The biggest question I’ve seen is what do we plan to do with your hard-earned items? We’ve given it a lot of thought and have been refining our plans.

Locking Stats into the leveling process ensures that no one can ever raise all of their Stat scores to 30, so Stats are a “sacred cow” in CR2.0. Therefore, removing Stats from equipment is important to the new combat system balance. This vital mechanic preserves and protects all character choices you’ll have with this revision. Because everyone gains 1 Stat point per level, there is always a valuable reward when you increase your level that you can’t get anywhere else.

On launch day (makes me happy just saying it), you’ll see that all items that previously had Stat bonuses now have Influence bonuses. (Virtually all item bonuses are Influence related.) Even though items no longer change your Stats, the resulting values are roughly equal to what you’re currently used to.

You’ll also find that weapons have damage values that appear as DPS and a firing rate. The firing rate is based on the weapon type not individual weapons. For example, shotguns have a slower firing rate than rifles. However, all shotguns have the same firing rate.

And we aren’t increasing the decay rate on any items. Painless no, interesting yes (Huu-zah!).