POE - The only ARPG with no loot: this needs to change

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matto77 a écrit :

I rage quit and went looking for other ARPG's.

And how did that work out for you ?

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Dharall a écrit :

2) Low mods on high ilvl
Getting T9 mods on a ilvl80+ is just wrong. It should be adjusted just as the high T is for the ilvl.

In short rares needs a span of T levels coupled to the ilvl.

Ex. ilvl80 can drop with T1-4 mods

ALL OF THE YES.

I enjoy the loot system in this game the worst thing they could do is make loot like diablo 3. I have every gear in that game for all characters it is not fun at all to get all the gear maxed that easily and takes away the longevity of the game.

This is one of the few games left that excites me when I see a specific loot drop. Hopefully GGG does not take that new generation of entitled kids wanting all the loot right now.

I want to see maybe 1000% less quantity, but with real chance to find something usable.

I tired of three screens filled by dropped items with not even one of them are reasonable 'OK gear'. Not 'good' or better, just one 'OK' - is fantastic output from 1000 identified items.

And yes - I HATE stupid trade (with no real trade system) in this game.

I think a permanent SSF league with better drop rates and crafting would be a godsend.

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Qiox a écrit :

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matto77 a écrit :

First of all if you like farming the same burial grounds map 24/7 looking for divination cards that's fine, that option should still be there - but there needs to be a viable different way to play. I tried to shape my map and do this strategy, and after 2 hours of no div card drops I rage quit and went looking for other ARPG's.

Translation:

You set a completely unrealistic expectation for what would happen and got upset instead of getting informed.



I'll be generous and assume 2.5 minute clears. So lets round that up to 50 maps in 2 hours. And you rage quit for zero doctors after that small number of maps?

FYI, with a set of very high increased quantity gear, you can expect 1 doctor card to drop about every 200 maps.

With odds that low, it would not be unusual to get a stretch of 500 maps with no drops.

Putting it so little effort and expecting one of the rarest things in the game to drop for you is just stupid.

Did... did you even read the thing you quoted? I am not saying that I am expected doctors to drop at a higher rate, I am saying that playing for 5 hours straight and looting nothing in a ARPG is not what I play ARPG's for, I play them to loot. In this manner I am asking that there be a DIFFERENT way to play (EG making rares more farm-able)

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Shabob a écrit :

Here's some things I'd like to see regarding loot.

1. More ways for loot to drop identified.
2. Cut the affix tiers in half and double the ranges. Do you guys understand what I'm saying here?
3. Reduce item quant even more, but again more ways for loot to drop identified.
4. Map bosses actually dropping significant loot.

I'd also like to see a new buyout stash tab where items that are listed as a fixed price can be bought without trade and the currency and item would appear in that tab.

I love every single one of these ideas! I will add them to the main post if I can figure out how

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Ratedetar a écrit :

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matto77 a écrit :

I rage quit and went looking for other ARPG's.

And how did that work out for you ?

I like this post, because it's the kind of logic that people with more chromosomes with brain cells use to try and defend this shit.

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matto77 a écrit :

TL;DR: having only currency based farming as the only real option for end game is not fun for a lot of players who like ARPG's for the feeling of progression of their gear rather then just trading. It also forces player to repeat the same map over and over, cutting out a huge amount of potential content and making the game become boring much faster.

To be honest, the real reason for this is less about a supposed "flaw" in loot, and more that PoE offers a wider range of choices.

To compare with, say, D3, there's no trading, so sure, you ONLY upgrade from stuff you get... But the list of things that you can feasibly use is narrow: there's only a handful of classes in the game (with a fixed number of abilities each that are interchangeable) so there's only a very finite number of ways to gear them. It largely boils down to mostly relying on a tiny number of sets (IIRC, there's currently 59 item sets in D3?) and filling the remaining slots with "whatever maximizes your DPS and/or Toughness," which usually means just your class' damage attribute. (plus vitality if you're a tanky class like barbarian)

PoE breaks from that by having no fixed classes or builds; in spite of how present a lot of "meta" builds get talked about, truth is there's a lot more diversity than most give credit for; past half of the playerbase which appear to use "only" 8 pretty specific builds*, each individual build rapidly represents a smaller (but still numerous) section of players. And simply put, this yields a VERY long list of builds that aren't merely theoretically viable, but in active use; the ladder ALONE appears to have at least a few hundred distinct builds, and increasing the range to cover all level 80+ would bump that number into the thousands.

This means that there is no fixed identifier for "X is better than Y," because the positions could well be reversed on a different build. This is wildly different from Diablo 3, where because of the strict demarcation for what gear is even USABLE for a class, you can just tell "Oh yeah, this has more strength than this other piece of plate, so it's better."

And yes, while perhaps a majority of RPGs operate on a straightforward "Oh yeah, just equip the item with a bigger number ALWAYS," PoE isn't alone in allowing for a high level of build diversity by letting items be "whatever;" Ultima Online uses an incredibly similar system as well, which has yielded some similar complaints of "everything is garbage" from the less-experienced players, but still has valuable loot. It just doesn't come conveniently marked for the average newbie to notice.


*The top 8 builds in Incursion appear to be, in order, "Arc Trapper," (15.5%) "BV Elementalist," (10.8%), "Windripper TS," (6.1%) "EH Bow Deadeye," (5.4%) "Arc Totems," (3.8%) "KB Wander," (3.7%) "PP Frenzy," (3.3%) and "RF Juggernaut." (2.6%)

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matto77 a écrit :

First of all if you like farming the same burial grounds map 24/7 looking for divination cards that's fine, that option should still be there - but there needs to be a viable different way to play. I tried to shape my map and do this strategy, and after 2 hours of no div card drops I rage quit and went looking for other ARPG's. Even if I did get drops, its really not that fun and kills the fun of end game so quickly (for me personally and others like me)

To be honest, anyone that is whining because they didn't get a shitload of "The Doctor" drops has only themselves to blame. I've been letting EVERYONE know just how damn silly that "strategy" is, given that it requires a huge investment of currency and effort to get started (exalts' worth to get a MF setup, and effort to shape your Atlas and then constantly recruit people to leech IIQ from) and yet the returns from it are dubious at best: besides being heavily RNG-reliant, the overall "averaged-out" wealth rate is kinda poor given how long it takes for each Doctor card to drop.

Like, all told, if your goal is to generate wealth, spend next to nothing to build a melee juggernaut (e.g, molten strike) and just run Eternal Labyrinth, both running enchants and opening treasury chests. A smart lab-runner averages out to around ½ to 1 exalts' worth per run, and takes maybe 15-20 minutes even if you're not terribly fast. And all the while, you're getting drops that are both nice AND varied, so you don't really get bored. (Maps! Fragments! 6Ls! Fountains of orbs! 20% quality gems! Divination cards!)

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matto77 a écrit :

ARPG's at their core is all about progression, however in POE the rares are 99.99% trash so worthless to pick up, most unique's are also trash and have become more annoying then exciting when I see them as I know I now have to stop and waste time identifying the 1 alch item - which only leaves currency farming as the way to go.

There needs to be some sort of change/s that makes farming loot, well, worth it again

One thing you're also kind of forgetting: RPGs tend to have an "Endgame" which is defined as where progression generally stops, or at least slows down tremendously.

For Path of Exile, the endgame is very clearly marked as the "epilogue," and is primarily centered around using maps to explore and interact with the Atlas of Worlds. And in there, your progression, both in level and gear, starts becoming far more incremental rather than exponential. This is actually little different from other RPGs, with the only real difference that in the modern WoW/D3 style, there's a "level cap" you outright hit to herald the beginning of the endgame; in PoE, it's hazier, with it simply being that each level's improvement gives ever-diminishing returns.

Though, even in the endgame... Trust me, it's less than 99.99% of the loot that is trash. Most of my income has come from trading rares that I looted. To be honest, looting well is just a matter of learning how the game works and how to evaluate an item as valuable.

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matto77 a écrit :

Potential Ideas

There is already a huge amount of randomness in the actual affix/suffix types to support this:
- Make higher tier maps cut of the chance that rares will roll with low tier stats
- and/or Allow loot filters to detect if a rare has dropped with mostly t1/t2 rolls

Others:
- Make crafting more accessible (perhaps a new "mid tier" crafting currency with exalts used for perfect items?)
- Make unique's rarer, but more powerful
- "Tier" unique's so that low level/power do not drop in high tier maps

While the last one has some merit (I'll get back to that in a moment) the other part about uniques is ENTIRELY missing the point:

Not all uniques are meant to be direct upgrades over rare items. Too many people are kinda stuck in a simple MMO gear progression that WoW codified where it went uncommon->rare->epic->legendary.

This is not World of WarCraft, or even Diablo 3, (which borrows HEAVILY from WoW in almost every mechanical change from D2) where there is a trivial number of viable ways to build.

Unique items are called that (and not "legendary") because they are, well, unique. Their whole purpose is to offer CHOICE, not raw power. And to offer flavor at different points of the game.

A lot of uniques are weak because, if you notice, their level requirement is low. Obviously it's fitting: no matter HOW you dress it up, a spiked club is a low-level basetype that isn't gonna be good. So yeah, Gorebreaker can't be a weapon you can use to easily beat Uber Elder, because it can drop at level 9. However, at level 9, it's amazingly powerful. This makes it part of a BIG category known as "leveling uniques;" they're great for the "leveling" part (e.g, any part of Acts 1-10) but for the endgame mapping segment, you replace them.

Again, this isn't a generic MMO, so it bears repeating once more: unique items are not supposed to just strictly be better than rares.

Now, as I mentioned, there -is- some merit to cutting back the drops of leveling uniques: they're exciting to find early on, but from maps, they don't really offer anything. If they were much less likely to drop (with no other uniques taking their place) I think overall the experience would probably be improved.

And yeah, there ARE already "more powerful but rarer uniques;" if you hadn't noticed already, not all uniques drop as frequently; a few years back GGG revealed how the "rarity" roll works in the game, and that there's actually not 4 rarity tiers (normal/magic/rare/unique) but in fact seven: normal, magic, rare, and then four separate tiers of unique.

This isn't perhaps QUITE as visible today as it was before, admittedly; it'd shown up most prominently back when the "meta" made heavy use of rarer items that shared the same basetype as more common items, such as Mjölner vs. Cameria's Maul, and also back when Infernal Mantle shared the same basetype as Shavronne's Wrappings. It was VERY easy for most players to realize that the more-desired item proved to be several dozen times rarer... And today, can still be seen when players attempt to sacrifice belts in hopes of getting a Headhunter, and find that the vast majority of Leather Belts that drop out are instead Wurm's Molt. (with Gluttony and Immortal Flesh being less common than that, but still more common than Headhunter)

And also, for "more accessible crafting..." It already exists. Like, did you not notice that you get crafting benches from Masters, as well as stuff like Essences and Orbs of Binding? (e.g, make a new rare, with your pick of a guaranteed 4L or a single guaranteed mod) I mean, exalted orbs are ALREADY there for high-tier items, ("perfect" is a tier far, far beyond the value of a few measly exalts, BTW) and there's stuff in place for lower tiers.

There's so many routes there to produce usable gear, you've just either failed to realize it, or are willfully ignoring them.

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1. More ways for loot to drop identified.
2. Cut the affix tiers in half and double the ranges.
3. Map bosses actually dropping significant loot.

The only one I can agree with is the third one; in the current balance, bosses take way too much time for a very marginal reward. The time/reward calculation heavily favors just skipping most map bosses.

Why would loot need to drop identified? A good chunk of its importance comes from the basetype. Once you learn what basetypes are worth identifying, you've solved half your sorting issue. (and this can be automated by simply including it in your loot filter)

Lastly, I largely ignored mention above for bumps to rolls so I could address it more specifically here. The TL;DR for this is "power creep." The game is balanced around what players are largely able to gear themselves with, because GGG doesn't play the game so much as watch streamers, which are at least partly dependent on what they are able to gather themselves (if SSF) or what the market can bear to provide. (for non-SSF)

Power creep is double-edged: yes, it makes players more valuable, but ALSO raises the bar, too. A player that isn't very good at gearing themselves might find themselves statistically better-geared if the drops were just bumped... But then they'd find they'd just be where they started in a relative term: content would be rebalanced to be harder, and/or they'd find that they'd be still lagging just as much behind other players who were simply better at handling the itemization side of the game.

Of course, this is to say nothing of if the complaints are by people upset that they just can't seem to find anything worth a stack of exalts: sure, a Vaal Regalia with 600 ES and a lot of resists might be worth a bunch of exalts in Incursion now, but if drops are bumped to where every player gets one every dozen maps or so, the value will promptly become zero.

Path of Exile has a number of real, serious problems with it... But in all seriousness, the loot is -not- a major one in the slightest; it just merely appears that way to the less-understanding.

So... did you guys like my idea of an auto-pickup option for orbs?