Loot is bad

This league I've been strongly considering creating a loot filter that only shows limited currency and items that sale very quickly. Essentially I would be ignoring all forms of crafting and just buying what I need from trade. Now personally I don't care about crafting or trade, so if GGG doesn't change things. I'll still play. However, loot probably should be important. Right now I feel that loot is bad and I want to go over the reasons why I don't find loot interesting.

The affix pool is filled with trash

Consider the ring slot; there are 12 tiers for mana. A greater mind rune will give you +35 mana. I would expect any mana affix to be AT LEAST equal to that. However, 3 tiers give less than 35 mana. Items that drop in maps can still roll these weak tiers. If this affix is rolled there is a 25% chance to get a unplayable tier. However there is a bigger issue:

I don't want this affix at all.

So not only are there 12 tiers of an unwanted affix, 3 tiers of it are complete garbage.

And there are so many more affixes I don't want.

8 tiers of accuracy rating, 9 tiers of evasion. 28 tiers dedicated to Attributes. 3 tiers of light radius (I'm aware of no build that ever want this). Without looking at a ring, I can say with 99% certainty, that it's bad.

It's like this for every slot.

For boots, movement speed is required (I hope that's not up for debate). Yet there are 9 tiers dedicated to mana and again 3 tiers that are unreasonably bad. 9 tiers dedicated to life with 3 tiers that are worst than a greater body rune. Even in the campaign I don't use boots less than 20% movement speed unless I have to. For boots to be worth consideration they have to roll 1 of the 4 tiers of viable movement speed affixes. That's 4 out of 82 possible prefixes. In other words, there is a 5% chance for boots to be worth looking at.

So again without looking at the boots, I'm mathematically certain they are bad.

For gloves 9 tiers of mana, 9 tiers of accuracy rating, 5 tiers for reduce attribute requirements. 25 tiers dedicated to attributes. 4 tiers of "gain life per attack" (not sure who want this) For body armor 5 tiers for reduced attribute requirements. 15 tiers for reducing duration, 7 tiers for thorns. For helmet 9 tiers for accuracy rating, 10 tiers for mana, 3 tiers for light radius.

I could go on, but I hope that I've convinced you that 80-90% of the affix pool is bad and 90% of the time your drop is going to be bad.

Now on console anytime I have to interact with the inventory system it is bad (and even in the best case it would just be neutral). So GGG is asking me to navigate a crappy inventory system so that 90% of the time, I get a bad item? Yeah, I'm not going to do that.

But wait there's more..

"Crafting" is bad

There is almost zero player agency in crafting and lots of tedious inventory interaction. Transmutations, augmentations, exalted, alchemy and Regal orbs all do the same thing: add affixes to the item ....randomly. Meaning I can add more bad affixes to a item with some good affixes. To get 6 affixes on a magic item, I have to navigate to an augment, click a button, navigate to the item, click a button, navigate to a regal orb, click a button, then navigate to the item, click a button, navigate to an exalted orb, click a button, then navigate to the item, click a button, etc...

And after all this what do I get: a bad item.

There is no agency in any of these currencies. Either I get something good or I don't. And I can say with mathematical certainty, I won't be adding good affixes to the item. So the outcome of this entire interaction is bad 99% of the time. The only crafting that gives any sort of agency are omen and those rarely drop.

Crafting also can't fix bad items. Only 3 items let you remove affixes (chaos orbs, annulment and perfect essences). All of them are rare. None of them are deterministic. The outcome of chaos orbs is based on the above terrible affix pool.

Most unique don't have enough base defensive stats to compete with rares, AND their special affixes almost never make up for this.

Essence are good. However essences aren't good enough to convince me to interact with the rest of the loot system.

TLDR:

99% time drops are bad.
Crafting doesn't help.
Uniques are bad.

Loot is bad.

Thank you for reading.

Agree with all of this.

Unfortunately, you can look at the movespeed problem and already know the future of this game. Their solution was to add checkpoints. Didn't work, so they added more checkpoints again. Then they added sprint. Then they add Act 4 with more giant maps. On top of that, they added passives to the tree that affect sprinting. So you can see the domino of trash being added to the game instead of taking their time and just addressing it correctly in the first place.

Shrink maps, make movespeed inherent to boots(5-20%) and change movespeed affix to only 3 tiers(5/10/15). Then remove sprint. Checkpoints just take up space, but I'd be ok if they removed or left them in.

Also agree. I never really got into PoE1 to compare, I played the campaign a little, but I've been playing PoE2 since early access started. It has the absolute worst loot of any RPG of any type I have ever played.

good post. i agree.

I agree: And i always have known items are bad ! 6000 hours in POE1 and about 1000 now in POE 2

i'm one of the players who pick up A LOT of items, cause i still like too, sometimes 2 or 3 trips per map.

Since launch early December i've picked up every single Obliterator bow and NOT ONE had more than 400 base dps, i had ONE bow that got 311 base dps. Hardly suitable to do T15 maps with especially with other bad mods on that item it would roll. I always have to end up crafting my own or bying

Early into the league, items like boots, rings, helmets did'nt have too much bad stats and was okay to invest in some minor crafting. I noticed greater orbs was doing the trick well enough to fill decent enough mods worthy to either use or sell on trade.

Then comes about 2 weeks ago, completely lowered drops with stats like 1.2 life regen start appearing. Greater orbs all of a sudden giving the same bad stats when for a month was kind of okay. If something was changed, they'll call it a bug.

I've understood drops are not designed to be good enough to get you through, this game is designed to have to craft your gear in the ultimate end. If out of 50k-100 k players online, maybe some out of those will get an actual good drop. But for 1 player, they not dropping 50k Obliterator bows over their period playing.but as a player base in a whole, it could be dropped by someone.

While everyone argues RNG is RNG. I disagree somewhat and that the RNG is programmed at such a minimal rate and i think its intentional. By what means or reason from GGG, that i do not know exactly.

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R3cKiTT#5326 a écrit :

I've understood drops are not designed to be good enough to get you through, this game is designed to have to craft your gear in the ultimate end. If out of 50k-100 k players online, maybe some out of those will get an actual good drop. But for 1 player, they not dropping 50k Obliterator bows over their period playing.but as a player base in a whole, it could be dropped by someone.

If this is truly matey's "vision" for this game, then, yikes!

We should be able to do SSF if you want to and get through the acts to endgame via drops only. No-one is seriously expecting bis items with max rolls or whatever but the drops should be good enough.

Then for end-game, we need to either have played PoE1 for 10 years and have a 4-year degree in GGG gobbledygook to understand the crafting system or save up and buy our top-notch end-gear items.

One of the things I love about aRPGs is that really nice feeling when a nice item of gear drops that is an upgrade to whatever you currently have. PoE2 just doesn't provide that.

I actually currently prefer playing the campaign right now, I have 4 toons so far. I get to mapping, progress stops, nothing drops (not counting currency) and I just get bored and start a new guy.

Same thing happens when I get to about level 92. There's no more excitement hits (or, they are way too far apart) and there's not much more to look forward to on the passives on most builds anyway.

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Ferdelizer#3373 a écrit :

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R3cKiTT#5326 a écrit :

I've understood drops are not designed to be good enough to get you through, this game is designed to have to craft your gear in the ultimate end. If out of 50k-100 k players online, maybe some out of those will get an actual good drop. But for 1 player, they not dropping 50k Obliterator bows over their period playing.but as a player base in a whole, it could be dropped by someone.

If this is truly matey's "vision" for this game, then, yikes!

We should be able to do SSF if you want to and get through the acts to endgame via drops only. No-one is seriously expecting bis items with max rolls or whatever but the drops should be good enough.

Then for end-game, we need to either have played PoE1 for 10 years and have a 4-year degree in GGG gobbledygook to understand the crafting system or save up and buy our top-notch end-gear items.

One of the things I love about aRPGs is that really nice feeling when a nice item of gear drops that is an upgrade to whatever you currently have. PoE2 just doesn't provide that.

I actually currently prefer playing the campaign right now, I have 4 toons so far. I get to mapping, progress stops, nothing drops (not counting currency) and I just get bored and start a new guy.

Same thing happens when I get to about level 92. There's no more excitement hits (or, they are way too far apart) and there's not much more to look forward to on the passives on most builds anyway.

I think for most people, they want that excitement feeling of a drop being good or potential upgrade or good enough with a different stat that you can try on your build to test.

I would agree, that SSF does need to be able to drop items at a fair RNG rate to successfully enter those final end game sections that you can work on your build to get there without 100% relying on the need to craft.

The thing is, its not balanced that we can call bad rolls "Unlucky" all the time. Then when does any player get "lucky" ? I've never been "Lucky" where is the RNG to get me that ? We call a divine drop or oman of light "Lucky" but never an item that competes with a top crafted item. That would be "Lucky"

In total 7000 hours(poe 1&2) i've never been able to get through harder end game content by kitting myself on item drops i found alone, no matter how many hours per day playing or months into the league i played.

Sure, a niche build can on some dodgy exploit without gear. But 80% of the skills to choose from, not possible without specific top notch gear.