Which is, a loot based game, is that the worst part of the game experience, comes when you have to identify all those rares you have in your inventory.
How is, that the most annoying, boring, almost depressing part of a loot based game.. happens to be the very same item identification process?.
I'm not talking about the time it takes, I don't care about it, but how itemization works, it makes extremely depressing to have to go through the identification process, you just see one useless item after another. Item specific class rolling non item specific stats.. 1k DPS 1 hand weapons rolling stupid stats.. or not having the required stats to be "competitive".
When the major aspect of a loot based game becomes the worse part of it.. something is just not ok.
I know, this is not new, I'm not saying anything almost everyone don't know, and I think that I'm far past the point of making threads to complain about something, like most of us do.
But.. seriously, the gameplay is overall good, killing stuff is fun, the builds are somewhat fun too (balance is still required thou) but when it comes to identify an inventory full of rares... sigh, It just makes me want to quit the game for good.
Something must be done, the situation has to change.
There are several alternatives to improve this game's itemization system, but I don't think Actiblizzard is going to hear any of them just because they could go against their need to maximize profits.
I would end this post with a "discuss" but.. not sure if there is a point anymore.
Revive Decard Cain already! He can do that for you!
And for your actual problem: there are more item classes and more item affixes and more legendaries than in D2 which makes for a load of more useless items. Add to that that most people never actually played D2 or if they did they didn´t do MF runs in a large quantity.
So for you newer guys out there: it was pretty normal that in a boss run where you kill most act bosses and some other special npcs to leave a lot of items right on the ground. For a 20 minute mf run game (with the fastest possible char and insane mf gear) it was the regular case to leave a whole boss drop on the ground consisting of mainly only unique ( = legendaries) and rare items.
These two things combined lead to the problem you have described. One solution I could think of would be to allow/require/disallow some affix combinations or make them more frequent. For example: increase the chance weapons have sockets or reduce the chance to find off-class items (Finding Mighty Belts when playing WD).
Which is, a loot based game, is that the worst part of the game experience, comes when you have to identify all those rares you have in your inventory.
How is, that the most annoying, boring, almost depressing part of a loot based game.. happens to be the very same item identification process?.
I too have an issue with the ID process, but it's flip-side to yours.
I don't mind the high amount of "useless" rares. As I played D2, and most of what dropped there was useless as well.
My issue is with the ID process itself. I could almost puke everytime I have to go back to town to ID a full INV of rares. It takes over 1 minute just to ID a full INV. I'm a very patient player, but this is just too much.
1 minute may not sound like much, but it weighs on the player. When you consider the two ways this could be done, it really seems ridiculous.
If we had an 'ID all' feature at the merch, it would be click.....done
...there....done, finally. That's a visualization of ID'ing 33 rares (an average haul). Fucking...ridiculous.
People get frustrated and accidentally switch equipped gears for junk, sell their multi-million gold items to the vendor, leave the game and don't realize until it's too late. This is a direct result of the unnecessary monotony of the ID process.
Other major playability issues IMO;
1) The lack of /nopickup. So sick of stumbling over loot on the ground, nevermind having to dump shit I didn't mean to pick-up.
2) No cap on key properties, causing serious itemization failures. Crit Damage & Crit Chance both need a hard cap. Resistance is also lacking a cap, having one would free-up itemization drastically. Life Steal also needs a cap of 6%, unless they make LS available on belts for all classes.
Which is, a loot based game, is that the worst part of the game experience, comes when you have to identify all those rares you have in your inventory.
How is, that the most annoying, boring, almost depressing part of a loot based game.. happens to be the very same item identification process?.
I too have an issue with the ID process, but it's flip-side to yours.
I don't mind the high amount of "useless" rares. As I played D2, and most of what dropped there was useless as well.
My issue is with the ID process itself. I could almost puke everytime I have to go back to town to ID a full INV of rares. It takes over 1 minute just to ID a full INV. I'm a very patient player, but this is just too much.
1 minute may not sound like much, but it weighs on the player. When you consider the two ways this could be done, it really seems ridiculous.
If we had an 'ID all' feature at the merch, it would be click.....done
...there....done, finally. That's a visualization of ID'ing 33 rares (an average haul). Fucking...ridiculous.
People get frustrated and accidentally switch equipped gears for junk, sell their multi-million gold items to the vendor, leave the game and don't realize until it's too late. This is a direct result of the unnecessary monotony of the ID process.
Other major playability issues IMO;
1) The lack of /nopickup. So sick of stumbling over loot on the ground, nevermind having to dump shit I didn't mean to pick-up.
2) No cap on key properties, causing serious itemization failures. Crit Damage & Crit Chance both need a hard cap. Resistance is also lacking a cap, having one would free-up itemization drastically. Life Steal also needs a cap of 6%, unless they make LS available on belts for all classes.
But you are missing a point. What actually makes the process tedious and boring, is the fact that you already know that the chance of finding a coherent item is more rare than to finding a legendary. I'm not talking about a good item, but a coherent one. Like, a class specific item with an average DPS/Armor with stats that are actually good for that class. Instead, you find items like xbows with strength, or wd helms with dex.. etc.
If this changes, I can assure you that those 2 seconds would be more than welcome.
Another issue about the loot system is with legendaries, rare two-handers and bows are pointless to pick up. Skorn comes with five out of six affixes already, so any two-handed rare needs to roll five affixes just to compete with low end skorns. Same with bows, you need to roll four affixes just to compete with low end manticores.
I know lots of people prefer the legendaries to be best in slot, and being a D2 classic player, I didn't mind that they weren't. The base legendaries are too good however and only a handful. They re-vamped them, but still only one out of the three or four top legendaries of each type are good while they others are still crap.
Legendary crossbow? AWESOME! Oh.. It's a hellrack.
But you are missing a point. What actually makes the process tedious and boring, is the fact that you already know that the chance of finding a coherent item is more rare than to finding a legendary. I'm not talking about a good item, but a coherent one. Like, a class specific item with an average DPS/Armor with stats that are actually good for that class. Instead, you find items like xbows with strength, or wd helms with dex.. etc.
If this changes, I can assure you that those 2 seconds would be more than welcome.
Well this is going to come to personal taste. It doesn't matter to me as to why the item was merch food. I don't care if it's because it was a Monk fist with 225 STR or a Barb belt with +6 to ham sandwich.......good/worthy finds should be rare.
To me, it's the time intensive effort of identifying the items that seems pointless.
No one wants a monk fist weapon with 225 str, it takes two affixes in order to get 225, and of course it's strength on a fist weapon. Personal taste might play a factor with a barb belt with +6 ham sandwich though, but I prefer turkey.
While you hate the time it takes to identify an item, which is weird since you like to waste time on higher MP. I'm with the OP who has a disgust for the loot itself and it's even more annoying that I have to ignore a majority of my drops because the low end market of legendaries makes looting and identifying them a complete waste of time.
No one wants a monk fist weapon with 225 str, it takes two affixes in order to get 225, and of course it's strength on a fist weapon. Personal taste might play a factor with a barb belt with +6 ham sandwich though, but I prefer turkey.
In case you misunderstood, I was implying that a fist with 225 STR IS a waste. But I don't consider it any differently than I do a low range roll on a desirable prop.
While you hate the time it takes to identify an item, which is weird since you like to waste time on higher MP.
I don't consider it wasting time when I'm playing. Playing the game is why I....ahem...play the game. Part of the challenge of playing the game should not come from such an innocuous activity like ID'ing an item. Honestly, I'm shocked that we still have to individually ID.
I'm with the OP who has a disgust for the loot itself and it's even more annoying that I have to ignore a majority of my drops because the low end market of legendaries makes looting and identifying them a complete waste of time.
I agree the loot is, for the most part, flat and vanilla. I have faith this will be fixed but that's going to take time. I want them to do it right, not another shit botched and hurried job like we saw with 1.04.
No one wants a monk fist weapon with 225 str, it takes two affixes in order to get 225, and of course it's strength on a fist weapon. Personal taste might play a factor with a barb belt with +6 ham sandwich though, but I prefer turkey.
In case you misunderstood, I was implying that a fist with 225 STR IS a waste. But I don't consider it any differently than I do a low range roll on a desirable prop.
While you hate the time it takes to identify an item, which is weird since you like to waste time on higher MP.
I don't consider it wasting time when I'm playing. Playing the game is why I....ahem...play the game. Part of the challenge of playing the game should not come from such an innocuous activity like ID'ing an item. Honestly, I'm shocked that we still have to individually ID.
I'm with the OP who has a disgust for the loot itself and it's even more annoying that I have to ignore a majority of my drops because the low end market of legendaries makes looting and identifying them a complete waste of time.
I agree the loot is, for the most part, flat and vanilla. I have faith this will be fixed but that's going to take time. I want them to do it right, not another shit botched and hurried job like we saw with 1.04.
Which is, a loot based game, is that the worst part of the game experience, comes when you have to identify all those rares you have in your inventory.
How is, that the most annoying, boring, almost depressing part of a loot based game.. happens to be the very same item identification process?.
I too have an issue with the ID process, but it's flip-side to yours.
I don't mind the high amount of "useless" rares. As I played D2, and most of what dropped there was useless as well.
My issue is with the ID process itself. I could almost puke everytime I have to go back to town to ID a full INV of rares. It takes over 1 minute just to ID a full INV. I'm a very patient player, but this is just too much.
1 minute may not sound like much, but it weighs on the player. When you consider the two ways this could be done, it really seems ridiculous.
If we had an 'ID all' feature at the merch, it would be click.....done
...there....done, finally. That's a visualization of ID'ing 33 rares (an average haul). Fucking...ridiculous.
People get frustrated and accidentally switch equipped gears for junk, sell their multi-million gold items to the vendor, leave the game and don't realize until it's too late. This is a direct result of the unnecessary monotony of the ID process.
Other major playability issues IMO;
1) The lack of /nopickup. So sick of stumbling over loot on the ground, nevermind having to dump shit I didn't mean to pick-up.
2) No cap on key properties, causing serious itemization failures. Crit Damage & Crit Chance both need a hard cap. Resistance is also lacking a cap, having one would free-up itemization drastically. Life Steal also needs a cap of 6%, unless they make LS available on belts for all classes.
its not 2 second, its 1 second and 4 second legendary
They could make it so we could ID all, like friggin Tuesday during maintenance. I'm no programmer but I would bet my right nut that change would be easy as shit.
its not 2 second, its 1 second and 4 second legendary
Semantics.... It should be 1 second and done....move on with inspecting the items so I can sell and play again. Identifying should not be rigorous. It's kinda fun with Legends, but these rares have a great disparity.
I too have an issue with the ID process, but it's flip-side to yours.
I don't mind the high amount of "useless" rares. As I played D2, and most of what dropped there was useless as well.
Other major playability issues IMO;
2) No cap on key properties, causing serious itemization failures. Crit Damage & Crit Chance both need a hard cap. Resistance is also lacking a cap, having one would free-up itemization drastically. Life Steal also needs a cap of 6%, unless they make LS available on belts for all classes.
Actually, you are contradicting yourself a little here. Having great stats and bad stats is what make most of the loot useless and you say you don't mind this. The greatest the inbalance between stats, the more useless loot we get. The more we "nerf" the good stats (crit, resist or LS) or improve the bad ones, the more they become equally desirable and almost any roll on an item becomes "equal" (of course it would require lots of nerfs and improvements to make health from globes as desirable as crit chance).
In my opinion saying you want to "nerf" (I know it's a bad word !) the greatest stats is like saying you want less useless item (because you want more items to be useful).
No contradiction here.
To state it simply;
If some of these highly desirable properties were capped (as they were in D2) than we have some balance to work with. If they then made it so more slots could spawn more of these props (helm w/ IAS....weapons with Crit Chance.....belts with LS etc etc) than we have balance.
Some of the most popular items are items that have the unique (and inherent) ability to spawn a specific prop. Prowlers...Mempo etc. What if rare Bracers could spawn with IAS and/or MS? Do Prowlers become less desirable? Yes. Is that bad? No.
So many people said they were glad that Rune Words weren't a part of D3. They said this because they didn't want every class to be using the same handful of items. Well....that's where we're at. Find me a monk that does respectable DPS that doesn't have an EF or a Skorn. Very few indeed.
Capping would be very tricky and would require much thought and testing, but I see it as absolutely necessary.
You have to ask yourself....why can't IAS, CC, LS etc spawn on all slots?
Answer; Because there are certain props that are very powerful. If all slots could spawn these props, than people would stack every slot with said prop. If there was a cap on that prop....problem solved. You could hit the cap without stacking every slot, use your other slots for stacking up other props. We'd have balance and what we would see is people attaining these cap limits on various pieces.
Individual character diversity would come from how players chose to stack other, non-capped props like main, LoH, Vit, Armor, Weapon DPS. To make all this work correctly we need more props as well. Deadly Strike, Crushing Blow, Faster Hit Recovery, Cannot Be Frozen....that kinda shit.
Anyone that disagrees with me, I'd like to hear why they think itemization fails in D3 as opposed to what I've laid out here. There is no diversity right now. Slot 'Y' must have 'X' is a bad template.
(well actually the notion of BiS could disappear with capped stats).
BINGO!!!!
And what I meant is : no more BiS = more items usable for each slot = more items are useful = less useless items
So we agree I'm a fucking genius? Good.
lol...seriously though, What I meant way back when I said "I don't mind the high amount of 'useless' rares" is that I don't mind having an INV full of useless rares, I just don't like the process of ID'ing one at a time. To be clear, Whether or not the item is useful isn't the point, it's this fucking retarded one-at-a-time shit ......I swear I feel like I'm digging a shard of glass out of my palm everytime I have to do this.
To simplify; There is little difference between 1 out of 1,000 items being salable/usable and 3 out of 1,000 items being salable/usable, so long as I'm not spending unwarranted amounts of time Id'ing.
I don't mind a wider variety of items and a higher chance of a viable roll....I sorta wrote that comment poorly. My apologies.
Individual character diversity would come from how players chose to stack other, non-capped props like main, LoH, Vit, Armor, Weapon DPS. To make all this work correctly we need more props as well. Deadly Strike, Crushing Blow, Faster Hit Recovery, Cannot Be Frozen....that kinda shit.
Dude, at the end of the beta, after I had played it to death, I made a post similar to the one quoted, saying that the amount and variety of affixes in D3 was absolutely abysmal, and used those same stats you used (DS, CB, FHR, CBF, etc) as examples of the delicious variety D2 had.
Even having levelled all classes to 60, I still find myself looking for the same stats in the same items. It's always the same crap.
Yep. HUGE issue. The diversity is so ....bleh.
The shame is that D3 has assloads of potential yet unmet. Amazing character building COULD be done through items, as is the template. But not these items.....it cannot be done with any flavor.
Certain really dynamic props are altogether missing from the detail sheet. FHR and Attack Rating jump right out.
I get the feeling that Blizzard was more concerned with balance. To make balance easier, you chop down the number of variable props to make it less complicated.
How is, that the most annoying, boring, almost depressing part of a loot based game.. happens to be the very same item identification process?.
I'm not talking about the time it takes, I don't care about it, but how itemization works, it makes extremely depressing to have to go through the identification process, you just see one useless item after another. Item specific class rolling non item specific stats.. 1k DPS 1 hand weapons rolling stupid stats.. or not having the required stats to be "competitive".
When the major aspect of a loot based game becomes the worse part of it.. something is just not ok.
I know, this is not new, I'm not saying anything almost everyone don't know, and I think that I'm far past the point of making threads to complain about something, like most of us do.
But.. seriously, the gameplay is overall good, killing stuff is fun, the builds are somewhat fun too (balance is still required thou) but when it comes to identify an inventory full of rares... sigh, It just makes me want to quit the game for good.
Something must be done, the situation has to change.
There are several alternatives to improve this game's itemization system, but I don't think Actiblizzard is going to hear any of them just because they could go against their need to maximize profits.
I would end this post with a "discuss" but.. not sure if there is a point anymore.
And for your actual problem: there are more item classes and more item affixes and more legendaries than in D2 which makes for a load of more useless items. Add to that that most people never actually played D2 or if they did they didn´t do MF runs in a large quantity.
So for you newer guys out there: it was pretty normal that in a boss run where you kill most act bosses and some other special npcs to leave a lot of items right on the ground. For a 20 minute mf run game (with the fastest possible char and insane mf gear) it was the regular case to leave a whole boss drop on the ground consisting of mainly only unique ( = legendaries) and rare items.
These two things combined lead to the problem you have described. One solution I could think of would be to allow/require/disallow some affix combinations or make them more frequent. For example: increase the chance weapons have sockets or reduce the chance to find off-class items (Finding Mighty Belts when playing WD).
I too have an issue with the ID process, but it's flip-side to yours.
I don't mind the high amount of "useless" rares. As I played D2, and most of what dropped there was useless as well.
My issue is with the ID process itself. I could almost puke everytime I have to go back to town to ID a full INV of rares. It takes over 1 minute just to ID a full INV. I'm a very patient player, but this is just too much.
1 minute may not sound like much, but it weighs on the player. When you consider the two ways this could be done, it really seems ridiculous.
If we had an 'ID all' feature at the merch, it would be click.....done
The way it is; click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds)....click (wait 2 seconds).....
...there....done, finally. That's a visualization of ID'ing 33 rares (an average haul). Fucking...ridiculous.
People get frustrated and accidentally switch equipped gears for junk, sell their multi-million gold items to the vendor, leave the game and don't realize until it's too late. This is a direct result of the unnecessary monotony of the ID process.
Other major playability issues IMO;
1) The lack of /nopickup. So sick of stumbling over loot on the ground, nevermind having to dump shit I didn't mean to pick-up.
2) No cap on key properties, causing serious itemization failures. Crit Damage & Crit Chance both need a hard cap. Resistance is also lacking a cap, having one would free-up itemization drastically. Life Steal also needs a cap of 6%, unless they make LS available on belts for all classes.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
But you are missing a point. What actually makes the process tedious and boring, is the fact that you already know that the chance of finding a coherent item is more rare than to finding a legendary. I'm not talking about a good item, but a coherent one. Like, a class specific item with an average DPS/Armor with stats that are actually good for that class. Instead, you find items like xbows with strength, or wd helms with dex.. etc.
If this changes, I can assure you that those 2 seconds would be more than welcome.
I know lots of people prefer the legendaries to be best in slot, and being a D2 classic player, I didn't mind that they weren't. The base legendaries are too good however and only a handful. They re-vamped them, but still only one out of the three or four top legendaries of each type are good while they others are still crap.
Legendary crossbow? AWESOME! Oh.. It's a hellrack.
Well this is going to come to personal taste. It doesn't matter to me as to why the item was merch food. I don't care if it's because it was a Monk fist with 225 STR or a Barb belt with +6 to ham sandwich.......good/worthy finds should be rare.
To me, it's the time intensive effort of identifying the items that seems pointless.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
While you hate the time it takes to identify an item, which is weird since you like to waste time on higher MP. I'm with the OP who has a disgust for the loot itself and it's even more annoying that I have to ignore a majority of my drops because the low end market of legendaries makes looting and identifying them a complete waste of time.
In case you misunderstood, I was implying that a fist with 225 STR IS a waste. But I don't consider it any differently than I do a low range roll on a desirable prop.
I don't consider it wasting time when I'm playing. Playing the game is why I....ahem...play the game. Part of the challenge of playing the game should not come from such an innocuous activity like ID'ing an item. Honestly, I'm shocked that we still have to individually ID.
I agree the loot is, for the most part, flat and vanilla. I have faith this will be fixed but that's going to take time. I want them to do it right, not another shit botched and hurried job like we saw with 1.04.
The ID issue could be fixed on Tuesday.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Explain please.
its not 2 second, its 1 second and 4 second legendary
They could make it so we could ID all, like friggin Tuesday during maintenance. I'm no programmer but I would bet my right nut that change would be easy as shit.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Semantics.... It should be 1 second and done....move on with inspecting the items so I can sell and play again. Identifying should not be rigorous. It's kinda fun with Legends, but these rares have a great disparity.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
No contradiction here.
To state it simply;
If some of these highly desirable properties were capped (as they were in D2) than we have some balance to work with. If they then made it so more slots could spawn more of these props (helm w/ IAS....weapons with Crit Chance.....belts with LS etc etc) than we have balance.
Some of the most popular items are items that have the unique (and inherent) ability to spawn a specific prop. Prowlers...Mempo etc. What if rare Bracers could spawn with IAS and/or MS? Do Prowlers become less desirable? Yes. Is that bad? No.
So many people said they were glad that Rune Words weren't a part of D3. They said this because they didn't want every class to be using the same handful of items. Well....that's where we're at. Find me a monk that does respectable DPS that doesn't have an EF or a Skorn. Very few indeed.
Capping would be very tricky and would require much thought and testing, but I see it as absolutely necessary.
You have to ask yourself....why can't IAS, CC, LS etc spawn on all slots?
Answer; Because there are certain props that are very powerful. If all slots could spawn these props, than people would stack every slot with said prop. If there was a cap on that prop....problem solved. You could hit the cap without stacking every slot, use your other slots for stacking up other props. We'd have balance and what we would see is people attaining these cap limits on various pieces.
Individual character diversity would come from how players chose to stack other, non-capped props like main, LoH, Vit, Armor, Weapon DPS. To make all this work correctly we need more props as well. Deadly Strike, Crushing Blow, Faster Hit Recovery, Cannot Be Frozen....that kinda shit.
Anyone that disagrees with me, I'd like to hear why they think itemization fails in D3 as opposed to what I've laid out here. There is no diversity right now. Slot 'Y' must have 'X' is a bad template.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
BINGO!!!!
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
So we agree I'm a fucking genius? Good.
lol...seriously though, What I meant way back when I said "I don't mind the high amount of 'useless' rares" is that I don't mind having an INV full of useless rares, I just don't like the process of ID'ing one at a time. To be clear, Whether or not the item is useful isn't the point, it's this fucking retarded one-at-a-time shit ......I swear I feel like I'm digging a shard of glass out of my palm everytime I have to do this.
To simplify; There is little difference between 1 out of 1,000 items being salable/usable and 3 out of 1,000 items being salable/usable, so long as I'm not spending unwarranted amounts of time Id'ing.
I don't mind a wider variety of items and a higher chance of a viable roll....I sorta wrote that comment poorly. My apologies.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Yep. HUGE issue. The diversity is so ....bleh.
The shame is that D3 has assloads of potential yet unmet. Amazing character building COULD be done through items, as is the template. But not these items.....it cannot be done with any flavor.
Certain really dynamic props are altogether missing from the detail sheet. FHR and Attack Rating jump right out.
I get the feeling that Blizzard was more concerned with balance. To make balance easier, you chop down the number of variable props to make it less complicated.
It almost seems....lazy.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Agreed. It's about power and diversity. I suppose I used the wrong word. "Diversity". It's key.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan