Very much agreed. What if there was a system where: For up to two hours after a legendary drops, you could select up to 1-5 friends to "reserve" it for. Allowing you to trade it with those selected FEW friend players indefinitely.
Wouldn't that deal with 3rd party trading while also completely allowing trading with a several friends to still exist?
That's a great idea.
Also, OP, just because you can't grasp something doesn't make it bullshit.
Honestly, I don't anticipate finding a ton of legendaries when I jump into Reaper of Souls. I do, however, anticipate that I'll be farming up lots of Veiled Crystals, Arcane Dust, Common Debris and gold so I can craft and Enchant as much as I want. And that should keep me plenty busy until I get some powerful enough legendaries, however long that'll be.
Wouldn't you like to feel that you have a chance of actually completing that set it's taken you 1000 hours to find 2 bits of though?
I really like how the game is in PTR, much better than the live version. I just hope they do not get super crazy with massive amounts of monsters. The latest patch added just a tad too many for my taste since I do like to use single target skills and only use limited amount of AoE.
I do like BoA since that will hopefully ease the third party sites gold/item tradings and the other aspects of that shady bunch of entrepreneurs.
The longer you play of course you are not going to find as many upgrades or sidegrades for other builds.
In the PTR I have switched mostly to Rares and some crafted Rares since the few Uniques did not fit my build plans, They were nice but I liked the Rares more. I think the main issue is that many players think that only Uniques and Set items should be good and be best in Slot. Too me they should be more of a special bonus item, great if you have one but no game breaker if you do not.
Diablo 1 had very low chance for getting Uniques except for some of the special Uniques. I never played online in DI or ever played the expansion for it. Quite often the end gear were just magic items with a few other bonus gear. Diablo II Uniques were still kind of rare unless you farmed bosses. I did not like that method too much and that's when I started to play mods for DII since many of them altered the gear and most of them made all item types viable and also most of them made the game more difficult as well. Farming in those mods were quite awesome and to some overwhelming, since there were multiple ways to get gear to upgrade and gold finding builds were common as well.
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On Strike and supporting Fallout 4 Mod Makers
Some fallout 4 mod makers have had their mods stolen and uploaded and downloaded on Bethesda's site for the Xbox One.
They are still tweaking data and numbers, so chances are high that they will increase the drop rate. That doesn't mean people shouldn't voice their concerns on the forums, just that they should be patient and continue to constructively provide criticism. Saying that BoA is bullshit is, imo, a narrow view on a BETA version of the game and doesn't show a lot of reflection to the goals of the game or the developers. No offense meant - just trying to be honest.
But let me ask this question - at what point is the drop rate too much? I highly encourage people to read threads from other folks in the community about their views of the console version of D3V. It was exciting at first and then large amounts of players complained that they got too many legendary items and that there was no sense of "progression." If that's true, then be careful what you ask for.
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Yes. I'm not against the BoA model. But to make it work they need to retune the current drop rate and reward system. It's just completely unrewarding right now.
I hate BoA, but I think that it *is* possible for them to deliver a fun experience despite that. What worries me most is that they just have not done that thusfar. I don't view the PTR experience as any significant forward progress from the vanilla experience (at least in terms of the item hunt). What's limiting them is this "kill monsters > get loot > kill monsters > get loot is the only way to have fun" mantra. Yes, killing monsters IS fun. But don't pidgeon-hole the game into being nothing more than killing monsters.
Make a good game. Stop trying to eliminate 3rd party sites, stop trying to get everyone to play exactly the same way. Just make a good game. That's all they have to do.
Not going to be a popular post, but I'll say it anyway: I see a lot of people complaining that they won't be able to boost their friends as easily so they can play together. It seems to me that if you just want to play together, it shouldn't matter what difficulty you're on, so if you need to go back down to their level that shouldn't be a problem. If you want to get them to point that they can play on the higher difficulties with you, then, frankly, that SHOULD be harder to do. I don't think it's that big of a problem that people need to work to get up to the higher tiers of the game. Of course you should be allowed to help them get there, but that doesn't mean you should be able to just give them a bunch of free gear to get them there instantly.
That's how I feel about it. I think being able to share items in the same game is a pretty good compromise. If you want to boost a friend, that's fine - you just actually have to play with them to do it. You can't just do it passively by handing off your drops. In a game that has a level cap like D3, such that a fresh level 70 can instantly put on any gear that's rated level 70 regardless of how long it took to find, I don't think this is an unfair restriction.
Based on my own PTR experience, I will say that I do think the drop rates for legendaries are too low, and that with BoA in place they certainly have room to improve it without much negative repercussion.
I hate BoA, but I think that it *is* possible for them to deliver a fun experience despite that. What worries me most is that they just have not done that thusfar. I don't view the PTR experience as any significant forward progress from the vanilla experience (at least in terms of the item hunt). What's limiting them is this "kill monsters > get loot > kill monsters > get loot is the only way to have fun" mantra. Yes, killing monsters IS fun. But don't pidgeon-hole the game into being nothing more than killing monsters.
Make a good game. Stop trying to eliminate 3rd party sites, stop trying to get everyone to play exactly the same way. Just make a good game. That's all they have to do.
I agree with you completely. If any negative criticism I have of RoS, it would fall in the realm of they don't do enough with Rifts/Bounties/Events to make it rewarding.
I'm a crafting buff and I personally feel the developers are overlooking this aspect a little too much. They have a great foundation set already in Rifts and Rift Bosses. I would love to see more unique crafting mats, legendary recipes and harder to find materials that can allow you to craft a great set of gear. Enchanting is a great start, but its still too limited. I guess a bit of the MMO influence wouldn't hurt in this case. Enchanting as it is now is just a reroll of numbers. I'd rather see an Enchantress that you have to find rare and powerful enchants that she can provide to your gear for a high materials cost and that takes time to accumulate.
They need to provide more than just the mantra of kill monsters = get loot.
If the auction house was taken out to encourage trading and add more to the social experience, then isn't adding boa go against that? Doesn't make sense to me. Either way boa or not I don't really care I play solo anyways. Also I don't get why it would matter if someone wants to sell what they find or not. How does it effect you personally? Botting? There was a lot of that going on and it didn't effect me at all. If it wasn't brought up then I would never been able to tell. Scamming for items and accounts? Don't know never fell for that just like in life if somethings to good to be true or seems shady you don't do it. If you download programs and get a tojan/keylogger it's your own fault because you probably knew you shouldn't have done that anyway. Just like in D2 with maphack.
Locking 3rd-party spammers/botters and traders out of the game, de-emphasizing gold and getting people out of the AH and back into the game is bullshit? I do not wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I would like to see some means of insulating people from bad luck, as that was (arguably) the only good use for the AH. Perhaps a +LegFind buff that increases with every elite kill? Although I'm not sure reasonable discussion about actual issues belongs in this thread.
Honestly, I don't anticipate finding a ton of legendaries when I jump into Reaper of Souls. I do, however, anticipate that I'll be farming up lots of Veiled Crystals, Arcane Dust, Common Debris and gold so I can craft and Enchant as much as I want. And that should keep me plenty busy until I get some powerful enough legendaries, however long that'll be.
Wouldn't you like to feel that you have a chance of actually completing that set it's taken you 1000 hours to find 2 bits of though?
I would like to feel that I have a chance to complete that set, of course. However, if I never complete that set, I'll still be able to enjoy the game.
We've seen so much coverage of how amazing Set bonuses are going to be, and how insane some legendaries are going to be, that it seems like that's all people care about. And if they don't find every piece of some set, or if they don't get some one single special legendary, they can't enjoy the game.
For me...I want to make my characters awesome, and one of the things that makes Reaper of Souls great is that even if you're not finding lots of high end legendary or set drops, you at least have access to Paragon Points to (re)allocate and the Mystic for Enchanting. I can still make a really awesome build without insane legendaries.
I love high end items as much as the next guy. But my enjoyment of this game will not held back simply because I'm not getting the best of the best around every corner. Which, truthfully, only makes those drops and items even better when they do happen, because they'll be even more unexpected.
Very much agreed. What if there was a system where: For up to two hours after a legendary drops, you could select up to 1-5 friends to "reserve" it for. Allowing you to trade it with those selected FEW friend players indefinitely.Wouldn't that deal with 3rd party trading while also completely allowing trading with a several friends to still exist?
That would be an awesome idea. "Reserving" would very much solve a lot of my problems regarding item sharing. Love that idea.
But my enjoyment of this game will not held back simply because I'm not getting the best of the best around every corner. Which, truthfully, only makes those drops and items even better when they do happen, because they'll be even more unexpected.
I'm sorry, Blizzard created this expectation. They spent so much time telling us how amazing legendaries would be, how they'd be build-changing, etc. They made us want them. And then we log into the PTR and it's kinda like Dave Chappelle yelling "gotcha, bitch!" at us. The most efficient way to farm is to play single player in a multiplayer game (split farming) because killing monsters is horrible when it comes to getting loot, but getting more shards/hour is *better* for getting loot. Considering that they've browbeat us with the "KILLING MONSTERS IS FUN, IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO HAVE FUN IN THIS GAME" mantra, that's pretty ironic. It's also hilarious that the last PTR patch made the best legendaries rarer, but increased the chance to get legendaries from gambling. Contradictory much? I thought killing monsters was supposed to be fun... apparently killing monsters to go to the Tristram Casino is what we're doing.
It's also ironic that the most-efficient way to gear up is to play co-op with three other people who use the same primary stat because smart drops make it very unlikely that you actually find gear to pass off to other people unless they share your primary stat. In reality, this is WORSE than trading because the average person doesn't have access to three pocket players with appropriate characters to help them gear up in this manner. The average person also won't be able to split farm either because of the increased difficulty of soloing in a four-player game. So this ridiculous notion that BoA makes a level playing field where everyone farts rainbows is just stupid.
All of this comes back to BoA, Blizzard's inability to balance droprates, and itemization which remains uninspired. Thorns is a prime example as to why drop rates can't be low. Without the gear to make a thorns build work, the property is still largely useless. So, it makes absolutely no sense that someone could feel that they never get to put thorns to use.
All BoA has accomplished is turn the item hunt into a scenario where you have to play 10+ hours per day for it to feel hopeful. Is that really the game you want?
If you bothered to quote the rest of my post, shaggy, yes, it is...I mean, not the way you twist the entire thing into being bad, but yeah...
Right off...Blizzard created this expectation? No. Players have desperately wanted that expectation for a long time in D3, because items weren't good enough...mainly because the D3 devs knew people wanted a more streamlined form of trading...which is why the Auction House was put into place...which is why legendaries couldn't be game-breaking. You say all this goes back to BoA, not entirely. This goes back to the very core philosophy of playing Diablo at all...
"KILLING MONSTERS IS FUN, IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO HAVE FUN IN THIS GAME"
First, if you have to be sarcastic about that, then I'm sorry you don't have much fun killing monsters. I've killed elite packs and only gotten a blue item, some gold and maybe a crafting mat...still felt pretty good when I won the battle. Notice...nowhere in that short snarky fake quote do you say anything about item acquisition. Blizzard wants people to have fun killing monsters, but since this game is a "loot hunt," most people equate the most fun with getting the best loot.
It's also hilarious that the last PTR patch made the best legendaries rarer, but increased the chance to get legendaries from gambling. Contradictory much? I thought killing monsters was supposed to be fun... apparently killing monsters to go to the Tristram Casino is what we're doing.
Contradictory? How many times do posters, devs, and CMs need to say that this is a beta test, and that most things that are occurring now won't be as they are in release? They even make official statements all the time about it...
"We've purposefully tuned legendary drop rates high to give testers more things to try out and play with."
"We've purposefully allowed legendaries to be acquired through gambling as a test to get feedback."
"We've purposefully tuned drop rate of keys to 100% so that the Infernal Machine can be tested."
"We've purposefully removed X feature to get more focused feedback."
Sometimes, when I visit these forums, I feel like I'm living in the friggin Twilight Zone. Why am I one of the only people who realizes that if Blizzard lets drop rates of legendaries stay high, that's all streamers are going to stream about. They're not going to "test" anything else, nor will they get accurate data back...why? Because if people are dripping in OP legendaries that should, yes, take a seriously long amount of time to get, how are they going to accurately test things like difficulty levels? Uber boss difficulty? Bounty difficulty? That's why they did a wipe? They tuned the drop rate of legendaries seriously high at first to show off some of the effects. GREAT! Test over...now they need to test other things, so they're tuning the drop rate down so people aren't constantly PLAYING the beta as opposed to TESTING. People who get beta keys aren't involved in some Early Access/Kickstarter here, they're supposed to be giving feedback.
But of course, all people are doing is panicking that they'll never be OP and be covered in legendaries. This is why companies like Blizzard don't mass test on players.
As far as gambling not fitting into the killing monsters equation, not sure how that's possible...in order to get Blood Shards, you do Bounties, most of which involves killing monsters. Just adds maybe one or two extra steps in between. Also, maybe you haven't noticed the groundswell of people BEGGING for Gheed, or some such mechanic from D2, to be included in D3 where people could gamble to get unique items. Yes, Blizzard wants you to kill monsters...it's not a contradiction...it's just adding one other source of gear acquisition that can be accessed via...what? Right...killing monsters. Yes, getting items to drop on slaying a monster is plenty fun. I know I love walking around, killing something and picking up an epic sword on the ground. But if you look back at D2, it wasn't the only way people got gear, and people enjoyed it. Right now, they're testing it out to see if people like it or not. By the time release comes, they'll likely be tweaking it to different levels of effectiveness.
It's also ironic that the most-efficient way to gear up is to play co-op with three other people who use the same primary stat because smart drops make it very unlikely that you actually find gear to pass off to other people unless they share your primary stat.
First of all, shaggy, not sure if you've been on the PTR or beta this past week, but Smart Drops have SERIOUSLY been tuned down for the time being. A lot of people are thinking there's some gear bug that's causing Smart Drops to not work, but personally, I just think they tuned it down in the background. Yesterday, I played for a good long while and while I did find a bunch of Smart Drops, wasn't anything like when the PTR first went up and 90% of my stuff was Smart Drop. It was actually more like half. So like I've said...may not even be an issue anymore.
No, what's ironic is that this point actually reminds me of the big back and forth I had with you and Zero over Smart Drops, and how you both claimed it limits one's ability to find items for alts.
Let's say I take my Monk into a public game with a Wizard, a DH and a Barb...the Barb finds a Rare they say they don't need, but looks like a major upgrade for my own Barb. Why can't I offer to trade him for it? Notice...I said RARE...Rares are tradeable, and in RoS, they're going to be a lot more useful than they are now, thanks to Enchanting. But unless that Barb, for some reason, has a second Barb and would need that Rare for that "alt," the only other things he'd do with that Rare is either salvage it (which I can give him one or more Rares for), or vend it (see last point). If I'm really eager for Monk upgrades, not hard to post in General Chat that I'm looking for other Monks to do some runs in Adventure Mode to farm upgrades.
Thorns is a prime example as to why drop rates can't be low. Without the gear to make a thorns build work, the property is still largely useless. So, it makes absolutely no sense that someone could feel that they never get to put thorns to use.
All BoA has accomplished is turn the item hunt into a scenario where you have to play 10+ hours per day for it to feel hopeful. Is that really the game you want?
And why can't you get the gear to make a Thorns build work? I understand Torment 6 has enormously high HP on Monsters (something else that is likely being tweaked before release), but plenty of Rares have Thorns affixes on them, and if you're not finding enough yourself, Rares are, what? That's right. Tradeable. People like you think that just because OP legendaries aren't tradeable beyond a 2 hour window to people outside the game that "trading is dead." No, the endgame economy is dead. Trading, for purposes of putting work into a build, isn't changing.
As for your "10+ hour a day" estimate...really think you're overestimating it. Certainly sounds inflated, but...you're wildly against BoA and desperately want your friends to hand you OP legendaries. At least, that's how it sounds. I've said it before...I don't care if Blizzard does a 180 on BoA and takes it away, and turns the game back into Trading 101. I'm really fine with it. Especially if it brings people back to the game.
But most people are so focused on legendaries, they've forgotten the constant cries from people that legendaries are the only viable items and how Rares are so useless in Vanilla right now, farming is pointless.
You're seeing legendaries being BoA, pessimistically assuming you're not going to get any, especially since they can't be traded, and you have a sketchy playing schedule. I'm saying...legendaries for me are going to be bonuses. My focus in the expansion is to put my work toward finding powerful Rares and Enchanting them up so they give me builds I want. When I happen to find a legendary, whether from killing a monster, Gambling, a Bounty Bag, a Cursed Chest, in a Rift, wherever, whenever, and if it's insanely badass? All that'll do is start my project over again and give me a new direction to work toward.
By the way...not sure where all this nonsense about low drop rates are about anyway. Yesterday on the PTR, my DH found a Balefire Caster that put my Windforce to shame (never thought I'd see that happen), and a legendary Quiver, pretty sure it was better than some of my Dead Man's Legacy's stats, but allowed me to have two extra Sentries, which was perfect for my Aid Station/Custom Engineering/Brooding build. Not to mention I also found a Harvest Moon crafting plan with my Witch Doctor. Harvest Moon...a Mighty Weapon...no way that was a Smart Drop if my WD found it.
If "low drop rates" simply means on killing monsters in general, and how MUCH they drop, I guess I can agree they could drop a bit more stuff. However, I'm really fine if elite packs and white mobs are dropping not that much, since Resplendent Chests drop so much more stuff by comparison. Ultimately, shaggy, the devs keep saying they want people to kill monsters to get loot, but what they mean is...they want people to play the game, and play it together. They'd rather have people generate loot together, than simply pass the same high end items around from person to person.
Picking on one quote of them saying they want you to kill monsters, though, is really up for more interpretation than you're allowing for.
It's also ironic that the most-efficient way to gear up is to play co-op with three other people who use the same primary stat because smart drops make it very unlikely that you actually find gear to pass off to other people unless they share your primary stat. In reality, this is WORSE than trading because the average person doesn't have access to three pocket players with appropriate characters to help them gear up in this manner. The average person also won't be able to split farm either because of the increased difficulty of soloing in a four-player game. So this ridiculous notion that BoA makes a level playing field where everyone farts rainbows is just stupid.
I'm seeing this crop up more and more but I'm not sure I'm convinced it's as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Players will always find a way to game the system - these are just examples of how people can game the system in RoS. Why can't you just not play that way if you don't want to play that way?Diablo 2 had its own version of this in Blood Runs / Baal Runs (all day all night baby). Sometimes I feel like I played a different version of D2 than everyone else, by my recollection is that 90% of the games in the game list at any given room were Bloody / Baal runs. Blizzard took a few steps to mitigate them but ultimately they remained the most efficient way to level up, but they didn't ruin the game. You either liked them or didn't like them and acted accordingly by doing them or not doing them.
but...you're wildly against BoA and desperately want your friends to hand you OP legendaries.
No. I just don't want to play 100% self-found 100% of the time. There's a massive difference, and I'm really, really, sorry that you cannot respect that without trolling.
It's patently ignorant, and rude, to insinuate that just because someone doesn't want to play purely self-found at all times that they just want people to hand them shit. Yet that argument keeps coming up every time people lack a real rebuttal. It's the height of "I have no argument, so I'll just make some ridiculously hyperbolic statement to make the other guy look like a loon." It's the kind of shit politicians do that makes politics such a horrible, broke, system in the USA. It would make discussions here a lot more productive if people like you, who clearly are intelligent, wouldn't stoop to those levels.
As I said before, numerous times, killing monsters is fun. But designing a game where it's the ONLY source of fun is shortsighted. If you took trading, PvP, and ladders out of D2 it never would have lasted for a decade. Why? Because those things did actually provide a gear meta-game where the purpose of acquiring gear went beyond "get more gear so you can kill monsters slightly faster so that you can get more gear so that you can kill monsters slightly faster so that you can get more gear so that....."
It's ridiculous to think that is a sustainable model. Ridiculous.
Again, me and all D2 players I knew at the time played Diablo 1+2 for about 15 years "only for killing monsters". If you're not satisfied by that... it's fine, but don't derive from that that RoS will fail just because it doesn't ship with ladder and PvP as of 2.0 (I'm 100% sure it'll be patched in later anyways). For us, the game lasted a decade without these features.
It really grinds my gears that we're going back to square one. BoA, PvP, ladders - these kind of discussions just provide some sort of distraction, but neglect the core issues. There are bugs to be fixed and balancing problems to be sorted out before release. Once that's done, more features can be added to the game.
but...you're wildly against BoA and desperately want your friends to hand you OP legendaries.
No. I just don't want to play 100% self-found 100% of the time. There's a massive difference, and I'm really, really, sorry that you cannot respect that without trolling. It's patently ignorant, and rude, to insinuate that just because someone doesn't want to play purely self-found at all times that they just want people to hand them shit. Yet that argument keeps coming up every time people lack a real rebuttal. It's the height of "I have no argument, so I'll just make some ridiculously hyperbolic statement to make the other guy look like a loon." It's the kind of shit politicians do that makes politics such a horrible, broke, system in the USA. It would make discussions here a lot more productive if people like you, who clearly are intelligent, wouldn't stoop to those levels.As I said before, numerous times, killing monsters is fun. But designing a game where it's the ONLY source of fun is shortsighted. If you took trading, PvP, and ladders out of D2 it never would have lasted for a decade. Why? Because those things did actually provide a gear meta-game where the purpose of acquiring gear went beyond "get more gear so you can kill monsters slightly faster so that you can get more gear so that you can kill monsters slightly faster so that you can get more gear so that....."It's ridiculous to think that is a sustainable model. Ridiculous.
But shaggy, I completely agree with you that PvP, Ladders and even trading ARE healthy for this game. They DO create a gear meta-game, and open up the possibilities and community. Believe me, I fully agree 100%. I've done it in other threads, you've seen me do it, and I'm doing it again now.
So, I really don't think what I've done is trolling. I posted a long message to call you out on wanting to get OP legendaries from friends, which is pretty much what would happen. You'd give some items to friends, and you'd get OP legendaries you want in return. Would that not happen?
Meanwhile, speaking of "ridiculously hyperbolic statements," you and everyone else seem to think that just because OP legendaries become BoA after 2 hours, and can only be traded to people in the game it dropped from, that "trading is being removed." I'm sorry, but that idea is EONS more hyperbolic than what you're calling my statement. Trading is NOT getting removed, and you know it's not getting removed. What's being removed, yet again, is the economy surrounding high end OP legendaries that get treated like trading tokens. Again, I've agreed with you before that Blizzard should absolutely find a particular way to allow players to trade specific items with specific friends indefinitely. Like a Clan, or a Group, or a Community, or whatever it happens to be. That way, the economy goes BYE BYE, but you (and WE) get the social feature back of helping other players we actually care about.
Yet, you haven't even once acknowledged that Rares are still tradeable and because legednaries are appearing at so little a rate, Rares are being made intensely more useful in RoS than they've been since D3 came out.
You can't deny this fact...the only Rares in D3V that have any real viability are trifecta, quadfecta, quintfecta items, stuff that are about as rare (if not rarer) than most people consider legendaries to be now in the beta. Best way to get them is the AH, and that's just the worst way to get them. You plunk in a few stats, put your gold down, boom, you have an item. It completely circumvented the entire loot hunt, that you think is magically floating away simply because the best and brightest items can't be floating from person to person.
You don't want to buy RoS, fine, don't. I'm not trying to convince you otherwise. All I'm trying to do is call you out on being guilty of the same exact thing most of the anti-D3 community has been guilty of since day 1 of this game's release...hating change simply on principle. You don't like Diablo anymore, that's entirely your prerogative. I'd probably have more respect for you to quit, drop being a member of these forums and playing something else, at least then you're doing something you LIKE as opposed to stressing yourself out on something you're not happy with. Not to sound sarcastic at all here, but feel free to move over to Path of Exile if you haven't already. I've been playing it on and off with some friends lately, it's fun. I've seen the good in it, some aspects are pretty cool, however I've also seen how it's held back drastically by trying to be too much like D2.
Then again, it has free trade, PvP, leagues and races. Plenty to keep you busy.
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That's a great idea.
Also, OP, just because you can't grasp something doesn't make it bullshit.
I really like how the game is in PTR, much better than the live version. I just hope they do not get super crazy with massive amounts of monsters. The latest patch added just a tad too many for my taste since I do like to use single target skills and only use limited amount of AoE.
I do like BoA since that will hopefully ease the third party sites gold/item tradings and the other aspects of that shady bunch of entrepreneurs.
The longer you play of course you are not going to find as many upgrades or sidegrades for other builds.
In the PTR I have switched mostly to Rares and some crafted Rares since the few Uniques did not fit my build plans, They were nice but I liked the Rares more. I think the main issue is that many players think that only Uniques and Set items should be good and be best in Slot. Too me they should be more of a special bonus item, great if you have one but no game breaker if you do not.
Diablo 1 had very low chance for getting Uniques except for some of the special Uniques. I never played online in DI or ever played the expansion for it. Quite often the end gear were just magic items with a few other bonus gear. Diablo II Uniques were still kind of rare unless you farmed bosses. I did not like that method too much and that's when I started to play mods for DII since many of them altered the gear and most of them made all item types viable and also most of them made the game more difficult as well. Farming in those mods were quite awesome and to some overwhelming, since there were multiple ways to get gear to upgrade and gold finding builds were common as well.
They are still tweaking data and numbers, so chances are high that they will increase the drop rate. That doesn't mean people shouldn't voice their concerns on the forums, just that they should be patient and continue to constructively provide criticism. Saying that BoA is bullshit is, imo, a narrow view on a BETA version of the game and doesn't show a lot of reflection to the goals of the game or the developers. No offense meant - just trying to be honest.
But let me ask this question - at what point is the drop rate too much? I highly encourage people to read threads from other folks in the community about their views of the console version of D3V. It was exciting at first and then large amounts of players complained that they got too many legendary items and that there was no sense of "progression." If that's true, then be careful what you ask for.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
I hate BoA, but I think that it *is* possible for them to deliver a fun experience despite that. What worries me most is that they just have not done that thusfar. I don't view the PTR experience as any significant forward progress from the vanilla experience (at least in terms of the item hunt). What's limiting them is this "kill monsters > get loot > kill monsters > get loot is the only way to have fun" mantra. Yes, killing monsters IS fun. But don't pidgeon-hole the game into being nothing more than killing monsters.
Make a good game. Stop trying to eliminate 3rd party sites, stop trying to get everyone to play exactly the same way. Just make a good game. That's all they have to do.
I agree with you completely. If any negative criticism I have of RoS, it would fall in the realm of they don't do enough with Rifts/Bounties/Events to make it rewarding.
I'm a crafting buff and I personally feel the developers are overlooking this aspect a little too much. They have a great foundation set already in Rifts and Rift Bosses. I would love to see more unique crafting mats, legendary recipes and harder to find materials that can allow you to craft a great set of gear. Enchanting is a great start, but its still too limited. I guess a bit of the MMO influence wouldn't hurt in this case. Enchanting as it is now is just a reroll of numbers. I'd rather see an Enchantress that you have to find rare and powerful enchants that she can provide to your gear for a high materials cost and that takes time to accumulate.
They need to provide more than just the mantra of kill monsters = get loot.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
I love high end items as much as the next guy. But my enjoyment of this game will not held back simply because I'm not getting the best of the best around every corner. Which, truthfully, only makes those drops and items even better when they do happen, because they'll be even more unexpected.
I'm sorry, Blizzard created this expectation. They spent so much time telling us how amazing legendaries would be, how they'd be build-changing, etc. They made us want them. And then we log into the PTR and it's kinda like Dave Chappelle yelling "gotcha, bitch!" at us. The most efficient way to farm is to play single player in a multiplayer game (split farming) because killing monsters is horrible when it comes to getting loot, but getting more shards/hour is *better* for getting loot. Considering that they've browbeat us with the "KILLING MONSTERS IS FUN, IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO HAVE FUN IN THIS GAME" mantra, that's pretty ironic. It's also hilarious that the last PTR patch made the best legendaries rarer, but increased the chance to get legendaries from gambling. Contradictory much? I thought killing monsters was supposed to be fun... apparently killing monsters to go to the Tristram Casino is what we're doing.
It's also ironic that the most-efficient way to gear up is to play co-op with three other people who use the same primary stat because smart drops make it very unlikely that you actually find gear to pass off to other people unless they share your primary stat. In reality, this is WORSE than trading because the average person doesn't have access to three pocket players with appropriate characters to help them gear up in this manner. The average person also won't be able to split farm either because of the increased difficulty of soloing in a four-player game. So this ridiculous notion that BoA makes a level playing field where everyone farts rainbows is just stupid.
All of this comes back to BoA, Blizzard's inability to balance droprates, and itemization which remains uninspired. Thorns is a prime example as to why drop rates can't be low. Without the gear to make a thorns build work, the property is still largely useless. So, it makes absolutely no sense that someone could feel that they never get to put thorns to use.
All BoA has accomplished is turn the item hunt into a scenario where you have to play 10+ hours per day for it to feel hopeful. Is that really the game you want?
If you bothered to quote the rest of my post, shaggy, yes, it is...I mean, not the way you twist the entire thing into being bad, but yeah...
Right off...Blizzard created this expectation? No. Players have desperately wanted that expectation for a long time in D3, because items weren't good enough...mainly because the D3 devs knew people wanted a more streamlined form of trading...which is why the Auction House was put into place...which is why legendaries couldn't be game-breaking. You say all this goes back to BoA, not entirely. This goes back to the very core philosophy of playing Diablo at all...
First, if you have to be sarcastic about that, then I'm sorry you don't have much fun killing monsters. I've killed elite packs and only gotten a blue item, some gold and maybe a crafting mat...still felt pretty good when I won the battle. Notice...nowhere in that short snarky fake quote do you say anything about item acquisition. Blizzard wants people to have fun killing monsters, but since this game is a "loot hunt," most people equate the most fun with getting the best loot.
Contradictory? How many times do posters, devs, and CMs need to say that this is a beta test, and that most things that are occurring now won't be as they are in release? They even make official statements all the time about it...
"We've purposefully tuned legendary drop rates high to give testers more things to try out and play with."
"We've purposefully allowed legendaries to be acquired through gambling as a test to get feedback."
"We've purposefully tuned drop rate of keys to 100% so that the Infernal Machine can be tested."
"We've purposefully removed X feature to get more focused feedback."
Sometimes, when I visit these forums, I feel like I'm living in the friggin Twilight Zone. Why am I one of the only people who realizes that if Blizzard lets drop rates of legendaries stay high, that's all streamers are going to stream about. They're not going to "test" anything else, nor will they get accurate data back...why? Because if people are dripping in OP legendaries that should, yes, take a seriously long amount of time to get, how are they going to accurately test things like difficulty levels? Uber boss difficulty? Bounty difficulty? That's why they did a wipe? They tuned the drop rate of legendaries seriously high at first to show off some of the effects. GREAT! Test over...now they need to test other things, so they're tuning the drop rate down so people aren't constantly PLAYING the beta as opposed to TESTING. People who get beta keys aren't involved in some Early Access/Kickstarter here, they're supposed to be giving feedback.
But of course, all people are doing is panicking that they'll never be OP and be covered in legendaries. This is why companies like Blizzard don't mass test on players.
As far as gambling not fitting into the killing monsters equation, not sure how that's possible...in order to get Blood Shards, you do Bounties, most of which involves killing monsters. Just adds maybe one or two extra steps in between. Also, maybe you haven't noticed the groundswell of people BEGGING for Gheed, or some such mechanic from D2, to be included in D3 where people could gamble to get unique items. Yes, Blizzard wants you to kill monsters...it's not a contradiction...it's just adding one other source of gear acquisition that can be accessed via...what? Right...killing monsters. Yes, getting items to drop on slaying a monster is plenty fun. I know I love walking around, killing something and picking up an epic sword on the ground. But if you look back at D2, it wasn't the only way people got gear, and people enjoyed it. Right now, they're testing it out to see if people like it or not. By the time release comes, they'll likely be tweaking it to different levels of effectiveness.
First of all, shaggy, not sure if you've been on the PTR or beta this past week, but Smart Drops have SERIOUSLY been tuned down for the time being. A lot of people are thinking there's some gear bug that's causing Smart Drops to not work, but personally, I just think they tuned it down in the background. Yesterday, I played for a good long while and while I did find a bunch of Smart Drops, wasn't anything like when the PTR first went up and 90% of my stuff was Smart Drop. It was actually more like half. So like I've said...may not even be an issue anymore.
No, what's ironic is that this point actually reminds me of the big back and forth I had with you and Zero over Smart Drops, and how you both claimed it limits one's ability to find items for alts.
Let's say I take my Monk into a public game with a Wizard, a DH and a Barb...the Barb finds a Rare they say they don't need, but looks like a major upgrade for my own Barb. Why can't I offer to trade him for it? Notice...I said RARE...Rares are tradeable, and in RoS, they're going to be a lot more useful than they are now, thanks to Enchanting. But unless that Barb, for some reason, has a second Barb and would need that Rare for that "alt," the only other things he'd do with that Rare is either salvage it (which I can give him one or more Rares for), or vend it (see last point). If I'm really eager for Monk upgrades, not hard to post in General Chat that I'm looking for other Monks to do some runs in Adventure Mode to farm upgrades.
And why can't you get the gear to make a Thorns build work? I understand Torment 6 has enormously high HP on Monsters (something else that is likely being tweaked before release), but plenty of Rares have Thorns affixes on them, and if you're not finding enough yourself, Rares are, what? That's right. Tradeable. People like you think that just because OP legendaries aren't tradeable beyond a 2 hour window to people outside the game that "trading is dead." No, the endgame economy is dead. Trading, for purposes of putting work into a build, isn't changing.
As for your "10+ hour a day" estimate...really think you're overestimating it. Certainly sounds inflated, but...you're wildly against BoA and desperately want your friends to hand you OP legendaries. At least, that's how it sounds. I've said it before...I don't care if Blizzard does a 180 on BoA and takes it away, and turns the game back into Trading 101. I'm really fine with it. Especially if it brings people back to the game.
But most people are so focused on legendaries, they've forgotten the constant cries from people that legendaries are the only viable items and how Rares are so useless in Vanilla right now, farming is pointless.
You're seeing legendaries being BoA, pessimistically assuming you're not going to get any, especially since they can't be traded, and you have a sketchy playing schedule. I'm saying...legendaries for me are going to be bonuses. My focus in the expansion is to put my work toward finding powerful Rares and Enchanting them up so they give me builds I want. When I happen to find a legendary, whether from killing a monster, Gambling, a Bounty Bag, a Cursed Chest, in a Rift, wherever, whenever, and if it's insanely badass? All that'll do is start my project over again and give me a new direction to work toward.
So yes...that is a game I want to play.
By the way...not sure where all this nonsense about low drop rates are about anyway. Yesterday on the PTR, my DH found a Balefire Caster that put my Windforce to shame (never thought I'd see that happen), and a legendary Quiver, pretty sure it was better than some of my Dead Man's Legacy's stats, but allowed me to have two extra Sentries, which was perfect for my Aid Station/Custom Engineering/Brooding build. Not to mention I also found a Harvest Moon crafting plan with my Witch Doctor. Harvest Moon...a Mighty Weapon...no way that was a Smart Drop if my WD found it.
If "low drop rates" simply means on killing monsters in general, and how MUCH they drop, I guess I can agree they could drop a bit more stuff. However, I'm really fine if elite packs and white mobs are dropping not that much, since Resplendent Chests drop so much more stuff by comparison. Ultimately, shaggy, the devs keep saying they want people to kill monsters to get loot, but what they mean is...they want people to play the game, and play it together. They'd rather have people generate loot together, than simply pass the same high end items around from person to person.
Picking on one quote of them saying they want you to kill monsters, though, is really up for more interpretation than you're allowing for.
It's patently ignorant, and rude, to insinuate that just because someone doesn't want to play purely self-found at all times that they just want people to hand them shit. Yet that argument keeps coming up every time people lack a real rebuttal. It's the height of "I have no argument, so I'll just make some ridiculously hyperbolic statement to make the other guy look like a loon." It's the kind of shit politicians do that makes politics such a horrible, broke, system in the USA. It would make discussions here a lot more productive if people like you, who clearly are intelligent, wouldn't stoop to those levels.
As I said before, numerous times, killing monsters is fun. But designing a game where it's the ONLY source of fun is shortsighted. If you took trading, PvP, and ladders out of D2 it never would have lasted for a decade. Why? Because those things did actually provide a gear meta-game where the purpose of acquiring gear went beyond "get more gear so you can kill monsters slightly faster so that you can get more gear so that you can kill monsters slightly faster so that you can get more gear so that....."
It's ridiculous to think that is a sustainable model. Ridiculous.
Again, me and all D2 players I knew at the time played Diablo 1+2 for about 15 years "only for killing monsters". If you're not satisfied by that... it's fine, but don't derive from that that RoS will fail just because it doesn't ship with ladder and PvP as of 2.0 (I'm 100% sure it'll be patched in later anyways). For us, the game lasted a decade without these features.
It really grinds my gears that we're going back to square one. BoA, PvP, ladders - these kind of discussions just provide some sort of distraction, but neglect the core issues. There are bugs to be fixed and balancing problems to be sorted out before release. Once that's done, more features can be added to the game.
But shaggy, I completely agree with you that PvP, Ladders and even trading ARE healthy for this game. They DO create a gear meta-game, and open up the possibilities and community. Believe me, I fully agree 100%. I've done it in other threads, you've seen me do it, and I'm doing it again now.
So, I really don't think what I've done is trolling. I posted a long message to call you out on wanting to get OP legendaries from friends, which is pretty much what would happen. You'd give some items to friends, and you'd get OP legendaries you want in return. Would that not happen?
Meanwhile, speaking of "ridiculously hyperbolic statements," you and everyone else seem to think that just because OP legendaries become BoA after 2 hours, and can only be traded to people in the game it dropped from, that "trading is being removed." I'm sorry, but that idea is EONS more hyperbolic than what you're calling my statement. Trading is NOT getting removed, and you know it's not getting removed. What's being removed, yet again, is the economy surrounding high end OP legendaries that get treated like trading tokens. Again, I've agreed with you before that Blizzard should absolutely find a particular way to allow players to trade specific items with specific friends indefinitely. Like a Clan, or a Group, or a Community, or whatever it happens to be. That way, the economy goes BYE BYE, but you (and WE) get the social feature back of helping other players we actually care about.
Yet, you haven't even once acknowledged that Rares are still tradeable and because legednaries are appearing at so little a rate, Rares are being made intensely more useful in RoS than they've been since D3 came out.
You can't deny this fact...the only Rares in D3V that have any real viability are trifecta, quadfecta, quintfecta items, stuff that are about as rare (if not rarer) than most people consider legendaries to be now in the beta. Best way to get them is the AH, and that's just the worst way to get them. You plunk in a few stats, put your gold down, boom, you have an item. It completely circumvented the entire loot hunt, that you think is magically floating away simply because the best and brightest items can't be floating from person to person.
You don't want to buy RoS, fine, don't. I'm not trying to convince you otherwise. All I'm trying to do is call you out on being guilty of the same exact thing most of the anti-D3 community has been guilty of since day 1 of this game's release...hating change simply on principle. You don't like Diablo anymore, that's entirely your prerogative. I'd probably have more respect for you to quit, drop being a member of these forums and playing something else, at least then you're doing something you LIKE as opposed to stressing yourself out on something you're not happy with. Not to sound sarcastic at all here, but feel free to move over to Path of Exile if you haven't already. I've been playing it on and off with some friends lately, it's fun. I've seen the good in it, some aspects are pretty cool, however I've also seen how it's held back drastically by trying to be too much like D2.
Then again, it has free trade, PvP, leagues and races. Plenty to keep you busy.