I remember seeing this a few weeks ago on Kripparrian's stream. He was running with Cybrix and Chengo, Kripp got picked up and Chengo kept him frozen the entire fight. It was funny how long it took with only the monk and wizard killing him, and not the ww/sprint barb
I never thought that something as simple as Nephalem Valor would be so addicting! Now that I've got 2 characters at lvl 60, each game becomes a race to 5 stacks of NV, then killing everything in my path for extra loot! No other game has created such an addicting idea where I have to keep playing once I've started! I just wish it would apply to chests and vases too! Make 5 stacks feel even more fantastic! Just throwing that out there!
P.S. Why stop at 5 stacks? Maybe starting in a3 inferno, let it go up to 10+ stacks????
To be honest, I wish it worked on chests and vases too, but then the bots would be rolling in loot more than they already do. I understand blizz's thinking behind it, but this is why we can't have nice things.......
Unfortunately I never botted. I just have a lot of time on my hands.
Also the video on the front page isn't the correct one. That was the first first time I tested any sort of tanky build vs Diablo, which was a really long time ago.
lot of time when u admit that u had 250 hours of game and 500+ in the profile? and u admited also that u leave game on during night? and to count hours it must be IN GAME, not in menu.
So, u have a lot of time (botting) meanwhile u sleep, u are right ^^
Whoa there buddy, no need to throw accusations around. You are aware that you can idle away in town and never be disconnected right? I've done it several times. I know, I know, sometimes you are disconnected, but it's not guaranteed that you are however. And yes, I can't be arsed to log in every freaking time I play diablo 3, so I just don't logout. Problem?
Hey, look at that, a COMPLETE list of affixes with values attached and everything. Right here on these very forums, man I'm blind. Or dumb. Or both. I'm gonna go drool in the corner now, bai guyz.
Hey guys, the name is Affy. Some of you may know me as Recurs1ve. I've been seeing a trend lately, a lot of questions about loot in the Diablo franchise and how certain things effect them, like magic find. I'm going to lay some things out, if you find an error please feel free to correct me. I've been playing Diablo games since the very first one came out, and I authored many Diablo 2 mods, item drops and the process behind them has always been fascinating to me. Hopefully I can shed some light on the curious world of Diablo items. So, without further ado......
Loot! or, Why Exactly Do We Kill Demons?
So, you've played through normal difficulty, items magically fall from enemies as you progress through the game. You've probably noticed those weapons that have the higher DPS numbers on them, makes it a lot easier and faster to kill the monsters in your way as you head to kill Misses Diablo, she of a Masculine and repetitive voice. You lay the killing blow to Big D, the credits screen rolls, afterwords another screen pops up that says you can progress to Nightmare difficulty, where greater challenges and epic loot await you. Well, isn't that strange, we get to do the same game, over and over again, why would we do that?
The answer lies in your character. You like to feel powerful, you love it when monsters disintegrate by the mere glance of your character. And what better way to prove your mastery over the foul demons of hell then by letting them get stronger, and you still laying waste to the armies of the Evils of Hell. Leveling up does make your character marginally more powerful, but I stress marginally. If you went through the world of Inferno difficulty wearing nothing but a loin cloth and armed with only your fists, those denizens of hell would crush your soul. So how do you get stronger? Loot, of course.
The difficulty of the enemies goes up, the quality of the items they drop goes up, and you become stronger and more able to progress through the challenges presented to you. If you always got awesome loot, the game would be far too easy. If the loot did not get better, then the game would be too hard. The Diablo franchise revolves around this, you progress through the game through a steady but slow diet of awesome items thrown your way, just don't ask where skeletons keep all those gold coins or where quill rats keep 8 foot polearms, we have to exaggerate a bit, ok?
So, how does the game decide how to give me better loot?
As you've probably noticed, Diablo 3 is broken up into 4 acts per difficulty, with 4 total difficulties across the entirety of the game. Like I mentioned before, if you could get the best loot from act 1 monsters in normal difficulty, then the rest of the game would not be that hard.
In previous Diablo games, there was what us veterans like to call loot tables. Loot tables are exactly that, a table not unlike a spreadsheet that defines exactly what kind of loot (items, gold, things like health and mana potions) that every monster in the game could drop. Quill rats in act 1 right outside of town dropped gear that was appropriate for the level expected to complete that area. As you progressed through the act, monsters became higher level and dropped higher level loot, and the answers were always in the loot tables.
In Diablo 3, the concept of loot tables exist, but they are more global then they were before. Act 1 normal difficulty has one loot table, act 2 normal has another, as does act 3, and this continues for every act across every difficulty. The specific monster level means less than it did before, but you should still get level appropriate loot as the game progresses. More gold drops, better health potions drop, and better items pop out of cultist innards.
What are these new fangled item colors? or, Item Quality Explained.
The previous section detailed item level. Item level is one half of the equation when it comes to how good that new weapon that just dropped is. There are 5 item qualites; lesser, normal, magical, rare, set and legendary. Wait, that's six qualities you say? Well, for the purposes of Diablo 3, Set and Legendary items are of the same quality. Each item quality has a specific color of text when you see it on the ground. Lesser is grey, normal is white, magical is blue, rare is yellow, set is green and legendary is a burnt orange color I haven't quite defined yet.
You can quickly tell how cool an item can potentially be by seeing the color of it's name as it lies on the ground, by the odds a yellow will be better than a blue, whites and grey's should be left on the ground or sold to a vendor (for the love of god don't use them) and sets and greens have the potential of being the rarest and most coveted items in the game. Yeah, ignore the whole legendary items suck right now thing, Blizzard has promised us new shiny items in a future patch ok? Lay off me.
Why aren't all my items legendary? I LIKE SHINY ITEMS!
Item quality is very important to a loot driven game like Diablo 3. Items too good make the game easy, but progressing through the game is the goal. I'm going to lay down the process of what happens when you kill a monster, and how the game decides to throw down a piece of loot.
This section is conjecture and theory, this is how it worked in Diablo 2 and we have all the reason in the world to believe this is how it works in Diablo 3, as pointed out by a blue post given a month or so ago.
You wack that monster with a hammer, it dies. Now, in the loot table I explained earlier, there are certain parameters defined by percentages. You have a chance of getting no drop at all, a drop of gold, a drop of a potion, or a drop of an item. The highest chance is no drop, which means you get nothing. You've probably noticed that the majority of monsters you kill in fact drop nothing at all. From my personal experience, I think potion drops are actually the rarest, we just don't notice because oh look a potion dropped who cares, right? So that leaves gold and items.
A gold drop is just that, if the game decides to drop you a pile of gold, it will then do another check and randomly assign you an amount of gold. As you go through the game, those gold piles get bigger and bigger, and gold find increases on your items effect this. Let's say the game decides to drop you 100 gold, it will then check to see how much gold find increase percentage you have, let's say you have 30%, and then it adds that to your gold pile. Your 100 gold drop just magically turned into 130, and since it's a percentage the larger the initial pile of gold is, the better your gold find becomes.
Items work a bit different than all others. So, your running through Inferno difficulty act 3, you kill a stupid succubus (may he who designed those rot in hell) and the game decides you get an item drop, the process starts to get complicated here. First off, since you are in act 3, the game has to decide on the items level. Act 3 has a certain level range of items that will drop, 52% of the items will be from levels 50 to 60, 24% of the items will be level 61, 16% will be level 62, and 8% will be level 63. Obviously, and especially when it comes to weapons, 63 is better than 62 which is better than 61, etc. The higher the level of the item, the better the affixes can be on the items. I'll explain that later, but just keep in mind now that a 63 item's affixes have the potential of being far, far better than the affixes on a 61.
Now that the item's level has been decided, the game has to check on the item's quality. Back to our scenario, you killed that succubus and the game decided to drop a level 63 item for you. Now the item is checked for quality. We do not have these numbers, but I'll break it down as best I can without them. It works like the item level does, but instead of levels being assigned percentages, qualities are given a percentage. You have 5 percentages to choose from, lesser, normal, magic, rare, and legendary (which includes set). Now, if you are a smart cookie and have noticed that set and legendary items are never higher than level 62. So that means your 63 item can not be set or legendary, but those percentages are not ruled out. Quality checks are always done in order from best to worst, so it will check for the item to be legendary or set, then rare, then magic, then normal and then finally lesser. So we have a conundrum, if the game chooses a 63 item, and then chooses for it to be legendary or set, what happens then? If the particular quality of the item does not exist, then the next down is automatically chosen, so in the case of our item it now becomes rare. Ahh, now you see the light grass hoppa. This applies to other items in the particular level ranges also, like there is no legendary level 13 axe, so if legendary is picked it will automatically be a rare item.
Where in the High Hells does Magic Find come into play?
So glad you asked. Remember those percentages I talked about earlier for the item qualities, and how they are always checked from best to last? Those percentages for each quality is what magic find improves. It does not effect item level, because that was already chosen before quality was. So, if your level 63 has a 1% chance of being a legendary item, and you have say 75% magic find, you now have 1*1.75 percent chance of getting a legendary item, or 1.75% chance. Yeah, bad example, 63 can't be legendary I know, but the math still stands.
Rare items, now that we are back to that point because our legendary 63 item just turned into a rare because it doesn't exist, are a special case. Again, I'll explain more about affix pools later, but rare items have the potential of obtaining six affixes, 3 prefix and 3 suffix. Now, rare items when they are dropped are checked AGAIN for the amount of affixes, and yes magic find works here too. So if that particular monster has a 1% chance of dropping a 6 suffix rare item, and you have that 75% magic find, you now have 1.75% chance of getting a 6 suffix rare item. This is why rares can be so freaking good, they are capable of getting more (and better) affixes than any other items in the game.
Finally, Affixes. or, Affy talks a lot.
Affixes are an important part of Diablo 3. Affixes, or properties as they may be called, are what gives the items we find stats, like strength and intellect, they can also augment armor or life on hit or life steal, and they give us such cool things like sockets and percentage bonuses to our life and define the damage that weapons can do. If you are really curious, affix lists can be found here http://gaming.stacke...ilable-on-items it's the most complete list I can find, but it doesn't have values and I don't know if it's complete. If anyone puts together a list with those values, let me know. Anyhow, prefixes on that list do not have "of" in front of them, and the suffixes do. So if you find a Ruthless ring of Assault, you get a strength and vitality bonus from the Ruthless prefix, and another strength bonus from the of Assault suffix.
Legendary and set items have a number of predetermined properties and then another number of random properties to make each one unique, they will pick from the affixes list for those randoms. Magic items can have either 1 or 2 suffixes, rare's always have at least 2 and up to 6.
Selecting affixes is always completely random, as long as the item type can have that affix it is on the list of things that can be chosen. Affixes are always decided upon as the item drops, and is not changed or decided upon when you identify the item. Identifying an item is merely like opening a gift on your birthday, it may be really cool, it may be crap, but it's always fun to open them.
So that's about it. I'm tired of typing all this crap out, if I think of anything else I'll revise this. Like I said before, if you have any questions or comments or you just want to tell me how awesome I am or how much I suck, let me know. I'm all ears. Ok, not ears, more like eyeballs, but you get the point.
P.S. You've been crit by Wall of Text for 9001. You have died.
Its absolutely retarded that anyting lower then lvl 60 drops in inferno, i mean HELLO you have to be lvl 60 to even be in inferno. finding lvl 52 items is the dumbest thing ever. Loot system is absolutley broken.
And so it begins, let me explain, this is what makes this game run. It's why we like it when we do find a good item....
First inferno diablo kill got me a 52 and a 58 rare.
I cried. some champ packs are harder than diablo though to be fair.
And if you got a guaranteed upgrade, you would just kill bosses. Over, and over and over, until you had perfect items everywhere, and then you would do it some more. You would sell the new perfect items on the auction house, with everyone else, and sooner or later no one would buy anything because everyone has the best gear. Then everyone would stop playing, because they already have the best gear and they can't do anything with the drops that they keep getting, so why play?
Depends where you are in Inferno. Act 3 drops a lot of ilvl 60+ items. Only problem is that everything is junk.
Not EVERYTHING is junk. If 100% of the items were junk, then where are all the good items being sold for multiple millions of gold on the auction house, or for hundreds of dollars on the RMAH coming from?
i agree that the further in acts you go the better the gear, but im just saying that inferno dropping anything that is sub lvl 60 is dumb since you have to be 60 to get there.
and ya killing diablo on inferno was a disapointment got a 61 sheild and 53 bow
I already covered this, just pointing out how many times the same thing has been said.
The lower range is definitely far too low, but you can't have everything dropping in Inferno be good/ilvl 61-63. I have seen 52s myself, but I'd love if Inferno didn't drop anything lower than 57 or 58.
I don't think it really matters that much tbh, if you're killing anything in Inferno you want ilvl 63 drops, which have a fixed percentage. The rest is basically AH fodder (61-62) or garbage (60 and lower)
I actually said almost exactly this to a friend yesturday.
57 min in Act 1, 58 min in Act 2, 59 min in Act 3 and Act 4 gets 60+.
Just my thoughts anyways.
Terrible idea, see above. Flooding the market with really really good items is a bad idea.
im not saying to increase the ilvl 63 items all i was saying is that it makes no sense to spend several minutes and maybe even dying a few times to get a lvl 52 item in inferno, 58.59.60 could take the place of all the low ilvl gear, and they could keep there 61-63 tables the same, im just saying
>>>>>it makes as much sense for a lvl 63 mob to drop a lvl 52 item as it does for a lvl 52 mob to drop a lvl 63 item.<<<<<....
*** simplest soloution of all make it so that the item dropped is within 3 lvls of the mob*****
so if its a lvl 60 trash mob the lowest they could drop is a lvl 57
and if its a lvl 63 pack of champs the lowest is a lvl 60..
See, you guys are like a broken record. And it's always a bad song playing.
Ok since you don't get the point of my post because you are incompetent, let me reword it for you.
If blizzard were to change Act3/4 of inferno to 100% ilvl63 drops, you would still cry about it.
Why? I can already see your cry baby self saying
"Whaaa! Why do I not always get a drop from elites?!"
"Whaaa! Why doesn't my ilvl63 always roll godly?!"
"Whaaa! I can't sell my awesome ilvl63 items for billions like before cause it drops so often now!"
Layman's term? You can never please a cry baby - leave it the way it is.
So you're saying people would cry that they don't always get drops from elites, even though you just hypothetically upped the drop chance to 100%?
I agree with your point though, you can never please everyone at the same time. They could carefully alter a few changes in drops here and there, without altering the prices on the auction house.
I think that there are many vocal players who wouldn't be happy if Blizzard mailed them gold-plated Ferraris. To that extent, I think there are some minor tweaks to loot that could be made.
1) Condense all follower special items into one, the class-specific follower relics are fucking TERRIBLE and I really hate it.
2) As you said, make class-specific items unable to have the "wrong" primary stat (no int/dex on barb gear), but while still not forcing str on barb gear.
3) Somehow address the "damage" issue on weapons. I wish I had SS'd it, but I just got a *really* good 63 wand, except it had like 350 damage. I don't think that having such a wide damage range on weapons is actually helpful at this point.
Beyond that, I'm not really sure much needs to be done to loot unless you want to delve into the world of "those who shall never be pleased."
I explained this in another post, but putting limits of any kind on item drops will inevitably lead to the best items being everywhere, and no point to playing the game.
We've been used to a design in Diablo 2 where MF simply improved your chances are getting gear in a better colour, affixes were not a concern. Yet now, we are presented with a system upon where after the game checks to see if an item will roll at its highest tier, it now follows a series of brackets to determine the quality of its rare status.
Why is this a problem? It's twofold. Because the endgame right now IS rare items, and we also have item level to contend with, players are left with two options.
They can farm act 1 with high MF for the significantly rare chance of finding an ilvl 63 (or 62 jewelry) item with a reasonable chance of rolling 5-6 affixes
They can farm act 3 with little-no MF for the uncommon chance of finding an ilvl 63 with a very low chance of rolling 5-6 affixes
It's standard fare to accept that only those with gold values in the tens and hundreds of millions have the capacity to find quality farming gear that also has MF. Therefore, the vast majority of players are in a lose-lose situation. Either method offers you a staggeringly low chance of even acquiring a 5 or 6 affix, high ilvl rare. And this is even before getting into the huge variations on affixes that can spawn on those items.
Diablo 2's farming used to be like penny slots, if you tried enough times at single, quick runs you might not get much, but there was a pretty solid chance you would walk away with something pretty nice after a low to moderate amount of time invested. Diablo 3's farming is like buying a jackpot ticket. More expensive and the chance to get a return of sizable value is astronomically low.
I don't know what else needs to be said. This tier of affixes garbage has to be taken out, and each rare item needs an equal chance of rolling all its possible number of affixes. I would say increase the minimum # affixes on high level items to four, but that would probably be too much fun.
I can't take it anymore, this thread, I already said it earlier, you guys kill me. You absolutely can not, ever, put any sort of guarantee on item drops being good, that would lead to very bad things. All right, I'm done now. Continue on, go slay some demons folks.
So you're saying A) ilvl 60 items are very good and you are clearing act3/4 with these items? And You're saying that with the tables right now, you're finding the best gear on a regular basis?
I want your luck, really. People are saying Diablo 3 isn't a substitute for a job, but if I would find the best gear on a regular basis, like you claim to do, I'd be a millionaire by now.
Also: I wouldn't mind if Blizzard removed a few possiblities of affixes on some items, no INT on Mighty weapons, no STR on Spirit Stones etc., that said, they shouldn't force the STR on mighty weapons and DEX on Spirit Stones either. Just remove the 1-2 affixes out of the 20+ affix pool and it's already a whole lot better, more importantly: less frustrating.
Wait, what? I think you totally did not comprehend my post. You guys just don't realize the damage that limiting ANYTHING in the item affix pools will seriously change the game play. Here, let me spell it out.
IF DROPS HAD ANY GUARANTEE, AT ALL, EVEN A MINOR ONE, ANY GUARANTEE AT ALL OF NOT BEING SHIT WHEN IT DROPPED THEN THE MARKET WILL BE FLOODED WITH VERY GOOD ITEMS.
When that happens, you can kiss gear progression good bye, there would be no point at all in playing a game based completely on item farming. If you stopped bad primary stats on class gear, that would be bad. If you limited the item levels that could drop by monster level, that would be bad. If you made it so your weapon that just dropped with really good stats always had good damage, that would be bad.
Getting bad items 99% of the time is the WHOLE FREAKING POINT of Diablo 3. Simply because when you DO get that awesome item 1% of the time, it feels epic and awesome and you feel good and you either get rich or become significantly more powerful because of it. I do not see how this is so hard to comprehend. Really guys, stop crying about bad items, they will not and should not go anywhere.
If you don't understand that concept by now, there really is no hope left for you, you really should find another game to play.
Bob: "You know how we're selling out gold for half the price Blizzard is?"
Mike: "Yeah."
Bob: "We don't have to keep selling it for so low."
Mike: "You're right! Let's bump it up from 50% of their price to 90%!"
Bob: "Genius. We will still retain our customers because we are cheaper but now we're maximizing our profits!"
tl:dr predicting website prices re-zero out according to Blizzard's minimum to maximize profits.
Your scenario works only if bob and mike are only competing with blizzard. There is a reason bob and mike were only selling gold at the price they had it, and it's because that was the point where they were already maximizing profits. There are more gold sellers than bob and mike, and they all have to fight for our dollar.
My scenario was the dumbed down process that will stretch over X amount of day/weeks/months that the websites, represented as the single entity within Bob and Mike as the "non-blizzard sellers", will raise their prices as a whole slowly but surely since they know there is larger profit margin the entire enterprise can agree to tap into via this slow increase to whatever each outlet feels is the highest margin they feel comfortable will maintain the customer flow they want. It's exactly how almost all markets work and I don't see a reason this won't do the same as these websites only have a limited amount of gold to sell since RMAH is the best sell price despite websites being the best buying price.
But I don't expect all my metaphors to be understood all the time.
Either way, monopoly is implied. It doesn't work like that in a pure free market, specifically because it's not zero sum. As long as there are more than 2 competitors to blizzard, prices will not be fixed. Just ask them nicely, they might even tell you that
The floor effectively limits to players from falling to match the bots so the minimum value for gold is now confirmed. I don't expect the bots to drop in price but it is possible that a surge in demand for legal gold could drive the price up. I parked several sell orders at a few price levels just in case the price starts to rise on RMAH
Problem is I don't think much gold is selling on the RMAH. You've done what several people have done, and the minimum value isn't even selling. I wish you luck though.
Step 1: Buy gold from trade chat for $1.2 per million.
Step 2: Sell gold on RMAH for $3 per million.
Step 3: Pray someone buys it.
This. You know people will be buying when it first comes out
And all reports are pointing to....people are not buying gold on the RMAH. I mean to say, supply is far outstripping demand, and to get demand higher the value needs to go up. And the only way to raise the value is to lower the cost, and Blizzard is not allowing us to do that.
The spread is large atm, and it can't stay that way. Something will give. The question is if the bots will rise, or the players will fall.
The spread doesn't have to change if Blizzard decides to not change anything. If anything, the spread will get even greater. Until Blizzard either gets rid of ALL the gold sellers other than themselves by legal means (they've been trying to do that for years, good luck) or changes the minimum buyout to less than what they decided, and they decided that minimum for a reason. We may not know the reason, but there has to be a reason they set it.
Wasn't the idea with RMAH to discourage people from buying gold from these dodgy websites? Seems like they now indirectly encouraging it.
You're confusing "competing" and "security". The RMAH isn't meant to compete, it's made as a legit and safe medium for the same transactions that will always exist. I can always buy my fruit and veggies for cheaper from the man in the van on the side of the road, but the risk is higher for countless reasons. You don't go to the grocery store because it's cheaper, you go because it's safer.
Yes, some people have had safe transactions with these websites, but just because someone came back from Africa without Malaria doesn't mean the next person won't.
Please read my post again.
This miniumum price will actually make people buy more gold from gold websites, only to sell it higher on the RMAH. People will earn real lfie monies on this. Because the RMAH is not competing it is actually making gold websites more attractive, becuase they are not only cheaper.. they can also make you a real money profit.
I think this is really bad and Blizzard should change this. Gold websites will profit from this even more which leads to even more hacked accounts, keyloggers and gold spam in your channels.
And then this discussion will happen between the owners of a gold selling website:
Bob: "You know how we're selling out gold for half the price Blizzard is?"
Mike: "Yeah."
Bob: "We don't have to keep selling it for so low."
Mike: "You're right! Let's bump it up from 50% of their price to 90%!"
Bob: "Genius. We will still retain our customers because we are cheaper but now we're maximizing our profits!"
tl:dr predicting website prices re-zero out according to Blizzard's minimum to maximize profits.
Your scenario works only if bob and mike are only competing with blizzard. There is a reason bob and mike were only selling gold at the price they had it, and it's because that was the point where they were already maximizing profits. There are more gold sellers than bob and mike, and they all have to fight for our dollar.
And your solution would flood the market with ilvl60 plus items. Everyone would get the best gear on a regular basis, there would be no progression of gear because you would easily go to the auction house and get nearly perfect rolls of items for almost free. The RMAH would be useless, and Blizzard would see no return on investment for the entire system they created.
So your only qualm is that it "would ruin the AH"?
Umm, yes. This game was built to include an AH. If you don't like it, you are better off choosing another game.
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To be honest, I wish it worked on chests and vases too, but then the bots would be rolling in loot more than they already do. I understand blizz's thinking behind it, but this is why we can't have nice things.......
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Whoa there buddy, no need to throw accusations around. You are aware that you can idle away in town and never be disconnected right? I've done it several times. I know, I know, sometimes you are disconnected, but it's not guaranteed that you are however. And yes, I can't be arsed to log in every freaking time I play diablo 3, so I just don't logout. Problem?
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Or jailers, wallers, or teleporters for that matter. That could have ended up badly.
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Hey, look at that, a COMPLETE list of affixes with values attached and everything. Right here on these very forums, man I'm blind. Or dumb. Or both. I'm gonna go drool in the corner now, bai guyz.
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Loot! or, Why Exactly Do We Kill Demons?
So, you've played through normal difficulty, items magically fall from enemies as you progress through the game. You've probably noticed those weapons that have the higher DPS numbers on them, makes it a lot easier and faster to kill the monsters in your way as you head to kill Misses Diablo, she of a Masculine and repetitive voice. You lay the killing blow to Big D, the credits screen rolls, afterwords another screen pops up that says you can progress to Nightmare difficulty, where greater challenges and epic loot await you. Well, isn't that strange, we get to do the same game, over and over again, why would we do that?
The answer lies in your character. You like to feel powerful, you love it when monsters disintegrate by the mere glance of your character. And what better way to prove your mastery over the foul demons of hell then by letting them get stronger, and you still laying waste to the armies of the Evils of Hell. Leveling up does make your character marginally more powerful, but I stress marginally. If you went through the world of Inferno difficulty wearing nothing but a loin cloth and armed with only your fists, those denizens of hell would crush your soul. So how do you get stronger? Loot, of course.
The difficulty of the enemies goes up, the quality of the items they drop goes up, and you become stronger and more able to progress through the challenges presented to you. If you always got awesome loot, the game would be far too easy. If the loot did not get better, then the game would be too hard. The Diablo franchise revolves around this, you progress through the game through a steady but slow diet of awesome items thrown your way, just don't ask where skeletons keep all those gold coins or where quill rats keep 8 foot polearms, we have to exaggerate a bit, ok?
So, how does the game decide how to give me better loot?
As you've probably noticed, Diablo 3 is broken up into 4 acts per difficulty, with 4 total difficulties across the entirety of the game. Like I mentioned before, if you could get the best loot from act 1 monsters in normal difficulty, then the rest of the game would not be that hard.
In previous Diablo games, there was what us veterans like to call loot tables. Loot tables are exactly that, a table not unlike a spreadsheet that defines exactly what kind of loot (items, gold, things like health and mana potions) that every monster in the game could drop. Quill rats in act 1 right outside of town dropped gear that was appropriate for the level expected to complete that area. As you progressed through the act, monsters became higher level and dropped higher level loot, and the answers were always in the loot tables.
In Diablo 3, the concept of loot tables exist, but they are more global then they were before. Act 1 normal difficulty has one loot table, act 2 normal has another, as does act 3, and this continues for every act across every difficulty. The specific monster level means less than it did before, but you should still get level appropriate loot as the game progresses. More gold drops, better health potions drop, and better items pop out of cultist innards.
What are these new fangled item colors? or, Item Quality Explained.
The previous section detailed item level. Item level is one half of the equation when it comes to how good that new weapon that just dropped is. There are 5 item qualites; lesser, normal, magical, rare, set and legendary. Wait, that's six qualities you say? Well, for the purposes of Diablo 3, Set and Legendary items are of the same quality. Each item quality has a specific color of text when you see it on the ground. Lesser is grey, normal is white, magical is blue, rare is yellow, set is green and legendary is a burnt orange color I haven't quite defined yet.
You can quickly tell how cool an item can potentially be by seeing the color of it's name as it lies on the ground, by the odds a yellow will be better than a blue, whites and grey's should be left on the ground or sold to a vendor (for the love of god don't use them) and sets and greens have the potential of being the rarest and most coveted items in the game. Yeah, ignore the whole legendary items suck right now thing, Blizzard has promised us new shiny items in a future patch ok? Lay off me.
Why aren't all my items legendary? I LIKE SHINY ITEMS!
Item quality is very important to a loot driven game like Diablo 3. Items too good make the game easy, but progressing through the game is the goal. I'm going to lay down the process of what happens when you kill a monster, and how the game decides to throw down a piece of loot.
This section is conjecture and theory, this is how it worked in Diablo 2 and we have all the reason in the world to believe this is how it works in Diablo 3, as pointed out by a blue post given a month or so ago.
You wack that monster with a hammer, it dies. Now, in the loot table I explained earlier, there are certain parameters defined by percentages. You have a chance of getting no drop at all, a drop of gold, a drop of a potion, or a drop of an item. The highest chance is no drop, which means you get nothing. You've probably noticed that the majority of monsters you kill in fact drop nothing at all. From my personal experience, I think potion drops are actually the rarest, we just don't notice because oh look a potion dropped who cares, right? So that leaves gold and items.
A gold drop is just that, if the game decides to drop you a pile of gold, it will then do another check and randomly assign you an amount of gold. As you go through the game, those gold piles get bigger and bigger, and gold find increases on your items effect this. Let's say the game decides to drop you 100 gold, it will then check to see how much gold find increase percentage you have, let's say you have 30%, and then it adds that to your gold pile. Your 100 gold drop just magically turned into 130, and since it's a percentage the larger the initial pile of gold is, the better your gold find becomes.
Items work a bit different than all others. So, your running through Inferno difficulty act 3, you kill a stupid succubus (may he who designed those rot in hell) and the game decides you get an item drop, the process starts to get complicated here. First off, since you are in act 3, the game has to decide on the items level. Act 3 has a certain level range of items that will drop, 52% of the items will be from levels 50 to 60, 24% of the items will be level 61, 16% will be level 62, and 8% will be level 63. Obviously, and especially when it comes to weapons, 63 is better than 62 which is better than 61, etc. The higher the level of the item, the better the affixes can be on the items. I'll explain that later, but just keep in mind now that a 63 item's affixes have the potential of being far, far better than the affixes on a 61.
Now that the item's level has been decided, the game has to check on the item's quality. Back to our scenario, you killed that succubus and the game decided to drop a level 63 item for you. Now the item is checked for quality. We do not have these numbers, but I'll break it down as best I can without them. It works like the item level does, but instead of levels being assigned percentages, qualities are given a percentage. You have 5 percentages to choose from, lesser, normal, magic, rare, and legendary (which includes set). Now, if you are a smart cookie and have noticed that set and legendary items are never higher than level 62. So that means your 63 item can not be set or legendary, but those percentages are not ruled out. Quality checks are always done in order from best to worst, so it will check for the item to be legendary or set, then rare, then magic, then normal and then finally lesser. So we have a conundrum, if the game chooses a 63 item, and then chooses for it to be legendary or set, what happens then? If the particular quality of the item does not exist, then the next down is automatically chosen, so in the case of our item it now becomes rare. Ahh, now you see the light grass hoppa. This applies to other items in the particular level ranges also, like there is no legendary level 13 axe, so if legendary is picked it will automatically be a rare item.
Where in the High Hells does Magic Find come into play?
So glad you asked. Remember those percentages I talked about earlier for the item qualities, and how they are always checked from best to last? Those percentages for each quality is what magic find improves. It does not effect item level, because that was already chosen before quality was. So, if your level 63 has a 1% chance of being a legendary item, and you have say 75% magic find, you now have 1*1.75 percent chance of getting a legendary item, or 1.75% chance. Yeah, bad example, 63 can't be legendary I know, but the math still stands.
Rare items, now that we are back to that point because our legendary 63 item just turned into a rare because it doesn't exist, are a special case. Again, I'll explain more about affix pools later, but rare items have the potential of obtaining six affixes, 3 prefix and 3 suffix. Now, rare items when they are dropped are checked AGAIN for the amount of affixes, and yes magic find works here too. So if that particular monster has a 1% chance of dropping a 6 suffix rare item, and you have that 75% magic find, you now have 1.75% chance of getting a 6 suffix rare item. This is why rares can be so freaking good, they are capable of getting more (and better) affixes than any other items in the game.
Finally, Affixes. or, Affy talks a lot.
Affixes are an important part of Diablo 3. Affixes, or properties as they may be called, are what gives the items we find stats, like strength and intellect, they can also augment armor or life on hit or life steal, and they give us such cool things like sockets and percentage bonuses to our life and define the damage that weapons can do. If you are really curious, affix lists can be found here http://gaming.stacke...ilable-on-items it's the most complete list I can find, but it doesn't have values and I don't know if it's complete. If anyone puts together a list with those values, let me know. Anyhow, prefixes on that list do not have "of" in front of them, and the suffixes do. So if you find a Ruthless ring of Assault, you get a strength and vitality bonus from the Ruthless prefix, and another strength bonus from the of Assault suffix.
Legendary and set items have a number of predetermined properties and then another number of random properties to make each one unique, they will pick from the affixes list for those randoms. Magic items can have either 1 or 2 suffixes, rare's always have at least 2 and up to 6.
Selecting affixes is always completely random, as long as the item type can have that affix it is on the list of things that can be chosen. Affixes are always decided upon as the item drops, and is not changed or decided upon when you identify the item. Identifying an item is merely like opening a gift on your birthday, it may be really cool, it may be crap, but it's always fun to open them.
So that's about it. I'm tired of typing all this crap out, if I think of anything else I'll revise this. Like I said before, if you have any questions or comments or you just want to tell me how awesome I am or how much I suck, let me know. I'm all ears. Ok, not ears, more like eyeballs, but you get the point.
P.S. You've been crit by Wall of Text for 9001. You have died.
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And if you got a guaranteed upgrade, you would just kill bosses. Over, and over and over, until you had perfect items everywhere, and then you would do it some more. You would sell the new perfect items on the auction house, with everyone else, and sooner or later no one would buy anything because everyone has the best gear. Then everyone would stop playing, because they already have the best gear and they can't do anything with the drops that they keep getting, so why play?
Not EVERYTHING is junk. If 100% of the items were junk, then where are all the good items being sold for multiple millions of gold on the auction house, or for hundreds of dollars on the RMAH coming from?
I already covered this, just pointing out how many times the same thing has been said.
Terrible idea, see above. Flooding the market with really really good items is a bad idea.
See, you guys are like a broken record. And it's always a bad song playing.
I explained this in another post, but putting limits of any kind on item drops will inevitably lead to the best items being everywhere, and no point to playing the game.
I can't take it anymore, this thread, I already said it earlier, you guys kill me. You absolutely can not, ever, put any sort of guarantee on item drops being good, that would lead to very bad things. All right, I'm done now. Continue on, go slay some demons folks.
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Wait, what? I think you totally did not comprehend my post. You guys just don't realize the damage that limiting ANYTHING in the item affix pools will seriously change the game play. Here, let me spell it out.
IF DROPS HAD ANY GUARANTEE, AT ALL, EVEN A MINOR ONE, ANY GUARANTEE AT ALL OF NOT BEING SHIT WHEN IT DROPPED THEN THE MARKET WILL BE FLOODED WITH VERY GOOD ITEMS.
When that happens, you can kiss gear progression good bye, there would be no point at all in playing a game based completely on item farming. If you stopped bad primary stats on class gear, that would be bad. If you limited the item levels that could drop by monster level, that would be bad. If you made it so your weapon that just dropped with really good stats always had good damage, that would be bad.
Getting bad items 99% of the time is the WHOLE FREAKING POINT of Diablo 3. Simply because when you DO get that awesome item 1% of the time, it feels epic and awesome and you feel good and you either get rich or become significantly more powerful because of it. I do not see how this is so hard to comprehend. Really guys, stop crying about bad items, they will not and should not go anywhere.
If you don't understand that concept by now, there really is no hope left for you, you really should find another game to play.
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Either way, monopoly is implied. It doesn't work like that in a pure free market, specifically because it's not zero sum. As long as there are more than 2 competitors to blizzard, prices will not be fixed. Just ask them nicely, they might even tell you that
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Problem is I don't think much gold is selling on the RMAH. You've done what several people have done, and the minimum value isn't even selling. I wish you luck though.
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And all reports are pointing to....people are not buying gold on the RMAH. I mean to say, supply is far outstripping demand, and to get demand higher the value needs to go up. And the only way to raise the value is to lower the cost, and Blizzard is not allowing us to do that.
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The spread doesn't have to change if Blizzard decides to not change anything. If anything, the spread will get even greater. Until Blizzard either gets rid of ALL the gold sellers other than themselves by legal means (they've been trying to do that for years, good luck) or changes the minimum buyout to less than what they decided, and they decided that minimum for a reason. We may not know the reason, but there has to be a reason they set it.
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Your scenario works only if bob and mike are only competing with blizzard. There is a reason bob and mike were only selling gold at the price they had it, and it's because that was the point where they were already maximizing profits. There are more gold sellers than bob and mike, and they all have to fight for our dollar.
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Umm, yes. This game was built to include an AH. If you don't like it, you are better off choosing another game.