Players should keep in mind that changing a core thing like item drop rates will likely have some major consequences to a many other aspects of the game as well.
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(As designers part of our job is to understand and be aware of the ripples caused by changes we make. Reducing the drop rate of items in the future will certainly impact the rate at which players acquire gold and crafting materials and we will adjust values where necessary to compensate for this.
KageKaze's Diablo Digest
Long time forum member and prominent video creator KageKaze has made a lengthy and informative summation of his thoughts towards where Diablo 3 is right now, how the developers feel about it and where it is heading. The commentary is long and detailed.
Check out his topic where he explains the video briefly but has also made a really useful table of content so viewers are able to skip right to a part of the video which concerns them! Don't forget to also drop him some feedback!
Chris Metzen on Blizzard Art
Forbes has published an article about the book Art of Blizzard and the company's new art exhibit in Los Angeles. To answer Forbes' questions comes senior vice president of story and franchise development Chris Metzen.
The article includes two videos and their transcribed version. You can check all that on this link. The first of the two videos you can watch below.
I didn't touch on the item drop changes affecting the AH or even crafting, but I'm glad Blizzard did. Any change they make will have far reaching implications that need to be balanced and it really makes sense why these are changes we won't see till down the road. I'm glad they are considering this seriously.
EDIT: I'm not so sure about the prominent thing, but I'll take it
Trouble with that is that it would encourage massive stockpiling now. They should leave it as-is and make salvaging create 4x the amount.
(Kagekaze: love your D3 Witch Doctor and PoE Shadow let's play series, keep'em coming!)
Maybe you've missed this developer journal. Check it out. It was linked in the article. KageKaze's video also gives a very detailed summation of everything concerning the future and present of Diablo, mentioned in the last few weeks/months.
Well it's not the first time that would have happened, stockpiling was already beneficial pre-1.07 because of the new crafting recipes. Fiery Brimstones and Iridescent Tears became way more expensive, even the Tomes of Secrets tripled in price or so. I'm stockpiling on materials right now cause they're so damn cheap anyway. I might lose on it, I might win on it, time will tell.
From your post it does seem like you see how they are going to do it. They will be boosting the chances to roll good items in at least two ways:
1) Increasing the average value of individual stat rolls in the rares that do drop. For a single stat item this would mean instead of rolling 1-100 int and dropping, say 4 / 100 times, you roll 75-100 int and drop 1 / 100 of the time. This seems kind of like its not doing much than decreasing clutter, but say you have 6 stats. Now instead of each of those 6 stats rolling in a 1-100 range, they all roll in a 75-100 range. In the old way your probabilty of getting such an item was 0.25^6 or 2.4%. Now it will be 100%. Say they drop drop rate to 25% of current values...you still have 100 / 2.4 x 0.25 = 10x the probability of finding a good rare than before!!! (Actual values subject to change, but I'm using Travis Day's example as a basis).
2) Although not mentioned in the developer blog (its in Travis Day's very long response to Gosu's post) they are also looking at increasing the number of viable stat types as well: i.e. instead of only attack speed, CD, CC being effective, other stats will be effective for dps too. Say there is a pool of 25 stats now, of which 6 are considered viable for a good item (Str/Dex/Int, Vit, AR, AS, CD, CC). That means your 6 stat rare has a 1 in 177100 chance (maybe higher, have to remember my second year stats class) of getting all of these on the same item. If the pool is increased to say 20/25 desirable stats, then all of a sudden your probabilty becomes 1 in 5, or 35400x the current probability of finding a good rare.
Now likely the changes aren't going to be that drastic, but with two simple changes: higher/narrower stat roll ranges, and increased number of stats which are desirable, they can very greatly increase the probability of good rares dropping. With the changes above with numbers in tact, they could decrease the drop rate by 10x and you'd still find way more good rare items.
but when the items on the ground are inherently of better quality, its a much better quality of life in game all around.
its a much needed change for the game to continue to survive (imho) because the economy is so bad from everyone thinking every orange item they find, or mediocre rare is worth millions, when in fact they should take any offer they get for them.