It's a complete misconception when people blame Blizzard for balancing loot around the existence of the AH.
In fact, loot is most likely balanced around the total number of players. The AH is simply created as a convenient replacement for forum trading, trade-chat trading, and other "traditional" means of trading. The RMAH is created to compete with the black market.
Couple this with the lack of gear sink, and players quitting everyday and dumping their gear onto the market, the base standard of what is considered "decent" gear is going up everyday, slowly but surely.
So, in summary, reasons for the perceived "bad" loot:
- Large player pool (AH being the vehicle deliverying the consequences of this)
- Lack of gear sink
- More players quitting than new players joining.
The diablo series has ALWAYS been a fucking treasure hunt where you grind endlessly for drops. If you don't like it, quit, because that will not change. This isn't WoW where you faceroll through ezmode heroics and then get welfare epics handed to you once you accrue enough welfare points.
Grow up, stop crying, make a decision to play or quit. Just stop crying and making repeat threads.
Would love to know why a mod hasn't locked this thread yet.
I'm rational, I talk from experience : play for dozens of hours without getting a single sellable yellow drop
Bullshit. You just have no idea what constitutes sellable or you think its only sellable if you get millions of gold for it. Without my MF I can do an A3 farm and always get 500k+ gold worth of sellable rares. Just because you have no idea wtf you can sell doesn't mean you aren't getting sellable drops.
If this "GAME" causes you so much rage, make the adult decision, quit it. It is obviously not the game for you.
OP, I agree with you. I remember reading something on an old addon for WoW that would allow you to see what loot was going to drop when you went into an instance, so you could just reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted. Further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person. Something like that, I haven't played in years.
Everything in this paragraph is incorrect.
There were addons that showed the drop tables for instances: in WoW, each boss only had a small loot table with maybe half a dozen items that were unique to that boss. This information was always available on sites like thottbot and later wowhead and Curse's own wowdb, the addons merely made the information available to you in game without alt-tabbing.
There was certainly never any addon which circumvented the random number generator and told you what drops were going to drop before they dropped. And you certainly couldn't "reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted" - it just told you that if you wanted this particular sword you needed to kill boss X in instance Y, and that if you did, he had a 17% chance (or whatever) of dropping it.
As for "further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person" - absolutely not. Simply did not happen.
OP, I agree with you. I remember reading something on an old addon for WoW that would allow you to see what loot was going to drop when you went into an instance, so you could just reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted. Further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person. Something like that, I haven't played in years.
Everything in this paragraph is incorrect.
There were addons that showed the drop tables for instances: in WoW, each boss only had a small loot table with maybe half a dozen items that were unique to that boss. This information was always available on sites like thottbot and later wowhead and Curse's own wowdb, the addons merely made the information available to you in game without alt-tabbing.
There was certainly never any addon which circumvented the random number generator and told you what drops were going to drop before they dropped. And you certainly couldn't "reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted" - it just told you that if you wanted this particular sword you needed to kill boss X in instance Y, and that if you did, he had a 17% chance (or whatever) of dropping it.
As for "further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person" - absolutely not. Simply did not happen.
You're 85% right, and 15% wrong.
During Burning crusade, you could use atlas loot to link items that hadnt dropped on the server before - and if they were linkable, that meant they were in that raid ID. This is why once sunwell came out, atlas loot would warn you that linking an item the server hasnt seen could disconnect you (because the "exploit" had been fixed).
This was WIDELY and VERY PUBLICLY exploited by server first guilds. The average (or even majority of) players would gain no benefit out of this - since by the time they attempted content, the loot would already have been on the server.
You not hearing about it, doesn't mean it didnt happen. It did. A simple google search can show you the same results - which is something you should always do, before telling people they're dead wrong.
OP, I agree with you. I remember reading something on an old addon for WoW that would allow you to see what loot was going to drop when you went into an instance, so you could just reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted. Further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person. Something like that, I haven't played in years.
Everything in this paragraph is incorrect.
There were addons that showed the drop tables for instances: in WoW, each boss only had a small loot table with maybe half a dozen items that were unique to that boss. This information was always available on sites like thottbot and later wowhead and Curse's own wowdb, the addons merely made the information available to you in game without alt-tabbing.
There was certainly never any addon which circumvented the random number generator and told you what drops were going to drop before they dropped. And you certainly couldn't "reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted" - it just told you that if you wanted this particular sword you needed to kill boss X in instance Y, and that if you did, he had a 17% chance (or whatever) of dropping it.
As for "further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person" - absolutely not. Simply did not happen.
You're 85% right, and 15% wrong.
During Burning crusade, you could use atlas loot to link items that hadnt dropped on the server before - and if they were linkable, that meant they were in that raid ID. This is why once sunwell came out, atlas loot would warn you that linking an item the server hasnt seen could disconnect you (because the "exploit" had been fixed).
This was WIDELY and VERY PUBLICLY exploited by server first guilds. The average (or even majority of) players would gain no benefit out of this - since by the time they attempted content, the loot would already have been on the server.
You not hearing about it, doesn't mean it didnt happen. It did. A simple google search can show you the same results - which is something you should always do, before telling people they're dead wrong.
Hehe, this is absurd. I bet you still believe it was possible to hijack session IDs in D3.
I'm not going to say the op and others are wrong as rng affects everyone differently. But to say that the vast majority of players agree with that stance is disingenuous at best. It's nothing more than an overreaction that dilutes the point. There's no need to make things up to try and push your viewpoint.
I'm also enjoying those that still compare D3 to D2. D2 was a lackluster game on it's way to a quick death before changes were made and the expansion released. It's pretty easy to spot those that played D2 from launch and those that came along later. D3 is FAR far better now than D2 was four months in.
Saying that D2 functioned "perfectly" is just as ridiculous.
Which of course I never said, but ok.
I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. All I know is that I want very much to like this game, but the pattern for me seems to be have fun -> get bored -> wait for patch -> have fun -> get bored -> repeat. I don't care enough to debate why anymore, all I know is it isn't holding my interest, and that's a shame.
The loot system will always "suck" because there will always be players dissatisfied with their drops or maybe more importantly the value and marketability of their drops. If they improve drops a notch then the market will correct itself accordingly. If they diversify drops with better and more varied affixes then the market will corner the most popular of these and move accordingly. Blizzards cannot possibly satisfy every player or create a loot system that makes every user a loot winner, all they can do is try to stay one step ahead and try to keep adding new additions to the game be it new content or new loot which is an area they could improve and a more constructive topic IMO.
Saying that D2 functioned "perfectly" is just as ridiculous.
Which of course I never said, but ok.
I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. All I know is that I want very much to like this game, but the pattern for me seems to be have fun -> get bored -> wait for patch -> have fun -> get bored -> repeat. I don't care enough to debate why anymore, all I know is it isn't holding my interest, and that's a shame.
The same went for me for D2, to be perfectly honest, except "wait for patch" is sometimes replaced with "wait for ladder reset". What I did back in those days were to pick up another game and play it. Perhaps you should do the same.
Saying that D2 functioned "perfectly" is just as ridiculous.
Which of course I never said, but ok.
I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. All I know is that I want very much to like this game, but the pattern for me seems to be have fun -> get bored -> wait for patch -> have fun -> get bored -> repeat. I don't care enough to debate why anymore, all I know is it isn't holding my interest, and that's a shame.
The same went for me for D2, to be perfectly honest, except "wait for patch" is sometimes replaced with "wait for ladder reset". What I did back in those days were to pick up another game and play it. Perhaps you should do the same.
Yeah, I just... really want to like Diablo. I haven't been playing much at all lately. I'll probably be back to WoW come MOP and... Marvel Heroes looks awesome.
I'm also enjoying those that still compare D3 to D2. D2 was a lackluster game on it's way to a quick death before changes were made and the expansion released. It's pretty easy to spot those that played D2 from launch and those that came along later. D3 is FAR far better now than D2 was four months in.
While that may be true and I agree it can be a valid argument for many things, such as not enough legendaries, not enough gems, etc. I do not feel that it's valid for putting the economy before gameplay nor for something as core and important as loot and affixes in general. Ideally a company would use what they learned from previous titles to make the next one better, or to avoid certain design pitfalls.
That may be difficult with a new development team on a title ten years later, but they should have analyzed its predecessor in its final form more thoroughly and and held off on releasing the game a bit longer until they tested the game some more, or at least had a game that was "blizzard quality" that put gameplay first.
Why are some people harping on about "you can make 500k gold in less than an hr in act 3 and use that gold to buy items off the AH" ? Why can't items be self found? By using that statement/argument, it only goes to show that the game is centered around the AHs, rather than the other way around as it should be. The AH should not be the be-all-end-all place to find loot. One time which I feel the AH will be needed is when one maybe is just missing that ONE piece of equipment to perfect his/her hero, or one more to complete that set. The other time that I think e AH is useful is when someone wants to find that perfect/near perfect roll for an item.
In D2, people paid tons for perf rolls on uniques, but were those uniques impossible to find, say after 400 hrs of gameplay? By 400 hours, most people would have found 4 out of 6 of the IK set at least. Who here can say that "Hey I have found HALF of my current set on my own". Okay, maybe some of you have, but I am pretty sure that it is due to the fact that items were bought from the AH to ensure your character is godly and thus farming at high MF is easy and fast, thus set items drop frequently.
In my 400 hrs of gameplay, I havent used the AHs at all, and I have found a grand total of 3 set items, all from different sets and pre 1-04. I havent seen such dismal rates of item drops in any other ARPG ever in my 20 years of gaming.
TLDR: Stop talking about AH to get items. Its not diauction 3, its diablo 3. Items are supposed to be self found. Perfect or near perfect from AH.
TLDR: Stop talking about AH to get items. Its not diauction 3, its diablo 3. Items are supposed to be self found. Perfect or near perfect from AH.
Items are "supposed" to be self found?
Go find me a blue post or press release from Blizzard stating that you are supposed to be able to fully upgrade yourself to clear inferno difficulty without ever trading or using the AH. You can't find it, because it doesn't exist, and it is only your "opinion" that items "should" be self found. That is not how the game works now or ever.
Edit: @ all the whiners. If you played D2 to progress your character to be as powerful as possible that is also not how D2 worked, nor was it how D1 worked. Not a single Diablo game have you ever been able to fully upgrade your toons without trading. Just now instead of haunting trade channels and trade games you can just go to the AH. It is a VAST improvement over D1 and D2 trading if you would remove you heads from your asses and "think" about it.
Well I didnt trade at all on d2 ladder.. n i still found my titans, full IK set with a super lucky sacred armor drop in maggot liar, my friend was lucky with a rune drop that allowed me to make a smiter.. I also didnt say that I can 'fully upgrade' myself with self found items.. if i really want a perfect character with near perfect rolls on the perfect items for each slot, then yes, the AH will be needed just like how i would use e trading forums in d2.. atm most ppl are nowhere close to getting great items for each slot after hundreds of hrs of gamplay on just a singe hero with self found drops..
As for blue post: I remember one saying that players should not feel that using the AH as a necessary part of completing the game or something to that extent.. and i still feel that items are supposed to be self found. one farms items for their own hero, or for alts if e item is not for e current hero. How many times in d2 have u played where u were a paladin n a titans drops n u go :"hey i should play a javazon next"? and how many times in d3 has an item dropped and makes u go "hey i should try this character next?"
I also dont find upgrades every 2-3 hrs, and i havent bought anything from the AHs at all.. yes in d2 we could see a lowel lvl set drop from hell baal/meph.. but how long do we take do just one run? n the range of affixes and no-random affix property of uniques mean that when something drop, we knew what we were going to get.. no silly str rolls on wands, or intel rolls on mighty weapons.. and looking at just what bosses drop during runs in d2 to compare to d3 is not right as well.. some drops were found off normal monsters or unique packs along e way too..
IK set useless and common? well, in d3, taking an average IK set item on its own, a good rare would most likely trump it as well.. and we still have to factor in that the IK set item, say gloves, have a bad roll,.. n then what? you also mentioned that they were "common".. are the IK set items common in d3?
As for blue post: I remember one saying that players should not feel that using the AH as a necessary part of completing the game or something to that extent.. and i still feel that items are supposed to be self found. one farms items for their own hero, or for alts if e item is not for e current hero.
And therein lies the problem. That's like me picking up World of Warcraft and throwing a hissy-fit because I FEEL that all my items should be self-found despite absolutely no indication from anyone, anywhere, that is the case. You can FEEL that way until you're blue in the face, until the cows come home, but all you're doing is setting up parameters for the game which never were there in the first place and then using said parameters as a point to whine. I don't even know how to express how silly it is.
What it comes down to, as it always has with the AH-haters, is "I don't want to play that way, but that's going to slow me down and I can't live with that, so instead of making me responsible for my decisions I want you, Blizzard, to force everyone else to play MY way so that there are no repercussions to my decisions." There is nothing else about it. You're pissed that people who use the AH can get gear faster. You're pissed that you don't want to use the AH, but you still feel that you should get gear at the same rate, which is mathematically impossible even if we went back to posting buying/selling adverts on the forums. You're pissed because other people embrace the ability to leverage their assets to attain items and that's not fair in your mind.
Ultimately you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to choose what you feel is the "right" way to play but you want everyone else to adhere to whatever decision you, personally, make. It's so brutally hypocritical, but it's the same thing that comes up in every single anti-AH thread out there. Remove a feature that the vast majority of the players are using (either to amass wealth, purchase gear, or a bit of both) because it makes YOU feel better about your gaming experience.
I have a suggestion. Take the stick out of your ass. Lighten up. Play the game and have fun. Leave your preconceived notions at the door.
I've found a dozen legendaries since 1.0.4 and innumerable rares that have sold for 6-figures or more. How? I guarantee that I have more elite kills on just my WD than almost everyone who is complaining about loot has on their entire account. I play the game, I kill shit, and I get rewarded. I haven't thrown in the towel after 5k elite kills. I haven't given up and emo-quit because everything didn't pan out perfectly for me within a week and a full IK set wasn't in my hands and my barbarian wasn't the newest, baddest, motherfucker in town. I play because every single drop can be the big one and because, just like flipping a coin, previous outcomes have no bearing on the current outcome.
OP, I agree with you. I remember reading something on an old addon for WoW that would allow you to see what loot was going to drop when you went into an instance, so you could just reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted. Further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person. Something like that, I haven't played in years.
Everything in this paragraph is incorrect.
There were addons that showed the drop tables for instances: in WoW, each boss only had a small loot table with maybe half a dozen items that were unique to that boss. This information was always available on sites like thottbot and later wowhead and Curse's own wowdb, the addons merely made the information available to you in game without alt-tabbing.
There was certainly never any addon which circumvented the random number generator and told you what drops were going to drop before they dropped. And you certainly couldn't "reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted" - it just told you that if you wanted this particular sword you needed to kill boss X in instance Y, and that if you did, he had a 17% chance (or whatever) of dropping it.
As for "further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person" - absolutely not. Simply did not happen.
You're 85% right, and 15% wrong.
During Burning crusade, you could use atlas loot to link items that hadnt dropped on the server before - and if they were linkable, that meant they were in that raid ID. This is why once sunwell came out, atlas loot would warn you that linking an item the server hasnt seen could disconnect you (because the "exploit" had been fixed).
This was WIDELY and VERY PUBLICLY exploited by server first guilds. The average (or even majority of) players would gain no benefit out of this - since by the time they attempted content, the loot would already have been on the server.
You not hearing about it, doesn't mean it didnt happen. It did. A simple google search can show you the same results - which is something you should always do, before telling people they're dead wrong.
Hehe, this is absurd. I bet you still believe it was possible to hijack session IDs in D3.
I'm not going to say the op and others are wrong as rng affects everyone differently. But to say that the vast majority of players agree with that stance is disingenuous at best. It's nothing more than an overreaction that dilutes the point. There's no need to make things up to try and push your viewpoint.
I'm also enjoying those that still compare D3 to D2. D2 was a lackluster game on it's way to a quick death before changes were made and the expansion released. It's pretty easy to spot those that played D2 from launch and those that came along later. D3 is FAR far better now than D2 was four months in.
Nope, I only believe things that were actually substantiated by blizzard - and actively testable (and used / reported / publicized) by the community. Why would I believe some nonsense that people spouted off during a hate-mongering spree?
As for the rest of the thread - I didnt comment on D3 loot. My experiences have been more positive than poor. I merely wanted to comment on the WoW comment, because the "I didn't see it - it didnt happen" logic is silly, when even a google search says otherwise... I'm sort of appalled, that you quoted my post, and didn't do it yourself.
Also: Telling me Im someone who believed session hacking, because I make a comment about wow, is very similar to me telling you your one of those people who believe Likes on Facebook will help save a kid in Africa. Don't resort to insults, especially ones that have no bearing, to (attempt to) prove a point.
Saying that D2 functioned "perfectly" is just as ridiculous.
Which of course I never said, but ok.
Within the context of this thread (loot, D3 AH vs D2 trading), you very much DID say that. Why you would assume that I'm veering from the context of this thread without explicitly indicating so is beyond me. However, you did pointedly say that loot in D2 was perfect - something that is provably untrue. Your exact words were that the game "functioned perfectly well without the AH." And I stand by my position that said words are not only misleading but amusingly silly. The hundreds of Isenheart's Breastplates I left on the ground agree with me.
I fully respect the maxim of not breaking what isn't broken, but in order to invoke that (which you are clearly trying to do) the obvious first step is that nothing is broken, and that simply isn't true. Trading, for people who wanted to do it, was tedious in D2. People were constantly scammed. The common currencies (yes, multiple currencies) all took up inventory space which forced a lot of toon-hopping and required a trusted friend to transfter loot between your mules and the toon you wanted it on.
Furthermore, finding and executing a trade forced you to not be playing the game, something that the D3 team has clearly taken under consideration because they've made a number of changes which allow us to focus on killing monsters for items and not dicking around with menial tasks that keep us from doing so. Finding an item on the AH can take a while, but it doesn't take anywhere near as long as finding an acceptable trade did in D2. So the idea that nothing about trading in D2 could have been improved upon is not only laughable but entirely ignorant of the situation.
What you are doing is, ultimately, making an argument against any form of change at all so long as one person can bury their head in the sand and say "it was fine the old way" no matter how factually inaccurate that may be.
Who needs anti-lock breaks, we don't have THAT many car accidents when it snows outside! Besides, anti-lock breaks make it harder for me to change my own brake pads and then I have to take the car to a mechanic - it's like Ford and GM are forcing me into something!
Who needs smartphones or cell phones, being tethered to the wall is totally OK! Besides, old land lines had absolutely no problems ever. They were the epitome of telephones and nothing could possibly top them so why try? It's just a scam for Apple to make lots of money anyway!
Who needs insulation in our walls, it didn't get THAT cold in the winter! Besides, living in a log cabin made moving a lot more adventuresome. Taking time to fell the trees and fashion a new house was fun and it was rewarding because I had to work for it! Homeowners today could never be as proud of their house that they bought from someone else as I am of my log cabin because I did it myself!
Why move on from anything, ever? Why not just cling to the past like a wet blanket perpetually claiming that it was so much better despite the fact that there are pros and cons to both the past and the future?
What really irks me is that all you see is the negative to the AH, despite clear benefits. Yet when we talk about D2 trading all you see is the positive, despite clear drawbacks. We're not having a discussion here, it's ridiculous nostalgia and idolatry. It's not based in facts or reason, but in statements that are designed to play to the emotions and evoke some kind of lynch mob response. I feel like every one of these posts is some kind of WWII propoganda poster and not actually reasonable, adult, discussion.
If it were reasonable discussion there would be no insinuation that the loot and economy of D2 were "perfect" in any sense of the word. I'm not going to waste your time by saying that the AH is perfect because it is not. I'd appreciate if you didn't waste my time by telling me that D2 loot and trading was perfect, because it was not. Get a sense of pragmatism here - dealing in this realm where everything is black, or white, but never grey is tedious and doesn't promote any form of actual intelligence or anything short of internet fighting.
Well I never said anything about not having the AH at all. All I said that I dont want to rely on the AH to get drops that were not meant to be that rare in the first place. I never said that the D2 system is perfect - yes we know have a stable way to trade, less scams and all, but surely a game in 2012 compared to 2000 should have made those improvements? Isn't Diablo, or most ARPG, loot games? carrot and stick to the core? with no new skills to earn past lvl 60 and only the item grind to keep things going for the moment, is the current "carrot" for players is for them to learn to flip or snipe items on the AH? I also never said about finding ALL the gear on my own.
What if the drop rates are increased? are you afraid that no one will use the AH anymore? Nope, people would still want to use the AH to find the items that RNG fails to give them.. as I said that near-perfect roll or missing set item. Everyone benefits, prices get more stable as ppl start to post more gear that is found on the AH. The perfect gears are still pricey, and the odds of getting them in-game are still ridiculously low due to random stats. So, what harm will raising the drop rates do?
Before people say that I am raging and ask me to stop being emo or taking things out of my arse, I am still playing the game with a passion. Its just that the game could be so much more.
I wish people would stop using the term "drop rate". The drop rate is fine. I get tons of rares farming. I believe "quality" of the drops is the issue and not drop rate. I know it is just semantics but it irks me .. lol
I am curious though. At what rate do people think they should be getting that high quality rare? 1 in every 100 drops? 50? 25? After determining that, how does Blizzard go about tuning the system to meet it? I do not think believe understand how much effort goes into trying to come up with a system that works for everyone. I do not think it is as simple as upping the min cap on all items although maybe it is...
Sorry had a zillion appointments yesterday and didn't get a chance to stay on top of the thread with responses. So here goes:
First to those who complain that this is another post whining about loot and the DFans mods should take action - look at how many responses this "yet another whiny post" has gotten. Complain about us complaining, its cool. But please notice how this is issue is topical enough to clearly create opinions in so many.
2. Conspiracy theory (the "luck" parameter).
This is where your post becomes messed up. First, you mention WoW as example. I played WoW for a few years, and I don't see how luck plays any role there. Loot is very deterministic in WoW, with fixed loot tables for bosses and Emblems or Valor points to reward everyone who participates in dungeons and raids. If you raid WoW with a good guild, you could be sure to get your gear, there is no luck involved.
Next, D3 is already designed with an incentive for people to use the AH. You have 5 different classes, and each item that drops, if it is any good, will be useful for at most two classes, in many cases only for one class. So for most players there is already a very strong built in incentive to use the AH, without having to introduce a hidden "luck" parameter.
Finally, the "create the market" hypothesis. Here I think you forget that there are some players that are incredibly much faster, better and more dedicated to this game. I have played quite a bit since the last patch, gotten to plvl 27 and found 6 or so legendaries. At the same time, I know there are players that have killed ten or twenty times the mobs in the same period, and correspondingly have found 100 or so legendaries in that same period. Those are the players that create the market, not the ones with a hypothetical "luck" parameter.
So, while some badly designed games might need a luck parameter, I think that D3 has enough of this build in, without having to screw people over.
I would like to hear what you think about this.
Thanks for the repsonse. First, WoW. You are correct with loot tables, raiding, etc. The "Luck" factor applies to all the other loot, items, crafting material, etc that you find as you quest. Ever get a purple item killing a murloc? Luck. As it was explained to me by a guy who has been designing games for a long time - there have to be players in any economy that bring forth the commodities faster than others. This can be done by those hardcore players you talk about, but also the casual gamer that just has incredible luck. RNG - by its very nature, is too random to keep the economy stable. Too many good rolls by too many players and you have an over-saturated market. Too many bad rolls...you see my point. It makes sense - some players find more, easier than others. Those who don't - use the AH and buy the spoils of the "Lucky" player.
Instead of 99% of weapons being unwanted, many of them because they lacked those two affixes, instead, you'd have 99% of weapons being unwanted because they weren't in the top 1% of those affixes. Or because they lacked the new "must have" stats (primary stat, crit damage, whatever).
There would still be hundreds of millions of drops and only millions of players, and thus you would still not find more than one item in 12 hours plus of farming that was remotely worth selling.
Do you understand why this is so?
Yes I understand the logic. Think about this. Without the two primary stats of Elemental damage and Weapon %, you dismiss the item entirely, regardless of its other properties. If the weapon's dps is more acceptable, i.e. an i63 weapon being 600dps or better each time, than I would experiement with the different properties it can roll, even if those weren't Crit Dmg, etc. Specific example - two handers. I have seen some awesome rolls of 400 plus of a primary stat. That alone makes me want to try it out. However when a 2 hander consistently rolls 700 to 800 dps, I trash it. I can put out more dps with two crappy one hander weapons. Why did they just recently buff 2 handers - so we will use them in place of one handers. Yet 99% are total garbage.
People will still want the best of the best - but if the DPS across the board for i62 and i63 is acceptable than there is more diversity there, than just looking for the PRIMARY stat of a weapon - its dps.
@Bilge - my main is a monk and I use the cookie cutter Sweeping Winds build with SSS and I put out about 55k dmg and am Plevel 22 with 230% MF. I do not break open every barrell and do fast track to the elites. I also do read the other forums - I have a 60 DH and 60 Wiz, with friends that fill in the blanks for me with WD and Barbs. Most of the garbage that I list on the AH is at a buyout off 200k or less. Because its garbage. Seriously though - thank you for the suggestions. There is always room to investigate your gameplay to make it the most beneficial D3 experience you can.
To alot of folks saying a version of this: 99% of items are crap, because you want the final 1% to be 100%.
I disagree and that's my point about loot breaking the game. In D2 (which I played a LOT) I didn't want the perfect roll of something, because the acceptable roll of the item that I got was good enough for me. That's because that Unique item was good, even with its acceptable margin of error. Getting the perfect rolled item is one of the things that kept me farming. There was always an upgrade on the horizon. The AH lets you see good items. But the margin is either good or crap. There is no middle ground. And that's what is wrong.
The diablo series has ALWAYS been a fucking treasure hunt where you grind endlessly for drops. If you don't like it, quit, because that will not change. This isn't WoW where you faceroll through ezmode heroics and then get welfare epics handed to you once you accrue enough welfare points. If this "GAME" causes you so much rage, make the adult decision, quit it. It is obviously not the game for you.
Learn to read. I don't want this game to be WoW - I want it to be the farming game that Diablo has always been. I want the items to be worth it and not to be designed so poorly as to help benefit the use of the AH and RMAH. The game doesn't cause me rage, I voice my conerns on a forum in the hopes that maybe Blizzard will bring D3's items into allignment with the game were expecting. Clearly blowing your load in the forums causes you RAGE and you should quite reading DFans. That's my adult recommendation for you.
Only thing about the loot I would like to see changed (this is only my opinion, feel free to disagree) is affix range adjustment. There is nothing worse than item lvl 63 which has randomly generated 20 AR. Since affixes are random there are millions of combination possible, and upping the minimum affix stats shouldn't brake the game.
THIS! This is exactely what I'm talking about. We should have to farm for hours on end before we find THE PERFECT ITEM. We should have to sell things on the AH to get gold to buy THE PERFECT ITEM if we so choose. But ALL ALONG THE WAY we should be finding gear that has this methodology behind it. If its an i62 or i63 item than it shouldn't have such a HUGE MARGIN OF ERROR on it, so that more viable gear, not PERFECT gear, makes its way into the players hands. Whehter thats found or bought, can be discussed.
Seriously it's just RNG and it can't be helped. And about the luck factor per character created, this sounds like... Meh ~~
I have to agree. After hundreds of hours of gameplay, I found my first 6 prop receipe just a few days ago in Act 3. So that definitely tells me that RNG is in effect. I've also found maybe five legendary items since the release. 3 of which I found in the first two days of patch 1.0.4. I found two of those three in the same run. Given that so many others are stating the same information, gives one the inclination to start to think there might be some truth to the drop rates being linked to the AH in some small way.
And the Luck factor - consider it confirmed as an existing mechanic in a lot of games. Maybe or maybe not in D3, but my source is a desginer and was lead designer on a few MMO and ARPG games. Its out there. That's not a tin foil hat threat - its just a statement of fact.
Isn't Diablo, or most ARPG, loot games? carrot and stick to the core? with no new skills to earn past lvl 60 and only the item grind to keep things going for the moment, is the current "carrot" for players is for them to learn to flip or snipe items on the AH? I also never said about finding ALL the gear on my own.
What if the drop rates are increased? are you afraid that no one will use the AH anymore? Nope, people would still want to use the AH to find the items that RNG fails to give them.. as I said that near-perfect roll or missing set item. Everyone benefits, prices get more stable as ppl start to post more gear that is found on the AH. The perfect gears are still pricey, and the odds of getting them in-game are still ridiculously low due to random stats. So, what harm will raising the drop rates do?
Before people say that I am raging and ask me to stop being emo or taking things out of my arse, I am still playing the game with a passion. Its just that the game could be so much more.
Thank you. This is it.
Look folks - so many others have said it in so many ways. The core problem with this game is the loot. Its designed poorly with too large a margin of error. With every comment and patch from Blizzard not addressing this issue, I'm starting to lose faith that their isn't a consipiracy theory to make you use the RMAH and thus they get more money from you. If that's the case - its not a "SHAME on your Blizzard for being like every other Corporation in the world!" - but it definitely is not the game that I wanted and if its not going to change, than on to games that will be what they are promised to be.
Stop reading now - the wall of text is complete. For now......
1) If you never get loot worth selling, you're either killing extremely slowly (ask in class forum for build & gear advice), or you're not recognizing good rares. If you vendor something worth a lot, that's your fault, not Blizzard's
2) If better gear dropped more often, good gear would be worth nothing. Everyone would have the best gear available. That happened in D2 LoD. People became obsessed with "perfect" uniques (legendaries), since uniques were so common everyone had them. So you'd get something with 148 str (out of a possible 150) and work your way up to a perfect 150. This was one reason LoD sucked so bad and classic was better.
Think about it in real-world terms: You want a Lamborghini (you know you do). Why do you want it? Primarily because not everyone has one - this makes it a status symbol. People who want better loot don't seem to understand that better loot for them means better loot for everyone else, and that their standing won't improve if gear does. The poster who claimed that everyone who disagrees with the OP is stupid is a perfect example of how childish this mindset is.
In fact, loot is most likely balanced around the total number of players. The AH is simply created as a convenient replacement for forum trading, trade-chat trading, and other "traditional" means of trading. The RMAH is created to compete with the black market.
Couple this with the lack of gear sink, and players quitting everyday and dumping their gear onto the market, the base standard of what is considered "decent" gear is going up everyday, slowly but surely.
So, in summary, reasons for the perceived "bad" loot:
- Large player pool (AH being the vehicle deliverying the consequences of this)
- Lack of gear sink
- More players quitting than new players joining.
Grow up, stop crying, make a decision to play or quit. Just stop crying and making repeat threads.
Would love to know why a mod hasn't locked this thread yet.
Bullshit. You just have no idea what constitutes sellable or you think its only sellable if you get millions of gold for it. Without my MF I can do an A3 farm and always get 500k+ gold worth of sellable rares. Just because you have no idea wtf you can sell doesn't mean you aren't getting sellable drops.
If this "GAME" causes you so much rage, make the adult decision, quit it. It is obviously not the game for you.
Everything in this paragraph is incorrect.
There were addons that showed the drop tables for instances: in WoW, each boss only had a small loot table with maybe half a dozen items that were unique to that boss. This information was always available on sites like thottbot and later wowhead and Curse's own wowdb, the addons merely made the information available to you in game without alt-tabbing.
There was certainly never any addon which circumvented the random number generator and told you what drops were going to drop before they dropped. And you certainly couldn't "reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted" - it just told you that if you wanted this particular sword you needed to kill boss X in instance Y, and that if you did, he had a 17% chance (or whatever) of dropping it.
As for "further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person" - absolutely not. Simply did not happen.
You're 85% right, and 15% wrong.
During Burning crusade, you could use atlas loot to link items that hadnt dropped on the server before - and if they were linkable, that meant they were in that raid ID. This is why once sunwell came out, atlas loot would warn you that linking an item the server hasnt seen could disconnect you (because the "exploit" had been fixed).
This was WIDELY and VERY PUBLICLY exploited by server first guilds. The average (or even majority of) players would gain no benefit out of this - since by the time they attempted content, the loot would already have been on the server.
You not hearing about it, doesn't mean it didnt happen. It did. A simple google search can show you the same results - which is something you should always do, before telling people they're dead wrong.
Hehe, this is absurd. I bet you still believe it was possible to hijack session IDs in D3.
I'm not going to say the op and others are wrong as rng affects everyone differently. But to say that the vast majority of players agree with that stance is disingenuous at best. It's nothing more than an overreaction that dilutes the point. There's no need to make things up to try and push your viewpoint.
I'm also enjoying those that still compare D3 to D2. D2 was a lackluster game on it's way to a quick death before changes were made and the expansion released. It's pretty easy to spot those that played D2 from launch and those that came along later. D3 is FAR far better now than D2 was four months in.
Which of course I never said, but ok.
I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. All I know is that I want very much to like this game, but the pattern for me seems to be have fun -> get bored -> wait for patch -> have fun -> get bored -> repeat. I don't care enough to debate why anymore, all I know is it isn't holding my interest, and that's a shame.
Yeah, I just... really want to like Diablo. I haven't been playing much at all lately. I'll probably be back to WoW come MOP and... Marvel Heroes looks awesome.
That may be difficult with a new development team on a title ten years later, but they should have analyzed its predecessor in its final form more thoroughly and and held off on releasing the game a bit longer until they tested the game some more, or at least had a game that was "blizzard quality" that put gameplay first.
In D2, people paid tons for perf rolls on uniques, but were those uniques impossible to find, say after 400 hrs of gameplay? By 400 hours, most people would have found 4 out of 6 of the IK set at least. Who here can say that "Hey I have found HALF of my current set on my own". Okay, maybe some of you have, but I am pretty sure that it is due to the fact that items were bought from the AH to ensure your character is godly and thus farming at high MF is easy and fast, thus set items drop frequently.
In my 400 hrs of gameplay, I havent used the AHs at all, and I have found a grand total of 3 set items, all from different sets and pre 1-04. I havent seen such dismal rates of item drops in any other ARPG ever in my 20 years of gaming.
TLDR: Stop talking about AH to get items. Its not diauction 3, its diablo 3. Items are supposed to be self found. Perfect or near perfect from AH.
Items are "supposed" to be self found?
Go find me a blue post or press release from Blizzard stating that you are supposed to be able to fully upgrade yourself to clear inferno difficulty without ever trading or using the AH. You can't find it, because it doesn't exist, and it is only your "opinion" that items "should" be self found. That is not how the game works now or ever.
Edit: @ all the whiners. If you played D2 to progress your character to be as powerful as possible that is also not how D2 worked, nor was it how D1 worked. Not a single Diablo game have you ever been able to fully upgrade your toons without trading. Just now instead of haunting trade channels and trade games you can just go to the AH. It is a VAST improvement over D1 and D2 trading if you would remove you heads from your asses and "think" about it.
As for blue post: I remember one saying that players should not feel that using the AH as a necessary part of completing the game or something to that extent.. and i still feel that items are supposed to be self found. one farms items for their own hero, or for alts if e item is not for e current hero. How many times in d2 have u played where u were a paladin n a titans drops n u go :"hey i should play a javazon next"? and how many times in d3 has an item dropped and makes u go "hey i should try this character next?"
I also dont find upgrades every 2-3 hrs, and i havent bought anything from the AHs at all.. yes in d2 we could see a lowel lvl set drop from hell baal/meph.. but how long do we take do just one run? n the range of affixes and no-random affix property of uniques mean that when something drop, we knew what we were going to get.. no silly str rolls on wands, or intel rolls on mighty weapons.. and looking at just what bosses drop during runs in d2 to compare to d3 is not right as well.. some drops were found off normal monsters or unique packs along e way too..
IK set useless and common? well, in d3, taking an average IK set item on its own, a good rare would most likely trump it as well.. and we still have to factor in that the IK set item, say gloves, have a bad roll,.. n then what? you also mentioned that they were "common".. are the IK set items common in d3?
And therein lies the problem. That's like me picking up World of Warcraft and throwing a hissy-fit because I FEEL that all my items should be self-found despite absolutely no indication from anyone, anywhere, that is the case. You can FEEL that way until you're blue in the face, until the cows come home, but all you're doing is setting up parameters for the game which never were there in the first place and then using said parameters as a point to whine. I don't even know how to express how silly it is.
What it comes down to, as it always has with the AH-haters, is "I don't want to play that way, but that's going to slow me down and I can't live with that, so instead of making me responsible for my decisions I want you, Blizzard, to force everyone else to play MY way so that there are no repercussions to my decisions." There is nothing else about it. You're pissed that people who use the AH can get gear faster. You're pissed that you don't want to use the AH, but you still feel that you should get gear at the same rate, which is mathematically impossible even if we went back to posting buying/selling adverts on the forums. You're pissed because other people embrace the ability to leverage their assets to attain items and that's not fair in your mind.
Ultimately you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to choose what you feel is the "right" way to play but you want everyone else to adhere to whatever decision you, personally, make. It's so brutally hypocritical, but it's the same thing that comes up in every single anti-AH thread out there. Remove a feature that the vast majority of the players are using (either to amass wealth, purchase gear, or a bit of both) because it makes YOU feel better about your gaming experience.
I have a suggestion. Take the stick out of your ass. Lighten up. Play the game and have fun. Leave your preconceived notions at the door.
I've found a dozen legendaries since 1.0.4 and innumerable rares that have sold for 6-figures or more. How? I guarantee that I have more elite kills on just my WD than almost everyone who is complaining about loot has on their entire account. I play the game, I kill shit, and I get rewarded. I haven't thrown in the towel after 5k elite kills. I haven't given up and emo-quit because everything didn't pan out perfectly for me within a week and a full IK set wasn't in my hands and my barbarian wasn't the newest, baddest, motherfucker in town. I play because every single drop can be the big one and because, just like flipping a coin, previous outcomes have no bearing on the current outcome.
Nope, I only believe things that were actually substantiated by blizzard - and actively testable (and used / reported / publicized) by the community. Why would I believe some nonsense that people spouted off during a hate-mongering spree?
As for the rest of the thread - I didnt comment on D3 loot. My experiences have been more positive than poor. I merely wanted to comment on the WoW comment, because the "I didn't see it - it didnt happen" logic is silly, when even a google search says otherwise... I'm sort of appalled, that you quoted my post, and didn't do it yourself.
Also: Telling me Im someone who believed session hacking, because I make a comment about wow, is very similar to me telling you your one of those people who believe Likes on Facebook will help save a kid in Africa. Don't resort to insults, especially ones that have no bearing, to (attempt to) prove a point.
Within the context of this thread (loot, D3 AH vs D2 trading), you very much DID say that. Why you would assume that I'm veering from the context of this thread without explicitly indicating so is beyond me. However, you did pointedly say that loot in D2 was perfect - something that is provably untrue. Your exact words were that the game "functioned perfectly well without the AH." And I stand by my position that said words are not only misleading but amusingly silly. The hundreds of Isenheart's Breastplates I left on the ground agree with me.
I fully respect the maxim of not breaking what isn't broken, but in order to invoke that (which you are clearly trying to do) the obvious first step is that nothing is broken, and that simply isn't true. Trading, for people who wanted to do it, was tedious in D2. People were constantly scammed. The common currencies (yes, multiple currencies) all took up inventory space which forced a lot of toon-hopping and required a trusted friend to transfter loot between your mules and the toon you wanted it on.
Furthermore, finding and executing a trade forced you to not be playing the game, something that the D3 team has clearly taken under consideration because they've made a number of changes which allow us to focus on killing monsters for items and not dicking around with menial tasks that keep us from doing so. Finding an item on the AH can take a while, but it doesn't take anywhere near as long as finding an acceptable trade did in D2. So the idea that nothing about trading in D2 could have been improved upon is not only laughable but entirely ignorant of the situation.
What you are doing is, ultimately, making an argument against any form of change at all so long as one person can bury their head in the sand and say "it was fine the old way" no matter how factually inaccurate that may be.
Who needs anti-lock breaks, we don't have THAT many car accidents when it snows outside! Besides, anti-lock breaks make it harder for me to change my own brake pads and then I have to take the car to a mechanic - it's like Ford and GM are forcing me into something!
Who needs smartphones or cell phones, being tethered to the wall is totally OK! Besides, old land lines had absolutely no problems ever. They were the epitome of telephones and nothing could possibly top them so why try? It's just a scam for Apple to make lots of money anyway!
Who needs insulation in our walls, it didn't get THAT cold in the winter! Besides, living in a log cabin made moving a lot more adventuresome. Taking time to fell the trees and fashion a new house was fun and it was rewarding because I had to work for it! Homeowners today could never be as proud of their house that they bought from someone else as I am of my log cabin because I did it myself!
Why move on from anything, ever? Why not just cling to the past like a wet blanket perpetually claiming that it was so much better despite the fact that there are pros and cons to both the past and the future?
What really irks me is that all you see is the negative to the AH, despite clear benefits. Yet when we talk about D2 trading all you see is the positive, despite clear drawbacks. We're not having a discussion here, it's ridiculous nostalgia and idolatry. It's not based in facts or reason, but in statements that are designed to play to the emotions and evoke some kind of lynch mob response. I feel like every one of these posts is some kind of WWII propoganda poster and not actually reasonable, adult, discussion.
If it were reasonable discussion there would be no insinuation that the loot and economy of D2 were "perfect" in any sense of the word. I'm not going to waste your time by saying that the AH is perfect because it is not. I'd appreciate if you didn't waste my time by telling me that D2 loot and trading was perfect, because it was not. Get a sense of pragmatism here - dealing in this realm where everything is black, or white, but never grey is tedious and doesn't promote any form of actual intelligence or anything short of internet fighting.
What if the drop rates are increased? are you afraid that no one will use the AH anymore? Nope, people would still want to use the AH to find the items that RNG fails to give them.. as I said that near-perfect roll or missing set item. Everyone benefits, prices get more stable as ppl start to post more gear that is found on the AH. The perfect gears are still pricey, and the odds of getting them in-game are still ridiculously low due to random stats. So, what harm will raising the drop rates do?
Before people say that I am raging and ask me to stop being emo or taking things out of my arse, I am still playing the game with a passion. Its just that the game could be so much more.
I am curious though. At what rate do people think they should be getting that high quality rare? 1 in every 100 drops? 50? 25? After determining that, how does Blizzard go about tuning the system to meet it? I do not think believe understand how much effort goes into trying to come up with a system that works for everyone. I do not think it is as simple as upping the min cap on all items although maybe it is...
First to those who complain that this is another post whining about loot and the DFans mods should take action - look at how many responses this "yet another whiny post" has gotten. Complain about us complaining, its cool. But please notice how this is issue is topical enough to clearly create opinions in so many.
@thundersteele
Thanks for the repsonse. First, WoW. You are correct with loot tables, raiding, etc. The "Luck" factor applies to all the other loot, items, crafting material, etc that you find as you quest. Ever get a purple item killing a murloc? Luck. As it was explained to me by a guy who has been designing games for a long time - there have to be players in any economy that bring forth the commodities faster than others. This can be done by those hardcore players you talk about, but also the casual gamer that just has incredible luck. RNG - by its very nature, is too random to keep the economy stable. Too many good rolls by too many players and you have an over-saturated market. Too many bad rolls...you see my point. It makes sense - some players find more, easier than others. Those who don't - use the AH and buy the spoils of the "Lucky" player.
@ st0rmie
Yes I understand the logic. Think about this. Without the two primary stats of Elemental damage and Weapon %, you dismiss the item entirely, regardless of its other properties. If the weapon's dps is more acceptable, i.e. an i63 weapon being 600dps or better each time, than I would experiement with the different properties it can roll, even if those weren't Crit Dmg, etc. Specific example - two handers. I have seen some awesome rolls of 400 plus of a primary stat. That alone makes me want to try it out. However when a 2 hander consistently rolls 700 to 800 dps, I trash it. I can put out more dps with two crappy one hander weapons. Why did they just recently buff 2 handers - so we will use them in place of one handers. Yet 99% are total garbage.
People will still want the best of the best - but if the DPS across the board for i62 and i63 is acceptable than there is more diversity there, than just looking for the PRIMARY stat of a weapon - its dps.
@Bilge - my main is a monk and I use the cookie cutter Sweeping Winds build with SSS and I put out about 55k dmg and am Plevel 22 with 230% MF. I do not break open every barrell and do fast track to the elites. I also do read the other forums - I have a 60 DH and 60 Wiz, with friends that fill in the blanks for me with WD and Barbs. Most of the garbage that I list on the AH is at a buyout off 200k or less. Because its garbage. Seriously though - thank you for the suggestions. There is always room to investigate your gameplay to make it the most beneficial D3 experience you can.
To alot of folks saying a version of this: 99% of items are crap, because you want the final 1% to be 100%.
I disagree and that's my point about loot breaking the game. In D2 (which I played a LOT) I didn't want the perfect roll of something, because the acceptable roll of the item that I got was good enough for me. That's because that Unique item was good, even with its acceptable margin of error. Getting the perfect rolled item is one of the things that kept me farming. There was always an upgrade on the horizon. The AH lets you see good items. But the margin is either good or crap. There is no middle ground. And that's what is wrong.
@phoulmouth
Learn to read. I don't want this game to be WoW - I want it to be the farming game that Diablo has always been. I want the items to be worth it and not to be designed so poorly as to help benefit the use of the AH and RMAH. The game doesn't cause me rage, I voice my conerns on a forum in the hopes that maybe Blizzard will bring D3's items into allignment with the game were expecting. Clearly blowing your load in the forums causes you RAGE and you should quite reading DFans. That's my adult recommendation for you.
@ ExecutoR2006
THIS! This is exactely what I'm talking about. We should have to farm for hours on end before we find THE PERFECT ITEM. We should have to sell things on the AH to get gold to buy THE PERFECT ITEM if we so choose. But ALL ALONG THE WAY we should be finding gear that has this methodology behind it. If its an i62 or i63 item than it shouldn't have such a HUGE MARGIN OF ERROR on it, so that more viable gear, not PERFECT gear, makes its way into the players hands. Whehter thats found or bought, can be discussed.
@Mow
I have to agree. After hundreds of hours of gameplay, I found my first 6 prop receipe just a few days ago in Act 3. So that definitely tells me that RNG is in effect. I've also found maybe five legendary items since the release. 3 of which I found in the first two days of patch 1.0.4. I found two of those three in the same run. Given that so many others are stating the same information, gives one the inclination to start to think there might be some truth to the drop rates being linked to the AH in some small way.
And the Luck factor - consider it confirmed as an existing mechanic in a lot of games. Maybe or maybe not in D3, but my source is a desginer and was lead designer on a few MMO and ARPG games. Its out there. That's not a tin foil hat threat - its just a statement of fact.
@Gr3yham3Lim
Thank you. This is it.
Look folks - so many others have said it in so many ways. The core problem with this game is the loot. Its designed poorly with too large a margin of error. With every comment and patch from Blizzard not addressing this issue, I'm starting to lose faith that their isn't a consipiracy theory to make you use the RMAH and thus they get more money from you. If that's the case - its not a "SHAME on your Blizzard for being like every other Corporation in the world!" - but it definitely is not the game that I wanted and if its not going to change, than on to games that will be what they are promised to be.
Stop reading now - the wall of text is complete. For now......
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
1) If you never get loot worth selling, you're either killing extremely slowly (ask in class forum for build & gear advice), or you're not recognizing good rares. If you vendor something worth a lot, that's your fault, not Blizzard's
2) If better gear dropped more often, good gear would be worth nothing. Everyone would have the best gear available. That happened in D2 LoD. People became obsessed with "perfect" uniques (legendaries), since uniques were so common everyone had them. So you'd get something with 148 str (out of a possible 150) and work your way up to a perfect 150. This was one reason LoD sucked so bad and classic was better.
Think about it in real-world terms: You want a Lamborghini (you know you do). Why do you want it? Primarily because not everyone has one - this makes it a status symbol. People who want better loot don't seem to understand that better loot for them means better loot for everyone else, and that their standing won't improve if gear does. The poster who claimed that everyone who disagrees with the OP is stupid is a perfect example of how childish this mindset is.