Loot -- Be Careful of What You Wish For

[Archon_Wing]

Or, "The Diablo 2 Everyone Remembers"

If Blizzard concedes to the majority of gripes that are on the battle.net forums, the game will fall apart.

Wait, that's not news. Don't go yet! The main problem isn't that, it's that a great deal of the online thoughts concerning Diablo 3 are based on Diablo 2 multiplayer. This is not to say they're all magically invalid, but it can be built on a unstable premise when they reminiscence about godly items falling from the sky. Because they didn't. Diablo 2 had crappy drop values for really rare things too! You can't really take posts seriously when they say Harlequin's Crest is an entry level item, can you?

The thing is that like it or not, Diablo 2 Multiplayer was almost always tainted by cheating. Thus, using that economy model would be somewhat pointless, as it was basically run on a bunch of counterfeit bills. Then again, D3 isn't exploit and bot free at all, but that can be another issue. Well, they've partially stemmed the tide, though it'll be a ongoing fight.

Eventually, Blizzard would try to release the counterfeit SOJs with Uber Diablo, but since that was clearly a feature that only works if you get your hands dirty, here's an example of something that just caters effectively to cheating. It's not really an economy I have much nostalgia about.

In the end, I don't have a problem with the top of the line items being impossible to drop. But there must be ways to increase the niches for items and not have 95% of items not looked at. One could have say, Low Level PvP, and increase the amount of character slots for this purpose. This would open a new market all of a sudden for top-tier low level items. Or bring back a socketing option, with blue items getting more sockets for it; etc. Gem rerolling would be really nice in Diablo 3. Imagine; the better the gem you toss in with an item, the better item your blacksmith makes. Or even better yet, rerolling a high end gem with an item can create affixes/prefixes normally impossible on items depending on what it rolls. Or guarantee sockets. Isn't that way more exciting than just slightly higher stats?

For this reason, I actually wouldn't mind if level 10 items dropped in inferno, if they had a purpose. But "godly" level 10 items.

Or create new "ladder characters". The ladder system would only last like 3 months, but one could use their regular gold to buy items on the ladder. However, any gold collected on the ladder can't be transferred back. Items can when it ends, and of course there would be ladder only items. Then in a month... whoa gold sink. Promise special prizes and honors to the top folks that clear inferno on the ladder, etc. Raise the cap to level 63 (ladder only) but make it near impossible to attain so we can determine ladder ranking. Once again we'd need more ladder slots.

People can and will throw away tons of gold for vanity. I can foresee players tossing millions just to get ahead a bit, and meanwhile that AH fee will remove gold. Even there were inane features like say, pay 10 million regular gold and start your ladder character in act 2, people would do it just because they can.

Even a feature such as putting your name on an item would eat up some gold.

This isn't something blindly increasing drop rates can fix. But the number of people that are reaching 60 and getting into Inferno are increasing each day, so we must take heed of that.

[Occhidiangela]

In just had drop, last weekend, my first ever Titans: The Unique Ceremonial Javs. Hell Duriel. (Did I mention I don't yet have a machine that can run D III and have to beg snippets of time from my son on his rig?)

I mention this to support your point that, if you play it straight, good stuff like that did not fall from the sky like raindrops.

Funny, I was just listening to "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" on the oldies station as I typed that.

[Athenau]

Yeah, I don't know in what magical universe people were living in where good gear rained from the sky (in D2).

The reality is that you had to wade through a virtual cornucopia of crap before you found anything interesting in D2, just like D3. It's just that good stuff that you did find in D2 was cooler than D3's onslaught of rares.

One thing I would like in D3 is an increased legendary drop rate. Generally, by the time you clear hell with a character in D2 you'll have gotten several uniques, exceptional uniques, and a handful of elite uniques as well.

Legendaries in D3 appear to be much, much rarer, in addition to being crap. Hopefully 1.04 will address both issues.

[Dozer]

Yeah, I don't know in what magical universe people were living in where good gear rained from the sky (in D2).

It was called battle.net!

[Archon_Wing]

Oh, I was busy editing more and more crazy ideas into my OP, but it seems people have replied. It's nice to know you guys remembered that Diablo 2 was not just "get rushed to hell by someone with ill gotten gear, and sit around in Baal runs while someone with ill gotten gear levels you, and you can finally trade for your own tainted gear" If that is truly their idea of fun, then I'd rather not have any.

We must consider the very nature of Diablo 3 Magic Finding, aka the farming of "lewt" is slower paced than that in Diablo 3. In Diablo 2, there were several easy ways to farm. Note that a lot of the battle.net forum pundits probably didn't do this and cheated instead, proving even these were too hard for them but alas...

1.) Grab your best AOE ability and shoot it around in a dense area with a lot of slow monsters. Pindle and the Hell Cows would have many sad stories to tell you.
2.) Teleport/Run like an idiot til you find a chump of an Act Boss. Before he dies, put on 1000 MF, and make sure your stash isn't clogged with cracked bardiches. I recieved a letter from Meph, that the Lord of Hatred finally learned to walk around the moat, but I ceased to care.

In general, it was fast, because D2 monsters were usually weaker, and we'd have stories of people doing dozens of runs in an hour. In Diablo 3, most of the monster killing is centered around elites, and as everyone knows, even overgeared people can't just roll them over all the time. Even a single easy elite fight require far more precision than doing dozens of meph runs, much less any of the harder combos.

Thus, we don't have the same adrenaline rush of mowing down a load of easy to kill minions and hope they drop stuff. Before 60, watching the exp bar climb was sufficient, but white monsters drop crap usually. I see people running past trash mobs, and that just feels off. And then comes the whole MF swapping again because people are desperate to see drops. This is also why gold find is so popular-- you can beat up trash mobs for them.

Blizzard needs to be a bit more imaginative when it comes to fixing this. To me, the only way to fix it is to allow weapon swapping via W like in D2 so that people who don't want the tedium can just press a button, and allow MF on weapons. But... Nerfing MF would be the least creative way to do it. There's been too many nerfs-- buff alternate options instead. Consider a elite kill with 5 stacks. 2 people do it, one has 0 MF and the other has 200

Person 1: 100% base + 75% NV+ 0% MF =175%
Person 2: 100% base + 75% NV+200% mf= 375%

Person 2 would about 2x the better "quality". Let's just leave that as an abstraction for now.

375 / 175 = 2.14

But... let's say you can have 6 valors
No MF Guy: 100% base + 90% NV+ 0% MF =190%
Mf Guy: 100% base + 90% NV+200% mf= 390%

390 / 190 = 2.05
Gap is closing right? And the 0 MF guy can usually kill faster. Though the MF guy will be ahead for the first few valor kills, I just slightly closed the gap between having mf and not and everyone gets better drops still!

But allowing infinite valors is boring, so I'd suggest:

-- Max 7 valors
-- When you kill an elite with max valors, you get 20% of receiving a temporary MF buff like with a fortune shrine. You can't find an elite pack possibly in that time, so you're best off... running as fast as you can killing whatever you can.
-- If you kill 25 packs in the same act your valors become permanent bar skill swaps or leaving the game. That means you can go to the next act, and burn through the game if you want.
-- Disconnecting doesn't remove valors, but this protection is only allowed once every 48 hours to prevent active exploits. You also lose the valor if you change quests-- or change from multiplayer to single, or vice versa.

[Yricyn]

I agree wonderful gear didn't rain from the sky in Diablo 2. However, I found many of my own cool items in Diablo 2, I never traded with anyone but my wife the entire time I played. Also I think most set items and unique items had some value.

I have over 300 hours played in Diablo 3 now, and I have 0 set items, 1 level 25 Legendary and 1 level 58 Legendary (both with crappy stats on the random stats roll). Now when I'm playing there is no anticipation for the next Legendary drop, and even if one drops its almost anticlimactic to identify it.

[Lissa]

The biggest problem with loot in D3 is you need almost perfect affixes to progress in Inferno. In D2, this wasn't the case as there were numerous instances where people were able to progress just fine through hell difficulty with less than optimal pieces of gear. In the case of Inferno, if it's not optimal, you hit a brick wall when trying to progress.

[Elric of Grans]

Even outside of Inferno, you need `good' gear to progress through Hell; far more optimised than Diablo I/II. Thankfully, the requirement is not so tight as to impact on gameplay, just limiting in your choices.

[MongoJerry]

Agreed with your charactization of D2 drops, although I would like legendaries to drop a little more offen in D3. I've been farming Act III hell for three days now and have found hundreds of rares but not a single legendary -- not even a terrible one. Also, I like your idea of allowing someone to use a gem in a crafting recipe to nail down one modifier in the craft. For example, what's the point of boots that don't have movement speed on them? I'd gladly sacrifice some gems to ensure that movement speed always shows up on my boot crafts.

Regarding magic find, one needs to understand that the weapon swap to a magic find set was an unintented consequence in LoD. The purpose of the weapon swap mechanism was to allow you to swap to a piece of gear that may allow you to handle a particularly bad set of immunes that spawn on an elite mob. For example, the intention was that a sorceress coming up against a fire/lightning/cold immune could swap to a strong bow and whittle the mob down.

My preference with magic find would be that they make all of the magic find affixes about 50% stronger but make it so that if you swap a piece of gear in, your magic find from gear drops to 0 for 3 minutes. That way, those who fight in magic find gear get good rewards for their efforts but at the same time we eliminate this really ridiculous need to swap in magic find gear at the last second on every elite or boss fight.

[smegged]

The biggest problem with loot in D3 is you need almost perfect affixes to progress in Inferno. In D2, this wasn't the case as there were numerous instances where people were able to progress just fine through hell difficulty with less than optimal pieces of gear. In the case of Inferno, if it's not optimal, you hit a brick wall when trying to progress.

I think the big problem with Inferno is that it drops the best items.

Seriously, if all the best items were just as farmable in hell difficulty, Inferno would only be seen as something that you do to be a bit masochistic. To me that would be much more fun than the situation now, where you need the best items to progress and the only place to get those items is in Inferno. It would fit in much more with Blizzard's stated goal of Inferno being like a "challenge mode".

[LochnarITB]

I think the big problem with Inferno is that it drops the best items.

Seriously, if all the best items were just as farmable in hell difficulty, Inferno would only be seen as something that you do to be a bit masochistic. To me that would be much more fun than the situation now, where you need the best items to progress and the only place to get those items is in Inferno. It would fit in much more with Blizzard's stated goal of Inferno being like a "challenge mode".

I was rather disappointed to find that I had to dip my toes into Inferno in order to get Tomes of Secrets to advance my Blacksmith and Jeweler. I hadn't planned on messing with Inferno until I figured that out.

[Elric of Grans]

Yes, I am much the same as Lochnar. I was horrified to discover that I was level 60 in Hell, but had to be in Inferno to craft level 60 items and collect blacksmith/jeweller instructions.

[Archon_Wing]

You can't even craft ilvl 63 items, so don't waste your gold. Plus you must find the recipes for anything good, and useful recipes are also just as impossible to find.

I think the concept of using the blacksmith as a stopgap is inherently flawed. That was the premise of which they worked with. If they would craft the best items, then that's a true gold sink. As of now, at least in softcore, there is absolutely no reason to waste so much gold on these stopgaps that are so unreliable.

And that's the thing-- "stopgaps" can't be unreliable. They need to be cost efficient and time efficient lest you quickly outgrow them. Imagine if Bloodfist only had the increased attack speed, and everything else was determined randomly. This would summarize most of d3's legendaries. That's the same reason why it's stupid to put up low level items on the AH with no buyout.

As of now, sub 60 items by the blacksmith need their costs cut to like 1/4 to be remotely considered viable. There should not be any 4 trait recipes. Don't waste time with that garbage.

The possible excitement of crafting a godly item is equal to that of one dropping. Do that, and there's a real market for crafting materials. It's such a simple idea for a gold sink, really. It's not rocket science. Why even bother having them in the game, if they can't?

This again stems from the problem that the game revolves around the hell mode paradigm that they created, and most didn't buy. People don't just want items that don't go past what you draw the arbitrary line for. If you look in hardcore, the economy is far more refined, because reaching inferno is not guaranteed. In practice, the hardcore economy is actually closest to how Diablo 3 was meant to be played, since hell mode is the centerpiece of it as most players are able to reach nightmare/hell... for now. There's also a reason to replay those difficulties again, if you die thus leveling items are always in demand. There's no such need in softcore. But crafting still sucks regardless.

[Occhidiangela]

I was horrified to discover that I was level 60 in Hell, but had to be in Inferno to craft level 60 items and collect blacksmith/jeweller instructions.

While my initial thought is "that can be fixed" what are the ripple effects of changing that? Think of it with as broad a view as you can, given that the game devs/balance team have to look through such a lens.

You can't even craft ilvl 63 items, so don't waste your gold. Plus you must find the recipes for anything good, and useful recipes are also just as impossible to find.

That is IMO a place for Blizzard should seriously look to make a considered adjustment. It is my opinion that crafting ought to have the potential to make the uberest items, though the cost, or opportunity cost, and the risk of failed craft, needs to remain high or the economy goes to the tank and cheese runs amok. Adjust with care.

I also like Mongo Jerry's idea of being able to fix an attribute during a caft ... but the items to do that may need to be tough to find.

Make it worth the effort ... but make it an effort.

[LochnarITB]

Leveling the crafters had almost nothing to do with making worthwhile gear, at least on the first toon through. Since I don't buy off the AH, there were a few upgrades, even for that initial toon, but will probably be more useful in progressing subsequent toons. For me, just as in WoW, leveling crafting is a game within the game. In WoW, I insisted on trying to have at least one of each profession maxed, with all the possible recipes, on both servers. I came close but fell short mostly on raid only recipes that came after I could no longer raid. I really don't know if it will even be possible to get close to all recipes in D3, but I will at least have them maxed. The Blacksmith already is but the Jeweler is waiting for me to go back for more Inferno with Lochnar.

[MongoJerry]

As of now, sub 60 items by the blacksmith need their costs cut to like 1/4 to be remotely considered viable. There should not be any 4 trait recipes. Don't waste time with that garbage.

Have you looked at the costs for under level 60 items after the 1.0.3 patch? Their costs got reduced to rock bottom prices both in terms of crafting materials and gold. Just today, I crafted up 150 warlord boots (ilvl 60 boots with 59 req that have 5 affixes) for effectively nothing. As usual, most of the boots were junk and were sold to the vendor. However, about 10 of them were good enough to go on the AH to recover my costs. I don't think anyone can complain about sub-60 costs anymore.

Now, your point about 4-affixes on crafting rares is key, though. I was shocked when I got my blacksmith up to level 10 and even proudly trained Haidrig with a chest recipe I found -- only to discover that every armor recipe only had 4 affixes. Armor has to have at least 5 affixes for there to be a reasonable chance for the piece to be remotely good.

[FireIceTalon]

I can tolerate less than 5 affixes on chest armor, but certainly no less than 3 and those three have to be main stat/vit/all resists....also, it must have 3 sockets, or it aint really worth using if you ask me.

[Wessonality]

Well, maybe what you really want is for Shen to be able to replace any number of affixes on an item with sockets.

This puts a floor under the crappiness of any affix - if it's worse than a gem, Shen can replace it with a socket.

No idea if this would be OP or what.

[Archon_Wing]

As of now, sub 60 items by the blacksmith need their costs cut to like 1/4 to be remotely considered viable. There should not be any 4 trait recipes. Don't waste time with that garbage.

Have you looked at the costs for under level 60 items after the 1.0.3 patch? Their costs got reduced to rock bottom prices both in terms of crafting materials and gold. Just today, I crafted up 150 warlord boots (ilvl 60 boots with 59 req that have 5 affixes) for effectively nothing. As usual, most of the boots were junk and were sold to the vendor. However, about 10 of them were good enough to go on the AH to recover my costs. I don't think anyone can complain about sub-60 costs anymore.

Now, your point about 4-affixes on crafting rares is key, though. I was shocked when I got my blacksmith up to level 10 and even proudly trained Haidrig with a chest recipe I found -- only to discover that every armor recipe only had 4 affixes. Armor has to have at least 5 affixes for there to be a reasonable chance for the piece to be remotely good.

Oh, you actually crafted something useful. I might as well try then for my wizard. :p

I also tried farming Act 3 Inferno on my softcore Monk. It was doable, but rather dreary. Those repair costs aren't cool, and I didn't even die. :S

[MongoJerry]

I can tolerate less than 5 affixes on chest armor, but certainly no less than 3 and those three have to be main stat/vit/all resists....also, it must have 3 sockets, or it aint really worth using if you ask me.

Exactly -- high levels of stat, high levels of vit, high levels of all resist, and 3 sockets. That's 4 affixes. If you start with only being able to roll 4 affixes, the chances of actually rolling that perfect combination becomes nearly impossible. If you had 5 affixes to roll so that there's at least some margin of error, then it at least becomes possible after potentially hundreds of crafts. Also, you might get incredibly lucky and get +armor, too.