Gambling improvement suggestion

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Ok, so I have searched the forums and I’ve seen many threads about gambling. I’ve noticed that many people aren’t happy with it and also that many people get heated in discussing it. I hope that doesn’t happen here and we can keep a calm and civil discussion :slight_smile:

Currently, to me, if feels like gambling is basically useless. You use it a few times when leveling your first char or 2 and mostly to try and improve weapons, then you forget it exists.

Furthermore, it feels like the way gambling, the way it currently is, is a noob trap. It’s something that feels like it could help you get the stuff you need but that will rarely work and will only cause you to dump all your gold into it for no return, which will increase a new player’s frustration and dissatisfaction.

My suggestion to improve this would be some system to slightly alter the stacked odds of getting something you want. Not a way to guarantee you get what you want, just an improvement of the odds.
Basically, you’d have some sort of filter-like system in place where you could stack the odds slightly higher for what you’re searching for: for example, you could mark it for uniques and instead of having a 0.001% chance of getting one (or whichever is the real value, I’m just making one up) you’d have a 0.005% chance of getting it, auto-adjusting the rest of the odds accordingly. Likewise, you could say you wanted to favour a particular base, or a particular affix or 2. Something in those lines.

The actual numbers and the way the system is set up would have to be tested and balanced, of course, but the basis, in theory, would be that you would have slightly better chances of finding what you want or need for a particular build while still being random enough that no drop would be guaranteed. It could improve the desirability of gambling in general.

I would also suggest not having to pay for rerolling (kinda like what happens in D2, or even better in D2R where reroll is free without having to close and open the vendor again) or even a system like D3/D4 where all bases are available to gamble, but that could make it “too easy” for what the devs intended and might derail this discussion, so just having a chance to slightly increase the odds of your base as suggested above would be enough.

Anyway, that’s my 2c. Feel free to discuss it further or shoot down my idea, but please let’s try to remain civil. This is a great community and, so far, I’ve had a great positive experience in this form and I’d like to keep it that way :wink:

2

The chance to get a unique at the regular gambler is 0%. And it’s limited to max of level 40 bases.
It used to not be like this so probably they wouldn’t want to revert that part.

Maybe your suggestion is better suited for the Soul Gambler ?

2 Likes
3

I wasn’t aware that uniques couldn’t roll from the regular gambler, but it was just a suggestion to illustrate my point. You could just do that with bases and affixes and it would still be an improvement, since exalted items play such a big roll in this game. It was just a way to try and make the gambler a little less irrelevant.

And yes, I suppose you could use a similar system for the soul gambler. As long as it was reasonably balanced and it just gave you slighly better odds, rather than hugely better odds, I think it would be enough to make gambling a little more appealing.

As for the bases, maybe remove that limit? Maybe the guide has all that info, but in-game you don’t really know that unless you search for it. You see a gambler and you assume it’s sort of like D2’s or other similar games where the items scale up with your level.

As an added suggestion, maybe add idols to the gambler? If you were to implement a similar system as what I’m suggesting and you added idols, it would remove some of the frustration of getting specific idols for your build.

4

You can’t roll exalteds either because of the level 40 limit for items. :sweat_smile:

But yeah, the regular gambler is in a bit of a weird spot after the introduction of the Soul Bastion dungeon. It’s useful for your first character or if you play character found or possibly for your alts up to level 40ish, but after that not as much.

I think it would be cool if the regular gambler has something unique to him that doesn’t just make him a worse Soul Gambler. For example rare affixes having higher chances to be on items from the gambler and/or something similar to weaver items where if you gamble a class-specific relic it has a greater chance to have +skill on it. Or as you mentioned - idols. :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

Yes, my suggestion was based on the assumption that you could gamble for any base. The gambler being limited to level 40 (which, again, isn’t really apparent in-game and further increased the gambler being a noob trap) really makes my suggestions useless.

However, if you were to remove the base limitation (and thus the possibility of exalteds rolling), along with my suggestion, it would make gamblers a bit more relevant without taking space from the soul gambler.

And yes, being able to gamble idols would also make things a lot easier. That alone might actually make gamblers relevant as is.

6

As Iceberg mentions, the Gambler can’t create Unique, Set, or Exalted items. The item bases it has available are limited to level 40 and below. Also, the average amount of Forging Potential available on gambled items is less than similar items found in the world.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but the main one was that the Gambler used to be the most powerful source of gaining items in the game. This led people to sit at the Gambler for hours on end to accumulate the best gear in the game. It was also the fastest way to achieve this.

For an ARPG that relies on loot this created an unhealthy environment for the game where people would only play the game to collect gold (and at the time this was the arena) and then spend that gold at the Gambler.

Personally, I’m happy that this unwanted playstyle was removed because it was neither fun, healthy, or satisfying (imo). The Gambler now fills a reduced roll where it’s meant for helping players during the initial stages of the campaign.

The Soul Gambler, of the Soulfire Bastion dungeon, fills the role of the previous Gambler (albeit in a reduced capacity) as there’s an opportunity cost to it where you have to collect Soul Embers throughout the dungeon which you then spend for a chance at Unique/Set/Exalted items of various levels (based on the level tier of the dungeon). It also has limited quantities of each item type, requiring you to do repeated runs of the dungeon if you’re targeting a specific item or item slot. Like the Rune of Ascendence, the Soul Gambler cannot create boss specific Unique/Set items, however, there are a few items exclusive to the Soul Gambler that can’t be found elsewhere.

3 Likes
7

Bending fate to your will in order to get better drops? That sounds really familiar.

They should honestly just get rid of the normal gambler. There isn’t really a good reason for it to exist.

2 Likes
8

Getting rid of it would also be an acceptable solution, I guess. You have endgame alternatives and you have other gold sinks and other ways to find gear, so maybe the gambler shouldn’t exist anymore. At least that way it wouldn’t be a noob trap.

At the very least it should be way more evident that it has all those limits.

9

The only purpose the gambler serves, IMHO, is for buying bases for Ascendency forging. Other than that, I haven’t used it in the year(s)+ since the nerf-bat beating he took.

2 Likes
10

Why? You could just use the normal vendor for that since you only need the item type (1h sword) rather than the base (katana) to be able to get an Eye of Reen (or any other 1h sword). Or, heaven forbid, these things called “drops” from “mobs”.

11

Agreed.
The problem with gambler is that it is currently very weak, but it would be very bad for the game if it was strong, because, well, he is not exactly an entertaining mechanic to interact with.

I also use it exclusively for ascendency forging, so for me he could just be replaced with a vendor that sells white items.

1 Like
12

It would really depend on the function it’s supposed to fill. For example, in D2 the gambler is the gold sink. You just dump all your gold there because you don’t have really much else to spend on, other than merc ressurections. And even then it’s still very hard to get a really good item.

But LE already has gold sinks in place, not to mention another gambler, so if the regular gambler isn’t really meant to be one it really should be removed from the game. Not only is it almost completely useless but, as I mentioned, it’s currently a noob trap. New players will use it and be dissatisfied with the results.

13

You can refresh the Gambler and not the vendor. So you can target buy the base you want . Its buy far the most effective ways to acquires a specific types of bases if you want to use a large amount of RoA

14

The only worthwhile improvement to the gambler in my eyes is A to remove it or B make it usefull again and allow uniques/sets without any chance of LP to be gambled. I don’t see any reason to keep the gambler ingame when it’s reduced to useless clutter.

15

Because I can’t remember the last time the vendor had 10 rings or 10 1h swords for sale at one time.

I prefer my games to be gambling simulators. The ‘REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE’ from these forums makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

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