Thou art missing one very important detail. It is number and variety of builds in this game, which directly affecteth the amount of loot. If ye make less loot as thou suggest, a player will never collect what he needeth. If ye reduce the quantity, then ye need to increase its quality and increase the chances of items falling out for specific builds, that is, an adaptive chance of loot that will adapt to each specific player. As a result, ye could end up with the World of Warcraft mmo game where ye only get loot for thy class, which is not very good, including for variety.
Well, yes and no. On the one hand, yes, fixing sets first would be better. But it’s not an easy task and maybe they don’t even know exactly how they will change them exactly and are still discussing it.
After all, the main issue about sets is that they want them to be fun and usable but not in a way that makes them mandatory to use. That’s not an easy task to accomplish.
On the other hand, no. They introduced CoF (and now loot lizards). If they ignored sets entirely when making those (and any future mechanics they introduce as well) that would mean that when they do fix sets, they would also have to make changes to every mechanic that is supposed to interact with them.
I think it’s better to include sets already in the design of new mechanics, since that will lead to less changes down the road.
Wah?
Umh… that’s not how loot drops work.
The only change is the mechanic that instead of ‘1’ piece it drops all of em. Which is only in CoF. Which is senseless currently.
They don’t need to adjust that mechanic anywhere… it’s a modifier they added which basically is a check if a set-piece drops and if ‘yes’ then it creates the related pieces on top.
And even if they have no clue how exactly they wanna change Sets yet… there’s a dozen things to be changed/fixed/added/adjusted instead of doing something prematurely in the game, so it was simply ‘a bad choice’ and nothing else.
In 1.0 it was one utter joke since Rank 9 was basically a ‘dead’ rank… yes, you got the lens but they didn’t even write that down there.
And in 1.1 it’s also bad since the only position where your character would need whole sets to drop is during the campaign… and well, before Act 9 there’s no CoF now, is there? So your first character won’t get the upside of that change anyway.
First, I was also referring to the post that is complaining about set lizards. They were also complaining about sets being useless and it being a waste of time. It’s easier to implement the lizard now, even though sets are still crappy, then to add one later when sets become better.
Second, the CoF reward is a rank reward. If they hadn’t introduced that reward now, they would then have to redo ranks when sets were fixed. Which is my whole point.
According to your way of thinking, CoF shouldn’t have the set reward and there shouldn’t exist set lizards and if the next mechanic has anything interacting with sets it shouldn’t as well.
And then when they do fix sets, they’d have to go back and add a new lizard, redo CoF ranks, redo whichever next mechanic they introduce, etc.
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The Lizards are fine, implementing them is not bad by itself, a let-down, but simply a mob which provides them.
Also, who said they can’t be done already? Hence the color and the mechanic set up… but simply not enabled? Have em there, ready to be pulled out of your sleeve and be done with it. Nobody stops them from doing stuff just don’t shove those things in the player’s face prematurely is what I’m talking about.
That’s the part I’m talking about, so yes, it shouldn’t be seen by us in the current state of sets.
A rank in CoF though? Yes… yes that’s bad. Could’ve made a placeholder of any kind and it would’ve been better. Like… getting double the rare affix amount instead.
Oh! Here we go… we now got a fairly useless rank which still does ‘something’ and can be exchanged with sets later on.
Or… just adding another Rank.
The CoF situation really isn’t rocket science there, it’s just badly done. A far worse situation then implementing set lizards… which is still a bad decision but at least ‘eh’.
That would actually be a great rank and there would be huge backlash if you tried to replace it for sets later on.
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And I am pretty sure you or someone else would jump out of the bush how this CoF tier is utterly bad and an insult to your players, because who needs rares?
While I agree that most sets are in a terrible spot, at least you get the bunch to actually use the one or two sets that have builds that can work around them. Makes it easier to get the set going and to later find better rolled ones.
Edit: ah, rare affix amount. Well, that nobody wants to be replaced later, I guess.
Also, it should be noted that Houlala’s point wasn’t that it was a useless rank, but rather that it removes the chase. He wants to collect the set items, this rank just makes it too easy. So we can clearly see that its usefulness is clearly subjective.
Ok, badly worded up there:
Double the rare affix shard amount. Not actually on items… otherwise it would be too strong.
It has a function at least early in the game to alleviate the issue that you won’t find enough of the rare ones until empowered monoliths to even make some items with a single try… but also have no major impact itself long-term.
Yeah, it’s subjective to someone who hasn’t played up a few characters yet and seen the longer-term situation and validity of those.
I think there’s… 2 sets which have somewhat value for specific builds partially? I mean… beyond normal Monoliths.
It’s fairly obvious someone says ‘yeah, I wanna collect those sets’ when they didn’t have em yet and literally couldn’t get anything decent going with them in any way/shape or form despite having all methods available.
I did the exact same thing after all being the loot-goblin I am, each set item in offline mode with nigh perfect rolls since I farmed them up. Before throwing em all out again because they were garbage.
After over 500h, all in legacy, I still have a bunch of rare affixes that I have no shards for. Even recently I slammed one on a piece of gear and couldn’t craft on it anymore because I only had the 1 (you can’t even chaos out of it without one). So I would argue that it would quite a major impact long-term.
I have a ton of those as well.
You have to pick up the respective rares and shatter them to get a reliable amount, I fitted my filter specifically to do that actually, which cost me hundreds of shatterings when people told me ‘but you don’t need to buy shatterings!’.
Yeah, you don’t, but then you won’t get a stock of those affixes stored up.
The amount of rare affixes available and the amount of shards dropping is so disparage to each other that the dropping ones are basically just useless 99% of the time anyway for your build. Which is why I’m saying ‘they at least have use for some build’ with such a rank rather then being entirely worthless like sets… + potentially removing the fun of collecting them piece by piece if there’s a set one strives for. (which there really isn’t outside of the boss ones)
I used to do that as well, but it was honestly annoying as hell and I stopped doing that. So that rank would actually give you all that without effort or needing to shatter as much. Which means it’s actually pretty strong and players would rage at it being removed.
Not really… even if you double the amount of rare affix shards dropping it would change basically nothing.
As you’ve said… you don’t have some shards after 500 hours of play-time. So let’s say after 500 hours of play-time you get each of the rare affix shards dropped once (and they have a even distribution). So with the rank it would be after 250 hours.
But… you might need 5… 10… 20 of those. So it changes nothing in the big picture, a drop in a bucket.
It would change the perception. If you had a rank that gave 100% chance to find rare affix shards and then you removed it to put sets instead, people would still rage about rare shards being nerfed by 100%.
That’s a thought-terminating cliche there though. ‘If we remove anything it would cause rage out of perception’ is a 100% infallible argument which enforces that nothing is ever removed or exchanged no matter what.
Which obviously is not universally holding true.
And since the effect of it is miniscule a change is viable for such a rank, especially given that that’s the plan and sets would then be a viable and sought after part of the game… unlike a worthless rare affix shard for another class and skill to boot which nobody needs.
Isn’t it? Think of all the times PoE removed stuff and the backlash they suffered. Harvest being the most prominent case. Think of all the games that removed a feature and were forced to put it back in due to community backlash. It’s not a rare occurence.
Players don’t like when games remove stuff they take for granted.
Yes, but the only thing that players would see is simply: now I need to farm twice as long to get that affix I need for my build.
This is even more true when you consider that almost all builds use +skills for one skill or another and having a T5 is a good placeholder until you can find a T6+.
Yes, I think of the time when PoE removed elder/shaper pingpong as well and had backlash for that and after the initial outrage - which is infallible as said - of some people it was deemed nigh universally ‘a better system’.
I also remember it when masters were removed and instead the still used Niko/Alva and so on new ‘masters’ were introduced this way.
I also remember when prophecies were removed in favor of scarab-based player-agency for content to be run.
All caused backlash of miniscule amounts… but backlash… and all of them proved to be substantially improved methods of doing things nonetheless.
So yes, change is never liked, nobody gives a damn about people simply ‘not liking change’ for a good reason, it’s the antithesis of a live-service game and hence has to be ignored.
Which wouldn’t even be true unless you got some dimwit. Because pure drops doesn’t relate to the overall existence of them in the game, hence on items, which is 95% of your source anyway and otherwise you won’t get them in any reasonable amount of time in the first place, so they’re useless.
Hence it’s - by design from my side mind you - a rank which is inherently useless… but has a perceived positive impact which has no meaning though unless you play without picking up items to shatter/removal them ever. Which would make everyone ask if you’re insanity impersonated if you do it solely that way though, unless it’s a personal challenge… at which point the change in functionality there removes any viability to voice out against it since it’s only that… a personal challenge.
Players don’t mind change when you’re giving them stuff. They just don’t like it when you take things away.
And yes, most of the backlash goes away when you make a good change. But sometimes you can avoid that backlash.
For example, implementing the green lizards that drop a set item but also drop exalted items and shards means that you already have the system in place, without needing to change anything, and they’re still useful. Or at worst you see it’s a green one and don’t bother chasing it.
Much like you have set echoes in monoliths. Some players will avoid them, some won’t care and go through them.
And a few players will even like all that because they try to have fun with set builds.
My point is simply that you shouldn’t completely ignore a part of the game that’s currently weaker. Not only do some people still enjoy that, most aren’t really affected by it and just ignore it.
And when sets do get fixed, you already have everything in place for them without having to make huge changes.
Duh?
‘Exchanging’ something is by design ‘taking away something and giving something else’.
We’re not talking about outright ‘removal’ here.
That’s another topic and not applicable.
Ok, so the big question currently is:
Exalted items, are we in need of more? Ok, yes… hence they have a use.
Shards? We already get showered in shards left and right, they’re a nuisance by now and not a upside. You can’t even remove them properly with the loot filter! That’s missing in functionality there. Bad move.
Next up… cross-drops cause individual enemies (in this case the lizards) to become less valuable on their own. They’re less unique. The more cross-dropping there is the less important distinction becomes. It’s already a major issue with the chests that came together with exiled mages and is a repeated bad decision. One which PoE found out quite a while ago already, namely when it became rampant after nigh every mechanic cross-dropped items from others, causing a single one to stand out as the ‘best’ and all others being ‘worthless’. That’s how you ruin your game if not taken care of.
GGG back-pedaled that quite a lot for that reason and now EHG is following into the same footsteps which are as mistaken as they always were.
Let a set lizard drop specifically sets, 2-3 pieces… a exalted one several exalted pieces, shard one shard pieces, a unique one uniques and so on. Don’t cross-drop! Or keep it miniscule, a single exalted item on top of the other stuff is fine… 2-3 shards like a normal enemy is fine. This mass mess produced? Garbage quality for loot drop.
Taking a outdated (sadly) and barely functioning system like the monolith rewards is already a bad thing to start with. Then going towards the extremely vast minority route, calling out those 15 people which despite all odds and knowledge keep hunting for desperate tries to make something at least work (not good… but work) outside the established few builds related to sets (and damn… people tried a lot 
) is fairly nonsensical.
It’s called bloat. Bloat = bad.
Bloat is when mechanics become outdated and barely functional, not pulling their weight.
Black Desert Online for example is a nice game… but it has a massive content bloat issue where the devs were too lazy to fix their old mechanics or keep them relevant. There’s a whole mechanic of investing points into towns to create good with whole money making supply lines… really great! Until you find out that the end result is utterly worthless when you invest tens of hours into it making that whole net functional and mathing stuff out just to realize 5 minutes of another task will provide you with 2 weeks of effort in that.
Yeah, great mechanic! Bloat… just outright remove it or fix it.
Same situation with monolith rewards in LE. Fix it or dump it. Don’t keep stuff which has no gameplay meaning anymore inside. It’s neither a minigame nor is it functionally relevant nowadays.
Same situation with sets… either fix em or remove em… don’t mess around in the ‘in-between’ state. It’s been repeatedly proven that doing that provides no upsides and at best detriments, only alleviated through the actual big changes to ‘fix’ the stuff at the end… so effort could’ve been done to improve relevant things and keep people from getting tired of the game beforehand. Not making year long ‘preparations’ for something which might turn out to be a golden turd, a shit-pile sprayed into a nice color. Still stinks.
First show it’s not a turd. Simple as that.
This is just a matter of perception. The way I look at them is that they’re shard piñatas (all of them) and then each just happens to drop something else as an extra. From the start I always say lizards as shardplosions primarily.