Yes, obviously it is a matter of perception! One which together with the other system being ‘random loot pinata’ makes them not stand out besides being ‘more loot pinata’ then others!
That’s the whole darn issue
You know, generic loot enemy upon generic loot system inside generic end-game content? Makes any otherwise well set up system into a bad mess, repeatedly proven by other games. Starfield’s world was repetitive and generic and hence badly received (besides 50+ other things, but it’s one of the major points). PoE had massive backlash for a good while because they made loot drops in a generic way between mechanics - as stated above - and hence had to change it, same situation.
Distinct your mechanics, distinct your content, make it feel unique. That’s how you work with perception after all. Not how it’s done here.
Obviously it is perception, that’s the whole point of differentiating uniquely between things! Because otherwise you have no difference in perception and hence everything is ‘the same’ and gets boring.
Welcome to design 101… not even 101… that’s 100.1 even.
I think this is just your perception being different than mine. I see them as fundamentally different and separate. Mages give you experimental affixes which you don’t get anywhere else. Nemesis gives you legendaries/LP. Lizards give you shards, especially rare ones like Envys.
Each of them gives me different things and I chase them for different reasons.
Mhmm… Exiles are good, they give you a special thing only they give.
Nemesis is a mechanic de-valuing Temporal Sanctum, nice extra content, badly done long-term. Works great short-term.
Lizards give generic loot, simply pinata, which is fine. General purpose great, having them specialized and then not specializing them properly is bad though. Could’ve just gone with a single non-colored one since nobody leaves specific color behind anyway as they drop more loot simply quantity wise then any other mob, would be dumb to do unless it’s a bother to kill em for some reason.
EHG is not good in differentiating their mechanics, that’s not hard to see. They really… really need to work on that since it’s a primary sign of success versus failure long-term, so it’s important.
And… it’s not hard to fix either actually, but has surprisingly - yes, surprisingly - vast outcomes in general. You would be surprised how much the belittled ‘perception’ there actually does in terms of retention and replay-value.
You can throw away the whole graphical aspect of the game, all the story and lore and likely make it work as well or even better then it does now if proper differentiated systems are in the game, performance is no issue and a smooth progression pace is provided for a far longer time then we currently have ongoing.
Alas… not the case, in 2-3 years I’ll nudge you again about it depending on the direction EHG takes it and point out the specific things which caused those changes.
I don’t really agree with this. Nemesis either gives you LP (which only increases Sanctum value) or they give you random affixes. The chances of getting the affixes you need are so small that they are negligible, so they have no impact on Sanctum value.
Nemesis legendaries are just a source of uniques that are potentially slightly better than 0LP ones and never as good as you picking what you want to slam. They’re just a step in between, not a replacement.
I don’t see them as generic loot pinatas, though. I see them as specifically shard pinatas where each of them also drops something else (which might or might not be useful). But this way, they still have a specific use even when their specific extra drop isn’t that great.
And they all have their uses at some point (besides the shards), though most are more useful in early game.
It’s not like caches (the chests in the maps) that each give you a specific thing (even though they all look the same). Lizards give you shards. All of them. And then each also drops something extra.
You don’t need to agree, it’s not something which needs agreement for in that case.
How does de-valuing work?
If something can only be achieved from a singular source that source’s value will be intrinsically tied to all potential outcomes from that source, hence it can’t ever become ‘useless’ as long as the outcomes have a use.
Now, theoretically with adjustements and over time Nemesis can outright remove the need for temporal sanctum. Also early temporal sanctum has become fairly worthless (for 1 LP uniques) since you can get 2 LP value out of it regularly. Unless you find a early targeted item or it’s a late-game 1 LP rare unique craft the whole area of running sanctum has basically been removed from viability.
That’s bad design there.
Mind you… the upgrade mechanic for LP itself is good, the outcome for providing legendary items is a huge mistake, for the market as well as for overall gameplay. The upgrade of specific rares only available through that mechanic on the other hand is a great decision.
I’m putting the distinction specifically on ‘Providing a second source of legendary items’ and nothing else hence. So stay with that going forward, this part is after all indisputable de-valuing every other area by design which provides those outcomes.
Same for loot lizards, if lizard ‘A’ can give me a unique but lizard ‘b’ gives me 5 then Lizard ‘A’ is worthless for that, you want lizard ‘b’. And if 10 other mechanics give me the same loot then each becomes more and more unimportant, creating a flood of those items which loose value.
Since they all give overall more loot in general then other enemies the current meta hence has shifted to ‘ignore enemies unless you wanna level, kill lizards and event mobs, do special content’ for monoliths.
This is the part EHG has to manage properly, which isn’t currently. But that’s fine, it’s their first time doing such a thing, going forward decides how it’ll be perceived hence. Nonetheless a mistake.
The feel functionally the same. Caches give you secondary stuff as well, nigh every chest gives a decent amount of shards, exceptions apply. All lizards give huge amounts of shards.
Shards are already a disaster, great to have more messing up my screen and causing loot pick-up freezes!
Wonderful.
Just what I wanted.
All I waited for.
I hope the ‘mild’ sarcasm there is clear without me declaring it here, nonetheless doing so for safety’s sake.
But that doesn’t make sense in any practical case. The chances of you landing the legendary affixes you want are so slim as to be close to 4LP red ring.
That’s like saying that every year I’m going to create a random roll from 1-100000 and if it lands 1 I will give you a year’s worth of wages and you stating that this effectively devalues salaries.
I mean, technically it does, sure. But it devalues it by 0.00001%, so it’s value remains pretty much the same.
In fact, if you think about it, it actually increased value. While the most common result would be affixes that don’t really do anything for your build, sometimes you get an affix which is kinda alright. Which makes players think “Ok, this is better than what I was using (0LP), maybe I should consider running Sanctum to get the real deal.”.
So no, overall Nemesis doesn’t devalue Sanctum. The very small percentage it would devalue in theory is more than made up by creating an in-between step between 0LP and Sanctum.
Not if lizard “A” is much more common. That’s what balance is about. If lizard “A” shows up 5 times more often, then they’re pretty much the same. Although in these cases, where the reward is the same, you usually get something like lizard “A” showing up 6/7 and lizard “B” showing up 1/7. So you still get more stuff from lizard “A” overall, but when you do get a lizard “B” it feels better.
This is not true. There’s only one cache that gives you shards, which is the same one that gives you a RoA. All other caches only drop the thing they say they do, like caster weapons, etc.
I don’t have pickup freezes with them. And even if I did, that would be a problem that needs fixing, not a problem with the underlying mechanic. Otherwise let’s just get rid of all loot so we don’t get pickup freezes, no?
And I actually like that lizards drop a bunch of shards. It just means that I can ignore pretty much every other random shard drop from now on. They have effectively become my only source of shards since being introduced. I don’t even usually pick up the ones from the mono chest.
Just a few observations of mine, adding to the (mostly constructive) discussion:
This cycle is the one which kept me playing the longest on one character up to now. For me that is mostly because the loot system got better.
I do have an “intricate loot filter” after playing since BETA, so for me drops are always exciting without regards to my level.
I get it that players who are new to the game don’t have a loot filter at all and are overwhelmed by both the loot itself and the in-game loot filter tool.
Thus, it might be useful to consider to have a basic loot filter set in game for beginners, which filters some items up to certain conservative levels - white items show up to Level 5, blue up to Level 10, … - with a warning before the item type disappears. And a link to the item filter for people to see, how it looks like + tutorial.
As for the rarity of shards, uniques, … imho each sort of item has its own merit function with respect to rarity. Examples :
T2 rares are very good at L10, you don’t look at them later in the campaign.
L0 uniques may be game changer early on, but you’ll seldomly use them late in the game (tho you might want to keep some for enhancing).
Missing skill shards may prevent you from upgrading a “badly chaosed” T6 base around PL60, since you didn’t find an item with the required skill yet (chaosed to the wrong skill you can’t further chaos update). In endgame one will have plenty of every rare and/or skill shard if filtered/fractured reasonably.
Imho glyphs are better now than before. They should not be the restricting cause for endgame crafts. They aren’t anymore.
THE end game restriction a.t.m. is finding L2+ and T77x,T76x,T66x with the right combination. Or T75x with L3. I adjusted the loot filter by marking T66+ with the right combinations in a special highlighted color. I get excited every time that drops during a monolith. Which happens frequently, but not frequently enough to become boring.
TLDR; I am 80 hours in this time and not bored at all. Changes were good imho.
They get substantially smaller the higher the respective item.
Welcome to getting ‘a fitting exalted item’ and ‘a fitting LP item’ together.
Sam pile of poop, different hat.
Now we have 2 options, formerly 1.
We already see the shift in how Temporal Sanctum is handled (have you seen less complaints maybe over the last time in comparison to usually for creating low LP legendaries… I definitely felt the shift ) since now people can circumvent the bad design choices.
Laziest of options.
And no, not by 0,00001%… low LP low value unique items which beginner or intermediate players often use have been nigh removed from usage in the Temporal Sanctum as those exclude 3 and 4 LP anyway and solely relate to 1-2 LP, the quantity of Nemesis is so high though the repetition of this system provides often a viable outcome, and in conjunction with Temporal Sanctum pushes people swiftly beyond that stage, which caused the complaints about progression to become louder… and more viable. Since it screwed that up.
That’s… quite the backward logic following.
That’s where the perception applies, unless it’s substantially different and they’re differently showcased.
Many didn’t even see the two-legged run of the loot-lizards… and I can tell you one thing, after the 20th map I only see the shape or the symbol on the map and don’t even look what color it is, because why should I care? It’s a pinata and provides exalted items and uniques, nothing else matters, some give more, some give less, they’re not distinct. No ‘Oh, this one gives only shards, I’ll avoid it’ or ‘this one gives only sets, I’ll avoid it’ countered by ‘this one gives unique items, I have to get it!’ while even going into danger one wouldn’t usually go into just to manage that.
The pickup freezes happen for many system, count yourself lucky.
Not to speak of screen clutter for lack of loot-filter options. Shards… are a mess.
Exactly what I’m talking about. Providing a adaptive loot filter ‘in house’ is not a choice but mandatory.
PoE can handle it without because of their long-standing playerbase that’s established, and third party functionality providing top-tier usable ones (Neversink is a great person doing that). If Neversink ever stops providing those high-quality things then literally GGG’s game will die in 2-3 cycles unless someone else picks up that slack
EHG doesn’t have those people though providing quality generic loot filters which are on the face right away. Hence the current perception problem, which necessitates in-house solutions right away.
Yes, the loot lizards are doing well as a baseline. Nemesis baseline is good too. 1.1 is progress at least.
Details can cause issues for the future, I’m mentioning them so it’s known that some could and others will cause issues if forgotten.
How is that any different from some div cards that give 1 chaos orb, some that give 3 chaos, some that give 10, etc? They all basically give the same thing, only in different quantities and with different drop rates.
It doesn’t make them less valuable, just less valuable at certain points in the game (when you’re in endgame, a single chaos is basically worthless).
So it’s not that they don’t have value, it’s that they have more value for early game than for endgame.
Most are but there is a bigger one that pops up very rarely that is actually worth chasing.
I had pickup freezes in 1.1, but not since the event 1.1.7 (event start).
For me the filter gets in the way since I want to be able to see everything and potentially try out different characters/specs based on what I find. The only time I find myself opening it is to recenter item text which has been crowded away from its drop location. There’s very often something to try and craft, shatter or both as well so it can be a lot of reading plus start and stop play. Can still be a fun experience but definitely wouldn’t mind seeing it honed a bit for play without the use of a filter
Div-cards are all community made, so the community decided on said content. Each one costs between 480 and 1100 to create.
That’s why there’s so many similar ones.
Not an applicable thing to compare with, it’s a monetization avenue for GGG.
And yes, each individual divination card is utterly and entirely worthless. Only specific ones are valuable, and they are respectively rare.
Either because they provide things which is nigh unobtainable otherwise (ilvl 100 elder influenced bone helmet for example) related to expensive stuff (mirror shards, divine orbs, headhunter and so on) or specified to unique content (watcher’s eye div card).
They are secondary form of content to alleviate the vast variance in drops and especially made for that. And the ones related to special drops only seen in special content only drop there respectively. Like watcher’s eye div cards only drop from elder nowadays… which wasn’t always the case, backpedaled quickly since it caused issues.
I’m not talking about ‘when’ it’s valuable but overall value of any sort of mechanic/content.
Since they provide vastly more then many standard rare mobs anyway all are worth chasing… hence it’s not distinct. If it were the only one actually providing such a disparity then I would agree. But it isn’t.
The only reason other stuff provides as much is because event mobs are utterly over-tuned.
No, and PoB nearly died, luckily someone made a fork, otherwise that would’ve been a problem
Neversink doesn’t get money from GGG, they offered him a job but he said ‘nah’ because of having social life somewhere else and he would’ve had to move.
I can relate. I did this during beta until I got a grasp of what items to look for and when. Then I sat down to learn “programming” the filter, which in the end saves more time than it takes to learn. If you play much, that is.
My filters were very loose and included all classes back then. Nowadays they are divided into level ranges and veeeery restrictive in the end game, because for instance eyeing every T6 feels stressy to me… like, too much work.
Kulze:
Neversink doesn’t get money from GGG, they offered him a job but he said ‘nah’ because of having social life somewhere else and he would’ve had to move.
Ok, this would be something I would approach differently if I was G³. Was there ever a new content patch without a proper Neversink filter during the last few years? So why not pay the guy for what he reliably accomplishes - and not time/presence?
No, there was not a single league without a Neversink Filter available. And as said… they wanted to pay him, he said ‘nah thanks, gonna do my own thing’ and they’re coasting cozily on his back ever since still
I mean, I wouldn’t complain in GGGs boots either, saves me from making that stuff in-house since someone else takes the - extensive - effort to provide a quality variety of filters pre-made for players.
Yeah, but risk assessment. As you wrote yourself, if the filter goes “then literally GGG’s game will die in 2-3 cycles unless someone else picks up that slack.” So, what if noone does?
I’d pay money without condition, except one: “Please tell us beforehand, if that was going to be your last filter.” Then I’d have ~3 months to buy the source and take over.
(But I’m not G³ and this is OT. )
It feels like too much work because it is in my opinion but it’s also still possible to manually filter through items by briefly scanning their descriptions since the mods they roll with determine how the text will read. Doesn’t take very long to develop the necessary association either but again there is still a lot to digest. Can chalk it up to personal preference maybe since people also enjoy using filters. If they really wanted to though I think they could sharpen the item game to a point where filters aren’t necessary
Plainly spoken since GGG already tried to tie Neversink in I imagine they have a fallback plan in store. Their team is big enough nowadays - and efficient enough plainly spoken - to provide such a system in a single league should that really happen.
But one league… will be a mess
The one issue I see is that other games generally try to copy ‘how GGG does it’ but without understanding the core underlying details.
I think that’s actually the ongoing thing with the majority of games since Neversink picked up ‘the slack’ for GGG in that regard, which was a life-saver for them after all, it boosted numbers massively the leagues after the filters game out.
So without him that would mean it has to be done ‘in house’ but competition also handles it the same way despite not having this ‘unique’ situation where someone from the community basically provides tens of thousands in value to provide a core necessity for free.
And here we are in LE where there’s a - fairly - great filter system available but not properly utilized as it’s all put in the hands of the community… but rather then 5 clicks like with the Neversink filters here it’s ‘everyone do it on your own!’. We have a site for filters… but there’s no proper pinning for top-tier filters or categorization available, hence causing it all to be a bit of a mess still.
To be fair, Heavy did a general purpose filter for a while. He just decided it was too much effort to keep it up. So not at all dissimilar to PoE’s situation.
Yeah, it’s a massive amount of work after all, which can get too much easily.
Neversink is one massive madlad to be able to handle that so regularly and for so long, kudos to that guy.
) since now people can circumvent the bad design choices.
)