I Don't See Why Forging Potential Exists

On my part I like the current system and agree with what @Heavy stated earlier.

If you create a definitive ceiling, everybody will feel forced to reach that ceiling. For me it’s the opposite with the current system. I know about the odds of getting a t28 item and thus I also know that it is not reasonable to actively farm for it. But I like that there might be a lucky drop to get such an item. I really feel excited whenever I find an item with 3 exalted affixes. Never found one with 4. But that’s ok. They are out there. Some day I might see one and post it on reddit to become famous :laughing:.

I’m also with @darkdeal regarding his argument for the always moving goalposts.

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If there is a maximum tier of gear obtainable people will always want to obtain it, regardless of how practical that is and when they learn that it’s “improbable within the lifetime of the universe” some of them will feel deceived. You could make t100 gear possible and people would want it.

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This is part of the elitism disease that I have to have the best of everything no matter how much it costs or how hard it is to obtain.

I am with @XLVI_carpo about probably never finding that elusive penultimate item but hey we can always try.

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Are you serious? Are you somehow personally, or financially, vested in LE’s interests? Why would you include items, or tiers of items, in a game, and then make all but virtually impossible to ever obtain? And you’re perfectly fine with that? It’s not even like it’s a matter of time investment either (as would be with the case of severe diminishing returns on XP gain or the like), where you can just grind and grind, knowing that time is the only gate to obtaining the prize.

And no, I realize these items aren’t required. But, as I said, I personally dislike shelving a character with ‘good enough’ gear. These games are about the hunt, and the grind, and min/maxing. We could all beat the game without LP, and we’ve all beaten it without Exalted items as well. I guess, using your logic, LE should just remove those, or make them impossible to obtain since they aren’t necessary, right?

In a genre that’s about obtaining items and upgrades, it makes no sense to have those types of cockblocks. And that is what annoys me. Not being unable to finish the game without them, but that they are there, but you just can’t get them… well, have no reasonable chance in hell of getting them, I should say. I’ve just never seen a game do that, especially in this genre.

It’s just math. An item dropped rolls for the affixes. It has a % chance that a T5 will become a T6 (I don’t remember what that % is). If it actually succeeds on that roll, it then rolls to see if it upgrades to a T7. So even if it were like rolling a 20 on a 20-sided die twice in a row, it isn’t THAT common. Now do that for all 4 affixes on the item. The way the formula works in this game, the odds of that item dropping is astronomical.

It has nothing to do with whatever conspiracy theory you have cooked up in your head.

*insert Michael Jordan “stop it! get some help” meme here.

I’m sorry to derail this topic even more but this is actually really interesting to me and I think it’s a valuable discussion. I might just be completely desensitized to this from playing way to much D2 and I’d like to get some more information on it if you’re up for it. So I’d like to try and draw some parallels and find out where the line is for you.

For the purposes of this comparison, I’d like to pretend we are playing D2 in offline mode or at least just solo so we don’t have trading. Let’s take a look at the process of getting a perfect Last Wish runeword from D2. It is super not necessary to beat the game and is more of a show off piece than anything. It has an astronomical cost of Jah + Mal + Jah + Sur + Jah + Ber. most people who play D2 don’t play enough to ever find a Mal, let alone the rarer Sur, let alone the even rarer Ber, let alone the crazy wtf rarer 3 Jah runes. Then we also have to find a base for the item, a perfect 6os 15% ED Phase Blade should do nicely (I don’t think PBs can get enhanced durability because they are indestructible but it’s been a while). Luckily because we aren’t accepting anything other than perfect, this piece is actually reusable if we are ok destroying the runes inside. Then we have to get perfect rolls on the item itself. Because the chance of hitting any one spot in the range is equal, you have a 1/46 chance (2.17%) for the ED roll and a 1/11 (9.1%) for the CB. This is a 1/506 (0.198%) chance of getting a perfect roll on the unbelievably expensive item you’ve just created.

So I do want to point out that there are several differences in this system and getting that perfect T28 exalted item because it just has to drop as is right out of the gate. You can re-roll the mods on it though so you have a few cracks at the perfect version which is nice. Both of these hypothetical items are non-deterministic to find. You might play either game for a decade and never get them.

This isn’t an attempt to refute your points at all. I would like your opinion if these are similar cases or if they are different in the item acquisition flow. If they are, what is the key property that makes them different and why?

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So I didn’t play D2 back in the day, and have a very small amount of hours in it now, but as you described it, let’s break down a few things and maybe we can figure out why they feel so different.

If you were to really really try to get the Last Wish runeword from D2, and not have it roll perfectly, how reasonable is that? If someone played for thousands of hours, do they at least have a shot at making one at some point? Are there people out there that actually have a perfectly rolled Last Wish that we can point to and say “Wow, they’re so super lucky to have that. I didn’t get so lucky, but at least there’s a chance!”.

If the answer to either of those is ‘yes’ then that’s a distinct difference with that system vs. both the exalted and the LP system. There is no rational chance that anyone will ever own a 4LP Ravenous Void, and that has nothing to do with how well it rolls. There is probably no rational chance that anyone will ever own a T28 exalted of any type, nevermind that it’s on a base the player wants with the right affixes and perfectly rolled. And since there’s no rational shot that either of those will happen, we can’t even fathom the odds of having both of those items and smashing them together. I think the overall point of this discussion, to me, is that the system is so chock full of of absurdly astronomical drop rates, that even getting an item that is multiple steps away from resembling perfect is effectively impossible for everyone who will ever play the game in totality, and that just isn’t fun, exciting, or compelling to players who like to chase after the kind of loot that makes a player jump out of their chair in excitement because OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT ACTUALLY DROPPED. We can’t even get jealous over the random person on Reddit who got it because the numbers are so ridiculous that it’s impossible for them as well.

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D2 offline, it is also quite easy to setup better loot chance, so any player can setup it to match with the time he can invest in the game.
When you play 2h/week, such drop rate become even more ridiculous compared to player who can spend 8h/day…
I had a lot of fun with LE, until it become really to much time consuming and no more rewarding.

I have a simple question:

“If an item is practically unattainable, what is the purpose of said item existing in any game?”

You are more likely to get hit by lightning in a given year than win the lottery but people still play… but all of these odds are only in the range of millions to 1… (sometimes many millions) - what is the point of the odds of a game item dropping in 1 in 16 quintillions - a number that is beyond virtually every humans ability to comprehend… May as well say that a Ravenous Void cannot drop with 4LP. There is no practical difference and it would save some processing time.

I see this as very different from an item that could be earned and said item may only be earned by say 0.001% of the player base over years of play/effort… Its still practically unattainable for most, but its not practically impossible… Its like a kid seeing a Bugati Veyron drive past and thinking “I will own one someday”. Its unlikely and probably practically unlikely for most, but its by no means impossible.

imho, LEs current item system leans heavily into the chance side of these example. Once you reach at certain level of gear, to get better requires starting from scratch again. Say you have T22 gear (T6,T5x3,T1 seal) - attainable (I have plenty of them)… To get a perfect T23 - just one tier higher- you need to start again from a random drop off a good base with at least 1 perfect affix and high FP. Crafting is basically RNG so its basically pot luck to get an improved piece of gear to replace what you have already… There is no sure way to “earn” an improvement to the existing item. Its effectively replaced only by compounded chance…

So perfect item drops are practically impossible… and there is no way to work/earn/make perfect items… So once you get to a certain point, there is no motivation to go any higher… In my experience T23 is likely this point…

So why bother having better items in the game if there is no practical way to get them.

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I personally would differentiate between very very rare unique items and rare/exlated items for this discussion.

Those super rare random-everywhere drops such as Ravenous Void or Orian’s Eye can have several “stages of even btter”, when they roll LP, it is unlikely, but it can happen.

Then you have those “perfect” rare/exalted items, which are to some extend are refineable with some crafting methods.

For both of these points I think its important to have “unexpected results”, that positively surprise you. But to have these, the “ceiling” needs to be super high, so high that its pratically impossible to even get them reliably, but they still need to exist, so that you maybe some day get this astonishing drop.

I wanna visuallize this:

You could probably split up the bar even more into more segments with different expectations.
But my issue is, that a lot of people seems to expect to get these items that are at the end of the orange category or even in the red category, but IMO these only exist, so that there is the chance for a positively surprising oustanding drop.

A player that mostly finds items in the green category, will occasionally find a item from the orange category, if he is lucky.

A player that plays a lot and will find items from the orange category often, will sometimes find items from th red category.

Even a green player might find that one item from the red category. That is very unexpected and will give that player a exciting moment.

Obviously there will always be items, that are still bad, even if they have multiple exalted affixes and especially when the player play in a solo or a non-trade-enabled envrionment a lot of the “rare” drops are still worthless.

So having a very high ceiling only serves the purpose of having these occasional unexpected random drops, that feel exciting.

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Concentrating only on drops as the way of getting Red items, what is the practical chance of attaining Red level item drops?

If the chance to drop is in the billions or trillions or quintillions to 1 chance, then I see that as pointless and I dont see that as a ceiling at all… but a waste of time…

if someone told me the chances of winning the lotto were a billion to 1, I wouldnt bother buying a ticket…

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Even a 1 in billion chance could happen to you on your first echo of the day.

This is not a direct reply to your question because I don’t have an issue with the current system.

I just wanted to point out maybe the obvious that this seems to be rooted in the different psychological nature of people.

I would describe the system as being asymptotic in nature where with increasing grind you get closer to perfect gear, but never reach it. What I like about this that

  • it’s inclusive, because your progression is better at the beginning and slowly decreases
  • you are not compelled to achieve perfect gear. You decide when you are done or what is perfect enough
  • still there is always a reason to grind and stumble upon gear (I think the amount of people showing of gear speak for itself)

However, I think players who are more completionist than me might struggle, because the game doesn’t tell them, that’s the end or they just don’t get the satisfaction they are seeking - to get perfect gear as a way to complete.

One possible solution might be to have season goals and rewards that set the goals they have to complete and that tell them, this is enough.

I am speaking though for a group of people I do not belong in, so feel free to criticize and chime in.

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That is a good point and something I also wanted to mention.

Right now we basically only have infinitely scaling content and T4 dungeons as the pinnacle content.

T4 Dungeosn are hard, but you really don’t need perfect gear for these and it is more reliant on player skill.
Infinitely scaling content is boring to begin with, because there is no end.

Having Cycle Goals/Milestones/Achievements will definitely help grasping your progression a bit better, without focusing solely on your characters gear, but on the content you have done so far.

What would help even more here, would be to have pillars of content, that serve as a really good indicator how strong your character is.
So we need content that has fixed difficulties, that can be used as a measurement, how well your character performs and once you were able to defeat them, some people might be statisfied enough with their character, so they can move on.

I just played D2R from fresh account and not playing in over 10 years to 95 Paladin doing /players8 for about a month. I actually stopped a few days ago

I needed a Ber to complete Enigma, I cubed up to 2x Vex and im essentially a Lo rune away from a Ber as I have a Sur/Jah on hand

Last I played I have something like 2x Vex, Ohm, Sur, Jah, 2x Ist, 2x Mal. I would collect Hel runes and cube up to 4 of a rune then 3>1 or 2>1

In terms of what I had I made HOTO/CoT I got lucky with 5/6 and 6/6 for Battle Orders/Battle Command so I didnt have to farm more runes for another one that was sufficient

The issue is you are using a different analogy where you have no control at all on the result of the runeword rolls. Dream runeword also costs multiple Jahs (you want 2) and I was aiming for it and the Hit Recovery and Resistance has a wide range - nothing you cannot fix with Charms

The issue I think is you give the player WAY too much control over their crafting and then when they dont actually get the perfect item they cant seem to comprehend,

It seems actually statistically impossible to get even a 100% perfect T20 item in LE because rerolling the affix values costs LP, 99/100% Fire Damage isnt perfect. In Diablo 2 you just build a new item its caveman-ish. In PoE you use a Divine Orb to reasonably reroll an item values (haha not anymore) or special crafting methods that reroll suffixes then prefixes, takes sometimes a ridiculous amount of work and only PoE allows this that I know of

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Ive played PoE since 2013 on/off usually leagues. I always wondered over the years how many monsters I killed, this league they added a monster kill counter. After 2 characters I had approx 2.6million kills for the league and I roughly estimated I would of killed at least 40 million over my time

In that time I had only once found a Mirror of Kalandra which is a currency item that can drop off any mob/chest after a pretty early point in the game. most players never find one. I held onto mine as a trophy but I could of sold it for huge currency and made a few really good builds or made something extremely expensive. Basically its a lotto ticket

Currency items / Runes in D2 are exciting to find but they also have tiers, LE only has gear currently and a couple of Glyphs. Need more ‘can drop off anything’ type of excitement items

Thats true, but there are 999 999 999 more chances it will not… but thats not the point I am trying to make… In my mind, arpgs are generally grind-for-better-items games and if grinding away to get something that is so unlikely as it may as well be impossible to get then I simply stop - there is no point. doesnt matter if someone says you CAN technically get it, its so unlikely and no amount of grinding improves your chance so why do it…

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Similar experience when I played PoE… I was luckier than you in terms of play time but I too found only 1 before I quit years ago and had GGG delete my chars / account so I wouldnt be tempted to play again.

Your example is what I would use to illustate the concept of accepting lotto level odds for the highest tier items… I know I am not likely ever gonna win the lotto, but f it, I’ll get a quick pick on a whim if I think I am feeling lucky. and you know someone out there will win - people do regularly… but the best technically possible items in LE are likely never to be seen in drops in our lifetimes… sure, they could but odds are they wont… so thats my question - why do they even exist?

But you will get better items over time.

I think the problem a lot of people here have, is that they set them selves a “end goal” of what they would like to have already.

I personally approach this very differently, I just see what drops and make the best out of it.
Of course I have a few big ticket affixes or items in mind that would give me the next good power boost, but generally I don’t think about my absolute end items.

So I don’t even think about these “theoretically best possible items”.

But they still existing is something that can lead to very unexpected drops.

Ok… Incremental updates & making the best of what drops - I do exactly that… but you can only do it for so long and I feel that you reach this point too early… especially if theoretically best possible items are so unlikely to drop that there is no point in chasing them.

What happens when you have reached the point of being unable to improve anything you have already… I have reached this point numerous times with T21-22 level items and virtually nothing that drops is 1) and improvement on its own or 2) after crafting its not better than what I have even after being succcessful?

Most times I need a T7 item to improve - in a very specific cases I need a perfect T6+T7 item to drop and then craft on to make it better and I have never ever found an item like this for any build… never… I have a single stash tab full of T6+T7 or T6x2 items and most of them are either useless combinations or have failed when I tried crafting them into something useful. i.e. they drop, but the chances of them being useful is next to nothing.

The fact that T6x3, T7+T6x2 or even T7x3 would theoretically drop makes no difference because I getting a T7x2 is something I have never found - after 2k hours of play… My ceiling is T7x2 right now… the rest might as well not exist… factor in the chance of anything dropping with the needed affixes and the likelyhood is too depressing to play anymore…

and this all boils down to the fact that there is little point in grinding away on the off chance of getting a minor single tier affix improvement on a piece of gear… (EDIT: beyond a certain point e.g. T21/2/3)