I Don't See Why Forging Potential Exists

Feedback and Suggestions
204

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.

2 Likes
205

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.

2 Likes
206

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…

2 Likes
207

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

208

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.

1 Like
209

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.

210

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

1 Like
211

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

212

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…

1 Like
213

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?

214

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.

215

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)

216

I would say I am about at the g in the green game section. I may play and think that I am an orange or red player but realistically my playstyle is barely into the T6 line. It is setting and expecting unrealistic expectations and demanding that they are met is a large problem for developers.

You do not know how many times from players I have heard that every fighter in classic D&D should be carrying +5 mithril vorpal blades and be able to have (11 to 20) crit range. Just because an item is there, listed somewhere does not mean it is obtainable and if you DO get it, what cost is that going to be? Much like handling a Wand of Orcus, there are bonuses but definite downsides. I am giving classic examples that have been around for more than 40 years. The same argument being made now was the same made then. I want it, I am throwing a temper tantrum until I get it. So as a DM I would just kill your character off and move on :stuck_out_tongue: .

1 Like
217

For those items, it can’t happen for tier 3 and above. There’s a 1 in 16000000000000000000 chance that any Winigs of Argentus drop with LP4 (switched from Rav Void because Wings has the old drop rates still). There’s a 1 in 13,983,816 you’ll win the lottery.. The odds are far closer to the number of insects on the planet, at 10,000,000,000,000,000,000. Now that’s the odds once you’ve already dropped Wings. You still have to farm each one individually. If we assume that the odds of getting a pair of wings are approximately 20% (changes with corruption), then we have to reduce your odds by a factor of 5 (as you can imagine, this is far, far worse for Rav Void).

So the problem isn’t that these items are super rare, it’s that the numbers make them effectively non existent. No one will ever see these items in the entirety of the game, and if someone does claim to have one, we’ll all just assume they must be cheating because the odds of the item being cheated are now far far greater than if the item was legitimate.

My problem isn’t that I expect to get these items, my problem is as you’ve described the system is in fact not how it works. There is no chance for a positively surprising outstanding drop on almost all of the most exciting stuff. You have the red bar listed as “Not expected for players to reliably get”, but in the current state of the game, the top half of that bar should be labeled as “Not expected for players to get, ever”.

Only the very lowest end of the red category. I’ve dropped a few double exalts (never particularly good), a good bunch of 2LPs (usually on poor uniques), and maybe a couple 3LPs (always on poor uniques with great LP that increases the odds drastically). Almost everything beyond that is completely inaccessible to the entire playerbase.

If the system worked exactly as you describe it, I’d be very happy with it. If every once in a while someone dropped a 4LP on a great unique and we saw some 3 and 4 exalts in the wild, then the sense that this ‘could’ drop for me would be established. Those items would be real, just like the mirror of Kalandra is, but in their current state they are very much not real.

1 Like
218

Just to add for reference, since the Mirror of Kalandra has now been referenced multiple times; that item is estimated by some to have a drop rate of 1 in 1 million. Even if we assume that these estimates are off by a factor of ten, so the actual drop rate is 1 in 10 million, let’s do a side by side comparison of the drop rates of a 4 LP wings vs a mirror:

                      10,000,000
      16,000,000,000,000,000,000

Bear in mind, Mirror can be basically any drop after a certain level in PoE, so any time you get a drop while mapping (which is like…hundreds on a juiced map), it could be a mirror. Wings have to drop before these odds are even in play, and they only drop off of one specific boss in the game that you have to actively choose to kill.

So, given how few players ever see a mirror in PoE, do we really think those odds are reasonable, even for an item that’s supposed to be super rare?

2 Likes
219

Oh man. You destroyed everything! It was nice to not know the exact numbers. :laughing:

220

I know, but it had to be done!

4 Likes
221

Yes it did.

1 Like
222

In the past leagues of PoE, Mirror rates were actually easier. My time 2 mirrors have dropped for me. The 2nd mirror that dropped I remember the best, it was after killing Cortex the first time along with getting my first Nebulus. The 2nd was a random drop from a broken bone container with the lich in an abyss in 3.2 (Bestiary league)

223

The fact that you remember exactly where those dropped and when is what I want for the best drops in LE :slight_smile:

1 Like