Quitting game, drop rates too low

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62

I played both factions to try to differences.

Issues become fairly obvious when you try them both out and play from a ‘I have nothing’ perspective.

But as said, it won’t be glaring it 1.0… 1.1 will showcase it more, it’s not a overly healthy system currently… first iteration as well… so expected.

Many do though, which is the point. There’s a lot of variety of people available. A lot of people gravitate towards the most efficient in games like LE over time though. Some never do… some don’t care at all and just try out new builds.

Many different types.

But other games (like PoE) have proven that if there’s a disparity which is too vast and doesn’t align with the shifting goals people simply switch over… which is then the case that they’re hindered and frustrated. And reasonably so when it happens.

From the reveal it’s meant to be an ‘easy swap with limitations’ and then even the presentation forgets what it actually wants. That was from the reveal of EHG with the factions when the dev-reveal came.

So… it’s both. You’re supposed to choose your playstyle… but you’re allowed to switch when you find out it’s not quite as you wanted it to be. So you have a proper choice.
The reality is that the longer it takes you to realize that the harsher the consequences are, and not solely in rank but in gear and favor cost as well.

This is not something which can be alleviated by making an alt, since solo-character situations also happen, as well as those people which want to switch completely.

Which is why I’m saying that the progression feeling itself needs to be fairly similar.
Currently they haven’t managed that… the differences at varying stages of the game are so glaring at times. MG has far too early access to powerful rares and rare unqiues. Then it switches over completely to CoF since they’re getting 20 times more LP items, many with 3 LP before MG can even buy a common 1 LP item. When you get to the section where you’re already decked out and want to go ‘beyond’ then it once again switches over to MG completely as you can never reasonably acquire rare boss drops with higher LP or even get the ‘right’ rare 3 LP base-drop uniques in comparison.

What I’m asking for is to adjust the systems so they provide a rough similarity between acquisition access of the respective item types as you play on. We know roughly the XP (and hence favor) you’ll have at any stage of the game, with a variance… so the reputation needs to be adjusted accordingly to provide said access by MG.

CoF overall is fine, it does nothing else then multiply the item drop-rate after all. A bit more targeted through prophecies but that’s the baseline. But neither should MG be able to get 4 T5 items right from the start nor should it allow access to all uniques at the same time or even access to LP for all uniques at the same time.
It needs to be adjusted to provide access according to game stage… someone in the middle of the campaign shouldn’t be able to buy hard to acquire rare boss drops and someone farming them permanently already shouldn’t be hindered to access a simple 1 LP ‘The Kestrel’ as an example.
Those are issues and then we can go along to make a baseline so they feel roughly equivalent until a drop-off point where trade is inviably becoming superior no matter what you do. By then 95% have stopped playing their character though, so it’s not as important anymore.

Yes, but you have to agree to the point that MG has a simple easier time to acquire a Twisted Heart before it should ever get access to it. And that CoF has a harder time getting a ridiculous unique of that sort then MG ever would.

So why should a player ever have to chose (or even the ability to) getting access either really early or later with a modicum of power level before once again the early-power people get it then with near guarantee hundreds of times earlier then the ‘modicum choice’ ones?
That’s the current disparity between MG and CoF.
It partially boils down to boss-drop access for CoF and general unique access for MG, both sides have problems which both need to be handled simply.

Yes, and that’s absolutely fine… for you!
It’s not the way that people min-maxing go along it though… which is also an important part of the community.
It’s also not aligning with people who’re trying out the game for the first time and have no utter clue which type of playstyle they’ll actually enjoy long-term. They’ll be in empowered monoliths before realizing what the problem with their respective faction compared to the other is and by then the chance (less so given that CoF has clear faction-tagging issues for items as well) that they’ll be geared with a decent chunk of faction items is high… at which point it’s basically ‘start over and bite the bullet or simply go on despite it being less enjoyable’.

I simply don’t think that’s the optimal solution there.

63

I try not to compare too much with other games anymore, but if you’re gonna compare to PoE, that game always said they design around heavy trading only, and they will again for PoE 2. As an SSF player in early PoE, that was also very noticeable.

As for the rest, I’m fairly certain that (especially in Legacy), new players won’t have easy access to rare items either, simply due to the game economy. I’m fairly certain that the prices will increase both in the current cycle and Legacy, because as people get gear, gold/hour goes up and well, the true cost of rare drops is time, not gold. It’s exactly the reason I didn’t go MG, even though I play more than enough to be among the decent earners. I simply didn’t expect rare items to be … well … affordable for someone that plays different builds.

Maybe CoF Rank 6 does need a boost for higher LP rather than just double all (maybe a chance equal to 1LP to simply +1 it instead?) but if we’re talking boss drops specifically, I don’t see the disparity between those and random drops in CoF, which seemed to have triggered this entire thread. Or maybe bots/RMT are just more prevalent in MG than I realized and I am just blissfully unaware, could also be the case :smiley:

But I think we’ve discussed it to the end now, I’m gonna leave it at that.

64

Truth is CoF sucks mate

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Some one was offering 1B gold for 3 usd in chat. Any more questions as to why prices are gonna go bonkers, why i suggested Eleventh Hour intentionally are not banning players, as they know the problem would become so bad, that if you want to compete your going to be forced to buy gold like you buy WoW token.

On a more nefarious conspiracy, the devs are running the gold selling bots, and when you buy gold, your actually just buying indirect boosters, they just are not in game.

Not making stuff up, as this happened in Old School Runescape with Mod jagex. While Mod Jagax did so nefariously, it shows just how easy devs could do same, by running their own bots and stealth selling gold to players.

66

That’s not quite how it goes though.
The ‘ceiling’ for gear rises over time, which means upgrades become less likely.
The acquisition rate of the former stuff though stays the same.

This can be seen in any cyclic game with a market actually, cheap → expensive → cheap. The most top-tier stuff generally tends to stay solid and expensive though as the supply doesn’t outstrip the supply. Everything right below though lowers in value.

This has to do with builds becoming more ‘complete’ over time and the amount of people making a new character lowers gradually or they already have the sets for those characters simply finished, just accumulating wealth.

In a cycle this will have faaar less effects then in legacy. PoE has limited sell-space and a high-friction system for trade, LE has not. This will lead to a flooding of the market and expedite those issues further in time. Hefty inflation in legacy should be expected for high-end items and the others becoming rather worthless with a major gap in-between.

Ah, that’s because boss drops themselves are only affected by the baseline CoF mechanic and not the multiplication of prophecies.
All ‘core pool’ uniques can be farmed through them, boss-drops aren’t affected though. Which simply seems to be an oversight to allow something for them as it is a stark contrast to the whole system otherwise.

They sadly are… MG is rather badly set up to avoid that.
For that they would need to tie favor cost to gold prices + implementing a tax on sales (natural gold sink). That would alleviate the problem in a huge way.

Currently you can just put up a idol for 100 mil so nobody buys it outside of the gold seller… and even if someone else does then you’ve got what you wanted anyway. That shouldn’t be possible though, which makes the chat flooded with gold sellers as well sadly.

That would be a really really stupid move actually.
You’re ruining your game’s reputation for a fairly miniscule short-term profit while sitting on literally a billion dollar gold mine.

67

Wow token has kept blizzard alive for 10+ years of gold sellers alone. So maybe that could be the plan?

68

Might be, unlikely but definitely could be the actual situation.
Though before we go towards that we can wait a bit and see what EHG does in terms of RMT-treatment in the upcoming future.

1 Like
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Disclaimer: Don’t get me wrong on this i still like / love Diablo 3 - esp. with all the updates and such, as well the expansion, for what it is. I sometimes go back and play it, and i’m not as ‘Anti’ towards D3 (and not even D4) as some others. BUT

I do agree on this. Esp. Diablo 3 showcases / hitted pretty hard on this, because due the lack of character customization because not any real skillconcepts (outside of the accountwide basic paragon system) it was the gear which pretty much defined / opened towards builds (and missing skillconcept was also one of the reason why sets were so off on this game, because you couldn’t compensate the Set-Synergies with your own building / tinkering with skilltrees/skillsystems and such but i go to offtopic on here sorry).
So for such a Game it hits especially hard when you homogenize loot so far that you pretty much get the same specific stuff based on your class-choice… which kills a lot of replaybility and longlivety.

As i pointed out above… i do play from time to time in a casual manner Diablo 3, but Smartloot is one of the major reasons why i never was invested into D3 as i was in D2 or other great ARPG’s… because getting BiS pretty much within a week is kinda boring and frustrating if you want an (modern) ARPG where you can invest time in, and experience the journey / hunt for loot. Doesn’t mean that there might not needed be any kind of adjustment AT ALL might be either CoF or whatever… but i fear if it’s touched to openly it trivialize the loothunt and kills it longlivety/replaybility.

But sigh i guess these are the times we live in. I dunno if it’s because a general influx of casual-gamer, or if it’s just because so many games drop that people don’t want to invest time into a single game anymore… maybe some genres have an impact like roguelites, or it’s just the whole season/cycle/league mentality cultivated the (general) playerbase to a level that this become an issue. But it really feels like nowdays parts of the HnS/ARPG Community really looking for an Fast-Food Experience in ARPG’s (once run and done) then some quality time where you can spent years with(even if it’s on an off/on basis)… might be also the reason why it’s not even allowed anymore to have one meaningfull character-based choice with the Mastery without people asking for a respecc.

70

The problem is not smart loot, if said smart loot is locked behind low drop rates. Titan quest had deterministic loot [entirely] but had gear locked behind 0.00x% drop rates on some items. This meant you had chase items, you just had no rng involved in drops

There are many ways, to make it work. Just bad design choice to stack rng on top of rng om top of rng

71

Umh… as soon as you have a % chance aligned… it’s… well… RNG?
Random Number Generator.

And RNG layers also aren’t a bad design choice inherently, it’s a common practice which has been done since ages for a reason.
One of the probably most simple examples there is a % hit chance and a % dodge chance together. It’s a double-layered RNG mechanic. Which is… utterly fine! And even needed for variance in outcomes to a degree.

Those mechanics only become a problem when they’re overdone, turning into situations which couldn’t even solved with any method provided in the game through personal time investment.
That’s something which isn’t the case anymore with the introduction of MG and an economy, which is the whole baseline for games as LE to even be able to provide such ridiculously low-chanced outcomes in the first place.
The premise here is ‘Even if you personally can’t acquire it in your lifetime of playing this game, someone else will and actually put it up for trade’.
This way you get more reliable access to said outcome through the means of acquiring funds which that person once again can use to acquire things which they want.

So having a deterministic mechanic of acquiring stability and facing a boss is fine.
Having a boss only chance-wise drop the respective item is also fine.
Having that item on top of that be enhanced beyond the baseline capability is also absolutely fine.

That’s the acquisition of the item.
From then on the outcome is a 100% upgrade which has a RNG system to decide the type of upgrade… which is also… fine!

No matter if 1 LP or 4 LP, you always get an item which is better then it commonly is supposed to be.
That’s the situation here.

This holds especially true since the game is designed with non-LP items in mind. Owning them is a bonus system introduced to uplift bad uniques initially while also giving a small chance to get extremely powerful items beyond that. as a pure and absolute chase mechanic.

So, the only discussion to have here is if the respective mechanic in itself is a viable and balanced one. Which… yes, it actually is. The LP mechanic is absolutely fine. The more common a unique the worse it commonly is (with exceptions for very specific builds). Hence the chance for LP and bringing them ‘up to par’ with other powerful gear is the actual goal of the whole LP system. It was nothing more and nothing less.
The small chance of acquiring a rare unique with LP is a intrinsic bonus to the game. Those are really rare to acquire and that also should stay that way.
Otherwise those highly sought for items will loose value in a rather immense way. It lowers the ability to strife for upgrades massively, especially in legacy.

This game is first and foremost meant to be played for years and not a ‘I have everything done in 2 month’. That’s the first thing which has to be taken into consideration. Which means constant steady acquisition of funds and working towards a grand goal along trying out builds. If you do it with 1 or 20 characters has no meaning here actually, that’s your own choice.

So, the initial acquisition itself is fine, the LP system itself is fine… so overall it’s fine.
But nonetheless issues are there, the devil’s in the detail.
Which for CoF is the acquisition rate of the boss drop uniques compared to common uniques. It doesn’t align currently.
That’s the sole problem currently with the unique system in terms of active acquisition.

We can look over to MG and see that the market is also a bit screwed, but that’s another topic.

As for smart loot:
Smart loot inherently is a negative system for long-term engagement. Not only will it make you unable to branch out into other builds as you won’t get items for said classes but it also causes overall drop rates to plummet into oblivion.
To have items specifically tailored solely to your class dropping is a disaster.
Hence a full implementation is not one any dev should ever strive for. Many many games have proven that those systems cause inherent problems.
As a disclaimer it doesn’t mean parts of the system can’t be used properly. Actually… LE is a prime example of ‘smart loot done right’. Have you realized that while dropping gear for other classes that the gear is by far less likely to drop? Which is the case for every item drop outside of uniques, hence rares/exalteds and idols.

But a pure version? That’s a self-made disaster which leads to guaranteed issues with player retention.

72

Stats matter and the current stats for D3 in the last 30 days is 3.5 million players. They are doing something right. The OP has a point and most people will leave this game after a few weeks because they wont see a point. His argument is valid and should be considered.

73

What’s popular isn’t always right, what’s right isn’t always popular.

By your logic, the CCP is the best government in the world, because they have the most citizens, so they must be “doing something right”.

74

Thanks, I’d like to add to my original post and at the same time rebut the argument that increasing gear availability spells doom for player retainment and long term enjoyment.

With regards LE, this argument is beyond nonsensical. Why? Because it already happened. How? Merchants’ Guild.

The exact opposite is happening there. Players are leaving not because they can’t progress but because they soon find themselves in a position where there’s nowhere to progress anymore.

It seems devs are too preoccupied with technical issues to address the hot mess which game balance currently is.

75

Welcome to ARPG mate. if you want easy progress you can play diablo 3 or 4. Corruption 100-200 may be considered early stage of monolith.

76

If we go by charts then you should watch those over-time related ones.
The site you posted goes with the middle amount over the course of the last 30 days.

Diablo 3 never had more then 10,5 million players. LE currently has ~36 mil people.

Also Diablo 3 has seen a steady non-ending decline over the years. Last Epoch a steady rise (even if small).
Path of Exile also has a steady rise since the last few leagues, also by far more concurrent players. 117 million to be exact.

So in terms of comparison… Diablo 3 does the worst out of the 3 big ARPGs here and 2 of the list got years upon years of headstart compared to this freshly released game we have here.

Your argument about ‘most people’ leaving is hence nonsensical as the statistics show something else entirely.
Sure, the hype will die down but the overall amount of people is still going to outpace D3 by miles despite that.

If you want to provide charts then please at least be able to properly interpret them.

In the gaming industry? It is.

Yes, in terms of history they did far more things ‘right’ then ‘wrong’ since they’re clearly thriving.
We’re not talking about short-term or long-term prospects from the current state, simply the outcome leading to the situation they have at this moment. Which can be compared to any other government of the world after all.

Can hate em, can love em, can do whatever… doesn’t change that stuff isn’t always as black and white as we would love it to be… and boy… would we love it to be in such cases.

I see where you’re going with that, and at first glance someone would actually agree with you.

If you look a bit more in depth though the argument falls apart though.

Because look at the current situation. LE had no MG or CoF until 1.0, which was the time the heavy influx (because of the release) happened.
Before we didn’t have that, which follows directly with your comment:

You’re saying it yourself here!
The opposite of player retention is happening, people leave because ‘they run out of achievable content’. Which is true!
But why? That’s the major question now.

Which is the second important part to it.
Since 1.0 we have a multiplier on overall loot acquisition compared to before, no matter if you pick MG or CoF. The amount of content on the other hand kept roughly the same.
This now causes people to acquire gear swifter. Formerly it was 50 hours… now it’s 30 hours… so that already is a direct outcome of making loot accessed easier.

Now, that’s something which will be alleviated with 1.1 since that’s a end-game update, but the current situation causes player retention to lower.
The reason by deduction hence is fairly obvious. Since the loot availability has increased the retention has decreased.
Obviously that doesn’t mean ‘increase it endlessly’ because that doesn’t work either.

It’s a balancing line, and the sweet spot for the market is the place just below PoE but higher then D3.
Which we currently have, but LE shifted further towards D3 speeds and that damages the game.

So yes…

…they clearly are. We can only hope it changes and the factions will be addressed in a major way since currently they are detrimental for long-term engagement. It needs a dire rework as well as extra content which increases the play-time again.

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Yes, stats matter. And the top daily players in D3 for the last 360d was around 40k. So I really don’t know where you’re getting those numbers, unless it’s from activeplayer.io, which even has a graph for D3 labelled Diablo Immortal and with clearly wrong stats.

No. Most casuals will leave this game. The older players from the D2 days will stay because LE appeals to them.
Clearly CoF needs some adjustments, no one is disputing that. And I would be very surprised if the devs weren’t already working on that. But even as it is, LE is fun for the playerbase EHG is aiming for. It just isn’t the D3/D4 playerbase. Which is why LE has way more players now than those 2 combined.

78

Agreed. To get BiS gear you need to pass so many RNG checks, some of which are just ridiculous, that it just isn’t worth even considering. I understand that some gear has to be “aspirational” or whatever, but that shouldn’t be every slot your character has.

Of course that’s why we have gold sellers now. Why wrestle with RNG when you can just buy gold and get that 4LP Exsanguinous and also a double exalted body with perfect affixes? That seems to be the onyl way to get truly BiS gear right now.

79

Yep, that’s exactly my biggest concern with the game right now and will most likely make me uninstall. I don’t find 2LP but even if I would the chances to get f***** at Julra are insanely high and simply do not correlate with the effort to get to that point.

This feels like an artifical obstacle to prevent players from progessing at a certain point.

Either adjust drop rates or make a proper forging system with linear probability the more LP an item has.

80

Perhaps they could allow crafting legendaries with exalted items that have less than 4 affixes. It still retains RNG via rune of removal but rewards you with a more reliable way to get upgrades.

81

That was my first thought too, but would also be problematic:

1LP with 3 Aff (33%) - 2 Aff (50%)
2LP: 3 ( 33%) - 2 (100%)
3LP: 4 (25%) - 3 (100%)

Still no rewarding linearity.

For me it would be totally sufficient to eliminate Julras RNG and leave it to drop rates and Exalt Crafting RNG or enable a rule like “higher stats are prioritized” or something.