From what you just said Krafton taking over would be little to no difference in what we get now 
Everyone wants to make money so they’re gonna have to do something at some point.
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No, it’s how larger companies work. Also called delegation.
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It pretty much works the same way as in LE, but some things are more rudimentary, e.g. in LE the title of a rule is often prefilled with something matching the rule conditions unless you specify your own title. In D4 it’s just e.g. “SHOW Rule #4”, also you can’t import filters on console afaik. I’ve never tried with a controller in D4 - so unless the UI displays it completely differently - I imagine it is the same PITA and frustrating. Especially input text and numbers.
So far, imo, any respectable loot filter creation tool is a feature for PC players. Blizzard for the longest time had the standpoint that LFs are not necessary and the player should inspect and pickup everything on the ground, officially because a) less drops and b) indicators what dropped. I believe they resisted also because exactly the console players.
That didn’t work even in D4 though and on popular demand, they finally caved and added the LF filter in S13.
Now EHG tries to go the other way and have less loot on the ground or “smart loot” whatever that means.
If you ignore Mike’s occasional teasers in the Q&A dev streams, the marketing has so far been:
- ~15 seconds teaser trailer with date ~2 month before launch.
- ~90s trailer ~1 month before launch.
- “Hype week” 2 weeks before launch. Consisting of daily posts and Judds longer break-down video and culminating in the patch-notes.
For Season 2, they also arranged pod casts / interviews in the hype week.
Now Krafton may keep it that way or communicate more earlier in the season but I seriously doubt that. I think we’ll see even less. No pod casts. More “summer sale video” like atrocities. Maybe not even full patch notes. Also Mike’s will probably be able to tease even less (as currently). Remember the 9+ month between S1 and S2. There was not much, but at least occasionally he showed art, an item, skill- or passive-node.
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I would agree if it’s solely a internal thing. But it’s not.
He’s a stakeholder, the situation is a bit different there. Staying up on information cross-department is a necessity there, he’s not solely a worker in a position which doesn’t need to care about anything besides doing the job well.
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In English this is a generic term for someone who has skin in the game, not related to someone in charge/senior management/shareholder/etc. I would be a stakeholder for any changes to the payroll system/processes.
Yes & no. As DJ said, he should be aware of the bug picture stuff not the detailed stuff from other departments, otherwise he’d be bogged down in so much detail he wouldn’t be able to do his job. Especially since they are no longer a small edgy indy company. Micromanaging is not a good thing.
Yah the big picture is the main issue here though. The direction of the game, the massive mistakes with season 4 and the changes that brought that. The new skills, the new classes, new items. The changes also go through their version of a cab meeting where he said in discord and asked me to post a thread on here about how us (the players now) would prefer they did early season balances once the season has started if things were wildly over powered or acting in a way they were not designed to be but were not technically bugs (which came about after me raging over how stupid shadow rend was and the interaction with flow etc) and he said he would like this posted so he had some ammunition to take to a meeting. This suggests they have change meetings where things are discussed maybe with the heads of department which is where other changes would also be shared and there would not be a need for micromanaging as they would have minutes taken, points addressed and thoughts discussed. If my creation of any kind was being taken in a shit direction or away from my vision I would be fuming and I would most definitely be across those bits that were doing so.
Department comes up with a plan, plan is written up as per any proposal - this plan then has to go through peer review to make sure it doesnt break anything (lol they might miss this step based on history of breaking things) the plan then gets submitted to cab where its discussed and questioned/approved/denied. Now I get Mike wont see all of these but any major game changes he -SHOULD- as a lover of the game and co-founder etc. If he isn’t then as @Kulze said a failure on his side.
Imagine if restaraunts just changed menus on the fly without involving the head chef - Judd owned the restaurant but Mike is the guy in the kitchen cooking.
I can’t wait for most of this to be ignored just so my final line about restaraunts gets picked at because everything else I said was fricking spot on.
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I honestly don’t know how I feel about this. On the one hand, having these broken interactions isn’t fun. On the other hand, knowing that things might change down the road just makes it so I don’t want to play day 1.
That’s what happened in PoE2. They keep nerfing stuff after season start so I decided not to join day 1. And then with other things happening and other games, I ended up not even trying this season yet.
Joining day 1 you’re all excited and fired up for the new stuff. Joining a week or a month later isn’t as exciting and even though I hear the season is actually good, I just can’t get the motivation to dive into it later, when the economy is already a mess.
So there are positives and negatives about nerfing after season start, just like there are if you don’t nerf things.
Mike once said that he only has a seat at the table, just like Judd also has one, and a few others, and the players have another seat. Not everything Judd or Mike want is implemented. They have discussions and reach their decisions not simply by the boss(es) saying so.
I’m going to ignore everything else and pick on your because of this final line. 
Seriously though, I think the way EHG works is that when deciding the menu the restaurant owner gets a vote, the head chef gets a vote, the waiter gets a vote, the clients get a vote, etc. So that in the end they reach a majority decision, even if it’s not what the chef wants.
Now, with so many seasons (and so many stuff planned for each season) planned ahead already in the works/design phase, I’m sure there are many things that are proposed and later dropped and others that get dropped and later picked up.
So it’s possible that some of the things that are coming/might come to EHG Mike doesn’t know about, as in not sure what their status currently is.
Still using the restaurant example, it would be like planning a different menu each week and they are already planning a month ahead. It’s possible you’re not sure of some of the stuff in next week’s or next month’s menu.
As far as I’ve seen personally, when it’s stuff about the game mechanics, Mike will more often say that he can’t say anything rather than that he doesn’t know. When he says he doesn’t know, the chances are that it’s not planned (unless he’s saying he doesn’t know when it will come, in which case he might not actually know, just that it’s down the pipeline sometime).
I’ve mostly heard him say he doesn’t know on matters like what’s planned for hype week, or expansion prices, or things of that nature. Which I believe he doesn’t. He’s likely generally aware of stuff of that nature going on, but I doubt he knows many details.
At least, that’s my experience with Mike’s streams. He’ll most often say he can’t say anything rather than say he doesn’t know when it’s stuff about the game itself (unless people ask him technical questions about stuff he didn’t develop).
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Honestly the thing I hear him say the most is “I’m not sure” which to me isn’t “I don’t know” or “I can’t say” its a cop-out mix of both and if he’s not allowed to say then just saying so haha but as we discussed he SHOULD say so. They NEED to! I also think all gettng a vote is stupid because Mike is on discord all the time for example and Judd - well, doesn’t seem to be. Mike interacts and gets torn down a lot on there too, he knows what people want. Meh anyways I don’t know their system but whatever it is just isn’t working.
You shoulda played POE2 this season, you still can. There has a couple of nerfs on interactions that were bugged and that’s it. Every build is insane. Everyone currently playing Gem as it got a crazy new skill that makes it better than a lot of other classes - extra proj for spark/arc, more attack speed for others. But anyways actual nerfs? Nope! Nothing like you might remember. I spend an hour each morning on YT looking for new builds because they’re still popping up. Even builds using the default spell on staffs etc. It’s wild and hugely creative this season. Jewels are OP and will be nerfed they can have up to 5 mods this season so lots of end end builds stack these but those are the people who play 1 char for 2 months straight, good for them. I’m on about my 30th alt atm lol - also re economy this season everyone has money. No ones struggling. The new mechanic you get to end game and hit 5 divs on one remnant of 10 on some, or drop aldurs saga worth 40 div or get the 10k mana rune stone which every character can get just once - i got it, hit the corruption on it made it 2k div instead of 500. Raw divs through campaign from act 3 onwards and in all maps not eve juicing for currency. The new tree thing shits divines out lol its wild man. Last time I played this game right before I came to LE I would be end game and have like 5-10d to my name if lucky. Right now I’ve got like 800, MB, legacy supports, insane weapons / items etc and about 1000d worth of stuff in my trade tabs lol
I dunno what zoom-zoom means to you but yeah sure they have blink builds but I have 65ms with boots and mageblood with quicksilver on it. My warpath when not spinning has 187ms on it. I find LE mapping quicker than POE2. Invandrana on his archer in LE 200+ movespeed I have to teleport to keep up with him. Most of the guys I group with have normal move speeds as well and we do group maps most days even now still. I’m in global chat that supports https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU5iwcSTSpQ this guy and his people and it’s the closest thing to LE chat I’ve had, great people, helpful, supportive and taught me heaps.
EDIT - sorry I really just wall of text aye? I should chatbot these replies for you guys haha
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This is actually something that has been drawing me back from playing it, tbh. From what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard from players is that PoE2 is now more PoE1 than PoE1 is.
I liked PoE2 better before they caved to the zoom zoom.
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Yes, that’s a major issue, but the alternative is leaving things broken for many many more people long-term. Be it by affecting the market or by screwing over balance perception overall.
There is no good solution available, but LE has clearly shown what I said after the initial 1.0 poll… that what players decided is not what the better of those two choices is, and it’s shown since then to hold true. And it’s also what decades of game-design knowledge in the industry have shown to be the case, and those don’t need to be in the same genre to uphold.
All sounds fine and dandy at first sight.
But somewhere it’s mighty mighty awry.
If the players, Judd and Mike have a voice… does that mean the arguments which have been going around repeatedly since 2 years and seen to hold true then be overturned by Mike and Judd? That would be quite the awful situation for trusting into their decisions at all hence, because there is a LOT which hasn’t been done.
Or is the system itself broken in some way, not even at the decision basis but the route towards implementation? Be it understanding what is asked for in the first place up to actual introduction into the game ultimately?
Either/Or it doesn’t matter, it just isn’t functioning like this. If it’s the decision-making itself which led to this mess then either players or core devs need a higher value for decisions, based on which sentiment exactly messed it up.
And if it’s not the decision making itself then the process needs dire fixing.
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I wish they would not make balance changes after a season has began, but that they would fix bugs, including bugs that made skills more powerful than intended. So no broken interactions.
Sure. I can agree that things aren’t working properly since launch. Seasons get delayed constantly, changes are slow to come, etc.
I still have fun playing LE. If it was abandoned I still would have fun playing LE on and off over the years like I do with GD and D2. But I can agree that things could have gone smoother.
The simple fact that they had to sell to stay afloat atests to that.
The problem is that the biggest problems we’ve been seeing lately aren’t bugs, they’re just balance oversights.
The issue with Season 0 and profane veil or ballista, those were bugs. They got fixed.
The issue with shadow rend, or bear-quake last season, those weren’t bugs. They’re just oversights where they overtuned the skill and didn’t account for all the interactions that then overtuned the skill even more.
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Least bear still took investment and time because it sucked to level with and then you needed some good 77+ slams to really get the kill time down a lot. SR you can single slam crap and still instagib. But yeah, bugs get fixed but “balance” which should be changed isn’t touched in fear of public rage.
Thing is if you go back 2 years to the poll they sent out where more players were in favour of NOT balancing issues early in season and waiting til next the poll count was like 74k or something similar, close to TWICE the amount of the highest peak of season 4 and one week in that number which was 43k the highest ‘peak’ was already down to 22k players - now we take into account they reckon 31% of all chars were rogues and then 85% of those were BD’s. So lets say 26% of all players were infact no-skilling it with Shadow Rend that’s around 5.7k players of the 22k players (don’t you fkn dare get into finer points bro, you know who you are) that’s not really a huge impact if you changed the skill 1 week in, toned it down - 2 weeks in our highest peak count was 12k players. The point is toning down a skill multiplier or changing something isn’t going to break a build. Nerfing a skill from 100% chance down to 10% chance - thats a fkn nerf and the worst idea in history they should fire the sack of sh** who came up with that.
Overall the impact on changing a skill 1 week into a season is very low. If you start a character with a brand new ability and you think HOLY FLIPPING HECK THIS IS STRONG - then don’t be shocked if it gets taken down a notch. This is how NEW things should be looked at. You won’t find an old skill suddenly 100 times stronger than its ever been. If anything you’ll find older skills slightly weaker each time - Erasing strike hefty nerf, Warpath hefty nerf and so on. If it’s new and shiny chances and ultra strong it needs a tweak ASAP. Their closed testing players are really just generic super average players who don’t think outside of the box like some of the people… some of the chinese super players do who come up with epic all beit broken builds and interactions which then get stolen by maxroll people and posted to the masses. God I ramble! Anyways it’s simple - if its a new interaction/item just say if its too strong and working better than intended we will balance this, not nerf it into the ground. If 100% percent is too strong we’ll lower it to 75% and see how that goes. Heaven forbid a 25 second uber kill instead of an instant shot before he starts his slam wind up.
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If just those closed testing allowed access for those chinese super players which come up with all that epic broken shit, right? 
Would counter a good amount of issues, but even back when they were still allowed in before being nonsensically removed for a even more nonsensical reason they weren’t properly listened to. I heard of so sooooo many people which had been testing, chatting and suddenly the answer of ‘yeah, I mentioned that in the playtest as well and nothing was done’. It’s absolutely baffling.
So it’s not really hard to see where the issues are existing.
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I wouldn’t be shocked at hearing that aye “I told them but they didn’t care” - not suprising but same time absolutely wild if it’s is or did happen.
I suggested a while back giving the ‘known’ class specialist community folks who each season specialise in one kind of build a chance to test - like that guy potato_LE hes quite often first to kill uber each season and uses a rogue (or FrozenSentinel for mage etc etc) and then a bit later is first to find crazy tech often before some of the Chinese community (I mean I don’t know him he could be Chinese) but invite people like that to test with the catch they can’t release any guides for least 2 weeks into the season and I bet they’d love to. Half the time soon as the patch notes drop people have strong builds ready to go so it’s not going to be some great spoiler alert anyway haha!
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Besides the ‘2 weeks no build guides’ I agree.
That part though… why not? Build Guides are a community service, they get clicks, the game gets more players which can handle the game and the players which want them have access.
The only complaining people are those which for the love of it are unable to handle it to not be spoiled, their fingers miraculously clicking on those videos and links to read and watch despite being aversed. A very odd group indeed.
And yes, this issue is something I’ve known since 0.6 to exist, when I started to interact (only through twitch back then) with content creators that regularly were also testers. The sentiment of ‘why is this existing? That’s specifically what I provided as feedback and now it’s causing issues!’ has been a surprisingly big thing.
I personally picked up last Epoch after my obligatory waiting time when it was announced to be released into EA and went ultimately in at 0.4. Up until 0.8 all was relatively fine still, rather minor issues, but already the systemic failure visible. Starting with 0.9 the hammer dropped ultimately and every reasonable gameplay feel got utterly destroyed, still the fault of exalted items being introduced without adjusting the crafting mechanics at a fundamental level accordingly.
It was just massively overshadowed because MP was introduced at that time as well and everyone focused on that, praising that it finally was there to the heavens. And then came 1.0 with the Factions, MG fundamentally broken still, CoF never expanded for the necessary target-farming options missing and important to exist. One absolute awful end-game bossfight which for some reason got a ‘inspirational’ version on top despite being one absolute awfully designed fight.
1.2 was ‘ok’ but also introduced the crafting options as the biggest tedium possible, re-run to access the crafting benches rather then giving out any form of ‘token’ to use at will. 1.3 with the ‘cycle mechanic’ being the mechanic of the campaign, hence a joke since the campaign should’ve been existing since 1.0 anyway, so basically we got pre 1.0 content sold as ‘here you go, your cycle mechanics!’ rather then splitting cycle mechanic and core content into separate aspects as it’s supposed to happen. And 1.4 introduced further RNG on a completely out-of-scale RNG itemization issue while destrocing imprints on top, the only saving grace making it actually bearable before.
After 0.8 the game got substantially worse in cohesion with every single update, either by introducing broken mechanics ruining the complete feeling of the game, low quality shoddy implementations or providing content that shouldn’t be cycle content but instead core in the first place.
That’s the state of LE seen through the lens when we look back.
Hence serious mismanegement all over the place in many areas, all addressed by multiple people over the time and only a fraction ever being actually tackled. And since that goes on since multiple years… well… you can imagine the timeframe needed to fix the utter broken mess building up on other broken messes fundamentally interfering with any step beyond them already. You cannot build a solid house on a unstable foundation. Which is sadly exactly what happened.
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Man Ive only played since 1.0 and am as jaded as you if I had played since when you did I probably would have bailed! I only suggested the no build guides for instances of hidden mechanics that might supe up the build but as I read your post back I thought if they were doing a genuine job and everything they pointed out was looked at, acknowledged and fixed then there shouldnt be any secret tech so you’re right. I think thought if they’re seeing new stuff that isn’t announced then they shouldn’t mention that until it’s officially announced which is usually patch day?
Man don’t get me started with FP and crafting… right now back to poe2 where people mocked the crafting in LE, it’s actually superior and despite being quite stupid I’ve picked it up nicely and make a ton of money every night specialising in twink items level 36 and lower. I have end game crafted - T1 base, perfect regals, hit a fracture, anul the remaining, chaos spam until next T1 is hit and so on. I love it. No FP limit means you get to spend your currency as much or as little as you want. There is no bias because if you earn it you should get an advantange and as someone who COULDNT earn it last year its really damn easy now and every single person can earn it. It doesn’t feel like that race to end game now that poe1 always did then the markets get flooded by the speeders. Guys like Jenebu got banned with his huge online website and their selling gold, mirror’d items etc all trapped in time~ losers! Others on there offer free mirror services now - just bring the the mirror and thats it. I’ve found free ascendancy carry service too which is awesome for my alt compulsion.
A lot of changes need to happen man, holding on here.. just lol
This is a recent twink item - i got the rare base just playing a alt through during act 2, hit it with a few things and it sold for mega bucks! most of my level 16 crossbows would go for 2-3d lol (that staff in my inventory just listed for 5d level 16) - down to 23k players online when I wake up but stuff still sells quick as and once poe1 league drops, 20-30k will come back til mini league
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Yes, that’s the NDA portion, no release of information before the release of the version. That’s the norm how it is handled and why 1 hour after a release often guides come out.
Plainly spoken the limitation of creating guides has to end at the second when the patch-notes come out, those should differ enough from the testing environment anyway to need reading through and adjusting any plans, making it a nearly fair environment for testers and non-testers again anyway. The difference in release-time is miniscule, should happen before the release even since patch notes are released days before the patch drops anyway.
As for content, yeah, the moment it drops the moment videos and guides can be uploaded. Also at the risk of the creator once more if something since the test has changes, which could also be significant. So it mandates checking anyway or loosing reputation for providing false information which doesn’t uphold anymore, meaning they got to reach that point personally anyway once more.
And I agree 100% with the FP issue and crafting in general.
LE provides a high amount of different item slots, item bases, a large amount of Affixes for both Pre- and Suffix slots while also having a total of 4 of those slots baseline available.
That’s massive RNG for drops.
Hence crafting needs to counter that. Which it properly did until 0.9 with the implementation of exalted items. Formerly you created your perfect results from time to time, hence picking up different items and farming the materials to create them was feasable. Now suddenly… the drop itself has to be on the right base rather then just being ‘the right base with some roughly fitting Affixes’ which provided a chance for a good outcome.
So now you had ‘It needs this one specific Affix’ already as a drop, which means the whole RNG of the drop-mechanic applies to exalteds individually on top of the spread of the other leftover Affixes, multiplying the total weight in the system and hence reducing the percentile chance of a proper outcome by magnitudes.
Formerly out of 150 dropped rare items of the right base it was 1 result - as a rough example, numbers out of thin air.
Now though… you got those 150 drops, but they first have to be exalted, which means out of 150 you probably got 5 of those… and every - another random number - 80 for example you get the right Affix to even start trying. So you gotta get 16 times the 150, so over 2300 of the base to then even add a rough fitting other Affix spread - which another random number - is now only 90 tries anymore since we only need to fix 3 instead of 4 slots.
See the issue there?
The crafting mechanic adjusted ‘0’ to it. Nothing was changed to handle this introduction. It’s just a ‘Now you need more to reach the end-point’ situation without any reduction in RNG.
Was it too easy for a live-service before? Yeah! But surely not by hundreds of times That’s a bit overkill in the opposite direction.
And that’s specifically the issue we hence see.
In PoE as you properly state it’s a process, hence GGG only needs to adjust for the process itself to create a fitting state which feels nice. EHG has forced themselves to combine the drop-change and the crafting chance to be in tune with each other all the time… and they can’t get either handled, even remotely.
That led as you also rightfully state to the absolutely rampant power creep, to counter the issue of ‘Our players cannot craft decent gear in our item progression anymore’ which they personally implemented, messing hence all the game progression up. Utterly… and entirely by now.
All that needed to be done is a fundamental rework of the crafting mechanic, once, in 0.9… or 1.0… and it would’ve all been fixed.
By now? With all the introductions to counter the issue they created themselves? It’s too late to fix it solely from the crafting and item-drop side. That’s gone off into the horizon entirely. It still needs substantial work to get that side handled.
And the other side is mobs. The campaign was a nice - albeit a bit easy but not too much - difficulty. But then Nemesis wrecked it and made it a extremely easy progression as you can just grab a exalted item very early on, or a good unique, which were sparse otherwise, trivializing the whole thing.
That hence needs to be reworked. The whole mobs at early monoliths need to be reworked too, only empowered uphold the proper scaling still. They screwed up the entire power-scaling front to back.
So yes… a lot and then a lot of a lot of changes to even fix the whole absolute garbage they designed on top of other garbage.
PoE 2 also has a massive power creep, but for them it’s no issue comparatively because that game is unfinished, it’s EA, they got the leeway to mess around and did - properly so - before now it closes in on 1.0 and they hence need to ‘lock in’. Having only every 2-3 years major upheavals at best, if even.
And yes, the economy in PoE functions because there is no nonsense like ‘You cannot resell your item’. Which I get it… they wanted to avoid RMT and price-fixing. But damn… it’s utter and entire incompetence to throw every single basic economic rule overboard to fix something which comparably to the created problems in the game with their option are absolutely miniscule… and the RMT still happens nonetheless! Well… less so nowadays since too few people play and they get no money anymore because of it, and items are utterly broken price-wise so the RMT itself is a mess to even price likely because nobody knows what something is roughly worth in-game and reasonable since it’s all over the place. Makes them putting price-tags on their illegal sites which should all be sued to hell for business damages probably kinda hard
So mission fulfilled, RMT is nigh gone! The price was only the whole game and playerbase of MG.
It’s a mess… all over, from every position even, and so many at once that when you try to talk about one issue people come in and repeatedly say ‘You cannot fix xyz because then zyx doesn’t work anymore’ and absolutely missing the capacity to see that singular solutions are all impossible… we’re vastly beyond that, it’s only combinations, larger changes with multiple angles that actually solve issues rather then making things marginally - and hence useless in scale - better. But the comments come anyway.
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Oh snap I didnt even consider how crafting should have changed with things being added - man the affix needing to be there is insane. Sometimes its there and you still have to havoc, 1 bad havoc and youve cut the craft in half and its bricked. INSANE! Now they add set item crafting which in itself I really like but again, no adjustments and as mentioned with the one set chest you need 1: the affix to be there 2: no sealed affix so you can remove/add the T1 then seal that so you get the bonus then add another then hopefully end up with 2 x T6/T7 prefixs - even with 64FP its bonkers. 20+ gone on a simple click then 20 more on another and thats if you get one with no seal from Nem towers which is rare as hell in the first place WIOY@$($($@#% so much craft rage right now lol
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Yep, that’s exactly it.
Since they added it the chance has significantly lowered. So that’s why things like the Havoc rune were even introduced in the first place. EHG messed up the drop-rate because of exalteds… and instead of reworking the crafting mechanic from the ground up as was necessary they instead tacked on a solution.
Usually tacking on a solution is fine. But that only works when the issue is a single one. The implementation caused not only the right Affix to be there being an issue… but a lot more.
You need it to be T7 for example, not T6 commonly… then T7 and T6 as a double T6 is as strong as a single T7 when spreading it out overall all items roughly. And each upgrade there respectively becomes harder to get as a base even. Not even talking about starting to use crafting itself, just a ‘viable base’ itself.
So instead of 10 bases per hour you now get 1 base every 10 hours instead as you go forward, which obviously doesn’t work as it’s a exponential difficulty curve, not a linear one.
The next issue is that the rune costs FP, which reduces the total amount of tries already, and every try after the first substantially reduces your success chance anyway, up to basically nil.
Then the next issue is that runes have no critical success, so there is no chance to bypass this extra cost which misaligns with the never adjusted FP system.
Now one might say FP was adjusted, more FP on items! But that’s a really miniscule change. It rises the individual chance, but as the acquisition-chance of the drop itself with being exalted properly is so extreme compared to the former system (magnitudes after all, 100 times less results basically, even much less as you go forward further into deeper end-game territory) it’s a little drop on a hot stone. If you had a 2% chance to make a ‘decent’ base-drop formerly into a perfected item with the limits back then now it’s a 0,03% chance in the same timeframe. Which is quite massive.
Then we can even add to it that LP items exist, which didn’t exist before 0.9 either, which add another chance on top. So putting that 0,03% item onto something which has a 50% chance to get the right Affixes on it (3 LP item hence) makes it only a 0,015% chance then suddenly. So even worse.
So as you can see you cannot fix all those multiple issues with a single rune, which also in itself reduces your success-rate on top as well.
That’s why imprinting was made, which solved the RNG issue… a mechanic which is supposed to only be available to CoF for their faction in the first place, but because of the mess they made given to everyone instead.
Which is also a completely messed up system if you’ve looked up how to get the proper drops formerly, so how to actually improve it optimally and having to handle the spread of Affixes to ensure it gets with the highest chance better.
That was to counteract the screwup of the drop-rate itself.
And it got absolutely butchered, pushing us back to when 0.9 dropped, but now with a whole mess of extra top-end adding more RNG, making it all even worse.
LE was in the best state at version 0.8. If EHG had finished simply the campaign, added the 1.2 weaver content and nothing else… the game would currently be in a much better state.
No failed champions (nobody goes for the champion affixes, they’re loot pinatas only hence), no loot lizards to counteract loot scarcity, which utterly ruined unique scarcity as well. Which counteracted the mess with 4 LP items being basically non-existent before. No primordial affixes and no corruptions.
And it would still be better because the progression itself would still work properly.
All EHG ever needed to do was introducing higher Affix tiers, craftable, no ‘drop-only’ crap as they did… and the game would’ve stayed good instead of being a frustrating slog. No LP, because uniques are then possible to be designed according to the position in the game, not at the potential of what they can become with 4 extra Affixes on top, mandating near every slot in your character to become a unique for every character either.
It’s just a mess everywhere you look when you see itemization. It was good… it was ruined. Never adjusted as you say, absolutely brainless changes.
EHG utterly failed as designers with their itemization system and that’s the primary reason why LE is dieing and will still die after the console release in no time. There is no money in a game which causes players to feel frustrated quickly and then leave. Nobody sane pays for that experience, not that much can be paid with them absolutely forgetting to implement MTX in a proper amount despite it being their lifeline.