The problem I have with this trend is that it has the following problems.
It encourages a very boring style of gameplay, where you basically run the same monos over and over again because you are trying to get a specific item.
Once (and if) trading comes out, it becomes an incredibly efficient way to get a specific uniques which initially are designed to be very hard to get (which is why they are gated behind empowered monos) end up becoming very easy to get because people will just run builds that are highly efficient for killing specific mobs and they will flood the market (botting will make this worse which be an inevitability if trading comes out and at that point it just becomes a case handling it)
Personally I would prefer a system where rather than having to constantly farm a specific item from a specific boss, the bosses would instead drop very rare crafting materials which can be used to craft a specific set of items (which would normally be boss specific items). Different items would require different crafting materials but there would also be some overlap.
This is just an idea, I just personally having been a big fan of boss specific item drops for the reasons stated earlier. Its arguable that its less of a problem once you get trading, but that is another case of worms for another thread.
The boss only drop uniques are just a portion of all uniques overall and having different kind of uniques acquisition methods (random drops, specific boss drops and maybe even later down the line uniques that only drop in specific content, but not specific bosses) is very healthy for the game i think.
If everything would be random or if everything would be target farmable it would be boring.
The âproblemâ that you try to focus here is not a problem of uniques, but rather in the content i think.
I can see why some people dislike farming timeliens over and over again, but we will just receive a overhaul or addition to MoF with the next patch and i expect the system to get more and more features and overhauls.
So maybe it will become less of an issue.
I personally already like the current system very much, since you can eitehr farm blessigns or uniques or just push high echoes for great loot overall.
One thing i want to touch on:
We donât even know anythign about the trading system, i would not automatically assume that uniques/set items are tradeable.
Maybe they are, maybe they are not.
Maybe only ârandom dropâ uniques are tradeable, we donât know yet.
Right, but this is the reason why I came up with my idea which is essentially a compromise between the two systems. You have the benefit of the current system which is that its easier to get specific items since it has a specific+clear condition on when it drops, its just that the condition is âa set of bossesâ rather than just âone bossâ.
I also understand that the mono content can be improved to be more interesting but it also doesnât solve the other problem (which historically speaking is inevitable) where you just get builds that are narrow and specifically designed to just âkill one bossâ, i.e. a Strand of Souls can be created with crafting materials that are dropped from not only Abomination but also Emperor of Corpses aliong with Fire Shamans, that way you can at least shuffle between a set of monos (you can even fine tune it further by having different drops rates for different materials depending on which boss, i.e. earlier bosses such as Abomination will have a lower drop rate).
I just donât like it in the context of boss-specific uniques, because i really like them as they are.
What i could see would be some âthemedâ unqiues attached to certain timelines (maybe Void, Elemental and Necrotic Timelines).
There are âcrafting materialsâ dropping in those timelines and you could make exclusive uniques from those.
But for the boss-specific unique perspective i donât like it,
It comes very close to a âgrindâ were you 100% will reach your goal eventually.
I know this is also true if you have enough willpower to kill the boss often enough.
But your system suggestion has this âguaranteedâ reward at the end, i donât like that system, it feels too much like âworkâ.
I donât see how its any more guaranteed than the current system? The difference is one system is more granular than the other, I mean fundamentally in terms of statistics you are just dealing with drop rates (to be clear I am not saying that bosses should have a 100% chance to drop crafting materials, the drop rates for crafting materials will also be very low).
The thing with %based drop chances and the distribution among multiple different items is, that it makes the âraresâ ones waaaaay more exciting, when they actually drop.
There needs to be common drops, to make rare drops exciting.
With any form of âcraft your own uniqueâ the excitment of dropping something is dampened IMO.
An extensive overhaul of the Monolith system is taking place for this upcoming patch so weâll see if the changes alter your view on this.
From the limited information weâve been given about how trading will function in this game, I donât think itâll work quite like you think and it may not be the problem you envision. Though, again, weâll just have to wait and see on this front.
Yep i am sure, EHG will try to create a very different market than PoE.
We donât know what they exactly will do, but i am so sure they will do alot of things differently.
If people talk about trading the vast majority instantly envisions a system like PoE, because there are not other big games in a similar genre that have any kind of those systems.
But just because PoE does it a particular way doesnât mean there are sooo many more options for a trading system.
Right but there is a difference between the way you feel and the actual odds of something dropping. The former is purely subjective, the latter is not.
You can of course do the maths so that a set of items (which you later combine) have roughly almost the same âdrop rateâ as a current gated empowered mono drop.
The feeling you get when a very rare item drops is of course of a valid but also different point, this is more about chase items and in this case there is nothing stopping you from the current gated empowered mono uniques from having a global (but very low) drop rate along with a system like I proposed.
Well we have an idea already of whats happening but I doubt it will change much, fundamentally the most efficient way of farming the uniques devolves into using the current highest power meta build (which in my case is a BM SD build) that runs through content as fast as possible to reach the boss and you rinse and repeat (this is my personal biggest issue imho).
I can also say that with such a system, I doubt that I will have the same gratification feeling that @Heavy is describing with chase items, rather it will be something like âyay, I finally f**ken got my item after doing abomination 100 timesâ.
Chase items have the feeling they have when they drop because its unexpected, however if you are doing a empowered mono run you are expecting a specific drop and thats why you are doing it again and again (and then the game ends up feeling like a grindy Korean MMO).
True but the trading is another point, one that I am very skeptical of but of course thats another discussion.
But how does your âsolutionâ solve this issue? Would you not still run the bosses with your most powerful/fastest build to gather these âvery rare crafting materialsâ in the most efficient manner? Perhaps Iâm not understanding your solution correctly.
I did feel genuinely exicted, when i finally dropped Gasparâs Insight, that was one of the best feelings i had in LE in a long time.
Because i wanted that Item so badly.
And here i just repost something from my first post:
I really like that we currently have a mix of random drops and specific target drop.
And the total pool of uniques will expand and getting a specific item will get less unlikely and more and more uniques will become âchase itemsâ
There is a very big difference between just doing one boss all the time versus jumping between 2-3 (or even more) bosses in different monos. Also due to blessing system, it will feel less grindy since you can at the same time farm/optimize blessings. I mean these are also numbers so you can change them as you please.
I guess this is the subjective part, I feel about it differently. But using the same reasoning I donât see how you wouldnât equally feel just as excited when the last crafting item that you need to create the specific unique you are looking for will drop.
I doubt we will see a case where a specific boss will have more than multiple specific unique drops than we have currently.
Suppose weâll just have to agree to disagree. Personally, I donât see the âvery big differenceâ between them functionally, and Iâd still be using my fastest build to perform such a task so thereâs really not much that changes on my end. Also, if I got bored farming one Unique/Blessing then Iâd just farm a different one.
However, there are new Runes & Glyphs coming into the game at some point and having a system similar to what you describe for obtaining the rarest of them could be pretty cool. So then thereâd be a third reason to farm these bosses (beyond their specific Uniques and Blessings).
I would disagree here, because some empowered mono bosses are very different (or even more difficult and hence challenging compared to others). By the same token, some builds are also much better at defeating specific empowered mono bosses then others, an obvious example where this can happen is having lower resists against a certain damage type which the boss deals.
For example with my latest character that I mentioned previously, abomination is a walk in the park but heriot is something else, you really have to pay attention because if you are caught off guard when he dashes/charges with blizzard you are basically dead.
As you said we can agree to disagree but personally I find it much more fun when jumping inbetween different types of content, there is also merit in doing the same mono run again and again when defeating a hard boss (ergo Heriot) which felt really good but thats more for completionist sakes of defeating the hardest boss at the hardest level.
