Hotfix 6/28 -- Item drop rate changes

[MongoJerry]

Blizzard just made a huge hotfix change to the drop rates of high ilvl items:

•The drop rates for high-end items (items level 61-63) have been increased for Acts III and IV of Hell difficulty and Acts I – IV of Inferno difficulty:

•Hell – Act III and Act IV
•iLvl 61: 9% to 13.9%
•iLvl 62: 1.9% to 3.45%
•iLvl 63: 0% (no change)

•Inferno – Act I
•iLvl 61: 17.7% to 23.9%
•iLvl 62: 7.9% to 12.6%
•iLvl 63: 2.0% to 4.8%

•Inferno – Act II
•iLvl 61: 18.6% to 23.3%
•iLvl 62: 12.4% to 18.6%
•iLvl 63: 4.1% to 9.3%

•Inferno – Act III and Act IV
•iLvl 61: 24.1% to 27.1%
•iLvl 62: 16.1% to 21.7%
•iLvl 63: 8.0% to 16.3%

Bosses
•Bosses are now guaranteed to drop at least 1 Rare item for players with 4 stacks of Nephalem Valor and at least 2 Rare items for players with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor.

[Archon_Wing]

I posted my thoughts elsewhere:

Ugh, the road to hell (inferno) is paved with good intentions.

It's good that they're tweaking. Problem is why are the changes always so drastic? Don't double ilvl63 drops. That's like halving IAS all of a sudden. Try a 25-50% increase. I liked the way they patched Starcraft where small changes were made, but it led to huge differences.

They're trying to hammer a nail in with an anvil.

Personally, I think it would have been wiser to greatly buff 61-62 drops and maybe improve the affixes and ranges of those categories. That way, good loot is much more common but godly loot remains rare.

I would have imagined something like: Hell Act 4(15/3.45/0), Act 1(30/15/3), Act 2 (40/18.6/6), Act 3(50/21.7/12) but 62s seem to be swell and on the spot.

But on the other hand the valor thing is strong now.

[MMAgCh]

These changes still fail to make me want to play Act 2 Inferno and onwards, but at least the first act makes for some reasonably worthwhile farming every once in a while now.

[Kevin]

They're trying to hammer a nail in with an anvil.

So they are staying true to the methods they used in D2. Hello 50% global physical resists! They did stuff like this with WoW too where they would nerf one thing and buff another when they only really need to do one or the other. Like I've said they've never had good QA or patching practices. Though they do tend to still get it right at some point and they do tend to make core gameplay fun enough that the big swings don't matter as much.

[ViralSpiral]

The mental picture of a blind ogre swinging a club wildly at rats biting his ankles adorns my mind.

[FoxBat]

I don't really see how this addresses those people complaining about a3/a4 drops. The a1/a2 stuff has been mostly buffed proportionally, particularly ilvl 63 drops.

Doubling drop rates so suddenly somehow reeks of.... desperation to me.

[Concillian]

Thing is, they still don't get it. The ilvls aren't the problem. It's the fact that EVERYONE wants two affixes on weapons (+% damage and +xxx-xxx damage) and EVERYONE wants +resist all on armor. EVERYONE. The affix concentration is the issue, upping the drop rates will help I guess but items still need to roll the right affixes.

It's not so much like hammering a nail in with an anvil as it is using a crane swinging a 20 ton nail to hammer an anvil in so it will work like a nail.

[NuurAbSaal]

using a crane swinging a 20 ton nail to hammer an anvil in so it will work like a nail.

This could make a compelling game. Somebody kickstart it please.

take care
Tarabulus

P.S.:

[Archon_Wing]

Well, at least the rare spam (only had 40ish base mf) makes it look better. But let's see how long this lasts, and I sure hope it isn't til after I ID.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff247...hot063.jpg

[Lissa]

Thing is, they still don't get it. The ilvls aren't the problem. It's the fact that EVERYONE wants two affixes on weapons (+% damage and +xxx-xxx damage) and EVERYONE wants +resist all on armor. EVERYONE. The affix concentration is the issue, upping the drop rates will help I guess but items still need to roll the right affixes.

Part of the problem with the Affixes is that you now of both prefixes and suffixes that add the same stats. Back in the days of D1 (fuzzy on D2 prefix/suffix setup), +stats was only a suffix and +damage/resists was only a prefix. Now, you can see stats from both the prefix and the suffix. So with so many more prefixes and suffixes now, you can easily get some affixes drown out making certain affixes (the ones you metioned above) become more necessary due to the way the game is setup.

So, what does this lead to? Lots of junk drops and a few great drops.

[Elric of Grans]

Lissa, there are a heck of a lot less affixes now than before, not more. The main issue is game balance. Inferno requires EXTREMELY high gear stats that require all players to have absurdly high DPS, absurdly high armour and absurdly high resistances. No exceptions. As such, only very particular affix combinations (eg +xxx-xxx damage and +dmg% and +crit dmg% and +primary stat) allow you to reach these minimums. As a result, anything that is not perfect will just not let you progress. In Diablo/Diablo II, equipment was far less important (build dependent, of cause). As such, it did not overly matter if you had light radius affixes, or other such largely meaningless ones that were removed in Diablo III.

As for this hotfix, I am not impressed. As others have said, it completely fails to address any of the core issues and shows a complete lack of comprehension to what they are. Perhaps the signal to noise ratio is so bad that Blizzard are having trouble filtering out what the actual issues are.

[Lissa]

Lissa, there are a heck of a lot less affixes now than before, not more. The main issue is game balance. Inferno requires EXTREMELY high gear stats that require all players to have absurdly high DPS, absurdly high armour and absurdly high resistances. No exceptions. As such, only very particular affix combinations (eg +xxx-xxx damage and +dmg% and +crit dmg% and +primary stat) allow you to reach these minimums. As a result, anything that is not perfect will just not let you progress. In Diablo/Diablo II, equipment was far less important (build dependent, of cause). As such, it did not overly matter if you had light radius affixes, or other such largely meaningless ones that were removed in Diablo III.

As for this hotfix, I am not impressed. As others have said, it completely fails to address any of the core issues and shows a complete lack of comprehension to what they are. Perhaps the signal to noise ratio is so bad that Blizzard are having trouble filtering out what the actual issues are.

There are a lot more now, not less. Take a look at the AH some time and search on just magic so you can see some of the affixes. There are a lot more than there were in D1, probably more than D2 as well. Just to give an example of this, let's look at +attribute Affixes:

You have a Prefix for:
Str
Dex
Int
Vit
Str + Vit
Dex + Vit
Int + Vit
Str + Dex
Str + Int
Dex + Int

You have a Suffix for:
Str
Dex
Int
Vit

In D1 you had a Suffix for
+Str
+Dex
+Int
+Vit
+all stats

you have thrice as many Affixes in D3 than you ever did in D1 for stats alone, and this is just a small subset of what you have now.

This is why getting that optimal item is much more difficult now, because you need so many specific affixes to show up and you get a maximum of 6 affixes on an item.

[DeeBye]

Doubling drop rates so suddenly somehow reeks of.... desperation to me.

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Diablo-...44005.html

Granted that's just data from Xfire users.

[ViralSpiral]

Maybe Blizzard would understand this:

The basic problem is that you need a certain level of gear to play. Let's say finishing A1 Inferno requires an IQ (Item Quality) of 1,000.

The problem isn't that not enough items are dropping, or their ilvl, the problem is almost every item property is worth about 1-3 points. Only things like +% life, +% damage, +% crit damage, +vitality, or resist all are worth double digit amounts of points. For reference: https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5911942964 second post is very in detail discussion of what affixes are good on WD gear (and for the most part, everyone, subbing int for whatever your damage stat is.) He even uses a star rating system which probably equates pretty well to my IQ suggestion.

It's just that almost every affix is trash because of how harshly the math is against the player. It's going to be a really thin line between too hard, just right, and too easy, and I don't envy Blizzard trying to sort it all out. At least we know no one's calling Inferno too easy.

[Elric of Grans]

Lissa, I just went and counted. Diablo had 176 different affixes. I stopped counting Diablo II's affixes after 1000, but would estimate around 1300. Diablo II had a lot of affixes that no longer exist (eg +mana, +skills, cast on hit, etc), which is why I stated Diablo III has less (people would not normally compare Diablo with Diablo III, completely skipping over Diablo II). I have not seen a comprehensive list of all affixes in Diablo III, but I can guarantee it is considerably less than 1000.

Viral, Blizzard's approach to Legendary items showed they did not even realised how gear oriented their own game was. People dismiss Legendary weapons because they have half the DPS required for Inferno; the armour lacks the bare minimum properties to survive. Follower and healing scaling also show this same disconnect. Since it is all numbers, it should be easy for Blizzard to work it out. Hypothetically, if every creature in a zone is coded to do 1,000 damage, and we assume average armour/resistances are each 40% damage reduction, the player is looking at something like 360 damage per hit. If the creatures spawn in groups of 10, that means the player needs 4,000 life to be able to take even one hit from each, and would more than likely need more. Lets say on this example, the player needed 20,000+ Life to be comfortable. It is all numbers, and highly predictable in a box like this. Even looking at this random number example, 20K Life still requires a fair about of +vit to be viable, which as a designer should make you question those numbers.

[Concillian]

Elric, Combine the affix pools with Viral Spiral's note though.

That's the real issue.

Sure you had a TON of affixes in Diablo II, but items with +skills were GOOD even if they had extremely LOW DPS. Half the classes had builds that wanted +skills, even with low DPS. In Diablo III, even though there are less affixes, there is a comparitvely small number of useful ones. At the inferno level ANY weapon without +damage% AND a +xxx-xxx damage affix is safe to slavage or vendor, because it has ZERO value.

This is what severely limits the issue. The relative concentration of the affixes. Diablo II had several affixes that were TRASH for some builds but PURE GOLD to others. Sometimes even 2 builds of the same class. This is where Diablo III screwed the pooch. The item design needs to force higher probability on the affixes that people actually have a use for in order for people to have a reasonable expectation to find their own upgrades, or even find items that are tradeable at a reasonable frequency.

[Lissa]

Lissa, I just went and counted. Diablo had 176 different affixes. I stopped counting Diablo II's affixes after 1000, but would estimate around 1300. Diablo II had a lot of affixes that no longer exist (eg +mana, +skills, cast on hit, etc), which is why I stated Diablo III has less (people would not normally compare Diablo with Diablo III, completely skipping over Diablo II). I have not seen a comprehensive list of all affixes in Diablo III, but I can guarantee it is considerably less than 1000.

Stop counting each individual affix that is only avaiable at certain ilvls and look at the actual effect. If you sit down and look at things like +res, you'll see that the base overall affix is less in D2 than D3, do not seperate each individual tier, look at what the affix does. You'll find that yes, D3 has more affixes than D2 when you look at what the tier does, not how many times said tier is broken down. As I noted in my reply to you, there are 15 affixes in D3 for just stats where as there were only 5 in D1 and 5 or 6 in D2. There is way more variety in D3 on affixes than there was in D3 when you look at the overall affix and not each tier of an specific affix class (like Lightning resistance).

[MongoJerry]

Good lord, people. Blizzard has nerfed Act II and III by 40% and made high level rares rain down on players like Christmas, and you're still complaining. Other than DH's, who need and I expect will get a lot of love in the 1.1 patch, start playing the game already. Blizzard has already said exactly what they want Inferno to be about -- killing champ and boss packs and occationally a boss after you get enough Nef stacks. The game is approaching this. Stop with the relentless complaining already. Start talking about how you're building your characters to succeed rather than bitching about how you can't do what lots of other people are able to do.

Regarding specifically this thread, you now get 10 billion rares per run, only a few of which are really good. Welcome to the world of the random number generator. If there weren't lousy items, you wouldn't know you got a great item. And, if you get a lot of lousy items, churn them into salvage material and try for a good item that way.

And if you bought a whole bunch of top of the line items off the AH, don't be surprised if it takes a while for you to get something that beats the items you bought. I thought the whole complaint was that it was impossible to progress without going onto the AH. Well, now, you get so many rares, you have no excuses anymore even if you don't use the AH. And if you do use the AH, there will be a *lot* more top level items becoming available for cheaper now. So, stop with the relentless complaining already.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Diablo-...44005.html

Granted that's just data from Xfire users.

The article itself was lets just say not exactly unbiased. The Xfire numbers were the only thing about the article that was interesting, but I'd be interested to see what the pattern is like for most games. The graphic is showing hours logged, not the number of players, and I can say from my own experience that the number of hours I played in the first few weeks of the game was not sustainable long term. Others have mentioned taking vacation days off work just to play the game, for example, as well. I would suspect that a lot of games would have a similar pattern of an initial splash of time invested with a decay to a new plateau. It would be more interesting to see how the numbers change from the past couple of weeks to say the last couple of weeks of July or August.

[Kurosu]

Been away for a few days, and I'm quite happy with these buffs.
Blizzard throws us a bone once in awhile, so let's just enjoy it.