My problems with the drop system

[RiotInferno]

I (hopefully) want to take this in a direction other than the standard "drops suck", "drops are too rare", etc etc.

My main frustration with the drop system in D3, is that there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. Blizzard has laid out what the drop rates in 1.03 will be for Inferno, but that doesn't seem to help for the rest of the game.

In D2 (I hate making this comparison), if I was looking for a Buriza, I knew roughly where to farm for my best chances of having one drop. In D3, if I'm looking for a pair of (Mr.) Boj Angles, I haven't the slightest clue what mobs / breakables can drop them. They're an ilvl 41, clvl 39. I've gotten drops in Inferno that require clvl 45. People say they drop in NM. Logically then, I can deduce that they could drop anywhere from A1/NM to possibly A4/Hell.

That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems to be slightly on point. If you make the loot system so broad that you're routinely getting stuff you can't use, or you have no clue where to farm for stuff you do want, then people resort to the lowest common denominator: AH or Chest/Goblins.

Blizzard constantly states that they want people to play the game the "right" way, aka killing monsters for fun and profit. I completely agree. When the players have no direction other than "grind your face off in Inferno", that's where we start to see more problems though.

I know the game's only been out a month. I know the resources for D2 took quite a while to build up. I know that the Arreat Summit didn't come into being overnight, and (iirc) was a post-LOD addition, after most of the game data was readily available on other sites. BUT, it's hard to transition from an almost fully transparent game, to one that has us blindly fumbling around in the dark again. That might be the biggest set-back of D3, and the super-random loot system doesn't do anything at all to help that.

[Archon_Wing]

Forcing people to play the right way never works.

Let there be multiple paths to success. In D2, most of hell was free reign for treasure seekers. Each act had a novelty if you wanted to specialize. You could safely beat on the countess for reliable runes, but you wouldn't get the best stuff from her either, for example.

[FoxBat]

That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems to be slightly on point. If you make the loot system so broad that you're routinely getting stuff you can't use, or you have no clue where to farm for stuff you do want, then people resort to the lowest common denominator: AH or Chest/Goblins.

If chests/goblins were the best place to find Burizas people would be farming them too. Ultimately AH is the most efficient way to acquire anything even if you know the best farm spot. While helpful, I don't think having a map of which areas have slightly better chance of X is going to make these issues vanish.

This is moot though because 1.03 NV changes seems to be more or less pushing people towards full act clears. They don't want to encourage people to specialize in a particular boss.

My "brilliant" expansion idea to tackle the issue would be type-specific magic find. Like 100% MF on Crossbow rolls for example. This could help bring back the feel of finding specific gear without encouraging specific farm locations.

[MonTy]

I take it Blizzard doesn't want someone to have to look up where to find a certain item, that they'd much rather have the user naturally play the game and know that you can get virtually any combination of stats or type of item from any point of the game.

I'm trying to play more before I give some sort of write-up or summary on items. But some of my initial impressions is that I find it exciting having magic and rare items be potentially the best in the game as I'm eager to check each and every one. The issues I have concerning items stems from lack of interesting affixes, not the drop system. I've accepted the fact Legendary items are no longer like Unique items, just they're rarer loot with fancy graphics.

It's funny because I'm still playing D2 & Median XL to get that item hunting fix that I'm so used to- Diablo 3 is certainly a different beast.

[ViralSpiral]

Well, technically, the "Arreat Summit" didn't exist pre-LOD, but the "Chaos Sanctuary" did - same site, different name. I didn't start playing until 1.05 or 1.06, but it did already exist by then. But that was also around or nearly a year after it came out.

[Elric of Grans]

I think the main issue with item drops is not going to be properly addressed in 1.0.3.

The game is heavily gear dependent, far more than previous Diablo games. You either have the specific gear needed to progress, or you need to farm for that gear; there is no middle ground. OK, fair enough, that alone is not an issue. The big issue is that the gear needed to progress is absurdly rare. Items that drop can, and usually will, be far lower than your level. That means the majority of drops are absolutely useless. When a level-appropriate item does drop, you then have the usual randomness against you as to whether it is (a) any good, and (b) useful to your character. Now, even that should not be an issue, as the Blacksmith is supposed to convert items useless to your character into items that are useful. However, the first issue (most items are really low level) means that you cannot get the resources required for crafting.

Blizzard's solution? Somewhat increase the odds of level-appropriate gear in a quarter of the game.

*facepalm*

They have tuned the game so that levels are fairly predictable. You can have a pretty good guess at what level someone will be when they enter any given Act/difficulty. Is it that hard to ensure the gear that drops is level-appropriate? There are still a million factors against you, so most items drops will still not be what you are looking for, but at least the game does not feel rigged against you. In Diablo, potentially something fantastic could drop in any zone/difficulty (though the best items tended to be later in the game). In Diablo II, when you went up a difficulty you had good odds of getting level-appropriate drops, and gambling was an easy way to fill the gap. The drop problems only feel intentional: there is no way you could fail to realise this would cause the players issues!

[RiotInferno]

I also enjoy Rares being better than Legendary items. It creates some diversity at the high-end, so not everyone is wearing the same items, except for legendary items with unique stats (for their item slot).

The "same drop rates per act" makes sense in Inferno, but I think that's the only part of the game where drop rates seem to act that way, and that doesn't make up for the fact that in A1/Inferno, you can still get gear way below your level. (But that's another rant, and well documented).

There isn't even the obvious "Act X / Difficulty Y yields ilvls A-B". It just seems very random and chaotic right now.

[Athenau]

Diablo 2's loot tables were way worse than D3's when it came to dropping crap. I routinely saw _normal_ items drop in hell.

The issue is not that mobs drop a lot of garbage, that's part and parcel of a Diablo game. The issue is the hard gear checks enforced throughout inferno (starting at Act 2) which makes it impossible to continue if you're undergeared.

I expect patch 1.03 to help a lot in this department, with the tweaked crafting costs, more higher ilvl drops (that you can salvage for mats), and less over the top damage in later portions of inferno.

[FoxBat]

I'm not sure inferno crafting is being touched at all, just buffing up the lower end and making it easier to train him up. So in other words, not clear that inferno gear will flow any more freely from the smith. Right now lvl 60 items are worth much more as essences than vendor gold, which says the system is working, there must be enough people that find it worthwhile gambling on high end crafts. Lowering those craft prices would just eliminate a working gold sink and make AH stuff even harder to afford.

Still some kind of outlet for hell mats would be really nice versa gold sinks. Maybe a way to convert X hell mats into 1 inferno mat.

[Elric of Grans]

The gold cost on crafting is, in my opinion, pretty balanced. Some (note: definitely not all, but some) items require an inordinate number of materials for crafting, and the poor state of drops means it is quite difficult to get the materials you need before late-Act II. In my opinion, the biggest issue with the Blacksmith are the enormous gaps in his range of abilities. Often you need to wait 10-20 levels just to craft the next tier of item, because (for no apparent reason) he does not offer it. A few particularly bad examples have an even larger gap. As far as I can tell, there is no reason why every single base item should not be available for crafting. I have no issue with hunting down plans (in fact, I think that is a fun mechanic, so long as they are not absurdly rare), but those gaps grind me.

The Jeweller, on the other hand, is a little gold-heavy in the Hell-tier gems. 20K per gem? Get real! Normal and Nightmare both felt right to me, cost-wise, but I have not upgraded gems since reaching Hell difficulty, because I just cannot afford that kind of cash. Not sure about Inferno-tier gems, because I have not looked at them. Considering they must be at least double the cost of Hell-tier, they are probably also more expensive than they are worth.

I am very surprised there is no way to upgrade materials. I had heard there would be. Perhaps it was in the beta, but removed as a balance concern? If done well, I can only see it being a great benefit to the player-base with no harm done to the game balance.

[kandrathe]

I crafted through Normal difficulty, but now so far the AH has been cheaper through Nightmare. Eventually, once I've saved up enough gold I'll skill up my blacksmith for possible use with my other characters as needed (if the items are not too expensive). So far I've been able to procure many good rare items on the AH for low prices (~2000 to 4000 gold). And, the AH items are not random and better than what I would have crafted.

[FoxBat]

The Jeweller, on the other hand, is a little gold-heavy in the Hell-tier gems. 20K per gem? Get real! Normal and Nightmare both felt right to me, cost-wise, but I have not upgraded gems since reaching Hell difficulty, because I just cannot afford that kind of cash. Not sure about Inferno-tier gems, because I have not looked at them. Considering they must be at least double the cost of Hell-tier, they are probably also more expensive than they are worth.

The costs are absurdly overpriced up until perfect squares (basically inferno items). Then it's actually a bit cheaper to craft upgrade gems then buy them on the AH. Fortunately Blizzard has stated these pre-perfect squares will be tweaked, we'll have to see by how much.

[Elric of Grans]

They put the new prices on the website (1.0.3 preview article). The price drops through the floor, to the point that they may as well have just given us the Horadric Cube to do it for free again.

[Quark]

It's better than where things stood. Anything pre-Square rune before was practically useless, because Square drops too often for anything below it to be worth upgrading before 1.0.3. Even going Square to Flawless Square is not particularly viable. Past Flawless Square, since they don't drop, costs don't seem to bad. It's a hit for sure, but these gems are permanent.

[Athenau]

Gems are a really good source of life on hit and +crit damage on weapons. Crafting top quality amethysts and emeralds will definitely be worth it.

[Kevin]

It's better than where things stood. Anything pre-Square rune before was practically useless, because Square drops too often for anything below it to be worth upgrading before 1.0.3. Even going Square to Flawless Square is not particularly viable. Past Flawless Square, since they don't drop, costs don't seem to bad. It's a hit for sure, but these gems are permanent.

My worry is they are going to run into a WoW style PvP vs PvE skill problem but it will be a HC vs SC economy issue instead of skills. In WoW most balance changes were because of PvP imbalance. In D3 most of the economy changes are going to be balanced around hardcore. Hardcore has a much bigger gold sink effect because things do leave the economy faster. The biggest hit to me when I lost my L53 witch doctor in hell was the gems. I still prefer to only sell on the AH (just because of the experience I'm looking for right now there will be other times I'll happily use it to buy and I did play a toon that used it to buy stuff once, I resold or melted anything that I stopped using with her so other toons didn't have access to it later) but I'm OK using stuff I've crafted or found on most other new toons. Losing access to everything above radiant because I no longer had a source of tomes or bigger drops slowed things down.

Of course even in hardcore, and even playing without AH purchases I'm net positive in gems. But I do tend to think that the SC economy is going to get a bit more out of whack because I think balance focus will be on the HC economy.

Though I haven't really considered the effect of the RMAH. Perhaps that will be the biggest effective sink and it will be the HC gold only economy that really screws up....

[FoxBat]

My worry is they are going to run into a WoW style PvP vs PvE skill problem but it will be a HC vs SC economy issue instead of skills. In WoW most balance changes were because of PvP imbalance. In D3 most of the economy changes are going to be balanced around hardcore.

Jay said that Inferno itself was not balanced for HC. Why on earth would the economy be? Even if it somehow ended up more balanced, it wouldn't be for Blizzard particularly trying.

[Kevin]

Jay said that Inferno itself was not balanced for HC. Why on earth would the economy be? Even if it somehow ended up more balanced, it wouldn't be for Blizzard particularly trying.

Good to know, I had not read that (I honestly read very little of the dev chats).

[MongoJerry]

Jay said that Inferno itself was not balanced for HC. Why on earth would the economy be? Even if it somehow ended up more balanced, it wouldn't be for Blizzard particularly trying.

Where the heck did he say that? I do recall him saying that the hardcore community was very important to him and that they do make decisions based on hardcore and the hardcore community.

[Elric of Grans]

I know it is probably just a crazy feeling that has no basis in reality, but sometimes I feel like nothing of any use to me drops.