Dear Cadiro Perandus,

My experience with RNG based games has almost always been 99.99999999% of the time I get absolute shit drops. As a mostly self found player progressing beyond level 65 was a nightmare. My shit luck still applies even to Cadiro but he's has been a nice addition for me by making the uniques at least somewhat affordable so that this league I was able to trade up all my currency and buy myself some good gear. Although the trade improvements were nice I probably made no more that 1 exalt this league trading and most of my currency was made through the chaos recipe and trading up lower tier currencies (alt, jewelers, and fusings).

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Aldora_the_Summoner wrote:

I was finally able to try out some items that I had never been able to acquire in previous leagues and I had a blast!

Same here.

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Anelit wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

but if you believe unique items should be in the game, it's really difficult to come up with a good argument as to why Cadiro shouldn't.

Thats not very nuanced is it? you act like it is either black or white, either all uniques should be easily available or not be there at all.

There can be different defrees of rarity, have you ever played ARPG's before?
There beeing certain unique items that are an elusive end-goal has always been part of them.

Apart from that you can play literally 95%+ of all builds without expensive uniques.

Lowlife can be done with solaris lorica, Ele bow builds can use tri-ele thickets instead of windrippers etc.

It wasn't very nuanced because it was concise. Still, I stand by what I said.

Making unique items elusive end-game goals is usually shit design. If it is build-enabling, then players are forced to use different builds until finding the item, which forces either a reroll or respec tax upon the player (most good games with unique-centric design opt for cheap respecs, because they embrace the idea that acquiring a scarce unique item means your build can change completely). PoE tends to compound this problem with level requirements, and although respec points are offered as quest rewards to partially enable this, it's still a little awkward.

On the other hand, if unique items are made readily available and those unique items are endgame relevant, then the player acquires technically BiS items far earlier than normal, replacing the intended cycle of kill-upgrade-kill which is integral to continuous yet grindy progression, with a cycle of kill-kill-kill. This can be hugely demotivating and can cause players to quit because they're done gearing.

And, of course, if uniques aren't endgame relevant, players will think they suck and QQ about how shit they are. See D3 1.0.

Because you're damned if you don't, then if you do you're damned if you do another thing and damned if you don't, uniques are essentially incompatible with the continuous yet grindy progression model, unless combined with casual-friendly easy respecs. Therefore: not good for PoE.

I feel the better design choice would have been to make all the crazy shit unique items do into affixes. Crazy affixes do demand counterbalances to prevent overpowered combinations, and preformatted "unique" items are one way to do this, but there are other ways, like taking multiple affix slots or restricting certain affixes to low-stat bases (you could even have a "unique affix" for each base).

However, it's a bit late for that. And since unique items are here, letting players actually use them is the way to go, instead of forcing lengthy amounts of MF with rare-viable builds as a prerequisite. The only change I'd make to Cadiro at this point before including him in the core game is to restrict his offerings to unique items ONLY. Yes, it's dirty casual as fuck, but earlier design choices have essentially forced GGG's hand. Our only hope at this point is that affix-based items can maintain some degree of endgame relevance such that not all gear slots become occupied by uniques; slots where uniques are BiS are a lost cause.

Having him up for a while near Christmas wouldn't be a bad idea. Leaving him as a permanent feature removes too much of the "hunt" aspect of the game.

Cadiro was the best thing to happen to POE in years, i cant belive there just going ot throw it away, just the good feeling you get when you see him on the map even if he has crap just finding him is making me want to play more, as other's have said keep him and reduce the chances of an epic rare item spawning

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danny868686 wrote:

Cadiro was the best thing to happen to POE in years, i cant belive there just going ot throw it away, just the good feeling you get when you see him on the map even if he has crap just finding him is making me want to play more, as other's have said keep him and reduce the chances of an epic rare item spawning

This is exactly what I mean. The game becomes a hunt for a merchant rather than a hunt for the items.

A game all about building characters mostly by uniques and items - that is super grindy to get said uniques and items - thus making the game less about building characters and more about grinding and wishful theory crafting - is crap.

It's funny that everyone shits on D3 because the set items and other building defining items are relatively easy to get, seems that is what people wanted all along.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

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danny868686 wrote:

Cadiro was the best thing to happen to POE in years, i cant belive there just going ot throw it away, just the good feeling you get when you see him on the map even if he has crap just finding him is making me want to play more, as other's have said keep him and reduce the chances of an epic rare item spawning

This is exactly what I mean. The game becomes a hunt for a merchant rather than a hunt for the items.

Same difference, whether you are grinding for gear drops or this merchant. just turn his spawn rate down. then he would be just like "finding" a zana when I am running maps. Only Shav's I have ever seen in game was on him and it was very early in the league and I did not have enough coins to buy it, but...at least I finally seen one in game that I might have had...made my day and made me grind even more for coins! And is that not what GGG wants? people to play more and maybe if they are having fun they will support the game more?

Certainly... but they also want us to keep playing over the summer, and on into 2017. If the game becomes too easy, many will play for a bit and get bored with nothing to fall back on.

It's fine to be generous every so often, but if it becomes the norm you have nowhere to go.