"If PoE increased droprates, people would instantly leave the game"

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

This notion that drop rates could ever outweigh trading in terms of time investment is just ludicrous. You're putting your own personal findings up against tens of thousands of people doing the exact same thing.

Luckily, "Time investment" is not the only factor that matters when a person decides between getting equip to use through looting/crafting or trading. It is evident for that many people, looting/crafting has a intrinsic value; this means that as long as looting/crafting yields gear with enough utility in comparison to the gear they would obtain through trading, such people would choose the former.

Increasing drop rates doesn't solve anything. It only delays the problem.

If you've played Normal Twilight Strand more than once or twice, you'll remember that, when you first start the game, upgrades drop all the time, and virtually nothing which drops is unusable shit. "What dropped? Are those white gloves? Score."

As you play more and more, the time between upgrades gets longer and longer, and an increasing percentage of loot dropped seems worthless to you. It's just like this chart here:

Just replace "Mastery" with "Usable Loot."

There is really no design change GGG could possibly make which would prevent this pattern from emerging. Perhaps they could delay you getting to the point where 99.97% of drops are crap, but the way to make sure you get more upgrades later is to give you less upgrades earlier, so in a way it's just one big trade-off.

The closest they could get to subverting something like this is by balancing itemization using incomparables — you know, apples and oranges types of situations, where you can't say the apple is strictly superior to the orange or vice versa. However, this doesn't so much escape the asymptotic nature of upgrades so much as separate things into two separate asymptotic graphs — one for apples, one for oranges — which the player then has to choose between.

So yeah. Asymptotic functions. Can't really stop 'em.

However, I will give OP credit for at least one thing: the "players would perfect their gear in a week and leave" thing sure is an easily dispatched strawman.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Increasing drop rates doesn't solve anything. It only delays the problem.

If you've played Normal Twilight Strand more than once or twice, you'll remember that, when you first start the game, upgrades drop all the time, and virtually nothing which drops is unusable shit. "What dropped? Are those white gloves? Score."

As you play more and more, the time between upgrades gets longer and longer, and an increasing percentage of loot dropped seems worthless to you. It's just like this chart here:

Just replace "Mastery" with "Usable Loot."

There is really no design change GGG could possibly make which would prevent this pattern from emerging. Perhaps they could delay you getting to the point where 99.97% of drops are crap, but the way to make sure you get more upgrades later is to give you less upgrades earlier, so in a way it's just one big trade-off.

So yeah. Asymptotic functions. Can't really stop 'em.

While you're correct on everything you say, you neglect to mention that GGG uses an item generation method that exacerbates this problem. By not phasing out obsolete affixes on gear, the average level of the mods on gear you find becomes increasingly disproportionate to the level of your character.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Increasing drop rates doesn't solve anything. It only delays the problem.

If you've played Normal Twilight Strand more than once or twice, you'll remember that, when you first start the game, upgrades drop all the time, and virtually nothing which drops is unusable shit. "What dropped? Are those white gloves? Score."

As you play more and more, the time between upgrades gets longer and longer, and an increasing percentage of loot dropped seems worthless to you. It's just like this chart here:

Just replace "Mastery" with "Usable Loot."

There is really no design change GGG could possibly make which would prevent this pattern from emerging. Perhaps they could delay you getting to the point where 99.97% of drops are crap, but the way to make sure you get more upgrades later is to give you less upgrades earlier, so in a way it's just one big trade-off.

The closest they could get to subverting something like this is by balancing itemization using incomparables — you know, apples and oranges types of situations, where you can't say the apple is strictly superior to the orange or vice versa. However, this doesn't so much escape the asymptotic nature of upgrades so much as separate things into two separate asymptotic graphs — one for apples, one for oranges — which the player then has to choose between.

So yeah. Asymptotic functions. Can't really stop 'em.

However, I will give OP credit for at least one thing: the "players would perfect their gear in a weak and leave" thing sure is an easily dispatched strawman.

You assume that a person always wants equip upgrades and that it doesn't matter how it is obtained.

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mazul wrote:

You assume that a person always wants equip upgrades and that it doesn't matter how it is obtained.

I think the first is a pretty safe assumption. In terms of the second, it's an assymptotic relationship regardless of whether you're extremely trade-centric or whether you're self-found. Essentially, the only difference between trading and self-found is that, with trading, you have a large group of people farming on your behalf, being paid on commission.

If they increased droprates, I would play more often. This game is just disappointing when you're not full magic find.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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mazul wrote:

You assume that a person always wants equip upgrades and that it doesn't matter how it is obtained.

I think the first is a pretty safe assumption. In terms of the second, it's an assymptotic relationship regardless of whether you're extremely trade-centric or whether you're self-found. Essentially, the only difference between trading and self-found is that, with trading, you have a large group of people farming on your behalf, being paid on commission.

It is not a safe assumption because otherwise you wouldn't see people with godly gear grind maps for exp. They know they won't get any gear upgrades, but still play to gain those levels.

And as I've pointed out previously in this thread: for a significant amount of people crafting/looting the gear to equip has an intrinsic value, which means that even if the utility of the looted/crafted item is exactly the same as of the traded item, they will feel better and prefer the looted/crafted one.

And to be more specific about what I think you are wrong about: "Increasing drop rates doesn't solve anything. It only delays the problem."

Increasing map drop rates through cartographer's box evidently solved the issue for many people who want to build their map pool on their own without trading. It very much helped solving that issue.

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mazul wrote:

It is not a safe assumption because otherwise you wouldn't see people with godly gear grind maps for exp. They know they won't get any gear upgrades, but still play to gain those levels.

Considering the best affixes are over ilvl 70, maps are the only place to realistically farm such upgrades. You are apparently living under the delusion that Merc Piety runs are designed to farm gear rather than currency.

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mazul wrote:

And to be more specific about what I think you are wrong about: "Increasing drop rates doesn't solve anything. It only delays the problem."

Increasing map drop rates through cartographer's box evidently solved the issue for many people who want to build their map pool on their own without trading. It very much helped solving that issue.

I guess I should have pointed out that the asymptotic relationship only applies to non-consumables. With gear, you essentially only use the one best piece you've ever found for that slot; with maps, you use almost everything you find. Thus increases to map drop rates have a very different effect than increases to drop rates in general. Orbs, by the way, fall somewhere between the two; they take on the nature of the item type they're used on, so messing with orb drop rates has both a map-like and gear-like effect (and the more the orb in question is used on maps, the more map-like the effect is).

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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mazul wrote:

It is not a safe assumption because otherwise you wouldn't see people with godly gear grind maps for exp. They know they won't get any gear upgrades, but still play to gain those levels.

Considering the best affixes are over ilvl 70, maps are the only place to realistically farm such upgrades. You are apparently living under the delusion that Merc Piety runs are designed to farm gear rather than currency.

Flipping items and using lotteries is far better than grinding lv75+ maps for achieving godly gear. Lv75+ maps are by people with godly gear primarily grinded for the exp, not for potential gear upgrades.


As for orb drop rates: I agree with that simply increasing them directly by changing the number at which they directly spawn is not the way to go. The extreme RNG when it comes to affix distribution along with that having too many drops can be a major annoyance (that's a reason for why IIQ was removed; the loot explosions caused annoyance) makes it of concern that directly increasing orb drop rates would replace the "cannot craft/loot gear of high enough utility on my own" with a "so annoying to pick up all orbs, I want to kill monsters".

Reducing useless affixes and affix brackets, but also simultaneously reducing the drop rates, would be a far better option. Furthermore, "Identifying items" is usually not fun, it just an annoying chore; something that D3 realized.

D3 keeps a bit of excitement though by making so that only set-items and legendaries need to be identified and that it takes several seconds to identify them.

I'm a semi-casual player: 2 chars to 75 in open beta, 2 more chars to 77 and 79 coming back in Vaal. I'm about to the point where I'm going to stop playing again (sure, I'll likely come back when big changes hit again). I really have to say I think increased drop rates would help the game.

Here's why: I love the customization of this game. I love making builds and testing out really whacky ideas. But, I hit a wall. I don't like playing the trading game, and I'm nowhere near hardcore enough with doing trading (using that trading website) to accrue enough wealth to get core items for my build.

I simply don't like that trading on some random website as being a core component of the game. If I could actually get close to fully gearing a character, then I would simply start another and do some other whacky build. It's kind of GGGs job to ensure there are an endless supply of FUN builds possible (and so far there is a good amount, and more options are still being added). However, I quickly realize the futility on any "gear dependent" build and simply don't bother.

But really, almost every build is pretty gear dependent. I approach level 80, don't have the gear to keep up (or am missing crucial items/stats in my build), and kind of hit a wall. It's not that I can't keep leveling, but it slows to the point of a slow grind. I'll end up having 3-4 pieces of gear with no HP, because I need resistances or some other stat, or I'll be missing a unique that straight up is required for my build to work. Add in a lot of desyncing as you get powerful and can attack/cast very quickly, and the really stupid deaths start to pile up.

Sure, there are cookie cutter builds and ways around it. But that's not how I want to play, and so, I quit the game. I'm sure there are plenty of people who feel the same, and I really don't think higher drop rates will "cheapen" the experience. I mean, why not just make map bosses have much higher drop rates instead of a global boost? Right now, most of the people I know straight up skip many of the lvl74+ map bosses (especially if mods are tough), because it's just not worth it unless you're a fresh level up.

Bottom Line: I think many players are just being lost because it's too time consuming to find good drops, and crafting is just a near total no-go. You can't get the currency, without hardcore trading, to effectively craft items at a rate that is acceptable to keep any non-hardcore (who will already be trading, anyhow) around playing the game.