What if Poe had been all about uniques instead of rares?

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lolozori wrote:

I think the idea behind this game (if i understood well) was that rares are the ultimate uniques, they are the ultimate goal to farm.

Imo In reality it is not.




At low level I understand that rares are made of a lot of troll mods and potentialy some good ones but when playing past level 70 it become painful.

In end-game rare drop are so bad and the rolls we get are so shity we just vendor them.

Uniques items are the only thing people are trying to farm because they are the only items with interesting mods for starting toon or end-game mapping.




Right now everyone want to drop uniques simply because rares are boring and even if they where to be nicely rolled (like for exemple life+res+dps) they are still so uninteresting to create builds.

Masters can create cool mods but it is still based on a crappy crafting system not really fun to play so much you need to farm for a one chance/1000 to get the base you want.

What if GGG had designed the game around unique instead of rares?

Well rares would still be shit most of the time and have boring rolls, something that is allready ingame.

Maybe however they would release much more uniques, they would focus the developpement to really make interesting uniques and think about exotic builds possibilities.

It is possible the game would still be on A3 and very little new content in term of level design but instead we would every week get new unique to use for creating interesting and crazy builds.




The fact rares drop boring mods and most of the time are useless in end-game make me think maybe they should have targeted their game around unique instead. After all if the drops are fun and interesting then people would enjoy actualy playing the game instead of flipping in hope to get a Shav or a Kaom.




Do you guys think Poe would be better(or worse) if uniques would have been the main focus point of POE instead of players crafting rares?

Ps: got windows 10 and I dont know why but my english grammar tool don t work. Hope this text don t give you headhaches.

Good luck building a end-game viable build with all uniques.

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linkstatic wrote:

Good luck building a end-game viable build with all uniques.

If the focus of poe would be unique items of course the game would be created for building around all uniques.


My thread was more about what if POE was based on farming uniques instead of rares, or what if rares could drop and have unique mods on them.


Right now I hear people say end-game items are rares but rares are just boosting dps or defenses.

Once I have average rares do i really need to farm years and years just for some dps boost? would it be more fun to farm items that could make you create new builds instead?

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Flapdrol wrote:

In some cases, the rares are BiS by a long shot: try to find something better for a life-based crit Windripper as:

no IIR/IIQ, vendor trash.

best example D2:
You build basicly around uniques and runewords.
(Yeah some builds had uniques but in the end Uber Builds etc required Unique builds)

Pro:
You knew what you need to succeed!
You knew where to farm specific items!

Con:
Less build diversity!
Only a few viable Endgame builds!
Non unique items were basicly useless unless it was for creating runewords!

I like the idea of good rare beating uniques, but I also feel the best items in the game should be droppable. And the best rares in the game are not dropable (within reason). I also don't like that to enforce GGG's rare better than unique ideology they gimp uniques to the point of them being vendor food.

Uniques are easier to farm for (in a mind-game kind of way) because the stats are static.

Compare that feeling of "I know what this is" to "Oh god, please let ONE of these stupid things be halfway decent".

Uniques just feel more tangible in terms of finding them and utilization.

Unique items have really never been the problem in the endgame other than the starvation on them for which patch 2.0.3 is a step in the right direction for us to find them more often. The endgame has always had crap rare loot drops that mostly go toward chaos recipe. There have been many posts on the topic of item progression and that is what you are referring to. sure it's always great to get good/great unique to drop and be able to create a fun to play build around it. But as GGG wants us to play PoE long term then the day-in/day-out grinding maps for xp and the goal of the next level (and ultimately level 100) is all about the problem of rare gear reaching a level cap and after that no mattter how high our build goes the rare gear doesn't keep up. We reach a point where item progression flattens out and just doesn't keep pace with our exile's level. To some degree that is to be expected, the closer to the top we get the fewer higher quality uniques there are to be found. But with rare gear the stats could continue to go up to keep pace with our build level such that we could get better rare drops all the way to 100. GGG has decided that is not to be the case in PoE and item progression drops off after level 70 and rares flatline after about level 80 more or less. So we keep on farming maps looking for that great unique drop instead of finding any better rares to use.

GGG deliberately wants us to struggle to find better gear in the endgame maps. That is both good and bad at the same time. Receiving too much better loot than we currently have is just as bad as quality loot starvation and GGG is forever walking the tightrope and tweaking PoE based on stats and player feedback. If a balance for the majority of players isn't achieved than many quit either from frustration of never getting anything rewarding (loot starvation) or loot overload (raining T1 gear). We have always suffered from loot starvation and thus GGG has finally decided to increase the rewards for time played ratio with patch 2.0.3 (hurray!... most are applauding GGG for this).

GGG could modify rare stats so that high level rare drops keep pace with our build and empower us to play on toward a level 100 goal. Then we wouldn't be in dire need of a rare unique to empower a specific build and that could/should open up build diversity even more than GGG has seen in The Awakening's first 2 months. Item progression all the way to 100 is just as important as map progression all the way to level 100. If GGG were to modify rare stats so that we actually could get better rares all the way from 68 to 100 then the map difficulty should also go up to level 100 maps and be difficulty balanced around the new better rares we will be finding.

If GGG were to keep the item progression train going all the way to level 100, and then keep the map levels going all the way to level 100 to keep the hardcore challenge intact, then we all would feel more empowered, would be incentivized to play more, and thus would be happier and play more and buy more. But that is in direct conflict with their desire for us to trade for better endgame items so I seriously doubt GGG would ever make a move in that direction. So the rare stats stop going up and we are all faced with the need to find/craft/trade for a high level unique to make a specific build work well (or at all).

lolzori, did I inspire the OP somehow? Just curious.

In any case, I believe I'm even more extreme than Charan on this point. I don't feel uniques should exist at all, provided every mod which exists on a unique now enters the rare affix pool. Some of these would need harsh qualifiers (ex: only spawns on Simple Robes, minimum itemlevel 25), but items where every mod is predetermined is anti-gear-progression, anti-RNG, and thus anti-ARPG.

Of course, this in turn would mean the devs being willing to make some crazy, interesting, and powerful affixes. This goes against the ARPG design status quo of boring affixes, a timid yet prudent stance which prevents some truly OP mistakes from occurring before they can be properly bounded in. Nevertheless, I feel it's the appropriate design for a "continuous gear progression" ARPG (as opposed to a "CCG itemization" ARPG like D3).

I just do not believe the hybridization of unique and rare itemizations fits either style well. Uniques and rares in the same game is like enchiladas and cheesecake, I think both can be good but I see no benefit in mixing them together.

So no, OP, as far as PoE goes I believe in going full affix, not full preset.

PS I was gifted a unique item design some time ago. I used it to create the Animate Guardian Haku mod, perhaps not powerful but at least interesting... and not yet another unique item.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

PS I was gifted a unique item design some time ago. I used it to create the Animate Guardian Haku mod, perhaps not powerful but at least interesting... and not yet another unique item.

Wow, thank you very much!

Imagine a PoE 3.0 without Uniques but every unique affix can be found as a Milestone on the tree. Even if that would mean some harsh limitations (max 5 unique milestones), I think I would love it!

I've often felt like it was kind of weird that 'uniques' really are not that unique given I've had 5-6 of the same 'unique' from time to time in my stash. It's so incorrectly named.

I've toyed with the idea that the system should be changed so that what we call 'unique' currently would be named something clever to indicate 'build maker'.

Then a new truly unique tier created with the label of 'unique' These however truly would be unique as they would be a combination of rares and 1 or more property from current uniques.

Ie. It might be a Rare ES glove that drops with 'Knockback direction is reversed' or a dex based chest piece with 'chaos does not bypass energy shield'.

Obviously these should be limited, thus making them truly unique and the drop rate should be somewhere between end game and beginner current day uniques, leaning towards end game.

These items should be powerful as they will be truly unique as no other will be identical to it, or at least very very few.

Combinations of unqiue powers could be quite interesting and certainly would have to be tested. Point is, if I get a unique drop, I want to feel excited. Instead of 'oh another blackheart. That makes seven!'