Why Unique Weapons are too Strong in PoE
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frankenberry is right, the situation with unique weapons is fubar.
Ok, frank I completely agree with your observation of the problem, I would slightly disagree with the conclusions drawn from it in terms of what should be done about all this. Just gonna waffle out some random points I believe to be true, hopefully in an order that makes sense, tldr etc dgaf. unique weapons have to be as strong as they are because you cant rebalance the entire game. When you compare what weapon based builds can do compared to spell based builds, theyre not overpowered with the current dps capability of the weapons in the leagues. If anything theyre a little on the shafted side when u look at budget, whats actually achievable by significant %s of the player base etc. If they were not as strong as they are they wouldnt be used. I think the problem is not the power, its not the availibility of endgame attack weapons, its the balance between how many of those weapons are rare and how many are unique. Thats where its all gone wrong, and its messing with the unique properties of these weapons. Take claws for example, theres so many claws now in that 230-280 pdps range, tons of uniques, and u sort of just want a physical claw man, ur not even going for the unique property, its just that theyre 1 chaos and youve played the game for 3,000 hours without finding a single rare claw as good as these 1 chaos claws, despite looting every god damn one that dropped. How messed up is that? GGG if ur listening:
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how messed have you got ur balance in this area? This is the sort of thing where people question how much youre playing ur game, yeah sure you jump in and get to 90 then rip on hc once a league, ok, but I dont think youre really seeing the in depth picture that the 10k hours players are seeing. Do you guys understand that people play 10k hours, loot every rare claw and dagger and maybe find 2 or 3 items that can compete with 1 chaos uniques? Not beat, just compete in terms of raw pdps while still being worse because they dont also have instant leech or chaos poison madness unique mods on top.
I dont think they should bring back hybrid, thats just an awful bandaid mod. Master crafting is in a good place I think regarding the absolute mods u can slap on, the stuff people were making with hybrid was absurd for the price they were paying and it still leaves looting items and crafting using big orbs in the dumpster. Make looting and proper crafting worth while, dont just slap a bench mod on and have ppl running around making 450pdps 1h weapons for 4ex. Where they should make masters more powerful imo is switching up the massive cost for the prefix/suffix cant be changed jobs. These require serious orb crafting or item finding, theyre supplements for proper item acquisition, they buff proper orbing, not just relegate the idea of actually exalting items and say hey, slam on some blue orbs, regal and ur done, rng is over now u get a guaranteed bench to go the distance for a fixed price. Heres what i think needs to happen, Im gonna use 1h physical weapons as my example and break it down, but the theory carries with adjusted dps to 2h and bows... 400-600+ pdps 1h weapons: This range should not change at all, these are insane weapons and we need to maintain that "theres something thats possible but its impossible" potential. Thats much needed spice, and these things are too powerful for mass consumption. 300-400 pdps 1h weapons: Ok these should be slightly easier to find, slightly, but not by much, just a little touch on the mod chances. 220-300 pdps 1h weapons: ok this is where the game is fucked and needs a massive turn around. All the uniques falling in these categories need their drop rates hammered, like 1/6, maybe 1/10 of the current drop rates, absolutely obliterate the drops. Dont nerf the items, make them a LOT more rare. These uniques should be a premium over rare items of the same power that demand that premium due to their unique properties, not just landfill amounts of them pouring into the game and being used because standard pdps rares dont exist. Then what needs to happen is that the chances for rare items to get in this category needs massively buffed, massively. That 220-300 area availability should remain somewhat consistent while literally taking 90% of uniques in that range off the market. Heres the thing, we find so little currency, its pathetic, what it takes to craft something vs the currency droprate is ridiculous. Finding just standard pdps rare weapons to make an attack build function is also ridiculous. But what are ggg doing? Oh players are overpowered, lets water down the stat pool with even more guff on weapons to get in the way of required mods, meanwhile lets just empty shipping containers of powerful endgame unique weapons from the sky and absolutely flood the game... guys, come on, what are you doing over there? Youre restricting currency drops to curb power creep, destroying rare mod pools to make powerful gear harder to get, and yet you just bypass all of it with these guaranteed power uniques that are so bloated theyre hard to shift for a single chaos by 2 weeks into the league. Whats up? Smash these unique drops into the dirt and give us more currency, give us better chance of hitting usable rare items so that looting rares and crafting work, ur getting way too diablo 3 here with simple benching and fixed uniques out the ears. Its not just weapons, unique body armours need smashed. dont nerf them, if you nerf them they are not even usable, just make them wayyyyy more rare. Serious endgame unique chests are just landfill, the demand is so outstripped by the drop rates that rares are just forgotten. Bring back the chase, bring back having to work hard for the thing but hey, a rare will do. QotF, Coil, Belly, Cheribums, Lioneyes, all the strong unique chests should be an exciting drop at any point, never just a 1-5 chaos shitter, they should be rare enough that the supply cant keep up with the demand and the price becomes premium with most people going for the strong rare instead. Same with unique hats. Wtf is up with nightmare bascinets, starkonjas, rats nests etc? Theyre bonkers and yet theyre essentially throwaway bullshit because the supply is through the roof. They have to be this good to be usable, but youre destroying the life of leagues and the demand for decent rares with this insane supply. Remember when rats nest and abyssus were 4ex each? Come on ggg, enough with the bargain bin game, bring some integrity back to this thing. Div cards are part of this, div cards for serious endgame unique items need absolutely smashed too. I love all you people on the forums, we can disagree but still be friends and respect each other :)
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Spoiler
" Heh, pretty much I agree with you, but why not make those uniques more rare in the "easy" content and still keep the same drop rates, or close to the current ones, in the "tougher content? That would entice players to prepare their builds for farming "end game" or at least red tier content in hope of hitting a "worthy" unique/rare... GGG should better scale the danger/reward ratio, as right now you're better served by RNG crafting or trading for the wanted item, instead of grinding for it, and that should change... Bringing back the hybrid roll should be a thing only if it would have a substantial cost attached, so a cool 5 EX or equivalent, at the current drop rate, does feel fair if you want to "finish" a >400-450 pDPS rare... So yeah, 220-350 pDPS rares are overshadowed by their unique counterparts, even worse for certain armours, helmets etc., but reaching a better drop rate (by the way, I always dropped sufficient uniques even before the buff, right now, they simply don't mean anything 99% of the time) in regard to item power and danger/reward ratio should be a priority for GGG, just like with divination cards and the over nerfed Cartographer's, Essences, Breaches etc... PSS: Our almighty TencentGGG overlords are very scrupulous regarding criticizing their abilities to take proper decisions and consider everything "needlessly harsh and condescending"...
Good to know "free speech" doesn't apply in any form or manner on the forums these days... |
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balancing with rarity is a sh.. concept. it essentially removes said items from the game (totem blood magic shield is a nice example) from normal players and changes nothing for others. if said item is build defining - cool thing to watch a guide about a build one will never be able to afford.. please just dont.
real solution is to nerf bonkers items (like said shield) adding a DRAWBACK, not by cutting their current stats. weapons and non-weapons are two separate topics. weapons are plain too strong. non-weapon uniques - lack drawback. something that defined uniques in closed-beta times. using uniques right now requires NOTHING. they have their signature mod, they have life and resists and stats that do not matter (like AR/EV irrelevant due to VP meta). what else should anyone need? take Belly of the Beast: life, resists, mid-tier AR/EV rolls. where is the catch? what would make anyone hesitate? simple '-2 max resistance' or 'your chaos resist is always -100%' would make people think. right now - it is a no brainer. you need INSANE rare chest to compete. you cannot solve this with 'rarity'. people RMT enough already. same with weapons. 300pdps 1h (with crit, non crit is a garbage choice STILL, dear GGG) is enough to clear entire game. finding 300 pdps rare onehander.. damn, good luck. unique? there is one for every weapon class except 1h swords. AND uniques have their singular stat.. as a bonus. always thought that this 'bonus' is their raison d'etre. something that justifies their 'mid-tier' rolls and in good build - when said bonus is leveraged - makes it worth using. sadly, the power creep made designers 'slightly blind' and the bonus is no longer justyfing anything because most uniques nowadays are just as strong as good rares again, drawback is what we are missing. part of the problem is 'fake dual wielding' that allows usage of low-dps strong-bonus weapons anyway. nerfing drop rates wont cut it, wont solve a damn thing rare crafting? gambling rather. annulments will help if they are kept in the game but it is still a gamble with negative expected value |
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" balancing with rarity is the entire game mate, every single thing in the game has a rarity, and theyre all different, and thats what makes the game. You want everyones entitled to everything go play geometry wars or quake 3 or pretty much anything thats not a loot based game. In loot based games theres different loot and its balanced by rarity with powerful stuff in the game thats rare compared to other less powerful stuff thats common. If you dont like that concept youre in the wrong genre of game. I love all you people on the forums, we can disagree but still be friends and respect each other :)
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" Thank fucking god he doesn't balence like it makes Rory's balencing / 1k balence team ACTUALLY SEMI-DECENT. Dys an sohm
Rohs an kyn Sahl djahs afah Mah morn narr |
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making something stupidly powerful and saying 'it is ok' because it is rare and will break the game only in few places is worst design imaginable (look what HH did to the loot acquisition for non-HH users, look what Bisco's did, look what old Kaom's did. i still cannot forgive GGG that they did not have the balls to nerf Kaoms but they changed entire passive tree to accomodate that BS item.) lazy, short-sighted and leading to inevitable power creep/crap. POE has too much of the later already. with how popular the 'other means of aquiring items' are fueling it even more with 'must have, but obscenely rare' items is pretty desperate 'strategy' making said powerful items have drawbacks makes them powerful (but accessible to normal players) and the snowflakes who play for 10k hours and want to have a self-justification for that time expenditure can keep their 'advantage' because they can afford better ways of mitigating said drawbacks with better overal quality of gear there are more and better ways to skin the cat than stock 'make it rare' |
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" Idunno what's the chip on your shoulder but you are aware the entire idea of a loot-hunt game is to find loot. Not have it magically balanced for the sake of "balance". You don't need "Drawbacks" for an item being powerful is for balancing PVP games or highly competitive games. Even then drawbacks are rare in those games because drawbacks in those games involve cost or opportunity cost :V also before everyone starts jacking off with "lol let's nerf everything" train, people just play builds that require 0 items anyway for league starters. Skyforth boots existing has 0 balance in the game since you would beat shaper by the time you afford them. Yet again I still don't understand the fetish for everyone using rare weapons. Almost all rare weapons are carbon copies of one another with higher values. There is 0 gain is a balance, diversity, or interesting choices if people used then more outside of the special rare weapon crafts that are basically customizable unique anyway. Last edited by RagnarokChu#4426 on Oct 5, 2017, 2:56:33 AM
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unique items with a requirement level greater 50 should sell for 2 to 3 chaos at the npc trader.
age and treachery will triumph over youth and skill!
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" I dont agree, the entire genre is built around balance by rarity, its what makes it fun. Give downsides and then let wealthier people mitigate it better with better gear... that they have access to and the others dont because its more rare and hence more expensive... well done escaping that balance by rarity idea mate. All this build enabling stuff is bullshit. I_NO has 10 mirrors, I dont, you see me crying? Oh but I want to play blastingcaps wander build that instagibs shaper and I need 10 mirrors to dupe the gear needed and I dont have them but I_No does. Oh ppor me, oh the pity, the violins, how hard done by I am that I came to play this game and I dont have everything, what an insult to my civil rights that I am denied this build Im entitled to... gimmie a break man. Pity the man with everything in this game, with nothing amazing left to find, because hes the one with nothing left to play for. You can take any skill in this game, go make a build using self found rares and make it work. Might not work as well as it does with certain uniques, but you can make a build with the skill and do stuff. No one needs a rats nest, a kaoms, a belly, a starkonjas, a binos, you dont need any of them. Build enabling my arse, theyre power enabling and power is balanced by rarity, its what makes the game fun. You hear about that slot machine where you put in a pound, pull the leaver and no matter what happens on the spinners it always just gives you your pound back? No? Because it doesnt exist, people play them and most of the time they eat their money, sometimes they erupt like a waterfall of money. Thats the fun in the thing, youre looking for stuff, and in order to find something exciting it has to be something that you dont always find, it has to be rare or theres no meaning. The entire drive of the game, all meaning within it is an emergent property of rarity and an imbalance of power. Normal players were better off when there were 4ex - 40ex+ uniques in the regular drop pool, because at least they had a chance to find something gamechanging. All this unique proliferation and look at the game, the dregs are still dregs and the elites are still elite, everyone can have anything except a headhunter, so is everyone happy and super l33t flyboy fabulous? No, and if everyone gets a headhunter they still wont be because without rarity theres no value, its all just pixels, they dont mean anything if theyre everywhere and everyone has them coming out their ears. Everyone gwts to have a shavs now, no one gives a shit. They were better off when a shavs was something, they didnt have one but they might find one, cause that was a ticket to somewhere. Whats the ticket now? Early league restricted content push, that isnt random, the elites will get there and the scrubs will stay scrubs, or no life map grinding, and the no lifers will milk that and the plebs will stay plebs, with no opportunities, no mechanisms left for economic mobility, for getting lucky, outside of finding a mirror because every other drop is common as muck and no one gives a shit about whatever muck you found today, its the same muck the elites found except they found 10x as much of it. You propose a system thats closer to everyone getting a similar hourly wage under the misconception that it will bring equality between people who work 2 hours a week and people who work 100 hours a week. The inequality will stay, become even more rigid, and what is lost is the fun of the game, the excitement of the loot hunt. Obviously you dont agree, thats fine, everyones entitled to their opinion. I love all you people on the forums, we can disagree but still be friends and respect each other :)
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i think youve missed the point by exactly 800 miles
my point is not about wealth or forced equality - that does not work IRL and it wont work here. i manage quite well IRL because i do some things better, more efficient than others that dont (and i was lucky, it is always is about luck as well). the point is - rare items wont have a place in this game as long as there are uniques that are just as good as rares AND have a 'free' bonus on top of that rare chest like this: is pretty much vendor food as long as this exists: IF this chest had a drawback - to make people actually think 'this chest is great, but ill have to do A and B that i wouldnt have to if i used generic EV chest' there would be no issues. but most unique chests are generic rare items + a bonus result? pretty much noone picks rare items. and we are D3 now - uniques everywhere + rares to fill resists. itemization depth is what makes loot games fun. not the artificial rarity (that is there ONLY to make people play longer - because the game is very shallow otherwise). uniques like QoTF, Belly, Lightning Coil (that one at least has a drawback, pretty mild for the best chest in the game..) make entire item class pointless if you think that making them drop 1/10 of the time will 'fix' the problem - then i think you simply decide to overlook the problem and focus on a sidenote to it with weapons it is even more pronounced. rare bows? cool. i have 3*T1 ele harbinger with crit. nice weapon when you look at it. but it cannot beat windripper in utility and lioneyes + ele conversion is a better ele bow.. lesson learnt? do not pick rare bows, there is almost no reason. same with 1h axes, 1h maces, 2h swords, axes etc. the list is long. it really cannot be solved with rarity - GGG tried that making Goldrinm Tier 0 drop, along with.. Mightfly. they reverted that change QUICKLY. there is an underlying gamedesign problem with what uniques are supposed to be. they told us 'no BiS uniques because these are bad for the game'. and then we got Starforge and several other 99 percentile weapons. Last edited by sidtherat#1310 on Oct 6, 2017, 2:27:40 AM
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