Why unique items are so useless?..

"

Flying_Mage wrote:

"

Pizzarugi wrote:

Uniques aren't like legendary items in Diablo 2. They're unique in that they have unique mods you can't find anywhere else.

However, just because they're unique, doesn't mean they have to be strong.

Idk. It seems totally unintuitive to me.
I see item gradation as normal -> magic -> rare -> unique and expect those uniques to be a top tier items (and some uniques definitely are). But the fact that most uniques here is complete trash and there are tons of them, which kinda ruins whole "unique" thing, is what bothering me.

theres too many bad items, for sure, too many bad uniques. got to watch my mouth i guess cause ive had a post deleted and was sent some shitty message by a mod on this forum because i said a specific unique was "landfill vendor garbage", thats literally what i said and they deleted my post and sent me a shitty pm about my attitude or something.

so i guess ill be careful. this game is full of landfill vendor tier shit uniques that shouldnt exist and they drop every 10 seconds. there we go, i didnt call them garbage so hopefully that is an acceptable statement.

that said they are garbage tho.



but i think the larger thing here is your perception being off. youve got a kind of diablo 3 look on the item progression and thats not what this games item system is all about, and to find out why u just need to look at diablo 3s item system.

in a game like that where legendary items are the top tier gear rare items become obsolete, they go in the scrap heap like magic items. So you end up with more items being vendor garbage, that landfill site really starts to expand as that whole tier of gear is now instavendor.

So what u have is everyone wearing the brown gear, and browns a good colour for it. theyre fairly fixed stat things, most of the randomness is taken out of them. so rather than have a million different combinations of mods on each piece of gear now everyones wearing gear thats essentially the same ting with slightly different rolls on the numbers. youve got this really limited pool of premade affix combo gear and this is your top tier gear, they all drop roughly the same so once u got it you got it, and its the same thing the next guy has. you reduce the item system to a terrible state, and once that top tier gear saturates then what? theres no room for that rare item thing where theres always a better rare, its a fixed drop so once you hit 99+ for sale on poe.trade and the price starts falling the entire gear chase of the game is over. you either have that unique or you dont, a rare item you have it, and then you get a better one, and then an even better one...

rare gear is actually interesting gear, its unthinkably hard to find or craft a piece of rare gear that cannot be better, that even has the best 6 mods for your character, never mind the best rolls on those mods. that kind of wonky nature forces variety because of the jigsaw of resists, core stats etc that you have to fulfill on your gear, this guy got 3 resists on this bit but the other guy got 2 and a core stat and someone else got 1, a core stat and some other thing and hence other things have to be happening on other slots for each one to work around that.

unique items are in a good spot when the average build has 1-3 of them on.




too many of them are such a struggle to justify even existing in the game given its current state, and they need to go. but way too many useless white, blue and yellows drop too, the issue of across the board landfill item drops is something i think the devs are aware of, theyll get around to fixing it. will we see the unique pool slimmed down? hopefully, or just all improved and then made rarer? i dunno. but fixing that is not switching to a d3 white > blue > yellow > brown system, thats never gonna be a thing. you got to look at rare items and unique items as being equal in terms of a direct item tier power hierarchy if that makes sense.

"

Flying_Mage wrote:

I see item gradation as normal -> magic -> rare -> unique and expect those uniques to be a top tier items

Your expectations are off.

"

snorkle_uk wrote:

too many of them are such a struggle to justify even existing in the game given its current state, and they need to go. but way too many useless white, blue and yellows drop too, the issue of across the board landfill item drops is something i think the devs are aware of, theyll get around to fixing it. will we see the unique pool slimmed down? hopefully, or just all improved and then made rarer? i dunno. but fixing that is not switching to a d3 white > blue > yellow > brown system, thats never gonna be a thing. you got to look at rare items and unique items as being equal in terms of a direct item tier power hierarchy if that makes sense.

Agree, unfortunately, the fact that we have loot filter is the "best" excuse they could ever have to not address this problem ...

And on one hand, some drops might benefit somebody else ( = I'm thinking about chancing white bases here ), althought I don't think it would be a big problem if that would need to go.
Having some specific ilvl 83+ bases drop can be useful though, when you cannot afford influenced gear or just plan to buy an awakening exalted orb for that ilvl 86 white hubris circlet you found.

This isn't an easy problem to solve for sure, and they have the excuse of the loot filter on top of it so .... I would not hold my breath :(.

the start should be with scrolls. i know people buy them or dont use them (because no picking up loot - no need for scrolls)

i do not know what option is 'best' out of many currently available on the market but im sure POE's one is the worst. i understand the theory behind items having click value but scrolls.. just let it go. make ID and Town buttons quest rewards or something and remove them from the game.

then - SIGNIFICANTLY cull low base-level items. since i've made a mistake with my loot filter (trying to find 'oils' i happen to see FAR TOO MANY 'oiled vests' in T13+ content and lvl83 delves. i understand that 'dream, one of scenario' when some Joe Extraoridinary chances ilvl86 oiled vest into glory.. but cmon. the price for that dream is on EVERYONE.

the mountain of crap that drops just because someone once in a year is going to do something really dumb.. that is dull excuse at this point.

im not asking for better drops. but just cull the garbage by design before they spawn (no, filtering them out is not the same).


and uniques? most of them have their uses. some are good, some are terrible (like that fire wand - wand without +gems? in 2020?), some are underapreciated and some have too wide roll margins to be reliable (Doomsower - great sword but try to get good roll (that is still ~500pdps in the end)). not to mention that certain archetypes are garbage by design (2h..) so most of 2h uniques are insta-vendor no matter what


ggg pushes people into crafting (becuase you CANNOT reliably buy end-game gear - the variety is too big and supply is low) to prolong the game (aka Time Tax). strong uniques are in fact bad for the business because instead of wasting several hours crafting, buying stuff (interacting with others) you can just buy 'good enough' unique for 10c. that means bad conversion ratio..

we wont be seeing strong uniques EXCEPT for some unhealthy grind ones - grind gated uniques serve the same purpose. time tax.

"

Fruz wrote:

Agree, unfortunately, the fact that we have loot filter is the "best" excuse they could ever have to not address this problem ...

oh theyll do it for sure, eventually. i made a post about it a while back and they even mentioned a few months later at exilecon that its an issue for them, they talked about the game load of having so many items and calculations involving items happening all the time is just not good for the game at all regardless of the fact you can filter them from sight, and you cant expect every player to even be clued up on filters, many new players will just be playing with default show all loot and having a terrible experience. its way better for the game to just fix it. no other arpg has anywhere near this amount of items everywhere, its madness.


i think it was jonathan in a baeclast interview, might be wrong there, but it was someone from ggg in some kind of video interview, they talked about a change they had made to item drops a fair while ago where an items mods are rolled when you pick up the item, not when it drops. the reason being when u killed a boss it would cause a lag stutter in the game from the game having to calculate the stats on the items it dropped.

so theyve solved that one little bit of the processing stress of items being spawned, but if u think about how many items a boss drops, its not THAT many, that alone was causing enough stress just rolling the affixes to be noticeable. every bit of gear is still an individual thing, they all got sockets with links and colours making every one of them different thats calculated when they drop, even if u got 30 white imbued wands theyre 30 completely individual items with individual socket/ilvl/implicit range properties and individual models in specific spots in specific lighting, chris was saying something about the server having to check them all every time something happened for some reason... theres just no need for it all to be happening with literally 1000s of unnecessary items in each map.


making bases rarer, i feel like thats a good thing, it adds value to items that are otherwise worthless. in diablo 2 finding the right base with the right amount of sockets was sometimes a really big deal. its a nerf to player power in a sense but a buff to item value and i honestly think both of those things are positives. and like sid says, most of these items that they can cull have no value as a base item in any sensible situation anyway.


i think 4.0 they will sort it. thats fine for me, i dont really want to play this game before 4.0 tbh. it feels like its in a pretty frustratingly bad spot atm and if stuff is gonna be fixed in a meaningful way thats probably when its coming right? im not expecting anything before then and i think they know whats wrong, weve made those posts, if fixes are coming theyre coming down the line.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

...
but way too many useless white, blue and yellows drop too, the issue of across the board landfill item drops is something i think the devs are aware of, theyll get around to fixing it. will we see the unique pool slimmed down? hopefully, or just all improved and then made rarer? i dunno. but fixing that is not switching to a d3 white > blue > yellow > brown system, thats never gonna be a thing. you got to look at rare items and unique items as being equal in terms of a direct item tier power hierarchy if that makes sense.

This is my issue with PoE loot system. How can a system that generates thousands upon thousands of items that are never seen, never check let alone picked up be still in a most successful ARPG of the last decade? Loot filter was perfect example of GGG solution--cheap, lazy, band-aid.

Still to this day, you can get disconnected from a map with too much loot if you press "show all" button. It happened to me yesterday twice in Blighted maps around pump when I just wanted to pick some portal scrolls.

Nothing will change in current iteration of the game but I hope that some changes will be done to loot system in 2.0. If loot system is not reworked, I will be looking for alternative ARPG to play--which might not exists and I will have to stick with PoE.

How is this game still not able to stack scrolls or other currencies that drop in certain area is beyond me? There is so much stuff that need to be improved in loot system that if GGG does not come up with at least some streamlining and improvements to loot system in 2.0 I will not support them financial even if I still play the game.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

oh theyll do it for sure, eventually. i made a post about it a while back and they even mentioned a few months later at exilecon that its an issue for them

I would like to believe this but they also said that they were very concerned with the power creep problem and that they wanted to do something about it ..... And then we got Metamorph league !

I can't honestly believe anything that Chris / Jonathan etc .... are saying now, they are just not being honest, they say something and what happens with the game is just different.

"

sidtherat wrote:

ggg pushes people into crafting (becuase you CANNOT reliably buy end-game gear - the variety is too big and supply is low) to prolong the game (aka Time Tax). strong uniques are in fact bad for the business because instead of wasting several hours crafting, buying stuff (interacting with others) you can just buy 'good enough' unique for 10c. that means bad conversion ratio..

we wont be seeing strong uniques EXCEPT for some unhealthy grind ones - grind gated uniques serve the same purpose. time tax.

This is 100% true. And it’s pushing me away from the game because I simply do not enjoy crafting. Changing probabilities on randomized outcomes, gating certain outcomes... ugh, it’s not fun at all for me! But now all those special, rulebreaking influenced mods are mandatory; you get wrecked without them. Plus it’s hard to make real currency without crafting, so you gotta craft to be able to afford to buy good crafted gear.

"

Fruz wrote:

I would like to believe this but they also said that they were very concerned with the power creep problem and that they wanted to do something about it ..... And then we got Metamorph league !

I can't honestly believe anything that Chris / Jonathan etc .... are saying now, they are just not being honest, they say something and what happens with the game is just different.

who doesn't know the situation of eventually starting a diet and then deciding for the steak instead of the pure salad on the next occasion ;)

for bigger changes i would hope for poe2 as players are likely more open to changes with major releases.

"

vio wrote:

who doesn't know the situation of eventually starting a diet and then deciding for the steak instead of the pure salad on the next occasion ;)

A diet is something that one chooses for oneself ... not a public "anouncement" in front of thousands of people ( including Twitch ) and saved on youtube.


So that's quite a difference I think.

"

Vio wrote:

for bigger changes i would hope for poe2 as players are likely more open to changes with major releases.

True, that plus the fact that GGG can't seemingly be arsed to release quality content because they are focused on poe2.

"

Reinhart wrote:

Good example is the tabula-goldrim-wanderlust combination. Like literally everyone uses it but do they know even why? They don't.

Because Tabluta carries you all the way to level 90 easily, even in HC.
This item is fucking stupid to be honest, it trivializes most content until red maps and makes everything boring because other non 6L choices just simply suck in most cases until the (map/delve) content gets scarry.