Why Empower/Enhance/Enlighten 4 removed?

Whats the point of this? Also gems 21/23 removed from drops too? This mean that Legion/Simulacrum targetfarm is nerfed as hell. In damage balance I see some logic but why this?

i dont think those level 4s were removed...where do you see that? removing 21/23 gems from drops is sort of trying to introduce new "chase" in the form of lucky gambling corruptions.

Remember that 21/20s STILL DROP. Lets be honest, the difference between a 21/20 and a 21/23 is almost negligible in the grand scheme of things. Legion/Sim is hardly nerfed at all in that regard.

From the Patch Notes: "Level 4 versions can still be obtained from corruption and specific Divination Cards."

It's one fork of their two self-contradictory (IMO) game design philosophies. The one fork that I like, too. That fork is: "the very best source of [league]-specific rewards should be [league]-specific content." Essentially, they want you to get the best possible Corrupted outcomes by Corrupting things, not dropping from unrelated League mechanics. (Yes, I know the corrupting things isn't actually a League in itself. 21/23 was designed to be Incursion-specific, though, and Corruption is a unique mechanic that is League-like in this context).

The other fork, which I don't like, is "any drop from any source in the game should potentially give you massive rewards," aka the whole idea of dropping a Mirror of Kalandra from a random barrel you broke in Act 3 The Docks or something like that. The reason I don't like this fork as much is that they released boss-specific Unique drops to the general drop pool and it just feels so boring and small. Obscurantis, Slivertongue, Grelwood Shank... these were all basically vendor trash already, but now they're not even special vendor trash anymore, they're just the same kind of homogeneous trash as The Ignomon or Chernobog's Pillar. Sure, I can still appreciate them as pieces of lore or obscure builds or whatever, but now they're decidedly less special as non boss-specific Uniques.

Evidently, you prefer the second fork of design rather than the first fork, at least when it comes to gem drops.

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adghar wrote:

Chernobog's Pillar

My emo scene girl witch cosplay doesn't make itself. Need that shield for the skin transfer.

we were having too much fun and they weren't.

TADAAAAAAA

"

adghar wrote:

It's one fork of their two self-contradictory (IMO) game design philosophies. The one fork that I like, too. That fork is: "the very best source of [league]-specific rewards should be [league]-specific content." Essentially, they want you to get the best possible Corrupted outcomes by Corrupting things, not dropping from unrelated League mechanics. (Yes, I know the corrupting things isn't actually a League in itself. 21/23 was designed to be Incursion-specific, though, and Corruption is a unique mechanic that is League-like in this context).

The other fork, which I don't like, is "any drop from any source in the game should potentially give you massive rewards," aka the whole idea of dropping a Mirror of Kalandra from a random barrel you broke in Act 3 The Docks or something like that. The reason I don't like this fork as much is that they released boss-specific Unique drops to the general drop pool and it just feels so boring and small. Obscurantis, Slivertongue, Grelwood Shank... these were all basically vendor trash already, but now they're not even special vendor trash anymore, they're just the same kind of homogeneous trash as The Ignomon or Chernobog's Pillar. Sure, I can still appreciate them as pieces of lore or obscure builds or whatever, but now they're decidedly less special as non boss-specific Uniques.

Evidently, you prefer the second fork of design rather than the first fork, at least when it comes to gem drops.

this second ones kind of problematic right? i agree with you completely, there needs to be a reason to farm a boss, their special loot is kind of like the league mechanic rewards, they need to be exclusive to doing the thing in order to give the thing a reason to be done.

i do also get the other side tho and its something ive felt myself is that i play a map and have literally 0 hope anything will drop worth while. the people who get rich in leagues speed to specific boss drop content, run that boss dry over a week and then the market is saturated, the league economy is dead, come back in 3 months to do it again. even in a game as garbage as diablo 3 i play any content and theres a chance im gonna get a good primal ancient item or something, its there and it actually happens, its not 'well theres a mirror that will never happen, and then theres nothing'.

I play maps for xp, there are no items in the game essentially. i pick up 2 chaos in a map and find another map... ok... i can chaos over a map mod and play this next map... it sustains but what do i actually get outside of xp? nothing, ever basically, i find an exalt once every 100 maps, ok last time i tried to craft 2 suffixes on a pair of gloves using suffix stripping i spent 150 exalts and got nothing. so 1 exalt is nothing, 150 exalts is nothing. i pick up 20,000 items per map and yet somehow there are 0 items in the game that drop in maps. thats the honest feeling that i have when playing, we can dig into that and say well theres alts and you roll ur flasks and thats gear etc etc, sure, but the 'feeling' i get is undeniably i run maps for xp and items dont exist.


its really hard to try and find a balance there.







theres a thing where to have build variety you need balance. so you balance well, achieve build variety because a lot of stuff has similar power levels, achieve gear variety because you have build variety... but now theres 300 items that are all roughly equal, theyre 'balanced' power wise, and usage wise, so now theres no particular demand for any given one of them and you end up with 300 uniques worth 1 chaos each that feel like 'nothing' when they drop, despite being viable items that are used. theres also a conflict there between 2 goals, the more you achieve one the worse the other becomes, balance that provides build variety vs chase items that feel like something dropped actually conflict with each other.

i think where those trains of thought often lead is that in order to make it feel like stuff drops you need to reduce how much stuff drops, which is counter intuitive and hard to sell to a crowd, esp a wilfully negative, wilfully ignorant vocal minority. you need to make all 300 of those uniques a lot harder to find which will oddly make playing a map feel more rewarding because you now have less chance of finding things and that means they begin to have value via scarcity.

its hard to do that when you have stuff like div cards in the game :/... and when you have a certain crowd who will be outraged and claim ggg hates 'new players' and 'off meta players' and 'people with jobs' and on and on...

This is just false information. You can still get level 4 in all of these gems, no problem at all. What they removed was the way to get them from drops.

If you want them now, farm cards or corrupt them yourself.

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adghar wrote:

they want you to get the best possible Corrupted outcomes by Corrupting things, not dropping from unrelated League mechanics.

Not introducing such third-party drop sources in the first place is what sober people would do BTW.