The disconnect between ideas: "dev loot" vs "player loot"

Players have 1 definition of loot, and (it appears, to ME) that devs have another. and ill elaborate here:

Dev definition of 'loot'. Turn off your loot filter. Look at all that *stuff* that drops. theres plenty of rares, flasks, jewels, small currencies dropping. why do they keep saying theres no loot? theres even loot explosions from rare mobs (archnems) now!


Player definition of 'loot'. Turn ON your loot filter. This place is fking empty. Theres nothing **OF VALUE** to pick up. piles of flasks, fractured junk, and random rares isnt loot, its CLUTTER. its JUNK.


So, the devs see loot as being fine, because we are getting about the same amount of stuff to drop in 'alch n go' situations, and they did what they consider 'interesting' things with archnem making piles of explosions. But between the exalt<->divine changes, the 'explosions' being, well, JUNK, and the nerf to "juicing", players get less VALUE per map than before, and in some cases a whole bunch less.


Why players are correct in saying VALUE has dropped off:
Archem conversions (flasks, quality currency, jewels, jewelry, fractured items)
Flasks - These can drop from anywhere. Getting a pile of flasks, even high level ones, matters ONCE. Maybe twice if i want to keep one and roll for a double tier1 version. and then *ALL* subsequent flasks of that type are worthless.
Jewels, Jewelry, Fractured items - These have the same issue that all rares have had since the beginning of time : the mod pool is so large, and populated with so many tiers of each mod, and so many different base types, that a naturally rolled item is going to be worthless a large majority of the time. And for the last couple of years now, players have been asking for LESS loot BUT rolled better. picking up an ilvl 85 fractured jeweled foil, and seeing it has '3 life on kill' fractured is NEVER going to be a viable item. So, ill repeat : LESS LOOT BUT BETTER
Quality currency - I really dont have to elaborate on why getting 100 whetstones + scraps isnt valuable, do i? DO I???????

So that leaves the ONLY value in the currency converting Archnems. AND now they actually use player iiq/iir. Queue the rise of TFT culler services. What a mess. One giant 50 divine explosion is great for a twitch clip, where i can experience it in 30 seconds. But we already have drops like this : mirrors, tier0 uniques, crazy temple corrupts, players crafting mirror tier items. The majority of people PLAYING would much rather get a single divine every hour or two, as opposed to getting 50 divines at once spaced 40 hours apart. In the end, its ~the same reward. but one of them doesnt leave an awful feeling of 'all this time and nothing to show for it'.

And this is ON TOP OF the change to divines<->exalts. all those exalt div cards are worth 10% what they used to be. Exalt shards are less than 1c each, which affects NOT ONLY Harbingers, but also EXALT SHARD RECIPE. you thought chaos recipe was too much trouble. How about a FULL SET of INFLUENCED ITEMS, for 2 exalt shards? another source of INCREMENTAL income destroyed.


So, dev 'loot' vs player 'loot' is where 3.19 failed. and is still failing.

what about the disconnect between streamer loot and player loot? there is something VERY fucky when one streamer can ex slam +2 minions right when he needs it, have a mirror and squire drop, and more.

i used to dismiss such things as confirmation bias/paranoia, but... good rng can only go so far.

its easy to forget that streamers play a ton, they spin the RNG wheel a ton, and you just see the clips of them winning, but they lose too. Ghazzy invested insane amounts of currency, mutliple mirrors to get to that point.

dude. i play as much as any streamer. most likely more. streaming is a job for them... i dont work and only play. and yes on fully juiced t16s. and just because i toggle off those silly emblems you all show off doesnt meant i havent been here a LONG time.

and drops like that are NOT what the rest of us see. not. at. all.

I agree with the sentiment, loot definition in the players eyes is vastly different.

Funnily enough, I decided to make a new build, I just killed piety, I've not had 1 single transmutation drop for me through 3 acts. The loot I'd ideally like is some levelling uniques, early 2h weapons, Goldrim etc, but I have found nothing over 3 characters which are in maps.

I can appreciate that the previous historic bonus has been lost, but something feels vastly off.

I feel sorry for any new person trying to get into POE, cause currently, it is not new player friendly.

I highly doubt there will be a full on revert, but please consider what the original poster has mentioned, it defines everything clearly, otherwise, give us an explanation or thoughts on going forward.

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Stormy_Fairweather wrote:

dude. i play as much as any streamer. most likely more. streaming is a job for them... i dont work and only play. and yes on fully juiced t16s. and just because i toggle off those silly emblems you all show off doesnt meant i havent been here a LONG time.

and drops like that are NOT what the rest of us see. not. at. all.

You might play just as much or more than a streamer but you will never be as effective as someone that can literally instant sell items because ppl wanna overpay their streamer over looking for same item elsewhere. Their mirror service will flow fast and smoothly so they can afford to risk the crafts knowing that when they get the mirror tier item they will get to sell copies more than you can ever dream of. Streamers have viewers. The more viewers the higher chance some of the viewers gets their currency from dodgy places to get copies of those mirror tier items xD... and when they get bored they might dump off the stuff to their streamers (yes I am aware that a few streamers refuse to take handouts/while still their sales are often channeled in through viewers. There is also the fact that they have the advatage of selling off items from their own broadcasted build. So they can buy the needed items cheap and sell them off expensive after viewers have hit the build with inflation that shadows RL inflation by a mile. Can't blame the streamers though. It is what it is.

Just give up comparing yourself to a streamer! You might feel they get to their checkpoints faster but that's just an inevitable result of streamer community effectiveness.

Loot is better then it was before, at lesat currency is, so whats your point Mr 1 challenge???

Quality of loot is absolutely a problem, and the fact most of this junk isn't naturally spawning but being forced by Archnemesis conversions. It ignores the kind of content you're doing, the maps you're running, the leagues you're engaging with, and makes all loot "Archnemesis loot".

Fractured items are extremely deflated because of how common they've become, this is okay in regards to crafting your own items. But it involves so much sifting through junk. You're ultimately looking for a 1/10,000 fractured item to actually make money on because of the mod pool. Anything less than a perfect 3 mod jewel is basically unsellable thanks to the drop off in the league and loot homogenization flooding the market.

When I see screens full of items now I'm more frustrated than excited.

Even with a strict filter, theres just soo much junk that ends up back on the ground because it isn't worth the portals to pull out.



This isn't rewarding content, this is wasting my time.

I can absolutely confirm that the loot is absurdly scarce. And the ex/div swap made the situation much worse.

I'm lvl 91 (easily could've been 94-95 if not for countless deaths to AN) with about 3 days playtime. I've fully cleared atlas apart from a couple uniques, I did pinnacle bosses, guardians etc and still haven't dropped A SINGLE divine orb. I was able to afford a bare minimum of build-enabling gear just because I had a lucky forbidden flesh drop.
So I don't believe for a second that the loot for the average player is better then before. On other leagues I had ex to drop on white maps already. In this league I've wasted evening to get nowhere at all. After some play sessions I look at my empty exp bar, I look at my currency tab and realize that I should've spent my time doing something else. On other playsessions I just alt F4 after a failing a blight map dying to toxic bombs which are impossible to see in all that screen clutter, or after dying a few times to an unkillable metamorph with crazy an mods, or to a red beast with crazy metamorph mods, or to an essence stacked rare with crazy an mods etc, etc, etc

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Stormy_Fairweather wrote:

dude. i play as much as any streamer. most likely more. streaming is a job for them... i dont work and only play. and yes on fully juiced t16s. and just because i toggle off those silly emblems you all show off doesnt meant i havent been here a LONG time.

and drops like that are NOT what the rest of us see. not. at. all.

Caught the liar. You know we can easily check how much you really play, right? It is not much, you don't play all the time.