PoE 2 must solve loot to be truly great. Ruthless is half way there.

This is going to be a long post. I'm really hoping PoE2 already has some surprises for us regarding loot in the works that renders this post meaningless. But I've been thinking about this over the years with frustration/burn out caused by loot in PoE. I have over 3000 hours in PoE, but still consider myself a casual. Most of those hours is because I've been playing since release, I still have never even attempted Shaper. Here is my "casual player" two cents on why/how looting needs to change in POE.

I believe a mix of ruthless scarcity with some additional changes (buffs) mixed with the core game would be a good thing for everyone, including casuals like me.

First, there are a few rules that ARPGs need to abide by (mostly about items) to be good in the long term. PoE loot has major problems that conflict and does not allow all of them to be fulfilled.

The rules:

1. There should be at least a minor amount of progression towards powering up your character, and in short intervals without doing anything specific. (i.e. without crafting, trading, etc.)
This means by just playing the game you should find minor gear upgrades all the time, even if it's something really small. Of course this "interval" would exponentially increase the better your items are.

2. The best loot should always be drop-only
If by the end of the league you are using crafted gear instead of dropped gear on most of your slots then it is a failure.


3. Looting should not feel like a chore
There are so many mod combinations that currently it is impossible to have a good loot system in PoE. Even if the game dropped infinite rare items the time it would take to go through them to find a top tier item would feel more like a job then a game. Looting is supposed to be fun. Spamming essences is quicker, better, more fun, and allows you to do more maps and kill monsters than inventory management. (Please don't nerf essences. jk)

4. The best gear should be exponentially hard to find, absolute perfect stats being near impossible.
I think the changes most players want is not necessarily more, or better items. Contrary to what many believe, PoE's mindset on scarcity is a good thing. The problem is it just does not work in the current implementation and this incompatibility hides the underlying issues causing people to just want more currency and deterministic crafting.


Overhauling the loot system completely is probably the best, but I still think we can save the current system with a few major changes.
Note: These changes would only affect drop-only items. Currency/crafting would have no difference.

The short version: Significantly reduce quantity of non-currency item drops, but make the drops significantly more worthwhile with the goal being a net neutral of overall good items found (even less would be better than what we have now).

1. Severely reduce quantity of non-currency items dropped, scaling exponentially by item level. (The better the possible mods, the less drop chance).
This can go to very high number, like 80%+ less items dropped by end game.

2. Limit the possible number of mods per mod group. For example, if we choose a limit of 7. When Maximum Life with 7 tiers gets an additional tier added to the pool, the lowest tier is removed. Although you are finding way less items, the items you are finding are worthwhile. Overall you should get LESS "good items" than before if you were picking up every item, but who does that anyway? Since you will filter less items with such a change, you might even find more items than you did before. Either way, it will definitely feel better and give a sense of excitement when a rare of a good base drops. Overall the chances to get a really good item are still quite low, and a perfect item still near impossible. So we have not broken any rules.

Now of course it would be cool if there was additional changes, like Last Epoch with drop-only modifiers. But the point of this post is the core problems of the item drop system and not any additional features.
Because even having drop-only modifiers wont fix looting just being an obstacle you have to get rid of with filters, instead of an exciting moment.

They use rng to slow us down but this not work

Imagine day 1 i have all voidstone , week1 all uber dead

And im a noone …

Our crafting not exist anymore , is pure casino lotery machine , again designed to slow players down

GGG thinks that when you get gg min max gear you quit .. well in all my uears playing the game the oposite is true lol

All ppl i know that quit poe did it not cause they had mirror items but cause they couldnt even made mid tier gear

Also this is the reason for massive RMT across the board

There was a time RnG with deterministic was balanced that was 3.13 after that they just pumping more and more rng mechanics while same time nerfing/taking away the deterministic crafts

Respect

How did ruthless solve loot. Almosst all dogs are still meaningless. A rare item in ruthless is just as bad as a rare item in standard

Solving drops means increasing determinism. GGG refuses to do that.

"

roundishcap wrote:

How did ruthless solve loot. Almosst all dogs are still meaningless. A rare item in ruthless is just as bad as a rare item in standard

Solving drops means increasing determinism. GGG refuses to do that.

I heard the Diablo franchise is in the market for some deterministic loot ;)

The most fun part of the early league is the let's see what i get this time moment... Also trade league is very deterministic, since you can just buy what you want from doing league mechanics in yellow maps, including the rarest chase unique items.

Also there are two top tier amulets that are pretty much determinsitic loot from bosses....

I agree with the OP, however orb drops need nerfing badly. The amount of Div/ex drops is ridiculous rn, and fuses are a joke- I hoarded over 12k in ssf last league. and 80% less? make it 99.99% less... try disabling your filter on a juiced map- you will see what i mean.

Also, drops should feel good on the drop, not when you ID item. Make the high ilvl rares fkn rare, and when they drop - roll them good, crafting can remain in current state using the weights we have now.

Also get rid of all the trash tier uniques, seeing a leather or heavy belt unique on the ground should make you loose your fkn mind.

poe1 is beyond saving, this can only be done in poe2

I am very much against basically all of these ideas. I think they would ultimately destroy the game. However, I do agree that loot needs to be more scarce overall.

1) This already exists, basically up through red maps. If you know what to loot, you can find incremental and even big upgrades straight out of drops. It is only the very NARROW builds that can't do this. And only when you are optimizing the mid to top end of your build does raw loot not really cut it anymore.

2) Hard disagree: crafting should be the TOP of the gearing. All the time. Crafting should be the ONLY way to make the best possible gear. Drop-only BiS is a BAD idea. That leads to total 100% reliance on RNG at the top end. At least with crafting, this reliance gets SLIGHTLY reduced. There should be chase uniques, but it should never be a situation where the chase uniques are ALWAYS going to be BiS.

3) Looting is not a chore. Yes, it requires knowledge of loot filters. I agree that loot should be overall more scarce. Rares should not be raining from the sky at every turn. This alone would fix the "chore" aspect of churning through thousands of useless items. But even in the current system, with a proper lootfilter, it is never a chore to loot per se. The chore comes when you try to trade everything you loot. That is TOTALLY SEPARATE.

4) This is already true. Ever dropped a mageblood raw? HH? Mirror? Ever crafted an endgame item completely from SSF? No matter what the rarity, trade will make it obtainable quite "easily". This game should NEVER learn the lesson of the uber unique D4 s-show. Nor should it cut trade a la D4 to "fake" drop importance.


Regarding loot, there are only two things we really need: less of it, but better quality. With higher difficulties and ilvls, the affixes should be more weighted to upper tiers. That's it.