Developer Insight: The Divination Card Creation Process

Are Divination card affected by IIQ?

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Serleth wrote:

The balance is terrible for the card early-mid league and later, but by the same token they can't really adjust it because early league RoTP is 2-3ex or so when everyone wants it and you could make a killing off it just doing Solaris runs.

Farmed the set in beta over like 12 hours, which seemed fair, droprate was massively nerfed since then for some reason. It's not rare enough to be a several ex item, that's where the demand artificially inflates the price because it's a very specific build enabling unique, you HAVE to pay whatever people demand when there are only a few up for sale.

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Lanfear88 wrote:

Are Divination card affected by IIQ?

Yes. As per Carl in an interview with Project PT

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2. Are Divination Cards drops effected by quantity/rarity on maps/gear?
"Quantity affects the drops. Rarity does not, as individual cards do not have a rarity, as other items do."

As such, Divination Cards are also affected by a drop rate penalty since they are treated like currency in that regard.

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IceyDevil wrote:

Farmed the set in beta over like 12 hours, which seemed fair, droprate was massively nerfed since then for some reason. It's not rare enough to be a several ex item, that's where the demand artificially inflates the price because it's a very specific build enabling unique, you HAVE to pay whatever people demand when there are only a few up for sale.

Yeah I tried to find the patch notes for where they changed the Sun's drop rate, but I couldn't quickly. I remember reading it somewhere though. The nerf was for exactly the reason I discussed: early league, they're worth way too much to be farmed in 12 hours or less. Three exalt that early is massive and allows you to essentially trade the set 1:1 for another item you need, sooner than anyone else would be able to afford.

divination card is good , but will add new skill from monster that like cold skill ball , looks like pretty

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Serleth wrote:

Yeah I tried to find the patch notes for where they changed the Sun's drop rate, but I couldn't quickly. I remember reading it somewhere though. The nerf was for exactly the reason I discussed: early league, they're worth way too much to be farmed in 12 hours or less. Three exalt that early is massive and allows you to essentially trade the set 1:1 for another item you need, sooner than anyone else would be able to afford.

Well that's just it, isn't it? If you could farm it yourself you wouldn't pay 3 exalts for it, nobody would, it would be 1 ex or less on release day, where it's supposed to be. The div card dropping at a fair rate would simply force the economy to start balanced, instead of price gouging out the door that slowly settles over time.

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IceyDevil wrote:

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Serleth wrote:

Yeah I tried to find the patch notes for where they changed the Sun's drop rate, but I couldn't quickly. I remember reading it somewhere though. The nerf was for exactly the reason I discussed: early league, they're worth way too much to be farmed in 12 hours or less. Three exalt that early is massive and allows you to essentially trade the set 1:1 for another item you need, sooner than anyone else would be able to afford.

Well that's just it, isn't it? If you could farm it yourself you wouldn't pay 3 exalts for it, nobody would, it would be 1 ex or less on release day, where it's supposed to be. The div card dropping at a fair rate would simply force the economy to start balanced, instead of price gouging out the door that slowly settles over time.

Right, but the whole point is to provide players with the option: you can still farm it yourself (key: solo) if you want early on and probably get it by the point the price has dropped to 1ex or so, which equates with the value for time invested vs item acquisition, assuming you'd prefer to not wait until the price dips.

As for price gouging: that's just supply and demand at work, and an adjusted (increased) drop rate wouldn't do much to change that: it would just benefit NL players who race to Solaris and farm like bastards. You get a group of players split-running Solaris before anybody else, get the Sun set complete, sell the first RoTP in the league for ABC item which then propels you to be the first to kill Atziri while your friends frame-time fragments for you in Docks and then dominate the market from there.

In fact, I'm dead sure something like that is exactly what happened this league that led to the drop rate being nerfed.

My concern is that they all look the same in the inventory, and the more cards there are the more same looking squares will be in the inventory. Not concernerd about stash space more, but i`m already overwhelmed when i need look at the gems tab. Now i realized that i should use the search bar more often. well. but i also have a different idea, to take the "spellbook" from diablo 1,(http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/D1_Spellbooks#The_Spellbook ) where each card/gem would always populate the same page nr and the same position on the page, every time you play. Make it a custom effect for a tab, or different tab type.
Basically make a collectors book (like hearthstone?) for Dev Cards (and gems). to buy of course. Ok? Thank you very much:D

Decent read. Good to know some of the behind the scene work surrounding the making of my card.

Hype !

Honestly, cant wait for a divination card giving Orb of alteration.

And cant wait for a drop rate buff for all those weird Orb of Chaos related cards.
Too much of them !

Very interesting read, but in my opinion the drop rates are too low or cards needed for a full set are too many. Sure, the cards already drop more frequently than the item itself. Problem is that you usually need 5 or even more cards of the same type. So a very low drop chance x number of cards and that combined with drop penalty makes farming some cards impossible.

Furthermore all cards should be attainable in merciless difficulty. Because how will you farm cards, which only drop in normal or cruel difficulty efficiently? Always make new characters until the drop penalty gets too high? Really?
In this state, there is no way to do the divination card challenge of current leagues without trading. And some cards are extremely expensive. Why make a "challenge", which is impossible to do for people, even if they are willing to spend lots of time farming?