The amout of vendor trash makes me want to quit this game

By the way, I believe D3 RoS's itemization is vastly improved from release. I believe in part its because rare items were abandoned in favor of a system where a piece of gear feels like cards in a digital CCG and your combined gear feels like a deck. It's one way to handle itemization design. The only problem I have with the overall design is that blue and yellow items shouldn't exist in D3 at all; include some base uniques as quest rewards then use colors for "card rarity" purposes and you have a more intuitive system.

Which makes me wonder if rares and uniques really belong in the same game at all. Their design is very different on a fundamental level. With uniques, the indisible unit is the whole item; with rares, the indisible unit is smaller, each affix itself. Including both (in a mutually relevant manner) creates a varied but thematically ambivalent itemization scheme.

I wonder if the affix-based system would be better going with unique affixes rather than unique items. By which I mean each base item type has an (unusual) affix no other item type can get, so you can add some incentive for the lower item types. For example, "chaos damage can't bypass ES" on level 18 Scholar's Robes (I'd go lower but chaos damage isn't introduced until arealevel 15).

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I wonder if the affix-based system would be better going with unique affixes rather than unique items. By which I mean each base item type has an (unusual) affix no other item type can get, so you can add some incentive for the lower item types. For example, "chaos damage can't bypass ES" on level 18 Scholar's Robes (I'd go lower but chaos damage isn't introduced until arealevel 15).

While I like the overall idea of making rares not so mindnumbingly boring, I'd hate to see uniques go. Currency and uniques are the high points of the loot hunt. Even if the unique is almost always crap, it still breaks things up a bit. Finding "CD can't bypass ES" would be great, except the reduced attributes + light radius your getting taking up affix slots making it yet another shit item that can't salvage the good part. Really, the entire affix system of PoE is beyond saving, I think, due to design decisions that permeate the game. There's just no place in the game for like 80%+ of the affixes, and the reason for that is many, ranging from technical to design to balance.

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b15h09 wrote:

Really, the entire affix system of PoE is beyond saving, I think, due to design decisions that permeate the game. There's just no place in the game for like 80%+ of the affixes, and the reason for that is many, ranging from technical to design to balance.

If you would have asked me 30 months ago, I would have said D3's uniques were beyond saving.

The whole-item approach is the obvious casual theorycraft option, while affixes are the hardcore theorycraft option. I feel the best move for the PoE franchise would be to commit harder to affixes, especially in future titles when itemization can get a fresh start. I feel the unique items of the Diablos are and will be an overpopulated niche in the genre, and PoE would server its hardcore-theorycraft playerbase well by going with a different system.

I know this sounds strange but I kind of admire D3's team for choosing what type of game it would be - a filthy casual more-action less-RPG - and really committing to that choice. PoE's current identity crisis reminds me of 2012 D3 in many ways.

the real problem with rares in poe, in permaleagues, is the 'either mirror quality rare or gtfo' paradigm

in temp leagues, rares are in a much better place.

and if you play self found in temp leagues, as Ive found out, rares rule.

with that said, being an old rpg munchkin as I am, I id every yellow item on the ground (unless its a chest/weapon with shitty base). I'll trade the excitement I get from getting anything useful for extra 1 chaos from vendor recipe any time.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

By the way, I believe D3 RoS's itemization is vastly improved from release. I believe in part its because rare items were abandoned in favor of a system where a piece of gear feels like cards in a digital CCG and your combined gear feels like a deck. It's one way to handle itemization design. The only problem I have with the overall design is that blue and yellow items shouldn't exist in D3 at all; include some base uniques as quest rewards then use colors for "card rarity" purposes and you have a more intuitive system.

For what I can remember, a lot of legendaries feel like glorified rares in that game.
I find that ROS itemization is a camouflaged version of the traditional ones in that sense, with normal, magic and rare items being unnecesary.
And the skill changing legendaries power/spectacle creeped the fuck out of the rest, specially with set bonuses.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The whole-item approach is the obvious casual theorycraft option, while affixes are the hardcore theorycraft option. I feel the best move for the PoE franchise would be to commit harder to affixes, especially in future titles when itemization can get a fresh start. I feel the unique items of the Diablos are and will be an overpopulated niche in the genre, and PoE would server its hardcore-theorycraft playerbase well by going with a different system.

+1

It would be interesting to have more uses for all the affixes, so people don't go behind the same ones.
Although it would help if the whole linking/socket thing was made more atractive for rare items; else it's too much of a cost for people to try many of them, and all options would converge to the efficient ones to reduce costs, killing diversity anyway.

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grepman wrote:

the real problem with rares in poe, in permaleagues, is the 'either mirror quality rare or gtfo' paradigm

in temp leagues, rares are in a much better place.

and if you play self found in temp leagues, as Ive found out, rares rule.

Everyone feel free to disagree with me, but the power disparity between perfect and average rare items is the root of this issue.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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b15h09 wrote:

Really, the entire affix system of PoE is beyond saving, I think, due to design decisions that permeate the game. There's just no place in the game for like 80%+ of the affixes, and the reason for that is many, ranging from technical to design to balance.

If you would have asked me 30 months ago, I would have said D3's uniques were beyond saving.

The whole-item approach is the obvious casual theorycraft option, while affixes are the hardcore theorycraft option. I feel the best move for the PoE franchise would be to commit harder to affixes, especially in future titles when itemization can get a fresh start. I feel the unique items of the Diablos are and will be an overpopulated niche in the genre, and PoE would server its hardcore-theorycraft playerbase well by going with a different system.

Dunno about D3, decided it wasn't worth my time after about 30 hours and haven't looked back. Does main hand weapon damage still determine spell damage? Cause that shit is stupid.

Anyway, I agree, getting some of the unique mods out of the unique pool and into the affix pool can only be good for the otherwise crap itemization of 'all damage mitigation, all the time'. Still... marginally less boring dumpsters full of rares, without even the occasional crappy orange text item... doesn't sound much better. Could it be fixed? Maybe. I still think fixing desync, and allowing mobility/skillful play to be a highly viable defense, would be a requisite. Could bring some offensive affixes out of the shadows.

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NeroNoah wrote:

Everyone feel free to disagree with me, but the power disparity between perfect and average rare items is the root of this issue.

Can totally get behind this, at least in regards to defensive stats. I wouldn't mind seeing either the +% or flat + to ES, AR, and EV being removed, with a base item buff to compensate. Especially ES. Think I've dropped 1 chest that was over 350 ES, not counting uniques. Same situation with weapon flat and % damage. As you say, too much disparity.

God i agree 200%. I dont even pick most rares already unless they are good base and all


I mean i pick sorcerer gloves but not inferior base. I dont pick ANY chest cos they useless etc etc

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NeroNoah wrote:

Everyone feel free to disagree with me, but the power disparity between perfect and average rare items is the root of this issue.

if you narrow down the disparity of perfect and average rare items, what will you get though ?

first if you balance it on the perfect side, a lot uniques that are currently balanced on 'slightly above the average' rare will be near useless, if they arent right now.
if you balance it on the average side, that means a huge power creep and below average item will be complete garbage.

even if you dont play self-found, getting a drop of boots with life, 3 res and 30% movespeed is exciting.

but if average boots drop was 30% movespeed life and two resists, that kind of drop would be boring as fuck.

I guess my point is where do you move the slider, if you make near perfect items easier to obtain, everyone will rock near perfect items a month later and everything else will be garbage.

I see this discussion very so often. While there are some valid points in between there are a few core issues that many people seem to misunderstand.

Lets take one part -> The volume of loot

Lets say the good item drop rate is kept the same, but we just remove 50% of the loot (making it specifically the 50% worst items, theoretical so don't need to worry about how this is calculated). This means that yes there is less on the screen, but you still don't find a good item, and everything you see still looks like vendor trash. Instead though you also don't see much, so you feel like nothing drops. Take to an extreme of 99% and you basically run around killing everything with nothing dropping, then bam, an exalt.

That's not to say that reducing loot volume is bad, just be aware it won't necessarily fix the 'nothing dropped that was good' it fixes the 'so much dropped that is not worth picking up and just clutters the floor'. We can take the above argument to the other extreme and say that everything is loot piñata, every kill you feel like you have a good chance because 1000 items drop, but you actually still have the same drop rate so it seems like lots of chances but really bad luck.

That sort of core duality is just the item volume not the actual rarity/quality of the drops

Next thing to consider -> the power level climbing or item upgrades. The game, ignoring perfect mirror rares (which I will get to later), could almost be broken down to a simple tier system. So you start on tier 1, and you want to get to tier 'x' which can be an unlimited number. You can skip tiers aswell, going tier 1-> tier 13 for example). This is looking at it from a 'upgrade your own character' perspective, or solo self found perhaps

When you are trying to farm for items to get your gear to a higher tier, its not so much how often the items drop but more how long it takes you to get that drop that is important. The time to next upgrade, or TtNU (has many different names) in most ARPG's (old D3 and PoE included) is structured such that it slowly increases. So going from tier 10 -> 11 may take 5 minutes, but tier 11 -> tier 12 takes 6 minutes. This is based on the difference between the tiers being that the item is rarer/harder to get (such as a unique with every roll at lowest, and a unique with every roll at highest). As you move up to the higher tiers the TtNU always gets really huge, so a level 80 player may have a TtNU of more than a day, etc, before he finds an item that is an upgrade.

When we change item rarity, what we are really doing is moving the TtNU down, or jumping the tiering system. Now what was a tier 50 item is now actually tier 40, so the TtNU from 40->41 applies instead of 50->51. This means that finding an upgrade to your tier 50 item is much quicker, and the upgrade after that quicker again, but eventually you reach tier 50 and you have the same TtNU and the same feeling of it taking ages to get an upgrade, difference is you are now 'stronger' relative to the content.

Mirror items themselves have a weird interaction with this type of system (or any place where you can get a 'perfect' item). Once you have that item, essentially TtNU becomes infinite, and this means every item drop is of no potential use for your current character, and it becomes alt or selling that becomes important.


This while not an argument that items need to be looked at better is something to be aware of whenever people just want better items to drop more often. When you do that you mess with TtNU which can have a very huge effect, when your level 40 and you are demolishing content, but just can't find an upgrade, its very disheartening so early.


The final thing to be aware of for items themselves is the market effect of increasing drops. A lot of people say 'nothing worthwhile' looking at it from the point of view of a trader, with the idea the items that are dropping are things they can't sell to other players in the game. This one is the biggest fallacy when people want the 'good item' drop rate to rise. If an item is rare, it is worth value for those who do not have it because its too difficult to get. If only 10 people are selling the item, they have to reach a price one of the 10 agree's to, and that's normally relative to only 10 of them existing. If 100 people are selling it, chances are that not as many people are trying to buy it, so now you can get it cheaper. If 1000 people are selling it, its probably dropped significantly in price and you can buy it super cheap, because the only way it would sell is if its way cheaper than everyone else.

So while you might make a 'sellable' item drop more, very quickly that same item will no longer be something you can sell, and will become 'vendor trash' once again because of the high volume of players who would get the same drop and be selling it.