Thoughts from a game dev in the industry ...

scale_e is hitting em with the truth here

it's a simple concept, really.

people who want 'smart drops' don't realize something that proponents of 'fair' RNG (like me) do realize. by electing 'smart drops' or biased RNG, you are effectively PUNISHING players who think outside of the box (whom smart drop predictive system considers as 'dumb'), pushing them even into more archetypal builds.

or, even worse, they realize it but think it's OK for minority of builds to be shat on by 'smart' RNG. sorry, RNG should be fair to all builds, since build customization is one of the BIGGEST features of PoE

up until ascendancy, smart drop was impossible in poe. even with ascendancy classes setting more concrete archetypes, it's still ridiculously hard.

how would you do a smart drop ? through passive tree ? no, passive tree can change at any time. by starting position ? nope, not until the ascendancy did the start position matter

by skills youre using ? no, a ton of builds only shine in high levels

by items youre using ? no, makes even less sense. creative builds that use non-archetypal items are getting fucked over. I'm using a siege ballista in a BoR, a helm typically and overwhelmingly used for melee. a smart drop system detecting a BoR would give me melee items/enchantments ?

the whole beauty of poe is that you can create a non-stereotypical/cookie cutter toon and make it (semi)work.

here's a simple truth about pretty much all predictive systems : they fail. they aren't nearly close to perfect, and the more entropy in a system, the more and more heuristics are in play. PoE's one predictive system was a spectacular fail for a ton of time.

what constitutes a build in PoE is a complex system that grows, evolves and changes as levels and gear pieces are obtained. smart drops punish people from thinking outside of the box, and lock them into archetypes. whereas 'fair' RNG is fair to all.

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NeroNoah wrote:

I tend to think about the potential mechanics GGG could add. Imagine a world where players can be easily switch to low life, not for the power, but because of the mechanics (so you have reasons to go CI or HP alternatively). A lot of uniques that use the low life modificator right now could become options for playing, also the Guardian class would become more interesting. There is a lot of design space there to just put it at higher levels. It's my opinion, of course. Again, there is Solaris Lorica, so maybe it's not the best example.

About the talismans: maybe that's because of the way the game spawns items (compared to, let's say, Diablo 2) that makes more items feel like shit? Honestly, I miss more the league mechanics than the talisman themselves, and Rigwald.

See my latest reply in the "power creep a necessary evil" thread. Maybe we can get the chaos blocker trait freed from uniqueland.

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grepman wrote:

people who want 'smart drops' don't realize something that proponents of 'fair' RNG (like me) do realize. by electing 'smart drops' or biased RNG, you are effectively PUNISHING players who think outside of the box (whom smart drop predictive system considers as 'dumb'), pushing them even into more archetypal builds.


or, even worse, they realize it but think it's OK for minority of builds to be shat on by 'smart' RNG. sorry, RNG should be fair to all builds, since build customization is one of the BIGGEST features of PoE

Almost, but no. It would be punishing players with nonarchetypal builds who don't trade. For those who do trade, going weird would still be essentially the same - you just go to poe.trade and buy the items you need, and sell the good stuff you don't need.

So the question is: should RNG be fair to all builds in a self-found environment, even if that means players struggle to gear up regardless of which build they choose? Or should one cannibalize the others, such that we can point to a build for self-found players and say "hey, build this?"

The passive tree kinda does this already, it's just that the loot system doesn't always deliver. Marauders get Armour nodes, Rangers get Evasion nodes, Witches get ES nodes. Builds are already biased by class, except for Scion.

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grepman wrote:

how would you do a smart drop ? through passive tree ? no. by starting position ? nope, by skills youre using ? no, by items youre using ? no

By starting position. Scion would get no bias whatsoever. Skills and items are too malleable and prone to abuse; passive tree is too likely to result in an inharmonic economy, and could potentially also be abused with Regrets. With classes, it's relatively easy to ensure harmonics: just keep the six non-Scion classes balanced against each other.

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grepman wrote:

here's a simple truth about pretty much all predictive systems : they fail. they aren't nearly close to perfect, and the more entropy in a system, the more and more heuristics are in play. PoE's one predictive system was a spectacular fail for a ton of time.

Pure, unregulated RNG fails too. To compensate for its failures, we have trade, removing the need for regulation. Trade would compensate for weird builds in a smart drop system as well, assuming the smart drop system is properly designed to have a net minimal impact on the economy.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Pure, unregulated RNG fails too. To compensate for its failures, we have trade, removing the need for regulation. Trade would compensate for weird builds in a smart drop system as well, assuming the smart drop system is properly designed to have a net minimal impact on the economy.

"smart drop" can mean many things.
people here wrongly associate the term with what D3 does, and I don't like what D3 does.
D3's system is the other side of PoE's ruthless "true" RNG: a biased RNG which the player still has absolutely no control of.
no, choosing a class doesn't count.

the kind of "smart" I would like to see, is the Titan Quest style. one which Grim Dawn enhances superbly: biased zones. themed monsters. loot-tabled bosses with specific themes.
the player chooses what sets of areas to farm and when and for how long, according to what he/she wants for the build.
so it does not matter how weird your build is. you are in charge and you decide which side of RNG to tackle.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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grepman wrote:

people who want 'smart drops' don't realize something that proponents of 'fair' RNG (like me) do realize. by electing 'smart drops' or biased RNG, you are effectively PUNISHING players who think outside of the box (whom smart drop predictive system considers as 'dumb'), pushing them even into more archetypal builds.


or, even worse, they realize it but think it's OK for minority of builds to be shat on by 'smart' RNG. sorry, RNG should be fair to all builds, since build customization is one of the BIGGEST features of PoE

Almost, but no. It would be punishing players with nonarchetypal builds who don't trade. For those who do trade, going weird would still be essentially the same - you just go to poe.trade and buy the items you need, and sell the good stuff you don't need.

So the question is: should RNG be fair to all builds in a self-found environment, even if that means players struggle to gear up regardless of which build they choose? Or should one cannibalize the others, such that we can point to a build for self-found players and say "hey, build this?"

out of all people I expected you to be the last person to bring this up.
you bring trade into the discussion, then I ask why do you need smart drops at all if you can simply trade for them ?

the game was, is and will always be built on trade. self-found is a handicap mode, which players are welcome to try and all.

and even then, you're incorrect. find me a BoR with a ballista enchantment on poe.trade. there are none, in neither temp leagues nor perma leagues. enough BoRs are/were on sale to believe it wasn't just a RNG hiccup. people just roll over that enchantment because they dont consider it sellable

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The passive tree kinda does this already, it's just that the loot system doesn't always deliver. Marauders get Armour nodes, Rangers get Evasion nodes, Witches get ES nodes. Builds are already biased by class, except for Scion.

no, again. first, defensive types dont really define everything. just chest/helmet (and possibly boots/gloves) base type, really, is a really small part of poe.

second, they dont prohibit you from doing anything else. marauders could take evasion. I had a fucking templar in talisman going evasion and acro, and it was a strong toon utilizing an underpowered skill (magma orb). does templar have evasion nodes at his start ? not the last time I saw.

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]By starting position. Scion would get no bias whatsoever. Skills and items are too malleable and prone to abuse; passive tree is too likely to result in an inharmonic economy, and could potentially also be abused with Regrets. With classes, it's relatively easy to ensure harmonics: just keep the six non-Scion classes balanced against each other.

and again, this would be nonsense pre-ascendancy, ie for the 4+ years the game actually existed

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grepman wrote:

Pure, unregulated RNG fails too. To compensate for its failures, we have trade, removing the need for regulation. Trade would compensate for weird builds in a smart drop system as well, assuming the smart drop system is properly designed to have a net minimal impact on the economy.

they both can and do fail, but pure RNG is 'fair' independent of strength of your build, your build concept, and does not limit the scope of your build.

again, bringing up trade is unnecessary here. it applies to both systems equally.

the only thing RNG has what can be considered a negative over smart drops is it requires more time input. and thats fine for a game where'achieving something' is a function of time input. people who expect instant gratification don't like that. ok. well *shrugs*

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johnKeys wrote:

the kind of "smart" I would like to see, is the Titan Quest style. one which Grim Dawn enhances superbly: biased zones. themed monsters. loot-tabled bosses with specific themes.
the player chooses what sets of areas to farm and when and for how long, according to what he/she wants for the build.
so it does not matter how weird your build is. you are in charge and you decide which side of RNG to tackle.

that's not a smart drop, that's a fixed loot table. those are entirely different things. it also doesn't work in GD as well as you might think, because the most powerful items in the game are either crafted via *drum rolls* sheer RNG you hate, or random legendary drops.

there are some exceptions of course such as troll 2 handers which drop from trolls, but monster infrequents (theres actual a term for this, NOT 'smart drop') arent really the 'top tier' of items in GD (or TQ for that matter, iirc)

so again, wont find a fixed legendary table drop from any monster in Grim Dawn, aside from the guaranteed random legendary from the endboss on elite difficulty (2nd difficulty)

and D3s system of builds is so simple, smart drop actually *works* well in that game. the cost, of course- is lack of customization in D3 from its release onward. when very few things contribute to the damage/survivability and some of those factors are locked in, it's extremely easy to make a relatively good predictive system.

the more complex a system is, the harder it is to predict it, obviously.

I cannot understand why always someone assumes it's all about copying Diablo 3.

PoE and D3, both have litarly the same itemization only with some twists.

In poe Weapons have basedmg which get multiplyed by your melee skills,
and spell skills have basedmg which get multiplyed by your weapons-spelldmg.
In D3 both scale of your weaponsdmg, evrything is ""normalized"".

In poe you want +life,+ressistance,+internal devenses(es gear without it is junk anyways)
In D3 you want main,vit,ress or dps depends on item slot.

In most cases you want almost always the same roll´s,
So ad internal-dmg and devenses on each item and boom smart drops.

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grepman wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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grepman wrote:

people who want 'smart drops' don't realize something that proponents of 'fair' RNG (like me) do realize. by electing 'smart drops' or biased RNG, you are effectively PUNISHING players who think outside of the box (whom smart drop predictive system considers as 'dumb'), pushing them even into more archetypal builds.


or, even worse, they realize it but think it's OK for minority of builds to be shat on by 'smart' RNG. sorry, RNG should be fair to all builds, since build customization is one of the BIGGEST features of PoE

Almost, but no. It would be punishing players with nonarchetypal builds who don't trade. For those who do trade, going weird would still be essentially the same - you just go to poe.trade and buy the items you need, and sell the good stuff you don't need.

So the question is: should RNG be fair to all builds in a self-found environment, even if that means players struggle to gear up regardless of which build they choose? Or should one cannibalize the others, such that we can point to a build for self-found players and say "hey, build this?"

out of all people I expected you to be the last person to bring this up.
you bring trade into the discussion, then I ask why do you need smart drops at all if you can simply trade for them ?

the game was, is and will always be built on trade. self-found is a handicap mode, which players are welcome to try and all.

There are Solo leagues. They don't tend to last for more than a couple hours, but they exist.

Still, for any dedicated economic participant, there's really no reason to care about smart loot one way or the other, until/unless it has a significant warping effect on the economy. There are ways to design smart loot so this doesn't occur.

By "one way or the other" I mean any caring, positive or negative. Apathy should be the response. Smart loot is really just a self-found concern.

I imagine there's an argument that developer time is finite, therefore anything developers do which doesn't make the game better for me hurts me... a kind of opportunity cost argument. And there's nothing wrong with that argument from what I can see; if you care zero about self-found it's rational to be against smart loot.

But some players do care about self-found (and/or racing). And it's not an appropriate topic to get all Chicken Little over (unless you see potential economy warping in the specific suggestion). So be honest about what such opposition is: voting against something simply because it benefits others, but not yourself.

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grepman wrote:

and even then, you're incorrect. find me a BoR with a ballista enchantment on poe.trade. there are none, in neither temp leagues nor perma leagues. enough BoRs are/were on sale to believe it wasn't just a RNG hiccup. people just roll over that enchantment because they dont consider it sellable

I have no idea what point you're trying to make here.

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grepman wrote:

"

The passive tree kinda does this already, it's just that the loot system doesn't always deliver. Marauders get Armour nodes, Rangers get Evasion nodes, Witches get ES nodes. Builds are already biased by class, except for Scion.

no, again. first, defensive types dont really define everything. just chest/helmet (and possibly boots/gloves) base type, really, is a really small part of poe.

second, they dont prohibit you from doing anything else. marauders could take evasion. I had a fucking templar in talisman going evasion and acro, and it was a strong toon utilizing an underpowered skill (magma orb). does templar have evasion nodes at his start ? not the last time I saw.

Maybe you missed my post on page 22 (in particular, "However #2"). Also, was it a self-found fucking Templar in Talisman going Evasion and Acro and Magma Orb?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

There are Solo leagues. They don't tend to last for more than a couple hours, but they exist.

Still, for any dedicated economic participant, there's really no reason to care about smart loot one way or the other, until/unless it has a significant warping effect on the economy. There are ways to design smart loot so this doesn't occur.

By "one way or the other" I mean any caring, positive or negative. Apathy should be the response. Smart loot is really just a self-found concern.

I imagine there's an argument that developer time is finite, therefore anything developers do which doesn't make the game better for me hurts me... a kind of opportunity cost argument. And there's nothing wrong with that argument from what I can see; if you care zero about self-found it's rational to be against smart loot.

But some players do care about self-found (and/or racing). And it's not an appropriate topic to get all Chicken Little over (unless you see potential economy warping in the specific suggestion). So be honest about what such opposition is: voting against something simply because it benefits others, but not yourself.

you got it wrong. if I could not trade a single second in poe with the same opportunities of gearing up, I would. I dont like trading per se. I like resource management but trading is not something I enjoy.

but I realize that some things are a foundation of a house. I dont try - in my eternal attempts to make the house better - to change the foundation. It would be a very irrational thing to do. Especially since the builders of the house are quite adamant about the foundation staying in place.

so again, trade is ubiquitous in PoE and many things depend on it. its not changing any time soon. I dont see why we need to bring it in to the argument. is it a some kinda QoL thing for handicap mode aka SSF ?

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have no idea what point you're trying to make here.

point being that for unconventional builds, it's not even trivial to simply trade for the item combination you need. your point implied that unconventional builds are only punished if they werent trading. I pointed out that trading argument came out of left field; you used almost what amounts to be a deus ex machina in your argument, and yes- Im disappointed about it, because it has little to do with the actual argument and because you're a good poster who knows his shit.

because I was talking about smart drops in general and how they punish builds that arent cookie cutter. I wasnt talking about smart drops as a specific crutch for SSF. using that line of thinking, like I already pointed out, one can speculate that you can have nothing besides currency dropping as long as you have trade and a proverbial cadiro.

if youre saying 'its ok to punish quirky builds like that because you have trade to balance out a nonstandard build and are trading anyway ' like I think you are- then I VEHEMENTLY disagree.

builds have to be treated FAIRLY and EQUALLY. otherwise youre getting pigeonholed. TRADE and SSF, on other hand, cannot be treated FAIRLY and EQUALLY in a game in which trade is one of the main pillars that holds up the game.

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grepman wrote:

Maybe you missed my post on page 22 (in particular, "However #2").

admittedly I did, but weapons are still only a part of possible gear combinations.

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Also, was it a self-found fucking Templar in Talisman going Evasion and Acro and Magma Orb?

no, it wasnt a self-found toon. it almost couldve been, but I admittedly gotten lucky finding a consuming dark for my build. and again, admittedly, it was the thing that allowed me to make a strong character in the first place. that and mana-based MoM and Acro are extremely potent together