we have a winner

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

As for loot filter, I think they made the smarter choice and simply reduced drops/tightened the loot table significantly. A loot filter is a bandaid. A surrender to the idea that you as a dev haven't properly figured out how to make drops meaningful.

I think this is a bad and very narrow take on it.

Lets take PoE's rather... Bad take on item/gear drop out of the equation here. I see Diablo's "smart drops" as very bad, and I will probably never play a game with a so excessive smart drop system. Just the whole idea of a game tailoring drops based on what I play, gives me a bad taste.

What is best: The game telling you what's valuable, or that you get to decide what's valuable or not - at all times? I see loot filters as "open source", with the ability for you to decide/tailor your own experience. The opposite? Proprietary? "This is the blueprint, we know best what you want".

I think your take on this is clouded by PoE's faults when it comes to item/gear balance/drop, and you're not judging "lootfilters", but rather judging "the lootfilter in PoE".

"

Phrazz wrote:

I think this is a bad and very narrow take on it.

Probably. ^_^

I play games to play games, not 'work' at them, so my answer to your question is a pretty obvious one and one that you will almost certainly find unpleasant: I trust the devs to balance their own game and not leave any decisions in the hands of players that they themselves should have made. And if that trust is somehow betrayed or proven unwarranted, I play something else.

I am a shitty console pleb who has no time for player made mods, meta-tools, or anything like that. Hell I don't even use a build calculator/planner for DIV, which is something I have done for every single ARPG for well over a decade now (yep, even Wolcen and Inquisitor).

I did use the loot filter in Titan Quest because it's hella basic, but for the most part, I find if a game demands I use one, especially a tailored one, I am like...yeah, you didn't really think this one through, devs. Elegance is very...very important to me in game design these days.

And fairly complex games can still be elegant. Stellaris on console is. As was/is Elite Dangerous imo. Board game wise, Gloomhaven was ridiculously complex in terms of bits and pieces but still elegant somehow.

There is nothing elegant about leaving it up to players to make their own loot filters in a game that should be all about rewarding loot drops.

Honestly, it's that simple for me now. Too old, too impatient, too inundated with game choice, and too busy when not gaming to do aught else.

As for smart loot: I used to hate it because yeah, I was all about getting weird drops for other classes in D2. But funny thing: smart loot reins in my altaholic tendencies and holy shit, I am getting characters to level 100 in DIV. ME. So while you can certainly argue it's limiting and imposing, I can equally argue some racehorses kinda need blinders.

I wrote my own bandaid, not generated but manually structured, and today it's 1750 lines long. Like a mummy.

Nice. You do you.

The existence of loot filters is a bandaid to GGG's terribly policy on drops. D3 smart loot went too far IMO but to a degree made sense given that trade was entirely disabled in RoS, D4's is likely similar. Quite frankly as much as I have issues with enormous portions of D3's designs I feel that smart loot was less frustrating to work with than PoE's actively and intentionally awful drop tables. At least in D3 if I was picking up stuff off the ground it had a chance to be useful, in PoE if its not boss (influenced or unique) or delve loot or a chase item its going to be utterly useless and I'm picking it up to turn into mats or use in a chaos orb recipe.

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

I can equally argue some racehorses kinda need blinders.

Indeed. And that is called a loot filter. A game can only guess what you want. You know what you want. It's better to set your own blinders. If you look at every item that drops, sure - a lootfilter would be useless. If you don't, it would serve a purpose.

"

Phrazz wrote:

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

I can equally argue some racehorses kinda need blinders.

Indeed. And that is called a loot filter. A game can only guess what you want. You know what you want. It's better to set your own blinders. If you look at every item that drops, sure - a lootfilter would be useless. If you don't, it would serve a purpose.

Uh...you want to reread what I said there, friend? No horse in history has put its own blinders on, let alone sat down and considered its design.

And in my experience, most humans are kind of shit at it too, if we consider the innate purpose of blinders is not to create myopia in and of itself but to shut out distractions.

...And have you forgotten which genre we're talking about here? It's basically the cliched Magpie Shiny Shit MUST PICK IT ALL UP of games. Kind of irresponsible of a dev to be aware of that and then just say eh fuck it, let em decide for themselves what's worth picking up out of the million shiny things on the ground and what isn't. Sure, it allows for freedom of choice -- but analysis paralysis is real and not everyone is dedicated or even self-aware enough to curb it themselves. Giving players too much freedom is as big a design sin as not giving them enough. Possibly even bigger, given the former is more common to games that could be truly magnificent, whereas the latter might just be the hallmark of a shit game.

I clearly wasn't able to handle all that freedom, not if I was so proud to be an 'altoholic' with somewhere around 70 character slots in PoE.

Now I am a recovering altoholic thanks to games that discourage it or at least keep it tucked away until after you've really finished them. This includes stuff like Elden Ring, DD2, but also most modern ARPGs that don't let you play their 'story free' mode until after you've finished them (W40KIM, DIV, hell even Wolcen did it). Bit of an aside but technically the fact that PoE has no story adjacent mode after finishing it (pick your arbitrary 'end' -- Kitava 2, Shaper, Elder, Atlas 100%, etc) kept me from finishing it because I wasn't motivated to unlock a mode aimed at alting. It was always the same old, old, old story, so why not try to make it interesting with a bunch of builds?

In games where you have to finish them before seriously considering alting, 10 character slots doesn't seem so restricted to me...which is funny given even on this PoE, the one I didn't set fire to give or take, I think I have a chunk of character slots set aside. Still.


Again, I chose my metaphor carefully. Blinders that are self-imposed aren't really blinders. You're too aware of them. And sure, if you do see the blinders a dev has put in, that's on them. That's their failing. But in good design, you don't. You're too busy enjoying what those blinders enable.

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

Again, I chose my metaphor carefully. Blinders that are self-imposed aren't really blinders.

Sure they are, if you know your game and build.

Again, if you look at/pick up every item that drops in D4, a filter wouldn't serve a purpose. If you don't, a loot filter would be better blinders even if you're "too aware", because it would hide more. You can't really disagree there.

Who am I kidding, sure you can :P

But I won't. Not unless you say please.

Who am I kidding, I probably will. When it's not 3am. Or not. Just as likely I'll wake up and forget. OR be mid-shower and go HOLY SHIT I GOT IT THE PERFECT ARGUMENT TO PHRAZZ!!!!!

...But for now, you...win?

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

"

Phrazz wrote:

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

I can equally argue some racehorses kinda need blinders.

Indeed. And that is called a loot filter. A game can only guess what you want. You know what you want. It's better to set your own blinders. If you look at every item that drops, sure - a lootfilter would be useless. If you don't, it would serve a purpose.

...

Again, I chose my metaphor carefully. Blinders that are self-imposed aren't really blinders. You're too aware of them. And sure, if you do see the blinders a dev has put in, that's on them. That's their failing. But in good design, you don't. You're too busy enjoying what those blinders enable.

How I wish GGG were more elegant in their design. I've been making my blinders ever since they allowed them, but man, due to the sheer amount of stuff dropping it feels like playing without a filter in the old days.

And, hello, old friend.
Hope you're well.