A solution to Divination Cards in Path of Exile 2.

I was going to write a longer thing for this, but then I remembered drawn out philosophical stuff isn't what they actually want, so:

In Path of Exile 2, Divination Cards should:

1. Have a Gold cost to open. This Gold cost should be extremely high for valuable items. Gambling card sets such as The Gambler, Emperor's Luck, and The Void should have variable Gold costs, where a higher Gold cost makes it more likely to get a good item.

2. Be easier to find. The Gold cost should balance how difficult the cards are to get.

3. Be target-farmable, but in a way that makes it so that you do not have to farm a single map forever. For instance make all (non-boss) Divination Card drops global, and:
- Allow the player to choose an item type that their Divination Card drops are then weighted towards (which would be balanced so there isn't an obvious choice I hope), or:
- Allow the player to find items that, when activated, make finding certain Divination Card types more likely to drop for a certain amount of monster kills (applied similarly to Incubators?).


This set of solutions should make Divination Cards a much more satisfying mechanic to interact with. Additionally, if the Gold cost for opening high-value Divination Cards is high enough, people who want those items to sell or use would need to forgo trading or gambling for a significant amount of time, a Gold sink that creates an additional layer of friction to the speed that items are traded, which I think would be a positive.

no

teehee....

1) So not only do you need to collect an entire set, but ALSO pay a cost on top of that? Doesn't that completely defeat the purpose of them being "divination cards" and not vendor items?

2) Pay more gold to get better odds: so make them p2w now too?

3) Easier to find but balance the gold cost: what would this actually solve? It would be the exact same situation except now gold would bear the value and not the card itself...seems to again defeat the purpose of divination cards.

4) Control over the weight or type of card drops / less map-specific cards: this is actually a GOOD idea but so unbelievably difficult to get right in current PoE 1 given the sheer number of cards and misrepresented values. (Ex: belt card weight would instantly be the highest value and most picked choice for everyone....). This would really be no different in PoE 2....there is always going to be that very few high-value items that have cards that EVERYONE is going to farm for using this type of mechanic.

5) Divination cards as a base mechanic are a failed and misguided concept. They should have never existed in the first place and deserve to be completely removed from the game for PoE 2. They cause many more problems than they solve, removes the value of randomized items themselves and instead transfers it to the cards, removes the ability to create target-farmable items in the long run by allowing a secondary avenue to completely bypass said target, and removes any need for differentiated maps since only a few are "worth" running because of the cards. They are just straight up bad game design, and really only exist now because GGG capitalized on them by selling them to players.


If divination cards should exist in PoE 2, they should function more like omens. Perhaps even a fusion of omens and prophecy, creating unique circumstances and items that can ONLY be found via the cards.

Ex: a stack of cards traded in will cause all items in the next map / area to drop with 1 higher tier of life mod rolls. Only 1 card buff can be active per area.

I don't have any major problem with the Divination cards system. I know they are sometimes hamstrung with what they can do exactly with the Div card pools, because I think some of the div cards are associated with supporters. The Dev's talk about this sometimes, and like items, I think some of them have been created by supporters, and they don't want to remove these from the game, as they want to be respectful to people who supported the game financially or otherwise, even if some of the cards don't have much value in the game anymore.

Div Cards already did their intended purpose. They made players buy more tabs.

I played this game for the first 4 years with no extra tabs. You'd go insane trying that now.