It is a shame that so many builds and items are so rare

I think it's totally OK that some items are very rare, as long as it's a case of "want" and not "need".

And it's not like it's a new concept in the genre. I played D2 (self-found) for around 10 years and I never completed the Tal Rasha's Bindings set. Totally OK with that, as these games are all about the progression and not the destination (IMO).

When it comes to Transfigured Gems/skills, I totally agree; gating them randomly behind lab is an awful implementation.

"

Aldora_the_Summoner wrote:

Many uniques had a particular build enabling feature that made things cool! Then the power creep set in and most Uniques became utter worthless trash (for example, Shavronnes isn't cheap because it's common, it's cheap because the game has evolved way past it and it's no longer particularly good).

its still amazing tho, i have builds that use shavs, that require shavs, that have obliterated every uber pinnacle boss in this game. not beaten them in a hard fight, just deleted them in a way that felt like cheating. deleted them all way harder than the best possible shavs builds were doing against things like uber atziri back when shavs was the best thing ever.


the game itself didnt really evolve past shavs, what evolved past shavs was people wanting it after they increased its drop rate x4 and gave us leagues like perandus that just shit out uniques like that. shavs isnt common, but it became very accessible compared to how it was and compared to how a mageblood is now. with self found trash items people are destroying super endgame, the meta isnt even about the game itself the meta is about desire.

"

Aldora_the_Summoner wrote:

Totally get where the OP is coming from on this topic.

I very much understand that GG's position on the game is that trading is at the core of the game. Everything is built around that and it's not going to change.

Which is a shame, because it's the worst aspect of this game for me personally.

I hate trading so much, flames, flames, on the side of my face...

The interface and the approach is just awful. It's also a solution to a created problem that needn't exist at all but that's the design approach so here we are.

I get the flip side of this too. If you are an active trader and embrace it then this game is awesome! You trade off stuff you don't need, easily pick up what you do need and off you go!

thing is i dont think its all about trade.

there is stuff in the game that you wont find, and the point is that you wont find it. its not just added to give someone who trades something to trade for, its added to make you want it but not get it. its there for you. i think its wrong to think that everything is added to be got, and therefor if you cant get it but this other dude can then its always been added for him specifically. sometimes it has but often not.

its like a lottery win or a jackpot in a casino machine etc. 100k people take part one of them wins this jackpot, the jackpot wasnt just added for that one guy. the jackpot is there for everyone, its job is not that you get it, its job is that it provides an incentive to try and get it. its not like the people who run the lottery only care about the winner, and if it wasnt for that one guy with the winning ticket you could remove the jackpot entirely because its not for the rest of you.

thats looking at it wrong. the jackpot is there to make the lottery exciting for everyone who plays the lottery, one person gets it, 99,9999 people dont get it, but it was added for everyone. the only problem with the jackpot is that someone actually does win it, so that person stops playing the lottery because they won 10 million. they dont want people to stop playing, thata was not the intention. they want you to come back next week and play again, thats the jackpots job. so the jackpot is for the 99,999 people who didnt win it more than the 1 guy who did.





theres stuff in this game that is added for the sole purpose of you wanting it, it is intended that you want it and intended that you dont find it.



theres a scale:


* stuff you find all the time, dont need, dont want, dont care

* stuff you find all the time, need it, still dont rly care cause its everywhere

* stuff you sometimes find, need it, feels good

* stuff you rarely find, want it, feels amazing

* stuff you never find, except that one time you do, you really really want it, feels OMG!!!!! YOOOO!!!!!!

* stuff you actually never find but maybe one day, ohhh, the dreams! the memes!! the thoughts and prayers.




the is the intention of the loot system, there must be items in all these categories. the game wants to provide you with this scale and on the end of it is stuff that is added for you to have this experience with the intent that the drop rate is so low you probably will never find it.


i never found a mirror, 20k hours, ive never found one. no one finds a mirror, thats the point of a mirror.




now my scale and your scale may not be the same. theres some dude out there struggling and theres things in your "stuff you sometimes find, need it, feels good" category that are actually in his "stuff you rarely find, want it, feels amazing" category.

theres people who take for granted stuff you deeply treasure, theres people who deeply treasure stuff you take for granted.

but the design intends to cater to all, its not designed for this person or that person, it is designed so that for everyone there is stuff we take for granted, starts with white items, and theres stuff we never find like an actual perfect bis rare item.

the devs have talked about this being a game that was designed to play forever. the intention isnt that you find everything, get everything and finish the game, its complete, i got and did everything. its designed to always have a next better thing you can strive for forever.

the people who actually can get everything and do everything, the tiny handful of people like belton and jenebu, back in the day AXN and ventor for you boomers, those are the people who are falling outside of the design. one way of looking at the game is those are the only guys who can really get everything so its been designed for them, but its not, its actually more like those are the only guys the game has not been designed for.

those guys occupy a sort of clause where the game understands a tiny handful of people will fall out of the actual intended balance and design of the game and what it hopes it that the ego boost they will get from sitting on top of the ocean of the communities desires will in itself be a justification for them sticking around despite them essentially having escaped the games design hook.

Just wanted to say thank you for your comments and feedback. I don't want to stoke any fires and I enjoy reading opinions about the game and its state.

I can see where people are coming from.

When I play this game I don't expect anything cool or exciting to drop because it frankly doesn't. It is the only reason I play trade, not because I want a shortcut, but if I want to use a build enabling semi-rare unique drop I have no way of really finding one outside trade or hoping a div card set drops (if the item has a div card. there are a few interesting uniques that don't)

Headhunter probably was a bad example for my post, but the player "feeling cheated" about one dropping naturally really made me think about how much trade value distorts items and their perceived value.

In my opinion players would be more engaged with a less extreme gap between upgrades or different build options.

Most arpgs I really enjoy have a pretty decent way to target farms things and the weights aren't so against the player. Playing the game is more fun for me than playing a trade simulator and aol instant messenger.

The league dies at the exact same time every time.

Because as soon as you present a rational human with the following, they quit.

You can spend days repeating yourself in an act of absolute boredom, punctuated by
points where all of your progress is removed.

There is random chance you can get the item you need to stop losing progress. There is no guarantee if it will ever drop.
Do you want to do that for hours a day?

Eventually you if you persist through the boredom and become totally apathetic to losing progress. You can scrape together enough trash to purchase the item you need from someone else.

Like Cookie Clicker for loot.

"

Jitter912 wrote:

The league dies at the exact same time every time.

Because as soon as you present a rational human with the following, they quit.

You can spend days repeating yourself in an act of absolute boredom, punctuated by
points where all of your progress is removed.

There is random chance you can get the item you need to stop losing progress. There is no guarantee if it will ever drop.
Do you want to do that for hours a day?

Eventually you if you persist through the boredom and become totally apathetic to losing progress. You can scrape together enough trash to purchase the item you need from someone else.

Like Cookie Clicker for loot.

Good thing that's not at all how the game works, then. That sounds pretty terrible!

"

roundishcap wrote:

Just wanted to say thank you for your comments and feedback. I don't want to stoke any fires and I enjoy reading opinions about the game and its state.

I can see where people are coming from.

When I play this game I don't expect anything cool or exciting to drop because it frankly doesn't. It is the only reason I play trade, not because I want a shortcut, but if I want to use a build enabling semi-rare unique drop I have no way of really finding one outside trade or hoping a div card set drops (if the item has a div card. there are a few interesting uniques that don't)

Headhunter probably was a bad example for my post, but the player "feeling cheated" about one dropping naturally really made me think about how much trade value distorts items and their perceived value.

In my opinion players would be more engaged with a less extreme gap between upgrades or different build options.

Most arpgs I really enjoy have a pretty decent way to target farms things and the weights aren't so against the player. Playing the game is more fun for me than playing a trade simulator and aol instant messenger.

thats fair.




what really appeals to me about self found is the limitations. in trade its easy to trade for gear that outgears almost every challenge in the game, its really easy to make a build that can crush an uber boss when you can buy a shavs for 10 chaos. softcore trade right now i could play white tier maps for a couple of hours and then buy gear that can make pretty easy work of uber maven.

it removes the ability to be good at certain aspects of the game. if im limited by what i can find then i have to actually be good at making a build to make those items work and i have to play the build well to overcome hard content.

obviously that means accepting a shift in the tiers of items, a shavs now becomes in the same tier as a mirror, a 10 chaos item now becomes a holy grail. but obviously the tradeoff there is if you dont directly want an item it has no value to you because you cant sell it. so it adds value to some items and removes value from a lot of others.




to me that feels like more of a game tho in the sense of having to be good at it to succeed, thats where i find appeal in it. i dont go into it thinking i want X build enabling unique, i know what i can rely on and the game is now how do i make that work? and then how i can adapt those plans to what actually does drop? thats a test of me as a poe player.


where on the other hand i will often just play my old characters in standard, and i have access to everything ive traded for in the past there which is essentially limitless and it very much is start with the items and skills i want to play and then making that reality which is how trade plays out.

its 2 very different ways of approaching the game and i do enjoy both. i must say tho im far more attracted to group found with my close friends. reacting to what drops and anticipating what is realistic just feels more engaging as a game than the doll dressing simulator of "i can have anything because trade". so i dont plan on ever trading in poe2, im going hard reset of item expectations.

The only reasonably consistent endgame reward system in modern POE is the equivalent of a currency simulator. This is for players who don't treat it like a job. I've gotten to the point that I can reasonably run T17 without being automatically deleted, which for me equates to an average of 2-3 (or less) hours of playing per day, and even my "casual" scrub self passes over all rare item drops except jewelry.

There is an actual reasonable (not approaching absolute zero) chance that I get a rare jewelry ugprade over my current pieces, or with base jewels themselves. The other item slots? lol forget it, go grind the currency simulator bro and sit there dealing with price fixers and people that refuse to sell the pieces you need.

For a game that prides itself on old school ARPG inspiration, there is near zero reward system in this game for loot drops themselves. For example, why does the game consistently drop MELEE rare weapons in endgame with zero or laughable physical damage mods (e.g. +40%)? Why do this even exist? For more currency salvage fodder? Why does the endgame drop rare armor pieces with zero or near zero armor and/or evasion and/or ES bonuses? To give us the illusion that we're being rewarded with something that equates to nothing?

This doesn't even touch on the laughable state of 99%+ of the unique items in the game, especially those meant for endgame use with high level requirements. Is that why they introduced the unique disenchanting system this league so we actually bother picking them up again? They couldn't do some quick number adjustments? They couldn't at least allow runecrafting on unique weapons? THEY DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?

So many more examples of horrific itemization and tuning and non-existent rewards in this game, but who wants to read a wall of text anyways, and the devs don't pay attention here anymore anyways.

Is this how the dev thought process goes for POE development?

"we don't want set items because they might overpower rare and unique items"
"we don't want powerful unique items because people will only wear unique items"
"we don't want to drop powerful rare items because people might get bored and stop playing"
"ok we'll just drop currency for everyone and consistently (with no documentation) nerf the drop rates for all their sources"

I agree that ground loot (random rares) in this game is particularly bad. There are millions of items dropping but none of them are good.

GGG has proven that they CAN make good rares drop out of the box with shipment and faustus gambling mechanics. They definitely have strong modifier tier bonus because you don't see crap like +7 to mana on them. I've got many sellable rare helmets, boots and gloves out of ships and gambles. Some of them went for 2-3 div.

I would love if monsters dropped less items but they would be better. Instead of 1000 rares from one map that get hidden by lootfilter even on day 1 of the league let that map drop 10 items, but they resemble stuff found in shipments this league.

but that's how online games work.
I don't ever see a mageblood drop, but that's not to say that it's not dropping.
There are hundreds on trade, which means they're dropping just not for me.
Which is only unlucky if i'm not running a min-maxed atlas on a min-maxed t17 and even if i was it's still probability.

If you were in the position of actually hard farming the t0 uniques, I don't believe you could complain.
There are techniques people are using that you are just not aware of.

And for rares, I don't believe many people have seen a rare drop and thought geez that's an upgrade. That's just not the kind of game poe is.
You see a rare, it's the right ilvl and you craft on it with specific methods and combinations to get the desired outcome.
Again, there are techniques people are using that are you just not aware of.

That's all it is, in poe that's all it ever is.

to me i would say we need to temper our expectations.

does it suck that its hard for x item to drop?

yes it is but its fair. its hard for everyone.

even to the point that it feels unfair but thats RNG.

i remember many years back i've never dropped a shavs. but a friend of mine who played barely a month dropped shavs. like wtf.

that said i will reemphasize on what i said.

temper your expectations.

me personally i never "farm items" to get what i want.

i farm currency in order to BUY what i want.

i have little choice in the matter but its the most feasible option to obtain what i want.