Abyssmal Campaign Loot Drops from Group Perspective

Noticed the other day that my friend and I, who I have been playing with since launch, were met with a ridiculous dps check on a boss recently. This is something we picked up on early on, noticing that many fights felt like some bosses were very squishy and others had enough life for three bosses. The enemy level range, according to the map, is 43 and we're 45. We are still going through the campaign and haven't had this severe of a problem at all, until now, though it does seem to have been a common occurrence: make game "hard" by making the loot not drop enough, not scale properly, not enough money to buy from vendor, and the vendors not having what one needs to begin with.

RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG, etc. That's...not a good design, at all.

This is not a skill issue either, as the fight is no different that others we faced before it; we didn't find most of the fights to be hard from a mechanic perspective. This is a "gear drops in this game are so horrible that it's literally stopped us from progressing" issue. Again, this is not a skill issue at all as neither of us die during the current boss fight, nor have we suffered many deaths throughout our coop game play.

Something we have noticed, immediately upon playing, is that this game sure loves to drop the blue transmutation orbs and scrolls of wisdom. What this game doesn't like to drop enough of, when in a group, is enough gear/ weapon loot. We're both still sitting on gear that is in the teen level range. Why? In what world is that acceptable? We literally haven't been able to buy, make, or find anything better.

That is a huge problem, a really huge problem. I don't care what other people do with their time, what game they do and don't play, however, a lot of people have already turned away from the game because of the obvious loot problem, and I think I can speak for most of us when I say, "We all know that games, such as this one, need a healthy player base, if for no other reason than to keep the economy from spiraling out of control." I'd like more people playing this game, not less.

Grinding. and I'm not talking about grinding higher difficulty or end game, but grinding being required during a normal campaign play through IS still fine, but it's a problem when the grinding needs to be done because the game's bone structure on how it handles loot is done in such a poor way that it starves players, groups to be exact, in such a way of obtaining good enough loot to boost their stats accordingly to at, or near, their current character level. Being more than 15 levels beyond one's gear level makes no sense, at all, and no argument can be made to validate such a ridiculous notion that "this is OK" for the "normal campaign/ story/ tutorial."

We're playing a "loot" based game. Loot. And I'm talking about just the initial play through of the campaign. I'm not talking about solo play, nor end game, but I'm talking about group play. I don't see enough people talking about this and I can only assume it's because, there are more solo players and/ or people are still in the honeymoon phase than there are groups of players going through the campaign.

It seems what make's the game hard is not a skill issue at all, it's because the game is (1) not dropping enough loot, (2) not scaling what meager quantity of items that are dropping to be at or near character level, (3) not enough blue-to-yellow transmutation orbs, in fact I'm sitting on hundreds of "convert white to blue" orbs, (4) and not enough money/ the money spread too thin trying to gamble-buy for all the necessary upgrades; the latter being an absolutely egregious mistake on behalf of the developer.

I initially figured that it was just a one-off during the Act 1 campaign, but no, the problem continued to compound. What made the problem worse is the fact that there is no extra loot that seems to drop if one is in a group as opposed to solo. What I mean is, gear + weapon drops are not increased, where as there have been plenty of skill gems. The blue trans orbs and wisdom scrolls are weighted too much so that it's literally all we see drop from darn near every other/ every third enemy we defeat and chest we open.

It's obvious now that people who play in groups are taking a huge hit in how much money and loot they can acquire, because if the game is only set to drop, i.e., six pieces of gear loot per boss kill, then six pieces of loot is all that will drop regardless of how many players there are in a group (Six gear drops being next to none existent too, mind you, but I'm using it as an example to emphasize how rubbish the loot system is for group campaign play on normal difficulty.)

This blocked progression problem is outlandishly absurd, especially as it's happening during the initial_campaign_play_through, which is basically a tutorial of sorts, if you would. It doesn't make sense for character level progression and skill gem progression to feel good and be tied to map zone monster levels, but then not being able to continue to progress a campaign story, because your gear is so bad that you can't put out enough damage to allow progression to continue to happen. I'm not angry about this, I'm laughing, because it's hilariously bad, that bad, to allow this to continue to go on, especially when there's supposedly already been a "loot buff."

So, my question is, why are scrolls of wisdom and blue transmutation orbs weighted so heavily to drop and everything else is next to none existent for group play? It's not as if one really needs the scrolls, technically, in the first place as there's a person in each town that does it for free and long before Act 1 is even near an end. As for the transmutation orbs, I would be willing to forgive this oddity, if that is what the game developers wanted players to do in order to keep their gear relevant. Yet, I can't forgive those being spammed along with scrolls as it's opposed to the traditional "monster drop looter" occurring like one would normally expect it to and as was done from multiple games over the past multiple decades of ARPG's...and this game wants to do.

The problem groups are facing is this:

1) Not enough money to buy replacement gear. One shouldn't have to grind-farm like one would for "end game" during an initial story campaign of normal difficulty. Progression should feel good, regarding loot drops. Drops, not purchases, drops. This IS a looter game we're playing, after all.

2) Not enough gear being sold by vendors in order to circumnavigate the absolutely dog-poo that is considered to be loot drops in this game. Then see * 1) *

I don't mind having to grind for what could likely take days in order to progress through a campaign, but that doesn't make anything else of what I said to be any less valid.

This game does, in fact, have a serious loot/ money problem for group play progression. I'm hopeful this will get looked into more deeply from a group perspective by the time the game goes "live", but I'm also very skeptical as the developers have already claimed to have buffed loot drops. If loot drops have indeed already been buffed, I find it sketchy as hell that they were even worse than what they are now and it begs the question, "How does a looter game, coming off the back of PoE, manage to botch up loot drops?"

This is not a hard game, in terms of anyone being able to play who is of sound mind and motor skill function. PoE 2 is a fun game to play that has peaks and valleys that mix challenging game play with casual point + click game play to make for an engaging roller coaster ride. What seems to make the game hard, rather, is that the game does not do a good job of scaling the level of gear drops to the player's level, and not enough of said scaling loot drops for group play as well. There is NO way that my group's luck has been all bad luck since we started playing. No way. When one is more than ten to fifteen levels beyond their equipped gear's levels and can do nothing but pray for RNGsus to throw them a bone because money + upgrade orbs + vendor items are just "not there", Houston, we have a problem.