This game is a lottery simulator

RPGs have generally always had an element of RNG.

Unfortunately it's been mutated through many genres to take advantage of addictive behavior without any of the immersion those systems were built on.

In the modern ARPG. Dynamic Map generation is almost pointless because the player doesn't actually interact with anything in the map. No book shelves, no secrets. Even tactically for cover or to LoS it's not even used outside whatever MMO-Lite boss mechanic is being used.

It's pretty bad. I expect and even enjoy a certain level of RNG, but unless you're lucky enough to be stocked with omens and greater essences, There's almost zero meaningful ways to craft anything. I've wasted so many orbs, and bricked so many pieces of gear in the pursuit of finding something even remotely beneficial, that I just gave up on crafting. Trade is fine to a point. It's tedious, but it works. For the most part you can get what you need, but once you reach a certain threshold and need gear with all the right affixes/tiers to round out a build, the items become straight up unaffordable anyway.

*SOME* level of determinism would be really nice..

Can't craft what I need.

Can't afford what I need.

Guess ill just roll another character. Again.

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Johnny_Hotbody#4829 wrote:

It's pretty bad. I expect and even enjoy a certain level of RNG, but unless you're lucky enough to be stocked with omens and greater essences, There's almost zero meaningful ways to craft anything. I've wasted so many orbs, and bricked so many pieces of gear in the pursuit of finding something even remotely beneficial, that I just gave up on crafting. Trade is fine to a point. It's tedious, but it works. For the most part you can get what you need, but once you reach a certain threshold and need gear with all the right affixes/tiers to round out a build, the items become straight up unaffordable anyway.

*SOME* level of determinism would be really nice..

Can't craft what I need.

Can't afford what I need.

Guess ill just roll another character. Again.

One reason I love Last Epoch's crafting system. It balances out the determinism with having more resists and other stats while having only 2 prefixes and 2 suffixes, but you always find a drop to try and play with or save for another character after a handful of maps. While that itself can sometimes feel restrictive, the systems still work (tooooons more implicits on gear) and it's far easier to find at least modest upgrades. If GGG was willing to give people more deterministic crafting and not just picking your preferred slot machine (Delve/Heist/Breach/Expedition/Harvest/etc) that pretends to be deterministic, I'd honestly expect more people would play the game and spend money on it. Biggest reason it's still top of the pack is Torchlight is meh, Diablo is bad, and if you aren't already playing something like Grim Dawn or something else a decade+ old the only real Diablo-like looter ARPG option right now otherwise is Last Epoch and that poor thing is still too new to the scene to have enough end game and mechanically engaging content.

GGG just really loves RNG to a severe fault. The right team of people could absolutely develop an ARPG with the mechanics and weight of PoE2 combat and completely blow it out of the water when it comes to the loot part.

They already have the mechanism in place to partially rectify this problem: higher tiers of rare item drops. If they want rarity and exclusivity, fine.... Make the higher tiers of items less common to drop than they are. But if they do, I agree that an ilvl 82 item should not have a T1 prefix... Ever. It's completely counter intuitive. Instead, there should be more tiers of gear (I've never seen beyond Tier 5, correct me if I'm wrong), and say a Tier 10 drop is guaranteed to have good rolls on whatever affixes land on it. Doesn't mean they'll be ideal affixes! It just removes one of the layers of RNG, and gives you a better chance of it not being just straight garbage.

The reforging bench is also a waste of time. I rerolled countless armors and scepters looking for very specific mod combinations, and I never came close to what I could trade for even a couple divine orbs.