Rebalancing Internal Unique Item Rarities (Locked June 16)

Increasing drops does not make a game easier, it makes it rewarding. The more rewarding, the more you play, and the more money you want to put into it.

Like D3 ROS increased drop rates.. especially with this 100% extra drop.. people came back.. why? Rewarding. Will they eventually lose interest when they've gotten a good bit of loot? Of course. But not until they've played a good bit.

A lot more quit a game from feeling they are nor adequately rewarded, than those that feel it's "too easy"... hardcore players will always overachieve and get bored. But the hardcore gamer has long been the minute percentage of players.

The trick is to keep adding newer and better uniques...

I suggest "trickle down" rewards.

Start with these changes... as the playerbase slows down... Add new items to the top tier... and those that WERE at the top tier, trickle down to the rare category.

The loot table cascades down making once hard to get items easier, but there are new uniques even more powerful and build driven.

The "regular" players are like "Oh my! Lion's Eye Glare can drop twice as much now??? Time to get back to playing,

Hardcore... "WOW! A new Facebreaker 2.0 weapon... GOTTA HAVE!"

It's win-win.

As someone previously mentioned in there post.

POE is an addiction grab game. It keeps its players by feeding there addiction.(Most free to plays are) I can tolerate a certain amount.
But when I started playing this game I thought it could be different.

I thought hey I can put in decent amounts of work and my character grows. I believe i was getting rewarded back then, so didnt wear out my welcome yet.

A couple of things might have happened.

Mechanics might have become too complicated or bloated. ( You have a good thing going, why mess with it.) In particular the Vaal expansion comes to mind.

Im not knocking on new content, but there are consequences when content is added.

Like someone said, Rogue exiles were a step in the right direction and they wre challenging, and they occurred randomly, it was balanced.
You have easy content balanced with something very challenging= good game flow.

However if it is true Rogues got nerfed. Not a good direction.


I feel the addiction curve has swung too far and most players are feeling it. This I agree with the casual players. Unfortunately they dont have the time to sit and grind for 10 hour days getting things they should have been rewarded for 3-5. Its all about healthy play time vs insane play time.

I will restate my belief,
The trade system as it stands right now is toxic and it only supports a unhealthy level of play. in fact even if you increase the drop rate, it will not benefit most of you, because you still wont be finding your items as you play. (Youll have to trade even more items now)


If this game had been focused on solo play, with never get bored mechanics( which it had)this could have become even more popular, but what you have is an addiction based game, focusing on partying and raids( the oath it took). Assuming Atziri is considered a raid, but she can be soloed, so not sure.


Partying should be for fun, not because you get rewarded more for it, because once you do that, you alienate solo players.

GGG, if you are listening? Revaluate your game. You have an awesome skill, do you realize how much replay value is in that?


Just my 2 cents.

"

renderwurx wrote:

Increasing drops does not make a game easier, it makes it rewarding. The more rewarding, the more you play, and the more money you want to put into it.

Like D3 ROS increased drop rates.. especially with this 100% extra drop.. people came back.. why? Rewarding. Will they eventually lose interest when they've gotten a good bit of loot? Of course. But not until they've played a good bit.

A lot more quit a game from feeling they are nor adequately rewarded, than those that feel it's "too easy"... hardcore players will always overachieve and get bored. But the hardcore gamer has long been the minute percentage of players.

The trick is to keep adding newer and better uniques...

I suggest "trickle down" rewards.

Start with these changes... as the playerbase slows down... Add new items to the top tier... and those that WERE at the top tier, trickle down to the rare category.

The loot table cascades down making once hard to get items easier, but there are new uniques even more powerful and build driven.

The "regular" players are like "Oh my! Lion's Eye Glare can drop twice as much now??? Time to get back to playing,

Hardcore... "WOW! A new Facebreaker 2.0 weapon... GOTTA HAVE!"

It's win-win.

great idea, this system is used in some MMOs out there and works really fine

"

Cursedone66 wrote:

Finnaly i have a chance to find mjolner and try build with that! But i`m think, GGG need 6-10 new legendary for it, because endless dominus runs will kill the game=)

yall really dont get it...if they increase the chance of x unique drop rate up 20% its not gonna make u get 50 uniques in a week lol.

the ones that complain about market prices droppin they wont by any degree that u can really notice, example:

if there are 20 binos kitcken knife in xyz now u might if ur lucky see 1-2 more in xyz after the 20% drop increase. this will not cut prices in half... derps. if they cost 10-15 ex u will see a drop in price of 1-2 exalted. its really simple to figure out this is not gonna ruin any market value, flood economy, or actually make it better...

this will basically remain the same.

people in this thread fail to realize 0 * 2 = 0

doubling the uncommon/rares will have far less impact than people think.

it's like woohoo!!! i will find exactly 0 shavs instead of 0!!! game will be broken!

i might find 2 "rare" uniques in a 4-month season instead of 1!!

GAME WILL BE BROEKN!!!

:)

20% of SFA is still SFA, and seriously go to XYZ and look at prices, instead of worrying about influencing economy you need to be seriously considering raising drop rates to reign the ridiculously high prices in. Unless of course all you want is cookie cutter builds designed for fast clear farming just to get enough currency for builds really wanted. You also need to do something to drop items 50 levels lower than character from pool, an ubber boss would not drop toothpicks 99% of time, if they carried that crap they not hurt you. As for people (most likely the small minority that pushed prices through roof in first place) complaining it reduces the HC factor, that is BS. If drop rates more reasonable instead of low risk high speed farming people would take more challenging maps and bosses to try get the items directly so in fact improve HC side of things.

"

Worldbreaker wrote:

The ONLY reason most of us came here was for a hardcore ARPG. I don't give a flying fuck about the %98. There are so many other games that do easy better and without PoE's flaws. This game wouldn't have got off the god damn ground if they hadn't false advertised it as niche/hardcore. The only thing that was/is (for now) hardcore is the grind

Name one thing that's "hardcore" about PoE, other than the grind?

I just wanted to get my voice heard, it's been heard, good bye.

So you would rather see GGG go bankrupt and shutdown the servers than to make the game better for 98% of the players. Good plan, then you could be happy that POE held tight to their original plan even though the game shutdown. I'm glad GGG stopped listening to the vocal minority that was screaming drop rates and difficulty were fine. Getting 1 shot from off screen while never finding a unique worth more than a few chaos is soooooo much fun for 98%.

"

Chris wrote:

The four tiers of uniques are internally known as:

• Common: Straightforward uniques that are useful for twinking and are very impactful when levelling. Shiversting is a good example.
• Uncommon: Somewhat more complicated or build-defining uniques like Facebreaker or The Three Dragons.
• Rare: Specialised and end-game uniques that aren't meant to drop often, like Bino's Kitchen Knife.
• Super-rare: Chase uniques like Shavronne's Wrappings, Kaom's Heart or Song of the Sirens.

As I've said earlier in this thread, this is not a good rubric for assigning rarity. An improved rubric, adapted from how Magic the Gathering handles rarity, would appear as follows.

A typical common unique should be:

• Relatively humble. Its unique affixes would feel somewhat "yellow," if you catch my drift.
• Not wordy. It shouldn't have too many lines of text, and the lines should be easy to understand.
• Early game focused. It's important to have some access to uniques early on which you outgrow later; if they're too rare, by the time you find them you'll have already outgrown them.
• Not build defining. It should fit into the builds you can normally make with just rares.
• Not disruptive to racing. The minimum number of race winners should be decided by unique drop luck.

In contrast, a typical super-rare unique should be:

• Splashy. Its unique affixes should offer things you can't find anywhere else.
• Wordy. The more lines of text, and the more complicated the text, the more rare it should be.
• Late game viable. Getting late-game uniques should require significant farming effort. Note that "late game viable" doesn't necessarily mean it has a high level requirement.
• Build defining. A good rare unique should make you feel like you've unlocked a new account feature by being able to make builds you couldn't make previously.
• Disruptive to racing. Getting a super-rare drop in a race shouldn't happen often, but when it does it should have a huge impact.

I feel the two key problems here are:
1. "Build defining" should not be an "uncommon" thing. Unlocking new builds can be very strong motivator to chase down a unique, and items which unlock entirely different builds should actually lean far stronger towards the highest rarities.
2. End game viability should be a factor, but not an overwhelming one. Other criteria should be important, and it shouldn't just be "it's a late game item, so it's rare or super-rare."

Although I should probably do a more thorough ranking, let me look at three items with this rubric first. For each subcategory, C means common, U uncommon, R rare, and S super-rare.

1. Mjolner
Splashy: S
Wordy: S
Late-game viable: S
Build defining: S
Disruptive to racing: S (possibly R)
Overall: This is the true exemplar of what a super-rare item should look like.

2. Belly of the Beast
Splashy: U
Wordy: C
Late-game viable: R
Build defining: C
Disruptive to racing: U
Overall: Should be uncommon.

3. Facebreaker
Splashy: S
Wordy: C, maybe U
Late-game viable: R
Build defining: S
Disruptive to racing: R, maybe S
Overall: Should be at least rare, and is a candidate for super-rare. (Sorry, Facebreaker fans, but you know this is true if you're honest with yourselves about how you feel about this item.)