How long per legendary?

[trocadero]

It shouldn't be a time based metric, it should be an objectives based metric. Of course, that means those objectives need to be fun, varied and challenging, which this team seems incapable of designing.

 

[Disciple of Erebos]

Now that we are talking about drop rates, you think D3's rates are fair? Or all those ARPGs were just too generous? Because I had a hard time not leaving my runs without some good items on those games. And now with BOA in place what evil would it be to finally set the rates to what ARPGs are more likely to be? Why are the devs so afraid of it? They already developed D3 to not be replayble for years anyway, to be a simple finish-it and put down game, why all this fear that players will get what they want?

I don't know about ARPGs in general, but for D2 (which I assume, perhaps incorrectly, is your main example), loot runs dropped a lot of uniques, but they were usually not 'good' uniques. For example, I only ever got one character through Hell, and most of my time before that was spent farming Nightmare Mephisto and his 'guards.' When I cleared out Durance lvl 3, I always got about 5-6 uniques/sets, but they were never anything good. I usually got a single piece of Sigon, Isenhart's Case/Parry, and a couple low-to-mid level uniques that were no good for any class I had. I spent hours farming Mephisto, primarily because I was having trouble getting through Act I Hell and I wanted better items; ultimately, I never actually got any better items, and because of this I got bored of D2 and downloaded the mod Median XL, which I still consider to be a far superior game to D2:LoD (I certainly played it continuously for 4 years, as opposed to the 1.5 years I played D2). Basically, what I'm saying here is that the quantity doesn't necessarily matter; the quality is more important. I'd rather get one legendary every two hours that is interesting and has a real use to me, as opposed to 100 uniques that were all trash, which was mostly what running Mephisto got me.

I should note that I played only Single Player D2 and, because of this, never traded; as a result, all items in D2 were BoA for me, since I didn't have online to trade them (back then my computer didn't have an internet connection). RoS, in theory, is lessening the quantity of drops in order to increase the quality of drops: if the devs can actually follow through on that and make each legendary/set that drops feel 'worth it,' then I'd rather than one drop every hour or two as opposed to ten crappy drops per hour. My personal luck with finding good items is terrible: even in D3C all of my friends found gear that they sold for at least 100 million, while the best sell I ever made got me about 30 million, and that was after playing for twice the time it took them to get their one 'big' sell. As you can probably imagine, I'm a big fan of the 'quality-over-quantity' argument, since my personal luck is so bad that I'm not likely to hit the jackpot on the quantity end. As a result, if RoS can manage to improve the average quality of drops, then I'm fine the quantity as it is. Besides, TD just posted that he's hotfixing the PTR so that drop chances are doubled (we too that and DOUBLED IT!), so the drop chance should probably be fine now. I'd agree that previously, the PTR drop chance was too low, but as long as the items themselves are useful, the drop chance, doubled as it has been, should be mostly fine.

 

[yovargas]

D2's drop rate was pretty good but centered around boss runs (drop rates without boss runs were blah).

This must be why I've long been baffled with the assertion that D2 has amazing items raining from the sky. I never did boss runs because good lord is that ever boring so for me this idea that you could get a zillion uniques an hour was very, very far from my experience. And I never cared because it doesn't matter as long as I'm having fun.

 

[Kiroptus]

This must be why I've long been baffled with the assertion that D2 has amazing items raining from the sky. I never did boss runs because good lord is that ever boring

Boss runs were the most effective way but It could get boring, thats why I did some pit runs and chaos runs with my summon necro together with those boss runs, and I was still rewarded with good items. And compared to D3, yes, good items were raining from the sky.

so for me this idea that you could get a zillion uniques an hour was very, very far from my experience. And I never cared because it doesn't matter as long as I'm having fun.

Oh it could perfectly possible to have a lot of fun and be rewarded with good items (tho Devs see this as something impossible), after all this is a loot hunting ARPG, was supposed to be anyway... I wouldnt mind being rewarded with interesting rares, sets, uniques, whatever, as long as it they were interesting enough. A good part of the formula is interesting items + good drop rates, not just monster slaying as Travis has said that "the killing of the monster is the reward".

Sorry it isnt only that if they wanted the game to last longer, but thats the point, they dont want it, Diablo 3 is an arcade monster slaying game meant to be put down quickly once its finished, like Gauntlet on the N64, so why are they being so strict/control freaks on the drop rates anyway?

 

[yovargas]

Sorry it isnt only that if they wanted the game to last longer, but thats the point, they dont want it, Diablo 3 is an arcade monster slaying game meant to be put down quickly once its finished, like Gauntlet on the N64, so why are they being so strict/control freaks on the drop rates anyway?

This is the crux of it - they DO want the game to last longer. They want the game to have the ultra-long play life all of there other titles have had. But they didn't build a game that could sustain that. Right now they've put all their eggs into the Legs basket hoping that the hunt for those will keep the game alive. But the game can't survive on items alone. There's nothing here that'll keep the game for years and years on end and I think the sooner they give up on that hope, the sooner they can make the game the a really great short-but-sweet experience.

 

[Kiroptus]

This is the crux of it - they DO want the game to last longer. They want the game to have the ultra-long play life all of there other titles have had. But they didn't build a game that could sustain that. Right now they've put all their eggs into the Legs basket hoping that the hunt for those will keep the game alive. But the game can't survive on items alone. There's nothing here that'll keep the game for years and years on end and I think the sooner they give up on that hope, the sooner they can make the game the a really great short-but-sweet experience.

Exactly, thats the problem, they created a game that isnt what people expected but now they are making changes in hope that it would turn into the game that people expected, weird band-aid fixes and last-minute ideas, but it doesnt matter, it will never be what people wanted, it cant be anymore. They should give up on it, focus more on turning it into a more HD version of Gauntlet Legends instead of a D2 sequel and it will be more sucessful.

Its a schizofrenic title that doesnt know what the hell it wants to be... A diablo title? WoW-Lite? Arcade Monster Slaying? Economic Simulator? They should focus on have it being a short experience once and for all, there is no more time or energy to remodel the game into something else, I say let legendaries with interesting affixes rain from the sky, no one is going to keep playing this for years for the astronomical chance of finding that one legendary item that has the affix that will enhance the specific skill of one the 6 classes that the player enjoys the most and even if they luckily do it, whats the point? some extra minutes of fun with that enhanced skill? They arent extending its replayability, they are just making it more frustrating.

 

[Mackan]

This is the crux of it - they DO want the game to last longer. They want the game to have the ultra-long play life all of there other titles have had. But they didn't build a game that could sustain that. Right now they've put all their eggs into the Legs basket hoping that the hunt for those will keep the game alive. But the game can't survive on items alone. There's nothing here that'll keep the game for years and years on end and I think the sooner they give up on that hope, the sooner they can make the game the a really great short-but-sweet experience.

Some paradox there, right. They want a game that could last long, but didn't build that game? Only conclusion is that they had no clue what they were doing, and all the lead designers should be removed from their positions. This should be the last expansion, and after that they should scrutinise themselves, and return to the roots with a Diablo 4.

Problem is, I don't think there is anyone left in the D3 team that wants to make a real Diablo game. Maybe there are a few developers left in the team that say "Yes boss" all the time, but silently suffers at every design decision... who knows.