Make nodrop% fixed to the players3 non-party rate, regardless of how many are in the game.
Experience:
Nerf or remove the base experience bonus for monsters at higher player counts. Boost party experience bonuses to compensate.
Benefits:
Provide a slightly better drop rate for solo players. They’d still be low enough IMO.
Makes it pointless for snipers to ruin open questing games.
Reduces the incentive for item leechers in multi games.
Makes the play choice very clear… Play solo for items, party up for potentially faster XP gain.
Eliminates the legitimate advantage of multi-accounters gaining access to better drops via multiple accounts in one game. They’d still have the skill buff and experience advantages.
Drawbacks:
The obvious one… Less drops with more players in the game.
I wouldn’t go so far to punish groups with fewer item drops. It already feels bad when you lose items to players snarfing them up, but when there are that many fewer items it hurts even more.
Solo needs a boost and the NoDrop% aspect is a pretty good place to go as it doesn’t inherently boost drop rates themselves, just provides for less chance of a chest or breakable having nothing in it. I’d argue though that this needs to accompany a full SSF mode and be available only to SSF characters. This leaves the group play untouched while giving soloers a minor QoL boost.
Yeah, it’s great… If I wanted to, I can join a questing game right now and run it into the ground just to get better drops than I could right now playing solo…
Think about it.
Is the drop rate really perfect? Or have we perfected ourselves around the current drop rates?
The story about “ruined quest game” doesn’t deserve to be trusted, I’ve already heard it numerous times from people who demand increased drop rates. There are not many quest games on hell unlike normal. Who would be farming on normal? This illogical and sounds like a lie.
Drop rates are high enough and I would say that they might be slightly decreased.
The issue I have when I was playing my nova sorc is actually that it was boring to play once I reached a certain level of power. It was fun for me to take my chances against monsters with 50% more damage, and 400% more hp. I died a few times and came close many more. Lost hours worth of progress, but it was fun to be able to push my character to the limit instead of steam rolling over everything because I progressed too far. I’d like to see a new difficulty that starts at players 8 power, and scales up to 64. Let’s see them crash that.
Players 1 is fun on my start up blizzard sorc because it offers a challenge and the reward feels proportionate to the effort. Once I can kill those same monsters in one hit and be almost certain I’m not going to be rewarded - it’s not fun.
Since hitting lvl 99 a few days ago, I’ve mostly lost interest in playing until next ladder.
Interesting take, one I never expected you to suggest. However, devs need to focus on actually getting people to play more together. Loot is a big barrier to this, and is the obvious place to start. I could care less if they gave me 10,000% extra xp in players 8 partied, and extended the level cap beyond 99, if I’m unable to realistically and consistently grab upgrades for my characters. The only way that this would change, is that if they added even more new items into the game, with higher level requirements than the mid-80s, thus forcing group play to equip those items.
Why do we need to decrease p8 nodrop rate? why cant we just ‘raise’ the floor as you suggested, i.e. p3 nodrop % is the minimum at p1 and scale up based off that
Yeah, I know. I have been against increasing the drop rates, and I’m fine with the system as it is now, as it works fine as long as people don’t abuse the system. It’s a thought experiment on how to address the issues with people taking advantage of the increased drops with more players in the game, while also shifting the drop rates slightly in favor of solo play.
People are going to play solo mostly anyways for drops, because they don’t want someone grabbing their loot. People are naturally going to find the best way to find items, which the current way happens to include methods which others do not like, which prompts people to password protect their games. It’s an attempt to address the issues with those who will ruin others games just for the increased drops, as well as putting a stop to multi accounters gaining the drop rate advantage over others with their wallet.
Personally, I think all that they’d need to do, is remove the general player’s bonus, and instance the loot to each player, and it would be fine. Have FFA option for those that actually care for the competitive clicking, moving those player count bonuses to party bonuses instead so that people can’t end run around the system to get both the increased no drop bonuses, while farming solo to control the Magic Find bonus (using their own instead of whomever gets the kill). This way, your 3 options are Personal Loot with the max of the players 7 split mf bonus (which people can already achieve), FFA loot which gives the highest drop rates for 8 players in a party (with the strings attached of being competitive/must share), or solo where players can control the Magic Find used in each monster kill calculation. If you want to give a quality of life to solo, maybe start base no drop for players 1 to 50% for normal mobs rather than the 62.5%.
Now hardcore market players will be noisy about ruining the economy, but also already utilize the highest solo high player count bonuses themselves. Thus I find it less about ruining the economy, and more about having tighter control of the market themselves running those meta classes. Economy can even be reacted through by adding more item sinks, whether it be corruption system, or more community style events like Dclone.
With Diablo 4 coming, we’ll have 3 seasonal based resets for the Diablo franchise. It would make sense to “speed up” the loot acquisition, to allow players to alternate through each Diablo game to play the seasons and their themes. Those players that only care to specialize in 1-2 Diablo games, can still play each season to the max by gearing multiple characters, since even if unique/set items become more common, High Runes are still rare even at players 8, and most of the best builds are tied to having multiple of these to achieve.
Will Blizzard touch this aspect of the game? I’m not holding my breath. With D4 being less than half a year away at this point, I’m not counting on too many more meaningful updates to D2R.
OK, the only way to stop that would be binding items on account and no trade. Why do you think Diablo 3 went the way it did? Why do you think trade isn’t going to be in Diablo 4?
So unless you have something useful to contribute other than troll trash talk, see yourself out of the conversation. Thanks.
While I have not paid too much attention to all of the D4 leaks, I do think that there will be a market economy in the game, just not the same as D2 players are used to. I feel also that the removal of open trade and the auction house in D3 was not just due to rmt/jsp concerns, but due in part to concerns over players finding it was more efficient to play trade than actually finding items. There was an interview sometime recently where Jay Wilson stated that they wanted to remove the auction house way earlier, but were too concerned over possible legal issues and wanted to research and prepare.
The rmt/jsp issue could be minimized if you had the in game market board structure, and limited trading to just it. Still provides an incentive to bot though, especially if drop rates are choked low. You’d need something in game for currency that couldn’t be traded. IIRC, gold was still able to be traded in D3, which allowed an entrance point for third parties to get involved.
Honestly, I like it enough. Going from 37.5% chance of any item dropping to 50% is a huge increase. We’re talking about 30% more loot. It’s not even a “conservative” increase. Players would absolutely notice this upkick.
My only quip with it is that I only think it’s fair if difficulty increases with reward, but that is an abstract idea in fairness. It would be more difficult for a zerker barb to full clear worldstone on players 1 than a lightning sorc on players 8. lol.
Something has to give and personally I see a new difficulty level as the best way to go about advancing the end game. I’m actually a really big fan of the worldstone shards of PD2 for diversity, power creep, and item sinks. The idea of somebody bricking a crafted 2/20 caster amulet with 30 strength and res or mana, or turning into a 3/20 or 2/30, 2/20 cannot be frozen, etc. Having the maximum sockets or a valuable attribute roll on a piece of gear opens up a seemingly unlimited number of item choices.
I also would find it funny to watch the big dog PvP community scramble to reobtain best in slot gear. Not because I hate PvP, but because competitive people are the most fun to annoy.
I don’t think it’s as huge as you’d like to believe. OP was suggesting to update the base drop rate to that of players 3, which is 38.78% no drop for most normal monsters, which is the same as players 2 party 2. 50% no drop for players 1 is a better balance than that of the OPs suggestion, especially if the devs want to consider a personal loot system to drive multiplayer play beyond that of primarily rushing/leveling fast.
It’s pretty big man. 30% more drops.
I’ll have to take your word on that for the player count % table. p3/p1 always felt reasonable enough, p5/p1 I feel like it’s raining, p7-p1 and I am drowning in loot text on screen.
I want more loot. The economy is always going to be controlled by bot farms. I have found high runes and so have many others, but the majority of all coveted goods do not come from humans playing the game. It only seems fair that I can get mine without cheating or supporting them.