Coincidence doesn’t prove causation. The game was already 10 years old at that point and Starcraft 2 and D3 - 2 plausible catalysts for significant player base migration - were introduced at varying times after the 1.13 patch.
I think we need some context around these numbers; we can talk numbers all day long, but numbers will remain just numbers until we relate it back to something real.
- If someone plays D2 for 4 hours a day 5 days a week, I think if anyone is able to keep up this schedule consistently while juggling everything that’s happening in their lives, they are doing well. Assuming this, that’s a minimum of 40 weeks worth of gameplay to reach 800+ hours
- In contrast, Starcraft 2 pros play 50 hours a week, or a little bit more if in the lead up to a tournament. I consider this level of play very much impractical for the current D2 player base, many of whom used to play D2 back in its 1.09/1.10 days and are now living adult lives
- 1 Zod rune from a minimum of 800 hours of gameplay offers you part of a runeword, or to use it in 1 item to make it indestructible. Along with other runes found, you can make a handful of other runewords.
- This seems to be consistent with my anecdotal experience, albeit I probably achieved the same number of 800 hours over a longer 28 month period since I picked up the game again to make BotD, Enigma, CTA, Infinity, CoH, Faith, Pride and a few Fortitudes with quite a few more high runes to spare. Note that a number of runes found have been through P7 Lower Kurast running
- The shelf life of D2R is to be considered. At best, I see this game lasting another 8 years, at worst another 2 years. I’d argue that optimal drop rates will play a factor in determining this number:
- too high and the player base would have played out all the builds they would have wanted to build
- too low and the player base would give up and play something else that can make them feel more adequately rewarded
- out of the 2 scenarios above, the top one is better from a player satisfaction perspective; the latter scenario would be like watching a horror movie and seeing no one die
- For me, I don’t consider myself even close to exhausting all the build possibilities after the 2 years of starting from scratch, so I can’t imagine an increase in drop rates would “kill the game”
- By contrast, I played Zelda BotW for a few months at the same pace and felt like I’ve accomplished enough in the game (the only thing left really was all the 900 or so seeds). Link’s awakening I did everything in 1-2 weeks haha
- Something else to keep in mind is runes are not even the rarest thing in the game. High level unique, magic and rare items are. If anything needs a buff in roll probabilities or potency, it is these items
- If properly fixed, it would at least address the fatigue and frustration experienced by people not finding runes, by at least finding magic or rare items that are of equivalent strength
- Currently, it would take someone 100 years of 24/7 play to find a rare bow that is on par with a Windforce. That’s just dumb