I was thinking of the Live song “Beauty of Grey”
Why else would you play the game? If I wanted to play a game for the stellar graphics environment, there are way better choices. If it’s for skill or mouse control, better choices. This game does a good job rewarding grinding, which is the core of the game.
Yes, what you call “intermediate players” are basically players who have the same goal as the “no lifers” but just don’t want to, or cannot, put in the time to achieve it. While true casuals often have no idea of anything beyond clearing core content. Like I was when I played D1 back in 90’s. To me it was a creepy fantasy horror survival game. Loved the content, graphics and sound. Hadn’t the slightest thought of “farming gear” after I completed it.
In this game I’m an intermediate who lucked out with RNG and have some end game BiS as a result. But nowhere near all of it. The fact I lucked on RNG may be why I don’t want the drop rates increased. I might feel different if I gotten snake eyed.
But I think the players who farm a lot would leave with any substantial increase, and I can well understand why. And that in the longrun would make for dead servers and little grouping opportunities. Intermediate players are likely to not play long term, even if drop rates are more to their taste. When D4 comes around, I’m out of here either way, unless I hate it.
As to increasing it a smidge, not going to piss off the long terms much, but not gonna satisfy the intermediates either.
Drop rates are what keeps people coming back. You get all the stuff you want too quickly then you’ll just quit the game lol
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Yes, but if you played 2-4 hrs per week, even if they doubled the drop rates, you’d still take an awfully long time to get BiS on even one character. Yet if you play say, 4-6 hours a day, you’d get it fast and quit. That’s why it’s such a difficult problem, and why this one game won’t satisfy everyone.
I quit and gave my gear away 3 times now, Because it is to easy get gear and runes, and then it become boring.
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Drop rates are certainly not “perfect” (I’m offline self-found so I know this all too well), but people who insist rates are different in D2R vs LOD really do need a reality check. There’s no evidence I’ve ever seen that Blizzard has adjusted drop rates. One person’s anecdotal experience doesn’t prove anything.
I think one of the big mental disconnects people have with this game is that there’s three categories of often very rare items that vastly increase your power (for the vast majority of builds anyway):
• -% resist gear
• certain high runes
• skillers
You can have the same exact build, the same maxed skills (20 hard points), and most of the same gear as someone else, and still do a pathetic fraction of the damage they do because of the outsized importance of:
• immunity breaking
• skill damage rapidly compounding at high +skill counts
It’s definitely not on the same level as the 10000% set bonuses in D3 being the difference between “powerful” and “objectively unusable” (which D3 “fixed” by skyrocketing drop rates - which I’m not proposing as the solution!), but it is a similar category of issue: seemingly small gearing/inventory changes that massively alter your power multiple times over.
So for example if you have Infinity/Conviction and other -% resist gear and I don’t, most of your elemental builds will be somewhere between “a whole damn lot” (i.e. doing multile times more damage to non-immunes) and “literally infinite” (i.e. breaking immunities I can’t) stronger. Even if we look like incredibly similar characters on paper.
And nearly every single print and video build guide on the internet for D2 is going to show you just that: Infinity, Enigma, Grief, BotD, Fortitude, Griffons, Facets, tons of Skillers, perfect Dmg/AR charms, Torch, Anni. This really draws attention to the disparity in performance between what’s realistic to find by yourself, and what’s only realistic through trading, real money purchases, or begging for hand-outs.
I don’t know what the perfect drop rates should be. I do think they’re poorly thought out for solo play, but I also don’t want it to be anything remotely like D3. There’s a ton of middle ground between those two points. I do recall finding PD2’s rates a lot more rewarding (only time in 20 years I’ve been able to make and experience the game-changing beautify that is Infinity!), so maybe that’s close to ideal.
But this isn’t a new issue, it isn’t unique to D2R, it’s how the game has been for ages and ages now. It is what it is, and I doubt we’re ever going to see a change.
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if there isnt much difference between infinity and non infinity or similar scenarios then gear no longer really matters. if infinity becomes a lot easier to get then the game is even easier. you keep saying it is an issue. many players do not think it is an issue and that is merely an opinion. if you want to play slower then non ladder is perfect for you
Autogold has already made the drops better since you aren’t spending the time picking up gold, and once the gold is vacuumed up the gold labels aren’t hiding the labels of potential good drops.
Now something needs to be done about the huge number of potion labels, because sometimes I have to pick up and drink through a bunch of them to see the other items. This is especially true if you’re a class that funnels a ton of monsters into a kill box, such as a Hammerdin, BlizzSorc, LightningJavazon or CE Necro. 
This misrepresents the discussion. It’s not like Infinity is, say… a 15% increase in damage. In cases of immunity breaking it’s a functionally infinite increase in damage, because it’s the difference between doing 0 and doing a lot more than 0. Even with non-immunes it results in doing multiple times more damage in most cases.
There should be some difference in outcomes with Infinity, as with any high end item. Absolutely. But the amount of difference is what’s open to debate. Of course, the issue isn’t Infinity itself, it’s the rather restrictive ways in which D2 implements immunities that create the need for Infinity (and the rather limited handful of other ways to break immunities) and limit player choice and gameplay diversity.
Now, that ship has pretty much sailed at this point, I don’t actually think such a central mechanic is going to change in D2R. But I do think it’s worth understanding why the drop rates and itemization (which is in many other ways very good) of D2 aren’t going to be described as “perfect” by many people, though. Even people like me, who have played thousands of hours of the game. I play in spite of what I perceive to be the game’s flaws, not because of them.
The drop rates are awful but i’m okay with this. Diablo 2 is a grind heavy game.
More character slots and QoL changes like stackable runes would be much more better imo.
Just to make it clear
A griffs is 1/120k to drop from the correct unique mob
You wanna make it 1/114k?
Correct. Start with a small change so that the chicken little the sky is falling crowd to realize that a small change is not the end of the world.
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so to be clear 1/114k isnt actually what you want, its a stepping stone to what you want
Making a small change would only open the flood gates for further increases. Going from 1:120K to 1:114K isn’t going to satisfy those who clamor for higher drop rates.
Give an inch, take a mile…
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he is going to claim its a slippery slope fallacy while he just admitted he wants it to be a stepping stone, just wait
And once the best gear is easily obtainable, people will want rarer and even better items (ancients, primals etc).
There is a middle ground between “hundreds and hundreds of hours of grinding and you still won’t find a lot of stuff that’s treated as standard kit in build guides” and “easily obtainable”. Lots of room in there to compromise. I’ve played this game for thousands of hours for two decades, and I’ll continue to do so even with the current drop rates. But we can still take a measured approach to the discussion, rather than pure hyperbole (on both sides).
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Sounds like a good reason not to change it at all.
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I want to overcome inertia and loyalty to petrified opinion that D2 = D2R. D2 had an increase in drop rates (some runes 4x if I recall correctly) so 5% is incredibly modest. There is no justification that D2R can not have an increase in drop rates especially since botting and duping has been reduced in D2R.
Let’s be honest this forum is highly enrivhed in those who favor the status quo. Even with that bias, there is support for change.
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