I can’t remember exactly which video, but in one of MrLlama’s earlier videos he said something to this effect about the shared stash: “What exactly is a shared stash, except just the mules we’ve already been using?” The argument being that it didn’t give players any new abilities they didn’t already have, since it was a thing they could’ve done all along, but it just made the process less annoying.
I would argue the same applies here. It would be one thing if the game didn’t have colour highlights at all and you had to pick up individual items to even find out that basic information. But given that the game already uses colour codes to immediately tell you what kinds of items have dropped, the filtering has already been done. It’s just that it’s implemented in a half-baked way where it highlights the things are that you’re looking for, but does so along with a bunch of useless visual noise which is really annoying to look at.
And it’s not just that it’s aesthetically bad. Sometimes it genuinely stops you from being able to see which items have dropped where because of the sheer amount of garbage on screen. Case in point: try opening the super chests in the Arcane Sanctuary on a P7/P8 game. It might take you a couple tries but very quickly you’ll see exactly what I mean. You should not be seeing this kind of thing in a professionally-made video game.
it would give an advantage to people who use certain ones over others unless the filters are curated by blizzard to let anyone choose from a list of premade ones.
giving the freedom to ignore any items you want and make the click boxes nearly the size of screens would do nothing but discourage new players.
the last thing blizzard and the community needs is new players quitting and refunding right away.
I agree that if you gave too much freedom, it would create a race to the bottom situation with feeling like they have to use the same crazy filters or else they’ll get left behind. I think there’s a happy medium to be found here.
For me personally, my filter of choice wouldn’t even change the display that much for me, since even some base and magic items can be useful in addition to the obvious targets of rares, uniques, sets and runes. I think a fair compromise would be that the filter can’t be too granular, ie I think a filter that you could set up do only display base polearms (for example) would be a case of doing too much of the player’s work for them. I don’t think having to look and sort visually through potentially useful items is too much to ask of players.
The problem is, there are too many items that are just categorically useless and contribute nothing to the game aside from screen clutter (and sometimes it’s clutter of crazy proportions). I imagine the first thing most people will do with their filters is make sure they never have to see another scroll or set of arrows/bolts or exploding/poison potion ever again. Now that I think about it, the deeper issue may be that there are certain items that frankly don’t even need to exist in the game, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now I’ll just settle for not having the game alert me to their presence every single time they drop.
The biggest problem is the explosion of potions in 8 player games, as if all 8 players are standing there needing to refill. Potions should drop according to proximity.
The least intrusive filter I can think of, would be one where Runes, unique and set items show without holding down Alt Key. Then everything could show with Alt key down.
If I had to make an argument against them, I’d say they’re an overly nerdy/complicated/moddy solution and something simpler would solve most of the issues people have.
It would be just as good to me if I could set a priority of which items to show when there are too many on the screen. E.g., let me see runes, uniques, sets, rares, magic, socketed, ethereal, normal, ammo, potions, gold, low quality - in that order of priority (or some other order). If you have room on the screen to show them all (99% of the time), then show them all. Otherwise don’t ever hide a rune while I’m holding Alt if there is any other item you can hide instead.
Edit: Or implement a different item display UI for the Alt key. Instead of a random mess of item boxes all over the screen, show them in a priority list, or as multiple scrollable lists by category, I dunno. There are things they could try without throwing up their hands and inventing some convoluted config file syntax for 1% of the playerbase to write and the other 99% to use without understanding.
many people use bots already anyway also doesn’t mean they should make bots.
i am not against loot filters i just think it needs to be done in a smart way the way loot works in groups is already poor enough adding filters will just make it more volatile if they don’t do it carefully.
Come on, did you really have to say this? Lootfilters are considered as feature and devs even talked about it. You cant even imagine they would want botting to be legit.
Lootfilters exists because of flaw in game where there is too much stuff on ground and you can miss items becsuse of it.
No sure what do you smart way, even easy loot filter would be fine, they dont need to make one with milion options. Loot filters exists like 15+ years, it cant be hard to add them for team of developers.
bots exists because of flaw in game where it takes too much time to farm and you can miss items or even your life becsuse of it.
it would be easy to add a loot filter that doesn’t take keeping group loot balanced into account as so many mods have done but blizzard needs to keep that in mind which is why they haven’t rushed to adding an official one. If they can figure it out i am sure they will add one.
i don’t think bots belong in this game but neither do loot filters until they can fix the problems with the inherently flawed group loot and how filters will effect that.
If they introduce it with premade lists you can’t adapt it will be pretty useless I guess. I may want to see white monarchs and trollnests, but not all other normal quality (white) items. I may want to see a normal quality cv ca and thresher but only eth ones. And I may want to see both of those filters without the other normal quality items. I may want to see only special sockets on those items and ignore the rest.
That’s just a few examples. I want to be able to have an “advanced” option where I can click through every itemtype available + properties.
You can add premade filters for new people, but I think those are bad for new players.
this would only work if they change the way loot works on a fundamental level otherwise they are baking tools into the game that make ffa loot even less balanced than it already is.
i don’t see a problem with them adding in a fully customizable filter for when you are solo though.
A loot filter would provide a slightly more even playing field against those that already use third party filters. It’d be different if people were getting banned for the use of filters. However, that isn’t the case since even streamers use it and haven’t been banned.
Explain why please. There are guides for everything, as soon as a player invested the time to read guides and play a little he can use his favorite streamers loot filter guide.
New players won’t or shouldn’t use lootfilter until they know enough, because the game would be a lot harder for them if they only wait for the gg items.
Why would you punish people for knowing which items they want? They are already looking for them and will pick them up faster than any new player who has no clue ever will.
not everyone playing a game uses guides or watches streamers, on top of that if you do those things you wouldn’t be playing with others around anyway.
i would argue it is very useful for them if curated properly to just filter out the items not worth picking up even for new players.
Of course that advantage is still out weighed significantly by the huge advantage other players with more filters would have over them.
why would you punish people significantly more for not knowing which items they should want?
i think you are ignoring how much of a difference filters can make to click-ability because you want to get an advantage.
bots are used by people too and so is maphack i don’t think blizzard should bake those into the game though either.
just because someone breaks rules but doesn’t get punished doesn’t mean we should ignore those rules or get rid of them. What should be happening is people should be asking blizzard to stop the rampant cheating not make cheating part of the game.