Why just not improving drop rate of high runes?

I’m stuck facing same problems that killed it for me in D2, which is one of the top QoL problems that everyone as been facing since day one.

Bots.

Like everyone, I can agree on how it’s just a endless fight against them but there’s just one way to truly win.

  • Improve drop rate of runes. Personnally, in 20 years I played, never dropped a Zod or anything higher than Vex except on a hell hellforge, which is a one-time thing. I’ve read some posts on players being adamantly against the fact of improving a drop rate when it’s still overwhelmingly low as said here.

  • Replace horadric cube recipes requiring runes. Runes are for runewords, they’re scarce as hell already.
    I don’t use Hel to remove stuff in my uniques, especially when it destroys what as been put in.
    It’s a free/unlimited feature in D3 at the jeweler, why they got it like that in the first case?
    Why not implementing it in D2R in a similar, less punitive/expensive way?
    And THREE low/mid runes, like, 3 Lems, for one tier higher one? C’mon, nobody just throws 2 Lems to trash for a higher one.
    Zoltun Khulle explains in D3 how the horadric cube cube is the father of the Kanai’s cube, then, no, the horadric cube is an overly expensive, crappy and bugged beta of Kanai, fuelling on things player can’t afford.

  • Make magic find scaling with drop rates. People are killing themselves to make MF builds that in no way improve their chances of finding elements for end-game content.

QoL alert here, please, fix this, it’s been 20 years.
Players are not farming runes. It’s a bot job!

67 Likes

Rune drops already have been buffed in 1.13 for e.g. Baal hell Ber from 1:550k to 1:60k. Still looks very rare but you don’t have to boss farm for runes since they are not affected by MF. But i agree that drop rates should get adjusted for the rarest items, but IMHO that’s the base items from the few highest TC’s.

5 Likes

No thx. It’s perfect as it is. No time to play or no desire for that kind of game? Move along. They’re many other games to play.

Don’t touch the drop rates.

100 Likes

I have really mixed feelings about runes. On one hand I enjoy d2s scarcity in that it doesn’t have things raining down from the sky like in D3 making everything feel meh cause nothing feels special and really earned. You can get a lot of really good stuff very quickly in D3, and you also get a metric ton of garbage. The legendaries and sets in D3 were overall pretty poorly designed.

Runes in D2 are a bit egregious when it comes to scarcity, and now I can appreciate the level of power that comes from runewords, some of them are pretty nuts like enigma, infinity, or insight. Even something as cheap as Stealth, Smoke, and Spirit are pretty powerful. The level of power upgrade these things have is insane and shouldn’t be super easily obtained.

However, in single player I’ve been told there is an average of 50hrs or more to find a single ber rune running lk with a telespamming sorc on a perfect map (6 super chests to pop). While I don’t want things to be so plentiful as to break the satisfaction that comes with having things, I think its also reasonable to treat players as players and not demand that they no life the game like bots to have a decent chance of obtaining any of these high end items and runes.

I know somebody who had a Zod drop the other day in Llamas discord, screenshots and all. It was nuts and awesome for that guy, blew his luck budget for the next 20 years haha. I don’t want to have full bis gear in a week, but I also don’t think seeing some of these higher runes should also be a months/years long adventure to get in the most mind numbing way possible (lk run like a bot). If the drop rates were adjusted in a way that made finding them while doing other things more optimal and not running the mind numbing lk loop.

I’ve been playing this game since I was little kid and still have never put together something like enigma or infinity let alone anything requiring a zod or cham rune.

Now I hear the deal with trading, I’ve done a bit of trading already to obtain some things. But if you are in offline that isn’t possible and you won’t be seeing anything of those for an incredibly long time, maybe never cause the rng gods are very fickle in Diablo 2.

So coming from someone who grew up playing d1/d2 something could stand to be done about some of the rarity, but it would need to be done with extreme care.

29 Likes

Care to elaborate on why or…?
Not constructive at all.

4 Likes

There is nothing to explain. The drop rate is just as good as it is. If you don’t have time to play, that’s your problem.
Impatiant D3 players…

Blizzard shouldn’t destroy the soul of this game just because any players don’t have time or desire to PLAY.

Or because they’re spoiled by other, newer, more modern games that aren’t even half as good as Diablo 2?

39 Likes

Also to put into perspective what an average 50hrs per ber rune looks like thats like a full completionist playthrough of a mass effect game per rune, and thats not 50hrs of epic story and adventure, thats 50hrs of running the same loop in lk with a telespam sorc on a perfect map. Any other character and that 50hrs turns into more of a completionist playthrough of Skyrim per rune. That seems a bit much in my eyes, but I don’t want to compromise d2s loot system by adjusting things too much. I don’t know how best to approach the matter, but it should only be done with exceptional care and testing.

19 Likes

Blizzard is killing “the soul of this game” with bots already, your call.

11 Likes

I love Diablo 2, been playing it for 20 years. I don’t think its a matter of impatience. For some yes there is a desire for instant gratification of folks that want enigma day one. There is a reasonable stance of a player who say isn’t a kid who can grind like a second job to get enigma. People have lives, families, etc. If you have the time to grind to a level that you can compete with a bot, great more power to you, but for a lot of people thats a huge ask, and not in a negative way.

Would it be better to adjust drops in such a way that things, while still rare, are in the reasonable obtainability for players who don’t have 40hrs a week to sink into Diablo 2, or do we need to keep things so rare that players end up dealing with bots just because its more worth their time to trade with a bot than to grind the amount of hours it took that bot to dig up that rune, and a bot doens’t need to eat, sleep, or do anything else at all than just grind and grind and grind.

I get Diablo 2 has a very special and delicate balance to things, but we aren’t kids anymore, we still love D2 all the same, but we’ve grown up, we have other obligations in life. I don’t think its unreasonable to say players should be able to obtain the extremely rare things without going many years upon years. Like a Zod drop for example is so rare that there are players who have been playing religiously for 20 years that have never seen them drop, others who have seen only a sparingly few high runes drop in that same time. Players shouldn’t need to stash away anything high power for years because heaven forbid they use it for anything else other than that top tier runeword, and god forbid you accidentally slot it into something or anything else happen. Whoops, lost a ber rune, well hope you see one in the next few months/years cause you can’t unsocket items without destroying the contents. Maybe a bit hyperbolic but I think it gets the jist across.

25 Likes

Not only that, in D3, where the droprates have exploded compared to D2, people can play as much.
People where pushing for that perfect roll, trying more builds and being more creative since they had them on hands already, etc.
I liked that aspect of D3, it was finally affordable but not preventing people to find the challenges of a good grind.

5 Likes

I think a big part of D3s item problems weren’t so much in rarity but in design. You had plenty of really rare stuff, it just was often so meh that it didn’t really excite you to find. Having a full firebirds for example feels nothing like having say a full set of tal rashas or trangs. The items aren’t awe inspiring to find like say homonuculus, occulus, tyrael’s might, etc. D3s drop rates were a bit high when they blew up the numbers, but there is still that grind you can have getting primals and ancients (still havent seen one myself but I haven’t been playing the game much since they implemented all that a ways back so thats my own fault)

3 Likes

My prophecy is coming true, two weeks until people realize dupes were what saved original D2.

16 Likes

I stoped reading after you said you got higher runes than Vex.on hellforge quest.

Those are the players that want to change the game for all of us.
The ones that don’t even know how the game works.

23 Likes

I studied the loot tables man, I know these Runes 17 and all and the farming spots.
The problem is that it bothers you that people get to play with an enigma if they haven’t played 250 hours of mindless, looped pindleruns, and this is absurd, that’s why bots get in the game and this is not why the majority of people like that game.

“Those are the players that want to change the game for all of us.”
Like you’ve not been the majority that forced bots on us, congrats.
Listen man, I will work 1 hour, buy 30ish Zods then.
So much for “all of us” right.

9 Likes

I think drop rate is so different from the original, runes are already easy drops but also something else such as identify scrolls. I found 200+ identify scrolls during my 3-4 hours play yesterday, too many.

As playing a sorc, I also feel like less mana potion drop rate compare to healing potion.

Diablo 2 was not designed to be played in a “monthly ladder system” without bots and dupes and here we are. Working as intended. If you cant stomach 100 000 pindle runs switch to D3.

8 Likes

Only cus you dont have enough time that dosent justifys to increase drop rates. That is your personal problem and not the games fault.

11 Likes

If the game is made to be played by bots, that last ladder reset was in 2017, and top ladder ranked chars also happen to be bots, everything is wrong here.

5 Likes

It’s not Blizzard that kills the soul of the game with bots.

It is the players! exactly the same players who want to drop such a nonsense as personnel loot and higher droprates.
No changes to droprates. ! Wait for D4… Or whatever. Anyway

In addition, bots have nothing to do with the drop rates there.

6 Likes

I expect to actually find some really good stuff if I put hours and even weeks into play, not years and whole life.

19 Likes