It’s not that much higher that it would ruin or destroy the economy though.
And frankly, if the tradeoff is that 8 people can play together instead of 8 solo games, I think it’s fine. I’ll take slightly more items on the market in exchange for more opportunities for group play and fun.
That’s what makes D2 so awesome is the drop rates. Knowing that I may never find an item, but if/when I do the feeling is great. Personal loot wouldn’t amount to 8x more the drops if it was an 8 person game. It would still calculate to the same “total” drops that would have dropped if it was a shared loot game. The only difference is personal loot makes it to where there are no leechers getting loot, etc. I would rather D2: R be shared loot than personal loot, but if they change it to personal loot then hopefully the “total” drops stay the same as if it was shared loot. As of now D2: R will be shared loot(from D2: R front page and even the Devs - “Classic gameplay—the same Diablo II you know and love, preserved.”), but give it time and they will either change it to personal loot only, or as some suggested having an option for shared loot or personal loot.
I dont think people would MF any more in groups even with personal loot, i just dont get why peple keep asking it, D2 is not like D3 where you hotjoin a game with your crappy geared char to be carried and follow a random guy who zoom’s trough maps and you follow trail of legendaries without ever seeing any monster, and anyway, who think this is fun?
Current state of D2 just doesnt suppport group magic finding very well, runs lasts mere minutes, you have to type game name and maybe password every few minutes,(hope its not full if its public game) wait for someone tele to boss, kill it in few seconds, exit and join new game, i dont think many ppl would find this very fun so personal loot doesnt matter all, currently it is 100% wasted development time and would just delay games launch.
You dont hotjoin public mf run games in D2, it just doesnt work like that, and if you play in group of friends etc, shared loot shouldnt be any issue.
And D2 is legendary for its rare loot, personal loot would mean 8x more stuff, not good, there will be millions of players…
It doesn’t mean 8x more loot though.
8 players doing 8 solo runs at the same time, vs 8 players doing a run together.
There will be a little bit more loot and that’s it.
You could even remove the group MF bonus and then there would be exactly as much loot as if everyone just played solo. Only, they can play with others, which is more fun for most people.
This part I’ll jump on, personal would just mean each item, depending on who is close to it would roll a chance. So if 2 people are within the screen distance it is 50/50 roll on each item instead of throwing them for everyone… but this does nothing to stop leeching, in fact makes it easier to just be kinda close, no where near the drops, and get drops.
Well, assuming they would do personal loot, then they would also need to adjust droprates, othwerwise no one would ever see any good loot drop, and imagine the cries in the forumz…
So yeah it would be more, dunno its 8x but anyway.
That’s my rub, what if in 300 games the 12.5% chance in an 8 man game never goes your way, because this new 0.0001% chance item now has a 0.0001% / 8 people chance of ever showing up on your screen. Just no way it would even show up… do you adjust to compensate, start moving the odds towards player not getting drops, change drops completely.
Also one thing i like in D2’s shared loot that there are quite a few items that many people dont pick up and can be worth quite alot and some can be really hard to find, with personal loot system you never get the change to pick those up if they dont roll to you.
If they were to make it personal loot only, or an option for personal loot maybe they can make it only apply to uniques/sets/runes, or something of the sort. All the other loot will still be shared for anyone to pick up so that way all the loot isn’t personal loot.
The developers would not make it personal loot only.
If personal loot was introduced , I am reasonably certain it would be as a selectable option that would be segregated at game creation or character creation level. Blizzard could also introduce “timed loot” as an option that is a compromise that incorporates concepts both from FFA and personal loot.
Gold-Auto-Pickup came like cancer to the PC version (Very bad change, affects game difficulty in early ladder, affects economy, destroys builds (ie gold find barb).
How does this change affect game difficulty?
How does it affect the economy?
How does it destroy builds?
There’s a gold find barb build? Never knew.
I always wanted auto gold pickup, gold is already distributed between party members.
I am not sure about changing seasons length. Players don’t invest time in their characters at the end of seasons because the next season starts soon — It is first and foremost a domino effect of players not willing to play alone, regardless of the length of the season imo. And I personally don’t mind longer seasons since the economy will be clean and leader boards meaningful.
Anyway I enjoyed the read TopCommander. I agree with everything else and found your analysis interesting. Well written.
D3 owns all of its commercial succes to D1/D2.
D3 failed because it was not D2.
D2 will be played long after D3 is dead.
You dont miss gold then you you have more. If you have more gold you can gamble more. If you can gamble more then you get more loot. If you get more loot then you can trade more items. If there is more items to trade then price of items goes down.
If items are cheap then you can get it easier. If you can get items easier then that means game is easier.
Why would i need gold find barb if i have more gold?
These 3 questions shows why casuals with almost zero experience from d2 shouldnt make suggestions to change game.
If you take time to make “gold find Barb” then you will continue to make this build, you only will not need to click to get your gold piles.
You literally can sold normal high defense items or wands on hell until you get max gold.
And gold will continue to be distributed between party members.
Ah sry tomorrow we talk again. I’m to tired of noobs who dont have any clue how d2 works.
Explaining why Auto-Gold-Pickup has significant impact on D2 to someone that appears to know nothing about D2 is like explaining the solar system to a neanderthal.
Anyone that has played in a ladder reset or started a new character from scratch without twinking knows this.
When you start out with a brand new character without any previous gold and gear, such as during a ladder reset, you know how gold is really a scarce commodity.
Dying in D2, has a massive gold cost, especially early in the ladder where you have very little gold
Reviving Mercenaries, which are crucial in D2, has a massive gold cost early in the ladder where you have very little gold
Gear Repair cost can have a massive gold cost depending on item bases worn on the character (ie Elite bases, or enhanced bases)
Life and Mana potions have a very high gold cost early in the ladder (again, a time where gold isn’t available in abundance)
Finding Items that sell to vendors for a large gold amount is very difficult early in the ladder if you are trying to progress into NM and especially Hell
Being low on gold, or running out of gold, often means one must reduce the difficulty and farm up some gear and gold in order to being able to revive a mercenary or to stock up on potions etc.
Gold-Auto-Pickup essentially makes these aspects of the game very trivial. It makes the game easier, more dumbed down and as mentioned affects also the economy.
Previously, skilled players would not pick up these thousands of 0-100 gold piles, and would focus on larger piles such a 1000++, simply because it was more efficient. Now, people will be loaded with gold right off the bat when hitting act 2, simply because the amount of those countless small gold piles will add up ridiculously high.
But you know… as mentioned, Consoles NEED Gold-Auto-Pickup I think, and since there is Cross-Progression between consoles and PC, they had to bring Gold-Auto-Pickup to the PC. It’s unfortunate, and I hope that the Devs understand how they are significantly changing the game in many other areas with this change (Ripple Effects), even if it looks trivial or even good to them on first glance.
I don’t think it is going to change the economy because people generally don’t trade gold. Also the gold penalty for dying far outweighs the perceived benefit of auto pickup. This isn’t going to auto id wands and vendor them for you. Even PC gamers aren’t as into clicking the mouse as they were in 1998. Look at all the people who are asking for smart cast key binds like LoL. Clicking on piles of 10 gold (which most people skipped as you pointed out) is not what made Diablo 2 what it was. If anything the idea that a poor adventurer would leave all that lying on the ground is a bit immersion breaking.
I don’t see it as much of a problem, it’s split anyways, I really would just pick up wands or something I knew was max value available then individual piles, I do see a clear improvement in gold auto pickup… but I’m meh.