I keep seeing those in favor of instanced loot overloading the forums with their demands for personal loot, but providing inadequate answers when asked directly how would this be implemented without drastically changing the way loot functions in the game. The issue for me with personal loot is not that I don’t like it, I just don’t see its place in a Diablo 2 game. Diablo 2 has an expectation of how loot will drop and any multiplayer personal loot would need to change that in a meaningful way.
This involves tweaking things under the hood that I simply would not want in a D2 remaster. It is also unfair to ask players to just not play with it as an option. In most satisfying ways personal loot can be implemented there would ultimately be more total drops. Asking players to turn this off is like asking someone to return a tax break if they disagreed with why it was implemented. I will do my best to explain, but if they did not increase total drops in personal loot you will “feel” like you get less drops in multiplayer games compared to solo.
To start, the only way to guarantee that the drop rate remained unchanged would be for the EXACT same loot to fall, but assigned to a player. Other players would need to be able to see what fell. There are too many items such as runeword bases that are of extreme importance to one player and no pick up garbage to another. If you cannot see that the item fell you would now have a feeling in multiplayer games that less items fall and you would be denied what might have been an uncontested pickup. That is before we even get into trying to implement how loot gets assigned. There are also strange tradeoff in getting 1/8 of players 8 loot vs playing by yourself that would really change how people play the game.
If you get into any changes where loot is calculated for the player individually, you have now fundamentally changed how loot drops in a dramatic way. That is because more players in a game simply decreases the rates at which monster drop nothing. For example lets say Meph can drop max 6 items. At a certain number of partied players in game on screen Meph will always drop 6 items, but he will never drop more. To maintain a balance with individual loot calculations in an 8 player game you would have to have a calculation where on average 2 players get no item. Without some overarching group hard caps, you would now have situations where Meph gives 7-8 items to an 8 person party, or less than 6. On average this would be no different, but will “feel” very different game to game. A multiplayer run will give you 0-3, 0-2, or 0-1 drops depending on the number of players whereas a single player run gives you 1-6. For someone who can clear this content pretty easily, there would be little incentive not to just clear it solo. The only time this would benefit someone really would be leeching off an XP run where you are not the one killing the monsters.
I know that was very wordy, but its things like this why players who are coming off as elitist are asking you not to change certain things. Some of the changes suggested actually open up a can of worms where they can actually really change the feel of the game.
The problem is, with any of these loot distribution tables, is an analyses of what is fair, balanced, and expected out of a modern remaster. If this was just a single player game remaster, then there wouldn’t be as much of an issue; simply whatever the devs have for the vision. But when you have an online game, one that was super popular in it’s prime, but support dropped dramatically for, an announcement like this is naturally going to cause a stir, especially for fans of the different iterations.
With that said, the current loot system might be iconic, but what many people believe, rewards illegitimate players and is an outdated mechanic due to not actually promoting party play and incentivizes playing solo to get your loot. I’m surrounded by mobs, zealing my butt off and one of my mobs die, dropping a HoZ. If no other Paladins in party (like that would happen post 1.10, lol), and I killed the mob, realistically that piece of loot should be mine. I’m a Paladin, and it’s Paladin gear. But the Sorc throwing lightning across the screen sees it drop, and teles over while I’m stuck in mid zeal animation to grab it. The loot system does not reward party play, and “shared” loot is anything but.
Instanced loot has it’s downs, such as removing the other players from seeing what each other got, but is a fair distribution system without having to have some complex system calculation to assign drops, giving favor to classes that could use them or locking out said drops in an instance lock for x amount of time before other players see them (which creates a messy UI situtation).
For economy, D2 is a notoriously low drop chance game, not everyone is going to be getting epic loot each run. Players will still want to trade with each other when they are close to completing a runeword, or completing a set. I’d say the economy would be better off than it is on current live, with many of the legitimate items in the hands of actual players, rather than in bot inventories to sell rmt.
short answer? you can’t…
This is what people don’t seem to understand or they don’t care about.
the people who want this have either never played d2 or they are mad that with botting and pickit are grabbing the good gear. neither of which should be an issue in d2:r because of the new battle.net 2.0. ( i mean wasn’t it blizzards excuse of “we can keep up with botters on such old architecture, the og bnet cant support what we need to catch people effectively”?)
and yeah u dont always get the good drop… thats life. but changing this would mean they would need to dramatically alter the loot tables. and it would this isnt into a crappy game like d3.
this would drastically change game balance. if you add this it might not as well be d2 anymore.
Blizzard has already worked how the mechanics of instanced personal loot in multiple Blizzard games (e.g. D3 and WoW). Blizzard is competent to introduce this change and are experienced in doing so for multiple IPs.
Stop claiming the boogeyman of D3 or claiming that people never played D2. I have never heard of PoE or other instanced loot gamers whining so vocally and blaming Diablo 3. At worse, they would have to remove the no drop buff in multiplayer and perhaps replace it with a general MF buff, or just buff the xp for the party.
You are climbing the wrong tree about other Blizzard games doing this. That is literally the biggest complaint of the no changes crowd is due to lack of trust to them.
there is a reason why most d2 fans dont like d3… it’s because the balance is horrific… the trading is terrible, and a bunch of other reasons.
one major one is how the loot drops.
adding “instanced” loot and having each player get thier own loot. is one of the many reason d2 players DONT LIKE D3.
thats why we DONT WANT IT.
d3 went from a game of where u could clear torment 3-4 with any build you want… very similar to d2.
a game of “this set gives you 25000% extra damage to skill X”
completly removing any ability to mix and match the skills you want… and forcing you to use predetermined gear and sets.
they also went down the aspect of jsut “infinitely increasing damage” infinite levels.
which bring up the same issue of “you chase the best player around picking up loot the entire time” PoE has this same issue in its maps system.
d2 is al about " pick w/e skills you want to do and find a way to clear hell with it.
d3 is about " picking only the best of the best" so u can do ever do the a infinitely rising higher level of torment.
there is no “pick your own build”
i have beaten d2 with a kicksin… with an enchant sorc… with a FIREWALL sorc.
what d2 allows u to do is pick ANY skill you want and make a build around it.
ity may not be the most efficient but you CAN do it.
d3 just completely eliminates any option to do anything but the “best” or you might as well be playing a single player game.
so yeah that your d3 BS out of d2. there is a reason why i played d2 for 11 years… play d3 for 2 and then went back and played d2 for 3 more years…
WE DONT WANT D3
i probably won’t be buying d4 either becuase i dont trust blizzard to dont ruin it like they did d3
Most of what you posted, were flaws of D3 that are unrelated to instanced loot. And I agree with those flaws of the skill builds not being as good as D2, and it was a numbers bloat game. Personal loot will not magically make your Firewall sorc change to conform to D3 skill systems. The items themselves are not going to change to stack crit chance and dmg, etc. Loot 2.0 is what cause BoA when drops were overtuned to like D2x1000, where orginal D3 was more undertuned, with lower drop chances than D2.
not only is it “not broken” your idea of a “fix” is WORSE than what we have.
WE DO NOT WANT INSTANCED LOOT… if u LIKE that stuff THEN GO PLAY A DIFFERENT GAME.
instanced loot would LITERALLY ruin the game. i would ask for a refund if they tried to add that BS.
Been playing for 21 Years, i probably have 30000 hours and personal loot never crossed my mind and i think its the dumbest change idea i’ve ever heard.
This is not world of warcraft.
This is not d3 (which sucked so bad).
If you wan’t all this crap added go play Mods like Pd2/POD/Median XL.
I don’t get why people are so obsessed by the loot, 99% of the time YOU WILL BE FARMING IN YOUR OWN PRIVATE GAMES ANYWAYS.
Only way to get to see loot drop is in pub baal runs, wich you probably wont be running much, or if you do you’ll have a circle of buddies that will run them privately eventually and will mostly just give you the loot if you actually need it anyways.
Two really undergeared players may run Pits/Tunnels and Trav and CS together to MF but thats pretty rare and obviously you wont run with a complete stranger, I’ve done that with friends before and we would just write everything down on a note pad and use what we can use and then split the profit of the other items found to buy other peices we need.
It ain’t rocket science , this is a core element of the game.
There are a lot of rather “popular” ideas around that would be horrible for a remaster (increased Droprates, personal Loot, more XP, etc.).
Most of them don’t originate within the “OG” D2 player base, which probably is the most important part of the community when it comes to keeping D2:R alive long term.
Many people who came from D3 or other games will likely play for a few month and then move on to D4 or whatever and never come back, so I don’t think it would be a good idea to tailor the game around them.
This remaster is for the purists, period.
If you don’t like it , find another game and stop trying to ruin the gaming experience we cherish and love.
So even in this thread for those in favor of changing it to personalized loot, you do seem to imply you want the way loot drops function to change.
That is the issue and why you have such strong opinions against this change. In a D2 RE-MASTER you are asking that they do what will end up being an overhaul of the loot system. It confuses me how anybody would see that as a reasonable change on the re-make of the game
I have not seen any ideas of personalized loot that would make up for the scenarios I described. It all just comes off as I want to do boss runs and not fight over loot. That doesn’t seem to justify the level of change that would bring
The way I currently play now, is that I quest solo in a private game, or if I play with my father, we go through the quests. Then I use pub games to level, and when I reach my desired level, I move to next difficulty. It would be nice to go through the quests with a full party, as the atmosphere is better as well as the social aspect, but in my experience (and I know I’m not alone), most people scoop up the loot, usually while I’m busy fighting. Hence, I just tend to play solo. By the time I’m in act 4 nightmare, I do meph runs until I am upgraded enough to tackle Diablo and move on, etc. Depending on what character I play, I can usually get to act 2-3 on Hell solo. Then usually if I play an elemental, the immunes overwhelm and I drop back to act 1-2 to farm either Pits or AT (depending on elemental build) and so on. Mid way through hell would be nice to group up to progress without being ninja looted.
I personally wouldn’t care either way. I don’t go into public games in D2 with the goal of getting some super amazing rare drop. Public games were usually just about XP or ganking people in HC.
If they were going to do it, I’d say you’d leave most things as whoever grabs it first/public loot and just make mid-rare+ items on some kind of round robin system. Or just random assignment on a timer and if they don’t pick it up fast enough it becomes public loot.
edit: if they did it it wouldn’t have to be some major overhaul of the loot system. The exact same loot and amount could drop and you’d just have to have a system of reserving certain tiers of gear for specific players (possibly on a limited timer).
I’m just not understanding what changes with instanced loot here? The same issue would be happening, you just won’t be able to see it’s happening.
Do you think when you played with other players you lost > 60% of good items dropped? With no drop rates changed you’re agreeing to give up 87.5% of quality drops in an 8 player game regardless of the others 7 players contributions or efforts.
I think people just have some idealistic views of instanced loot is or secretly they just want drop rates increased.
What changes, is every player would have their own loot. Instead of one dice being thrown, and the loot spilling on screen to where fastest click wins, each player would cast their own dice. Each player receives loot based on individual dice rolls. Player A might get junk, player B might get Sigon Boots, Player C might get a rare ring. Player C doesn’t have to worry about player A grabbing what player C killed while he/she was in mid attack frame. To balance the amount of loot dropped due to increasing no drop mod from increased players in game, you eliminate the no drop or reduce it.
Again, there -are- some balance issues and tweaks to make instanced loot work, but the current system promotes greed over need and the fastest click to ping ratio. Hardly what I would call “shared.” Now in a more static group, like with friends, looting is generally pretty easy to split, but I would reckon most of the general population is going to be randoms.