The drop rates for items in Diablo 2 have been abysmally low ever since the game was released. Aside from the rune drop bump in 1.13, there haven’t been many changes. Earlier in the games history, there was an issue with higher amounts of magic find that would cause an abnormally high number of uniques and sets to drop all of the time, so the fix was to add diminishing returns on unique, set and rare drop rates compared to base magic find total.
The low drop rates were a catalyst for people running bots, because some of the items can excruciatingly difficult to find. I just found my first Death’s Web about a week ago, and I’ve been playing the game since release!
HOWEVER… The low drop rates make the game that much more rewarding when you do find that ultra hard to find item, and that’s why I love this game. So honestly I’d rather keep the drop rates as they are now.
I also play Diablo 3… If I want a good dose of legendary and set items raining down everywhere, I’ll go play that game, but I usually get bored of it in a short period of time. Diablo 2 on the other hand keeps gnawing at me… Play some more… Find that Tyrael’s Might… Just… One… More… Run!!!
With shorter ladder seasons I do think they should remove ladder only items. As for drop rates and such I think the purpose of ladder is to get what you can in a short amount of time. You shouldn’t be able to find/build whatever you want. So don’t change anything related to drop rates.
This was my favorite thing about the game was the low rune drop rate, yes it’s a grind but if you have a couple friends who pick up low runes you can always ask them to help out with getting runes for yourself and them by using the cube to upgrade them to those high runes, I love making my runes from the ground up. El - ZoD
The real reason to have ladder items off ladder is due to them shortening seasons.
I never played a season for a fresh start, or to get on a leaderboard. I played it to get those cool items. That said I don’t think they should shorten the season.
Correct solution is to keep the ladder season at 6 months, so players can build their completed ladder runewords and then use them on non ladder when the season ends.
Ladder items and runewords exist in non ladder, after the first season.
BIG FACTS BLIZZARD PAY ATTENTION.
w.o having rune drops somewhat buffd or w.o personal loot either or, it’ll make the game a real challenge for the Legit player. “not that it shouldn’t be” BUT if we’re talking shorter season we needa opportunity to actually be able to build gear cause we’re finding runes.
If things are still as hard to get (actually harder if they get rid of bot supplies)
And season is 3 months then the value of items will be lower because less demand will be made because no one is playing or willing to pay the price to have said item for a couple months.
For all we know the 3 month season is so they can evaluate how many bots, whether with good information, or flying blind are effecting the economy as compared to before. Adjust drop rates accordingly. There is no doubt the drop rates got nerfed due to bots, monsters like pindleskin in fixed areas was a bots dream, almost no programming involved in that guy, so his drop rate was heavily nerfed. It all depended on who was being abused. They can’t just buff to prebot drop rates without knowing what’s effecting what.
All the rest is us just guessing why they chose 3 months, which in old drop rates, without bots, would be a nightmare for collecting gear in that timeframe. We are just kinda guessing on all these ones.
I can promise they aren’t basing the length of the ladder seasons on how easy or not it is to find a certain percentage of items. They will be looking at player numbers dwindle pretty quickly after the first month or two and come to the realization that all these slow “completionists” are mostly full of crap, and quit the game just like everyone else does after the 2-3 month mark.
They’ll look at those numbers and decide that the proper range should be somewhere around 3-4 months based on player retention, not some inability for certain people to find items or not find items.
I want as many resets as possible, because the absolute BEST time is during resets. They should also host weekly “reset races” for teams to put themselves up against other teams and have true “world records” for fastest completions. With winners getting special icons for the accounts and such.
That’s fine. And that is why non-ladder exists. For people who want to stack up the perfect pvp chars, or people that don’t have the infinite hours to grind up to 99, or to find every unique in the game. Ladder is the most popular because most of the people want to start fresh, play till their character is solid, then quit again. Most of the time, especially without d2jsp it takes about a month for that to happen if you play a normal schedule.
Don’t have the time to make that happen? Don’t worry, you can grind it out for as long as you need on non-ladder, and return to ladder during another reset to start fresh again.
Need 6 months to grind out a char? Play every other ladder… Pretty simple. It’s not a competition believe it or not. It’s okay for other people to move on and play another ladder without you.
I agree there shouldn’t be anything on ladder that isn’t on non-ladder. But can’t agree that ladders should be shorter, even if they refuse to change that. Creating long ladders for the couple dozen people that are actually worried about grinding a specific item on ladder compared to the tens of thousands that don’t care is absurd.
Your argument shouldn’t be about ladder seasons, it should be about accessibility to single player and non-ladder for the ladder only items. To which I agree with you.
Diablo 2 on the other hand keeps gnawing at me… Play some more… Find that Tyrael’s Might… Just… One… More… Run!!!