Hear me out…
I get the idea that there are certain drops that are best for certain builds and that you don’t want the loot itself to be so smart-loot-restricted that you are committed to a build and all its loot all the time.
But target farming by going to one area or boss fight to get a higher chance of the item you want is dumb. It cuts off huge chunks of content in addition to narrowing the items you find. It forces you to grind content you otherwise wouldn’t, which isn’t a solution to there being some content you want to do and some content you don’t want to do.
Instead, the game should provide a progression system that gradually specs your drops and content into the form you want. It could be that’s a passive tree like the Atlas or a set of charms in a bag or a rune-like progression of elixir recipes or new set of socketables or whatever else you can come up with.
Regardless of the form of it, focusing your bonuses should be able to massively increase the chance to drop certain groups of affixes, base item types, specific aspects/uniques, specific boss mats or other mats, specific elixirs, gems, gold, etc. Then a different set of bonuses should affect the content you face, like upping drop levels from helltide or NMD or making certain NMD affixes or hellborn spawns more likely or making it more likely you will face certain levels in the rift or find certain NM keys to specific dungeons or be given certain types of whispers or generate helltide threat / find cinders and hearts.
Whether the content bonuses should compete with the loot bonuses I’m not sure, but having both kinds of bonus would make later progression way more interesting whether you want to get yourself closer and closer to perfecting a build or want to farm up gear for an alt. Making it possible to swap your active bonuses would be great for alts, and argues for more of a skill tree or codex-style storage for the bonuses.
So what do you think? Better than target farming, right?
8 Likes
I get that some dont like to do opinional boss farming but its always been a staple in arpgs. The only reason to boss farm is for loot and as it is drop rates are quite high for items that are supposed to be rare.
The RNG casino mechanics is what makes it addictive but when items are so common as they are or there is a participation system in place loot hunts lose all purpose and meaning.
2 Likes
If you do not have target farming:
- The fastest and best way to acquire gear becomes the only content worth running.
If you have target farming:
- You have to run content you either do not like, or want to run.
No matter which way you go, there needs to be multiple similar routes to get the challenge and gear you want. NMD is the only thing that scales. Uber Duriel and some of the Uber Bosses are the only way to really get the Unique and Uber Unique items you want. Hell Tides and Whispers serve as nothing more than a means to an end.
Coming in S4, The Pit basically will become the only thing worth running with Masterwork being gated by it and its continuous scaling.
4 Likes
I was opposed to it when it was announced. I warmed up to it. I hope eventually we have multiple bosses with different tables.
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It’s fine as a concept IMO, it’s just that they have overdone it I think
In fact loot tables were so damn exclusive to one another that an addition of a new Boss ended up having to overlap a one existing
IF on the other hand they reduce the “exclusive” drops from bosses to like 3-4 per, then the rest of the Uber/uniques could drop from other places as well
S4 might get better with the Pit - as long as there’s some small chance for Uber/uniques to drop from there too (at say higher levels)
Who knows, we’ll see
In Season 1 it took me 100 hours to find Tempest Roar for my Seasonal Druid. I didn’t want to make a build for it. I just want to try out a different playstyle. Being at the mercy of RNG for build variety is bad game design.
Gone are the days where I’m stuck making a build with whatever gear RNG gives me. Even if they don’t mess well. All because my RNG is terrible.
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I see a lot of responses that didn’t read my post only the title, so I guess I’ll tl; dr it:
Replace dumb target farming via restrictive boss loot tables with customizable target farming via a mechanic that lets choose different types of drop chance buffs
same. at first i didnt really see how it would nicely fit to diablo, but yea, like you said, i also warmed up to it.
I remember proposing on forum that instead of farming to lvl 99 or reaching some greater rift level we get boss fights as endgame goal but I didn’t mean D2 single boss farming whole day that dies from 2 hits… I had WoW epic raid boss fights or PoE endgame bosses in mind.
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There is a need for targeted loot…especially with pit and GA drops. I believe that the unique ones will be quite useless now with only 4 affixes x 5 of the legendary ones. In the PIT there should be a tree or frame to direct the loot. Or you select the PIT with 3 final rewards in %. Another detail, now that items 925 will be obsolete as they have dropped everywhere because there is no way to transform a good 850 item that I have into 925. I would put more emphasis on the climb.
So LE’s Circle of Fortune system but for the entire loot system as LE has specific target farming as well.
That’s one way to do it, yes. I prefer charms with some form of codex you can extract them to
didn’t they say at campfire unique and even Ubers have a chance to drop from not only lower world tiers but elites and such come s4?
so u want to no targetfarming, to implement another form of target farming 
Target farming a gigantic loot pool is even more dumb
1 Like
I want to not have to do specific content to get specific loot. That’s a dumb way to target farm.
i can understand that the super boring duriel grind gives a bad aftertaste for this kind of target farm content. But if its implemented right, und you can do it much better, other arpgs have proven thats its actually a good system, cause these activities can be fun. It just that the d4 version of it sucks hard.
I don’t think it’s a good system in any of them, and I think the one I’m suggesting would be better. It’s why things like the Atlas and the circle of fortune and the monoliths are popular: being able to choose your own loot buffs is fun.
true i love cof, but thats mainly cause its a great system for not having to deal with trading shenanigans. That doesnt mean some target farmable bosses are bad if they drop some unique stuff, its just that the d4 version promotes tedious and very long grinds of content that is just boring and doesnt challenge you in the slightest.
- the extra chore to search for a group to be able to farm them effectively enough makes it stupid.
Your idea is all over the place. It really only addresses reducing RNG and does nothing to balance content. Sure, let me get Uber Uniques from Hell Tides at the same rate I get them from Duriel?
If you want to introduce any sort of balance to loot, it would be better spent adding a Rested Bonus that provides players with an XP Bonus and Magic Find bonus. That actually pulls players back and lets you have a benefit to cycle multiple characters and let them rest.