Divination Cards -- Balance Lost.

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Questions to the Devs from 8/27/2015

Q: Are you happy with Divination Cards drop rate? Have you considered having all of them require more cards to complete a set but drop more often so that players could actually feel the progress?

Chris -- A: We're pretty happy with the drop rate for most of the cards. We're also discussing increasing the drop rate of some that are slightly too low to encourage farming (as we do want to see more farming for Divination Cards occurring).

(https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1409553)

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whitelytning написал:

"

Questions to the Devs from 8/27/2015

Q: Are you happy with Divination Cards drop rate? Have you considered having all of them require more cards to complete a set but drop more often so that players could actually feel the progress?

Chris -- A: We're pretty happy with the drop rate for most of the cards. We're also discussing increasing the drop rate of some that are slightly too low to encourage farming (as we do want to see more farming for Divination Cards occurring).

(https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1409553)

This league has made it painfully clear that divination cards could and need to be looked at and improved because they aren't farmable.

Divination cards were obviously marketed to us as a way to deterministicly farm an item. Players liked this concept because it lessened their reliance in pure RNG or trading. However, any decent item that would be redeemed through divination cards has the card drop restricted to the point that farming the card isn't a realistic option and the only way to complete them is by turning to trading. This league has made this extremely clear.

First, the 1200 voll kill challenge. We now have a decent sample size to judge the drop rate of this card. People are completing the challenge and finding 0-2 cards (average). Sure, this item is one of the most desired items in the game but requiring someone to do 5 to 8k (average) kills in order to get the 8 cards needed for the set is extremely unbalanced.

I understand that this set should be harder to farm than others and am not suggesting that it drop easily. But if someone sets out to run a boss 1, even 2k times, you would think you should be able to get the resulting item after putting in that kind of time investment.

Second, the lucky deck/stacked deck. I just think it speaks to how broken the system is that a group of random cards are considered one of the best ways to work on divination card farming. We had a set that gave random cards, but because it wasn't truly random a supporter wanted a better way to get random cards and GGG thought it was a good idea. Why not just fix the underlying system?

Divination cards are not farmable in any reasonable way even though they were marketed and presented to us as a means to that end. Instead of farming items, people are just turning to the market to either sell or buy the cards. I don't have anything against trading and participate in it but when GGG tells us the intent of a system is to lesson the reliance on trading, and then that system works in the opposite way, its worth pointing out and expecting better.

GGG can do better and I don't think I'm the only one that wants them to look at this and fix it. It is not balanced and is working in the opposite way as it was presented by GGG.

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Entropic_Fire написал:

that was such a good farming zone already that it didn't need that extra incentive for people to grind it.

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Gaza написал:

Several builds can kill Voll easily within 1 minute and port back to town. 1200 minutes = 20 hours of farming to get an item worth 2-3 ex (if you are saying 1 card on average) doesn't actually seem unfair. You are talking about an item that is league specific and is meant to be very rare at that. You're then talking about 160 hours for an item guaranteed to be worth >16ex... Tell me where else you can find currency at that pace guaranteed?

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whitelytning написал:

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Gaza написал:

Several builds can kill Voll easily within 1 minute and port back to town. 1200 minutes = 20 hours of farming to get an item worth 2-3 ex (if you are saying 1 card on average) doesn't actually seem unfair. You are talking about an item that is league specific and is meant to be very rare at that. You're then talking about 160 hours for an item guaranteed to be worth >16ex... Tell me where else you can find currency at that pace guaranteed?

Just look at what you're defending. 160 hours...thats literally four normal working weeks. That is entirely too long to have to kill the same guy in order to possibly complete the set for an item. I don't understand how anyone can defend that kind of time commitment and consider it acceptable as a way of farming an item.

I don't want this whole thread come off as my complaining about the Bittle Emperor specifically. That is just the best example because of the sample size we now have. But it isn't just the Brittle Emperor. No one farms these cards because the drop rates are way too low. Across the board, if an item isn't a random piece of jewelry, a sac piece, or a wisdom scroll, 95% of them are not worth farming. Humility is the one exception I can think of.

Take the cards for other build enabling uniques. Rats Nets or Mjolnir cards. Does anyone farm them? Why not?

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Entropic_Fire написал:

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Gaza написал:

Several builds can kill Voll easily within 1 minute and port back to town. 1200 minutes = 20 hours of farming to get an item worth 2-3 ex (if you are saying 1 card on average) doesn't actually seem unfair. You are talking about an item that is league specific and is meant to be very rare at that. You're then talking about 160 hours for an item guaranteed to be worth >16ex... Tell me where else you can find currency at that pace guaranteed?

I haven't tried to speed farm Voll at all, do those 1 minute clears skip trash or do they kill and collect loot along the way?

I'm guessing no pickups before Voll which means you could farm currency much faster and more reliably by just clearing lake normally and picking up all the small currency that drops. I think GGG really intends the Brittle Emperor card to act as a sort of winning lottery ticket for the people already farming lake normally, not something to farm exclusively.

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Just look at what you're defending. 160 hours...thats literally four normal working weeks. That is entirely too long to have to kill the same guy in order to possibly complete the set for an item. I don't understand how anyone can defend that kind of time commitment and consider it acceptable as a way of farming an item.

I don't want this whole thread to come off as me complaining about the Bittle Emperor specifically. That is just the best example because of the sample size we now have. But it isn't just the Brittle Emperor. No one farms these cards because the drop rates are way too low. Across the board, if an item isn't a random piece of jewelry, a sac piece, or a wisdom scroll, 95% of them are not worth farming. Humility is the one exception I can think of.

Take the cards for other build enabling uniques. Rats Nets or Mjolnir cards. Does anyone farm them? Why not?