Feedback & Suggestions to Improve Loot & Progression

TLDR: In my opinion, with just a few adjustments to the drop rates of various currency, and a change to the functionality of greater essences, all players can reasonably achieve the highest possible tier of loot with any character they decide to build, by themselves or with friends. Trading should be an afterthought. Everything a player needs and wants should be acquired by directly playing the game.

All of the current issues with loot and progression are directly tied to the drop rate of many currency orbs being too rare, forcing players to hoard them for trading instead of using them for their intended purposes. By adjusting the drop rates dramatically, all players will benefit from being able to craft their own upgrades. This will enable self-sufficient progression which = more fun.

More currency drops → Players feel comfortable using them

Players use currency → Items improve → Players want to use more currency

Currency gets consumed → Supply stays manageable → More currency needed

This creates a healthy flow through the economy rather than the stagnant accumulation going on now.

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Hey GGG and everyone reading,

I'm a big fan of ARPGs but bounced off of PoE1 at around level 64 on my deadeye by not understanding how to make strong builds on my own (I didn't spec into life nodes!), but I was determined to fix that with PoE2. I don't follow build guides or read too much up-front. I learn the game the best I can as I play, get an idea, and I roll with it win or lose.

I jumped into early access a few days after launch and have racked up 620 hours thus far, with around 520 of those hours from playing 0.1.0. I started with a lightning invoker to lvl 92 in honor of my D3 monk, and then played a gas arrow pathfinder to lvl 91. I found pathfinder the most satisfying to play in the end, but my monk was a beast. I was clearing T15 - T18 maps with +4 boss difficulty on both characters. I was only able to get 3rd ascendancies on both characters, however. Sekhemas 4th floor boss was kicking my ass at some point late in the fight each time >.<!

I'm currently level 89 on my amazon in T15s (with just 3rd ascendency) and the same trend has appeared as with my first two characters:

I cannot find or craft the upgrades I need to push my build idea from strong to ridiculous in any reasonable or realistic amount of time (we are talking hundreds of hours here), but I can't trade for them either because I need tens to hundreds of divine orbs to do so, per slot!

The irony here is that the game has the tools for me to be able to obtain these upgrades all on my own, but these item drops are gated behind drop rates that are designed to encourage trading over everything else if you don't have incredible amounts of in-game wealth.


THE LOOT SYSTEM:

The loot system with magic and rare armor/weapons makes sense. These items should be able to support any build of skills/passives that a player wants to create, thus you can't generate "targeted drops" for the player because it's impossible to know what stats are being targeted for a build in each slot, so everything must be random.

This is fine. With currency orbs and other items (omens, essences), the player can work on item drops that show potential for their build, and even items that show potential for other builds...in theory. In practice however, we have some issues.


THE DILEMMA:

1. Because armor/weapon drops must be so heavily randomized, when you don't have a ton of increased rarity AND you're not running juiced content in a very optimal fashion, you're not seeing a lot of exalted orbs, divine orbs, etc. This directly leads to:

2. All of the orbs that do drop cannot be wasted on "potential" or I've wasted a potentially excessive amount of time for no reward, no return. In this environment, I need guarantees if I want to upgrade my character's power/survivability in a given slot. Trading my orbs for exactly the item I need with as many of the stats that I truly want across all 6 slots is a guaranteed path to power. This directly leads to:

3. I will eventually reach a point where I am priced out of further upgrading my character's power, and therefore my build idea plateaus at this point. I cannot achieve more power myself without insane luck across hundreds of hours of play on a single build idea. That insane luck, is finding an item worth tens to hundreds of divines for someone else, or myself.

4. Because the trade economy of the game is pushed to the forefront like this, it means new players are stagnating constantly throughout their playthroughs and into the endgame, because they are trying to rely entirely on random drops that they cannot risk trying to enhance, because that same currency could be used to get them the guaranteed power upgrades they need by trading. Or, if they don't know about trade and simply use these orbs up and don't get great results, chances are they end up soft-locked in some way and ask for help in global chat.

This core dilemma is the reason that many players choose to play meta builds and follow guides. There's too great a risk of wasting valuable time going in one direction based on an idea and not having the freedom to pivot and make adjustments as they learn where they made sub-optimal decisions.


THE ROOT CAUSE:

This boils down entirely to the drop rate of currency orbs. By not being able to use several different orbs generously for their intended purpose, one cannot be interested too much with the items that drop from monsters.

Unless I see an item that's nearly insane the moment I identify it, there's no chance I'm using an exalted orb on it.

Unless I already have an item that's insane, zero chance I divine it.

Because this is the situation in the trade league, the issue is multiplied for players in SSF who simply have to make due with such a small amount of orbs to work with (and no currency exchange iirc?).


THE POWER FANTASY:

Player power feels best when there's steady progression and continuous, reachable goals. I only got bored on my monk and pathfinder because pushing XP levels without ever gaining tangible build power was not fun. The loss of the ability to keep upgrading my power and thus my build idea, meant I was no longer interested in gaining XP, and I put the game down to wait for 0.2.0. Once I hit 91 - 92 on my amazon, it'll be the same deal and I'll wait for 0.3.0, because I know if I start another character, I will reach this wall again in the 90s where I'm priced out of more power.

I have never personally dropped a weapon that exceeded or had the potential to exceed 500 physical DPS, let alone the 700 - 900+ DPS weapons I wish I could try out with my build ideas. In the current state of the game, this is not a realistic goal to have, and I think that's an issue.

I imagine that if I was dropping something like 10+ exalted orbs per map as a baseline, I would be willing to spend them on items that are dropping while mapping. This sinks exalts out of the game economy because I'm actively using them and having fun doing it. I won't feel the need to hoard all my currency drops to look for something to snipe underpriced on the trade website. I'll use them on the items that have potential to be upgrades.

This means that many more of the rare items that drop will be useful to me, either for my character or another one I think up. I'd be willing to stash up a full tab of rare spears that look good and slam orbs on them. I'll stash base types too and craft on those, constantly using these items up for their intended purposes. Getting upgrades in this way would feel great.

If I know for sure I'll be working with some great items, I'll use omens and really try to refine my items and master the risk/reward of the system. A meta-system that right now, is only for hyper wealthy players trying to craft "mirror-tier" items.


DROP RATE SUGGESTIONS & EFFECTS:

In my opinion, with just a few adjustments to the drop rates of various currency, and a change to the functionality of greater essences, all players can reasonably achieve the highest possible tier of loot with any character they decide to build, by themselves or with friends. The philosophy behind these changes benefits both trade and SSF leagues, and all groups of players from newbies to the most optimal players who min/max the finest details.

Transmute & Augmentation Orbs - Drop these in piles of 2x - 5x. Increase inventory stack size to 50. We should eventually be able to stash enough of them through lvl 65 that we stop picking them up by endgame. We should slam these without thought to how many we have with the ability to buy hundreds more on the currency exchange being trivial.

Regal Orbs - Always drop 1x - 2x from rare monsters. Regal shards -> orbs should just be a byproduct of disenchanting rares we don't want, and not the primary method of obtaining them. This way we can consistently upgrade magic items very early and work with rares from then on. No one wants to spend more than 30 minutes in magic gear while leveling a new character.

Exalted Orbs - Always drop 1x from rare monsters. Allow increased rarity to roll for a 2nd orb drop. Higher IIR = up to 50% chance. A drop rate this high will cause players to use them while leveling/mapping on the rare items that drop from monsters, meaning there is a near constant chance at an upgrade, or a useful piece for an alt-character. This is a good thing, and applies to all stages of the game from early leveling through to late endgame in the 90s.

Divine Orbs - Due to the functional power of these orbs, the drop rate should likely be closer to the current drop rate of exalted orbs, but a bit higher. The goal here is still to see enough of them to be willing to use them for their intended purpose on your own gear, not just as trading currency for other items.

Chance Orbs - No changes to drop rate. These orbs are already pretty rare for good reason, and have a bottleneck to their acquisition via shards. Players are heavily incentivized to use them for a chance at rare unique items. Potential candidate currency for trading high-end items.

Vaal Orbs - No changes to drop rate. Becomes even more useful if more items are being slammed with the other orbs, because now players can risk a vaal more often due to having backup items to work with if things go south. Potential candidate currency for trading high-end items.

Alchemy Orbs - 3x the current drop rate. We need them for mapping, thus we need to be swimming in these eventually. This would also have the effect of incentivizing stashing a bunch of normal items to alch later, then slam with exalts if one is not planning on using essences to guide the RNG from normal -> magic -> rare (creating nuanced decision making).

Chaos Orbs - 1.5x the current drop rate. Can't go crazy with these due to how powerful they are with omens, but with a healthy amount dropping, they'll be used with or without omens which I think is a good thing.

Orb of Annulment - Between the current exalted orb and divine orb drop rates. I only saw 1 of these in over 600 hours of play with decent clear speed. It'd be nice to have this functionality available to me semi-regularly while trying to refine an item or two.


GREATER ESSENCES:

Should all of the above changes be made, there's one last adjustment that would enable players to more easily end up with high-tier gear items self-sufficiently, without trivializing the game or power progression, and that's to adjust greater essences to act like exalted orbs with a guaranteed mod type.

For example, Greater Essence of Haste would read: "Augments a rare item with a speed modifier".

A player could then use this greater essence on a great pair of rare boots, hoping to land a +35% movement speed roll, or on a weapon, hoping to get a T1 +% attack speed roll, granting a much greater level of determinism than we currently have, and putting really great upgrades in reach of every player. Players who will now use all these items they're finding to attempt to upgrade their power without resorting to hoarding them for trade (or never using them at all).


THE FEEDBACK LOOP OF POWER:

The above adjustments create a self-reinforcing feedback loop of progression, power, and reachable goals through the leveling stage into endgame:

1. Players will be interested in item drops from monsters that match what they want to upgrade, and will pick them up whether normal, magic, or rare.

2. Upon ID'ing magics and rares, players will slam the best potential upgrades with orbs from their inventory that have been dropping.

3. If the slams result in an upgrade, this is a dopamine hit for the player who will equip the new item and continue. If there is no upgrade, the player will hardly be bothered by it, and just turn the items into regal/artificer's shards or drop them and keep going because the player knows more exalts will drop from rare monsters.

4. Seeing a rare monster = resources for a potential upgrade. Dopamine hit.

5. Players will progress in power steadily without hitting major snags or reaching a plateau for too long because we will have hundreds if not thousands of attempts over hundreds of hours of play to keep gaining power by crafting gear consistently.

6. Players will progress more easily into juiced T15+ content, where they can experience the full breadth of what the endgame can offer and learn to achieve maximum efficiency. More players will chase level 100. Player engagement and retention will rise.

7. More builds will be discovered, because players will be more confident to experiment with items and different passive tree setups because resources will not be so scarce that they're best used on guarantees (trade) instead of chances (slamming). Off-meta builds will thrive.

8. Players will buy more stash tabs to hold batches of items to craft on later, and to stash gear for alt characters and other build ideas. Dopamine hit for GGG.


CONCLUSION:

In my opinion, trading for items should be an afterthought. Something that you do when you want to quickly prototype a build idea or pivot to a new style of play quickly at the cost of some of your resources. Being entirely priced out of upgrading in power without insanely lucky drops across 10 gear slots just isn't fun, especially when I know my builds could go so much further if I could get access to the gear I need.

I believe the suggestions above will achieve the goal of allowing every player to reach the highest levels of in-game power with nothing more than their own efforts playing solo (trade or ssf) or with friends. Thank you for your time, if you read all of this.

The true test of an ARPG's design isn't how long players grind a single character, but how eager they are to start another one when they're finished.

Do you mind to do a tl;dr?

seems pretty good. can definitely confirm as a SSF that I feel something is wrong with currency drops. I find myself collecting between 3-5 of each magic quality item, with 1 or sometimes 2 of the modifiers I want, but these items will absolutely stay in my stash until I out-level them because I do not find enough rares to disenchant, or enough regals to upgrade, and exalts in campaign are hilariously rare, I find more vaals than exalts which is ludicrous since I can't vaal something until it has been fully modified.

when I do find an exalt, there's a palpable feeling of apprehension and despair, since I know there's only about a 10% chance of landing a mod that is to my satisfaction.

"

Davius86#3654 написал:

Do you mind to do a tl;dr?

Sure, I probably should have included it at the beginning of my post:

TLDR: In my opinion, with just a few adjustments to the drop rates of various currency, and a change to the functionality of greater essences, all players can reasonably achieve the highest possible tier of loot with any character they decide to build, by themselves or with friends. Trading should be an afterthought. Everything a player needs and wants should be acquired by directly playing the game.

All of the current issues with loot and progression are directly tied to the drop rate of many currency orbs being too rare, forcing players to hoard them for trading instead of using them for their intended purposes. By adjusting the drop rates dramatically, all players will benefit from being able to craft their own upgrades. This will enable self-sufficient progression which = more fun.

More currency drops → Players feel comfortable using them

Players use currency → Items improve → Players want to use more currency

Currency gets consumed → Supply stays manageable → More currency needed

This creates a healthy flow through the economy rather than the stagnant accumulation going on now.

BOSSKONG#7121, you are a fantastic analyst!

Everything that you listed in your post is the exact related problem and solution to the current version of POE2.

In fact, it is so good that I would like to copy your post and use it's format as reference for future critical feedback reports.

Is that okay with you?

That's fine by me!

"

BOSSKONG#7121 написал:

That's fine by me!

Thank you!

Expressing criticism for the betterment of POE2 is the primary goal.
The format of your post is an effective method of communicating that betterment. Ultimately, such methods will help the community of POE2 direct toward that result.

You're welcome. Hoping these suggestions reach the right eyes at GGG.

To OP a lot of this was in 0.1
I remember it was fun and fast leveling chars and getting stronger. Currency was more abundant and able to tinker while leveling.
Loot dropped more so more chances something useful.

Basically what a lot have been saying bring back 0.1 except FEW skills that were too OP and cleared whole area in on hit. 0.2 LS is basically same, but we lost everything we had good in 0.1

0.1.0 was definitely a better starting point, but it shared the same core issue to a lesser degree. For the game to feel like it should for most players, the baseline drop rate of most currency orbs needs to be raised.