Drop Rates

[Dorfoumous]

Edit: To be clear:

The biggest problem in Diablo 2, was the lack of drops.

We all know that Diablo 3 will have a class drop system going on, in other words if you kill that monster you get that item, no clicking required, but lets not debate on that.

Now, we all know Diablo had a bad drop rate calulator, as in you could have 1000% MF and still not find anything.

How do you want that to be handled in Diablo 3?

Do you want Items to be rare like in Diablo 2 LOD, or more frequent, so you don't need a lot of MF to get certain items.

Or do you want the MF to just disappear?

[ColdAsIce]

Please elaborate a bit more.. Are you talking about drop rates on certain items being so rare? Or, Are you talking about certain items dropping too quick or too slow or what? Thanks

[shinningman]

Please elaborate a bit more.. Are you talking about drop rates on certain items being so rare? Or, Are you talking about certain items dropping too quick or too slow or what? Thanks

are you blind?

hes obviously talking about the drop rates in D2 are terrible, 1000 MF might seem awesome but you still never get what you want when you MF

I was trying to MF full IK set and instead got 2 shakos and some other goodies, but no IK. If you ask me thats BS, sure there should be some items with low drop rates but not every item worth getting should have a low drop rate.

[Kaeros]

Never really saw item drop-rates to be a problem in DII, and I like the frequency exactly the way it is..

People create builds solely for the purpose of gearing up with MF; why remove the attribute and take away that option completely?

If the most revered sought-after items had decent drop-rates, they wouldn't be the most revered sought-after items anymore.

[Damnatorius]

finding really really rare items was the fun of MFing. What's the fun in having every possible item drop after killing a boss a few times. The diversity of the items in D2 meant that you'd always (well, often) get something useful, just not the precise item you were looking for, which is where perseverence comes in.

[Nimbostratus]

I think what he's trying to say is that you should be able to find semi-decent gear without having to run bosses for five weeks straight. Sure, the godly things should still be hard to find, but how often do you see an untwinked melee character make it very far in D2?

[Felix]

I hope droprates stay in, setting oneself out to farm the full IK set by oneself should not be feasible. Finding some pieces, finding other valuables and then trading for the set. I hope thats part of the Diablo game they want to keep.

[phool]

Other than runes, which were too rare (and runewords correspondingly too powerful) I think it was all handled pretty nicely. A couple of items had stats that were imo too important to be on such rare items - griffons eye should not have 5 fcr more than otherwise possible on a helment, for example.

I hope the item system (dupewords aside), which is probably the single most important factor towards Diablo's greatness, stays as close to the original as possible.

[phaolo]

I prefer less luck and more merit. So if you want to find a great item you'll have to fight a hard battle and the final reward won't have impossible chances to appear. The difference will be survival and not drop chances (at least at high levels).

This way no noob will ever get that absurd lucky drop that will leave other veteran players speechless (and quite angry towards game designers)

[jamesisbest]

I think for the most part it's a great system. It also keeps trading flowing, just because you didn't get the ik items you hoped for you could trade your shako's and other items and you will definately have the full ik set in no time. The rare drop rates give the game a lot more replay value because you have to spend time getting the gear for your next character. Also, when something really good drops your heart races for a few seconds. If drop rates are easier in the new game you will see thousands of people with all the top gear within a month of the game release.

[ColdAsIce]

are you blind?

hes obviously talking about the drop rates in D2 are terrible, 1000 MF might seem awesome but you still never get what you want when you MF

I was trying to MF full IK set and instead got 2 shakos and some other goodies, but no IK. If you ask me thats BS, sure there should be some items with low drop rates but not every item worth getting should have a low drop rate.

No I'm not blind, but thanks for the comment.

Drop rates in D2 arent easy for a reason. It makes the game more interesting and fun. What fun would it be to find godly items all the time? The game would become boring and easy. D3 better be super rare drops to be hard to find, its the only way to keep the game alive.. I cant believe you people want to be spoiled, and have drop rates occur much quicker. You should be able to WORK hard for what you find, not simplicity of picking off of as tree as you wish.

[phaolo]

I'm not saying to reduce all drops drastically, only a bit so for example a single player will have a chance to see at least a Zod in his life LOL

Also with a "merit" system the "work" will come from the way you manage to defeat strong character. In D2 happens frequently that you kill some very strong boss and his pack and get all useless items in result

Trade would be the same due to the gold and player differences would be more based on skill

[Hrus]

I like frequency of unique items in D2. But i don't like their lack of diversity. Unique items (or legendary or whatever) should relly add something interesting like Oskill (not an overpowered one like Enigma) or interesting charges (with high level enough to actually do some harm) etc...
Also I don't like how affixes on blue and rare items are done in D2, high level items should have a better chance to spawn with better mods. I am talkong about +1life ring from Baal...

[phool]

So if you want to find a great item you'll have to fight a hard battle and the final reward won't have impossible chances to appear.

Doesn't really work, the effective difference between a good and great player just isn't big enough in Diablo. Until you stick them in hardcore anyway. Without completely altering the game mechanic or forcing teamplay elements you can't really change that.

[DBaron]

I think the drop rates on items are fine the way they are pretty much. The only exception's would be runes which could use a bump, and maybe up the drop rates on the first time you kill an act boss, especially the end boss.

[Hrus]

I think the drop rates on items are fine the way they are pretty much. The only exception's would be runes which could use a bump, and maybe up the drop rates on the first time you kill an act boss, especially the end boss.
Yeah, I would like that... Right now, we have around 1.3 better chance to get uniques/sets from 1st act boss drop, and we get at least rare items (which are useless in most cases anyway). Up the chance by at least 3 and get us chance to spawn higher TC items. And of course don't make this exploitable like it is now.

Runes - yeah, maybe up the chance to get higher runes a little bit. But face it, with some exceptions as Spirit and Insight, legit runewords have so incredible stats that only few should be able to have them, not everyone.

[Terenas]

D2 drops were based on Treasure Class clusters, among other things.
Some monsters could theoretically drop items form their TCs but could not because the ilevel was too high, or they almost never drop some specific item because the TC they dropped the item from was so large that it took a great length of time to obtain another unique from a less crowded TC (I am pointing the obvious but whatever).
A bit of smoothing could do, if the system is retained, and to quote Hrus, maybe it could be nice to cut the crap drops form high level monsters, after all you are killing skyscraper-size endgame bosses, not mere minions (in D2 at least) and those bosses' drops should visibly be better than normal monsters drops.

I also agree with those of you in that rune had a relatively crappy drop rate, but as far as I can see, here the system is different (or at least the runes name kind of implies the function).

Also, I like more character classes to be more or less equally MF capable. As it was, Sorceress was probably one of the best, if not the best, Magic Finder (barring Enigma wearing characters).

I don't agree much with the 1/10^12 drop rate for the so called godly items.
If they're balanced, then their rarity would be not so justifiable, if they're imbalanced and that rare, it's a call for duping (even under whatever policy you'd be implementing).

We still know little about the whole MF topic, who knows when we'll get some more info on it. Let's hope for the sooner.

Bye

[lukefojut]

You are meant to trade! Even the game developers acknowledge this (listen for their comments in the gameplay video).

Diablo's vibrant trading communities would be destroyed if drop rates/rarity rates were increased/decreased and this would make me berry sad indeed! :yes:

[Rashiminos]

I think what he's trying to say is that you should be able to find semi-decent gear without having to run bosses for five weeks straight. Sure, the godly things should still be hard to find, but how often do you see an untwinked melee character make it very far in D2?

Semi-decent of course meaning running uber trist in more than 5 minutes as opposed to less...

[DufresneXV]

I think the drop rates need to be fixed. I agree that runes whould be easier to get, since most of the time when doing the forge or bosses you get a bad rune. While I have gotten Ist runes from the countess and hellforge before, I have never gotten any of the other items.

What people don't like, is when they kill monsters such as memph over and over again, yet never get anything good. Changing the drop rates is not designed to make the items worth less or very easy to get, but rather to give people a more realistic chance of getting something.

Perhaps they could modify the act bosses to always drop at least 1 unique? You would still have to do it over and over again to try and get something good, but at least you would know that a unique of some type will drop. Unless you have a high MF%, there is no guarantee a unique will even drop under the current D2 format.

I have a meteorb Sorc with Tals set, War Travs, Gheeds and lots of MF charms, and even I don't get uniques every time I do NM memph or even normal memph. Sometimes I can do hell memph and walk away with some bad unique you get on normal.

Lastly, is the type of unique a monster can drop. Currently, a monster cannot drop a unique higher then its level, but it can drop items way lower than its level. For instance, you could do hell memph and get a crap unique you could just as easily get from normal memph. Its frustrating when you do hell memph only to get some item from normal or nightmare, rather than hell. A possible solution to this, is to set a level range, saying the monster will only drop items below a certain level, say lvl 80, but higher than lvl 30. That way when you do a hell memph run, you know you won't be wasting your time for a bad unique, but will still have the challenge of trying to get a godly unique.


So while making high runes or mid runes slightly easier to get, they need to modify the unique drops. They just need to find some way to give people a realistic chance of getting a decent unique, without lessening the importance of trading or the need to do boss runs all day.

[etslayer]

Now, we all know Diablo had a bad drop rate calulator, as in you could have 1000% MF and still not find anything.



Your problem is that you used 1000 MF and actually expected to find uniques. In D2, the optimum MF for finding uniques is 200-250. If you go much higher, you start getting higher ratios of blue items. There was nothing wrong with the MF system in D2... if anything items were too easy to find. The rarer an item is, the more exciting it is to find it.

[5zigen]

I think the drop rates on items are fine the way they are pretty much. The only exception's would be runes which could use a bump, and maybe up the drop rates on the first time you kill an act boss, especially the end boss.

I agree with this, with a couple exceptions.

Certain items were too rare simply because they could only be dropped by a certain enemy, or a couple enemies. Tyrael's might comes to mind, but it wasn't amazing enough to worry about, but IK armor also comes to mind, as does Griz shield/cadaceus and Mav daidem, deaths fathom, the archon staff etc.


I think how they should measure it is that during 1 playthrough of the game (all areas all difficulties) you should get a number of good items and 1 outsanding item. That's just my opinion though.

[Arkansaw]

You are meant to trade! Even the game developers acknowledge this (listen for their comments in the gameplay video).

Diablo's vibrant trading communities would be destroyed if drop rates/rarity rates were increased/decreased and this would make me berry sad indeed! :yes:


Nah, you are meant to frequent that item shop around the corner! If drop rates/rarity rates were increased/decreased, this would make the site owner berry sad indeed!

[Arkansaw]

It's not just the drop rates, the whole drop system should be refined for its known quirks. Remember the problem with set amulets? And how Sander's Paragorn is so difficult to get compared to the other pieces (not that it had great stats either)

[phool]

Your problem is that you used 1000 MF and actually expected to find uniques. In D2, the optimum MF for finding uniques is 200-250. If you go much higher, you start getting higher ratios of blue items.

What you're implying - that it's possible to have excessive mf resulting in a reduced chance of finding uniques - is incorrect. Obviously however the benefit of further mf has to be weighed against any negative impact on your killing speed, especially with mf's diminishing returns.

[Dorfoumous]

What you're implying - that it's possible to have excessive mf resulting in a reduced chance of finding uniques - is incorrect. Obviously however the benefit of further mf has to be weighed against any negative impact on your killing speed, especially with mf's diminishing returns.


Even this comment, implies, or suggests, that you are doing MF runs. While 1000 MF might be unrealistic due to the fact that all of your gear would suck, limiting your killing speed, would infact suggest MF running or boss killing.

Which was my point that I was alluding too, is that the drop system is screwed. You shouldnt have to kill the bosses a million times (exageration) to get something good, or rather that boss shouldn't be the only one with the best chance to get a unique.

Not to mention, it ruins the SP part of the game, because you know you will never see a ZOD or any uber- rare item. You just won't. If you do, you should go get some lottery tickets.

Plus the dupe issue, granted this will be diablo 3, but still, the rarer the item the more its been duped. Zods? Sojs? Torches? Annilies? I mean..come on, they are everywhere.

Someon mentioned trading for items, and the drop system allows you to trade.

Ok what about SP?

and The ecomony is duped runes right now? (at least I think), because they are too hard to find?

For once, I'd like to play the game and have an equal chance to get good gear without MFing the crap out of mephisto. Everyone always talks about how MFing ruins the game, and gets boring, but the fact of the matter is, you HAVE to MF if you want any half-way decent gear, unless you are really lucky..

Also, I don't like the fact that I can't get those items without trading for them, unless I MF for them which is really boring, and hard to do.

Again hindering the SP part of the game, and killing any chance of you enjoying your SP experience (at least for me)

[ColdAsIce]

No, your wrong. The D2 drop rates are perfect as they are and its how it should be. Runes were meant to be extremely hard to find because of what they can create. Enigma for example, not everyone was supposed to have one (Thanks dupers). If it wasnt for dupers, people would actually be willing to MF more, or even rune hunt and items would be worth more. People would see these items as something very very special knowing the runewords they can make.

If people desire these items so much, they work hard for it, either MF for godly items, or go in 8 player games and hit Kurast if you wish to find yourself a Cham rune. They were MEANT to be difficult to find, and i agree that the people who do not work hard at it, dont deserve it. Items like these SHOULD NOT just "Drop" consistently.. they should be limited and kept rarely found. But, yes, dupers have ruined this, so what are you people complaining about? I mean, dupers have already gave you the CHANCE to get an enigma, high runes, etc. Most people do not work hard anymore to find godlies because its easily made illegally.

I respect all legit players and their hard work and interest in finding a HR or godly items legitly. Remember that luck plays the role, so even I have not found a Crown of Ages yet in my entire D2 life, but I know one day I will and I will be VERY excited about it. It seems the economy is becoming lazy and doesnt feel like working hard for their items anymore. "Spoiled" is more what I call it. Almost like how most of our taxes in the USA go to the lazy, drugged out, "10-child a year" people who sit on their butt all day and collect your income because they dont FEEL like getting up off of their butt. (Ok, that wasnt called for, but you do see my picture).

Enjoy how the game was implemented, and if you do not like searching for legit HRs by working hard how it was meant to be, finding godlies, and knowing how to increase your chances of finding them then stop complaining. It may seem impossible, but its really not. I dunno.. I guess I'm just one of those die-hard legit people who enjoy playing the game. I've found Sur,Cham,Arkaines,Soj's,Maras,WF,GF,Levi,Ondals,St eelrends, and much more throughout my experience of just "playing" the game so I have no complains.

-Dave

[Dorfoumous]

I have to disagree. Very much so.

If it wasn't for the dupers, duping those Goldy Items, NO ONE, would survive in Hell alone.

Thus like I said, ruining the SP form of the game.

Thus forcing me to get online to dupers so I have a CHANCE to do something.

I prefer a system like Oblivion, or GW. To where you don't need those items to make it.

Sure you can be lucky to get good items, but you can play the game with a normal sword rather than a Goldy super slayer sword that gives you plus 5014 skills.

Increase the drop rates.

Whats the point of the item if only 1% of the popluation can get it? So that 1% will always be godly?

Doesn't make much sense to me.

Unless of course you want to waste hundreds of hours MFing the same boss to get that item. That isn't how the game is suppose to be played.

[ColdAsIce]

I have to disagree. Very much so.

If it wasn't for the dupers, duping those Goldy Items, NO ONE, would survive in Hell alone.
Thus like I said, ruining the SP form of the game.
Thus forcing me to get online to dupers so I have a CHANCE to do something.
I prefer a system like Oblivion, or GW. To where you don't need those items to make it.
Sure you can be lucky to get good items, but you can play the game with a normal sword rather than a Goldy super slayer sword that gives you plus 5014 skills.
Increase the drop rates.
Whats the point of the item if only 1% of the popluation can get it? So that 1% will always be godly?
Doesn't make much sense to me.
Unless of course you want to waste hundreds of hours MFing the same boss to get that item. That isn't how the game is suppose to be played.

You still do not get what I am trying to say. Every ladder/season I play I always make a MF character, sorceress rather. Ive played for THREE weeks this ladder, ran Meph + Andy, and I've found:

Shako, HoZ, Highlords, Eth 47% Travs, Skullders, 2 x Soj, BK Ring,Magefist, Frostburn, Lightsabre, 3 x Titans, 2 x Bartucs, Lycanders Aim, Reapers Toll, Hand of King Leoric, Cats Eye, Leviathan, Gul from Flayer Dungeon area hell, Dracs and..

About 40-50 (all together uniques,sets,rares) other "Elite-medium-exceptional" items I stashed/kept in mules for later USE that could EASILY get my by in a hell difficulty with team work, or even solo. I know you exaggerated with the normal sword thing, but seriously, this was only in 3 WEEKS playing a couple hours a day. Now, since I have all of these really good items, and decent elite items, I can BUILD my other characters.

You see, theres a way to become STRONG/ELITE quick, and then guess what? You got yourself a good setup for your desired characters who can become strong, and fight in areas your MF sorc wouldnt stand a chance.

This is how you do it, and apparently from what I just said/experienced, I dont see it being that hard. Do you? The hard way is making a weak character as your first char.. why? Its gonna take you 3 times longer than it took me to find good items.

1% Being godly? Are you kidding? Most people end up finding GODLY drops if you do what I just did, and for me finding a HoZ/Shako/SoJ thats pretty damn good for 3 weeks. You tell me.. I seriously dont think its 100% luck, I see it as effort. The funny thing is, before finding skullder/shako I only had about 80% MF from crappy blue/rare items. I start from scratch, and make my character successful legitly.. and you know what? Its not that hard.

[AgentMarth]

The way I look at it is: If an item is in the game, I want to be able to get it.

I, like many others, have spent countless hour killing countless monsters, and the only HR's I have even found are 2 Vex's, and 1 Ber rune. Now while the Ber made its way into a nice CoH (Which is not wasted on HC NL, thank you pointless reset), I would have never had an Enigma if I waited for a legit Jah to drop. That Beast I got? Never would have had. The Enigma's? Nope. And anything else that I used that had a HR. Say what you want about being overpower (some people DO like that, and lol at Wind) but the point is I play the game to have fun, not to MF/Forge rush for an insane amount of hours to cube a HR. While some may enjoy that, I certainly do not.

I want to be able to obtain and item that is in the game if I do so desire, and knowing I have a better chance of winning the lottery then finding a Zod blows. Now I am not saying that they should drop like hotcakes, but there should be a way of obtaining them with a bit of effort. Something like a mixture of Den/Tower/Trist/Ancients where a hard boss spawns (Ancients) and you have to kill it for the chance of a good Rune (Trist), but you have to clear out entirely (Den) all like 5 levels (Tower) of an area and are unable to TP back to town the whole time (Trist) so that you have to tough it out, and can't just pass by everything.

It would take effort, but would be doable and not take forever. Hell, even if it took like an hour, if the payoff was worth it, I would do it.

They shoulda just made Hellforge drop from Pul-Jah. That way you can't get every rune, but can still cube one up if needed.

I hope it stays similar to the way it it now, as I love the item system in D2. But they shouldn't make it broken on certain things like they did, mainly Runes.

[lionheart]

I think the drop rates should be better. I dont want to find everything right away, but i dont want to get frustrated either, kinda ruins the fun

[Sessily]

Drop rates for most anything are abysmal is d2. It is fun but I agree that if an item is there it should not be ridiculous to be able to find it. If you want to see mods that improve on this system look at eastern sun or median. The good items don't rain from the sky but they ARE possible to get! There is a happy medium there.

You are meant to trade! Even the game developers acknowledge this (listen for their comments in the gameplay video).

Diablo's vibrant trading communities would be destroyed if drop rates/rarity rates were increased/decreased and this would make me berry sad indeed! :yes:

And what about SP? Are we doomed to never have good items because we can't trade with dupers? I'll take my legit items over your economy filled with ridiculously duped runes & items, thankyou. Seriously, have any of you tried to find a rune like Vex+ on your own? It's impossible. If you believe even 1% of your Engimas/Infinities/etc are filled with legit runes you are dreaming!

Just look at this very forum's SP community. There are VERY precious few that have HRs and the only way they got them was using (abusing, maybe ;)) a bug with Lower Kurast's super-chest drops. That is the only way you can get HRs in a semi-reasonable time. Still, it's 19K runs on average for one Ber. And that is impossible on Bnet because it has to be done on /p7-8 & the maps should be persistent to make it more efficient. And even after all that VERY few people on the SPF have these high runes, and definitely there are still no BotD, Last Wishes, and maybe 2-3 Enigmas etc. THAT is how it should be on Bnet, but I hope the drop mechanics are much different in D3 so duping isn't necessary to get the best items.

Bottom line : I think Bnet'ers are spoiled because they can pretty much get anything (duped) if they really want it. If it was actually as hard to get as it should be I'm sure they would be singing a different tune!

[ColdAsIce]

I found my HRS in Lower,Middle, and Upper Kurast and I never used a bug. Can you please explain this bug to me I've never heard it and I doubt theres a "Treasure bug in Kurast" everyone has known 4-5 years now Kurast is one of the best places to find rare runes and I dont think its a bug..

[Nimbostratus]

They really do need to give players a realistic chance of finding some of these things. However, the best items shouldn't be too far ahead of the "regular" stuff. High power + low drop rate = Huge incentive for duping + potential for lots of legit players getting screwed over. If people can actually FIND some of these things, you have less impact from duping, and less reason for people even look for dupe methods to begin with.

On another note, perhaps the rarest items shouldn't be the godliest. Instead, give the super rare items things that are neat to play with but not godly. For example, rather than the rarest barb helm giving something like 20% DR, 40 resist all, etc. etc., give it instead something like +15 Hurricane, +15 Tornado, +5 Whirlwind. Things like this would be great for endgame. Rather than gathering stuff that merely increases the power of your characters, you can get stuff that increases the fun of your characters.

[Sessily]

I found my HRS in Lower,Middle, and Upper Kurast and I never used a bug. Can you please explain this bug to me I've never heard it and I doubt theres a "Treasure bug in Kurast" everyone has known 4-5 years now Kurast is one of the best places to find rare runes and I dont think its a bug..

Oh yeah? What runes did you find?

[ColdAsIce]

Oh yeah? What runes did you find?

2 Seasons ago me and 4-5 friends would run entire kurast grounds. I personally have found Sur, Cham and Gul there. I believe Sur was from a chest right in Kurast and Cham was in a temple in kurast. Altogether, I have seen with my friends who ran Jah, Zod, and Ists drop throughout runs. It would take along time though, but for some reason that place had the best luck.. We had to open all baskets/chests/stashs/etc.

I can remember many runes dropping from chests/stashs. We would also find high uniques and jewels there too.

Other places we ran for High runes were in the flayer dungeon, Abbadon pit levels in act 5, frozen river, city of the damned, tal rasha tombs, and arcane sanctuary. From my memory I've seen an Ohm drop in Arcane.

Can you explain this kurast bug? I'm pretty sure my rune finds from kurast had nothing to do with a bug.

[Grunthex]

If it wasn't for the dupers, duping those Goldy Items, NO ONE, would survive in Hell alone.

Thus like I said, ruining the SP form of the game.

Thus forcing me to get online to dupers so I have a CHANCE to do something.


Sorry, I had to take issue with the above. Swing by the single-player forum sometime. You'll find dozens of examples of people who can not only clear Hell alone without those duped items, they do it without twinking at all. Hardcore even. The real crazy ones only run through each area ONCE, no repeating anything to find items period.

Those duped godly items were never necessary for anything. They're needed by those who want everything easy, and think any challenge is too much.

[Sessily]

2 Seasons ago me and 4-5 friends would run entire kurast grounds. I personally have found Sur, Cham and Gul there. I believe Sur was from a chest right in Kurast and Cham was in a temple in kurast. Altogether, I have seen with my friends who ran Jah, Zod, and Ists drop throughout runs. It would take along time though, but for some reason that place had the best luck.. We had to open all baskets/chests/stashs/etc.

Well that's interesting because Jah & Cham can only drop from chests/poppables in Act4 onward, and Zod only in Act5. So basically you're full of it and I bet you've never seen a high rune drop in your life :)

[5zigen]

I think the thing with rune drop rates is they were fine pre 1.10. Reason being because a Zod didn't mean the same thing.

Finding a Zod or Ber or Cham, or Jah didn't make your character instantly godlike. They were luxury items in the truest sense. Hardest to get ahold of but not necessarily number one for utility.

When 1.10 rolled around all of that changed and not only created a market for high end runes but enabled a way to dupe them.


My two "wants" for Diablo 3 drop system changes.

At the highest level of gameplay (hell difficulty) the highest level of gear should be the most likely thing to drop. Not venom ward.

Same goes for runes.

Sure it would require that runes be more balanced as with rune words, but that just goes with the territory imo.

I am very skeptical of people who claim to have gotten a zod, since the number of zods that have dropped post 1.10 (per realm) could probably be counted on two hands.

[ColdAsIce]

Well that's interesting because Jah & Cham can only drop from chests/poppables in Act4 onward, and Zod only in Act5. So basically you're full of it and I bet you've never seen a high rune drop in your life :)

In this case then maybe I am wrong about them coming from chests but I know I found "2" HRS from chests in Kurast and the higher ones dropping from monsters, but I am pretty sure those were it.

Oh is that so? Well in that case, what your saying is not true because I have found them in Kurast and I dont need to go any further. Zod can not only be found in Act 5, and Cham/Jah have been found in Act 3 because I witnessed it. IF you think I'm full of it so be it, I do not need to prove anything because most ignorant people like yourself have never had the opportunity to know whats its like to find a high rune.

From Urliks proven high rune guide:



Although more tests are required to prove it, the only area in the game that may have a higher rune drop average is Arcane's Sanctuary.
Unfortunately, only Uniques and Champions in this area can drop up to Zod. Ordinary monsters (including wraiths) can drop up to Cham.
All those Special Chests at the end of the false paths to the Summoner can only drop up to Lo.
The Summoner himself is the best single source for Gul thru Lo (not counting the 1st time you kill Andy). Lo is his top end as well.
But aside from this, there are two pesky problems with Arcane's, both of which hurt your clearing time.
1. The layout of Arcane's is frustrating to navigate -- there are just so many turns and narrow pathways… You will kill slower as a result.
2. When fighting wraiths, be certain that they are hovering over "ground" when you kill them.
If they die while hovering in space (or over lava in RoF), whatever they would have dropped is lost to the inky depths.

Another area that may be of interest is Sewers L2. This is a level 85 area and it consistently has three Special Chests on the menu!
With a teleporting character, you can reach it very fast and quickly kill any resistance in there.
Unfortunately, the Special Chests in there can only drop runes up to Ber. But I'm not complaining too loudly 'bout that. :D

Some other areas with potentially high averages:
Maggot Lair L1-L3
Great Marsh
Flayer Jungle
Durance 2
Wilderness areas of Act 5 (Bloody Foothills, Frigid Highlands, Arreat Plateau, and Frozen Tundra)



Oh now isnt that funny.. I just pretty much explained this is where I go to hunt in my previous post. You and your "Only Zod can drop in act 5 and Jah can pop in chests in act 4" can go shove it please unless you were specifically talking about objects only.

You shouldn't say people are full of it when you do not know their history in the game. I bet i've found more high runes than you ever will because unfortunately I've gotten lucky. Oh, and it seems you still havent explained your mythical unevident "Kurast Chest Bug". Go figure.

[phool]

Check the SP forum stickies for extensive information on LK runs, and an explanation of why the chests there are are such a good way of finding HRs.

Ber is the highest rune available from LK chests.

[ColdAsIce]

Check the SP forum stickies for extensive information on LK runs, and an explanation of why the chests there are are such a good way of finding HRs.

Ber is the highest rune available from LK chests.

I was pretty sure I was right. Although, I've found these before the bug was ever discovered, but I dont think it was from pure chests ;P

[Sessily]

You said :

2 Seasons ago me and 4-5 friends would run entire kurast grounds. I personally have found Sur, Cham and Gul there. I believe Sur was from a chest right in Kurast and Cham was in a temple in kurast. Altogether, I have seen with my friends who ran Jah, Zod, and Ists drop throughout runs. It would take along time though, but for some reason that place had the best luck.. [b]We had to open all baskets/chests/stashs/etc.

I can remember many runes dropping from chests/stashs. We would also find high uniques and jewels there too.

Making it seem like most of your high runes came from these chests. To which I said, correctly :

Well that's interesting because Jah & Cham can only drop from chests/poppables in Act4 onward, and Zod only in Act5

Which is correct. Jah/Cham can only drop in chests/poppables in Act4 and Zod can only drop from chests/poppables in Act5.

Which makes me think you're a complete liar. Then you basically say you've seen HR drop like rain from the sky and you can imagine I'm pretty skeptical. You'd have to have been playing decades to reasonably have seen all the HRs you've seen. So, I still don't believe a word you say. Got any screen-shots of these high-runes dropping?

As for the Kurast bug, well you are welcome to read the almost 100 page explanation on it in the SP forums :

http://forums.diii.net/showthread.php?t=494938

[ColdAsIce]

I said we had to open all of the chests/stashs/etc because thats how we did our runs. I asked if thats what you meant, and no I could be wrong about certain runes popping from chests because it was so long ago. I took it as you stated in the original post. "Zod can only drop in Act 5" I guess I wasnt making it clear to myself that you meant chests. Ive "found" a Zod in Kurast because that was one memory I would never forget and it was not from a chest. What is your problem? I already told you I have seen more than 4+ HRs drop in Kurast "At LEAST" with 4-5 people in the game. Kurast's chests are not the only way to retreive High runes. The area itself is a mine IMO. You assume it would take decades for me to find all of the HRs I claimed to have found while calling me a liar, well your a complete ignorant bastard for saying such things you have no clue of. With that being said, it seems your one of those flamers who "Just cant believe people find HRs"

I said I ran with 4-5 of my friends, and we RAN all of the areas we thought were the best chance and we found what we found (Arcane/Kurast/Abandon portals/Flayer Dun/City of Damned/Frozenstein/Tunnels/Palace Basement). I never said I have seen HRs drop like rain from the sky, did I? I simply said I have seen some drop in Kurast, now you tell me what the **** is the big deal about that? Stop *****ing about peoples finds.. just because you have never attempted to go on rune hunts/nor know how doesnt mean you can call people liars who have.

Id love to upload screen shots if I had taken them at the time, but most of the time they werent mine solo finds, they were as a group and since we were friends, we didnt CARE who got them. The whole point of it was to actually find certain runes and have an exciting feeling that a HR was found and it was fun with a lot of hard work and dedication.

So, now that you call me a liar, I guess you will assume others like Urlick were liars about their runefinds, yet he wrote and dedicated an entire guide to his findings.

I still dont seem why you are so upset, and yet I even took the time to explain myself/experiences to you. I believe only 3-4% of people actually explore most hard areas in hell mode, especially the ones I mentioned. The other 96-97% are boss running, baal running, chaosing, or ubering these days. Its amazing what people can find elsewhere if they put the effort into it.

-Dave

[Sessily]

Maybe on Bnet, but on the SPF there are countless tournaments and many, many clear the entire game including me (except hell a lot of the time) on /p8 which gives the most drops possible. And in the couple years that I've been following the SPF I can count on two hands the amount of times posters have found Jah+ doing even full clear or thousands of runs of certain areas, etc. And the only reason why the SPF has any HRs at all is because of the superchests bug (mostly exploitable in Kurast - read the thread I provided?)

You say I'm being bitter, or jealous, or something ridiculous like that. Do you realize that the chance of finding Zod in the areas you described is 1 in SIXTY MILLION? Even in the best areas (of which none of them are the ones you described) it's still an impossible 1 in 20 million! I'm only being REALISTIC. The fact that you say you also have found Cham, Jah, whatever... it's a bunch of BS. Either that or you're the luckiest guy in the entire world ever. Go buy a friggin' lottery ticket.

The highest rune I ever found was Sur and I know I took about a million screen-shots. The fact that you don't have ONE is .... well, VERY strange.

Look.... if you seriously did find those runes then you are the luckiest person alive and good for you. BUT your results are definitely not indicative of the overall drop rates for the runes for others. 99.9999% of players have & will not see a HR drop in their entire d2 lives. Maybe even 2 or 3 d2 lives. To link it back to the point of this thread, that should be changed.

[Swiffer]

hes obviously talking about the drop rates in D2 are terrible, 1000 MF might seem awesome but you still never get what you want when you MF

Err...what? I am playing back through Diablo 1 and i can tell you right now you find alot more magic items in D2 than you do in D1

I was trying to MF full IK set and instead got 2 shakos and some other goodies, but no IK. If you ask me thats BS, sure there should be some items with low drop rates but not every item worth getting should have a low drop rate.

So? That is the nature of random drops. If you are arguing that there should be a way to essentially force particular items to drop, then continue to waste your breath, because it will not happen.

Look.... if you seriously did find those runes then you are the luckiest person alive and good for you. BUT your results are definitely not indicative of the overall drop rates for the runes for others. 99.9999% of players have & will not see a HR drop in their entire d2 lives. Maybe even 2 or 3 d2 lives. To link it back to the point of this thread, that should be changed.

Rare items cease to be rare when everybody starts to find them. That is why they have such low drop rates. The very nature of random drops means sometimes you will hear stories of incredible luck while most of the time you will just hear people ***** that they never got what they wanted.

Thats life. You want rare items and random drops, you live with the rarest items having improbable drop chances.

[ColdAsIce]

Maybe on Bnet, but on the SPF there are countless tournaments and many, many clear the entire game including me (except hell a lot of the time) on /p8 which gives the most drops possible. And in the couple years that I've been following the SPF I can count on two hands the amount of times posters have found Jah+ doing even full clear or thousands of runs of certain areas, etc. And the only reason why the SPF has any HRs at all is because of the superchests bug (mostly exploitable in Kurast - read the thread I provided?)


So you were talking about single player, Ok next time state that in your post. I know you may know this already, but theres a big difference in the amount of players in your game when running hard areas known to drop good runes.


You say I'm being bitter, or jealous, or something ridiculous like that. Do you realize that the chance of finding Zod in the areas you described is 1 in SIXTY MILLION? Even in the best areas (of which none of them are the ones you described) it's still an impossible 1 in 20 million! I'm only being REALISTIC. The fact that you say you also have found Cham, Jah, whatever... it's a bunch of BS. Either that or you're the luckiest guy in the entire world ever. Go buy a friggin' lottery ticket.

I just called you ignorant for assuming someones a liar/judging them without knowing them and what they have done. Thats pretty bad and ignorant in my opinion, and usually people like that insecure about themselves, sorry.
Obviously, me finding Cham, Jah, Gul, and Ist arent impossible because I found them throughout YEARS of playing. Like I said, with a full game of people it increases those chances. If I'm the luckiest guy in the world than I guess all of the other people finding high runes everyday must be too. Please, re-vent your "REALISTIC" views a bit more or play the game with a full house more.


The highest rune I ever found was Sur and I know I took about a million screen-shots. The fact that you don't have ONE is .... well, VERY strange.

Ok, so thats what I call a bit hypocritical. First you said I was lieing and I'm the luckiest guy in the world by finding a single high rune like I told you, now your claiming your highest rune was a Sur rune. So I guess, in your "REALISTIC" sense, you MUST be the luckiest guy in the world too.


Look.... if you seriously did find those runes then you are the luckiest person alive and good for you. BUT your results are definitely not indicative of the overall drop rates for the runes for others. 99.9999% of players have & will not see a HR drop in their entire d2 lives. Maybe even 2 or 3 d2 lives. To link it back to the point of this thread, that should be changed.

That is completely FALSE. You are sooo over-exaggerating there sir, or you have no idea what your talking about. Go ask old school players you know or anyone who has played this game for years. Everyone I know (most of them) have found at LEAST 1-2 high runes from Gul-Zod. This may have taken them YEARS.. I'm not saying its something they just "always found" when playing. Soloing something like doing 1000 Hell Baal runs is no where as near as good as doing a full house 8 player run, for example Arcane.

Bottom line - not all high runes are duped. Id say a good percent (10-15-20%) are legit high runes because people FIND them and stop basing it on the lottery.

-Dave

[Sessily]

Many people (including me) on the SPF clear areas on /p8 which is a command on single player which stimulates the max players in the game AND max drops. Still I can count the amount of HRs found over the years from hundreds of people on two hands (that is, Jah & above). Unless the drop chances are radically different between SP & Bnet there is no reasonable explanation for your success at rune hunting & I have no choice but to believe that 99% of runes on Bnet are duped to hell.

That you, alone or in a group or whatever, have found Zod, Cham, Jah, & whatever else is insanely hard to believe. Even over a period of years. Period.

Think I'm insecure, think I'm jealous, think I don't know how the game works, post a million page overly defensive reply again, I don't care. It's not going to make me believe you any more than before.

This is going in circles, it's pointless.

[Orphan]

Many people (including me) on the SPF clear areas on /p8 which is a command on single player which stimulates the max players in the game AND max drops.

Note that the /players command in SP only simulates the maximum un-allied party members, which isn't the maximum available drops for normal mosters (though it technically is for act bosses, because they're no-drop generally reaches 0 at 3 allied party members, or 6 unallied).

With regards to the drop system, I'd like it to stay somewhere around D2's current one. As mentioned Hell difficulty isn't impossible with the high level gear, which makes the high level gear nice additions if the player is willing to put the effort in to get it, but not necessary. The duping situation on battle.net has given everyone this misconception that they need or must have these items, when in reality they do not. Not every man and his dog were supposed to have Enigma. I don't like it when people have this belief that everything should be easy to get.

In single player the drop rates should be increase though as the lack of trading environment will make certain items harder to get. Likewise, if they introduce the /players command again in SP it really should be treated as full allied players, rather than unallied.

I also like the randomness of D2. Yes it meant that it was possible for new players to get a lucky drop (like a HoZ from NM Meph on their first play through) but it's what hooks them on the game. I think everyone who has played the game has gotten their "lucky" drop when starting over, be in when they first started or a new ladder season. This is what makes the game interesting to me, being able to travel from Act 1 Normal to Act 5 Normal and have a few good items, many of which would completely different if I were to repeat that process with another character.

[5zigen]

A lot of the feeling about drops would have been alleviated if more of the uniques were good, and less of them were venom wards.

[Hrus]

ColdAsIce, you say that Hell difficulty is tough without uber rare uniques and runewords? It's supposed to be.
(Though with a little bit of concentration, game knowledge and skill, it could be done untwinked, without any reruns and with crazy builds. Solo.)

High runes and high unique items are rare for a reason, you have to play more to get them if you want your character to get stronger.

Easy to get imba items=everyone gets uber good soon=everyone has nothing to do to make his character better=lot of them gets bored sooner and they will stop to play the game sooner. It's of course good for causual players, but core RPG players want to earn to be better than players who don't play as much as them.

And with the actual drops randomness, it only support trading which is a good thing imho.


And with actual droprates, I got all unique and set items besides Tyraels (and Torch of Iro - but I can get it easily if I would run act1 normal targets). And the fact I didn't found Tyraels yet is what keeps me playing the game. It's good that even a Gosu players playing 24/7 don't have any item in the game and actually can play more in the hope to get them is good imho.
EDIT: BTW I don't trade at all, all my items are self-found.

EDIT: ColdAsIce: it's pointless to discuss if you are lucky with your rune finds... Cham is possible from LK dungeon monsters... but I guess your Sur from LK actually comes from the bugged superchests.

Note that the /players command in SP only simulates the maximum un-allied party members, which isn't the maximum available drops for normal mosters (though it technically is for act bosses, because they're no-drop generally reaches 0 at 3 allied party members, or 6 unallied).3allied=5unallied and it's only true for Mephisto, Diablo and Baal, not for Andy and Duriel.

[Bauer]

Blizzard stated that the Diablo is a trading game. This isn't wow where you kill a boss for certain items and its soulbound to you. You MF for items and if you get some good drops you trade for what you want. MFing and trading is most of the fun to me.

[Sein Schatten]

Note that the /players command in SP only simulates the maximum un-allied party members, which isn't the maximum available drops for normal mosters (though it technically is for act bosses, because they're no-drop generally reaches 0 at 3 allied party members, or 6 unallied).

Can you explain?
Are the drops higher if all 8 players are teamed up?

[Orphan]

Can you explain?
Are the drops higher if all 8 players are teamed up?

Pretty much. Basically, ever monster has a no drop rate which determines when the monster drops nothing. Additional players in the game reduce this no drop chance, but how much they reduce it by depends on those players status and location. If those players are allied with you and within two screens of any monster you kill then they are treated as a full player, otherwise they're treated as half a player. In other words, even if the player is allied with you, but off in a different act then they're treated the same as someone who isn't allied to begin with.

So assume the following example: You're in a game travelling through with your friend who's always close by, and there's 4 other people in a different act doing a MF run. Any monster you kill with have a no drop player modification of: 1 (you) + 1 (your buddy) + (0.5*4 = 2) = 4.

This is not to be confused with HP and Exp, which gets increased by everyone equally, regardless of whether they're allied with you or not.

[smartdot]

the problem of the current system IMO is that the system places TOO much emphasis on MF. take a look at the ladder reset, for the first two days or so all you saw was sorks and hammerdins. Took me a week before i saw a druid. I think that they should increase set and unique drops a bit and throw MF out the door completely, because right now MF is really what dominates the endgame. Id like to see more endgame stuff rather than running pindle for 4 straight hours. maybe better PVP or something, but not MF. I made the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

[5zigen]

the problem of the current system IMO is that the system places TOO much emphasis on MF. take a look at the ladder reset, for the first two days or so all you saw was sorks and hammerdins. Took me a week before i saw a druid. I think that they should increase set and unique drops a bit and throw MF out the door completely, because right now MF is really what dominates the endgame. Id like to see more endgame stuff rather than running pindle for 4 straight hours. maybe better PVP or something, but not MF. I made the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Well the stat isn't really responsible for this, only partially for 2 reasons:

The lack of weapon requirement for hammerdins and sorcs means having a 125 mf weapon set switch is super easy for them, though that's the case with necros, wind druids, assassins etc.

Aside from that, the hammerdin and sorc are the most mobile classes and additionally the easiest to gear. They both do excellent with simple runewords and between Teleport for the sorc, Charge and Endurance aura for the pala, they are the classes that can most effectively kill any boss easiest.

if you removed the MF stat from D2 you would see the exact same thing, because the real reason is concentrating loot at bosses, and only giving 2 classes extremely good mobility options to get to those bosses while skipping everything else.

[Nimbostratus]

I'm pretty sure smartdot was talking about magic finding in general, not the stat. They really do need to get the focus off of endlessly running for items.

[5zigen]

I'm pretty sure smartdot was talking about magic finding in general, not the stat. They really do need to get the focus off of endlessly running for items.

Well, I think that's one of the main draws for a lot of people for example, Hrus.

But I think if they do anything about the activity of magic finding, they need to do 2 things. 1) more evenly distribute the loot throughout the game instead of only having it at the bosses. 2) simply remove the ultra mobility skills or tone them down.

[Smackin]

Hardcore gamers like to mf 165156154564 hours, casual gamers like to get items without spending that 16515615456 hours. U cant compare, it doesnt make sense. Increasing droprates and u lose hardcore gamers, decrease/maintain the current rate and u lose casual gamers.

People who like to mf will argue that it feels very good to have found "XXX" item after 51215641 runs, and that increasing the drop rate will screw up that good feeling. Why do they say that? Simple, because increasing the drop rate will mean that ur 20000 weeks of mf for a griff doesnt seem very accomplished anymore, when some noob gets it on his first day of play(Just watch as all these hardcore mfer disagree with me. Simple mental defense).

Personally, I'd like the chances to be increased, that is not to say make griffs drop every 10 mins. I dont like spending countless hours mfing for a digital pixel. The thing about D2 that keeps me and most others playing, is the fact that u can always get something better, thanks to the endless ability combinations. Why not focus on monsters with this type of flexibility? Why focus on items? Why not make bosses have the ability to be xtra strong/aura'ed/CE/LE/PI etc. Why not make "mirror" bosses? Bosses mirroring ur very own char, with the ability to spawn with xtra mods/features. Obviously such bosses would also drop nice items. This way it doesnt feel boring doing 56156100 runs because its different everytime, and the boss gets stronger as u get stronger.

[5zigen]

If the drop rates go up much, the whole trading economy is shot.

If anyone can find any item they want without trading the economy suffers which isnt good for anyone.

[Sessily]

If the drop rates go up much, the whole trading economy is shot.

If anyone can find any item they want without trading the economy suffers which isnt good for anyone.

The whole economy is based on duped items & runes that aren't even found anyway, I highly doubt anything will change UNLESS drop rates are increased to a REASONABLE level - which doesn't mean they should rain from the sky - so that duping is not so "necessary".

[Smips]

Hardcore gamers like to mf 165156154564 hours, casual gamers like to get items without spending that 16515615456 hours. U cant compare, it doesnt make sense. Increasing droprates and u lose hardcore gamers, decrease/maintain the current rate and u lose casual gamers.

People who like to mf will argue that it feels very good to have found "XXX" item after 51215641 runs, and that increasing the drop rate will screw up that good feeling. Why do they say that? Simple, because increasing the drop rate will mean that ur 20000 weeks of mf for a griff doesnt seem very accomplished anymore, when some noob gets it on his first day of play(Just watch as all these hardcore mfer disagree with me. Simple mental defense).


Is there something wrong with people liking to MF a lot in D2? I see no problem with doing that. People are drawn to D2 for different reasons; some just like playing through the game, some like searching for the rarest items, some like trying new and unique builds, ect. I don't think anyone can say that any of these reasons for playing the game and any less significant than the other.

Also, what's wrong with getting satisfaction out of find a really rare item? If that's what you like to do most and you have fun doing so, what's the problem? Lowering the drop rates in D3 would only take away from this satisfaction because it would make the part of the game hardcore MFers like the most too easy. Imagine if D3 were released and it was absurdly easy. It would get old fast for every play that likes playing through with different or unusual builds. I guess the point I'm getting at here is that just because you don't really like playing the game to MF doesn't mean you should criticize people who do. Any hardcore MFer who disagrees with you isn't using "simple mental defense," they're defending the aspect of the game they enjoy most.


Anyways, about how I feel about the drop rates for D3...I don't think there was anything too wrong with the drops in D2. Some items were WAY to rare IMO though. Also, the diminishing returns on MF were pretty rediculous. I mean, 500 MF mean you have a 166% better change of an item dropping as a unique? That's pretty harsh. Also, I think high runes were a bit too rare...People who play SP can hardly even imagine finding high runes.

[Nimbostratus]

Why is it that any time somebody mentions making things less rare, everybody acts like the guy said it should rain zods? The great items should stay hard to find, but some of them really do need to come down to realistic (read: better than one in six million) odds.

I think all they really have to do is give magic and rare items better affixes and add limits on the low level ones. There are a lot of key stats that are either severely limited or completely unavailable on magics and rares in D2. And think about the rare weapons in D2- how many times have you found something in Act 5 hell that wouldn't even be passable in Act 5 normal because of all the "+1-2 fire damage" type junk that still spawns that late in the game? I'm not saying everything should spawn with an automatic 400 ED, but come on, be realistic here.

[uzurpator]

Well - the problem with the game is that the whole drop system is woefully inconsistent. If the MF drones want to run mephy for hours at a time - I say, let them, but maybe, just maybe blizzard could acknowledge that some regular people would like to find decent rare/magic items without frustration.

Example - BoTD, the 'uber lewt' weapon we all know and love is 400% ed, 2 skills, 60% ias and some other crap mods. This is cutting edge.

Rare wapons I can find are 70%, 5% life leech and +1 barb skill (not even elite item of course).

The rift between regular and godly items is too big. Honestly - elite rare items should be a regular hell drop, with at least 4 high level affixes (say ~250% ed, 40% ias, 2 socket, 2 barbskill, or whatevers)

The game would be perfectly balanced, item wise, if a regular player could wear only rare/magic/crafted items (no runewords or uniques) and be able to comfortably solo hell without harvesting for items on purpose.

And let the MF drones have they ridicolusly overpowered uniques and runewords to hunt for.

[5zigen]

Well - the problem with the game is that the whole drop system is woefully inconsistent. If the MF drones want to run mephy for hours at a time - I say, let them, but maybe, just maybe blizzard could acknowledge that some regular people would like to find decent rare/magic items without frustration.

Example - BoTD, the 'uber lewt' weapon we all know and love is 400% ed, 2 skills, 60% ias and some other crap mods. This is cutting edge.

Rare wapons I can find are 70%, 5% life leech and +1 barb skill (not even elite item of course).

The rift between regular and godly items is too big. Honestly - elite rare items should be a regular hell drop, with at least 4 high level affixes (say ~250% ed, 40% ias, 2 socket, 2 barbskill, or whatevers)

The game would be perfectly balanced, item wise, if a regular player could wear only rare/magic/crafted items (no runewords or uniques) and be able to comfortably solo hell without harvesting for items on purpose.

And let the MF drones have they ridicolusly overpowered uniques and runewords to hunt for.

This is a good point imo.

I think one of the great things about D1 was that the uniques were good, but they werent utterly dominant.

In D2 this changed where uniques were the way to play, magic items were essentially worthless (except for chipped CCBoH).

What really made it worse in D2 was that finding that High ED cruel weapon of Quickness was incredibly more difficult than simply finding and using a unique weapon.

I hope they rebalance it in D2 so that magic items will maybe have less stats or mods on them, but ultimately could be better than uniques. Perhaps giving them a higher ED cap, or allowing a way to socket items and giving magic weapons 3 sockets always and not allowing sockets on uniques. Or anything. Just something to increase the viability of non uniques would be awesome.

Aside from that the discrepancy between unique items was huge also, some of them being awesome and some being beyond worthless. This should have been addressed too.

[sbn]

The whole economy is based on duped items & runes that aren't even found anyway, I highly doubt anything will change UNLESS drop rates are increased to a REASONABLE level - which doesn't mean they should rain from the sky - so that duping is not so "necessary".

This is exactly my thinking on the problem. If you create items that with such amazing stats, then make the item too rare for 95% to ever find, there will be duping. I try to take a very realistic approach to this subject. The problem for me starts with the source, which is Blizzard's design for these games. Making the 1.10 runewords was not necessarily the biggest problem, but having them use so many high runes that would simply never be found. The odds of finding one HR is extremely rare, the odds of two? Nobody could realistically look at ever making a Breath of the Dying, since it used Zod.

But the human nature, and let's keep in mind the audience here, is going to dictate that you simply can not hold out on a pedestal certain items and say "Ha! Good luck finding". A simplistic example would be holding out a piece of candy to a child and holding it just high enough out of his reach. Now when the other children have a piece of candy, obviously the desire for that child is going to not only increase, but other emotions such as jealousy will not arise. It is normal, and actually expected point, of games of this nature to continually improve your characters. When the game is so dependent upon items, and you have leveled high enough, then the desire becomes one thing only: items.

I think melee chars are most affected by the drops as they are. For example, it is very difficult to have a decent melee char start the ladder, as the items found are about 99% worthless. The health, defense, resists, life leech, mana leech, etc.. all effect the melee much more than say the Necromancer or Sorc. By creating almost a dependency on items rather than say skill or gameplay, the desire increases tenfold to obtain better items obviously. But when these items are not to be found, people WILL seek an alternative.

I have played this game now for 8 years, and in 8 years they were never able to address duping. Each stage there was always a response by the community. Worse yet the measures Blizzard enacted did not solve the problem, but now merely made it impossible to trade for certain items. While I know my view is somewhat controversial, I merely wish to just look at things objectively. As I see it, duping is not as much the problem as the drop rates, or ability to obtain items. While there certainly is a good percentage of players who wish to avoid things such as runewords made from HRs, I think the reality is most players simply do not realize what the true effect would be if there were no dupes (again I am not advocating, but merely discussing reality). Even at some of the "legit" trading forums you have many players that while not trading their Enigma there, certainly do have them.

In short, if they continue to have some godly-uber must have items that have drop rates similar to D2, and not "legitimate" means of obtaining, then you WILL have dupes and hacks for D3. That is a 110% guarantee. Over the years I have thought of numerous different proposals on this, but sadly none too popular :). I think the best method that at least received some positive responses was this:

The idea behind Diablo Clone was just plain idiotic. This did not solve the problem of SOJs duping, but merely enticed more TO dupe. But the idea of Ubers I believe was excellent. Although collecting keys is time consuming, the reality here is that you are almost guaranteed some keys after a set number of runs. Through time you have the keysets, and then begin to obtain the organs. After all that work you face 3 Ubers which drop one of the nicest items in the game, the Hellfire Torch. Aside from some rare duping of 20/20 Paladin torches, the reality here is that almost all torches are legit. Now think if they were instead dropped randomly at the same rate as Death's Fathom. Does anyone want to argue that torches would NOT be duped?

So now we have the SOH from our conquest of the Ubers. Why not have a vendor that would sell items such as an Enigma or Crown of Ages with enough SOHs amassed? You see the point here is that like the Ubers, you are guaranteed a victory of sorts. I do not necessarily think that all players are just lazy, many simply do not like to MF, and the pay offs can be so disappointing as to make it nothing more than a waste of time. Let's keep in mind also that the D2 community as it is now is one of hardcore D2 fans, but this will not constitute a good percentage when D3 comes out. Casual gamers who simply just want to play, level their character, etc.., well to them item dependency and drop rates are an extreme hindrance to enjoying this game at all. I would agree if someone says then maybe D3 is not the best game for them, but that does not change the fact that a very large number by this game simply to play it.

p.s. If you have read this far....I appreciate that you haven't fallen asleep :thumbup:

[phool]

If duping is possible, people will dupe. Adding dclone... removing enigma... Whatever; the incentive to dupe is equally high, short of making an item system as unvaried as GW's (even then... pp items like max r7s), the only thing you're changing is what people dupe.

There is however no need for duping to ever be possible in D3.

[uzurpator]

Simply put - balancing super items by their rarity only increases the incentive to dupe. Forcing people to use those items due to nothing else giving the necessary 'oomph' just magnifies this tenfold.

I honestly think that the problem would be solved if the regular 'out of the mill' equipment found by everyone offered 80-90% of the stuff offered by the 'cutting edge'. Then 'cutting edge' can be hyper rare (anyone remember griswold's set in 1.09?)

[ColdAsIce]

This is exactly my thinking on the problem. If you create items that with such amazing stats, then make the item too rare for 95% to ever find, there will be duping. I try to take a very realistic approach to this subject. The problem for me starts with the source, which is Blizzard's design for these games. Making the 1.10 runewords was not necessarily the biggest problem, but having them use so many high runes that would simply never be found. The odds of finding one HR is extremely rare, the odds of two? Nobody could realistically look at ever making a Breath of the Dying, since it used Zod.

Hi I read your post great point. Although I will have to put my opinion in I guess. Yea, it sucks runes are so rare..Which makes it almost impossible for most people to create the godly runewords. Although, you may find an HR only once or twice, but then count the other hundreds of thousands of people who have the chance to find them too. They say about 3-4 people find some sort of high rune each day that passes on each server which is pretty accurate I guess for being an average number, but HRS were meant to be traded and were meant to be rarely found.

With that being said, most of those runewords were meant to be very very rare to the game.. I didn't think blizz would have expected these dupes that caught them off guard, in which, now everyone has an enigma. My point is the runewords people seek were not meant to be for everyone, I see it as the people who seek this power and work hard for it.. Working hard could be trading your way to acheive what you want, or even playing the game.

Some people would ask me "You mean if HRs werent duped, people would trade them? Are you serious? I dont think so" Actually from my years of experience, I remember people would find HRs and go trade them for godlies and such. People will and people will not.

- Dave

[Nimbostratus]

While it sounds nice on paper to have things that are super rare, there really isn't anything positive about it. All it does is encourage duping and hacking, and really, what's the point of even having something in the game if only 1% of the population is ever going to have it? Also, keep in mind that single player does exist, so having items that can only realistically obtained through trading is nonsense. It's just a wasted effort to have something available to so few.

As for duping, keep in mind that duping itself isn't the main problem-it's the other effects that come from it being so overwhelming. Even if people do manage to dupe in D3, it won't be a huge problem it people can still legitimately find the item without too much difficulty (thus, traded items are still likely to be legitimate). As long as we can prevent the "99% of all <high runes, stone of jordan, etc.> are duped" scenario from happening, it's good. Yes, preventing duping in the first place would be ideal, but preventing it from being a problem when it happens would at least be a partial victory.

[CombatShrine]

It would just be great if rares were good again.

It was always really fun in classic diablo2 identifying a new rare with giddy excitement that it might help your character, or possibly be something utterly astounding...:D

If they just got rid of all the useless modifiers, and added some new useful ones into the prefix/suffix pool it would really help alot. like, what if you could get 10-20% crushing blow as a weapon modifier, but it had like, a required level of 90?

It would also help if, as you leveled up higher, inferior magical modifiers became "locked out", preventing such silly occurrences as a level 90 character identifying a rare sword from pindleskin, only to see mods like 15% enhanced damage, 6% fire res, and 1-2 fire damage.

This could be done not only in diablo 3, but also diablo 2. making rares good again would really slow down the dupers, because good rares are well...really one-of-a-kind, which means they have to either find one themselves or trade for one...which itself would require something equally amazing.

[Hrus]

what's the point of even having something in the game if only 1% of the population is ever going to have it? Also, keep in mind that single player does exist, so having items that can only realistically obtained through trading is nonsense. It's just a wasted effort to have something available to so few.

The purpose of rare and strong items is that the people will still have some goals to achieve after they finish the game. Someone brags about successfully completed (legit) BOTD-like item in D3? It just motivates you to play the game more.
And I don't see a reason why SP should be different from BNet in this case? 1) You can trade via TCP/IP (I hope TCP/IP will be still available for SP chars.) 2) Even if you don't trade, you can still hope to find the super rare items.

[ColdAsIce]

The purpose of rare and strong items is that the people will still have some goals to achieve after they finish the game. Someone brags about successfully completed (legit) BOTD-like item in D3? It just motivates you to play the game more.
And I don't see a reason why SP should be different from BNet in this case? 1) You can trade via TCP/IP (I hope TCP/IP will be still available for SP chars.) 2) Even if you don't trade, you can still hope to find the super rare items.

Which is pretty much what I have been saying all along since my first post on this thread.

My point of emphasis: Hard work pays off!

[uzurpator]

Which is pretty much what I have been saying all along since my first post on this thread.

My point of emphasis: Hard work pays off!

Methinks it is established quite well, that all uber-rare uber-items achieve is botting and duping - with "unofficial" rules that, for instance, 40/15 jewels* are "legit" even though virtually all of them are duped.

*and pretty much:
any HR
160/60 armors
120/45 helms
most of high end runewords
+life skillers
3/20/20 sc's
and tonnes of other items

[ColdAsIce]

Methinks it is established quite well, that all uber-rare uber-items achieve is botting and duping - with "unofficial" rules that, for instance, 40/15 jewels* are "legit" even though virtually all of them are duped.

*and pretty much:
any HR
160/60 armors
120/45 helms
most of high end runewords
+life skillers
3/20/20 sc's
and tonnes of other items

Yes, and they can be made/found legitly which is probrably the rarest thing about this game which makes it interesting.

[Helmi]

I agree that the drop rates of D2 are horriffic and hope that D3 changes something about them.
I remember the time when I played D2 for the first time. Back then I was about 13 years old and bought the game merely cause I had some good memories about playing Diablo once on the computer of my cousin.
I rolled a Barbarian cause I kinda liked the idea of being a tough close range fighter. I leveled my way up and didn't follow any particular build -well ok I had one in mind but I never checked wether there's a guide about it or if it sucks- nonetheless I managed to kill Diablo without too much problems. But then all of the sudden a brickwall! BAMM!!!
My char totally sucked on nightmare and the game I was now playing could've been called Corpse Run.
At that point I would have done anything to get better gear or undo my skill choices but the only rare item I could find was for casters and the skills were unchangeable.
So I edited my character with some tool but after that it felt „wrong“ and I quit playing him.
It would have felt better if Blizzard would have given me an option to buy back skill points even if that would have meant to farm half an hour or more to buy back one single point.
Same about the items. If 30-40 or whatever countable number of boss runs would have been needed to find the item I wanted I would have done them. But ten up to hundred times as much because there is an 0.001% chance that it might drop? After all this is just a fekking game!
Furthermore I find it kinda awkward that Diablo or any of his brothers drops crappy unusable white stuff as if he's some kind of lower minion. Come on I've just slain one of the mightiest demons that ever walked the earth and all he was equipped with were some crappy common items which he might have bought from the nearest apprentice blacksmith? Hardly believable.
What I'm trying to say is that there must be something in the middle. I wan't to have the feeling that I achieved something when I finally got hold of an item but I definetly don't want to spent 2-3 weeks on farming to find some stuff that I can hardly use.
And I want the possibility to correct failures I made cause I wasn't sure about my character build or didn't foresee any future patch changes.
Don't forget that there are still people playing these games as singleplayer!
So in my humble opinion either make the rare items less über so that the complete game is doable with normal items that each SP char could get hold on or change something about the drop system.

Please forgive my spelling or grammar mistakes as english isn't my native language.

Cheers
Helmi

[uzurpator]

Yes, and they can be made/found legitly which is probrably the rarest thing about this game which makes it interesting.

Battlenet disagrees with you, that is why 'legit' duels are stocked full of those items. And honestly if I was a dueler (I ain't) intrested only in pvp then I'd trade for those things.

Frankly, I value my time more then I value money, so as a dueler I'd prolly buy the items online because you know - running a mephy for a year to get that shako(ber) is worth that 20$...
It is obvious I guess that online bought items are guaranteed dupes.

Clarification: I don't buy items online, I don't do that at all, currently I play mods which actually have respectable drop rates

[JunkStory]

It would just be great if rares were good again.

It was always really fun in classic diablo2 identifying a new rare with giddy excitement that it might help your character, or possibly be something utterly astounding...:D

If they just got rid of all the useless modifiers, and added some new useful ones into the prefix/suffix pool it would really help alot. like, what if you could get 10-20% crushing blow as a weapon modifier, but it had like, a required level of 90?

It would also help if, as you leveled up higher, inferior magical modifiers became "locked out", preventing such silly occurrences as a level 90 character identifying a rare sword from pindleskin, only to see mods like 15% enhanced damage, 6% fire res, and 1-2 fire damage.

This could be done not only in diablo 3, but also diablo 2. making rares good again would really slow down the dupers, because good rares are well...really one-of-a-kind, which means they have to either find one themselves or trade for one...which itself would require something equally amazing.

Strongly agreed.

In D2, unique items and runeword became the dominant items to use.. and 90% of all people on bnet would be using the exact same items. The whole idea of unique items was just totally pwned.

[redrach]

I've returned to Diablo 2 single player after years and this topic is highly relevant to me. The biggest problem I have is this:
Not all untwinked character classes can complete the game.
Pretty simple isn't it?
I'd say there's something seriously wrong with a game if you need certain items to complete Hell difficulty which are only dropped by Act Bosses in Hell difficulty. Of course, its not even that easy. You need to do hundreds, if not thousands, of Boss runs with your ****ty gear before you can equip your shiny loot.

As for what I think Blizzard could do to fix this:
- Increase chances of finding rares/uniques across the whole game. Make it so that Boss runs aren't the only viable method.
- Ensure that Bosses only drop rares or higher.
- Bosses in Normal/Nightmare/Hell should drop Normal/Normal & Exceptional/Exceptional & Elite items respectively, or possibly one level lower as well.
- Have at least one item dropped per Boss be class-specific. Makes it a whole lot easier to find the specific item your looking for.
- Of course, for the previous point to work, all classes have to be equally good at Boss running.
- Instead of making all uniques more common, just ensure that the most common ones are enough for a character to complete the game, while the rarer ones allow for faster killing, faster Boss runs, etc.

[LawStudent]

What the biggest problem (not touching the dupes/economy problem) is that they have made the truly godly items (with the elite uniques and amazing multiple-HR runewords) that if there werent a duping problem only a few people could attain, and then right under that is a DROP to rares and lower uniques. They raised monster difficulty, and raised the ceiling of items, but did not change the middle ground.

What LOD original got right (originally):
Uniques should be good, but not possibly the best items.
The MORE unique rare and magical items should rule the show.
I liked how magicals in the beginning of LoD had the best possible raw power stats, the Cruel modifier only being available on magic items but that is well balanced with rares with slightly less max damage but the possibility for high damage and other modifiers like leech.

I thought from how LOD was originally was high level rune words sucked compared to unqiues and even magical items, and thought that those needed to be upped. But, to this degree, where it invites dupes is impractical and offers no truly middle ground-viable items in hell.

Variety of items is great. That's what makes the diablo series so amazing.
Rarity is important! It gives people a goal to shoot for. It gives the hardcore gamers a hope to find perfection.
I don't mind if 1% of people have an item, it's about having viable items for the non-hardcore gamers.

What I think is optimal, is that for your standard run through the game, you achieve one amazing item (not necessarily, top notch, but very good), and some good items. What I think could help this in multiplayer is to split up drops better between party members, and not having a contest for the prize after the boss dies.

[Bloodedmayhem]

I havn't read anyone else's posts but I want the Drop Rates to go down alot. So it makes things harder and more expensive ;D

[stillman]

I'm so strongly opposed to what I'm reading that I finally must speak out.

Some of you are going on like it's IMPOSSIBLE to attain legit hrs. Many of you want to slightly increase the drop rate of hrs so people won't be "forced" to dupe. Are you kidding?

You guys are justifying duping. Shame on you! Not only that, you are saying that having low drop rates "forces" people to dupe, like having godly ubber gear is a complete necessity and every noob should have every end game item that exists.

First, dupers are complete losers who suck hard and they are wrecking (have wrecked) the wonderful economy of our beloved d2 game. As a mod pointed out, people have a false assumption that everyone NEEDS end game gear. The truth is, this godly gear is only meant for the most dedicated players who invested enough time and effort into the game. We're selfish to think we should all get our greedy hands on every last thing in the game.

Secondly, it is very possible to get legit hrs on bnet. Every last one of you are capable of getting 3-4 legit hrs of your chosing, and it won't take a "lifetime" of playing. Now, before I go on, I'll say I'm talking about bnet only. I fully agree that for single player, something is wrong and changes are needed so it is reasonably possible to get hrs.

But for bnet, there are several ways to attain legit hrs:

1-Rush a friend for his forges over and over. NM runes available at forge: sol-Um. That alone gives you a change for lems, puls and Ums, which can be converted up to higher runes. Hell runes available at forge: hel-gul. This gives you good chances to get lems, puls, ums, mals, ists, and guls. 2 guls make a vex. 2 vex's make an ohm, and 2 ohm's make a Lo. Clearly, after less than 100 rushes you are on your way to the godly runeword of your choice (maybe not all the way there, but you'll have good runes). As for the problem of finding a friend good enough to help you with this (who will continually make new chrs to be rushed for his forges), that is one of the challenges you must face if you want hrs bad enough. In d2, if you really want something, you'll get it.

2-Simply save every low rune that drops and convert them up. Sell shiny things to noob's and take all their low crappy runes. Convert them. Ask them to message you when they have more. Make lots of friends and ask them to save every low rune for you that they come across. Be sure to drop what you're doing and join their game when they need to unload their low runes on you. Convert them. Trade good uniques for mid runes like puls or lesser good low runes like fals and lems. These are not duped. Convert them. Remember, puls and lems drop fairly frequently, unlike the astronomical odds of hrs. People on bnet are getting legit puls every day; you just need to wrest them out of their hands by selling them good uniques. Use your mf chr to farm good uniques and trade everything for puls. Convert them to ums, then mals, then ists...Flawless gems are extremely common, so save them all, convert to pgems and sell them all for puls or low runes. Covnet them to legit hrs. If you host nm chaos runs for 6 or more leechers, about 4-5 flawless gems will drop per run. Killing the council often yeids a low rune or a flawless gem.

3-Trading. Now, in a perfect world (like d3, hopefully) there would be no dupes. So lets say we have a hypothetical world where all hrs are legit. Many of you say it's impossible to get a small handful of hrs because of the astronomical odds. Well, the odds are actually pretty good because there are tens of thousands of people playing. The number of hrs on bnet is going to steadily rise, and only decrease as people collect them through trade to use them to make runewords. As for winning the lottery, people DO WIN the lottery because there are so many thousands of lottery players. The legit hrs are out there, you just need to trade for them. Now of course, d2 is ruined by dupers, so again I'm talking about a perfectly clean d3 ecconomy. Shakos, Coa's, arachs, facets and Hoz all drop in hell Chaos Sanctuary with relatively good odds. you just need to sell ALL this stuff for the hrs that are out there. Overpay for the hr you want; that's how you get something with near certainty. Again, we have a challenging situation here--you must overpay and this is a challenge we must be willing to face to really get what we want.

What's wrong with challenge? Why do some of you want all the niceties with minimal effort? Increasing the drop rates of hrs will only lessen the challenges of the above tactics I mentioned. Gee, are they even tactics? Any of you guys could do the above proceedures using the common mf gear that keeps droping.

4-Do countess runs all day for a while. She can drop up to ist with her rune drop, and IIRC up to Lo with her non-rune drop (but we won't count that since a Lo is almost out of the question). Obviously, lems, puls, etc are going to drop more frequently. Doing countess runs for a few weeks or even months does not constitue a "lifetime" of d2 playing. You could all make a tele sorc and do countess runs to get mid runes and convert them until you get hrs.

You just don't want to. You want Blizzard to give you the easy way by making hrs drop a bit more frequently.

5-Finally, you can build a very wide area attacker like a multi-shot bowazon and just clean out underpowered areas like in nm. You can join dueler games or w/e to get the no drop chance a bit lower or w/e (in nm, where you can kill stuff with 1-2 hits). Since it is runes you are after, ditch all the mf gear and make one really good killer that can hit everything on the screen. You simply increase your chance for low rune drops by increasing the number of monsters you kill. If you kill 3 times faster than Joe, then you have in a sense trippled your chances of getting a low rune in a given amount of time. This requires the sacrifice of mf; again, a challenge we must face to get those low runes we need for conversions to mids. You can also change your playing behavior a bit to ignore all the blue and rare goodies that drop since you want to save time and just collect runes. This is very hard to do (for me anyway). Again, a challenge to face in the name of getting hrs...

And, simply put, the longer you play, the more near-hrs will drop. Here's what all droped for me just doing solo chaos runs and a bit of act 5 dungeon and act 3 flayer jungle runs: 2 ists, 2-3guls, vex and 1 Ohm. Plus, puls, mals and Ums. So I never got a Lo, Sur, Ber, Jah, Cham or Zod which are used to make the godly runewords, but the ones I got are still pretty up there imo. I got the ones I did from spending virtually all summer playing d2 and whenever I had time off work. So this was just after 2-3 years, not a "lifetime". And, I was solo leveling, not really hunting for runes using the 5 methods I explained above. If you paly a lot, you'll get good runes as a reward, but if you want the best ones, you have to go some extra distance.

I'll tell you guys what the probelm is: you're caught up in a multiplayer sheme of dependance. You're getting rushed by others just to make some whim dueler character, getting leveld by baal runeers, etc. This means when a mid rune or w/e drops, you're not likely to be the one to snatch it up. You're also spending time dueling and mfing when you COULD be making a chr and a playing style devoted to earning mid-hrs. You COULD be spending that time rushing a frined over and over for a few days to get hrs, or doing countess runs. You're not using your time to get hrs, this is YOUR choice, and that's the only reason you don't all have 4 legit hrs which is very possible.

In d2, you can't have it all. You can't be on the ladder if you're dueling all night, and likewise, you won't get legit hrs unless you are devoted to it. You can't just expect them to drop for all of us.

[uzurpator]

stillman:

Drop rates are ok when it comes to item types (ie - sash, sword, elite sword, _rune_, gem whatever, altho I'd personally cut the amount of crap that drops (arrows, potions etc)).

Drop rates are even OK when it comes to enchantment type (normal, magic, set, unique).

Drop rates are completely screwed when it comes to what kind of enchantment you can get on an item: like %ed or +1skills. this is the root of the problem with the game - ie why ppl want uniques/runes so much.

Firstly - only preset items give certain bonii. You will not get %mana or +skills on a rare ring, there go rare rings for sosas. You will not get %damage on a rare armor. You will not get %deadly strike on a rare amulet. etc. No rare item will give you %crushing blow or %damage resist. This way useful, and often irreplacable mods are only on preset items -> bye bye rares.

Secondly - possibility of 6 strong, useful mods on a rare item is ridculously (sp?) low. Like - get a 6 pack of OHM low. And even when you get the best mods, a medium quality, easy to obtain runeword (like Honor or Crescent Moon, which are, honestly, trivial to make) will be most likely better anyway.

So this leaves us with runewords and uniques/sets as easiest to obtain sensible items. Which actually is broken design.

If there was a continuity of quality of items you get, then all runes can drop at ZOD rate, I don't care, since I have something to replace it. However there isn't, so equipment dependant builds (barbs ferinstance), will be screwed and their players will cheat their way to the sensible equipment.

On the other front - i play necros, which allows me to pretty much solo the game naked...

[Nimbostratus]

Stillman, people go on about HRs being near impossible to get because they ARE near impossible to get. We aren't trying to justify duping, simply pointing out how STRONGLY Blizzard has encouraged it.

Secondly, the problem isn't that everyone feels they deserve the absolute godliest gear. The problem is how MASSIVE the gap is between the godliest gear and what you're likely to find. For example, compare Breath of the Dying to your average unique or a nice rare weapon. The average unique has around 250% ED, 30 IAS, and some other stuff. The average BOTD has around 380% ED, 60 IAS, +30 all stats, AND can be made in an ethereal base without worrying about it breaking. I don't mind the top players having better stuff, but come on. There's simply no competition whatsoever; overpowered runewords blow everything else out of the water. I loathe Bnet because of this; you have "Grief" or you have nothing, when compared to other players.

Then you go on to HRs being "easy" to get if you're dedicated. Constant forge rushing requires good luck on the drops, friends willing to make hundreds of characters for you to rush, or tons of people not scamming you out of the forge. Cubing up from low runes simply isn't practical; it takes far too many to get anywhere. And if things like high runes stay so rare, what's stopping the OTHER players from keeping theirs in hopes of making runewords?

Again, we aren't whining and saying we deserve everything the game has to offer; stop acting like we are. Making the strongest things hardest to find is perfectly fine, so long as there are comparable alternatives. The difference should be noticeable, but it should also be reasonable. And if the only people who should have the best gear are the best players, shouldn't they already be good enough not to need that huge an advantage?

Lastly, Diablo is a game. Getting items for a character shouldn't be a chore, and it certainly shouldn't feel like a job. Sure, some dedication should get you some better results, but it shouldn't be required to run mephisto 900 times just so you can play a melee char in hell without getting slaughtered every 10 minutes or taking 10 hours to kill a fallen. Diablo is a game; it should be fun, and the items you find on a normal playthrough need to be viable by the end of the game. Not godly, but enough to get by at a reasonable pace.

[stillman]

Uzurpator, Yes, there should definitely be something done to make rares valuable (I was only discussing hrs, my post was too long to mention rares).

In d2, there are only a few "good" rares that are better than uniques. I believe they are high str high res fcr rings, and some wierd rare demensional blade or phase blade that has huge AR, is eth, socketed?, and some other specific set of mods. There might be some eth 2os rare armor that is desireable for wierd duelers, not sure what it is though. Anyway, rares can still be used as stepping stones for early in the game, but it'd be nice to have a realistic chance to attain end-game rares.

I'd prefer this, sort of like how 4os armor of the whale w/ jewels is a blue item and it is often prefered over any unique armor for end game.

[Messiah]

I know I don't have 6 hours a day anymore to do countless MF runs. I think a lot of people are just asking for more consistency in rares/uniques and make them attainable without being too common. They could probably increase the chance of uniques dropping by 50% and 80% of the people who play regularly still would never see a lot of that higher end stuff. I know in all my thousands of hours of D2 I only found a handful of elite uniques/rares, and I was VERY serious back then skipping High School just so I could stay at home and do MF runs all day/night long.

I mean what are the chances of a zod dropping, 1 in 6mil of all runes dropped? Get real.

[Spero]

I think that drop rates should be increased significantly over D2. People who have no other life and play tons of hours may end up with multiples of even rare items, but I don't see that as a problem. What I dislike is knowing that it's nearly impossible for me to ever get an IK set or any other high level set, higher runes, etc. That's lame, IMO.

I agree that really low drop rates increase the likelihood that people will try to dupe, eBay, bot, etc. All the crummy things that most of us despise will be reduced if the drop rates are increased. The only down side is the few people who play constantly will not have as many bragging rights.

[phool]

I've said it before and I'll say it again (it'll mostly fall on deaf ears anyway so I'll just say search if you want a more detailed post); without completely simplifying (i.e. destroying) the item system in the style of GW, duping is equally inevitable and has equal incentive regardless of whether runes exist or are rare. There will always be rare and valuable items and in the case of the best crafted amulets for example these would even in a dupe free economy be more desirable to dupe than hrs in terms of value held per inventory space.

The variable stats on many non-rune items does protect players to some extent from trading for known dupes however; they can refuse to get a 1 off perf or 3 off perf def item if it's a known dupe. With runes this isn't even slightly possible. Not that most players are demonstrably willing to sacrifice their char's power to be dupe-free anyway.

[sbn]

I think that drop rates should be increased significantly over D2. People who have no other life and play tons of hours may end up with multiples of even rare items, but I don't see that as a problem. What I dislike is knowing that it's nearly impossible for me to ever get an IK set or any other high level set, higher runes, etc. That's lame, IMO.

I agree that really low drop rates increase the likelihood that people will try to dupe, eBay, bot, etc. All the crummy things that most of us despise will be reduced if the drop rates are increased. The only down side is the few people who play constantly will not have as many bragging rights.

You have a point, which leads to a question; Is Diablo NOTHING more than just a big item hunt? If so, then maybe D3 shouldn't waste any more time on a storyline, plot, dialog, etc.. The average RPG game that was around when D1-D2 came out had items merely as a means to fight with. Blizzard went a step somewhat too far and made the game more reliant on items and less on skill, tactics, etc.

It always seems like a few hardcore players can't seem to realize that a lot more simply want to just play the game at their own pace. It annoys me that some just can not get it into their heads that NOT everyone enjoys doing magic find runs over and over...and over= repeat ad nauseum.

You can NOT apply your ideas and values on to others

Fact: The drop rates as they exist in D2 are very prohibiting to the casual D2 player. Of all the time I have spent playing the past couple of years (not counting time I spent years earlier) I myself have found very little in the means of those godly items. I have never found a Hoz, Griffons, Fathom, etc..I have found 2 SOJs my entire time. I have had to rely completely on trading. But I am neither naive or ignorant to the fact that many of the items I traded for were not found by some bloke just randomly playing the game. In fact I know that many of the items I got were from players who either used a bot, or used D2loader to stack up a game for better MF drops.

Fact: One of the points to a RPG game is to improve on your character you create. When a game like D2 becomes so item dependent, it is only natural that people have an instinctive to obtain 'better' items.

Now as much as people want to live in a fantasy world where dupes should not exist, the reality is that there will always be a high demand for them when items become unattainable. As I have to constantly repeat over and over which gets quite annoying, NONE of you would ever have a botd, enigma, etc.. without someone duping HRs.

Sure someone maybe can do hundreds of forges, but they would have to do them for their own chars of course considering the percentage of people that will simply leave once they get to act 4. Now factor in the time to do all this (tsk tsk, no using Maphack now) and this is equally prohibitive as the drop rates to the average person. Again, not EVERYONE has hundreds of hours to spend playing this game.

For me the solution that can keep everyone happy is this:
Adjust the drop rates to a more realistic rate, but you can still make most items harder to obtain. Then, have a built in game currency that allows players to sell off their crappy finds to build up a value that they could eventually just purchase one of the items from a NPC. For those that find the thrill in finding that special item, well you are still free as ever to spend countless hours doing Meph runs to find that item. Nobody will force you to go to the NPC and just buy the Griffons. But for the rest of the D2 players, they now have an alternative option.

[iraiam]

I don't like the drop rates in D2 either, maybe they were OK when I had Lots of time to play, but now it's just kind of frustrating to do run after run after run and not find anything that is much good. I will probably never have another level 99 character again.

But I'm old now with a kid and a mortgage so I am not likely the target audience for D3.

If D3 has similar drop rates I will probably only have 1 copy unlike the 4 sets of D2LOD I own. (yes I know shame on me! I could put more of my own accounts in my private games to get better drops)

I/we used to make character after character and rush them ourselves just for the forges and the added sockets (mentioned in previous post) and then just delete the account/character and start all over. that was the only way I was able to get a "godly account"

[stillman]

Is everyone forgeting about trade?

Ok, how to explain this...

Blizzard did NOT say "Ok, we'll make hrs drop such that people have to play a very long time to get a hr." That was NOT the intention. They did not want to have a hr drop for each of us even after 10 years.

Instead, they said "Ok, well make it so NO ONE has a hr drop for them ever. But, one lucky guy out of thousands will win the lottery and get a hr. That way, the only resonably timely way to make a godly runeword is through TRADE."

Trade, not finding hrs that drop for you. Trade. Trade. Trade. That was the whole point of the rarity of hrs. They want us to have to trade for them. Trade is a very big part of Diablo on bnet.

See? You all seem to think the point is for a hr to drop in your game and you pick it up and pick up the next one that drops and put them in an item to get the godly. Well that's not supposed to happen.
The hr drop rates are astronomical because they're supposed to be. We're not supposed to ever have a hr drop for us. Never. We're supposed to have to trade for them.

Now if you happen to be one of these "no-life" guys who plays all day (like me), then you can use alternatives: convert low/mid runes, do forge rushes, countess runs etc. But if you don't have time for that, if you have kids and a life, etc, then no problem: you just trade for the hrs you need instead. You can trade for them with the godly uniques that drop from bosses. Blizzard practically throws mf gear at you, and later, godly uniques.

And if you don't get a godly runeword after all your mfing efforts, is that really a problem? The game is beatable in hell mode with a common handful of cheap uniques. Even if you never have a hr after long hours of mfing for good trade items, well you still walk away with some stuff to trade with. No loss.

As for the gap between uniques and godly runewords, well that isn't broken either. The point of the gap is to give professional players something to work on. It was nice of Blizzard to give this final challenge to players who were bored of mastering everything else.

As I pointed out in a previous post, the best runewords are not supposed to be the end game gear for every player, only the top few best players. Maybe only 10 guys on bnet were meant to have an enigma, and then they could afffect all those under them by doing speedier boss runs. What is wrong with the very best players having a something (some item) that almost no one else has? They earned it. Likewise, if only like 10 guys on bnet had infinity, they would be the most helpful team member of most parties. Again, this was meant to be a reward to those top players. Enigma and infinity have huge gaps from uniques because there were only meant to be like 10 of them in USEAST. The point is for the top guys to have a special experience of affecting those beneith them in a positvie way. Runewords are a luxury; please don't think of them as necessary gear.

"Now as much as people want to live in a fantasy world where dupes should not exist, the reality is that there will always be a high demand for them when items become unattainable. As I have to constantly repeat over and over which gets quite annoying, NONE of you would ever have a botd, enigma, etc.. without someone duping HRs."

But none of us are supposed to have a nigma or botd. I don't know why you guys can't accept that. You want us all to be driving luxury cars or you say it isn't fair. These are ecconomy-wrecking and game-breaking items. Only one guy out of 10,000 or w/e is suppose to have one.

And that would be one of the best players on bnet. He would have his botd after trading everything he found. And what do you get? Well you would beat this guy in duels because you spent everything you found on dueler gear (for example). Or, you would have 8 characters decked out with 9 skillers, torches, etc who can handle any situation in the game. But you can't have legit hrs too because you spent everything on your multiple characters. You both invested your time differently and have different items. You have far more items than he does, but he has a nigma and only one character (for example). It's no different than you making a fire sorc while he makes a cold sorc.

"Sure someone maybe can do hundreds of forges, but they would have to do them for their own chars of course considering the percentage of people that will simply leave once they get to act 4. Now factor in the time to do all this (tsk tsk, no using Maphack now) and this is equally prohibitive as the drop rates to the average person. Again, not EVERYONE has hundreds of hours to spend playing this game."

But if you have a good friend to help you, he is not going to leave at act 4. He is going to do dozens of forge runs with you and the 2 of you split the profits. Co-op playing is encouraged by Blizzard. I realize not EVERYONE has hundreds of hours to play, but not EVERYONE should have a botd or nigma. These items are too powerful and should only be in the hands of a very small number of people on bnet. You don't need them anyway. The game is easy.

Why can't anyone accept this? It is a feature of many on-line games. The more time and effort you put into it allows you to experience things that others don't get to. The "having a godly runeword" experience only constitutes a little part of the boring end game grind. EVERYONE gets to enjoy beating the game in hell, dueling, mfing, trading, partying, questing and other activities without runewords. It's not like I'm advocating taking away a core part of the game for those who have families and jobs to tend to.

If there were no dupes, so very few would even have a nigma that it would barely affect anyone at all. Pictue it: we would all be doing slower chaos or baal runs. We would all kill a bit slower without infinity or grief. People would have lower damage in duels making fewer one hit kills. Someone with a grief is only going to show up in 1 out of 10,000 duel games and make it unfair, but the other 9999 duelers on bent wouldn't have this problem because there are so few griefs. We would all be slowed down a bit without dupewords, but not crippled as some of you seem to imply.

And d3 is going to be sped up a bit anyway (at least that is the impression Blizzard is giving). d3 also is not going to have any dupes at least for a short while. Plus, since it is their new baby, they will likely want to handle dupes as the problem arises, at least for a while.

Of course, like I said before, this all applies to bnet only. Obviously single player is taking away from players since they can't trade with thousands of people. But I figgue in single player there is no ladder, so there's not much point in taking your single player chr up to lev 96+. Thus, the huge edge godly runewords give you is not really as necessary in SP (my theory, anyway).

All the godly runewords were supposed to be just a little extra drive dirrected at the really bored players who needed something else to do. I truely beleive that if there were no dupes, there would only be such a small number of infinitys that hardly anyone would ever encounter one. It's not like someone would go into your game with an infinity or grief and make you look puny. There simply wouldn't be enough infinities out there.

The problem is, because of dupes, people now DO go into your game time after time and make us look puny unless we too have godly runewords. Well if that never happed there would be nothing to complain about. I think you guys have developed a mind set where you think godly dupes and hrs are the "norm", and that is understandable given the number of years you've played with the ecconomy broken as it is.

All I'm asking is try to imagin bnet as Blizzard intended with no duped hrs. So maybe ONE guy per year joins your game and flaunts his grief making you look like a noob. This might leave you in awe or encouraged/inspired to get one yourself (a good experience). Or, if you feel like a noob and underpowered, at least this only happens once a year due to the rarity of hrs.

But with dupes rampant and common, a guy does this grief-flaunting in every 2nd game and you develop the mindset I mentioned; you think that you also need hrs to be part of the upper class norm. You feel you are not up to par without the 3-4 hrs of your choice (a bad experience). You've all continued to have this bad experience for a few years now due to the duped hr problem. The problem was never the low drop rate. Yes, I know they are related.

See, if they increase the drop