New Drop System Issues.. Any Solutions?

[Kaeros]

This issue has been mentioned in other threads here, but I thought it'd be useful to consolidate the topic into one place.

I'm all for a new system to replace shared drops, because the way it works in DII is an exercise in frustration and mouse-abuse. However, upon examining DIII's new drop system, I'm worried about a few potential abuses and problems with it. To begin, let's compare what was in DII with what will be in DIII:

DII Scenario: A group of 8 players takes out a boss. One loot pile is dropped.

DIII Scenario: A group of 8 players takes out a boss. EIGHT loot piles are dropped.

The main issue with this is that grouping now HUGELY increases your chances of getting what you want while boss-farming, assuming the players you're playing with are open to bartering. They probably will be, because -- like you -- they're farming that boss for a particular item for their class. No longer do you have one loot pile that may have what you want in it.. Theoretically, you may have eight loot piles that may have what you want in it. Whoa.

This is going to occur in completely legit play, without even factoring in MF, multi-boxing, or farming gold-sellers. It does, however, add a huge incentive for players to multi-box, considering they can drag along other characters and poof, get X times the loot. Furthermore, since players typically group on battle.net, this is going to quicken inflation by quite a large amount. Instead of 1 pile of loot being pushed into the economy per boss in a game, up to 8 piles of loot are going to be pushed into the economy.

How do you fix this? Do you reduce the amount of good drops per character the higher the number of players in a game? Do you partition out the "best" items to just a handful of players, and give the rest low-quality junk? Do you limit the amount of times a player can farm a boss per hour? Do you exponentially decrease the quality of drops per run, and put the debuff on a 24-hour timer? Do you eliminate boss-farming all-together? Please, tell me what you think, because I'm stumped!

[5zigen]

This issue has been mentioned in other threads here, but I thought it'd be useful to consolidate the topic into one place.

I'm all for a new system to replace shared drops, because the way it works in DII is an exercise in frustration and mouse-abuse. However, upon examining DIII's new drop system, I'm worried about a few potential abuses and problems with it. To begin, let's compare what was in DII with what will be in DIII:

DII Scenario: A group of 8 players takes out a boss. One loot pile is dropped.

DIII Scenario: A group of 8 players takes out a boss. EIGHT loot piles are dropped.

The main issue with this is that grouping now HUGELY increases your chances of getting what you want while boss-farming, assuming the players you're playing with are open to bartering. They probably will be, because -- like you -- they're farming that boss for a particular item for their class. No longer do you have one loot pile that may have what you want in it.. Theoretically, you may have eight loot piles that may have what you want in it. Whoa.

This is going to occur in completely legit play, without even factoring in MF, multi-boxing, or farming gold-sellers. It does, however, add a huge incentive for players to multi-box, considering they can drag along other characters and poof, get X times the loot. Furthermore, since players typically group on battle.net, this is going to quicken inflation by quite a large amount. Instead of 1 pile of loot being pushed into the economy per boss in a game, up to 8 piles of loot are going to be pushed into the economy.

How do you fix this? Do you reduce the amount of good drops per character the higher the number of players in a game? Do you partition out the "best" items to just a handful of players, and give the rest low-quality junk? Do you limit the amount of times a player can farm a boss per hour? Do you exponentially decrease the quality of drops per run, and put the debuff on a 24-hour timer? Do you eliminate boss-farming all-together? Please, tell me what you think, because I'm stumped!

Your logic is sort of bad

D2 Scenario Solo, you kill a boss and he drops 5 items. In a group you kill a boss with 8 people and he drops 7 items

You're forgetting from a loot point of view, D2 really penalized grouping up.

Aside from that, the piles of loot are probably going to be much smaller per character per boss. Bosses aren't likely to drop 6 items per player.

I imagine we'll see a move closer to bosses dropping something like 3 items per character, and 4 items if you kill him solo.

The problem, as I see it and you kind of touched on it, is how do you encourage grouping without giving a big advantage to people who dual box?

[hostileeffect]

I'm not really going to comment on the looting issues but as far as dual boxes go, stop parting out your older computers because you want something faster, and you can dual box too.

I'm getting upgrades for my Pentium 4 2.0Ghz so I can dual box diablo 3 if it is a decent game. :P

[Kaeros]

I'm not really going to comment on the looting issues but as far as dual boxes go, stop parting out your older computers because you want something faster, and you can dual box too.

I'm getting upgrades for my Pentium 4 2.0Ghz so I can dual box diablo 3 if it is a decent game. :P

I could quad-box if I wanted to .. that's not really the point I'm trying to make. I think Blizzard needs to be careful not to make a system that actually rewards multi-boxing. Regardless of the fact that it's "allowed", I think it's pretty clear that multi-boxing is an unintended and exploitive way to play the game. If Blizzard wanted you carting around extra characters, they'd surely provide a mechanic for it, such as a party system or an easy way to "invite in" your other characters.


I imagine we'll see a move closer to bosses dropping something like 3 items per character, and 4 items if you kill him solo.

Do you think something like this could work?

1 player.
~5 items drop for player 1.
2 players.
~4 items drop for player 1.
~4 items drop for player 2.
3 players -- Max.
~3 items drop for player 1.
~3 items drop for player 2.
~3 items drop for player 3 ---> etc.
(Chance of Uniques/Set drops per player decreases from Players 4 up.)

It seems like there's a fine line to walk so that multi-player games are advantageous, but not so much that they damage the economy and leave solo-players in the dust.

[5zigen]

Do you think something like this could work?

1 player.
~5 items drop for player 1.
2 players.
~4 items drop for player 1.
~4 items drop for player 2.
3 players -- Max.
~3 items drop for player 1.
~3 items drop for player 2.
~3 items drop for player 3 ---> etc.
(Chance of Uniques/Set drops per player decreases from Players 4 up.)

It seems like there's a fine line to walk so that multi-player games are advantageous, but not so much that they damage the economy and leave solo-players in the dust.

I think that system would work pretty well. You have to remember that just because there are 2 players doesn't mean the game goes twice as fast.

In D2, a baal with 2 people took maybe what, 30 seconds longer than a full run to baal with 6 or more people? You have to balance it against how profitable it would be for everyone to solo.

I think actually it should be more like 1 person = 5 items, 2-3 people = 4 items each, 4-8 people = 3 items each.

[Mad Mantis]

To begin, let's compare what was in DII with what will be in DIII:

DII Scenario: A group of 8 players takes out a boss. One loot pile is dropped.

DIII Scenario: A group of 8 players takes out a boss. EIGHT loot piles are dropped.

I thought that in the DIII scenario eight piles are dropped with 1/8th of the loot in each pile, ofcourse not counting for a small increase in amount of dropped items.

[stillman]

Maybe Blizzard won't let people kill a boss in 30 seconds. Maybe it will take 20 minutes just to get to the bosses.

Maybe once you kill a boss for your quest, the next 5000 times you kill him he drops junk only. I don't see why they would design d3 based on the broken aspects of d2. People aren't supposed to all have enigmas made from duped runes, therefore people aren't supposed to be reaching bosses in 30 seconds. It's a broken game aspect, not a playing style Blizzard supports. And before anyone says that everyone would just play a sorc for tele if there were no dupes, this wouldn't work because sorc's would do no damage to immunes without their infinities (which are made of duped runes), or they would do poor hybrid damage. Thus, they could not farm so fast. Farming at the speed it occurs now in d2 is not supposed to happen.

People seem to just love farming. But they fail to realize that they are farming using cheater hr gear. They actually believe this fast paced farming is a regular part of the Diablo universe. Well it isn't. It's only possible because people cheat by duping runes.

As for the ecconomy, I think things will get out of hand regardless because of the tens of thousands of players. If Blizzard really cares about the ecconomy, they could just make "cube" recipies where you put in a coa, soj, fathom or other end game god-pieces and these certain high level unique elites go poof and you get a single point of damage added to your godly weapon max damage (up to a limit of 50 points or w/e). Things like that would make the top players trade for the top end gear and dissolve it to become more damaging.

[Brother Laz]

DII Scenario: A group of 8 players takes out a boss. One loot pile is dropped.

DIII Scenario: A group of 8 players takes out a boss. EIGHT loot piles are dropped.

The main issue with this is that grouping now HUGELY increases your chances of getting what you want while boss-farming, assuming the players you're playing with are open to bartering.

Alternative scenario: 8 people go solo and kill the boss 8 times. Eight loot piles are dropped.






Wasn't this obvious?

[TheODB]

I'm pretty sure Blizzard are smart enough to balance the item drop issue for their third Diablo release. They do make pretty successful games I think.

And hey Laz, thanks for all the work you put into mods :)

[Funkopotamus]

I think I read somewhere that the MF chances would go down a bit the more people you have in the game to make up the difference. It could of been a poster though so I don't know. It kinda melts together after a while.

[PlasmaTorture]

Pretty sure in an interview they said that just becuase everybody sees what they can pick up doesn't mean that they're increasing the amount of items that drops.

So, thus:

Diablo 2: ENEMY drops 5 items, all 8 players can see them and rush to grab them.
Diablo 3: ENEMY drops 5 items. Player A sees one, B, sees the second, C sees the third, D sees the fourth, E sees the fifth, and players F, G, and H see nothing.

...and that has its share of problems as well.

[uzurpator]

I think I read somewhere that the MF chances would go down a bit the more people you have in the game to make up the difference. It could of been a poster though so I don't know. It kinda melts together after a while.

If that happened, then it would be the most retarded thing Blizz could do. It would pretty much kill teaming up, because playing solo would grant better reward in items.

[CaptainDingo]

The problem, as I see it and you kind of touched on it, is how do you encourage grouping without giving a big advantage to people who dual box?

Grouping and playing co-op encourages itself, you don't really need to bribe people by giving them extra loot to do it. I could play Chaos Theory co-op almost forever if I had someone who loved playing it as much as me. :P Things tend to just be a lot more fun when you're grouped with friends, regardless of whether or not you get the exact loot you wanted or if you die or whatever.

[iraiam]

It looks like The boss at the end of the gameplay trailer only dropped 1 item and gold. we didn't see any of the other drops, just the witch doctor.

[Spero]

I don't see anything wrong with multiboxing. So what if a policy encourages it? I think if people buy a million boxes of DIII it's good for Blizzard and I don't mind at all. Why should I mind?

The thing I disliked about DII is that I could never grab the good drops if I was in a group. I NEVER got them. So if I ever wanted any good drops I always had to play solo or with a good friend. It would be nice to see that change.

I also don't see what's wrong with people getting a lot of good items. Inflation? Not sure what you mean by that and I don't see anything bad about there being a lot of good items out there. If a lot of good items drop, people will not be botting or duping - and that's a big advantage IMO.

[Soulstones]

Your logic is sort of bad


id consider it a total lack thereof

[ozzuilk]

this provokes leeching like wow bgs,
solution keep old system work for your items.

[Brother Laz]

Right. I'll be sure to cast zombie wall in your face when the boss dies and leisurely snap up the items. And when I get tired of this, I'll just get grabit.

Leeching = not attacking = having all the time in the world to stare at the ground waiting for items to drop...