Loot Needs an Overhaul
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I don't think it's controversial to say loot sucks atm. Nobody is enjoying or having fun with the current loot drops. When even Fubgun, is saying nothing is rewarding then you know something is wrong.
Why is loot not fun? 1. Gear picked up from the ground feels unrewarding. 2. Currency drops are scarce 3. There is no reliable way to craft gear upgrades. Gear picked up from the ground feels unrewarding. Gear upgrades from dropped loot are almost all confined to the first 2 acts of the campaign. After that, most gear upgrades come from a different source. Part of that is because most of the gear dropped won't be the right base. Of the gear that drops that is the right base almost all of them will have bad mods, or will be bricked in the crafting process. That last point is partially true of POE 1 as well. The major difference is that POE 1 has a way to start over or keep going The crafting system in POE 2 sucks. It requires thousands of bases, which requires you to enter and exit maps repeatedly over and over again just to pick up items that will 99.9% of the time end up being useless. Slamming exalts is not crafting. Even the essence system is unreliable at best because it doesn't guarantee a decent mod tier. In POE 1 all you need to drop is the correct base, with the correct item level. Nobody enjoys spending 10 minutes looting a map for 30 bases that all end up bricked. It's not fun. It takes too long. It's not rewarding to click on the bases. This all assumes you even have the currency needed to craft. There's not much to say here. Currency doesn't drop in the quantities needed. While we don't mod weighting solved completely yet, it's pretty obvious, and expected, that decent mods have low weighting and even lower still if you want a good tier. It takes 100s to 1000s of exalts to even get a chance of creating a 4+ mod item. The general consensus is, why waste any of my crafting currency on the lottery ticket of making a decent item, when somebody is going to sell for cheaper. All in all, I would say, unless loot gets an overhaul, or unless crafting gets significantly more consistent, people won't enjoy the game. This is doubly true for the larger casual audience, that probably doesn't want to engage in trade. POE 2 has failed at it's goal of making ground loot matter. How can this be fixed? 1. More tiered rare drops, and tiered rares are better rolled. 2. More currency drops 3. A more consistent way to craft. Any of the three above would significantly increase the enjoyment people get from loot. Of those three, I think the tiered rare system needs to be used more, a lot more. I think that solution is the best solution for making ground loot matter. It makes reasonably possible that a rare dropped on the ground might actually have modifiers on it, with decent tiers. I really hope the game continues to improve. I personally encouraged several of my friends to buy it, because I bought in to the ideas that the developers sold to me. I really did hope that Ground Gear Drops would matter, as that would dramatically increase the accessibility of POE 2 to a casual audience. I sincerely ask the Developers to please ask themselves, what are we supposed to enjoy about the loot in this game? What fun moments are we supposed to have? Are we having those moments enough? Thank you for reading this post, and have a wonderful day. Last bumped on Apr 16, 2025, 7:13:29 PM
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One of the issues that GGG is trying to balance here isn't just a solo play experience, but an economy that has to stay active for 3 months at a time. Overload the number of drops and access to good crafting, tank the economy after the first couple of weeks. This IS NOT an easy balancing act.
I agree, it's not fun when you are like me, know the bases you want to see (and typically with a range, not top tier bases) and trans/aug and even regal (depending on the base) them and dump them into your stash to reforge/recombine, and still not resulting in usable items is frustrating! It took me the entire league last go to truly create awesome items, burning through what was likely thousands of items to finally get something that was unobtainable through trade... meaning I only had a couple weeks to use said items before entering the new league, if not shorter. This isn't all "bad" as like I said, it still creates a rich economy that holds strong, and provides players with goals to work towards (if you get all your gear 2-3 weeks in, player base drops off when everyone no longer has a goal and the economy starts to dip). That said, your tier suggestion isn't bad either. One problem that I see her is that GGG set tiers from the bottom up, rather than the top down. This REALLY hurts certain mods (I think life and mana have what, 12 teirs?!) and flat phys on weapons has 9 tiers. Even tier 5 items as they currently roll can be completely insufficient depending on the base and build. I propose another potential option, Atlas Passive tree. Have some selectable nodes (optioned) so that a player can, for example increase drop rate (like in local knowledge) of rare evasion base boots (req lvl bases 65+) or rare spears (again, req lvl bases 65+) so that we can increase the chances of finding what we need at that given time. |
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Balance is already ruined for honest players.
3 weeks in on .2 and crap priced 100s of divine? Who has them? Ive got 1 since new league. Solution I propose: If they had a posting fee associated with the trade this crap would change. If they locked your item in place for a duration this crap would change. Cant play the bait and switch crap...that would be balance instead of nerfing the fun out of currency drops. Last edited by rhalbhub#0570 on Apr 16, 2025, 1:37:30 PM
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Loot is very important. Thats one of the reasons i play ARPGs like Poe 1. Thats my motivation. Play the game and find valuable loot. This gives me all the time chills.
When you play Poe 2 one week on every day for hours, you maybe find 1 divine or an item that sells for 1 div. Its just less motivation and i get bored very soon. |
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I absolutely agree. There is no excitement to looting. Killed another rare...oh sorry, should i say another orb of transmutation...
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Just to add—progression in the game is directly tied to item progression, since the skill tree mostly just amplifies your existing power. So when item progression is slow or inconsistent, it makes overall progression feel really unreliable. You can be doing everything “right,” but without decent drops or some way to craft upgrades, you end up stuck.
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" I've heard the same ... I.E. that the passive skill tree is just supposed to magnify the gear / gearing that you already have. So really the driver of progression is (mostly) gear driven with other things like skill gems, ascensions, passive tree, etc. just magnifying the effects of your gear. IMHO the problem is that I think we need a little more equality amongst gear, passive tree, and skills -- at LEAST through the campaign. Post-Campaign I'm plenty happy to gearing becoming more & more important the closer you are to endgame -- even to the point where if your gear isn't NICE then you're not making it to endgame at all. Last edited by KingAlamar#4071 on Apr 16, 2025, 2:47:54 PM
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I dunno, right now, I haven't seen much of value in any drops.
I think the increased essence mobs, strongboxes, and small changes to the other league mechanics really up the ante as far as what players need to do in order to get decent loot. I do has opinions on the flow of things, however loot alone isn't what I feel makes it feel slow. It is a combo of things that slow the progression overall. |
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" This would help solve the campaign issues, but I don't think GGG will budge on their design as it would require a complete overhaul of the passive tree. To give some anecdotal evidence specifically for the campaign I started tracking how many rares and magic items I drop. I started tracking from Act 1 Manor to the end of act 3 The Black Chamber, not Cruel. I got 45 rare item drops in total going through 32 zones. I barely got above 1 rare item a zone. I have 11,779 kills. I've cleared a total of 45 zones for an average of about 261 kills per zone. 32 zones x 261 kills/zone = 8352 average kills over 32 zones. (8352 kills)/(45 rare items) = ~185 kills per rare item. Maybe I'm the unluckiest motherfucker ever. I do not think anyone should be getting only ~1.41 rare items per zone. even in the campaign. I got a total of 304 magic items. (8352 kills)/(304 magic items) = ~27 kills per magic item. (304 magic items)/(32 zones) = ~9.5 magic items per zone. Raw items drops, I am getting about ~11 items a zone that aren't normal rarity. The story about currency is even more depressing. I got a total of 46 augmentation orbs over 32 zones. I got a total of 14 transmutation orbs over 32 zones. I got a total of 3 exalts over 32 zones. [/b] How are we supposed to craft anything with this amount of currency in campaign? What about runes? Aren't those supposed to solve the gear issues in the early game? I got a total of 19 runes over 32 zones. With the rune pool even more diluted now with attribute runes, I struggled to get any flat damage or resistance runes to fill my gear with. The campaign needs help. Last edited by rechetking#4103 on Apr 16, 2025, 3:44:36 PM
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" That's exactly the fucking feeling right now about loot drop and crafting (non-existent, pure garbage gamble). I hope they fix these issues quickly cause it's fucking bricking the game itself! |
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