I just realized again how different the chances to drop for some of the items of a set seem to be. I’ve seen this pattern with a few (but not all) sets. As an example the “Perdition” and the “The Apothecary” sets, because I’m sure how many of each item I have found with these sets.
I have found a total of:
9 Shoulderguards of Perdition 4 Handguards of Perdition 2 Chestguard of Perdition 1 Faceguard of Perdition 0 Shield of Perdition
Yes, that’s nine “Shoulderguards of Perdition” but not a single “Shield of Perdition”, but perhaps I really just had bad luck?
So, question to all readers: Do your experiences with set item drop rates match mine? In particular - do the numbers I gave for those two sets at least roughly correspond with the drop rates that you have seen for these set items?
Because if my numbers should be more or less representative, I think that respective drop-chances should be tweaked to make it more easy to complete a low- to mid-level set.
You just outlevel the enemies that can drop those items so quickly that it may become next to impossible to even complete a low-level set without either grinding low-level areas or trading with other players, which both are not what seems to be expected of the vast majority of the player base.
On this point I think I can more or less agree… Low/mid sets could benefit with having an alternate means of completing them in a timely fashion relevant to their level range, while the act of actually completing them extends their use well beyond that range.
While this isn’t as important to players with many toons and people that twink, new players and self-found players would benefit greatly and would help to keep those new players interested.
I have even worse luck, actually: I have yet to see a second piece of a set in the wild, save for a single instance of getting two pieces of the blind assassin set. Everything else has been 1/X to the point where I treat them like any other trash epic, i.e. it sits in my stash until I need the space or have a glut of dynamite and then it gets dismantled. What do I need with four miasma robes? An interesting comparison point for my three empowered miasma robes? I feel bad for people who don’t know about this forum and the trading thereof (or want to be entirely self-found) because their odds of getting together a set of any real use is next to nil.
To put my numbers into perspective - I am at 1000+ hours into the game, usually playing pretty casually (self-found), alternating between about two dozen characters.
Leveling up that many characters already makes me farm low- to mid-level areas more often than the usual player, I guess.
Maybe that’s the reason why I have found (and completed) many more sets than Yawgmoth?
On the other hand I consider myself a player with “many toons” as powbam put it, and I still got problems completing sets of that low- to mid-level range.
Which makes me feel a little sad because we three all basically agree but then again seem to have had very different experiences - it would be nice if more people would share their experiences here so that we could get a better picture of how the situation really is.
But I guess this topic just is not controversial enough to really get a discussion going. Perhaps I should have chosen a different title, perhaps something like “GD sucks balls and THESE 50 features HAVE TO be implemented immediately”?
Which brings me to clarify what I’m after here.
It’s not about fundamentally redesigning how set items work in GD.
Item sets have always, consistently since their very introduction into ARPGs, been an awkward concept with it’s problems always remaining the same. I don’t expect Crate to reinvent item sets.
It’s just that my numbers make me think that the parts of a set may probably have significantly different drop-chances, and I would like to know if that’s really the case or if my personal experience is just not representative.
Well, what I was kinda leaning toward by “alternative” means of completing low/mid sets I was thinking perhaps have an npc that you could take any lower set item that you have managed to find and he would muck you up a randomized “quest” to go find the next piece, then after that the next and so on (kind of like the bounty quests I suppose).
So, my numbers are also imbalanced, but differently from yours. That looks like what we’d expect from random distribution. Law of large numbers cuts both ways: with thousands of people playing Grim Dawn some of them are going to get streaks; the weied thing would be if that didn’t happen. If you have 1,000,000 people flip a coin 8 times each, we’d expect about 4000 of them to get 8 heads in a row.
I don’t think sets were ever meant to be assembled on a single pass through; they’re a reward for repeated play, or active trading.
With that said:
parts of a set may probably have significantly different drop-chances
It’s perfectly reasonable to think that might be the case. If the drop algorithm figures out the ilvl of the drop and makes a rarity roll, and then just rolls against all possible items that match, then no, it’s just random. But if it rolls for a slot and then picks an item for that slot, then either the weighting of slots against each other, or the differing number of blues for each slot at a given ilvl, could easily make it so some set items are legitimately rarer than others.
@powbam: Yeah, something like that would be nice, but I doubt that it would be implemented.
@Guurzak: The point of this thread is basically to see if the drop rates that I have experienced are founded in corresponding drop chances or if they are just random; as, you wrote it yourself, might be expected.
But thinking about it we might need far more people’s numbers for them to have any statistical relevance; and we probably won’t get enough feedback to get there.
Not only have Crate implemented many of my ideas (during testing, as well as others) I have seen them implement just as many people’s ideas on the normal boards here as well.
They read this shit. Believe it.
And considering, going off the recent Grim Misadventure’s post, that they have decided it is high time epics and sets receive more love I feel the chances are better now than ever to be writing about ideas for this very topic.
My suggestion wouldn’t even be all that tough for them to implement. The bounty system is already in place in the game and if they used that as a framework to go from I can’t see it being all that hard for them to bring to life.
I don’t think any of these complicated methods should be bothered with personally, and just have it so that if a set piece drops in a run, increase the odds of further set pieces dropping. For example, if you find Perdition gloves, the odds of all remaining set pieces double. Find the shield, and the remaining pieces are at a quadruple, chest remaining 8x, ect. You still won’t get all of a set in one run, but each time you see a set pieces, you know that the odds of getting that set’s parts just went up.
That, along with making it so you can’t get duplicate epics in a run (Really, duplicate epics feels really bad for the player, just like duplicate legendaries).
Just to throw in my 2 cents: one of the reasons I brought up the suggestion in http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45815 to give us the option to turn off xp in Crucible is that we should have another avenue to enjoy some of these cool low and mid level sets that otherwise will sit rotting on a lot of our mules. For example, if I have a bunch of cool level 30 gear including some set items, I’d love the challenge of trying to progress as far as I can in the Crucible on a level 30 toon. As it stands now though, my toon would keep gaining levels in the Crucible, rendering that level 30 gear obsolete after a handful of levels. This would provide a whole new dynamic for the Crucible and shine the spotlight on lower set items again. Players who normally always farm high level content for legendaries, might be more inclined to take an occasional break from that to farm for low level gear again if this option existed.
I remember when the “turn off xp gains” option was introduced in WoW and the market for low-level items/enchantments exploded because all of a sudden there was 10x the demand with almost no change in supply. It was a great time to be one of the 6 people on the server with Icy Chill, let me tell you.
In other words, I agree that getting to enjoy some of these lower-level sets in a less transitory manner would be really nice.
