The big question is… Why do you compare your game to the slot machine in the first place. I simply believe that games should respect player’s time. Gambling mechanics are the complete opposite of that respect because, as you said it yourself, it is a manipulation. In case of GD you pay with time to get the item. Doesn’t sound like much fun.
I believe that Grim Dawn will not become worse and will not lose part of its player base if, suddenly, the drop rate for Alkamos’ Touch of Anguish changed to 50%.
I think what would be fair is if that “Alkamos” version will be super duper strong, only then I would see why 50% chance is “fair”. I see your point but artifially boosting all global numbers won’t do justice, evenmore, I think some may not even like it because what’s the point of farming if evertyhing drops like candy.
Items drops are either guaranteed or random. In BG3, everything is guaranteed. In D2, basically everything is random.
Grim Dawn has a combination of the two. Faction items and blueprints are guaranteed, you just get them when you progress to a certain point in the game.
I think essential items should be guaranteed. And items with alternatives could be random. Nobody needs Alkamos Rings. There’s other rings you can use.
I do greatly dislike when items are random, and locked to a singular source. The MI change to 100% was really good in my opinion.
I think something to consider is to make items random AND guaranteed. Let’s say there’s an end game cold related blueprint. It should be a random drop. But it should also be guaranteed from Moose at SR20 or higher.
I’ve grown to dislike the blueprint system. It makes playing SSF weird. Making all blueprints innate to the blacksmith would be fine by me. Or making them all guaranteed as campaign and SR milestones on a character.
I can see the argument for it, but at the same time that would make all runs be more or less the same from a loot perspective.
Don’t get me started on that game. Loot might be guaranteed, but everything else combat-related is random. Absolutely terrible experience to spend your spell slots on stuff that then plainly fails.
This is a good point. I think the expectation that you’re entitled to a specific item is flawed. You might get lucky, but often there are other alternatives that you can use which are far more easily accessible.
For my taste, the current rate of Alkamos drops is about perfect. They are rare enough for it to feel like an undertaking to farm them yet, in the end, it only takes a few hours.
But stuff can be too rare (again, a matter of taste).
I am quite amazed at some of the claims being thrown around here.
I am gamer with many work and family related obligations. I don’t have a lot of time for gaming.
However, I most certainly do not want 40% drop rates, or 5 runs to get a powerful item. If Crate changed the game in that way, I would do everythng I can to mod it, to return the old drop rates.
I remember when I farmed Alkamos for Soulrend. It took me some 20 runs maybe. Maybe 30 or 40. That’s more than reasonable for such a powerful item.
(not to mention the freak occurence of getting Shar’Zul’s Worldeater in my first run ever, that is the first time I got to Shar’Zul)
I have been of the opinion for some time now that drop rates in GD have become too generous. I do not want D2’s leves of farming for Zod or Tyrael’s Might - but I do want the incentive to actually play the game, to get a reward. The point of these games is to fight enemies, to be able to get good loot. The player is supposed to enjoy actually moving around the world, killing monsters, handling drops. I simply like all the visuals and sounds that come with these activities.
Could I do such a thing even with high drop rates? I mean, I could - but having an in-game reward as a motive makes me much more likely to play than if no such reward were available.
You’ve pretty much summed up what I think about it. This sort of game is more fun if there’s a reward for playing, and GD’s rare items are not brutally rare, as D2’s are.
I was one of them, and like I said I certainly had less time for gaming back then.
So maybe it’s better to compare a 90s teenager without a job to a 2020s teenager without a job. I don’t think kids these days have less time to play than kids back then. They just choose to spend their time with other things.
They weren’t as common as today, but middle-aged gamers with jobs and families existed in the 90s too, and they probably had more time for gaming when they were young and without obligations. Compare them with the middle-aged gamers of today, I don’t think there is much of a difference. Maybe there is one in the USA, where today many people have to work 2-4 jobs to even get by.
But it’s all speculation unless someone can present some stats on the matter. I looked but couldn’t find anything relevant to this discussion.
Probably also a bunch are scrolling on tiktok or instagram.
As for games, there’s bunch of these ‘standard’ very popular games like Roblox, Minecraft, Leage of Legends… there’s more I just am not familiar with it You didn’t have that kind of thing back then as much as it was mainly offline and you would go to a friends house to play something. So I think mainly the kind of games people would play has changed a bit, and probably the amount of games as someone else mentioned also plays a role.
You have much more access these days to a wide variety of games compared to the 90s, like free to play games on consoles, pc and mobile, so it’s quite easy to get distracted by something. Also a certain thing that has become far more accessible in recent times that start with an e, has -ul in the middle, and ends in -tion.
Aren’t the blueprints themselves “the bad luck protection” for loot drops? So the bad luck protection has bad luck protection?
Personally I’m fine with drop rates how they are on most things. I would say that legendary jewelery is the only thing I would bump up a bit, and that’s most likely just because there’s so many of them and a couple builds I’ve played need double of one particular random-drop-only ring (pets with conversion on rings).
I do know that I never feel anything when I go fetch my Fettan Mask, but I do get excited (maybe just a little bit) when I see an item that I use on another build I already have because maybe this one has better stats! Even better if it’s an item that I want for the current character that makes my character better.
To be fair, a strong point of Grim Dawn is being able to make a lot of builds.
I didn’t try every possible builds and I’ve made/played about 100 builds
Considering that, i am ok if the game makes it a bit easier to gear a character.
I mean, you can play Grim Dawn for 10k hours and still have builds to try, will be even more with the FOA expansion.
And i didn’t talk about having good rolls (low vs high) on every gear slots or 2 good rolls (prefix and suffix) on your monster infrequents
Nyet, drop rates are fine, any worse and I’d burn out like I did on Destiny 2 chasing items etc that had terrible drop rates. Because there’s only so much repetition my ADHD addled brain can handle before it gets booooooored.
Also, I have farmed Nightbringer and I am of the opinion it’s drop rate needs a small boost. Because it took over a hundred runs to get one with a good conversion%. By that time I had a horde of Magi and Prime rings, but only dropped 3 Nightbringers in the same time and a slightly larger number of the epic version.
Anyhow, once you’ve got a hoard you can easily ignore or dismantle a lot of stuff, simply because it doesn’t have the stats you’re looking for. Which is how most of my tester builds leave 90%+ of the SR34-35 rewards on the ground these days.
While I think the bolded part is incontestable, I think it’s something of a moot point. For players that clear each dungeon once or twice and move on, can it really be said that they are ‘farming?’ I think there’s an implication that ‘farming’ has an inherent goal in mind, unless the loot → desired loot pipeline exists. (e.g., salvage items into mats, craft mats into a helmet, transmute helmet into a different set piece)
As to the main part of the quote, there’s also the question of what the “cost” to pulling the metaphorical slot machine lever is. As I wrote way back last year:
Currently I don’t think this is so much an issue for Grim Dawn. What “costs” do we really have? A Skeleton Key for roguelike dungeons, or a Waystone for SR farming? Pshaw - that’s nothing! Even the preview for the Ascension Altar looked relatively cheap to use. So the “risk” of investment in GD is fairly low.
But in games where the possible investment can get much higher than in GD, I think the idea of “well, you got something out of it, didn’t you?” begins to fall apart.
Emphasis on “kind of.”
Personally, I’ve never liked the idea of rerolling stats. It’s one of those things where you’re just in a menu hitting the “reroll” button 300 times until you finally get the exact number you’re looking for, when you could instead be out killing monsters.
At least rerolling affixes physically changes the functionality of an item, and can lead to some “oh, hang on…” moments.
But, yes - rerolling stats does mean variable stats are much less variable than they were before.
Loot might be guaranteed, but everything else combat-related is random. Absolutely terrible experience to spend your spell slots on stuff that then plainly fails.
You didn’t have that kind of thing back then as much as it was mainly offline and you would go to a friends house to play something. So I think mainly the kind of games people would play has changed a bit, and probably the amount of games as someone else mentioned also plays a role.