If the concern was about how the game balance will be impacted by the expectation that the average player has access to better items and builds and you worry players are going to be forced into grinding reroll materials to keep up then I would fully understand, but the concern seems to be that this will suddenly make the game a cakewalk and that reducing the grind for items is somehow a bad thing.
I feel like this is a power floor increase rather than a power ceiling increase, lots of builds are made entirely with GD Stash by build/theory crafters and they haven’t been managing to one-shot all of the content. It’s not like rerolling is going to somehow boost item effectiveness beyond what is possible with good luck or external tools, and it gives non-pc players a chance at some fun builds that were previously far too RNG reliant to feasibly craft.
Re-rolling will likely make the average player a bit stronger but the most dedicated (or lucky) players aren’t going to be that much more powerful, it’ll just save them time and reduce the incentive to install third party tools to reduce the grind.
Since GDstash is a thing. Top20 lists are GDstashed, even if the builders adhere to certain realism rules. They still go for calculated “perfect” items - something you’ll inevitably discover once you try to take a double-rare in one of their green slots and realize just how much OA/DA or some other unexpected shit you lose in the exchange. I once managed to brick 2 resists that way. Magic affixes provide way higher concentrated single stat boosts than rare ones, it’s already part of the balance consideration.
There’s also a question of rerolling removing the bias from an item. Suddenly you aren’t rolling just against fire affixes, but against all affixes in the game. Including pet ones. Somewhere in that process just dropping another double-rare becomes a viable alternative.
maybe i missed something but wouldn’t it enable all builds equal and therefore just collectively raise the bar on what kind of Equipment you achieve without massive time or GDStash investment.
I’ll be (pleasantly) surprised if that ends up being the case. However, considering the challenge the game has historically had, namely around defeating the Celestial bosses, I’m pretty confident that it will feel necessary at some point.
I’ve also become incredibly suspicious if you even know what power creep means. From a simple search:
“In gaming, “power creep” refers to the gradual unbalancing of a game due to successive releases of new content, where older content becomes obsolete or underpowered compared to newer, more powerful additions.”
Considering that Grim Dawn, AoM and FG lacked any sort of reroll feature and were balanced around its non-existence, I’m pretty sure being handed the ability to perpetually reroll items in your favor would undeniably marginalize the challenge of older content, so you’re at least partially wrong already.
As I wrote previously, the only unknown from my perspective is what effect it will have Ascendant Mode. If Ascendant Mode is reasonably possible where rerolling doesn’t provide for obvious or significant advantages and the feature truly is just for fun or to spice things up (as you’ve proposed), I’m perfectly fine with that.
I’m inclined to think that won’t be the case though.
Ah, I see. I wasn’t aware that the challenge of obtaining and time invested components weren’t considered with the same weight into the balance equation as what was just theoretically possible.
So I guess instead of farming items and visiting these forums for build ideas like I have in the past, I’ll just use GD Stash to give myself the best gear and whatever else to reroll for best in slot everything right away.
That way I can just blow through everything in a few hours rather than spend hundreds to do so.
Funny, I’ve had the same thought for you and others who share your opinion in this thread!
I’ve addressed this multiple times already, so I’ll just quote myself instead of rewriting everything. Perhaps you’ll read it this time.
Per your own quote, what older content becomes obsolete or underpowered from rerolling?
The high-end builds were considered for balancing GD, Ashes of Malmouth, and Forgotten Gods. In the before times, before GDStash even existed, balance was still being considered based on the strongest and highest-performing builds. Some of us were hex-editing items into the game manually, until Crate changed the stash’s file formats enough. But even these hex-edited items were using theoretically-possible affix combinations, and ergo provided valid balance feedback and criticism.
Did GDstash exist during AoM/FG? If so I think that nulls every point you just tried to make. If the game was already being balanced based upon optimized rolls/builds then placing a feature from GDstash in game doesn’t change anything.
If you want to game shark your way to victory I don’t think anyone here will mind. A lot of an ARPGs charm comes from self discovery. I stopped using GDtools 2 major patches ago and I don’t look at build guides. The game is just that much better since.
Would be sweet if Hyram had Ascendant Cowl wouldn’t it? I would gladly trade hours of vendor farming that thing to the 10s of hours of trying to get a good drop in Malmouth!
Not the case. 0.69% is the chance for a Fleshwarped Archive to have two rare pet affixes, as I said. (The chance for the item to have any rare/rare affixes, at Hyram, is 1% since the nerf.) That translates to an expected value of 100 visits, assuming 1 offhand in stock per visit, on average. But I repeat myself.
And yes, 50% of people will require more than 100 visits (but 50% of people will require fewer, too). That’s how expected value works. My spreadsheet can show you the rough shape of the distribution!
Given that the responses have confirmed that average player power will increase and marginalize old content, while simultaneously ignoring how adding convenience features inherently carry the risk of changing the meta of the game, with responses just repeatedly using the excuse, “because GD Stash, bro!” it’s safe to say there really isn’t one.
My concern was simply a reflection of what I’ve seen in the past across other games that have added similar features.
For myself, I hadn’t known that the game was balanced around theoretical levels only reasonably possible to obtain via cheating and so, I was concerned that Ascendant Mode would be balanced around the spreadsheet loop min/maxing that reroll features provide.
Above all, I feel like the excitement of drops is often what bridges the need to farm or occasionally grind and overcome whatever high-level challenge you were farming for, and powerful convenience features like stat rerolling neutralize a lot of that excitement, leaving me with the feeling I’m playing spreadsheet hero.
This is never a good feeling, regardless if it’s single-player or not.
That all said, now knowing I can just take it or leave it and magically conjure up whatever gear I want with GD Stash and thereby largely negate any challenge the game provides, I’ll probably just do that because…
I’m not sure I get this either. I feel games like PoE and Diablo have conditioned people to believe that games must be built to hook players into chasing a dragon for as long as possible.
I think sometimes people forget that it’s okay for players to feel finished with a game and stop playing.
So I’m not sure what expectations you have for the new expansion, but I suspect the answer using your particular definition of power creep is that, yes, there will be power creep, since otherwise they’d be adding in a new difficulty level on top of existing content and expecting player power to not rise to meet it seems not sensible.
I’d also point out that the majority of players rarely reach Ultimate/Ascendant difficulty so overall I can’t see much power creep happening. Remember that people here and on the discord are in the minority of players, not the majority.
There is some merit to saying “If you do not like it then do not use it”. Reason: This is not an MMO. Fundamentally this is a single player game which means I am competing with the logic within the game and myself. The same logic can apply to choosing difficulty level.
Contrast that with a true MMO where player advantage (especially in PvP environments) is a big deal.
ngl, i feels “weird” for me to see people lament the “powercreep introduction” tied to a specific feature
but not lament regular powevercreep
where’s the grandpa shaking hand at clouds “every” patch update that adds more and more player power? or for that matter just by virtue of an expansion happening and new/more items and points etc occurs?
idono, maybe it’s because i haven’t had my morning coffee yet, but reading through some of the posts i had this sensation “you’re all wrong”, and also arguing for nothing, but maybe i’m biased and or grumpy to not see the whole picture.
For me this feature boils down to, will it trivialize obtaining cool items “too much”, eg how legends don’t feel awesome because we drop 50 every time we turn our heads around. And if it does trivialize it, does it do it to where it feels sadge.
My assumption, not being a playtester, is that Crate has some sort of ratio in mind, similar like how even if we drop loads of legends we might not be dropping the exact ones we want or unique legends have a fixed 5-10% drop rate. Further assumption would then be initially players, just like with legends, feel the ratio is too low/stingy, costs too many mats or too much rng involved getting the affix transmutation “to our desire”, and might increase it later, “further trivializing the items”. That’s simply just judging by past player reactions and Crate’s response to alleviate those requests.
But, that still might not mean it’s going to be bad, because even if regular legends are voluminous and i feel not special in drops, i do appreciate what they’ve done for unique legends drop rates being increased.
I’m going to assume the affix transmutation will end up similar “by design” perhaps even. Some stuff will feel abundant, but the alkamos ring equivalent affix combo will feel nicer even if not totally non-grindy.
As for the powercreep introduction tied to this specific feature, oh boy, if the last expansions is anything to go by, affix rerolling should be the least of your concerns if you dislike powercreep
edit, someone just posted this, and if anything it should probably highlight the reason for this feature, and why it might even be “needed” (depending on OG arpg’er sentiment or not ofc)
the features concern isn’t about adding powercreep(from dev side), but basically “QoL” to a large segment of players, as is Crate’s way over the years
QoL then trumps the powercreep concern i suppose we might say,
and if stuff gets too powerful you can always advocate for Zantai’s nerf in future update PTRs, he would probably love to swing that
I think anyone looking at it logically will come to the conclusion that: affix re rolling isn’t really power creep. It’s for affixes and items that are already attainable in the game. Sure if you like to farm MIs over and over again for that perfect affix combo, or legendaries for good rolled version; than maybe the affix re rolling isn’t your cup of tea. But guess what…you don’t have to use it.
Legit players will appreciate a means to combine ideal affixes on items that wouldn’t drop naturally, myself included. It does mean that the ‘special’ feeling of a nice double rare will be diminished; and the trophy room thread might get redundant. But overall a nice change.
First an aside, which clown are people listening to nowadays for the latest GDSTASH IMPOSSIBRU BUILDS rant?
On topic, the one thing that remains to be seen is how much of a time sink rerolling actually is. People are treating this glimpse like it suddenly enables a character blanketed in full double rares. Taking a glance at rings, there’s something like 25 rare prefixes and 36 rare suffixes. Assuming you have the suffix you want, you’re still looking at dozens of rerolls for a reasonable guarantee that the desired affix comes up. And then if you care about the seed there will be who knows how many more rerolls for that.
The iron bit price cap seems a tad low, but the final hidden detail is the drop rate on the new ingredient. Unless it’s raining down like candy you’ll be looking at 100+ hours to secure a full character’s worth of rerolls.
They can make rerolling powerful as they want, if they make it expensive enough. It’s like getting your Ber, Mal and Gul runes in D2. Crazy power, after a thousand hours of farming hard content.
If I wasn’t on hiatus with a personal project (actually like 4) I’d be using that new toxic elitist helpful spreadsheet to find the mathematically rarest build possible and then recommending it to people in discord who ask what they should play.
You’re better at simming stuff than I am; I have 118 characters currently before zerker is implemented that could use better gear. Assuming I make a minimum of 15 new characters with FoA exactly how long will it be before I start looking at Grim Dawn in terms of years per dollar spent for time invested?
in future update PTRs, he would probably love to swing that 