Why Can't Developers Get Loot Right?

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

I am a level 75 Conjurer with a pure pet build that has completed veteran and elite difficulties. I would estimate I’ve had at least 25,000 magic or better drops. I cannot comment on other builds because I’ve only played a few of them to level 21. However, my experience clearly shows that loot drops for my build are horrible. As a bit of background, I am a statistician by trade so I know a bit about RNG and programming. In this instance the data show that this is not just bad luck. It’s either poor game design or bad programming. The facts:

  1. For argument’s sake let’s assume the 25,000 drops is accurate.

  2. When I talk about gear I am specifically referring to a pure pet build, so this is looking at gear with pet bonuses and hopefully relevant skill increases on the higher quality gear.

  3. After completing elite difficulty I have experienced zero helm drops, zero chest drops, zero shoulder drops, and zero pant drops. That’s right, level 75 and having completed elite difficulty I have yet to have a single drop with a pet bonus for any of these slots.

  4. In the same time I have had one one-handed weapon drop, one glove drop, and one boot drop. So for the 7 main gear slots I have had a grand total of 3 build appropriate drops out of 25,000 drops.

  5. For the amulet, ring, and medal slots I have had maybe 2-3 drops for each.

  6. I have had maybe half a dozen belt drops, none particularly good, but at least a few of them dropped.

  7. For some reason I have had more off-hand drops than all the other slots combined. No idea why this is the case. If the off-hand drops had been spread around to the other slots things wouldn’t be so bad.

  8. Since completing veteran difficulty I have had maybe 2 or 3 upgrades that dropped, mostly rings. So I completed elite difficulty in almost the same pet gear I used on veteran.

  9. Outside of my off-hand, my four best pieces of gear are from rep vendors.

For the pure pet build, this gear situation is absurd. Using JayNyne’s summoner guide as a reference, I have just one BIS piece, and that was because of a formula drop. I have farmed SoT, BoC, and just started with nemesis bosses, which I find extremely difficult because, for the most part, my gear is low level. I’ve been trying to farm some of the better gear, but to no avail. I’ve been able to progress up to this point, but things are definitely getting more difficult because I never get any gear upgrades.

According to JayNyne’s guide, which is excellent, the two best weapons are level 50 and 60 respectively. At level 75 apparently the only way to farm these on my current character is by killing nemesis bosses. I don’t mind doing that, but with my gear this is not easy and they take time and luck to find. Also, why is level 50 gear BIS? Your character can get to level 85 and there is no BIS weapon higher than level 50 for this build?

For the pure pet build the drops are terrible. Yes you can get gear through rep vendors, but is it really fun to go through tens of thousands of drops and never see a pet bonus piece of gear outside an occasional off-hand? In this type of game I want to be able to kill mobs and bosses along the story line so that at least I get some decent gear to be able to progress. I do not believe in getting handed gear, I believe you should have to work for it. But killing monster after monster with no return from drops is not enjoyable. For this game to be fun the loot issue needs to be addressed. It’s not necessary for BIS gear to drop with little effort, but by level 75 and after some decent farming, a few magic or better drops for each gear slot would be nice.

Thanks for reading!

Tarkus

2

Couple points to consider:

  • The game has a very wide scale of different builds, so the loot is naturally going to be wide-ranging and rarely apply directly to any given build. I have an 85 conjurer with his build and I have some decent gear, much of it found by my other characters.

This kind of game design strongly encourages playing multiple builds in lockstep, as they will each contribute a huge amount to each other in both gear and mandates.

  • The rep/crafted stuff for a pet build is only a bit more limited than any other build. The leveling section in JayNyne’s guide includes some decent rep pieces that are trivially easy to obtain, especially if supported with other characters.

  • Most importantly: because the game supports multiplayer, the problem really only exists during leveling. You can simply trade end-game gear. So as you start seeing more legendaries drop (or craft them), then you can accumulate them and trade them with other players to target specific items. Nobody cares to trade a Fiendblood Spellblade, but they will definitely be interested in that Aetherfire. And leveling with self-found gear is quite easy.

So I agree that the “width” of the RNG is painful, but there aren’t a lot of good solutions to it. Reduce the number of useful playstyles? Or make the RNG less random and somehow favor prefixes that it infers match your playstyle? The latter option robs some flexibility in playing multiple characters, so it must be a delicate touch, if done at all.

3

I regularly get usable gear for all of my characters whether it be while leveling or farming/grinding.

Honestly, there are enough of these types of threads a new one certainly wasn’t needed as, despite your thread being very well written and clearly understood (which is greatly appreciated), it doesn’t bring anything new to the conversation. RNG is the only thing that keeps people playing an ARPG in the vein of GD after a play through or two.

As noted initially, I get pieces of gear on every play session that are usable for my builds. They aren’t all upgrades, but to think they would be in a game set up the way GD is would be outside of reason. Vendor gear is great. Well rolled vendor gear is BiS or close to it for a number of build types, I’m not sure that part of your commentary is even relevant; as if vendor gear isn’t there to be used then why is it even in game?

For every person who is frustrated by a particular bad roll of RNG in their personal play time there are dozens/hundreds/thousands (depending on the scope of the game of course) that are rolling in loot to the point they can’t decide what piece wear.

RNG is RNG if you don’t like it I don’t understand playing a loot collecting game where the collection of loot is entirely based upon RNG.

I often get headaches when I bang my head on the floor. I found that I get less headaches when I don’t bang my head on the floor.

4

proceeds to post 0 statistics

Reminds me of

“Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

It couldn’t be that you are farming the wrong places or that you still haven’t even done ultimate yet. You are not getting best-in-slot items you see on an ultimate-based character build (some of which are lvl 75 and therefore only drop in areas lvl 75+, which are rare in Elite), it’s the programmers’ fault.

Solution:

  1. Farm Treasure troves.
  2. Craft the items you need
  3. Stop whining.

Alternatively:

  1. You are playing a summoner.
  2. This is the least item-dependent character in the game.
  3. Play ultimate with lvl 70 vendor gear.
5

Why even bother looking at magic drops as you level? Turn the filter up at or before Burrwitch. Just use the best rare or epic item you have and don’t worry about it. No class is gear dependent, or needs to farm (before ultimate at least, and I’ve never bothered). BIS is overkill. I have a series of characters now at 85 that are far from having BIS equipment and can stroll through Bastion of Chaos. I don’t bother playing much past that point so I slowly fill in the gaps with items found on other characters I level.

6

  1. Many forum builds are designed with BiS items in mind. Progression-wise, though, it’s best to customize builds depending on what you actually have. You do not need to be in full BiS gear to beat ultimate.

  2. The Grim Dawn system is built around making even YELLOW items useful in ultimate.This means that EVEN NORMAL VENDORS (who like to sell green items, BTW) are a source of viable ultimate difficulty items. You will definitely want greens/blues/legendaries with lots of bonuses, but yellows are perfect for offsetting whatever deficiencies your build has until you get your dream BiS drop.

For your summoner build specifically, the particular affix you’re looking for is “Subjugator’s” which can spawn on neck/finger/medal/waist items.

  1. Between normal vendors, rep vendors, crafters, augments, components and devotions, drops are basically just that - drops. They’re still a good source of bonuses (and perhaps the best source of BiS gear) but you have options. Learn to use them.

I play summoner builds almost exclusively and I only transfer BiS items when they reach 85. So far with just a few skill tweaks I have not had any trouble gearing my summoners pre-85.

7

that would explain why he had 0 armor drops :wink:

8

the last lines about how even killing a boss doesn’t provide enough rewards. that can be fixed simply by changing the drop rates.

the “best weapon is a level 50 weapon so I have to use the same weapon for 35 levels” part I agree with, though I didn’t have that issue mostly because I didn’t play to those levels.

the fairness part, is muddier than it seems like and can’t be fixed exactly.

this is more of a response to the topic title of “Why Can’t Developers Get Loot Right?”

  • how do you determine an items approximate value(can be solved easily, counting the properties/color)
  • how do you categorize items(as item, as weapon, as 2 handed sword, or as ‘xyzs 2hander’) and -maybe- loots(dropped from a hero, dropped from the portion of map wuv and so on)
  • what do you do if someone didn’t drop anything of worth
  • how do you deal with monsters that drop richer stuff and lower quality stuff

Say, you categorized weapons as “2 handed swords” and you had a logic “every time the player drops something of a low value, increase his chance of dropping high value item by x”

Then the best farming strategy to drop a really good sword becomes going to a monster that only drops crappy 2 handed swords. After a while, you can switch to the monster that drops the good stuff and you’d get a great 2 handed sword.

Some mmorpgs did some of this/still doing it, they got exploited heavily. It was usually “start enhancing crappy swords, go enhance the good one you failed 20 times”

On the other extreme, you can group monsters by something really specific(like their kind) so the calculations of zombie doesnt affect calculations of another monster, then your pool becomes so small its uncheatable but its practically the same system as the previous one.

xcom 2 recently, had some small drama around rng too iirc, though I dont know the details on that one. I don’t follow this stuff much, may or may not be related.

I like the “make sure good stuff happens once in a while and don’t fiddle with the bad stuff”, like how dota2/warcraft3 makes sure critical hits happen while letting miss shots happen randomly

I skipped a lot of the stuff on the way, of course there are middle grounds to this stuff. Almost all is exploitable, and the non-exploitable ones are closer to what you started with, thus they become pointless.

And then it becomes all a trade off, at which point if what people prefer are divided equally(or they don’t have a clear choice), why bother working to switch from the default one.

9

that would explain why he had 0 armor drops

Just about every non-accessory/waist item pet damage gear is a unique (blue/purple) and TBH most of them are not worth using unless you’re aiming for a very specific summoner build (La Magra Summoner, for example, is largely about stacking +pet OA so you need very specific items). Most of these items only give you like 5-10% more damage (even less if you’re stacking pet damage like the lazy pokemon master) at the cost of massive HP/resistances. It becomes even more tricky once you consider items with granted skills, since these can be paired with useful item procs/devotions to indirectly increase you offensive/defensive capabilities.

Even Beastcaller’s wouldn’t be worth it if it wasn’t for the higher tier set bonuses, and some builds benefit more from that than others. This is why many of my builds still only use the Beastcaller’s Cowl.

10

@ Tarkus,

If you play this game long enough, you will realize certain patterns.
Droprates, the amount of bosses, greens, legendarys per game… so it
is likely that the randon number generator is not 100% perfect.
But it is much better now, then it was at beginning or in Titanquest.
In TQ certain item-, drop-related patterns were very obvious.
I am not a statistic expert and I only had some occupational courses,
but I am stil happy with the game, it´s mechanics and the developer-
service. They doing a hell of a job.

Kind regards + have fun playing

Arkon

11

Thanks for all the responses thus far. Just a few replies to points certain people made.

@Mercury

I’m definitely saving all my legendary items, but in order for me to trade I will have to buy a second copy of the game as I purchased mine on gog.com, not realizing you can’t trade cross platform.

@Trellis

I’ve gone 20 hours straight without a single item (outside of off-hands) dropping with pet bonus. All I’m asking is to have a reasonable shot at some upgrades every day or so. I’m not asking for BIS legendary items to drop from the sky.

@GeneralCash

Please don’t make this personal. To quote from “The Princess Bride.” You keep using that word; I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

As far as crafting goes, other than the BIS off-hand recipe that dropped, I have no other formulas that provide pet bonus as a given. I’ve tried to craft pet bonus on basic pants, but have yet to be successful. Maybe it’s possible, but it hasn’t happened for me yet.

@Kobu

I turned magic drops off at level 74. I got tired of looking at tens of thousands of items for nothing. I will turn it back on as I start ultimate to see if maybe things are better on that level.

@Tyr

Thanks for the suggestions. I have checked vendors but I’ve never seen a green item there with pet bonuses. I will start ultimate today and see what it brings. If I don’t get drops I’ll just find another game to play. This is the bottom line for me. To quote the game developers.

Does Grim Dawn have tons of sweet loot?

Does a bear shit in the woods?! We have made many improvements to our item drop and randomization system with far more custom-crafted magical, rare, and even unique bonuses. We have also made several improvements to the loot dropping system to ensure more consistent rewards and less junk cluttering up the screen / inventory. Last but certainly not least, Grim Dawn features a new item crafting system based off collectible recipes and rare crafting components that drop in the world.

Everybody plays games for different reasons. For me this type of game is about killing monsters to get loot. I want the consistent rewards promised me by the developers. I don’t need BIS legendary items dropping every other mob. I do expect to get a drop more often than every week or so. I understand that you can get loot from normal and rep vendors, but that should be to supplement the loot you get as drops. If the majority of my armor has to be from rep vendors that’s just not something I enjoy. Others may be fine with that, but I bought the game to kill monsters so every once in a while they’ll drop some decent loot. If I can get 25,000 drops and it leaves me with 3 items with pet bonus for the seven armor slots, that’s just not enough reward for me. It’s not that I can’t progress through the game. I’ve managed to reach ultimate with horrible drops. But if I don’t start getting loot from monsters in ultimate, this is not the game for me. Doesn’t mean others don’t love it, but for me, it wouldn’t reward me in the way I enjoy.

Thanks again all for the feedback!

Regards,

Tarkus

12

Keep in mind that there are a ton of builds in this game, and as such it’s exceedingly difficult to accommodate each and every one. You often have to wait a long time to discover something useful–which in my opinion makes finding those things all the sweeter.

Take my build, for instance: the BiS weapon I listed is basically useless (or at least not optimal) for anyone but me, and I didn’t even know about it until I searched Graceful Dusk for bis items.

Just be patient and enjoy the game. Also, ultimate is where a lot of gear is found.

13

Yeah, too bad statistics is one of the most useless thing we can come up with. As one quantum physicists told, " Before discovery of quantum physics, this would mean we are completely deterministic objects. Quantum physics showed us that we are not 100% deterministic. We are limited by laws but still we are unpredictable (we can calculate probabilities of what we might do next, but we don’t know what we will do next until we do it)." Predict and calculate all that you want, it will come down to luck anyway.

Besides, you should know by now that playing such game means majority of the gear you find has nothing to do with your build and you basicaly have to farm stuff with other char

14

Pet builds when it comes to magic/rare affixes can be lacking when it comes to pet specific stats.

Amulet? Only 1 prefix and 1 suffix until later on at 42/90 when you can get 2 more prefix types (with variations). So trying to increase pet damage via amulets would take a ton of crafting/rng to accomplish.

A lot of player stats which are more easily acquired also don’t effect pets.

Pet builds rely mostly on player defensive stats while hoping for rng to grant them a lucky drop to actually boost your pets that can really only take you so far without specific items.

15

The danger here is the assumption that just because the item becomes available at level 50 it will drop at or near level 50 :wink:

16

You can craft legendaries in Tyrant’s hold in Elite and Ultimate, but you need hearts, brains and bloods that drop from treasure troves (or from disassembling other legendaries you don’t need in Devil’s Crossing).

It’s mechanism designed to give the player a degree of control over what drops he gets, thus avoiding frustration that usually goes into completing high level sets or farming a very specific items that makes the whole build tick (which don’t exist for a summoner, you can literally just use lvl 70 green items from the Rover shop).

It’s nothing personal, you are just incredibly wrong while shitting on the devs who have done an amazing job fixing the exact problem you are complaining about.

17

Pet builds when it comes to magic/rare affixes can be lacking when it comes to pet specific stats.

Amulet? Only 1 prefix and 1 suffix until later on at 42/90 when you can get 2 more prefix types (with variations). So trying to increase pet damage via amulets would take a ton of crafting/rng to accomplish.

A lot of player stats which are more easily acquired also don’t effect pets.

Pet builds rely mostly on player defensive stats while hoping for rng to grant them a lucky drop to actually boost your pets that can really only take you so far without specific items.

This is not my experience. It’s possible to stack enough pet damage for ultimate with just a full set of Subjugator’s accessories (2x rings, neck, waist), devotions/augments/components, 2 or so rep vendor items (eg. Legion Voidcutter), debuffs (from skills/augment/devotions, eg. Curse of Frailty, Noxious Poison Bomb and Eldritch Fire) and support from the Occultist (BoD, Manipulation), Shaman (Primal Bond) or Arcanist (Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange with Manifestation) masteries.

I’ve beaten ultimate ToS with a similar build (and that was BEFORE B31 buffs/changes). It was slow, my OA was pathetic, I had self-imposed handicaps AND I was fighting mobs that were actually resistant to my damage type, but thanks to elixirs, metaknowledge and careful gameplay I was able to reach and beat Lord Alkamos. The vid is in the forums somewhere.

Obviously though if you want an end-game build or if you want to clear dungeons quickly then you need better/BiS gear. Depending on your build, you might also need more/less pet damage.

18

They probably can’t get loot right because they’re lazy. :rolleyes:

19

I have to agree with the others about more gear dropping in Ultimate, but when you move up to Ultimate the resistance penalty comes into play, and you will have to take that into account. The drops seem to be fairly well balanced IMO, but it does seem like I get less Arcanist oriented drops when I play my Warlock, which is what I play 80% of the time. On the other hand, I find a ton of physical, vitality, vitality decay gear for all slots, and I also find a bunch of pet bonus gear(even though I am not using any pets from the Occultist side).

What I am trying to say is that you should branch off your main and start some other characters with the gear you are finding. I don’t know how much time you have to play OP, but I would almost guarantee you would start finding a bunch of pet gear if you leveled up a Nightblade variant or another class. Then again, it might just be your RNG luck.

20

Lol, I don’t know if it is just a mental thing or if there is actually something to that. I’m currently using 3 different builds and keeping them around the same level of eachother. It totally “seems” like I never get the gear for the build I’m actually playing at the time but am finding gear I can use on the other two builds.