Why Can't Developers Get Loot Right?

its funny because I swear I find more blademaster gear on my sorcerer and I find all my sorcerer gear on my blademaster… either way there are too many characters to play so eventually I’ll get all my gear :slight_smile:

I want to thank everyone for the amiable discussion. Some of the suggestions have been helpful.

  1. Farm nemesis bosses
  2. Buy from rep vendors
  3. Buy from normal vendors
  4. Buy from legendary vendor
  5. Trade with others

However, none of these address my initial issue. I play these types of games for the thrill of the drop. For picking up that item that makes my character better. This game does not meet that objective. Doesn’t mean it’s not a great game; just means that for people looking to level their characters primarily through drops, this game doesn’t cut it. I loved the original DII before they ruined it. It was kill mobs, pick up relevant loot, kill more mobs, pick up more relevant loot, do a little trading, pick up more relevant loot. That’s what I was hoping to get out of Grim Dawn.

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.

This quite is directly from the developers. For me the item dropping system does not live up to this promise. Level 76 now and still only 3 relevant drops for the 7 armor slots. 3 drops in 76 levels. Yes I know you can do the things mentioned above, but that’s not why I bought the game. If I wanted to farm mats to try and get good crafted loot I’d still be playing DIII. Thanks again for all the feedback. Good luck to you in your gear searches. Unless the loot drops change, I’m going to just plow on to 85, see what happens, and, if nothing changes, call it a day. I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth from this game. Just in it’s current loot state it’s not a long-term answer to my gaming needs.

Regards,

Tarkus

Wait, what?? Are you serious? You are talking about multiplayer, giving or dropping items for other players, right? That can’t honestly be platform-dependent, can it?

Currently, steam and GOG versions of game cannot play in multiplayer together. It’s being looked into to allow cross-platform though.

TBH I’ve never encountered a holistic “Yay I found every item my character ever needed through drops” hack-and-slash aRPG. The thing that came closest was D2, simply because there was virtually no other source of items besides drops in that game. Hell, you even had to farm for the best non-magical (socketed) items for rune words. Still, it took me getting dozens upon dozens of characters through hell difficulty before I even found my first Stone of Jordan.

Given that and an MMO background, Grim Dawn’s approach (“RNG not working out for you? Try these options…”) is actually one of the things that makes it stand out for me. I liked that.

D3 was more a study of how to break an aRPG as quickly as possible for me. Not on the level of Skyrim, but there were definitely a lot of shortcuts.

The faction items great for most part while levelling which is a superb idea

But I would like for the legendaries obtained to have a better chance to be of the class I am playing. My first character had only 1 legendary I could use even at 85. From then on it turned into picking masteries based on items I had.

Of course it can and it actually is. Steam uses Steam’s service, GOG their own, so far they are not compatible. Not even sure that is a Crate issue rather than one of the respective services (which only makes it a Crate issue in so far as they did not have their own).

There is nothing wrong with the loot system, it just isn’t want you wanted. To do what you want has some drawbacks. If the loot system dropped items fast enough to gear out your character in 1 play through, you’d also get so much of every other build dropping, that you would effectively gear every future character you planned to make as well. This is because there has to be equal odds for every class combination of gear to drop.

I also think that some people tend to expect their characters to find all the BiS gear for all their characters. I’m pretty certain the dev’s had no intentions of setting of the game so that everyone could find best in slot gear. They simply wanted to make sure everyone found good gear, and that there is always better gear to be found. If we got the best gear, it would stop people from replaying the game, as they’d eventually find that there is no better gear to be found.

The trick is to save your gear, and make new builds based on the gear you want to use, that or just expect to not have perfect gear.

I think there is a misunderstanding here. If someone downloaded a stash file from a person using GOG they could use that with their Steam version. But a Steam player and a GOG player can’t meet in a multiplayer game and trade items.

Thanks for another nice response Tyr. Couple of comments.

  1. I don’t want all the BIS stuff to drop in one day. What I do want is some decent gear to drop for each slot every once in a while. Being level 76 and picking up 30,000+ magic or better quality items and finding 0 for four slots and one for three slots is not bad RNG. It means the loot is either not designed to drop or it’s designed to drop at such a low level that it’s virtually impossible to find. Being level 76 and having an average item level of 57 (including all sources of gear such as vendor gear and crafted gear) doesn’t make sense to me. Why should my gear be 20 levels below my character level? Why should I be in ultimate difficulty using some of the same gear I used in veteran? What I would like to do is have some decent level-appropriate magic items drop, supplement that with some decent crafted items, some decent vendor items, an occasional epic item drop, and the rare legendary item so that I can have a reasonable challenge getting to level 85 at which point I could then farm more and more difficult monsters in the hunt for BIS gear. That is what would make the game last for me. Is that really asking too much? As some people have suggested I don’t want to make a character based on the loot drops I get, I want to play the character I want and get some decent drops while still maintaining a fair challenge fighting monsters while I hunt for better loot.

  2. On a side note, when DII first came out the only way to get loot was by killing monsters and trading. The currency was SoJs, which you could get by killing mobs or gambling with some fellow in Act II. That’s how I got most of mine. The system actually worked pretty well until Blizzard ruined it on Dupe Day, when they allowed dishonest players to essentially dupe their SoJs, which totally screwed the economy. Also, I don’t think rune swords came until the expansion, of which I was not a big fan.

  3. As I said above, it’s not that RNG is not working, it’s that, at least for this particular build, the probability of getting what I consider relevant drops for the pet build for the seven armor slots is very close to 0. Based on my assumptions of the number of drops I’ve had, the estimated probability is .0001 or one-hundredth of one percent or in other works one in every 10,000 drops.

Again, thanks for your comments and happy hunting.

Tarkus

Since legendary equipment was added to the game, I have filled two bags. Only one piece is for my class, Trozan’s chest. Everything else is for every other class in the game. Frustrating…

The issue is, there are 15 class combos. Each combo can focus on radically different things, meaning that 15 combos can easily permutate into 45 class builds. 2 bags means that you have gotten roughly 30 legendaries I’d say, and that’s being generous. We are not even going to assume duplicates in this matter.

You are statistically at a 50% of what you should have, and that is over an insanely low sample size of what is effectively 1/2. A single drop can set you to what you should be on average.

This points out a big issue in the game. We have so many different builds, that making someone feel good about getting gear for any of them hard. You either have to spam items at them (meaning every alt you could ever make will be 100% twinked out easily), or you have to give them targetted items based on their build (Meaning you get almost no gear for alts).

And to me, GD’s system is pretty fair. It gives you multiple ways to aim for gear pieces (Either by farming enemies who are of the same “class” as you, meaning a higher drop rate of your class items, or by going to the legendary blacksmith and asking for a specific type of gear slot fill, be it armor, caster weapons, melee weapons, guns, or jewelery).

The only reason you feel bad about what you are getting is because the way the game is balanced as far as gear drops goes, it doesn’t reward you just wanting to play a single class forever. You either need to radically alter your expectations on the rate of getting gear, or twink out characters so that they can perform well in ulti (Remember, BIS can infact be a level 50 item, as my level 85 Spellbreaker is using a level 50 legendary as his mainhand weapon, and there is literally only a single item that I would consider an upgrade to it).

And hoping to depend on a double-rare as a BIS is just not happening, if you get it it is because of pure unadulterated luck, not really a factor of farming no matter how much you do.

And that’s often a problem, because legendaries usually have the same level of power as good double-rare mods, but drop 10-100 times more often

Statistics isn’t useless, it’s just a way of quantifying probabilistic events.

With that said, there is no mathematical modelling around farming gear with the exception that as you farm gear, ad infinitum, the chance you will find what you’re looking for is 100%.

Beyond farming is the fact that you could be having fun or trying new angles with the loot you do have. That has driven new outcomes for me, including a sword and board commando thats getting really powerful.

I think thats what this is about, exploring new journeys. A journey of discoveries. Stop min maxing one character, experience the other combinations…

Invoking quotes about math and quantum physics unless theyre a means to an end seems somewhat fruitless and out of scope.

Enjoy the game, that’s what the community paid for… entertainment :slight_smile:

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

Tarkus, I’m level 78 and my item level is 53. I have a bleeding build so I want pretty specific stuff, not to mention the gear I do have just happened to be extremely good for the level I got it. Large amounts of physique or physical damage/bleeding damage that just hasn’t been surpassed by anything I’ve found.

The legendaries and Epic’s I got though pretty much fitted out my other builds and I got enough stuff to where my build is viable in Ultimate. Could I be better with better gear? Yeah and I’m working on getting it. But I’m still able to progress through the game with no problem (mostly cause the build is so strong).

I think the developers designed the game so that we wouldn’t get all the loot we needed right away, while still making it possible for other classes to get loot they need as well. Since there can be so many possibilities the chances of getting something you actually need aren’t as high. But they also designed the game to be able to be completed without needing the best, for nearly all builds at least. I’m sure there are builds that just aren’t as viable without the right gear but that isn’t necessarily the developers fault.

Sometimes you have to make sure that your build can manage the gear you have, instead of the other way around. That’s why we are able to refund skill points like we can.

Maybe it just comes down to you having a bad run of luck OP. RNG is a very cruel bitch, and I have been on a legendary item slump myself for about a week. Last night I found (another) Stonefist Rebuke and my first Ulziun’s Flamespreader, of course while farming with my Warlock.

Perhaps you have narrowed down what you are looking for so much that it has frustrated you. As for myself, I am glad my characters are not geared out in a short amount of time with targeted drops or is wearing a gimmicky set. I am still using Empowered Hermit’s Leg Guards, rare chest I found back early in Elite, Order of Death’s Vigil belt, rare dagger from a vendor, etc., and I am farming Ultimate with relative ease even though my gear is a mishmash not even close to what I really want. Maybe I can’t kill Fabius in 5 seconds like the YouTube video I watched, and I can still die in SoT or BoC, but it’s all part of the challenge.

As you have already alluded to, what you want and what you are getting out of the game is not aligning which may cause you to drop the game. I say keep chugging along and make what you do have work. After watching gameplay videos, I might be the worst Grim Dawn player out there because I don’t skip around everything, I die to stupid mistakes, and my gear/skill point distribution may not be perfect. But, the game is solid, and in 5 months has given me more enjoyment than 3+ years of D3(minus some of the people I met in my clan). Is it D2 level of rose tinted glasses? It’s hard to say since I am in a much different place in life at this point.

Yeah I’m using a rare troll club that I got in Elite and the level 50 something craftable shoulder pads. Decorated Pauldrons. I have yet to find anything that can best every stat that those have. That’s insane to me lol, I don’t mind though because it means that this game isn’t so completely bound by gear. Because I’ve used those since the start of Elite and I’m almost done with act 1 ultimate. So it’s not like they’re hurting me.

It’s probably because there are so many different items designed to fit so many different niches, that many otherwise “good” items feel like vendor trash.

Let me drop some statistics. I play a dual wielding shadow strike, pierce & cold based build, I need those cold and pierce damage. I can not use two-handed or ranged. the best two-handed weapon I have drops my damage by 50~%. When it comes to weapons, I have had a total of 57 legendary weapon slot drops. 37 of these are weapon slot items I cannot use because of their type. Not to mention the remaining based on their inferiority to my current items mainly because of the fact that they are not meant for my build (mainly the fact that they are either fire based or lightning based weapons). This leaves me with 5-7 weapons that I can actually use from the 57 weapon slot drops that I have had. Furthermore, I have had 13 chest drops, 10 gauntlets, 3 boots, 7 belts, 10 leggings, 9 shoulder pieces, 2 rings, 8 amulets and lastly 2 medals. That is 64 legendary drops that I cannot use. Because of course I am not counting the items I actually use in this.
Is this wrong? No, it is not wrong. The only thing to do in this game right now (after finishing the story) is killing bosses and farming items, and I sure am enjoying the two of those things!

Also, I am leaving the screenshots for my “banked” items here as well as a guide to how i farmed those items :wink:
http://imgur.com/a/PKUmk
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39820

Looks like I need to get my character, or get one of the others up to par, to farm Fabius. Moosey is easy(ran into him last night in SoT, which made me a little nervous, but it was all good, but no leg drop), and Valdaran is fairly easy as well. But, Fabius killed me over and over to the point where I pretty much gave up until I have the defenses lined up to take his hits a little better.