1.0.4 Legendary Item Improvements - blog

[Xanthippe]

I have a couple of unidentified legendaries in my chest. I wonder if they will benefit from this?

I guess I'll have to log in again someday to find out.

[Maledict]

I have a couple of unidentified legendaries in my chest. I wonder if they will benefit from this?

I guess I'll have to log in again someday to find out.

Nope - unidentified legendaries do not get the new stats.

[Xanthippe]

I'll wait until they do! Surely some future patch, surely.

[schild]

Paragon System is stuppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppid.

[Musashi]

Ack.

[Rokal]

Paragon System is stuppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppid.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6968517/Introducing_the_Paragon_System-8_20_2012

I'm not seeing the stupid. The system seems pretty good to me.

[Malakili]

Hellgate: London had this exact system.... 

[Paelos]

So they are adding more levels without adding levels, and capping MF at 300%.

Can somebody detail the supposed pros and cons of this system?

[amiable]

So they are adding more levels without adding levels, and capping MF at 300%.

Can somebody detail the supposed pros and cons of this system?

Pros:

More levels to grind
Makes magic find obsolete

Cons:

More levels to grind
Makes magic find obsolete

[Xanthippe]

Seems like a good method to give people a way to progress while playing.

What's bad about it? I'm confused.

It's not terribly surprising to me that they would raise the level cap in the future, although what is surprising to me is that this is coming in a patch rather than an expansion.

(I still have doubts that the team really understands the problems of their game, though).

[MrHat]

(I still have doubts that the team really understands the problems of their game, though).

I think this is why this is bad.  It's not adding anything at all except for another...what? 100 strength?

[Xanthippe]

(I still have doubts that the team really understands the problems of their game, though).

I think this is why this is bad.  It's not adding anything at all except for another...what? 100 strength?

Every Paragon level will reward you with:
   
      Core stats such as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in amounts similar to what you’d gain from a normal level
      3% Magic Find and 3% Gold Find

[Drai]

Diluting the magic find versus raw power decision with Paragon levels is completely not understanding what makes Diablo tick and is a silly way to address the mf gear switchers issue. 

Adding 100 levels of nothing but a few stat points is not a good "end game" solution. 

I still play on occassion, but man it sure is one step forward with the legendary fixes and one step back with the Paragon system.

[Malakili]

(I still have doubts that the team really understands the problems of their game, though).

They heard that people don't like how stagnant/grindy endgame can feel because they get good drops so rarely, so they decided to let them have levels every so foten to make it feel like they were progressing even when the drops sucked.  I get the idea, but it would've been better to, you know, make drops suck less.

[MrHat]

The only fix they need to add is the reintroduce rune levels, the system they originally had had each rune with L1-L7.

The rune levels didn't just add damage, they added more shit, like the old diablo 2 system.

L1 magic missile was 1 magic missile.

L2 was 2.

L7 was fucking 7 magic missiles.

They were working on this for every rune in the game, they had animations and graphics and specs already drawn up.  Then they dropped them for a 'simpler system" by making the runes in the game about equal to a level 3 rune of this system.

Want to fix Diablo 3 end game, add L7 as a rare modifier on rares and uniques.  Now, I just looted a crystal ball that gives me 7 magic missiles but haven't used that spell since level 8.  Damn, I kinda want to use it! Whoa, what a cool thing to use! I'm going to go find loot that makes this magic missile spec viable now! Hell, add level runes as skill modifiers to a huge level range.  Maybe that L7 magic missile rolls on a lower end item, now I have to make a choice if it's worth losing some vitality and crit damage to gain a few more missiles.

Boom - you've just increased up to L60.

tl;dr - the only thing they need to add is MORE item variability not LESS item variability by phasing out MF.

[Amaron]

At least this opens the possibility for ladders that can reset every few months.  That whole feeling of starting the game over again with a crapload of people is what I find compelling.

[Salamok]

Man I have been spending ALL my gold on getting unbuffed MF to 300 w/o having to gear swap in act I (and most of 2), I am currently at 286 (should be 287 but teh blizz can't add) and each additional point is costing me millions.  I was so sure they were just going to nerf gear swap and buff NV, then they go do something retarded like this.


edit - btw who thinks this shit up?  Loot is broken so let us just let people level stats so they don't need loot.

[Rokal]

Man I have been spending ALL my gold on getting unbuffed MF to 300 w/o having to gear swap in act I (and most of 2), I am currently at 286 (should be 287 but teh blizz can't add) and each additional point is costing me millions.  I was so sure they were just going to nerf gear swap and buff NV, then they go do something retarded like this.

edit - btw who thinks this shit up?  Loot is broken so let us just let people level stats so they don't need loot.

Out of all the MF solutions they suggested, this seems the most elegant. Your already-acquired MF gear is still useful, and will continue to be useful for a long time. As you slowly gain levels you can start replacing some pieces. Eventually (long-term) you won't need any MF gear. Unless you expected to play another 1000 hours without upgrading any gear, I don't see what the complaint is.

As for the stat increases, we have no idea how big of a boost you'll get per level. If it's a small boost, it won't impact your character much but at least you'll feel like you're progressing.

While I'm not going to say this is perfect end-game solution, or even a good one, it's substantially better than what they had before which was nothing. Out of all the 1.0.4 changes this one seems the most promising to me. Still doesn't really help with their boring loot, but it's progress.

[waffel]

At least this opens the possibility for ladders that can reset every few months.  That whole feeling of starting the game over again with a crapload of people is what I find compelling.

This is the one thing I want most but will never get, sadly.

[Salamok]

Out of all the MF solutions they suggested, this seems the most elegant. Your already-acquired MF gear is still useful, and will continue to be useful for a long time. As you slowly gain levels you can start replacing some pieces. Eventually (long-term) you won't need any MF gear. Unless you expected to play another 1000 hours without upgrading any gear, I don't see what the complaint is.

As for the stat increases, we have no idea how big of a boost you'll get per level. If it's a small boost, it won't impact your character much but at least you'll feel like you're progressing.

While I'm not going to say this is perfect end-game solution, or even a good one, it's substantially better than what they had before which was nothing. Out of all the 1.0.4 changes this one seems the most promising to me. Still doesn't really help with their boring loot, but it's progress.

I slightly over-reacted, I read Paelos' comment on a 300 cap and assumed it was inclusive of NV which it is not.  It is still a bit of a let down as I had visions of 400+ MF & buffed legendaries dancing through my head.  I also am less than thrilled as I feel the most fun solution to the problem would be to fix the actual loot instead of buffing the raw character to be less dependant on loot.  

There are plenty of ways they can fix loot, for starters it would be awesome if they made it so the affixes could only have at most 1 core stat + vit (so 2 core stats but if there were 2 one would be vit).  And holy fuck why not remove Life Steal from 60+ weapons (or entirely) since they nerfed the living crap out of it for inferno anyhow, one less affix to compete with something useful.

[Paelos]

They will fix loot, they just won't fix it in this patch. It's not like they are ignoring the issues of itemization.

[Amaron]

There are plenty of ways they can fix loot, for starters it would be awesome if they made it so the affixes could only have at most 1 core stat + vit (so 2 core stats but if there were 2 one would be vit).  And holy fuck why not remove Life Steal from 60+ weapons (or entirely) since they nerfed the living crap out of it for inferno anyhow, one less affix to compete with something useful.

Diablo isn't diablo without useless stats anyways.  The problem is more that the retarded difficulty and the auction house lead to an expectation of perfect gear. That is why they need a limited trade ladder reset more than anything else.  The gear people have is already too good really.

[Yegolev]

I'll wait until they do! Surely some future patch, surely.

Stats are rolled on drop, not identify.

[Yegolev]

I just read the Paragon stuff.  One hundred AA levels?  What?

[Ingmar]

I kind of felt that way about the idea of getting to level 99 in D2.

[Cheddar]

I am excited.  Loving everything about this patch and extremely optimistic for the future.

[Paelos]

I am excited.  Loving everything about this patch and extremely optimistic for the future.

Yeah I don't know what's pissing people off about paragon levels, but it seems to give people at the top something to achieve even if the drops don't work during that play session.

I like the idea in theory. We'll see how the execution goes.

[Xanthippe]

I'll wait until they do! Surely some future patch, surely.

Stats are rolled on drop, not identify.

You're breaking my heart, you know.

[Musashi]

I think what bothers me about the Paragon thing is that it isn't really a thing.  All it adds are 100 ding/grats.  Which in my mind is only sort of a thing.  If those ding/grats actually added something meaningful, then it would be worthy of my excitement.  Instead it's just a treadmill that adds 100 meager stat points and replaces something I already had.  I guess I appreciate that this is probably a better way of implementing magic find in an abstract sense.  But that alone isn't enough to get me excited about it.

And still, nowhere have I seen anyone accept responsibility for the game's biggest flaw.  And that is how the RMAH adversely affects game balance.

[Amaron]

I think what bothers me about the Paragon thing is that it isn't really a thing.  All it adds are 100 ding/grats.  Which in my mind is only sort of a thing.  If those ding/grats actually added something meaningful, then it would be worthy of my excitement.  Instead it's just a treadmill that adds 100 meager stat points and replaces something I already had. 

If you were already gear swapping then yea it doesn't add anything.  For those of us who don't gear swap it gives us an extra slot on pieces to work with.  That's a lot more than a few hundred stat points.

[Salamok]

So any opinions on the whole some servers are better than others for drops theory?  I can see the devs taking some sort of seed once shortcut maybe especially as some sort of cop out to random dungeon creation.   In the past I have also noticed that once my MF was above 200ish my legendary drops started coming in pairs (and tied to better drops all around for that run) more often than not.

Over the weekend I did pay some extra attention to what servers I was on and the loot did seem to be better on the even .7x servers but I only really completed 9 or 10 butcher runs with legendaries dropping on .72 and .38, not a very large sample to be sure but still somewhat interesting.

I am also getting a hunch that a possible indication of a "good" server is the presence of an elite mob in the ACT 1 graveyard.

[Ingmar]

When you're talking drop rates as low as legendaries, you are going to need thousands of samples to draw any kind of conclusion. I suspect it is "Onyxia deep breathes more" myth, though.

[Abelian75]

the devs taking some sort of seed once shortcut maybe especially as some sort of cop out to random dungeon creation.

I don't think people realize how easy it is to use RNGs (not the writing of the function part, which isn't something a game dev will bother doing, but actually using it.)  Your shit starts up, you toss that bad boy the current time or whatever the fuck, and bam, now you get random numbers.  The only time you're realistically going to see randomness failing is when you use those random results incorrectly in your code (Asheron's Call did something like this where certain players almost always drew aggro or something, as I recall).  Despite the outcry of random numbers "not being random", that's extremely misleading, and arguably untrue.  I could babble about this for hours, but the short version is that "true randomness" as an object quality of something may not even exist, and the fact that we can't be certain if they exist illustrates the fact that it doesn't matter whether your RNG is "truly random" or not.  If you can't figure out the pattern behind the numbers, then they are random.  With readily-available RNGs, you cannot figure out the pattern.  Even if you could, once multiple players are hitting that same RNG, and each player is doing an unpredictable number of things constantly, you once again can't figure it out because you don't know the pattern of the requests for random numbers.

If you're seeing tendencies and vague connections, you're almost certainly not seeing anything at all.  If you see overwhelming, near-constant repetition and easily exploitable patterns, then you might actually have found a problem.  But it will have nothing to do with "seeds."  Even if you did seed an RNG in D3 with the same number every time, you'd have to make sure to do the same exact actions every time to get the same results.  Otherwise your results would once again be totally random.

[Salamok]

stuff

I think the one server instance is better than the other has some weight, but from my experience it has more to do with the # of elite packs and champions present (and possibly their level).  Seems like when I land on one of the blogged about preferred IP's the ACT 1 cemetery always has 6-7 champ/elites and is almost immediately identifiable as good because there is a champion right at the waypoint.

Also talking about the RNG in theory w/o some coder effing it up, a fine example of this is the online poker site that had their shuffle cracked.  They were seeding fine but screwed everything up by trying to account for every possible shuffle combo with a 32 bit int.