Target Farming / Item Drops / Randomized Maps

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Hi all,

i want to talk a little bit about target farming and the item drops in other big arpg’s to compare and discuss the current situation in LE and maybe the future. I also made up some points about randomized maps. I hope you have fun reading it and share your opinion about your arpg experiences so far.
Why do i write this? I hope it can be interesting for the devs to see different opinions and suggestions for those topics.

Diablo 2
First of all, d2 is definitly the mother of all arpg’s. It’s a masterpiece, probably one of the best video games and the base of every current arpg out there. But, it’s kinda outdated and new games made a lot of things better.
Something i don’t like about d2 is how you play the endgame once you finished all difficulties and acts. Basically you do Boss/Map runs like Mephisto, Baal to farm your gear. The problem is, doing the same maps and boss runs over and over again for 1000 times, it gets kinda boring after a while (my opinion). Of course Blizzard North didn’t have the technical features and time to implement endgame ideas. Even though after so many years, people (me including) still have fun playing this game because it’s so much fun looking for the perfect gear, because itemization is awesome! Target farming does not really exist (because unique items can drop everywhere at a certain ilvl and maplvl), but people figured out that certain runs/maps are more efficient than other areas, so they started to farm the same maps over and over again (not randomized maps).

Diablo 3
Man, so many timelines in d3 let’s start from vanilla. Vanilla was kinda good but also kinda shit. I liked how difficult it was to find good gear, but there was not really an endgame feature and as far as i can remember, after 1 or 2 month people stopped playing because there was nothing really to do. I was even more in the auctionhouse rather then playing the game. Nowadays you find perfect gear (or just simply gamble at kadala / kanai’s cube) after 2 days when a new season started and you only have to hope that you find ancient or primal versions to make your char better and just farm many hours to get high paragon to boost your main stat. So d3 became waaaayy easier also for casual players. The absolute prime of d3 was when they introduced loot 2.0 and the release of RoS (when Sets were not that impactful and it took a lot of time to find the perfect gear). I can remember finding Kridershot with my DH after 5 days of Loot 2.0 release. I was like: what the hell is this item, it’s amazing, so i could completely change my build and it had such a big impact of my playstyle. I found no one on the internet having any builds for this item, so i really had the feeling i found something special and unique. Nowadays, every player plays the exact same build with the exact same stats on gear. D3 forces you almost to play exactly the build that the rank 1 Barbarian is playing because it’s the fastest way to farm and kill bosses in Grifts.
The best thing d3 implemented though was Rifts as an endgame alternative. It was the beginning of randomized maps that didn’t give you the feeling to repeat your playstyle. And also a good thing, you have the chance to find every item/unique where ever or how ever you play (no target farming).

Path of Exile
Probably the best arpg out there at the moment. A lot of content, many ways to play the game (mapping/delve/crafting/tower defense blight, many skills, you name it). I see LE being one of the closest arpgs to PoE and i give you my opinion. LE is going to introduce the bazaar, similar to poe.trade/poeninja. When we are talking about target farming and item drops this can be a critical point on how people will like this or not.
This is what i don’t like about PoE and here is my example: Headhunter and The Saviour are 2 really good and valuable items. Headhunter is probably the most expensive item for many leagues now and the go to item to farm, just to get rich in this game. When you find a HH, you can basically sell it and buy the perfect gear for any build out there to do all endgame content. What’s the problem about that? Well, there are certain divination cards that you can farm in maps for example Burial Chambers. It takes alot of time to collect all of them to get HH but now we come back to target farming. If you really want to get rich and want to find this item you need to farm Burial Chambers over and over again. This is something personally i don’t like. I want to find those divination cards also in other maps. I want to have variety so that i’m not getting bored after playing the same map over and over again, sure the maps are randomized in PoE, but once you know the layout of a map, you know where you have to go.
Now to The Saviour. Since the last League people are chasing Sirus Aw8 to have a chance to drop this item. Because Cyclone and the impale mechanic are meta and an efficient way to play this game (cyclone being the most comfortable melee skill/ impale being the most broken mechanic) people start target farming Sirus only and PoE becomes a racing game to the top of the endcontent. Casual Players almost have no chance to keep up with 24/7 streamers, because they can influence the market with early good drops. Ok, i’ll be honest i don’t play 24/7 but i play alot and i have a lot of game knowledge, once you hang in there you can also get rich and get every item in the game, but it’s time investing for sure. I don’t wanna say this is a big problem. But maybe those items are too good? It makes sense that the hardest boss and content in the game should give you the best gear, but this makes also other content a little bit less interesing because people wanna chase the best things in the game, what do you think?

Grim Dawn
Completely different to PoE but in my opinion almost as good as PoE. GD is more singleplayer related, GD is about exploring the world, leveling your character and finding the perfect gear. I think no other arpg does it so good like GD. Probably the most oldschool arpg out there. For me it is a true arpg game because it has all the elements d2 was giving us. Itemization is awesome, build varieties and the freedom of how you play the game are probably the best aspect of this game. There are also no leaderboards-> no meta builds-> every player can play the build he wants to play.
Something i don’t like about GD: No randomized maps (except Shattered Realms). I had the best experience with the first character i ever created for GD. The leveling was amazing and the content is mindblowing. But once you reached lvl 100 and there is nothing much to do with the character you want to start over again with a new char. Then you realize, all the maps are the same, all the hidden treasures are at the same location and i couldn’t really enjoy my character as i did with my first one.
Something else i don’t like about GD: Certain build relevant items are only available at lvl 94, yes 94! So you have to play many hours to finally have a chance to drop the item, and once you finally drop this item you need, you already reached lvl 100 and the char is not fun anymore.
Something i really like about GD: Itemization and Drops. In GD something like target farming doesn’t really excist even though you can farm special monster infrequents which are definitly BiS, but not mandatory to play endgame content. Uniques back then were really hard to find and the devs patched the game to drop uniques more frequent. I think now, GD is in a really good state and it’s a lot of fun to farm gear, even though randomized maps don’t excist and you get the feeling doing the same runs over and over again.

Conclusion
D2: Amazing game, amazing itemization, legendary builds, boring endgame runs (target farming in a way of doing the same runs over and over again, not loot drop related)

D3: Best gameplay of all arpgs (feels amazing to kill monsters), bad itemization (every unique has the same main stats), too easy to farm/gamble/craft, every build needs to have set items to perform good, no crafting, no trading, randomized maps with rifts (good), still a really good game don’t get me wrong but i think you guys and blizzard devs know whats going on.

PoE: Best arpg, good itemization, amazing content, randomized maps (good), target farming in terms of getting rich (bad), market/trade determines the game (bad), i’mreally interested in your opinion here because i believe some of you think different

GD: Amazing itemization, good content (story mode) not enough content (endgame), build variety (good), no randomized maps (bad), no target farming (good)

What about Last Epoch now? Right now something like target farming doesn’t really excist, only certain uniques can be found at certain bosses, but those uniques are not mandatory for any meta builds, they can change your build in a good way, but you don’t need them to perform waayy better than any other builds with only rare items. Yes Plaguebearer is probably the strongest unique item right now in the game but this is just a balance thing. Good thing is, the item is rare and you can’t target farm it on any bosses, so you have to earn it by playing the game alot. I really like the itemization so far, the crafting is amazing. We will get and already have endgame content with randomized maps, which are fun to play. I only hope the campaign and story mode will get a little bit more interesting because the maps are not randomized and certain side maps don’t reward you enough with certain treasures. If the story mode stays like this, the ‘‘poe effect’’ will kick in and people start to rush the story mode to farm in endgame maps.

Sorry for the looong text but i’m really interested in your opinion about target farming (do you like to find certain items only at certain bosses?) , how would you like to find your gear (should it be easy to get good gear, or should you really earn it?) What do you think about the current story mode and randomized maps (do you only care about endgame, or do you also like to experience the story mode in a good way?)
I’m also interested if the devs can maybe get us some input on how they wanna follow up the game with those topics in the future.

3 Likes
2

I can’t comment anything regarding D2, because i never played it and for D3 i only played a Little while with the introduction of the Crusader, which is by far the only class in like in D3(i really like those holy-warrior Kind of theme).

D3 as you said has good Gameplay but especially the rune System is to simple to me. Set’s are and were way to relevant for almost every build. Here wins LE already with the wast diverse skill tree System and the (small) sets that are no way mandatory for any build

Regarding PoE:

While PoE is already a well established ARPG because it’s out for so many years, i don’t know any specific part of PoE that LE should try to build into their game. The only Thing i hope EHG is making very well is the Bazaar. I really like the idea of a trademarket, which is gold-driven. PoE’s market is slightly more complicated because there goes so much into it and PoE does not have 1 simply ressource like Gold.

Now Comes the part where i definitly have to talk the most About… Grim Dawn.

One of my all time favorite ARPG’s(2nd place after Marvel Heroes, which was my favorite game of ALL time)

Anyway, the BEST part About Grim Dawn in my opinion are the “Monster Infrequents”.
For anyone who doesn’t know what those are: Monster Infrequents are base item types(like gloves, boots, helmets, etc.) that only drop from a certain monster type(or in some rare cases from random endgame chests). Those already have very build-specific stats on it(like certain element type damage or certain # to skill XY). Those Monster Infrequent’s like all other base items can roll with a random pre- and suffix.

So the main Point here is that you cna target farm specific items by killing monster of specific types, which usally are present in certain specific regions of the game. So it allows you to target farm those Mosnter Infrequent’s.

Those Monster Infrequents are by no mean the best items, but there are often BiS or at least almost equal to certain Legendaries within Grim Dawn and will allow you even if they are no BiS, to get relativly easy “good” items for certain Slots, before you get a specific legendary.

And for those BiS Hunters, you can target farm those MI’s all day Long to get any MI with perfect Pre- and Suffix.

Alot of those target farm strategies within Grim Dawn work bcause the world is NOT randomized(at least the basic layout and most Name mob spawns).

But for LE i wish something similar where we have Control over a certain amount of items.

Depending on how the Bazaar will work target farming and “just farming Gold” to buy item in the Bazaar, you can make Pretty decent build without much tiem Investment and then try to min-max them

TL:DR I besides uniques and set’s i want something similar to Monster Infrequents from Grim Dawn in LE

4 Likes
4

I totally agree about the MI’s in Grim Dawn. Early on they can make you uber powerful without too much time invested in farming them as you level. Then, as you get higher levels they become excellent farming gear (or even endgame gear) for a lot of builds.

What really supplements the MI’s in that game is the faction gear which has been greatly revamped and allows any build easy to get gear pieces (provided you get the reputation). The faction system, in general, is pretty awesome in that game.

So then you can use the MI’s + faction gear to farm the endgame legendaries you desire, or just better versions of the Rare MI’s as well as the Epic and Legendary MI’s. I love this because you can have a rather competent build without any endgame item. Heck, one can beat Lokarr with MI’s and faction gear. They’re an excellent option for newcomers to the game, but incredibly time consuming if you want a specific affix on your Rare MI which makes farming for that perfect MI quite a time-suck (but I love it).

Oh, I could probably talk about Grim Dawn for hours. I have thousands of hours played in the game and I’ve leveled 58 characters to 100 having tried every class combo…with a few of the same class in the mix because I couldn’t stand to destroy one character to design him differently. Also, there’s something like 30 more MI’s coming next patch. :grin:

4 Likes
5

I have a character of every mastery class now and I agree that going through the story each time sucks. Once you get to the end of time you can do monolith runs instead, but you miss out on idol slots. I would very much like a Marvel Heroes system where your characters get an extra exp percentage based on levels of existing characters. Something like .1% per other character level on your account. So if you have a character that is level 80, your second character gains 8% more experience while leveling. If you have 2 level 80 characters, your 3rd character would have a 16% exp bonus.

Given that there are also passive points and idol slot unlocks tied to storyline quests, maybe there could be a new character+ choice. This option would unlock after you complete a certain goal in the game on a character. Maybe the completion of all of the story content. It would be an account wide unlock. The New Character+ lets you start a new character with the extra passive points and idol unlocks gained at a certain level rather than through the story.

This would force the first character playthrough to go through the story to the end. Then each new character after that would not be forced to. They could start their new character at the end of time with automatic access to the monolith and arena and any additional end game content that gets added.

As for items. I don’t like that build defining items get locked behind content that only 1% or less of the players can actually get to. This is one of the reasons I am pulling away from PoE and have never liked MMO’s with end game raid systems.

*AndrewTilley - I love faction systems too. It allows people to get pretty great gear through grinding. Faction quests were great and could be quite hard. The best part about them is that it isn’t about random drops to find the gear, but grinding the quests/kills to get loyalty in order to buy the gear you want. This would be a fantastic option for build defining items/sets. I also very much like when factions are opposed, so gaining in one reduces another. This makes it so certain gears can’t be put together. That opens up design space for the devs too. Faction gear should bind to character.

4 Likes
6

The problem for me with D2 is that it one of my all time favourites. But I haven’t played it for years. And now I have a very “romantic” view on this game. I liked everything about this game, but making an exact clone today will not work.

One example of an incredible good game in terms of replayability, itemisation and trading is Warframe. But almost everything in this game is only obtainable through target farming.

For those who are not familiar with Warframe I’ll describe it a bit:
Warframe is a 3rd person shooter combining gunplay, melee combat and parkour elements. Playing a space ninja sums it up. You don’t have a fix class. You control an armor suit named Warframe. These have different abilities and stats. At the very beginning you choose one Warframe out of 3. Later you can obtain every Warframe by farming its parts and forge it in your spaceship.

The game is so simple. The spaceship is your homebase. You have a forge and an armoury to gear up. On the navigation panel you can choose the mission type and enemy faction (there are 3) you wanna play against. And that’s where the target farming comes in. You won’t be able to obtain any new item (besides some standard weapons) just by playing random maps.

Step 1: To get a new weapon you have to find the blueprint and mostly 3 additional parts. These only drop at specific mission types as reward for completion. So you would ask in chat or look at the wiki where to find the different parts and run these exact mission types over and over again until you have everything you need.

Step 2: You have to forge the item. For this you also need specific resources besides the already farmed parts. The better the item the rarer these resources are. For common weapons you farm these resources passively just by farming for the parts. But some resources only drop from a specific faction.

For improving weapons and Warframes you use mods. These are drops from enemies. The rarer mods also are only dropped by specific enemy types.

But there are so many different ways to obtain gear. For many Frames you have to do a short story quest to get the blueprint. Some parts drop on completion of missions. Then you have wave based missions where you for example have to defend a spot against infinite waves of enemies. Every X waves you get a reward and can choose to leve to claim it or carry on for the next reward. When you lose you also lose all rewards. But every round has a different loot table. So for example the shaft of a specific weapon will only drop on every 3rd reward of a specific defense mission (round 3, 6, 9, 12,…). So every reward in between will not be the desired part but a part of another weapon or Warframe.

This way you collect a bunch of parts you were not aiming for. so you have a pool of possible items you can farm next.

This sucked me in and drove me to play it for years.

There are also faction rewards. Faction based weapons are improved versions of common weapons. You can buy the blueprints when the reputation is high enough.

Warframes and Weapons often have “Prime” versions. Their parts are only obtainable at Void rift missions. To take part on such a mission you have to farm special keys on specific normal missions.

Some weapons and Warframes are only obtainable when you are in a clan. And to get the blueprints your clan has to build certain laboratories and do a research. This costs resources your clan has to farm.

Also what is very interesting is the trading. You can buy items directly for real money and you can also buy “platinum” as an ingame currency. This currency is also tradable between players. So by selling parts you don’t need for platinum you can then buy something on the ingame store. But you cannot get cash back for platinum.

This is a very simple description and not very accurate. Every single system in Warframe is very simple but it gets complex with the way these systems interact with each other.

This game started as a collection of different small coop game modes. But over the years with every content patch the game grew to a Loot Shooter Leviathan. It needs some time to get into it, but once you’re in you won’t leave for months or even years. This is one of the most addictive games I’ve ever played.

So I have to admit that I love target farming very much. I have made excel sheets to write down which parts of which weapons/frames I have, which are missing, which missions I have to run to find them. Are there synergies with the rewards? Can I get part 1 of weapon a and part 2 of weapon b at the same mission type. Awesome.

I can live with LE not having target farming for all items. But imho do this for specific legendaries or sets would spice things up.

I wonder if any of the EHG devs have ever played Warframe and what they think about its mechanics. Some would also fit into this ARPG I think.

2 Likes
7

Btw, when you play hardcore, go throgh story again and again not boring, at least for me. Its not very hard, but still there is some element of uncertainty - you dont really now how this story ends for you.

1 Like
8

Want o add to the discussion: This “you have to go through the story with every new char” topic is not huge for me. After playing hours and hours the same 2-5 endgame modes over and over again, playing the story with a new char is like a breeze of fresh air.

From my perspective it’s hilarious to begin a new char and enter the same game modes that I played for weeks. And even on top of this I have to do this with low gear, low skills and no passives? :wink:

Especially the beginning to the middle is something I play gladly. When it goes towards the end of story content I begin to rush more through the levels.

The story of LE is good enough that I like to play it. And it’s still work in progress.

1 Like
9

true, that makes target farming good because the reward is interesting, not mandatory items but rewarding gear pieces for sure!

i understand your point, but maybe making the story mode more interesting in terms of different treasures you can find with every new char can make it more special

completely forgot about the faction gear! This is indeed an amazing game element GD has. You also force the player to choose one faction to get the desired weapons you need, i like that.

You are right, it’s a new game, the content is still new to us, even with the upcoming chapter 8 and 9, but i can see in the future, (maybe in 1 or 2 years) if the story mode stays the same that leveling until endgame can get boring, but for now its an interesting story indeed.

Something i forgot about to mention is the single story playthrough that PoE introduced back then with 10 acts. I didn’t like the d2/ vanilla d3/gd story playthrough with 3 different difficulties. I’m glad LE alrdy went the poe way.

1 Like
10

The problem with the story mode is that it locks your movement. Once you have played through the story, which I enjoy for the actual story, most don’t want to do it again. It is like watching the same movie over and over and over. I know the story. I want to get to the open world part where I can explore what is new and different, which in this case would be the new character build.

Being forced to play through the story again makes me want to play new characters less and once I get bored with the current character, that is bad, because it makes me want to play the game less.

11

I agree with some points! For me it’s a little bit different and other arpgs give me another feeling about story mode.
D2 you are forced to play 3 difficulties=it gets boring after your 50th character.
In d3 i can’t remember the last time i played story mode since everyone is playing adventure mode. This is so sad because the diablo franchise actually has the best storylines of all arpgs in my opinion. Fighting duriel, mephisto, baal, belial…that was epic u know. Now it seems like the whole storymode in d3 was ‘‘worthless’’.
PoE: I like seasons, i always love to level up new chars in the beginning of a new season. But when i want to try out my second character, i wish i can alrdy play in endgame without leveling through 10 acts.
I think once you don’t have randomized maps, the storymode can be boring after many years and many characters that you have played because you always know where you have to go. That’s why i hope that years after the full release of LE, the story mode is still going to be fun to play.

true, that’s why i still think somehow story mode needs new features to make it a new experience everytime you level up a new char

Then you probably like adventure mode in d3, which in my opinion was also a good idea because blizzard didn’t come up with the great idea of GGG implementing a single play through with 10 acts. Or the Wolcen feature which is kinda similar after completing the campaign for the first time? This is actually a really cool feature from wolcen and i can imagine this works well with seasons if you only have to play the story mode with your first char once and the rest can be played with ‘‘adventure mode’’

12

I do like adventure mode in D3. The thing is, that mode shouldn’t be unlocked until you have ran through the story mode with at least one character. Maybe PoE could do the same, but each season would require a fresh playthrough to unlock the “adventure” mode. I don’t think I would ever be able to unlock it in that game though, have never beaten any of the final bosses.

I also think this game borrows a lot from Chrono Trigger. That is why I was thinking of a “New Game +”

13

That’s because D3’s reading age is the same as Topsy and Tim books (4-8 if you’re interested). I’m pretty sure Baby Shark has better character development & writing.

I suspect Blizzard had decided that they didn’t want to invest the kid of resources into D3 nearly 5 years after it was originally release (Fall of Oriath was released in Feb 2017, D3 was released in May 2012) given they effectively put it on life support after Reaper of Souls was released in March 2014.

Hopefully Blizzard have some competent writers for D4.

14

Or maybe just another out of season april fools joke

15

Blizzard hasn’t had competent writers since 2008, and they’re way too ‘Activision’ now to change that. D4 will likely grab to the lowest common denominator and then be ported to phones so they can make 10 billion dollars in China.

16

Blizzard cinematics are still really neat. The games themselves are boring though.

17

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.