Randomized Loot

[RobbinB]

Prefixes and Suffixes

Currently on the Live servers, random loot has a Prefix, a Suffix, and an Enhancement bonus, and the overall power of the item is divided between the three effects.

Going forward, Prefixes, Suffixes, and Enhancement bonuses will be independent of one another, meaning you can get multiple very good effects on a given item. Additionally, there is a chance for an additional effect to go along with the Prefix and Suffix, which is also independent. Giving the possibility of 3 effects on the item all of which determine their own level independently.

Look, I'm thrilled that you guys stole my basic ideas for random lootgen where you add additional "ix" and make the prefix/suffix/ix independent of one another. Unfortunately, you may have warped my suggestions in a way that completely invalidates them. Please go back and read my posts on random loot a little more carefully.

There are many responders to this very post that have pointed out the possibility of stat-flation with this system. This is exactly what will happen if you have each "ix" function independently but come with a static power level based on item ML. This is because if you set the power level too weak than random loot will still be weaker than named (and therefore still useless although slightly better), and if u set the power level too high than there will be too much good random loot. It simply can't work.

It is absolutely essential that each "ix" is not a static value based on item ML but rather a variable "rolled" value with a Gaussian distribution that is merely shifted as item ML increases. This makes uber (even through-the-roof-insane-uber) items possible but statistically unlikely. For example, take the case where 3 strength attributes actually fall on a single item, the majority of the time that this happens the + values to strength wouldn't be that great. But that one time in a zillion, you would get all strength values at the maximum possible and that would be the exceedingly rare holy-**** item.

Hopefully I misunderstood and the "ixes' do not provide set values based on item ML. But if they do, we could be seeing the next "mortal fear" type dev error.

[Dreppo]

Going forward, Prefixes, Suffixes, and Enhancement bonuses will be independent of one another, meaning you can get multiple very good effects on a given item. Additionally, there is a chance for an additional effect to go along with the Prefix and Suffix, which is also independent.

For the bonus affix you can get (in addition to the prefix and suffix), I propose the term "bonix".

[SealedInSong]

Also, are you guys going to adopt the same philosophy with Named/Raid loot? (And maybe make some of the ancient raid loot desirable again?)

This is really important to me; some items with solid bonus profiles are outdated extraordinarily quickly.
It's even worse if they're extremely rare, such as shard/seal/scroll epics.

Give older items a chance to be useful! The dev team worked hard on those items, so no reason to make them only useful for 1-2 levels.

[Knobull]

1. I think resistance gear is still way too common when it comes to drops. They're just disappointing to get, especially early on when a potion of resist energy is far more generally useful. I could see equipping element-proof gear if it was substantially better than what I can get from spells or item augments. A high level element-proof item giving 50 or 60 resistance would probably be something I'd actually think about using on certain encounters.

Yay! Someone else realises this! Element-proof gear is virtually useless, hugely over valued in platinum and almost nobody wants it! Please get rid of that junk. Plllleeeeeaaaaaasssssseeeee!!!!

[maddong]

I gottah say I am so psyched reading this, I'm ready for random loot to be worth looking at again, I can't wait until this hits, this will add so much replay value to the game no question about it.

This is what happened with Update 19 with massive loot inflation. The loot became much much better and outclassed most old named items (dream visor anyone?). Then everyone had their random loot very quickly so the only way to make massive random loot inflation work is to make it very very rare. You need 95% of chest drops to suck so that people only have a 5% chance of something good (which was how it was pre Update 19).

[lppmor]

So, lets say I get a ML 10 ring giving +6 Str. I bet we'll only be able to find +7 itens by level 20, so what can I expect in loot improvements from ML 11 to 19?

[changelingamuck]

Please bring back the old clickie loot items such as:

- shield
- haste
- detect secret doors
- invisible
- detect invisible

Also scale them with level instead of them being a base lvl 1 (or so) spell - this is particularly bad for Detect Secret which became useless around lvl 10.

I have no idea why these were taken out of the game but whoever made the decision got it wrong - these things are useful, not game breaking, and need to come back.

These still do exist, but only drop in chain end rewards (as bta) OR sand Antiq bronze token turn ins.

Please, absolutely, do not listen to that suggestion and bring back lootgen clickies. They were always an awful idea. They reduce the uniqueness of all the spellcasting classes. They reduce the teamwork aspect of the game by making it so every class has no need for helpful buffs from other party members of different classes. The game has progressively made it so more and more classes can do just about everything that other classes can do; removing lootgen clickies was one of the only decisions made in the past few years that resisted the trend toward homogenizing how classes play and what they each uniquely bring to parties.

And needless to say, if you make the terrible decision to reintroduce lootgen clickies, do not follow this other suggestion to make them scale with item level. This would additionally make it pointless for spellcasters to prepare many spells since they can just grab as many clickies as they want with caster levels just as high as their own caster level off the auction house. Terrible, terrible idea.

Leave them as chain end rewards and Antique Bronze Token turn-in rewards. That adds some extra uniqueness to the game, but still makes clickies very, very rare (as they should be if they exist at all).

[Astoroth]

2. I think older named loot is going to be made less appealing by this changed system. While this doesn't particularly bother me (I have no problem with a really good rare drop being more powerful than a sure-thing named item), a possible fix is to bump the effective level of the affixes on named loot. Since affixes seem to scale with item level now, maybe treat named loot as several levels higher than it actually is when determining affix bonuses? Like I said, though, I'm okay with rare drops being better than named items because named items are surefire ways to get specific sets of affixes which might be desirable to a certain character or build. Also, when speaking of named item's, I'm specifically referring to non-raid loot -- I think raid loot should be better than the rarest random loot you can find, even if only due to unique properties.

Making high end random loot is just a temporary fix for bored players. Sure there will be a whole lot of ooh and ahh at first, if you're expecting the game to shut down in a few months maybe that is good enough. But eventually your characters will have the best random loot can provide regardless, whether thats now or in a couple months with the new loot generation. High end random loot leaves little wiggle room to make good raid items, or named items in general. What it does without doubt is devalue existing named and raid loot. You should clean up all the older raid items, and really make them completitive end game offerings. That will give players a reason to go back and run those older raids. Throwing a hand grenade into the loot system, with no prospect of cleaning up the existing named loot or crafting is just a bad idea. I know its the way Turbine has done things in the past, but with a declining game population and little expectation of forthcoming content there needs to be an effort to stabilize raid loot.

[Gene8808]

Making high end random loot is just a temporary fix for bored players. Sure there will be a whole lot of ooh and ahh at first, if you're expecting the game to shut down in a few months maybe that is good enough. But eventually your characters will have the best random loot can provide regardless, whether thats now or in a couple months with the new loot generation. High end random loot leaves little wiggle room to make good raid items, or named items in general. What it does without doubt is devalue existing named and raid loot. You should clean up all the older raid items, and really make them completitive end game offerings. That will give players a reason to go back and run those older raids. Throwing a hand grenade into the loot system, with no prospect of cleaning up the existing named loot or crafting is just a bad idea. I know its the way Turbine has done things in the past, but with a declining game population and little expectation of forthcoming content there needs to be an effort to stabilize raid loot.

I don't disagree that named loot (both raid and non-raid) needs something of a boost to make it better than random loot with this new system. Especially the stuff in the mid-teens that didn't get touched by the last loot pass. I don't want to see every piece of named gear get bumped up to be crazy powerful, but I would definitely like to see them better off than they are currently. Heck as of U28 there are a lot of named items that are overshadowed by random items simply because they don't have the new properties that new random items have.

I can't agree that decent random loot removes wiggle room to make good named items (raid or no). I think it's going to force the devs to put some more creativity in them (new special abilities and whatnot), but I don't think it will remove any uniqueness from them beyond the fact that they're currently far and away better than random loot. I'm okay with named items being only marginal upgrades over random items -- upgrades are still upgrades and I'll still be working towards them. Plus I'm sure there are still going to be properties that we'll only ever see on named items (stuff like vampirism, true seeing and the like).

Raid items, I think, should be outright better than everything else, though, that's not something I'm ever going to argue against. If you put in the time/effort to raid, you deserve the absolute best gear the game has to offer at the time.

[niknight]

Browsing through the AH over the last few days got me thinking about how the lore of the game can affect the mechanics of the game. Item effects should be consistent with what we would expect some character would reasonably use. Lorewise, all of the random loot we find in chests had to be made by some crafter for some client. I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out what possible build would want a +4 Corrosion Greatsword of Healing Lore...

[Krelar]

I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out what possible build would want a +4 Corrosion Greatsword of Healing Lore...

Ever done canith crafting? Some poor guy was just trying to level up his divine and elemental spheres and got eaten by a kobold before he could deconstruct it to get some of the essences back.

[janave]

What are the goals with the new rangen loot?

I think what i'd be going for is

- return trade value to randgen loot
- extra lucky drops, so chests worth opening and reward lists worth browsing again
- a purpose for loot boosting! - this is a money maker guys dont hate yourself
- static rewards no need to be better in my opinion than stars aligned drops, because even if static loot takes 200 runs, its still there, unlike an ultraluckedout randgen
- clean items!, id really hope that good clean items like: Ring of SpellSight/MC/+slot or the same with Deadly and other highly desired buffs is possible on higher levels too.
- edit: i think the drop rate an all items should be much lower, plat maybe raised on higher levels to balance this out, but this would make items less boring to look at when you find one. Reward Lists also get proxy buffed this way => chest farm vs completion.

I like the removed I-X on the items, that was really too metagamy for my taste.


- I think some of the really old loot can be fixed with adding augment slots, esp the raid pieces like from Abbot and ReaversFate. Id prefer adding slots vs increasing their stats, except maybe for the epic SSS pieces where the stats are too low now even compared to the new ML14-15 gear. +6 vs +8s


Randgen Loot is one of the changes im really looking forward to, suggested it many times and cool to see this coming.

[Ellihor]

We are excited to give you our first Lamannia look at changes to randomized loot. We’ve done a ton of work on this already, and expect further work to be done for Update 29 and beyond. Here’s a basic idea of what’s happening:

Scaling Effects

Effects will now scale behind-the-scenes. This means that instead of seeing Dazing II or Dazing IV on an item, you’ll just see Dazing. However, the amount of the bonus will change as the item scales up, and the descriptions will accurately reflect the benefit. This allows us to build new items (and higher-level items) more quickly, and helps us better maintain our list of effects.

Prefixes and Suffixes

Currently on the Live servers, random loot has a Prefix, a Suffix, and an Enhancement bonus, and the overall power of the item is divided between the three effects.

Going forward, Prefixes, Suffixes, and Enhancement bonuses will be independent of one another, meaning you can get multiple very good effects on a given item. Additionally, there is a chance for an additional effect to go along with the Prefix and Suffix, which is also independent. Giving the possibility of 3 effects on the item all of which determine their own level independently.

Insightful Effects

Most effects now come in three bonuses:
· Main (typically Enhancement or Equipment bonuses)
· Insight (half the value of the main bonus type)
· Quality (only on named items; half the value of Insight bonuses)

Some items can now drop with both the Main and Insightful version of an effect on the same item, so you could end up with Strength +14 and Insightful Strength +7 on the same item.

Slots

Currently, there are four categories where we slot various effects: Weapons, Armor, Physical Accessory Effects, and Mental Accessory Effects. We plan to switch over to a list of effects that can show up on each slot, and different slots can overlap with one another. We expect that the exact placement of “which slot can have what” will require more polish, and will likely be tweaked over time.

Minimum Level

Currently on the Live servers, the Minimum Level of an item is determined “on the fly” by its Enhancement value and other effects. Starting in Update 29, the Minimum Level of the items you see in chests will be based on the level of the dungeon itself – so a level 10 dungeon on normal would drop Minimum Level 10 random loot, and level 12 loot on Elite. Behind the scenes how these minimum levels work is different (improved) so please let us know if you see anything odd on Lamannia.

Extra Lucky Loot

You can now get extra power on an item! In addition to the normal range of effect power an item can have, there will be the rare chance of the item getting even more power beyond its normal range for that minimum level.

Where does all this sit as of right now on Lamannia:

Our random loot update is still in progress. So far we’ve mostly created all of the scaling effects, and made both scaling and the effects themselves work. Now we’re at the point of adding the effects to various slots. In this preview, weapons, shields, and armor should be showing up with the new effects. Accessories are being worked on, and are in a mixed state for this preview.

There will be bugs. Polish will be needed. You’ll probably run into some issues. Please let us know about them. We also want to have feedback and discussion on what effects should show up where. Please remember that this system is still being worked on; in other words - Don’t Panic! We expect many iterations and tweaks to happen. There are also likely effects that are completely missing, and will need to be added back into random loot. Please help us find them!

Current Known Issues:

Striding/Speed effects don’t have a cap like they should.
Some Insight bonuses can show up at levels below where they should, causing a +0 bonus.
There are likely some effect/description errors.
Effect restrictions aren't implemented yet. This means unfortunate situations like assassination on ranged weapons can happen.

Can you tell us about the tomes in the random loot tables?

[N-0cturn]

I like the general direction of this change, especially that the bonus depends on the item level.

However:

"· Insight (half the value of the main bonus type)" - That's too much. Currently we have 12 normal and 4 Insight. --> 1/3. 1/2 would invalidate much of the current named loot, including named loot.

Also: I really don't want an insight bonus for everything. I would prefer no insightful deadly items for example.

And random loot armor still needs some serious love. Guard effects and xzyproof are way to common, and especially the guards just don't have any use. Suggestion: Combine the Guard and absorbtion into one effect. This way it will drop less and people who like it for some reason, can still find it.

Bugs:
Found two parrying random loot items on Lamannia with +4 AC and +9 saves. It should be the other way round. Could just be a wrong description I did not check how much AC/saves I actually got.

[jalont]

Can you tell us about the tomes in the random loot tables?

They exist.... I pull them semi-often. From reading this thread, there seems to be the impression that tomes don't drop in random loot, but they definitely drop in chests/breakables/end reward lists. The droprates are slightly lower than SP pot drop rates in most cases.

[Zakharov]

I like the idea, but please be careful tweaking the numbers. This could easily render most all named items useless, I hope that doesn't happen.

Also please please bring back the scaling naming conventions, they were so much better. I don't want "Flaming III" & "Flaming V" or just "Flaming". I want "Minor Flaming", "Lesser Flaming", "Flaming", "Greater Flaming" "Superior Flaming" etc etc. It makes it much easier to tell the power level at a glance and sounds way cooler.

[Tom116]

Certainly open to the option. List as many as you can think of and we can look into it.

Mithral armour PRR being what it should be would be nice (ex Mithral Full Plate is treated is med armor, but should have the PRR of heavy)

Addy armour being given a small boost to PRR (the DR is not cutting it for epics) would be nice too

Also, since druid is being balanced at some point, maybe giving some non-metal options that work would be helpful to them

[Kamode_Corebasher]

Ran Grim and Barett on EE with +1 loot ship buff so chest should be lvl 33?
1st chest got goggles ML27 +9 Charisma +9 Accuracy
(Lvl 30 Character)
That does not seem anything like what should be dropping now?
Ran it again to 1st chest, this time got a a cloak ML27 +9 Charisma +9 Accuracy
And again ML27 Gloves Armored +11 Dodge 9%
Then ran it on hard and got a ML 30 Longbow (+12 Cursespewing of Feeding)

Kambuk

This has been an issue for years...the stupid loot boosts hitting some cap above maximum and the code rolling the loot table down to the casual table for said quest. Who's job is it to fix this issue? Is it yet on the radar to be fixed?

Highlighting this again, I really like the idea that a loot boost gives the chance for stronger at-level gear. I really dislike the current implementation of a loot boost upping the ML of gear.

[Robai]

Some items can now drop with both the Main and Insightful version of an effect on the same item, so you could end up with Strength +14 and Insightful Strength +7 on the same item.

May I ask why this power creep was necessary?

[janave]

May I ask why this power creep was necessary?

Not saying the stats are not too high, but have you guys considered how likely it will be to actually loot that item on a slot you wanna use it? We are probably talking much worse rate than getting a high level tome.