Update: Diablo III's Loot 2.0 Breakdown - Less, Better, More Epic

[Steven Bogos]

Update: Diablo III's Loot 2.0 Breakdown - Less, Better, More Epic

Game system changes in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls such as loot 2.0 and the new Paragon system will be released as a free patch for the base game.

Diablo III's Josh Mosqueira, at a special GamesCom 2013 panel, explained exactly how "loot 2.0," one of the new features of the upcoming Diablo III expansion set: confirmed [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/127058-Diablo-III-Reaper-Of-Souls-Official-Announcement-Trailer] that game system changes, such as loot 2.0 and the new, infinite, account-wide, Paragon levels system, will be released as a free patch for the base game sometime before the expansion's release.

"The basic philosophy [of loot 2.0] is we wanna make sure that playing the game is the most fun, the most rewarding way to get items."

Mosqueria explains that loot drops in loot 2.0 will be less frequent, but better items, and more epic overall. "We really wanna make sure we're not constantly filling up your bags with items you don't care about." He says that one of loot 2.0's tenants is to make legendary items "build changers," and the way they have accomplished that is with special, legendary only modifiers.

For example, a legendary wand: "Serpent's Sparker" has a chance to summon a Hydra at the enemy's location, as well as grant arcane power on critical hits (a stat that now appears to be exclusive to legendaries).

He also details something called "smart drops," in which every time an item drops, it can calculate its stats to be more suited for the class that it drops for. In short: you should no longer be getting all those Wizard hats with +strength.

Mosqueria uses a standard run through of Act III inferno on a Paragon level 40 character as a comparison between the current loot system, and loot 2.0. Whereas now you would get around 253 white items, 399 blues, 275 rares and only 1 legendary, in loot 2.0 you would find 75 whites, 266 blues, 83 rares and 6 legendaries.

Lastly, Mosqueria introduces Reaper of Souls's new artisan: the Mystic, who can "transmogrify" and enchant items. World of Warcraft fans should be familiar enough with transmogrification - it basically takes the "look" from one item and applies it to another, while enchanting allows you to reroll a single affix on a rare or legendary item.

"Loot runs," short 15-20 minute dungeons consisting of randomized areas, monsters, and bosses, and Paragon 2.0, which is now account wide, were a couple other things Mosqueria touched on in his presentation.

Loot 2.0 is probably one of the changes I'm most excited about for the expansion, as we all know, the epic loot is the main reason anyone plays this game anyway!

Sources: Diablo Fans [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rYbt27bRMqs]

Update: Another blue poster has confirmed that pretty much everything except the Crusader, Act V, the Mystic, and leveling up to 70 will all be included in a free pre-expansion patch:

"We want to implement a lot of the new systems and features in a pre-expansion patch for free. That should include Paragon 2.0, Loot 2.0, Loot Runs, and Nephalem Trials. For now, you'll need to purchase the expansion to play as the Crusader, explore Act V, unlock the Mystic, and level up to 70. These details may change as development moves along, but we want some of the core gameplay improvements to be available for everyone."

Source: Battle.net Forums [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/9679139107#19]

Permalink

 

[EbonBehelit]

I stopped playing D3 only a few months after release, when I realised I was spending more time in the AH than I was playing the game. I was pretty much forced to do so too, lest I gimp myself and make each successive act far more difficult than it needed to be. I won't even get started on what Inferno - Act2 and on - felt like.

So I basically put the game down and resolved to wait till the first expansion before I picked it up again. Surely that would give Blizzard enough time to iron out the kinks? Things look pretty good so far, I think.

Who knows, maybe D3 might actually turn out to be the game we were always hoping it would be.

 

[wulfy42]

It's a start, but characters are still going to be incredibly linear and cut and paste (Every ends up the same)...although hopefully the new legendary mods will help differentiate characters from each other.

I really wish they would add back stats at level up, and some kind of skill system that lets you change how your character ends up. Loot by itself isn't enough to keep people interested long term (or at least alot of them) there has to be some form of progression for your character, something to shoot for. Just trying to get a few more bonus stats on equipment can only last so long.

In D2 I could play 1 character for 100+ hours, and then play the exact same class in a whole new way and spend another 100 hours on it.

In D3...I played all the characters through normal...which almost killed me because it was so easy/boring that I literally was falling asleep, then 1 character though to inferno and gave up getting the rest up. I stopped after playing 2 weeks...and only lasted that long because I waited so long for the game and I desprately wanted to love it.

I'll....retry...the game again after the loot tweaks etc....but it's going to take alot for me to invest more money in it.

 

[ZeoAssassin]

well its looking good so far...i had one major thought about the paragon 2.0 thou. Most of it is a good idea, but i can almost GUARANTEE that having no level cap on paragon levels will literally kill some of the more obsessive players =p just saying.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

We can only wait and see how much of this will ring true.

Spoiler

[http://imgur.com/TfoNygI]

But at least people will be getting a more Diablo-esque experience.

 

[piinyouri]

Despite what most people are saying, it does seem like they are listening to feedback from the users.

There was an article posted here some time ago where some guy from Blizzard said he regretted the real money auction house's inclusion, and apparently that sentiment was shared by a decent number of other employees.

Opinion here, but I do believe if it was just an arbitrary online check, like what Ubisoft does, and removing the RMAH didn't require redesigning the entire game, they would have done it by now.

Who knows, maybe they will, but as is it could be a case of hands being tied by the tremendous amount of time and money it would take to rework the game to play offline and not need the RMAU. (Though the "loot 2.0" thing seems to be on the road to resolving one part of that equation.)

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

We can only wait and see how much of this will ring true.

Spoiler

[http://imgur.com/TfoNygI]

But at least people will be getting a more Diablo-esque experience.

Ouch, if even half of that crap is true (I even recognise some of the images from promo material) then, just, wow.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

We can only wait and see how much of this will ring true.

Spoiler

[http://imgur.com/TfoNygI]

But at least people will be getting a more Diablo-esque experience.

Wow. That makes a terrifying amount of sense. They very unnecessarily split SC2 into three parts as well. Bleh.

 

[Steven Bogos]

We can only wait and see how much of this will ring true.

Spoiler

[http://imgur.com/TfoNygI]

But at least people will be getting a more Diablo-esque experience.

Wow. That makes a terrifying amount of sense. They very unnecessarily split SC2 into three parts as well. Bleh.

I disagree. So far at least, Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm were more than worth the cost of admission. They both added enough content to satisfy me for what Blizzard were charging for them.

When you consider other companies are willing to charge $10 for extra costumes, or $15 for 3 new maps, $40 for the ammount of content in your typical Blizzard expansion pack is exceptionally good value.

 

[Ticklefist]

They acknowledged this problem in a wordy blog post over half a year ago! Now their fix is being withheld as a selling point for their recently announced expansion? Given their turn around time between announcement and release this is a bit frustrating.

 

[Steven Bogos]

snip

Let me put it to you this way. Were you satisfied with the content in Wings of Liberty for what it cost?

Yes, I was. I put hundreds of hours into it. Then Heart of the Swarm came out and i sunk even more hours into it.

I was satisfied with the games as is. Sure, they could have put more content into it, but that would just be greedy. I got what I paid for, and Blizzard games tend to satisfy me a lot more than other triple A titles.

 

[AuronFtw]

By comparison, when a company is stripping entire campaigns worth of content from its game to sell to you at a $40 price tag, I call that a ripoff no matter how much content that expansion might have in it. That content should all have been in the game to begin with, not removed so as to be sold separately for another high fee.

Erm... the original starcraft launched with 30 missions, 10 for each race. Starcraft 2 launched with 29 missions, majority Terran controlled but several side missions as Protoss and the usual secret mission.

Unless you're protesting that 1 lost mission, I'm not sure where you get the idea "entire campaigns worth of content" were stripped. But then you'd have to factor in the objectively superior PvE content like between-mission research and dialog plus PvE-only perks like instant-build-time depots (and all the other ones, the list was fairly beefy) and SC2 comes out ahead, even despite missing that 1 mission.

Did you really want to play a half-assed short campaign for each race, trying to cram as much story into each crevice as possible while supporting characters come and go in a flash because there's no time to see them unfold or grow? You know, the problem starcraft 1 had? Kerrigan was the only character with a real arc because she got the most screentime. The goldmines of potential character development that were Zeratul and Raynor often got ignored for missions at a time while you farted around doing bullshit for Kerrigan, or getting betrayed by Kerrigan, or trying to kill Kerrigan. Even minor (comparatively) supporting characters like Samir Duran, Alexei Stukov and Duke Onionhead had the potential to be much more than they were, but they came and went incredibly fast because of the low mission count for each race.

I much prefer the time and elbow room for each person to get their screentime, their chance to shine. If Tychus Findlay only showed up for like 5 missions, would you have nearly the emotional attachment to him that you do having spent an entire beefy campaign around him? Would his conflict at the end have the same weight if he was just some nobody that came and went, as opposed to a human being we know to be Raynor's longtime friend and ally (shown countless times over many missions)?

I was "sad" when Stokov was killed in Brood War, but I could have been *devastated*. If Brood War had 30 (or 29, hurr) missions to build up his character as the intelligent and scheming but pure-hearted second-in-command with no small amount of distrust for Samir and his plans, and increasing resentment of the Zerg and the Terran's involvement with said zerg... Then Samir plots against him and finally corners him in a dark abandoned base to take him out, away from the potential protection of his friend Gerard... that whole scene could have been much, much cooler. But instead they were forced to just rush by it - you see it coming from a mile away and it happens in a flash, with no time for levity or attraction. None of it has weight or meaning, it just "happens."

Granted, these are RTS games. Most of these have absolute joke plots, despite sometimes having solid RTS elements (most C&C games, for example). But Starcraft was different. It had characters that weren't just cardboard cutouts from the Hero and Villain Archetype Coloring Book, but it didn't let us spend enough time with any of them sans Kerrigan (...and possibly Raynor, depending on how quickly you get attached to generic rugged hero archetypes) to really feel for their troubles. SC2 figured they'd have a much cooler story if they just stuck with one race all the way up, and they succeeded. While less actually "happens" in SC2:WoL compared to SC1 (just comparing major events), what does happen feels much more personal.

 

[chikusho]

They acknowledged this problem in a wordy blog post over half a year ago! Now their fix is being withheld as a selling point for their recently announced expansion? Given their turn around time between announcement and release this is a bit frustrating.

- "Game system changes in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls such as loot 2.0 and the new Paragon system will be released as a free patch for the base game."

I.E, now their fix is being implemented for everyone parallel to the release of the recently announced expansion.

 

[Colt47]

We can only wait and see how much of this will ring true.

Spoiler

[http://imgur.com/TfoNygI]

But at least people will be getting a more Diablo-esque experience.

That could explain a lot of things if it is true. The way that makes the game sound, it seems like it would have been much more successful in its original incarnation as it sticks closer to what people were expecting instead of trying to streamline the entire project. In any case I've kind of sworn off most of Acti-Blizzards franchises, including Starcraft II. They've gone too far in the direction of turning their games into services and they just don't have the same feel as the old Blizzard titles. It takes more than a name to make games that people want to play...

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

"We really wanna make sure we're not constantly filling up your bags with items you don't care about." Then take away the fucking white and grey drops on Inferno difficulty. They are absolutely pointless on difficulties above normal. In fact, just remove them completely, they're fucking pointless in general.

 

[Poomermon]

"We really wanna make sure we're not constantly filling up your bags with items you don't care about." Then take away the fucking white and grey drops on Inferno difficulty. They are absolutely pointless, even on difficulties above normal. In fact, just remove them completely, they're fucking pointless in general.

They are drastically reducing amount of white and blue drops (also rare drops but increasing their quality) in the expansion. They can be used as a crafting material for the mystic too.

 

[Makabriel]

You see it as "these expansions are worthwhile because of how much content they have". You're choosing not to look at it from the other angle, namely "I wonder how much of this content already existed by the time the game shipped but they kept it separate in order to plan ahead for the inevitable expansion instead of just stuffing the original game with that much extra content".

Try "options were cut because they did not fit with the overall game design or balance." It's a sad world were people always think the worst of a company because it's stylish..

 

[Smertnik]

"We really wanna make sure we're not constantly filling up your bags with items you don't care about." Then take away the fucking white and grey drops on Inferno difficulty. They are absolutely pointless, even on difficulties above normal. In fact, just remove them completely, they're fucking pointless in general.

Yeah, I never got the point of those items. In D2 the grey items are there for rune words (also I'm pretty sure the ones with a lot of slots can be sold for a decent amount) but since D3 doesn't have those their whole purpose is literally being useless garbage.

 

[Jandau]

If the loot drops are fixed so one can get what's needed to play the game by actually playing the game instead of fishing on the AH, I might give D3 a shot. Everything I've heard points to a solid game with good gameplay that's needlessly dragged down by its surrounding mechanics (drops, AH, etc.)...