"The Division" is making a loot table change

I know that a few folks here are moonlighting in New York City's dark zone and know the frustrations the current loot system. Much like Destiny, the current system stacks multiple RNG events on drops, making it very unlikely that any given drop will be useful. In "The Division", it's random luck if a drop will be high end (and currently that's a very low chance). Even if it's high end, the base damage value is based on a RNG roll, as are the talents (perks). There are far more useless talents than good ones, and getting a useful weapon from a drop is less likely then getting an Imago Loop with outlaw and firefly.

It's so rare that the best way to obtain gear is to craft it; farming the game for what amounts to weapon parts, armor parts and other materials, buying blueprints, and crafting dozens of copies of a weapon or armor until getting one that's close enough to use. It's essentially similar to re-rolling at the gunsmith.

So "The Division" has been walking the same path to loot that we're familiar with. On Tuesday, they're adjusting the economy of crafting to make it far less efficient (not doing away with re-rolling entirely, but requiring 3-5 times more material for a single craft and reducing the amount of materials that can be recycled). To balance this, Massive is updating their loot tables to guarantee that all named bosses (think strike bosses) will drop high end items. A similar change would be a guaranteed exotic or really good legendary (Doctrine, 1k Stare, etc.) from bosses in Destiny.

It's a pretty big swing towards the Diablo 3 approach to making loot (even "rare" loot) more common. It'll definitely get people away from the crafting table and back into the game itself, and I'm curious (and hopeful) that the overall player experience will improve.

Outside of the new Prison, Bungie's April update creates a higher tier to seek, and adds new rare items to covet, but I don't think it changes the basic "double RNG" equation for loot. "The Division" update will be an interesting counterpoint - largely the same loot but much more of it. We'll have to see if it changes things for better or worse.

Safe bet it'll make the Dark Zone more intense. There's no multiplayer equivalent in Destiny, but imagine crucible matches played inside normal patrol missions, where all of your recent crucible rewards/drops were exotics and great legendaries, but they dropped as engrams from your body on death so anyone could pick them up. If you kill another player you're marked as "rogue" and appear on everyone's map, and killing rogues doesn't make you rogue. I don't think I'll be playing in the DZ solo any more.

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Bungie has mentioned how they met with Blizzard about the lessons they learned from Diablo 3. I did not really play Diablo 3 (but played a lot of 2), but from what I gather the launch was fairly disastrous and the end game was very very bad. There was an auction house where you could buy gear, and so while gear was very rare, it was common on the auction house. Thus, most of the end game was spent farming gold with which to buy good items from the auction house.

From what I hear they did a few things. First, they eliminated the auction house. Second, they added tiers to the hardest difficulty level inferno. So you could play on Inferno 1, or up to 6. As it got harder you got more loot. Third, they added many many more end game activities which gave out tons of loot, such as nephelem rifts.

The bottom line, was more loot, more quickly, and more difficulty levels.

To me this makes perfect sense, as you'd always feel like you are progressing. The consensus is that Diablo 3 is now a far better game than at launch, by a massive margin.

Given that, it baffles me how Bungie apparently did not take Blizzard's advice at all (except for the no trading bit), and apparently neither did Division. When success stories are out there, how do you not do your homework? Why are mistakes of the past continually repeated?

RNG loot should be a nice surprise. It should not get in the way. Not sure how that's hard to understand.

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Lots of time the loot in the dark zone seems to be too random, and even though I can get 9 purples in a half hour or so, rarely do they end up being different or better. The crafting seemed to be the only way to ensure you get close to what you are looking for.

Borderlands typically showered you with loot, but they also had such random guns that you had to farm bosses for those rare drops anyway.

I'd be happy with a slow crafting to exactly what I want. It still feels like there is a nominal mean gameplay time they are shooting for for each upgrade, and all these efforts are just dancing around that.

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Borderlands typically showered you with loot, but they also had such random guns that you had to farm bosses for those rare drops anyway.

Yeah, but I would pay good money to get a loot explosion like you get from BNK3R... It would be glorious.

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I don't play, so I'm not entirely clear on why, but the general sentiment is that even with morr "boss" drops you're less likely to get what you're looking for - crafting was only semi-random, while this looks to be more frequent but completely random.

Essentially, rather than crafting a sniper with random perks, it's a random Legendary of any type. More loot drops, but less agency.

At least, I think that's the issue? Anyone who plays and can chime in to confirm or deny would be appreciated.

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I can't really speak to The Division's end game loot in much detail... I did hit level 30, but my already waning interest in the game came to a grinding halt. Some people may complain about the "treadmill" nature of Destiny's end game, but that's the entirety of The Division. Jeff Gertsman nailed it on the Giant Bombcast: "Hour 3 of the Division is exactly the same as hour 30". The gear doesn't get any better or more interesting. It just has higher numbers associated with it. Of course, the exact same thing goes for the enemies you are fighting, so the "progression" is just a continuation of the exact same experience with higher numbers on both sides. I had absolutely no interest in continuing to chase loot that was functionally identical to the loot I already had, and would allow me to enter higher level activities without feeling any change in difficulty. It's all utterly pointless, IMO.

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I can't really speak to The Division's end game loot in much detail... I did hit level 30, but my already waning interest in the game came to a grinding halt. Some people may complain about the "treadmill" nature of Destiny's end game, but that's the entirety of The Division. Jeff Gertsman nailed it on the Giant Bombcast: "Hour 3 of the Division is exactly the same as hour 30". The gear doesn't get any better or more interesting. It just has higher numbers associated with it. Of course, the exact same thing goes for the enemies you are fighting, so the "progression" is just a continuation of the exact same experience with higher numbers on both sides. I had absolutely no interest in continuing to chase loot that was functionally identical to the loot I already had, and would allow me to enter higher level activities without feeling any change in difficulty. It's all utterly pointless, IMO.

So the secret to Destiny's future success is more high level raids. Duh. :-p

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I can't really speak to The Division's end game loot in much detail... I did hit level 30, but my already waning interest in the game came to a grinding halt. Some people may complain about the "treadmill" nature of Destiny's end game, but that's the entirety of The Division. Jeff Gertsman nailed it on the Giant Bombcast: "Hour 3 of the Division is exactly the same as hour 30". The gear doesn't get any better or more interesting. It just has higher numbers associated with it. Of course, the exact same thing goes for the enemies you are fighting, so the "progression" is just a continuation of the exact same experience with higher numbers on both sides. I had absolutely no interest in continuing to chase loot that was functionally identical to the loot I already had, and would allow me to enter higher level activities without feeling any change in difficulty. It's all utterly pointless, IMO.

So the secret to Destiny's future success is more high level raids. Duh. :-p

Heh, jokes aside, The Division made me appreciate a lot of what Destiny does right with its end game even more than I already do. Destiny has interesting gear to chase that allows us to change the way we play. Destiny has end game activities that are actually different from the activities you play throughout the rest of the game. I have plenty of problems with the little details, but at least there is a fun and exciting end game present.

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Outside of the new Prison, Bungie's April update creates a higher tier to seek, and adds new rare items to covet, but I don't think it changes the basic "double RNG" equation for loot. "The Division" update will be an interesting counterpoint - largely the same loot but much more of it. We'll have to see if it changes things for better or worse.

With 100% Infusion, the 'double RNG' equation really collapses to a single one, doesn't it? I mean... while it's true that you're still not guaranteed 330 gear on every drop, the likelihood of GETTING 330 gear if you do lots of activities is quite high... so really the only RNG issue you've got is the perk issue, right?

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With 100% Infusion, the 'double RNG' equation really collapses to a single one, doesn't it? I mean... while it's true that you're still not guaranteed 330 gear on every drop, the likelihood of GETTING 330 gear if you do lots of activities is quite high... so really the only RNG issue you've got is the perk issue, right?

Thinking about this some more, I think this will actually only bring The Division to par with Destiny-

In Destiny, its still double RNG:
(chance of a good drop) * (chance it has good perks) + infusion to max damage

In The Division now, its triple RNG:
(chance of a good drop) * (chance it has good perks) * (chance it has good base damage)

In the updated Division, it will be double RNG:
Kill named elite for good drop + (chance it has good perks) * (chance it has good base damage)

I think "Double RNG" includes the chance of getting a good drop at all, and in all cases the "good drop" may not actually be a weapon or gear you're actually looking for. The Division might have an advantage here, since specific named enemies will have defined loot tables (e.g. Kill "Finch" for high end SMGs, Gear Mods, and Shotguns, or kill "Raptor" for high end Marksman Rifles, Weapon Mods, and light machine guns). Destiny's raid drops are similar, actually.

The only guaranteed drops in Destiny are for end game activities: Raid Challenge Modes, Iron Banner rank 3 and 5, and Trials silver, gold and flawless. Nightfall rewards too, I think. Note that Destiny's drop rate for legendaries and exotics (with 3 of coins) is higher than the Division's drop rate of high-ends at the moment.

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Outside of the new Prison, Bungie's April update creates a higher tier to seek, and adds new rare items to covet, but I don't think it changes the basic "double RNG" equation for loot. "The Division" update will be an interesting counterpoint - largely the same loot but much more of it. We'll have to see if it changes things for better or worse.

With 100% Infusion, the 'double RNG' equation really collapses to a single one, doesn't it? I mean... while it's true that you're still not guaranteed 330 gear on every drop, the likelihood of GETTING 330 gear if you do lots of activities is quite high... so really the only RNG issue you've got is the perk issue, right?

I think this will ultimately depend on drop rates.

Currently, Trials can drop gear up to 320. I run Trials every single weekend, get to the lighthouse on a regular basis, and I've never gotten a single Trials drop higher than 315 (excluding the 320 Voidfang Vestments that I got from a silver package about 3 months ago). I get 3 characters to rank 5 each and every single Iron Banner, which has gotten me a 320 class item and a 319 class item and nothing else above 314. And aside from challenge mode, the raid hasn't given me anything close to 320.

So when I hear Bungie saying a certain activity will award items up to 335, I can't help but mutter "yeah right" to myself. Not that I don't believe them, just that based on my track record, the triple-layered RNG will still very much be a thing (I say triple because RNG accounts for the specific item, perk roll, and light level).

Of course, there's the separate question of "how much does that matter?", which I think we've established is different for different people.

All that aside, the 1-to-1 infusion ratio will be a big help. Definitely glad to see that brought in :)

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I think Destiny will be better here. With the perk nerfs, the year one guns, even if they're identical (which they probably won't be, or they'd allow us to bring our old guns forward) probably won't be worth using over what we have already, making light level pretty much the single deciding factor of utility for us hardcore players who've utilized the gunsmith to get ideal guns for ourselves.

Speaking of which, full auto Max stability Dis 47 this week.

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*not counting the 15 seconds that I have whatever piece of garbage I use as infusion fodder.

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"The Division" is making a loot table change (Destiny)