During the campaign & “Path of the chosen” difficulty I had a decent droprate of things like “Essence Ember”, “Wool Threads”, “Black Pearls”, etc….
WIth every farming run I came out with a good amount of mats.
Now with LVL30 and decent gear I thought I increase my difficulty to “Path of the Unspoken” for more challange and hopefully even better droprates/loot as reward for the effort.
But in NRFTW the loot droprate seems to be buggy…..In “Path of the unspoken” (hardest difficulty) the droprate of high value crafting mats, Essences, etc… is practicaly 0 while in “Path of the Thorn” (easiest difficulty) it’s very high.
Follow situation:
I’ve farmed 6 hours today in “Path of the unspoken”, did all Plagues there, re-farmed the areas after plague, etc….During that time I dropped exactly 4 “Essence Ember”….after 6 hours.
Same for other valuable mats,….. the droprate felt very off.
To test the counterpart I’ve set now the difficulty to the lowest one and guess what….. the droprate of mats, Essences, etc…is insane.
I got 3 “Ember Essences” only from exploring the area around Sage Road (means after not even 10 minutes).
For comparision: 4 EE in 6 hours (on hardest difficulty) vs 3 EE in 10 minutes (on easiest difficulty).
I hope this will be adjusted in future patches becasue it completely kills the spirit of an ARPG and a very important long term motivation in such games….min/maxing the own char to beat the hardest difficulty and be rewarded propperly for the effort.
I rly hope this is a bug and will be patched in future, so the highest difficulty drop the best loot and motivates us player to develop our character for this challange.
But very nice game so far, rly enjoying it….could have even 1 more higher difficulty level to test the limits of the current builds.
Tbh drop rates should imo be the same across any difficulty.
Setting it to a harder difficulty shouldn’t increase drop rates. This will only push players to playing at the hardest difficulty.
I will also say u would need a much much larger sample size than u are giving to even begin proving there’s a drop rate difference
Rng will be rng in ur sample u could have just gotten very luck with the 3 EE u found on easiest difficulty
Reason being is on the easiest difficulty mobs will die faster and easier. On the hardest mobs will take a bit longer to kill. Which makes since as to why it took 6 hrs to get the EE u found vs 10 min on the easiest
If drops are in fact better on easiest then imo it should be nerfed. So that no matter what difficulty one plays at the drops are exactly the same across the board
Edit: also the data u present doesnt really show whether this is a bug or not. Like i was saying would need a much larger sample size like way larger. As well as rng will be rng
I would say that better drops on higher difficulty are expected — that’s the whole reason you farm it. Otherwise, would you want to play a harder difficulty just because it takes longer to kill monsters?
I have no time to create data sheets or so like people who play video games as theyr job, I have to many other purposes beside gaming.
But as someone who play ARPGs on a daily base since hour 0 in Diablo 1 I can tell when something feels very off and in NRFTW this is definitely the case.
But I can share my experiance here….Lets take Ember Essence drops as example:
I’ve played 6 hours on the hardest difficulty, cleared even all PLagues in all areas there and got a total of 3 Essence Embers in this time. (Plague bosses loot and 8 daily bouty loot included).
In the lowest difficulty I made a short loot run for around 30 minutes and already got 5 Essence Embers.
Same for other materials….killing mobs on the lowest difficulty gives so much more loot than on the highest (2 wool threads, 1 purple item AND coins from 1 single mob are not uncommon).
While on the hardest difficulty I’ve never dropped 2 wool threads from 1 mob (not once in the 6 hours yesterday and also not the days before)….on the easiest difficulty I do so regularly since I’ve turned it down (and can reproduce it).
Same for things like “Boar Hoofs”, “Bear Claws”, etc…On the highest difficulty I got a maximum drop of 1 every two mobs but on the lowest I get even 2 pieces from 1 single mob very often (5 boars this morning gave me 7 boar hoofs on the easiest difficulty….on the hardest I did get the same ammount after around 2 full runs, just as comparison).
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As a long term ARPG player I totaly disagree here with you and for a single reason….long term motivation.
Min/maxing the own character to beat the hardest difficulty and being rewarded for this effort is one of the main pillars in this genre….thats the engine that motivates people to spend 1000s of hours in such games.
If you take away the better rewards in the highest difficulty, why would people spend weeks & even months min/maxing theyr own character when they can have the exact same loot in the easiest difficulty?
noone …rly noone plays the hardest difficulty just for the sake to be more difficult (Not even with a ranking system, see new D4 update with “The Tower” leaderboards….becasue they’re no rewards there noone plays it anymore after 1 week).
If certain content doesen’t respect the players time they simply don’t do it.
This completely kills the long term motivation of an ARPG and I’ve seen so many games in this genre die becasue of this circumstances…..because if theres no need to develop the own character past the bare minimum and the hardest difficulty comes with less rewards and nothing else, why would you play further in such games?
This is OK in a story driven RPGs which you play once and put it on the side, but doesen’t work in a loot based ARPG that comes with replayable challanges & content after beating the main story.
That’s why I left this feedback here because I realy enjoy the game and like the team behind it(reminds me of the good old Blizzard North team) and therefore don’t want this game to die becasue of the situation as described.
Problem is this will push players to play on a difficulty they otherwise wouldnt play on. Because now the hardest difficulty is the most efficient in regards to farming loot.
In turn this also puts players at a disadvantage for not playing on the hardest difficulty. Why ever play on normal when the hardest difficulty has the better drops rates.
The point of playing on a harder difficult is for the challenge. It’s not ment to be an option cuz it gives better drops rates.
Which is why I said imo drop rates should be the exact same across all difficulties. This way players arent put at a disadvantage for not playing on the hardest difficulty. Or feel like they have to play on a difficulty they dont want to play on beacues it gives better drop rates.
That is false kcd1 and 2 players play HC for the sake of the challenge. Hellclock even. Cyberpunk 2077. As well there’s other games as well were difficulty is there for the challenge and not better loot.
Thats exactly what difficulty settings should be for.
Like I said. If this really is the case it shows that loot drops on easiest needs a nerf.
I can counter ur point about why play on the hardest difficulty when easiest seems to give better loot.
Same thing if things were flipped and the hardest difficulty has the better drop rates. Why ever play on easy or normal. All this will do is push players into playing a difficulty they otherwise wouldnt play in or dont want to.
This is exactly why loot drops should be the same on any difficulty no one difficulty should be giving better drops at all
In games like u mention even d3 there are items that only drop on harder difficulties. Thats the main incentive to upping the difficulty even d2 had this. These difficulties are built into the loot game play loop.
In NRFTW difficulties settings arent built into the game play loop
NRFTW doesnt have loot tables like that.
Tbh after reading the rest of what u said. Sounds like u really arent playing on the hardest difficulty for the challenge ur playing on it cuz u want the better loot drops. It really isnt about the challenge for u its all about the loot for u it seems.
Iv been reading alot of forms for this game tbh ur the first iv seen make a post about the hardest difficulty drop rates. It can’t be that bad or a deal breaker since otherwise we would be seeing post about this far far more often than we are seeing them.
It doesnt seem to be that big of an issue for a huge chunk of NRFTW community. Why wast dev time tweaking something a good chunk of the player base doesnt seem to have an issue with
Having loot drops the exact same across all difficulties makes them there for the challenge. Vs having the highest difficulty having better loot just makes it play on the hardest difficulty because of better loot and not for the challenge.
Difficulty settings should be there for the challenge not cuz it gives better loot drops rates.
Now number of players in a realm yes that should increase drops as it does in any Diablo like or poe like game
Plenty of games with loot have difficulty settings there for the challenge and not better drops. And have been very successful games. NRFTW can also be a huge success doing the exact same thing. It already is a success.
Edit also the devs may also want the hardest difficulty to even have nerfed drops to add to the challenge. Kinda like poe ruthless mod. Not saying thats what they want.
Just saying this maybe the goal with the hardest difficulty. For me that would be fun sure more of a grind but thats why I play these game since d1
Edit…my point is difficulty settings here arent part of the game play loop like d3 torment lvls d4 world tiers or even poe maps.
They are ment to be settings like ghost of tsushima. Cyberpunk ect. Difficulties are they weren’t added to be a game play loop or mechanic like in d3/4
These should stay that way.
Also for the difficulty settings to work like this it would need to be built around pushing higher difficulties like d3 torment lvls. Otherwise it causes the issue is mention before.
Why play easier or normal at all when. The best drop rates are on the hardest difficulty. Won’t work well if its not built around this as a gameplay loop
I just wanna bring up the Ember drop rate for players who progressed in the story.
Players in the Discord server says the drop is lowered as story progresses. I do not understand this design philosophy. Why am I as an invested player, giving time to progressed, rewarded with worse loot?
I have an old character in a completed realm and everyone is saying “create a new realm, drops are better”.
