does playing on higher difficulties improve chances at finding rare drops?

[agris]

inspired by the unique loot thread (https://steamcommunity.com/app/1082970/discussions/0/6208841617675337403/), i think it would be a nice little incentive to play on cruel if it made rare, good drops more common

[Dragonboy]

Personally I'm very much against the idea of making higher difficulties easier by giving them some drop or xp advantages.
The main choice for picking such a difficulty should be because you want some personal challenge or you want to make the game more difficult after playing through it multiple times already.
There is no need to compensate for the higher difficulty by giving them more rare and powerful loot which decreases the challenge that the difficulty offers.

[agris]

Originally posted by Dragonboy:

Personally I'm very much against the idea of making higher difficulties easier by giving them some drop or xp advantages.
The main choice for picking such a difficulty should be because you want some personal challenge or you want to make the game more difficult after playing through it multiple times already.
There is no need to compensate for the higher difficulty by giving them more rare and powerful loot which decreases the challenge that the difficulty offers.

that is a good point, and I agree with you that I wouldn't want it to be actually easier.

i guess it depends on how rare loot drops are structured. if right now there are or are plans for rare item drop rates to be in the 1% range, doubling it to 2% wouldn't make the game materially easier, I believe. rather, it lets the player experience the deep end of the loot pool more in a single run, as partial reward to tackling the harder difficulty.

you can tell from my perspective that I view itemization as one of the drivers for exploring the game world. if it were possible to expose more of it without materially lessening the difficulty, that's what i'm suggesting.

[zatia.francois]

Originally posted by agris:

Originally posted by Dragonboy:

Personally I'm very much against the idea of making higher difficulties easier by giving them some drop or xp advantages.
The main choice for picking such a difficulty should be because you want some personal challenge or you want to make the game more difficult after playing through it multiple times already.
There is no need to compensate for the higher difficulty by giving them more rare and powerful loot which decreases the challenge that the difficulty offers.

that is a good point, and I agree with you that I wouldn't want it to be actually easier.

i guess it depends on how rare loot drops are structured. if right now there are or are plans for rare item drop rates to be in the 1% range, doubling it to 2% wouldn't make the game materially easier, I believe. rather, it lets the player experience the deep end of the loot pool more in a single run, as partial reward to tackling the harder difficulty.

you can tell from my perspective that I view itemization as one of the drivers for exploring the game world. if it were possible to expose more of it without materially lessening the difficulty, that's what i'm suggesting.

yet you are still asking dev to add some advantage to push people into playing what they dont want. if some people want challenging game they shouldnt ask some advantage on that. you get what you ask not something not available in lower difficulty, if you are that proud of your tactical skills, you shouldnt be there asking for some additional buff or special drop that will be only available on Cruel difficulty. adding special bonus on harder difficulty and not add them on lesser difficulty will unbalance the game to imply that Cruel is the only difficulty where anyone has to go for better drop and challenge. you have to keep in mind that hardcore players are minority, and if you ask something that can have an impact to push player to play in the way they dont feel comfortable just because they want some special drop, that now remove , its for the average player the real reason on why we play higher difficulty which is for more Challenge and not for additionaly get some exclusive special bonus item .
i m absolutly against that idea to add some exclusive rare drop on higher difficulty . Diablos games or Darksouls game never add such things. you ask Challenge, you only get Challenge. not more not less

[agris]

Originally posted by zatia.francois:

Originally posted by agris:

that is a good point, and I agree with you that I wouldn't want it to be actually easier.

i guess it depends on how rare loot drops are structured. if right now there are or are plans for rare item drop rates to be in the 1% range, doubling it to 2% wouldn't make the game materially easier, I believe. rather, it lets the player experience the deep end of the loot pool more in a single run, as partial reward to tackling the harder difficulty.

you can tell from my perspective that I view itemization as one of the drivers for exploring the game world. if it were possible to expose more of it without materially lessening the difficulty, that's what i'm suggesting.

yet you are still asking dev to add some advantage to push people into playing what they dont want. if some people want challenging game they shouldnt ask some advantage on that. you get what you ask not something not available in lower difficulty, if you are that proud of your tactical skills, you shouldnt be there asking for some additional buff or special drop that will be only available on Cruel difficulty. adding special bonus on harder difficulty and not add them on lesser difficulty will unbalance the game to imply that Cruel is the only difficulty where anyone has to go for better drop and challenge. you have to keep in mind that hardcore players are minority, and if you ask something that can have an impact to push player to play in the way they dont feel comfortable just because they want some special drop, that now remove , its for the average player the real reason on why we play higher difficulty which is for more Challenge and not for additionaly get some exclusive special bonus item .
i m absolutly against that idea to add some exclusive rare drop on higher difficulty . Diablos games or Darksouls game never add such things. you ask Challenge, you only get Challenge. not more not less

hmmm... i'll put you down as a "maybe"

[stretch]

No.
I have done it on the hardest one and it didn't give any improvement in loot at all.
I never found anything earlier or in easier areas than on the easiest difficulty.
There simply is not enough variety of loot even in the game to support this sort of thing.
What if you did get better stuff sooner? Then you would be stuck with it for longer with no chance of any improvement because better stuff doesn't exist.
Some of the better gear is in very specific locations and you wont be able to get to it earlier anyway. One spear could be by going in the back way but that loophole has been closed. That wasn't anything to do with what you are asking though but if this sort of thing - the specific placement of items - is in the game that would be nullified by the system you are asking about.

[closedcaskit]

Originally posted by Dragonboy:

Personally I'm very much against the idea of making higher difficulties easier by giving them some drop or xp advantages.
The main choice for picking such a difficulty should be because you want some personal challenge or you want to make the game more difficult after playing through it multiple times already.
There is no need to compensate for the higher difficulty by giving them more rare and powerful loot which decreases the challenge that the difficulty offers.

Yah that's a pretty stupid opinion.

Games and gamification are mediums for dopamine. That's why we play games.

Its kinda a core loop in our species. Risk and reward. The best hits are when we take big risks in the pursuit of higher rewards.

You're just coming off as myopic.

[Syrris]

If anything, higher difficulty ought to mean less loot since resource scarcity makes gameplay harder.

[JIK]

i know there are many action arpgs that reward those who play harder difficulties by loot and that the harder difficulties won't remain harder when they do. i'm not totally opposed to it but it isn't necessary at games like this and would make the player a croisos in short time and flood the existing merchants with even more than now. it's a bit hard when they won't accept the trade when their inventory is full.

[Brigadoom]

I'd just prefer more random loot in general rather than having some loot rewards locked behind higher difficulty. If there had to be an exclusive high difficulty loot drop, it better just be an endgame meme weapon or armor.

[JIK]

if higher difficulties reward would be some items available at merchants earlier it would probably work best but i think that as this will be a large game loot will be more diverse as the game progresses.