[2021] Please add legendary potential to loot filter ruleset

This was actually very intentionally not added to the loot filter and as of right now, we don’t have any plans to add it. We really like the time between an item dropping and looking to see if it’s really fantastic wtf awesome or just good. Having LP be something that can be filtered for would remove this. It’s not completely off the table and we will continue to monitor things post patch but it’s not looking good for it to be added.

Edit: same with Forging Potential.

Roger Roger, hypothetically, if we were to give absolute control over the loot filter, you could design one where 100% of the items which drop, you pick up. We think that this would take away from a big part of the game. Looking at and evaluating loot. Because we don’t know exactly what loot you really want and we have so many options in loot, we have to drop way more gear than what you want to pick up. The goal of the loot filter is to reduce the quantity of loot displayed to a manageable amount so you can see the better options and pick from that. The goal is not to completely replace your decision making in what to pick up or not.

There is also an interesting effect that happens with convenience features like this. Every time you move the slider slightly towards automation, the next request becomes to move slightly further towards full automation. Moving that slider towards automation is often regarded positively, even if it’s a net negative to the game. However, if you move that slider back the other way, especially if you are undoing a change you already made, it’s an extremely negatively perceived thing, even if it’s a net positive for the game as a whole. In short, once you give it, you can’t take it away. So, if we do something like this, we need to be super sure that we want it forever.

Some people would still probably prefer to have ID scrolls and require a pickup and scroll to check what it is. We know there are many different points of view on this and sometimes we have to just make the game we want to make. This is a role playing game. Does your character instinctively know the details of all gear that falls on the ground far away from you? Maybe all loot should be ??? until you get close and then just show the item type and you have to pick it up to find out if it’s magical and then take it to an expert in town to find out exactly what it does. Yes that’s a crazy hyperbolic example that we won’t do but I’m just using it to show that we are very far to the automated end of the scale.

There is also a new player trap that can happen when someone starts playing and doesn’t really fully understand the loot filter system, loads up one from a super end game build and suddenly drops 0 items for the next 20 hours. This is a bit of an extreme example but it’s still something we keep in mind when designing these things.

I haven’t even gotten to the primary reason yet. The main reason we like having this is just the staggered hype graph that happens.

Scenario 1 (no LP filtering): Unique drops (hype 3), mouse over it and it has 3LP (hype 9).
Scenario 2 (hide all <3LP): Unique drops (hype 5), mouse over it and it has 3LP (hype 3).
Scenario 3 (no LP filtering): Unique drops (hype 3), mouse over it and it has 0LP (hype 0).

I know the numbers are probably not fully accurate and could change wildly based on what unique item it is. I’m just using them to illustrate the point so please don’t drill down on the exact numbers. Just using it to show up/up vs up/down on a good result. When the lowest quality item you can see is raised up, the excitement when getting that item to drop is lowered quite a lot.

So, Shirley you can understand that 1 “Yay!” + 100 “Nope, Craps" is > 1 “Yay!”

I know you meant Forging Potential instead of Legendary Potential and I went into a long reply about LP instead. So, sorry about that.

A lot of the points still apply to FP too. We are very unlikely to add FP to the filter. I would also recommend trying to craft on some of those medium FP items if they have a good starting point. You can get lucky and make some very strong items. I’ve had a few ultra crazy streaks in a row. The quality of the starting affixes is generally more important than the starting FP.

Don’t forget implicit and affix rolls too.

It’s a bit of a slippery slope but we did consider having a “with Legendary Potential” option for uniques. It’s more likely but still not on the list at the moment.