I'm not a huge fan of RNG loot, but overall I actually like the Vault. However it doesn't quite work, particularly after the changes that came with/after the addition of old PvP styles to the drop tables. What I'm proposing is a set of rules for Vault drops that remain consistent with all new additions and modifications (or, if the rules are changed, changes are made public and retroactively applied to all Vault drops). Right now it seems to just be whatever the team feel like doing on the day and that's getting messier and messier each time the tables are expanded. With proper, clearly stated rules for Vault drops I think everybody would enjoy the experience a lot more. It would certainly help if we didn't have to worry about fluctuation in Vault Ticket values when buying them. 400sc buys 5 tickets, but how valuable 5 tickets are today can be vastly different to how valuable they are after a single patch or GU. Ie, running the Vault at Christmas time earned you an average of some greens and two or three blues, where today you get an average of two greens and a single blue per run. You can argue there's higher potential today and that's fine, but there's no denying the value of the ticket has changed while the cost has remained the same. These are just random ideas I think would make good rules. I'd be interested to hear what you guys would like (keeping in mind the goal isn't to make it so you can get everything in a week, just to make it so things are achievable, fair and consistent between updates). Standardised Drop Rates for all items within sets. All items in a particular set should share the same drop rate. Ie, if the drop rate for Logistics Officer head is 5%, then the chest, legs, hands, feet and waist must also be 5%. That way Checkmate Informant can be rarer than Avatar Bombardier, and getting the full set is just as rare, but the styles within the set are all equally rare so there's no one rare part. All Vault items have high value, particularly if you've already got them or they're ultra-rare. Ie, style only items would have a high vendor value making them not completely worthless. The drop rates must scale with overall drop table sizes. The more items in the Vault the more you should walk away with on average. Adding the PvP styles to the loot tables actually seemed to make it harder to get anything in particular. Different 'tiers' of drops should be on independent tables similar to drops like Avatar Infiltrator and Time Traveler Alert gear. That way the greens don't compete with the blues, the blues don't compete with the Account Bound, etc. Not a rule, but just throw some Exobits into the Vault. They've become the one consistent currency between US, EU, PS3 and PC, so as long as each box has a chance to drop an Exobit in addition (rather than in place of) the normal table drops I think everyone will be much happier about Vault runs. No more legacy styles, or at least not legacy styles dropped directly from the Vault prizes. Including the old PvP gear in there was the best of a bad situation, but ultimately if we're going to start doing that why don't we add Marks of Legacy that drop from Monthly/Weekly Award Boxes and Vault Prizes which can then be used to buy the old styles? Getting a Mark of Legacy and a consumable would really lessen the blow of getting a consumable out of a weekly/monthly box. The Legacy vendors would also sell Exobits or Marks of Triumph at laughably high prices, just so there's always some value to the Marks of Legacy. The main line of reasoning is that odds are you've already got some of the Legacy styles. If you brought T4 PvP Checkmate gear in an order that was impractical for actual use (ie, brought the bits that are now rare drops, in both Checkmate styles) getting the rest from the Vault is easy. Likewise if you brought them practically you're probably going to struggle to get the full sets from the Vault. Alternatively just have the Vault drop mission items for the Legacy style sets where we pick our reward (like the Home Turf meta missions). That's simple, right? Limit ultra-rare items to non-feat based items and put a hard cap on the max rarity of feat based items. I understand randomness is part of the Vault, but at the same time it is a service that's provided at a cost. Even casinos have rules. On a semi-related note I'd also like to see a Mega Vault added. Each regular Vault run is guaranteed to give you a 'code' item. Five of those code items can be exchanged for a Mega Vault Ticket. Mega Vault is the same as regular Vault, except it's only accessible via ticket and the loot table is way better (no greens, top shelf stuff only). It over complicates things a little but I think it would increase people's overall satisfaction with the system. Especially the run it every day grinders and people forking out $4 for 5 tickets.
I run it and just get a single green I collected when I was, like, level 13, and 1 MoT. I support any change to the Vault
I run it and just get a single green I collected when I was, like, level 13, and 1 MoT. I support any change to the Vault
I'm tired of going in vault hoping one day sharpshooter legs will drop. I've been trying to finish style since it was put in there. Atleast logistic officer is now pvp armor and I complete it. I was lucky enough to complete aeronaut before it was changed to pvp gear.
I had Aeronaut and Logistics Officer completed ages ago. All I needed was Sharpshooter legs. Yesterday I ran the Vault on an alt just to see if the rumor they'd improved the drop rate was true and the second box I broke open contained Sharpshooter Legs. Needless to say I was angry. I know it doesn't actually impact my chances of getting them on my main, but man is it frustrating to get something that rare on an alt knowing full well it could be literally years before you see it on your main.
In my personal opinion, vault drops are a matter of luck / CR rating. There has to be something going on with the CR rating, especially since my main has not completed a single vault style (excluding aeronaut and logistics officer which are now pvp gear styles). And yet, my 2 inventory alts, one with CR rating of 62, with the other only lvl 20, both of them have now completed the Sharpshooter style. And my lvl 20 alt, has great loot roll luck when it comes to events. Also, she can get event trinkets from the vault. And everyone knows, vault drops are just gonna get worse, with each new update. Taking a look at the most recent changes, - Removed Aeronaut and Logistics from vault - Added Virtuous Knight, Checkmate Informant/Operative - Added prom jewellery Forget about changing the vault, or convincing the devs, since its a business decision with regards to vault tickets. Personally, I'm surprised ppl even buy them. The vault is of low priority. There are other things which require fixing, which are either easy to fix, or are fundamental to game mechanics or game QOL. No need to list them here. Everyone knows those issues, while "fixes" to the vault have been "required" since beta, but its still ongoing, and isn't going to change anytime soon.
Are you kidding me. MY main cannot even complete the Aeronaut or sharpshooter styles out of the vault. Lets do this. Funny thing is my level 14 just got the joker jetpack.
But business-wise the Vault fails, or at least could be improved. I think moving Promethium gear to the Vault is a sign that Vault Ticket sales aren't doing as well as they'd like. It would take an update about the size of the Mailbox update to get the Vault into a much more profitable position for both players and SoE which I think would be worth it. Once the Vault becomes, for lack of a better word trustworthy, the Vault Tickets become much more appealing. With a public declaration that the Vault will stay stable, more achievable drop rates and improved consolation prizes I think SoE could really boost sales. Not to mention make their lives easier since the Vault would be future proof enough they could just drop loot in, make the guideline adjustments and go. Vault Tickets become particularly appealing if you always walk away a winner, as would be the case with the Mega Vault idea and dropping a few Exobit or two per run. A five pack would then have a minimum value of some Exobits and a run of the better Vault.
How is moving promethium gear to the Vault going to make it more attractive? Just means an increased Vault loot table, meaning less chance to get the good stuff (perfect rings only, prom necks are useless now). And before Aeronaut and Logistics were moved out, I believe only a handful of ppl (on USPC) would have completed at least 1 or 2 of the vault styles ( aeronaut, logistics, sharpshooter) on their main. It just seems almost proven that less level and CR rated toons have a better chance at the vault. Look, its good and all that the vault gets a relook. But like I said in my previous post, there are other things which need to be looked at, should be looked at. There has to be some sort of priority on whats needed, otherwise nothing will get fixed or looked at or revamped. There needs to be a focus. The vault issue can be saved for later.
I hope someone with permission to post in "Testing Feedback" reads this dissertation. You put a great deal of though into a remake.
Wasn't it like that before at one point? Then they converted all marks earned into MoT and now that's we ever get at random between 1 and 25 from what I've seen, so yes, lets change it back to scaled with Cr!
Let's face it, it's not "random" in any true sense, it's completely rigged so you just cannot complete certain styles. Someone please prove me wrong that they manged to complete some sort of style by solely running in the vault?
Well I think the idea is that they're expecting impatient people who are already Legendary to spend additional money on Vault tickets chasing the 'perfect' Promethium gear combinations. There are some flaws in that idea so I don't think it'll play out that well, but I believe that was the basic idea. We'll see how that goes if/when they release new Promethium gear. I had Aeronaut and Logistics Officer finished pretty early with a high cr (near max at the time). My character that just got Sharpshooter legs is cr80-ish. I'm pretty sure it's just luck, but DCUO loot always has something off about it. I can never escape the idea that it's broken in some way at it's core that the devs don't notice because it's a random system. Like items further down the list on the loot tables have an additional unintended penalty on top of their hard coded drop rate. So the 1% drop rate for some super rare item is actually 1% chance of it dropping after everything else on the table has failed to drop. Either that or the devs are just jerks. =P Fair enough, but there's never a good time to do something like this and a lot of the changes we're desperate for simply aren't coming (or are coming at their own pace). I'm guessing feedback on a set of rules for the Vault would be mostly one sided, and fairly passive, so they could knock that up in a few meetings and a day of writing after a month of feedback on the topic. The actual changes would depend on the choices made there, but for the most part we're just talking about someone going through the loot tables and sorting it all out. Unless they handle loot tables with some super whacky method nobody else uses it's not much harder than a spreadsheet. Getting the drop rates right and all that correct is the hardest part, and a lot of that would be dictated by the new rule set. Personally I suck at it and it takes me about two days to balance up a good set of loot tables from scratch, which is actually why I like to make internal rule sets for this stuff. If they go with the mission item for Legacy gear idea that shouldn't be too time consuming either. True, that time could be better spent elsewhere, but sometimes you get a lot more done a lot faster if you space out your important problems with easily little tasks. There's not much problem solving involved which is always great for preventing burnout when you've got a massive list of bugs. That's not to say my pet cause needs to go to the top of the list, just that attacking things strictly in the priority they deserved to be fixed isn't always the most efficient way of doing things.
I'm waiting for them to laugh at everyone and say "You all have complaints about the vault? Okay, we're removing it to free up some space for the PS3 portion of things. Oh, and what used to drop in there has a slim chance of being in one of your weekly or monthly reward boxes now. And, your everyday free money is gone too." While I agree that the marks could scale, I also remember what happened when they removed items from the vault and added others. Still haven't gotten those New Genesis Feet. Random stays random, whether the item drops in the vault, from a challenge, from an alert, from a raid, or in a reward box. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
Personally, the vault just seems like an afterthought, like "oh, lets just chuck everything that isn't integral anymore to the game into the vault" eg Pvp styles, Promethium gear. The focus for the devs is the Promethium boxes, evidence being the quick turnaround on Promethium boxes with regards to the compounds and the drop rate. Nice. My main never completed either Aeronaut or Logistics Officer, before the pvp changes. The number of people who've completed all the 3 styles (Aeronaut, Logistics Officer, Sharpshooter) on their main character(s) is probably gonna be a pretty low low percentage across all servers. Even with the pvp changes, most ppl are probably still waiting on that 1 Sharpshooter piece. No way the RNG in the game is "random". I'm not a DCUO beta player, so I can only imagine how beta players or very long time players roll their eyes when they see their vault drops being something they already have . Yes, true, but this vault thing has been around since beta, and it just does not seem like there will be any sort of true revamp to the vault any time soon. But, when the devs open threads, inviting discussion (looking at Home Turf, Fire and Ice revamps, pvp changes, Origin Crisis), thats when things really seem to get going, because there is developer feedback, and players don't feel like they are yakking on the forums. Devs may not give us players everything we want, but at least, they explain their reasons. Since the devs aren't inviting discussion on the vault, all the good ideas that sprout from this thread, probably isn't going to amount to much, in the grand scheme of things, sad to say. The Promethium box rollback though, seems a one-off, where the devs quickly changed things based on player feedback regarding drop-rate and compounds.
The Vault has to change. As I said before, it needs to scale with your CR. On my CR93 'troller main, I just did 6 vault runs - the regular daily and a pack of 5 tickets - and here's the results: Daily run: Clown Nose trinket (blue, already have) 1 Mark of Triumph Laminated Gorillatech Shirt (green, already have) Dominator's Gloves (green, already have) 1st ticket: Galactic Guardian's Boots (green, already have) 1 Mark of Triumph Gorilla Omen Backguard (green, already have) 2nd ticket: Sharpshooter's Shoulderpads (blue, already have) 1 Mark of Triumph Lion Tooth Juju trinket (blue, already have) 3rd ticket: Dread Coluan Helmet (green, already have) Backguard of the Desert Sun (green, already have) 1 Mark of Triumph Informant's Blast Helmet (blue, already have) 4th ticket: Frightening Helltreads (green, already have) Hellthreat Belt (green, already have) 1 Mark of Triumph Ancient Qwardian Helmet (green, already have) 5th ticket: Superboy Hoodie (blue, already have) Alien Threat Boots (green, already have) 1 Mark of Triumph Chestguard of the Abyss (green, already have) To summarise, by the numbers: 10 green style drops that I've had a bazillion times before 6 Marks of Triumph 2 blue style drops that I've had several times before 2 blue trinkets that I've already had many times before 1 blue hoodie that I've had many times before 0 ex-Lockbox Rings/Necks Again, my toon is CR93, and the above just further proves that the Vault is no longer of any use for toons that aren't fresh level 30s. Please, devs, let's bring the Vault in line with the rest of the game and have it's drops scale with CR!
