Game Update 29 Loot Changes Discussion

Afternoon folks! With the latest Game Update we've made some considerable changes to the way loot is dropping from Duos, Alerts and Raids, and I wanted to post a thread explaining how the changes work, and to open up discussion and feedback on the subject.

With this game update, loot from DLC7 and DLC8 bosses is now given out individually to each group member. Before this, bosses dropped loot to the group, and the players in the group had to roll against each other to try to win loot. Now each player receives their own chance to receive loot from the lists, and the rewards go directly to the player, no more competing against your group member to receive rewards.

Now to get in to some of the nuts and bolts of how this works, I'll explain a more detailed approach looking at the before and after of how a player would receive loot from the final boss in the Nexus of Reality raid.

Before:

Before this game update for an entire raid there were 3 guaranteed rewards from the boss. 2 pieces of either level 86 or 87 gear or weapons, and 1 R&D item which could be either a Focusing Element or a Recovery kit.

There was a chance players could receive R&D plans, a Base Item, a utility belt, or a piece of Time Traveler's gear, but none of these drops were guaranteed, and if the boss did drop these you then had to roll against your group members to win any of these drops.

After:

With this game update, each player gets their own rolls against all these lists and anything that drops is theirs.

Each player is guaranteed a piece of loot from the boss, either a level 86 or 87 piece of gear or weapon. Instead of an entire raid fighting over 2 pieces of loot, you have 8 players receiving a their own piece of loot.

Each individual has their own roll on the other loot tables too. Each player has a chance to get their own R&D plan, or base item, or utility belt, or even a piece of Time Traveler's gear. If you get something from any of these lists, it's yours. No competing, it goes straight to your inventory. To avoid inflation of the R&D market, the Focusing Elements/Recovery Kits are no longer guaranteed, but they have a reasonable drop rate still, if anything I expect them to be more common.

Alerts and duos will function largely the same way with the exception that you won't get stuff you weren't previously able to. Duos won't start giving out Focusing elements for example.

Just like before, you might get loot from another role, but now instead of passing it to the other members in your raid you get it even if it's just to sell/salvage, but now when you get that sweet Tank/Healer/Controller/DPS piece of loot you've been trying to get you won't have to compete against someone to keep it, it's yours, put it on.

I hope this clears up how the new loot system works. With this game update all bosses from DLC7 and DLC8 have been made to work this way and we are working towards implementing this for all of the Duos, Alerts and Raids. As always feel free to ask questions, give constructive feedback, and discuss these changes. Malicious comments, trolling, and general being-a-hater won't be tolerated, you will be reported to Mepps and he will do his Mepps thing. You don't want that.
-CC

I like the new system, I just have a quick question about the back catalogue. Is this something that is easy to implement for the lower tiers so that they'll just be quick hotfixes, or will we be waiting for Game Updates or DLCs for those instances ?

While I can't make promises about a specific timeframe, I can tell you that it will be part of a Game Update and it will come out before the next DLC.

What happens if your inventory is full? Just wondering...

Its been a bad change from what I've seen so far.

This actually hurts leagues who distribute loot evenly amongst the group, while at the same time, also making you work even harder against the loot table. When before you had 2 items drop, but at least in established groups it had a better chance of finding a useful home. Now the chances of finding a piece you need is 1/The whole table for an individual.

Now with plans, everyone can use a plan and its tradable so theres no issue. With the rare gear its a different story, now it has a chance of dropping to a person with no need at all while giving someone who could use it just less incentive to run the raid. 87-88 gear is rare enough as it is, now on the off chance you get something its a 50/50 shot that it won't even be useful.

The loot changes are a bad change to the game IMO.

I do agree it hurts the support roles in the league. Only thing I did hate was rolling against other damages in my runs or damages who keep taking might based gear when they are freaking precision based players.

CC,

In the New System is it possible to be lucky and get multiple chance loots?

For example could i get a R&D Expert plan and a Time Traveler Piece, if chance would have it?

thanks

Things like this statements are false then and the people i run today with felt fooled the hard way.
The way the new loot system is described in this thread matches to what ive seen today- i dont like it but thats my personal feeling on this change.
But now the game matches to the infos we receive about that change.

Crafty, I have heard of people who ran Paradox after the update and that the only thing that appeared in their inventory after the last boss was a focusing element V and nothing else. Clearly this is not intended. Don't you think this should be fixed?

Same thing as before, you will see the loot bauble, and it will "bounce" off your character, then when you make room in your inventory you hoover it up.

If the loot table was the same and the same amount of items dropped then I would love the new system... but the fact that you can run paradox and just one random drop is a little blah.

It felt more rewarding when you beat the boss and tons of loot would drop. Its even better when your 1/3 dps but the other 2 already have the good stuff... you have a better chance at leaving happy.

I said the same when this was first announced: good for those who PUG, bad for organized Leagues.

But every update can't just be for me, I suppose.

This would be a very serious bug. If you have their character names I'll have CS look up the data for them, and I'll start digging in to it.

With the new system you have an even better chance to get loot though, each player can still get get up to 6 items each (87/88, 88 Time Traveler, Tier 5 expert plan, Base Item, and a FEV or Recovery kit).

The other thing is that before you could run Paradox or Nexus and get nothing, zero items. Now you are absolutely guaranteed something.

Bedovean posted about this on the testing feedback and this has got me very worried.

BTW, will the T5 solos or even the T5 duos start giving weekly boxes when you guys do this?

I don't have a problem with a system being implemented that has no bearing on me, theres already been a few updates that had no real effect on me. But I hate how this system actually hurts a sub-section of players out there, it seems no consideration was takin into account of established leagues that don't mind sharing the wealth, so to speak.

Is there any bug using normal loot settings (such as Master Looter) overriding the personal loot falling? A league mate of mine claimed his partner in a duo was getting all the loot and he wasn't.

I'd like to think that the devs considered how this would impact closely-knit Leagues, but they decided on this course of action because there's a much larger percentage of the playerbase that's pugging.

Edit: If they'd given us a new Loot option, it might have been less of a drawback for Leagues.

I wonder if an option could be set up for a group to use the old system if they all choose to. Or maybe League-only runs. (Would make Leagues a little more important).

It might make everyone happy. Does anyone else like this idea?