Well he didnt increase the drop rate until like January iirc. And there are many games people have played that are still by the rules. That allowed for multiple runs a week. Only adding the desired looter when a needed augment dropped. Like the only having loot lockout but not task lockout games many played to acquire the 4 evolves. However those tactics and heavy play time people have already have finished and its avg joe player who might only have time to do this once or twice a month that now gets slowed down drastically by him restoring the drop rate back to closer to what it was at first.
Not players that play once a month. Players that don't run 6 box teams or sync up with farm groups except for once or twice a month. Players that might only have 1 or 2 slot 19's so far and still have many to farm. Its not moot. He set the drop rate where he wanted it and was comfortable with it for months. I don't want to have to clear 6 raid instances and say get one aug every 75 mobs now when for months everyone who got ahead earlier was getting 1 aug every 15 or 20 mobs on average. Never mind the headache that comes with timing it all around when your guild does these raids. Missing one raid or farming one or two DZ's around you normal raid schedule is a lot easier than trying to work around needing 6 DZ's. Frankly for everyone just leave it as it is. If he wants a super low drop rate in every raid instance then next time around make sure thats the case for everyone before launch. You don't let tons get full sets in weeks of effort and then change it to months of effort if they too were just to clear 1 or 2 instances a week.
I dunno where you got this info but it's wrong. Then Don't This what is called adjusting. The drop rate was to low (0 infact) he increased it. He went to high for how fast he wanted these items to show up in game. Now he is readjusting it to something in between the two.
I just wish that once you have a loot lockout that the trash didn't spawn! There not droping loot and not needed for the event so no reason for them to be there. Convorteun was my favourite zone for trash clears, loved the trash lockouts there.
It was made up numbers to illustrate the point. But I do know people that have had 13 augs drop from a single run. And others only 1. The RNG is the RNG. If I don't then again what was weeks work for some becomes months work for others. The problem is why he is adjusting the rate not that the rate currently is what he wants to adjust. I could be wrong but based on why he initially increased it and based on his statement now. Its only being decreased because more DZ's will be dropping them. Otherwise he would have lowered the drop rate in February or March when it was just the drop rate change. So it seems that he doesn't have a problem that groups are getting like 14 augments a week. It seems he has a problem with that same group being able to get 42 augments in a week once the other DZ's are added. Because if they were getting 14 a week from 2 DZ's if they are then able to farm 6 DZ's they could potentially get 42 augments. The problem with that is the majority of the people in the situation to farm all 6 DZ's weekly are pretty much done. Its the people who didn't have time to flip the 1 or 2 instances every week that are still grinding away and that are going to be hindered even more with the change. They won't have time to flip 6 instances a week even if you ignore how many more mobs that is if they couldn't regularly do 2. And that also ignores the logistics of timing 6 loot and boss lockouts for DZ's around your guilds raiding schedule. So in fairness to everyone he should leave it as it is. Or add the DZ's with the same drop rate and accept that a small minority will be farming more augments per week until done.
Not every player in every guild has one grouped Plane of Fire trash for type 19 augments. Maybe in the top 5/10 they have, but not all. This change now makes it more time consuming for those that have not gotten a type 19 to get one. People may have done it before knowing maybe 6 augments would drop in a 4 hour clear; now why would people bother if they think only 2 augments will drop. Not everyone is in MS or ROI. This change doesn't affect most of those raiders, but it does affect many others in a negative fashion...
So, the expansion has been live since December 11th. And your upset that people decided to spend almost 4 months of not farming the augs? If people were not doing it for 4 months, pretty likely they will continue to not farm them. Fire is an incredibly easy instanced to 1 or 2 group, it is pretty dumb that the trash is tied to the Guardian but other than that it has been worthwhile to farm it. How about the people that full cleared Stratos or Empyr not knowing about the bug for no augs dropping? Having an instanced you can request with only doing progression is tailored to every one, not top-end guilds.
My point is nothing negative towards those two guilds. If anything, it is a compliment. Players in those two guilds are intensely focused, organized, and quickly accomplish basically everything in the game in a quick and timely manner. If I was in Vegas and had to bet on how many players in those two guilds have all four Fight Fire items, all of TBL completed (save for raid achievements), all four FF items at max level etcetera... I would bet the majority have all of that done. As you go down the "guild list" to top five, top ten, top twenty, etc... that percentage goes down. The players in those guilds most likely (again if I was in Vegas placing a bet) have a lower percentage of four FF items, FF items max, TBL hunters completed, etc. There are various reasons, both valid and invalid, as to why that is. But the fact of the matter is... it is what it is. Changing type 19 augment drop rates hurts those players in those guilds. Players who do not have all of their type 19 augments that they want. They are now going to have to do 2-4 times more raid zone clearing trash than before to equal how many augments were dropping prior to the change. If I told you it would take 100 hours of play to obtain item xyz, some players may cringe at it. If it gets changed to 300 hours of play, those players may not be able to devote that time and energy. I was not slighting the top guilds. If anything, changing type 19 augments probably does not affect the majority of players who already have obtained all the type 19 augments they want through weekly one group raid trash clears. It does affect those who have not done so, however- a handful in top guilds, and more and more the lower on the list you go.
I guarantee you that your server and every server in Everquest will have more type 19 augs on it than it will have type 19 aug slots.
Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too. Me included. Changes to the drop rates are going to affect everyone differently. Over all the ones that are proposed to happen next patch are a massive net gain to the vast majority of players. The game is supposed to be tuned to the majority not the minority and the proposed changes go a long way towards making it so. Think it through people before you post and complain. ALL base populations of raid zones will now have chance to drop type 19s not just a select few zones. The % chance for a drop has gone down but the # mobs you can (need) to kill has gone way up. Every event that has trash that needs to die to clear event area, has mobs that populate zone at start of the event (Stratos for example). Plan it correctly and there is nothing stopping guilds from ending the night in a zone with a high base pop that can be cleared AFTER raids are ended
I don't disagree with your general premise that this hurts people who haven't already gotten their Type 19's. I don't think making them harder to acquire now is a good idea. That said, I think bringing up guild tag as an imperfect proxy for effort devoted to the system distorts the discussion and allows players to avoid the actual matter at hand - whether they put in the 3-4 hours a week to farm these augs or not. An individual's current number of type 19 augs, or lack thereof, is based on the effort they've put into acquiring them since the expansion launched. There was no advantage to being in a particular guild, and guilds that raided lockouts (RoI) actually got fewer chances at augs because Plane of Fire trash don't spawn if you have a raid lockout. There are plenty outside of RoI/MS done with type 19's, and plenty in RoI (and I'd imagine MS) that don't have their type 19's. It's valid to argue against this change, but, again, bringing up guild tag is a scapegoat.
The standard was X now the standard to complete the same thing will be 3 times X. Asking for that not to happen isn't grasping as straws when he doesn't appear to have an issue with the drop rate itself and actually thinks it helps most people by dropping more places. Its only a gain if you clear all the DZ's that count every week. Otherwise its not. The majority of guilds and players will not be clearing out every single DZ. Instead of completing more raids in a night a guild would have to spend more time clearing out entire DZ's instead. At this time of year people tend to want to ease back to farm mode schedule not raid more nights to farm trash. For the majority its far better to have 2 DZ's to work around your raid schedule with a condensed drop rate to farm as they can.
Or you split it up into groups and don't waste your raid night on groupable content? When my group needed augs we were fairly upset when we could only farm Smoke and Fire for them. Kind of comical that people will complain about more options/ways to farm these augs. Yes the drop rate was reduced, but he just opened up 3 times? the zones. If you did these once a week you should be pretty much done, or close to done with your augs as is by now. Doing these as a raid is really inefficient and unnecessary tbh.
Group form will be the best but as I said most people that are still needing these are not suddenly going to have ready made groups or 6 box teams set to farm. And most guilds are not raiding on Sundays and then off the rest of the week to work DZ clears as they can. The subset of EQ, which is a vast minority of EQ, you are talking about are done or are only missing there last 1-2 augs they want due to RNG. The majority of EQ is not going to have the time or the timing to farm 6 instances every week in group form at a reduced drop rate to see a gain in returns up from the 1-2 instances old drop rate. Making this a nerf to the overwhelming majority of EQ when based on Ngreths statements he sees it as a neutral change. When in reality its only a neutral or increase in return for the minority subset of EQ that is capable of farming 6 instances every week. TL;DR Farming 2 instances at the current drop rate benefits the vast majority of EQ more than having to farm 6 instances with a reduced rate. Due to RL, raid night conflicts and group or box team availability. Its a flat out nerf or moving the goal line.
Plane of Smoke trash is easily stunnable and killable. No mercs since it is a raid zone, but me (paladin) and an sk were easily able to clear the zone out and kill in there. 2 people. Plane of fire is in a way harder and in a way easier. Harder, because of how resistant they are (I honestly couldn't even box in there, kept dying due to no hott heals making it through, no stun working, no slow working, etc on those jopals near the front), easier with a full group of players.
