Revisiting Dono's Solution to Loot Randomization

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Dono27, Sep 16, 2021.

  1. YourJobNotYourLife Elder

    While not the outcome I had hoped for, I appreciate you reading and responding to the central idea.

    Perhaps in another TLP...
    Dono27 likes this.
  2. Accipiter Old Timer


    That's a side effect of the goal, in my opinion.

    Mischief.

    The goal was to make a server that would maximize returning TLP subscriptions. Random loot and free trade are the goals. I don't think anyone said anything about making high end gear easy to get.
    Skuz and Duder like this.
  3. YourJobNotYourLife Elder

    I will say that the competent raiding guilds are killing all the same targets they always have which is a little bit disappointing.


    It has been more lucrative for the small man groups and guilds that are less capable, though.
    Dono27 likes this.
  4. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    I think the goal also included removing bottleneck camps and increase the ability to get some items by increasing the places they can drop.
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  5. Tweakfour17 Augur

    Well...yeah...the goal was to shuffle the loot, not create new raids?
    Duder likes this.
  6. Kahna Augur

    Loot got shuffled so little it is barely even living up to the Mischief title. There is nothing Mischievous about getting Vulak loot off Yeli. With out any real risk of bad loot off the end bosses there is no endorphin rush when good stuff does drop. Same for the mid level mobs. There is no anticipation because there is no real chance of them dropping anything amazing. It has definitely taken the excitement of the server down a notch or three. Now I am mostly here because of free trade, the mischief part was toned down too far to be a draw.
  7. Tweakfour17 Augur

    You can argue the level of mischievousness I suppose but killing Vulak and having the potential for Yeli, AoW, Vulak, some combination of any or all is random which was one of the main points (besides free trade). The fact that the potential to get nothing or to get Harla Dar loot was removed doesn't change the fact that the loot is being shuffled around. My view may be skewed vs others but to me the point of random loot was so that you didn't only have 1 shot a week a specific items. You want an Abashi? Tradionally you kill Vulak once every 7 days and hope for your drop, now you can go kill a range of other bosses in that same week and hope for the RNG you need. On the group level it was an anti camp measure, GEBs, Jboots, etc could drop from a large enough pool that 2 necros couldn't control the market.
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  8. YourJobNotYourLife Elder


    What are you talking about? Why would you think I'm talking about them creating new content? Completely non-sensical.

    If you're doing all the same content as before, the randomness really doesn't matter, only the extra loot and tradability. Those are fine draws on their own, but it does remove some of the fun for anyone who is big guild raiding (at least for me).

    I was hoping there would be reason to do other things than is normally done during a TLP with said large raid guild and there's really not. I guess we don't really kill Dain now, so there's that. *shrug*
    Dono27 likes this.
  9. Tweakfour17 Augur

    I'm thinking you're talking about creating new content since you're disappointed that the guilds still kill the same bosses, what did you expect was going to happen? Of course the same bosses get killed, thats the bosses for the expansion. What "other" things were you expecting/hoping to suddenly be relevant?

    The randomness matters for specific items since you have multiple shots at them every week instead of just 1.
    Duder likes this.
  10. YourJobNotYourLife Elder


    No, the randomness doesn't matter. The extra loot does.

    If you have 7 mobs that have a 1/7 chance of dropping any of the loot tables, then, over time, on average, you would get each loot table the same amount -- one per mob. Exactly the same as if you were killing them without randomness. When you double or triple the loot, the chance of total loot goes up, but the chance of getting a certain loot table for each roll is still that 1/7 chance. So, randomness isn't actually allowing extra Vulak loot or something like that.

    Now, if you're an OW guild, this changes some, since I'm pretty sure Vulak has a longer respawn than KT or Yeli, etc. Or if you're a guild that splits, you're more likely to split Yelinak than Vulak. But if you're only doing the mob once a week, randomness does not get you any more loot of a particular loot table. Only extra loot does. On average, over time.
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  11. Tweakfour17 Augur

    True, over an infinite amount of time the distribution would be perfectly equal, but we only have 8-12 weeks per expansion.
  12. YourJobNotYourLife Elder

    Yeah, but you're acting like the good case is what will happen. You could very easily end up with more yelinal and kt than vulak and tunare, in which case the randomness most definitely did not help get more desired loot.

    So, again, it's the extra loot that matters not the randomness. Randomness essentially becomes a pointless gimmick instead of a core interesting feature when it comes to a raid game that is tiered such as it is now. Again, maybe that was the desired intention but it seems pointless to me instead of something fun now.

    For group stuff it's still interesting, at least. But then again group stuff is not as useful as it once was because of the extra raid loot and the ability to trade items.

    It's clear that nothing will significantly change based on the dev's response so I guess this is all a lot of talk for nothing.
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  13. Tweakfour17 Augur

    Some good points here, especially about being screwed over by RNG haha.
  14. Duder Augur

    Sounds like he wanted Lord Bob and Lodi to be the big raid targets of the xpac? When you complain about raids killing the same old raid targets it really isn't clear what you want OP. What else would they kill? Would it be fun to camp Lodi 24 hours a day every day and DPS race him for Vulak loot? And that's it? Forget the rest of the xpac?
  15. YourJobNotYourLife Elder

    I take it you didn't read the OP since what you described would not happen under the suggested changes. Also, I'm not the OP.
    Dono27 likes this.
  16. Duder Augur

    I did but I didnt double check before replying ;) Presumed your involvement in the most recent replies as being the OP as well. So not directed to OP then, but you.
  17. Stormblossom Elder

    @ngreth Ok, so if I understand this correctly behind the scenes each mob still has an individual loot table, but in essence loot inside of a 'tier' has had the same loot bucket copy/pasted (or a level range etc), is that right? Is it possible to do multiple entries of the same item for some things and therefore 'weight' the buckets?

    If it isn't revealing too much of the special sauce, how is something like 'this mob always drops their key' in unrest or 'Luclin raid mobs always drop a glowing orb of luclinite outside of VT.' applied? Is the fixed item drop code something that could be hijacked to create a second loot bucket somehow and achieve the guaranteed one or more drops from the creature's normal loot table, or is it always a fixed drop of one specific item only?
    Dono27 likes this.
  18. Kahna Augur

    Why do you think this is what people would do? DPS racing over a once every 24 hours loot chance is a horrible way to get loot, especially if that turtle only had a what 1/20? 1/30? chance of dropping vulak loot? You really think that's how that was going to play out?

    My guild can kill VS with some pretty low numbers, respectively. We have continued to kill him pretty much every week. You know how much PH loot we have gotten off of him? 1 kill worth. Trak kills? 2. We sure do have blood orchid katanas and Hammer of the dragonborns coming out of our ears.
    More dead raid targets means more loot chances. No one was ever going to spend the expansion murdering an open world mob as their only source of loot.

    If overly large guilds were replaced with smaller guilds who stuck to the smaller targets in DZs there would be no significant impact to the average player in EQ. It would just be a change to the meta. Instead of logging on to your 72 man guild to go murder things in DZ 2-3 nights a week you would log in to your 20 person guild and murder things in DZs 2-3 nights a week.

    But that is, apparently, heretical thinking and cannot be allowed to happen or the sky would fall and the server would die because everyone knows that EQ players hate playing with a small group of friends to get good loot. If you don't "challenge" them by forcing them to constantly recruit more people so they have the raw numbers to kill things they are all going to quit the game.
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  19. Duder Augur

    My response was in regards to the person who thought it was boring that the large raid guilds killed the same old raid targets. More a, what did you expect? Sort of thing. If there is content, people will want to kill it. If it requires a large raid force to kill it, they will assemble large raiding forces. To "change the meta", into a server of small guilds killing small targets, you'd need to eliminate the existence of the large targets.

    Also, my small group of friends, that are in a full sized guild, have no problem taking out smaller raid targets and do so. Why do small groups need to have the biggest and best? Is that heretical thinking? If high end gear is designed to aid in the completion of high end content and small forces don't kill high end content, then they don't need high end gear, right?
  20. Kahna Augur

    Why shouldn't small groups have access to the biggest and best on just this one server that has a crazy mischief ruleset and promised things would be random? That raid gear is going to help my small guild progress to being able to kill bigger, harder targets in ways that the lower "tiers" can't. Small groups actually would be able to have some level of progression through the difficulty levels. Access to those bigger targets giving us more chances at loot.

    Why do large guilds need the gear? If high end gear is designed to aid in the completion of high end content and they can already kill that high end content without the gear, why do they need it?

    It was more fun without tiers. Plain and simple.
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