Bring back plat drops

Anyone else feeling like the devs are screwing us by getting rid of plat drops in the new expansions? The only way to make money now is whatever the mobs/chests drop, there are no sellable plat items. Please bring them back in the next expansion, I and probably most everyone else are losing money with everything we do.

Mobs are dropping cash directly more often.

I do wish they had brought back the 'classic' Luclin rock drops Iolite, Luclinite, Umbracite, etc.

I rarely "hunt" and I have more plat than I know what to do with at max level.

Say a mob would have been seeded with 100 plat and 2 items that vendor for 10 plat each. Say that Lucky would give you an additional 10% plat. You would have 110 plat and vendor for 20 plat making 130 plat. Now consider that either A) not all group members would be looting vendor drops or B) if the looter does a /split then your net plat is lower than 130.

What they did to convert is they took the item values into consideration. Instead of dropping 2 items worth 10 plat, the mob would now have a straight 120 plat. That 10% lucky now adds 12 plat making your total 132 plat. They had already taken the values into consideration so that we would actually come out ahead, no loot sharing no /split the vendor sales among the group.

This also helps them in design, they do not have to spend cycles making the expansion vendor drops, pricing them, adding and attaching the loot tables, etc.

I do miss the dopamine hit of hearing items go into my bag after killing a bunch of mobs.

So you guys are saying, the plat is the same its just in plat form on the mobs instead of like a diamond?

There's a perk that gives you 10% more cash from mobs. This perk seems kinda useless if mobs in newer expansions don't drop any plat.

More or less but yeah, they upped the plat not just axed drops. Don't know if diamonds were considered since that falls under TS materials but at least the vendor items. We are compensated in plat instead of items now, also to make the plat bonuses more useful.

The biggest issue is the amount of plat mobs drop doesn't scale with the cost of vendor items. I don't see a noticeable increase in overall plat per kill in ToL compared to HoT, however the cost of all of spells, type 3s, and gear components has increased significantly.

Gone in to this discussion a few different times on these forums and my argument to everyone who says they already have too much platinum is you need to think of a new/returning player and how they can sustain themselves.

I would assume no fresh level 116 character looking to buy their Rk 1 Spells, type 3 augs, and T1 gear combine components is going to get the platinum from current content.

Personally I just buy Krono and sell for platinum, soon my toons will be in a position where I don't have anything to spend money on but I'm not quite there yet and have burned through a lot of Krono in the process.

I'm completely confused as to the OP's complaint.

Before:

Mobs dropped coins and some items you could sell for platinum to NPC merchants

Now:

Mobs drop more coins.

In theory: The exact same amount of platinum is earned for killing the same amount of mobs with the only differences being:

1. Random number generator always hates us.
2. Luck gets you some more.
3. Paying for a certain Perk gets you some more.
4. Bags not overflowing with junk.
5. Having to go to NPC merchant and search through bags and figure out which items are junk (vendor trash) and sell them to the merchant.
6. Bags getting full with vendor trash because you haven't sold it off recently.

Please explain what I have wrong here.

I think what it comes down to is the minor dopamine rush you get selling a stack of Blue Diamonds for a few kpp vs a slow accumulation of plat that you will never notice. Do you end up with the same end result? Yeah probably, but it isn't really fun. (personal preference comes in to play as well)

Edit: I just looked at my logs from today killing in Mearatas (TBL). 137 kills, 2,191 platinum total (on one character out of 4 in group). At that pace you'd need over 1,000 kills to buy the component for 1 piece of TBL gear. Even if you were leaching all of the platinum you're talking approx 328 kills to buy a piece of armor.

Compare that to HoT where T1 armor took a Dream Coalescing Agent (1,000pp) to make, and I didn't go try it out but I am confident you can make more than 2,191pp killing 137 mobs in HoT.

Since Blue Diamonds are a very important tradeskill component, I hope they still drop at a good rate. I never sell them to NPCs because they are worth more for tradeskilling.

This is a different subject (to me). What I hear you saying is that mobs should drop more coins, not that it has to be vendor trash.

The price of items has nothing do to with whether or not the mob drops come as vendor items or coins. Money is money. If more needs to come from mob kills, so be it. How it comes from mob kills does not matter in that context.

I agree that NPC merchant prices for armor and other items is outrageous. The only way I can afford to pay for them is by having my Bazaar seller up whenever I am not in game. I sell off to other players what I can. Doing so has enabled me to have enough funds for my needs. It is unfortunate that those that do not play the "bazaar game" cannot afford basic items.

I disagree with the statement that if you don't play the "bazaar game" that you cannot afford basic items. Just don't buy from the NPC vendors. I mean what is it they have that one needs to play?

Even starting in the tutorial a player will get a good base of armor etc to help them merge into Cresent Reach where they can get more. Every expansion and zone has quests or tasks of some sort thru which you can gain armor, augs, weapons etc. Then if you add in the Overseer that opens up even more with free tradeskill items, a mount, collection /ach (which in turn open big bags) etc.

This is exactly why I wish vendor trash wasn't gone. You gotta love the feeling of having a full stack of blue diamonds.

You are not going to get far in this game without purchasing vendor items, especially from TBL on. Sure you can get Rk2 spells from drops, but you can only purchase type 3 augs with platinum, you need vendor items to create visible gear.

The cost is not insignificant I just think that long time players have blinders on as they have platinum going moldy in the bank.

I have yet to see a mob drop a diamond or blue diamond in ToV. Comparing the coin drop to earlier expacs, (and assuming you sell the Ds and BDs for plat), ToV is way behind earlier expacs in terms of plat generated.

If they're not going to have Ds and BDs drop, the plat drop per mob should be higher. By a fairly substantial amount.

It's comparable to a Ferengi hearing the cash register noise but the cash register isn't as noisy as it should be.

Vendor trash stopped in TBL when the luck stat was added. You will not find a blue diamond or diamond past RoS.

And you are correct the coin drop is out of whack with earlier xpacs. As I pointed out in an earlier post in HoT you could buy the vendor component of T1 gear for 1,000pp and blue diamonds sell for ~250pp. TBL T1 vendor component is 21,000 and I average 64pp total dropped per kill (split amongst group).

I don't know if the intent is to make this game pay to win, but that's what this creates for anyone who is new or returning.

The problem isn't that the mobs in recent expansions aren't dropping plat...they are. Actucally quite a bit sometimes if your luck stat kicks in often.

It's that they don't drop enough plat to justify the stupidly expensive cost of the armor reagents. I don't know which dev made the pricing decisions for that stuff, but they're extremely out of touch with the game.

Drop those costs down into the sub 5k range, and the problem goes away.

I agree with the need to bring back good platinum trash drops or bring down the price of spells, gear, and augs.
The issue isn't strictly drops now compared to back in earlier expansions (even though I feel I earned more back then), but the inflation of vendor purchased goods that you must buy today.
We, in the US, are living with sky high inflation currently. Everquest has been having exponential inflation for years and it harms new players, returning players, and even players just now starting to box or leveling new alts.
The current ways to go about making up for inflation with lower cash influx compared to older expansions are 1) buy and sell Kronos 2) go back to an earlier expansion and grind some Plat or 3) continue to level and hope you eventually get rk2 spells and can scrape together cash for your visible armor slots, the rk1 spells that don't have rk2 and type 3 augs. 4) sell some stuff in bazaar to try and make up for price inflation and platinum drop deflation.
This is even worse if you are "attempting" to level a FTP character as you cannot get rk 2 spells and are unable to sell in bazaar. (Yes, I know FTP isn't the preferred method of play, but it exists and I have seen people attempt it.)
5k+ spells, 20k+ T1 armor, 15k+ type 3 augs. It all adds up and returning, new, or even alcoholic players that are being forced to constantly upgrade so they don't have a very impossible task ahead of them cannot go straight through without usually going backward or looking for the easy Kronos way out.
This is not even mentioning mercs have also went up. It may not seem like a big deal to most, but to a fresh, bright eyed everquest player working their way up to 120, it all adds up.