To an entire demographic of this game, 20 something pieces are rot and share the loot table with the player made aug ores. That should 100% change.
What they should do is only drop the ore gear. Save the effort of the t1 gear. Then everyone who wants to suffer with Mindless grinding can just /random 1000 for every item in the chest. On a 1-985 they delete the loot. Everyone wins, I can play and get things for my characters. They can grind mindlessly for months.
This system sucks as much as someone trying real hard to drink a super thick milkshake through a straw. 100% something needs to change, the sooner the better.
I think what's missing, particularly from the group loot system, is something to mitigate the RNG. I'm not sure if specific named have higher chances to drop specific pieces, but if not, that will make it much more frustrating to acquire your last few BiS pieces than your first few (and, as mentioned, to acquire aug slots). The obvious solutions to that are either a currency system (a la raids) or some kind of trade-in system where you can exchange two or three otherworldly drops for the one you want (raids could use that too). Maybe they could drop more too, but it doesn't feel that rare for BiS group loot at this point. Ores have been varying degrees of plentiful in prior years; it's not crazy that they want maxing out BiS to take some more time. I think the RNG when looking for specific slots is the real pain point. Or, they could go back to the RoS system, which IMO worked best (except for requiring EoK visibles).
I prefer the universal ores we've seen in the past few expansions and if they wanted to make them more rare they could have done that instead. You can set a loot table for a rare or a chest. Visables Ornaments Augs Weapon Ore etc My suggestion is that they separate out the "augging" ore from the group ore on all mission and rare spawns on their loot tables.
Does it really matter? How many augs do you plan to make per character? How much improvement do those augs really make on any character (raid geared or group geared)? Wouldn't the whole game be better if loot wasn't just handed out like previous expansions? Can we not remember how dead and pointless the game becomes from April tooooooo? Beta?? For the group missions... do we really need 24AA, 45 currency, 3 ornaments, 1 spell, 1 T2 vis armor, 1-2 non-vis/weapon/aug, 1 heroic aug and 0-1 otherworldly drop each time???? Put in 5 mins of your time every 6 hours and get all of that. It happens every expansion too (ShadowHaven, Shei, Zlandi, Grakor, stratos, Cactiki, and more). Not to mention, some TS or collection items can also drop (at least in previous expansions). Again.. all of this. Its all garbage after the second month to everyone.
What about all the posts complaining about how the trade skill drops in raids made the dropped gear worthless? This change seems to be designed to address those types of concerns and it as also made at the group level as well.
Sure, but now you can't just get BIS by looting an universal item. Logical or not there was plenty of posts complaining about needing a single drop to make the BIS item for all slots and suddenly it is changed to needing a slot specific item.
Now, they’re just going back to wasting people’s time with slot specific drops. We’ve already been through this loot system. It blows.
Not saying I agree with the system, just pointing out that there was complaints about the trade skill drops in the past and this change appears to be an attempt to address those complaints.
I foresee two outcomes- One, you are going to have to play a LOT in order to combat the RNG and get BIS for every inventory slot on your toon. Which means zones will be full of people camping named, hoping for that piece of gear throughout the year. No summer time lull anymore. Two, players will just not care about getting BIS for every slot and their playtime may dwindle. Get your checkmarks, don't worry about gear, and move onto other things in life- whether it be other games, other hobbies, etc. I don't think either outcome is good. I would hope that a currency system, similar to raids, is put into the group game to buy pieces. Otherwise a lot of groupers are going to be turned off to this expansion.
Tegila is quoting a total of kills from 2 groups in my guild. The numbers provided are what recorded. As of right now at the time of -This- post, we have yet to see a total set drop. We have only had 5 duplicates for armor, but we have had 3 Acolyte's Focus of the Selenelion. We have seen 0 items for slot 5 or slot 7 augs. We have seen 0 1 hand weapon pieces. We've gone 5 consecutive missions without a tier piece dropping in a chest. We are doing all of the missions, not just one on repeat. As a comparison, we have gotten 5 cloaks of the Selenelion. For kill content we are no longer killing in T1, We are covering a wide selection of named in T2 only, with the least kills in Shar Vahl, and the most in Paludal.
Two is much more likely. You don't need BiS to succeed in the group game. Which is kind of nice considering how incredibly boring gear has been for years and how little content there is in the group game.
This 100% People want to max out their characters as fast as possible (I get it, I get the same urge). But then complain for 75% of the expansions life that there's nothing else to do except the same 3 things over and over and over and how something needs to change. So then it changes where they're not maxed out in 3 months and then they complain it's taking too long and needs to change. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Can't please everyone, nor anyone it seems
These "Part 2" expansions are already boring and underwhelming since they don't really add much in the way of power/upgrades. I think motivation to finish them, especially for group/casual players, is low to begin with. A decision like this, concerning gear, is just going to make it that much more unappealing. I mean, did we really need a whole expansion in order to add the Tradeskill Depot to the game? That could have been added as part of the anniversary. If they still wanted to make it a cash grab feature, they could have required All Access to use it. Other than that, this expansion is just hardcore cut & paste...no innovation. Getting rid of the universal "ores" actually makes it take a step backwards.
