Otherworldly Focus of Fortitude and Otherworldly Focus of Heroism

That is unfortunate, was hoping the aug slots were an oversight that they shared a loot table.

Raiders have complained in the past about not having anything to do outside of raids on their main 2 months into an expansion. Expansion is not even a week old and raiders are complaining that they may have to be doing missions 6 months into an expansion.

Halfling'ed if you do, halfling'ed if you don't.

I personally on three separate toons have seen 3 otherworldly aug drops in 18 missions. If that is a standard drop rate, then within a few months I should have the ores I need for my main at least. And when I start on my alt, those who I would be doing missions with may already have their drops so I can loot then.

Now, I do agree 100% that this system may not promote much grouping. Considering at least two of the missions is duoable IMHO, boxers may just run their box duos for those two and keep the OW augments to themselves. But maybe these missions were designed not necessarily around six raid gear toons (outside of the owlbear one), so raiders looking for only two of the OW could do the basic missions with less players. I don't know.

I just always find it funny with players who want everything given to them within two weeks of an expansion and then complain about having nothing to do. I know players who already have merc, partisans, all mission achievements done and are halfway with hunters. They are going to be done with checkmarks before raids are released. Instead of just logging on for raids, now they can do their four mission runs for another couple of months if they really want the augments.

My complaint is not on behalf of the raid side, but really more for the group side. We will get ours, be it in half a year or whatever, because we have the resources to brute force it. The folks that only get occasional missions or kill a named here and there have almost zero chance.

My main is about to be parked for the next 11 months, cloak grind aside, and my lovable alts are going to be in the same boat as everyone else in the group game - struggling to get enough drops to advance in limited opportunities.

My 2 cents is the augs should be handled differently.

Done probably 30 missions so far, another 12 named and have seen one 7/8 and one slot 5.

The alt being parked is a viable concern, especially if on same account as main. My alt monk is definitely behind with augs and AA and clickies and other things due to spending time on main.

I just think we are 6 days into an expansion. There is such a small sample size that changes should not be thought of as far as drop rate and quantity until at least a month or two passes. If we check back in mid January or mid February and players have participated in 20 missions each week and they have seen less than a handful of augs? Then we can discuss drop rate changes.

But six days in? I dunno

That's fair - I would like to mention that, at least for us and I assume some others, that 6 days was literally months packed into a few days. We take days off of work to play every year (less for EQ than some staycation with the friends). We have run more missions in this last week than many casual players will this entire year. At the rate we have seen these drops across more than 60 missions, our group will not finish this year, and there is zero chance that mission completion rate continues even this week, let alone until next beta.

I'm confident these will see adjustment and I'm sure they'll find a happy balance. I know I used the word complaint above, but it's really more feedback. I am concerned that people that do not have the time and resources to invest will be locked out without appropriate adjustment and our feedback will hopefully be used to determine what appropriate means here. People that can't devote that much work should have some access to these items without having to pay Krono for them in general.

You also have to remember that this system was on beta for a few weeks. The whole time, the feedback was "this is awful...don't do it...go back to universal ores".

The devs knew this was going to hack off players and chose not to do address it.

Or....are they going to up the drop rates later in the expansion as they have a tendency to do? And they're alright with a few complaints about people not maxing out their chars the first week the expansion drops?

Meh, wrong direction for the design. It’s better to just let people go at their own pace than methods designed to draw out content through frustration. It’s much healthier for the game to have people cycle in and out on their rather than burnout. FF14 tells its players to take breaks, and they consistently grow.

EQ always went the wrong direction feeling they needed to drag out the play time, afraid that people leave. Plus, making things rarer just makes people even more anti-social. It’s just all around bad design for this type of game. It’s better suited for a mobile game like Diablo Immoral.

Maybe, they can add purchasable upgrades for mission and raid rewards in the marketplace. /s

Damned if you do, damned if you don't situation though.

Go at your own pace and be done with the expansion in 2-3 months and leave until next expansion
Go at their pace and leave for 5-6 months until drop rates increase and then come back, play at your pace, and leave for 2-3 months until next expansion.

Allowing people to max out after only a single month of subscription time is not a great design either. I understand the frustration side, and I understand the slow rate so people are forced to play longer side as well.

Gotta be a happy medium somewhere. I'm of the mindset that they should be able to be bought off a vendor, just make the currency a little "tedious/time consuming" to accrue. So you still get the same time put into the game, and players still get the rewards at a pace they can control...ish.

It’s not even a damned if you do or damned if you don’t. It’s simply don’t make bad changes that increase frustration points. Currency is already tedious and time and consuming. Going the route of frustration isn’t good for retention. You don’t get those people back quickly.

There’s anniversary events coming up in March that’s a return point. Around mid year TLP releases, another return point. October expansion sale and turnaround for pre-order Beta. There’s already a natural cycle to allow for healthy flow through the game, even if someone finishes an expansion in 1 month.

Personally, I only play for the missions so I’m done within the first few hours. They’re theme park is too small to attempt to drag out without negative impacts to the player. Universal ores allowed for more flexible play and let the casual crowd get theirs too.

It’s exactly that.

Your solution is allow people to be done with the game in 2-3 months and pray there’s a reason for them to come back (anniversary and TLPs aren’t for everyone). Yay for 7-8 months of losing people until they come back.

Current design slows them down to the point where frustration kicks them out for a few months until the up the drop rate to something reasonable. And that’s praying they weren’t too frustrated to actually return.

Both models are just opposite sides of the same coin. No one really seems that happy with either option.

Lol, no. You literally just described modern WoW’s issues. They create a problem with a solution already in mind that they fix in a later patch. It’s been leading to them drastically losing players.

Source please.

Or is this just “personal speculation” ?

It’s an MMO issue. Trying to find that middle ground where people don’t get burned out or bored too quickly. Gotta be enough to keep people playing, but not to the point of tedium. It’s a hard line to draw

No, it’s one of the main feedback points from Legion, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands. It’s become its own meme.

I'm sure it will be changed for the next expansion release in 2024.

It's a different sort of elitist perspective you're applying there. Most of EQ doesn't blast through questing + hunters + collects + missions + achieves early on. Most of EQ doesn't do full rounds of four missions twice a day and three on weekends. Should the broad base of players never be able to get the expansion's Good Stuff? If you (or I), with substantial play time and determination, anticipate taking months to smooth over RNG, what hope for anyone else?

My overall issue with these drops is that they sure don't appear to be differentially common based on anticipated demand. With all appearing at the same rate, a full suit of Otherworldly drops includes one each of Focus of Fortitude and Focus of Heroism. But all characters desire at least another Fort for their type4 weapon aug besides a type7 stats one, and many want more 7s/5s than just one, too. Notably, any character that raids wants only aug drops, and so must take the aug drops "out" of multiple full sets of Otherworldly - presuming they're so very lucky as to get roughly even drops to begin with.

Basically, I'm fine with reintroducing some randomness. The full-on wildcard Ores were easy for players, but took a whole lot of interest out of loot, I get wanting to reduce that effect. But I think aug drops should be 5(?) times more common than the rest.

You can’t do any builds or really flex stats around in a meaningful way which makes the loot not interesting to begin with. If, you could do different builds like Path of Exile by using different armor drops with unique abilities or stat allocations. It used to be really be cool to see items having a spell from another class.

Loot is just copy paste and add % stats, built to be basic and boring.

Planning a PoE build:

Rounding off the end of week 1, I see a grand total of 10 new "ores" dropping from running missions 2-3 times per day.
Noting that only 1 was for an aug.

This also includes doing all progression, killing rares as I move.

I have 2143 dead mobs listed on my parser since the beginning of this log file, that started with the launch of beta.

I know I've already stated this, but there is a disconnect between the developers and the player base if there is this level of rot loot in the first week.

[Tue Dec 06 12:41:10 2022] --You have looted an Otherworldly Essence of Power from Manifested Chest .--

[Tue Dec 06 19:20:47 2022] No one was interested in the 1 item(s): Otherworldly Mask Fastener. These items can be randomed again or will be available to everyone after the corpse unlocks.

[Tue Dec 06 19:48:05 2022] No one was interested in the 1 item(s): Otherworldly Belt Buckle. These items can be randomed again or will be available to everyone after the corpse unlocks.

[Wed Dec 07 07:23:53 2022] No one was interested in the 1 item(s): Otherworldly Mask Fastener. These items can be randomed again or will be available to everyone after the corpse unlocks.

[Wed Dec 07 11:25:56 2022] No one was interested in the 1 item(s): Otherworldly Cloak Fastener. These items can be randomed again or will be available to everyone after the corpse unlocks.

[Thu Dec 08 08:08:37 2022] --Meckwell has looted an Otherworldly Focus of Heroism from a shimmery chest .--

[Thu Dec 08 16:34:51 2022] No one was interested in the 1 item(s): Otherworldly Chest Armor Lining. These items can be randomed again or will be available to everyone after the corpse unlocks.

[Thu Dec 08 19:12:17 2022] No one was interested in the 1 item(s): Otherworldly Idol Polishing Cloth. These items can be randomed again or will be available to everyone after the corpse unlocks.

[Sun Dec 11 06:24:09 2022] --Aerathor has looted an Otherworldly Idol Polishing Cloth from a solid chest .--

[Mon Dec 12 10:03:09 2022] No one was interested in the 1 item(s): Otherworldly Mask Fastener. These items can be randomed again or will be available to everyone after the corpse unlocks.

Separately:

[Tue Dec 06 12:28:57 2022] --You have looted a Lucent Cloak of the Selenelion from a solid chest .--

[Wed Dec 07 12:28:53 2022] --Meckwell has looted a Lucent Cloak of the Selenelion from a solid chest .--

[Thu Dec 08 13:58:11 2022] --Relwyn has looted a Lucent Cloak of the Selenelion from a solid chest .--

At this point I've seen more cloaks in groups than type 5/7/8 aug ores.

ditto. Four five cloaks, one (type5) aug