Revisiting Dono's Solution to Loot Randomization

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

  1. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I wouldn't say you are "naive", more "overly optimistic" that RNG won't screw whole guilds, because I know for a fact it definitely can & has in similar ways before.

    I've never liked naked RNG myself, it tends to be streaky & too famine/feast in nature and while it definitely works out okay in the long run that's the only place it does in my experience.
  2. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    While RNG is bad in general I do like the concept of random loot in general especially in the group game as it removed the need to camp for a specific named.
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  3. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Yeah I do like the overall concept of Random loot used on Mischief & Thornblade, where rare creatures have a greatly expanded table of items they can drop so that hitting any named is rewarding as opposed to only camping one or a selected few single specific rare creatures until you get what you were looking for.

    I like how it makes grouping a lot less focused on what one specific key player is looking for and more focused on just finding an area to hunt in, this is an important aspect of "open-ness" that EQ loses in the "group progression system era" that DoDH ushers in and which SoD formalises.

    I also like how that loot system fosters much more player to player interaction through swapping trading or selling and buying items between each other.

    But that said, one major thing I learned from my time on Phinigel is that time is an all important factor on TLP servers and it affects everything at every level of the game when you accelerate the pace at which the game moves through expansions.
  4. Dono27 Journeyman

    I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t share the concern. I’m not sure if this is based on prior experience, or experience so far on Mischief/Thornblade. It seems like prior experience and not Mischeif/Thornnblade.

    1) I can’t think of anything that’s particularly worth hunting down a Tier - except maybe Dozekar Tears and those and Tier 2 might be an entirely different issue/conversation. Maybe Dain heads, but those seem super common - thankfully because Tier 3 if pretty rough.

    2) Even though this is a random loot server, mobs still seem to drop their own loot reasonably often, together with more loot.

    3) Mobs drop a ton of items, further mitigating this risk.
  5. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    I think you misunderstand what I am saying. There are raids on live servers where each mob has normal loot and a guild might never see a drop or only get it a couple of times at once. There are some drops that are so common they rot right away and some that are never seen. If that is happening during an expansion that gets the full play time what about an expansion that is shortened for TLP?
    Skuz likes this.
  6. Jerakor Journeyman

    Imagine you finally get a Vulak off a PoG mini after the 2 months of farming and it drops Tolan's, Jaleen's, Sirran's, Kelsiferous'.

    At the end of the day a small chance to get top end loot only would work if top end loot was always good. Top end guilds keep killing mobs over and over not just to get multiple copies of items but because honestly some of the items on the top of the table are just bad.

    I don't get the goal of this. It makes as much sense to me as having an Orc Pawn have a 1/2000 chance of dropping Vibrating Gauntlets of Infuse. The chance of the right item getting to the right person at the right time for it to be fun and cool are so small it doesn't have any meaning other than gambling for items to sell for KR. If it ever happened to you it might be neat but it doesn't drive enjoyable gameplay behavior. It would be dev time wasted for something that most people would never experience in a way that was relevant to them.
  7. Machen New Member

    While all that you’ve said is true, it is also irrelevant. If I roll a hundred sided die 15 times, there is a 13.99% chance that at least one of those fifteen times I will roll a 1. Each individual roll gives a 1% chance. If I’ve rolled 14 times, and not gotten a 1 yet, my chance on the fifteenth roll is still 1%. But looking at all 15 rolls combined before any of them have been rolled, the combined chance is 13.99%.
    Duder likes this.
  8. Stymie Pendragon

    I guess we have different definitions of what random is. I like your take better than mine, though I don't ascribe to the theory.
  9. YourJobNotYourLife Elder


    It doesn't have to drop the best loot to be worth while. You're projecting yourself too much into imagining this.

    And, the reality is, once you get past the classic to PoP era, many zones in many expansions have rare zonewide loot that is less than 1% or even 0.1% chance to drop. There's super rare chase loot in the more recent expansions. There is an interest in this kind of mechanic and it's a mechanic that the game has actively endorsed.

    And, don't just focus on Vulak here. That's not what it's all about. Someone killing a T4 mob would still have a chance at T3, T2, and non-Vulak T1 look that would be likely be upgrades. So, it's not just about hitting the game winning grand slam, it's about being able to occasionally get doubles and triples too.
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  10. DruidStorm69 New Member



    And as i made that entire thread pointing this out and pointing out how stupid bobbybicks shortsighted idea was and how it would do EXACTLY this to the server yet your entire guild was in here calling me a noob who wanted hand outs. This is YOUR GUILDS FAULT
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  11. Machen New Member


    It's not a theory, it's basic mathematics. Take a statistics course. Or even algebra 2.
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  12. Arctodus Elder

    Random loot feels more like an RPG then having to farm specific mobs, let it rain like Diablo.
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  13. Dono27 Journeyman

    Exactly. Everything you said - exactly.

    It doesn’t have to be Vulak’s best drops to be an enormous upgrade from whatever the PoG minies would normally drop. I would think this would be obvious even from the large guild player’s perspective, but imagine the small guild player’s perspective too. I think they’d be ecstatic with those other Vulak drops or King Tormax drops or even some ST loot - which as a large guild player, I’m fairly tired of seeing. Having been in a small guild up until the first week of Velious, I can confirm this from experience.
  14. Nwpskl New Member

    I wholeheartedly agree with the OP's ideas. I was originally ok with the current tier system at first, but I came to realize it eroded the vision for the server. Nothing much mischievous happening with loot anymore unless you get a double yelinak whammy off of tunare and such.. But as much as it sucks to have bad rolls of loot on high tier mobs, it was balanced out in kunark by easy mobs hitting the motherlode from time to time... I was under the impression that's what this server was all about. Kunark had it right.. The current format is a homogenized, less exciting, less "mischief" style of loot acquisition and it's sad.. If we can't go back to the giant RNG loot pit that was kunark soon, can y'all at least consider it for Luclin and beyond?
  15. Stormblossom Elder

    I am not sure if it is possible to do it with the current rules, but I still like the idea of having a given mob drop its own loot table once 100% of the time and then check for the pinata past that.

    Since they were able to make the keys drop off the original sources reliably, it seems like this SHOULD be possible to me, but I am not a coder.

    It would also simplify weird issues that could arise from the pinata otherwise, like killing all 4 elemental gods in PoP and not getting a full set of elements to turn in for the quested goodie, etc. You MIGHT get multiples through killing other gods, but you also might just get the one, but you won't ever fail to complete the quest by doing all of the steps.
  16. Tucoh Augur

    1 - 0.99 ^ 15 = 0.14. So an 14% chance of getting at least one piece of Vulak loot + a chance for multiple drops.
  17. Dono27 Journeyman

    Good maths.

    Just for completion, that’s 90, 180, 270, or however many people to run 15 Wuoshis, with an 86% chance not one piece of Vulak loot in those 15 runs. Rather, a strong probability of getting anything from Tiers 1, 2, or 3 other than or without a single piece of Vulak loot.

    This doesn’t feel broken to me. Rather, it just presents a more interesting alternative to people are sitting around waiting for spawns when they know Wuoshi or another is presently bound to Tier 3. And, it makes Wuoshi a lot more fun and mischievous for the small guild player.

    Accordingly, these servers can present a lot of freedom, opportunity, and excitement. Hard ceilings on loot tiers significantly and materially hampers excitement and player options. (And, it puts a lot more pressure and challenge on the developers.)

    As another stated earlier, I hope the random loot feature can be implemented on more TLP’s in the future. I don’t think it has to be this way on all future TLP’s though. Give the people options!
    Arctodus likes this.
  18. Dre. Altoholic

    Take Diablo 3 for example. It has a lot of random loot, but there are ways to target a slot or set when you need a particular piece.

    In EQ I like to know what mob I can go kill if I'm looking for a particular item. Especially if I'm already BiS in most slots.

    The random loot mechanic is fun for a one-off server and I like OP's brainstorming. However I don't see, or desire it to be widely implemented in EQ.
  19. Lejaun Augur

    Haven't things like Velketor and Wuoshi always been consistently ignored after the first few kills by most guilds?
  20. Dono27 Journeyman


    Yup. This server has a chance to be different with random loot.

    I like that on this server, the mob you kill seems to have a reasonably high chance, if not certain, of pulling from its loot table PLUS random loot.