I disagree once you run zone or zones run them again with alts, and everyone in the group has equal chance of getting a rune/ ethereal/ coin from their own personal crate opposed to dicing it out on last mob in zone, the personal crate imo encourages more people to run zones esp in pugs opposed to last summer method of bot it out. Provided the chance in crate is reasonable
Bot it Out or not.. Limiting your chances to 1 a day p/toon will not increase groupsage other then once a day during prime time. Take for instance that 80% of the population has 3 toons they can run the zones with.. so thats 3 chances a day and a total of 3 grps. If you had it on bosses and not crates, you could run your main, back to back for approx 10 chances in a day. Yeah, I like the Boss Optino alot better to increase the amount of groups. And Botters are going to run bot groups regardless if its in a Crate or off a Boss.. They gonna run it either way and neither way will affect you unless you run groups with a botter.
Many people only play one character as well. Not everyone has the desire or time to level and gear up alts.
1 character still is building currency to buy the runes if one is all that is played. But if we had Kralet Contested, all of ToT, Zek, and then keys on top seems to many places to get the runes. Leave the runes to be bought with currency along with the possibility of being awarded one in the mission crates. Let the currency be awarded for all ToT and Zek zones upon completion after you open the last names chest so there is a reason to group all day everyday but then the excitement when awarded one.
With all due respect, there are how many heroics and event heroics in ToT? 10ish? that would be 10 chances for you to get one for a mission crate. If you ballpark and say that it takes an hour and a half to run though all 10 zones, which i think is on the low end, it would take an average of 4 and a half hours to get 3 toons in per day. Asking for them to drop from named vs reward crates may only literally affect 1% of the population as I can't imagine many people have more than 4 and a half hours of play time per day, and that's not even including your extracurriculars such as raiding, tradeskilling, or whatever else people like to do nowadays. I dont know, maybe i'm just bitter after running countless AoM zones and losing out on those shiny ethereals.... i would just love if everyone got a chance at it, and we wouldnt have to put up with the insanity of "oh i'm playing a tank, and i said i'd only roll for a tank, but that is a nice ethereal so i'm gonna need on it anyways...".
I like mission crates, but this is what will happen. 3 people will spend 4-6 weeks doing missions for a rare item. One person will get 3 of them. 2 people will get none due to the RNG. This is why I prefer a token system so that at least we can progress our way towards an item instead of being at the mercy of this game's RNG for rare or very rare drops. Remember Band of the Blood Gorger? Yeah, I never got one while it seemed to drop for everyone else I knew. I was finally able to go buy it last week. Remember the first wave of ethereals? Yeah I spent a lot of time hunting those down while two different people I knew logged in once a week, did one zone, and got one. Oh wait, they got three each while I killed my wrists doing zones. I got two myth hats from the duck portals real early this year just zoning in, fumbling around and getting a portal in about 10 minutes each time. I should be happy right? Two of my friends tried over and over to get one, and finally gave up after about a month of daily attempts even though they knew the timing of the portals and were in the zone when they popped. I feel bad for them because they deserve a myth hat. Hard work, time and effort should also result in rewards; not just let it all fall to the fickle fate of RNG.
You'd lose out just as much on a lot crate, 6 chances for a drop per zone vs 1 will mean 1/6th the drop rate probably. There's no way they could justify equal drop rates on crate vs just the named. Downside to crates is ppl who don't like to play alts get screwed as well as groups with less than 6 ppl due to lower drop chance. Downside to direct drops so far seems to just be am an impression that you'll lose rolls, but it's not really accurate. Not sure why ppl are worried about what bots loot, but that seemed to be a concern too. Either way it's an improvement over the current system. I've personally spent about 20-30 hours a week for the last 6 months farming for runes in kralet and keys, and spent about 1.5 mil plat on keys as well. I had 1 rune drop for not my class in all that time, so I really hope the drop rate is significantly increased as the current system is pointless to even try.
Hmm if you are using alts to run zones at a chance of a chest reward or to earn coins pls make the runes and currency tradable between our character's.
Thank you very much Kander for the quick response. Makes me feel a lot better to know this has something moving forward.
I agree getting a rune you cant use bites! with how uber rare these blood keys are. I had that happen to me and seriously couldn't log on for 2 days cuz I was so annoyed at the game. No one wants to run zones, everyone after the ethereal. The game I loved has really turned into a farming key lotto! A time sink to keep us busy lil bees busy! But feels like a job now without getting paid
Can the dropped ones be heirloom so people can tank/heal on their alts and still roll for their mains (with the groups consent established at the start, of course.) Also, PLEASE, Token system! Everyone gets a token at the end of the zone quest(s) and you need X number of heirloom tokens to buy the rune of your choice. That will keep the pugs going 24/7 and not penalize people for playing needed alts as well as eliminate drama like when the tank rolls for his dps main. The goal of rare very powerful items can stay with ultra rare weapon effects like aura of immolation that combine 2 ethereal effects on a single item.
This is a great start to "fixing" the Ethereal problem. I feel items like these gives extra incentive to continue playing out side of raid time and gives non-raiding players a nice boost for groups. The biggest issue is having them be so godly powerful and the having only RNG as your way of getting them. I love they idea of multiple ways to get these items that are now, lets face it, required to be able to play at anything other than a casual level. I feel like the new eths dropping off of heroic bosses during summer events is a wise choice but making them trade able is important for players that are forced to play a class that is needed for the group. Also, i like that you can get a chance at them in mission crates but these should be heirloom or trade able as well or you should be able to pick which one you want if the drop rates are going to be very rare. There is nothing worse than spending countless hours working towards a goal only to get an item that is infusion fodder because you are on the wrong toon when it is rewarded. Finally, having a currency to help mitigate the hair pulling of poor RNG luck is another great idea. Currency will allow Ethereal summers to be a successful event because people cant complain that they played hundreds of hours only to lose rolls to someones scrub 5th alt. That will still happen but at least you can work hard and buy an eth before the event ends. I do think that the currency should be rewarded with either missions like the current queens coin is or maybe as a 1 per zone run. Having coins as a drop that is rolled on will just add back too an already frustrating RNG system. I feel like cost wise it should be where someone with one toon running every mission for 4-5days a week they could get buy 1 of the ethereals during that event's time frame. if people want to spend 10hrs a day farming missions on 20 alts more power to them. they are working harder and spending more time farming so they should get the good items faster than someone who logs in for a few hours a day. that person logging in for a few zones still has a chance to skip the grind if the eth drops that they want on a boss kill. also if the person farming like crazy for coin happens to get lucky on a drop there is a good chance there will be a 2nd or 3rd eth/rune that they will be farming to buy next anyway. this is so much better than spending hundreds of hours farming key quests or 10 names in kp contested only to get a rune you cant use or already have. Thank you so much devs for listening to the players on this one. This already makes me want to start grouping again.
Excellent post players. We had rational and reasonable requests, Kander and Devs responded. My job here is done.
oh one final request/discussion on the eth merchant... Please for the love of Ro do not make these items cost more than a few million status + currency... it will completely negate the idea of rewarding hard work if we farming enough coin to buy all the eth adorns we are missing and the new eth item upgrades only to be able to buy one of them because it also cost 100 million status and we are not rich enough to buy status tokens.
That sounds great. Like i stated in some other threads, gradual progress is fun and really motivates players to get these things and the ultra-rare single drops are frustrating and prevents many players (like me) to go for them, maybe buying them. These items are very powerful, so players should do something for them, but be careful with the required number of tokens. Zones stop to be fun if everyone is too powerful to fast on the one hand but many players won't start to farm these if it is too many tokens requested on the other hand. I also really like these things to be in mission crates, that prevents a lot trouble and anger. One important point: For which zones will they drop? Only Scourge Keep is not fine since there is a 6 hours lockout timer and many players do not want to play alternative chars for farming but only enjoy their main-char. But Old Thalumbra zones seem to be too easy for such rewards, some of them are completed in ~3 minutes with a well equipped full group after the Zek release.
AoM heroics where just as easy back then so i assume they would drop in all ToT heroics plus scourge keep and perhaps even heroic keys/fabled contested heroic names(if they put in a mission crate for those i guess).
I believe 99.9% of people here would agree that having Ethereal coins for new and current ethereal items would be best and would make it a awesome rewarding experience for time and effort spent to get some cool stuff! I think there should also be a raid version of this system where everyone in the raid would get a mythical coin from bosses that have a chance to drop the mythical item(Ire-Dread/Ancient Spine of Terror) or you can make them drop off final end bosses of each zone and make it so that it would require like 3 months to buy 1 mythical item + a lot of plat/status.
can have a similar coin mechanic for class cloaks and possibly the effing duck hat? Been running these for months wiith no luck. seen portal pop 10+ times when hunting always for someone else. In all heroic runs I've done not even seen a class cloak drop and never seen swashy cloak for auction. Luck was never better for etereal drops and after 500ish keys 1 blood iron and no ethereal
