Rare Harvests are too rare again :(

In antonica yesterday. 6 glowing items, 2 rares.

Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:

Best conspiracy theory evah.

Kenazeer wrote:

Armourers...they're T1 specialty hats.

Seriously tho, since the server shift with my main, I've had much better results in harvesting and crafting. I'm having much better luck with my others on the same account (tho they didn't get server shifted) and again witness to the really bad problems the Outfitter I started up had. It's not a case of I'm only seeing what I want to see or that I'm crafting better. I've not changed how I craft. I've witnesses to this change by my spouse and guildmate Jrral. He lives nearby, pops over fairly often, and has seen what I've spoken about.

Meh...call it conspiracy theory, but both Rijacki and I have had the same results with server shift. *shrugs*

I would not mind if rares became more... well... rare. But, the tradeskill items that are made from them are not what they used to be anymore and there really is no point in making something harder to get if it is not a real commodity that people would scramble for like in the beginning of EQ2's career. Maybe if they made Mastercrafted something in between Legendary and Fabled and then made the rares truly rare... ack I am rambling again. Pay no attention to the Teir'Dal behind the curtain.

on my sever many people do not craft with the rares instead they farm them for plat profits so of course those people want the rares to be extremly hard to find again.
when the rares became easier to find my tradeskillers actually were able to make some money from people needing armor crafted from the rares that they were able to personally harvest. In fact, my crafting profits had never been better due to more people able to find the rares themselves that prior to the change they could not afford to buy from the brokers.
When the rares became less rare my tradeskillers for the first time in this game became useful to the community as a crafter. My tailor has been in great demand since people have been able to find their own rares and they don't have to pay outrageous prices to the farmers selling them on the brokers.
Due to the rares becoming less rare my crafters for the first time in this game have become useful and desired by the community. The rares becoming less rare may have affected the pocket book of the farmers; in contrast, the rares becoming less rare have revived my tradeskillers to a useful purpose within this game.
The rares becoming less rare have put the profits back into the pockets of the crafters as it should be, instead of into the pockets of the farmers. The rares becoming less rare have renewed my desire to craft since more people have been to afford the master crafted items and my crafters are in higher demand. This is a part of the game as a crafter until now I was never able to experience and it is nice that for the first time that my tradeskillers are busy filling crafting orders from the player community.

I wholeheartedly agree with that. My husband and I have all the crafts covered now and we only sell items made with rares when we accidentally make the wrong thing. We harvest and craft for ourselves only because the cost of rares makes Mastercrafted items beyond the budget of players who are not outfitting an alt. Additionally, most of the people who could afford Mastercrafted gear are in guilds where such stuff is available at little or no cost over the value of the rare. With a few noteable exceptions, when I look at Mastercrafted items for sale on my server I see stuff that was created to level a crafter, not the items with the best stats or looks.

To rehash my "conspiracy theory" a game must account for the amount of drops and rares found in a game to maintain order. That is why you do not find fabled drops on common creatures. EXCEPT once in perhaps x number of drops as determined by the game mechanics and programing. Now if developers can determine what creature drops what loot at a given rate, then it is certainly feasible that the game engine can be written to determine the number of drops of rares that occur in this game.

Now if by logic we follow this assertion we have to realize that the devs must control the drop rate of rares or else we would end up with exactly what we did.................Example.......severed fir selling for silvers instead of golds because there was literally 100's and 100's on the market. What transpired is that DEVS readjusted the drop rate. No conspiracy here. And there was no conspiracy intended in my prior post about checking the broker to get an idea what to gather.

PERIOD. This is not a conspiracy. It is how the DEVS keep the economy under control in this game. This has nothing to do with the 20 players or 50 players or a 100 players out of 420,000 players who HOARDE rares. You are insignificant in the grand scheme of mathematics.

My point earlier is that if you want to know what to look for when you gather.........check the broker first. Because if a zillion metals have dropped then I can assure you that the internal mechanics of the game has adjusted that so that the chances of finding metals has diminished until such time as the "game" counter or whatever means they have chosen to keep track of the drops is adjusted.

So in conclusion. It is not a conspiracy for the game devs to keep track of the drops of nearly all items. It is simply written as if x<100 then yz=2
where is x is severed fir and its less then 100 drops then yz (FOR THAT ZONE) which is the drop rate is given a plus two percent chance to drop. This is not a conspiracy. It is common sense. If you see 10,000 Xegonite clusters on the boards for sale that means the market has been saturated and I guarantee you that finding xegonite will become much harder to find until certain programing conditions are met.

I would actually like to see Domino address this rather then post a stupid albeit funny "hat of conspiracy" Which insults me and my attempt at helping people understand how the minds of deveolpers work in controlling a games economy.

Whats worse. If I'm wrong then I give the Eq2 developers too much credit for being smart. Hmmm. I guess thats a possiblity as well.

BladeLore wrote:

Not necessarily a conspiracy, no, but seriously, why bother? Why waste dev time, engineering time, processing time to track that?

And I completely disagree that stuff is harder to harvest if the market is saturated. Case in point: soft metals. According to your theory I shoudl hardly ever harvest any.

Calthine wrote:

I've been harvesting for four days now and I haven't seen a single soft metal rare. I need soft metal rares to make my own Adept-III books but since the change of drop rate, I'm SoL. I use to find at least 1-3 rares a night, now I can go for several days without seeing any.

netglen wrote:

And is the market saturated? Are there 20 pages of soft metal rares?

BladeLore wrote:

I would begin by questioning a couple of things...your numbers specifically (420,000 players). Not sure where you got that. Regardless, are you implying that the rare drop algorithms are based on game-wide drops, rather than server to server?
***Numbers in following paragraph are pure speculation, as are anyone else's***
Based on EQ2players, there are ~89,000 toons on AB (one of the more populated servers). Now, I don't know how often this db gets purged, but let's say 50% are active toons. So...44,500 active toons. Now, how many would you classify as rare-hoarders? I'd be generous and say about 5%. So, 2,250 toons are rare hoarders on AB.
While I whole-heartedly agree that there is much more programmatic control over the drop system than simple RNG, I believe your theory uses too much historical analysis to determine the outcome of a drop. Too much risk of drop-rates spiraling into some kind of recursive out of control increase or decrease. I believe the drop-rate chance is an instaneous calculation, using pre-determined variables and algorithms. I believe the rates are simply based on a series of char-based and global variables fed into drop rate algorithms. Hence the ability of the devs to so dramatically impact the drop rates by tweaking said variables.
Alas, it is doubtful anyone (outside of SOE) will know for sure. I suppose the conspiracy references were slightly unfair, but much like the JFK assassination, the moon landing or UFOs, you and I will never be privy to the "truth."
SC
EDIT: Just to clear up some confusion (I believe) from BladeLore's post. I don't think he's saying the drop rate is BASED on the number of rares available on the broker. I believe he is saying the abundance on the broker is evidence of a recent increase of drop rates, and you should therefore anticipate a drought of drops to compensate.

Calthine wrote:

It actually isnt that hard to code nor would there have to be any significant processing hit if designed correctly. He is right that it is one way to handle the issue. But, it isnt not a matter of the developer being smart. This is a matter of what school of thought they used when designing the system. Making a smart system does not mean that it will be a fun system. The smart system may also not have enough value to warrant the extra testing time it would take (dev time might not be too much more but QA time would be much greater). Maybe they wanted an even drop rate so that your avg player is on more even ground than the horder? The problem is we just do not know and I doubt anyone is going to tell us.

netglen wrote:

I have been harvesting in sinking sands for 7 levels now and have had at least 10 cobalt, 10 vandium, but only 2 pearl and 2 loam (rare spelling may not be correct).
Now granted the cobalt and vandium are still what I consider rare, but the pearl and loam are very rare.

BladeLore wrote:

Hogwash. To even suggest that raw drop rate is in relation to how many are in the game is silly. I could present you with a ton of scenerios that would prove your acid trip influenced theroy to be just that, wayyyyyy out there, full tin hat style.

If there was a "set" amount of rares and raws in game at any given time vs a random drop rate then market control and hording would be an actual fact. The wife and i could take two weeks off from work and harvest 18 hours a day 17 days straight and buy all metals off broker and sit on it.

In one 3 hour session i can harvest enough to fill my bag minus food from doing the standard KOS island hop. I could fill up 6 alts bank account with rosewood strong boxes full of metals and pelts.

Between us we have 100s of plat from the 3 years we are playing. If this was the case we could corner the market............according to your theory.

Calthine wrote:

It's the opposite. There are only 8 people selling Vanadium on the server from 1P.20G to almost 2P. One guy is selling a Vanadium for almost 20P. So there is probably less then 12 Vanadium clusters for sale on the server. That doesn't account for what people have in storage. But I really dislike the total tally idea that people have suggested. I seriously think the developers just put a cap on how many rares of a type can be pulled from a zone during a certain amount of hours. Once that limit has been reached for that timespan, it even becomes even harder to pull rares of that type or it just becomes close to impossible.

And to add another evening at SS without a single rare of any type from soft or hard rocks. I did find a rare from a root.

Zahrim-Dk wrote:

I don't think so. You don't want to waste your customers' time too much now. It's a good medium, I think. I'm quite happy with where it is now.

Calthine wrote:

Even if the market was saturated its like punishing those that want to harvest the rares themselves instead of having to pay someone else the money for the rare.

This makes NO sense to me at all. Market is saturated, welp tough poop for you, you have to buy your rare for the next week til the market calms down!... that just stupid lol

Zahrim-Dk wrote:

You're insane. If mastercrafted gear were actually good, I might agree that the harvests are a bit too common. But especially in Tier7, mastercrafted is junk. However, given their place in the overall scheme of things, "rare" harvests are just rare enough, IMO.

Maybe I should give up the foolish idea of being a Sage. Right now I'm at (L.50 Sage/L.51 Conj/67 AA) and I'm thinking of tossing in the towel in leveling my Sage side. It's not like I had any grand schemes of making the character a plat machine with a Sage business. All I wanted to do was have th ability to make spell books for my characters. It's a drag getting the T7 roots and wood but I think I have enough of a supply for 2 maybe three levels of grinding, but I'm at a total loss for the T7 book rares. I've been mining all week now at SS and LF and haven't found a single book rare. Now there are less then a dozen players selling Vanadium on the Broker with prices now ranging from 1P.80G to 2P each with a total of around 30ish clusters. Now if I look at the "Amazon" book sellers on my server, they're selling the Adept-III books that I need for a mere 60G-80G each if I go visit them at home.

So I can either toss down a few plat and get all the Adept-IIIs I need for all my spells in the 50s or waste a few weeks on the hops of finding a rare or two to craft into a book. I'll most likely buy the Adept-IIIs I need and level my Sage whenever I feel like taking a break from AAing and leveling. The drop rate for rares are borked.

netglen wrote:

My rare drop for ss and LF are pretty high for vand. Those places are farmed very heavy for the ores,soft metals are cleared in hopes for of a rock spawn. Try POF for a little better luck. But your level is still a lil low for that.

FYI i did not know a sage for my warlock adept IIIs and i dropped close to 30 plat for spells.