I do not like the idea of people using ferrin to buy an item a long as you have the achievement. That means you can run the zone completely one time and then farm various other easy zones for best in slot items. The best way to go about this would be to do something like the currency drops that was used in the Chains of Eternity expansion. Specific named mobs dropped a special currency for specific items. This would require people to farm the corresponding zones but also offer another means of obtaining the item you want. I guess this could still be considered a token grind, but it would still require you to farm the zone to get the item you want.
While we're on this topic, can we have harder heroics give like the double the ferrins that easy ones do? For example, in AoM, people generally don't want to run IS because in the time it takes, they can easily knock off 2 or 3 zones and with a lot less requirements on the group makeup. The regular ferrin quest for IS should give double the amount that Zavith'Loa does. I would even be ok if these were added a month after content goes live, once DEVs are able to pull stats on which zones are being run and how long it's taking.
Veta, what heroic zones are hard? The fabled drops from the hardest heroic zones no one wants b/c they really aren't that good, likewise the rare named spawn are universal no matter how easy the zone is. Everyone wants HH, HH Event, BB event. Super difficult. Don't put Ossuarry event on the table....that's fine.
Widem, I never said any of the heroic zones were hard, on that note, I duo most of the heroic/contested zones with our necromancer. The point would be to offer a specific currency for a specific item to offset RNG. I have the heroic items I want, but that does not mean everyone else has what they want. I also never stated any zones either, it could be for fabled drops for any zones. In this case you would have to farm Ossuary event to get the Ossuary event currency item, as stated before. Thus you would have to farm the zone still but not as much to get whichever item you are after particularly. I don't think people should be able to clear Ossuary event and then farm all the extremely easy zones, for ferrin, to get a best in slot item. Ossuary is one of the more difficult zones, I do not see why the wrist of grand auras would be a "fabled item no one wants because it is not good." Yeah, there are peeps out there farming the zone constantly to sell people the wrist on AB and/or other event heroic items such as the vulnerability ears, but it is not like that everywhere else. On BB and I am sure many other servers, people actually have to farm for their own items. We do not have an abundance of people farming these zones to sell them.
Well obviously you would make the curve so grinding out ferrin could actually reach an 'inefficient' rate or curve compared to just trying to get it to drop. You would also be able to completely manipulate what people run and how much. EVERYONE would be running dailies and weeklies and you could make harder zones or the ones people plan run less pay out more. Contested zones could be populated by more than 1-2 groups by putting more ferrin quests in them. You could get more people RAIDING by putting in more kinds ferrin weeklies for specific raid kills. Want people to run something more? Reward more ferrin for it. done. TSO did it. Other MMO's do it and it works splendidly. But fine if not ferrin then what? Whats the plan to offset the horrendous RNG? 'As is' isn't good enough and when you have so many people both complaining and coming up with many alternatives this is how you know something is broken. If not Ferrin make it encounter specific currency then. You kill 'Heroic mob 435' 15-20 times you have enough 'heroic mob 435' tokens to buy one item you would want from his table. Tokens are no-trade as well as the version of the item you buy being no-trade so you can't farm on one character to buy everything for your others. OR have loot drops tracked on a per character basis so it rotates the items according to what loot they have seen. OR at least make it so drop rates or more leveled out on a per server basis instead of so many peaks and valley's OR come up with your own idea to fix this problem instead of thinking everything is fine because it most definitely is not. EQ2's RNG is particularly bad. Everyone I personally know farmed Oss EH for months just for that wrist of grand auras and got nothing. But then no more than a week ago it started dropping like candy, like a 90% drop rate. The vulnerability ears are still scarce and we farmed those zones even more. This is just stupid for so many reasons. Streaks and dry spells for loot drops = BAD. Not interesting. Not fun.
Can you explain how EQ2's RNG is worse than any other game/system that uses exact weighted drops on equal weight? RNG has one word in it that ceases to exist if we do anything in the suggestions you have proposed. The word is Random. EverQuest games in general have always had that random element to them. If we wanted everyone to get a specific reward after completing X zone a specific number of times the item would be hooked up on an achievement not on a drop table. The fact is no matter what system we come up with someone will not like the system and do the same thing you are doing now. Fighting to get it changed so it fits your playstyle.
How is it no longer random? Some of these are suggesting it be OFFSET so we aren't COMPLETELY DEPENDENT on it being random. Was loot in TSO no longer random because you could eventually buy items off the black market vendor? Nope. Is loot no longer random if its weighted to decrease or increase odds over time? Nope, still random, just not 100% random as much as a simple program can be random anyway. Is it no longer random when it could drop very quickly or not at all but you know you will be able to get it after 20 runs at least instead of not at all? Nope, that would actually be two systems working simultaneously. Maybe i'm being 'tim technical' here but this is at its heart a technical problem. Okay, and 'tradition' is a horrible defense for anything. But i'll tell you I certainly don't remember EQ1 or any other video game for that matter having such an erratic drop rate for items. Maybe you need to look at the code for how things are chosen to drop or code for other games. It maybe as simple as the percentages being poorly chosen. None of this explains why when new items were introduced mid-stream in content they would drop like crazy on day one then take a sharp dive which means something is impacting the loot drop rates, knowingly or not. And if players wanted to run a zone dozens of times with no pay off they would play EQ2 because it happens here A LOT. Maybe there should be an achievement, just don't make it low. SOMETHING. The entire goal here is to prevent players from running a zone so many times they start resenting the game and still not getting the seemingly 'common' item they are shooting for. We aren't talking mythicals or ethereals here, just fabled items. Again with these poor arguments. Hey someone will always be mad about it so why do anything ever. You should be shooting for pleasing as many people as possible if the request is reasonable. Not refusing to do anything unless you have the magic bullet to solve all loot complaints everywhere. FYI I got all the heroic items I want and the way it came about was ridiculous and I DREAD having to ever go through it ever again. But yeah I guess my playstyle is some where along the lines 'not a fan of running a zone 20 times with no pay off', silly me.
Hey, that's a fantastic idea. I understand that you meant it at something else, but consider this: The reason you put items into a zone is because you want people to run the zone (sometimes run it a lot) and get those items. If the odds of getting the drop are 1 in 100, why NOT put in an achievement for getting ONE item of your choice from that zone after 100 clears? Most people will never run a heroic 100 times - they get old faster than that. If someone DOES run it 100 times, by that time the item is decently old anyhow. Plus, you'd only get ONE item (of your choice) off the zone's loot table, compared to like 25 that are on the loot table. At least it would make each one of those additional runs when you get nothing add up to some stretch goal. Ultimately, you want people running your zones, you want people grouping, doing heroics.. having some sense of (eventual) certainty would increase overall zone usage, increase number of groups, help liven up the servers, etc.
To follow up on Neiloch's post, he hit the nail on the head with "'not a fan of running a zone 20 times with no pay off'. It's not as much the RNG's fault, as the relatively low odds being fed to it. At some points the odds of getting anything for your effort become low enough that the mouse doesn't really want the damn cookie any more, and wanders off. Instead of the challenge being "Can you kill the mob?" Scorcher for your Vigor charm - the challenge becomes "Are you bored enough to run the zone 96 times with no intermediate reward" for you Vigor III charm. Sure, there was always an element of chance. But we've taken that to the extreme to the point where the stretches of no reward at all demotivate people into not bothering. I can only convince my guild to run the event heroics so many times, coming away with nothing for their effort, before I can't get people to run them any more. * And no, legendary crap doesn't count as a reward. It's just clutter to be dealt with.
Just having 4 items on a boss is a leg up on many other games. Now that's true RNG Look, rare items are going to be rare. When you get those items is going to be random. We have no plans to change that. You can call my arguments poor all you want. But this is the exact reason why developers typically do not talk/post much about these sort of decisions. No matter what we do or say is going to please you guys. I applaud you guys coming up with ideas to make getting loot easier/more fun for you guys. That's very cool. We just feel making loot in our game even easier than it already is to obtain will just muddy the waters even more with loot making all that loot then considered a trophy not an accomplishment. You say its just the fabled stuff... Fabled stuff is supposed to be the good stuff! Mythicals are supposed to be a huge deal. Its changes to availability of loot that has made those tags a lot less meaningful. I would say RNG is going to be part of the game for a long time to come.
It's the max/min mindset. They absolutely need an item, but would much rather not have to deal with any sort of randomness (which is why they max/min in the first place). Give people too much and the mob is a loot piñata. Make it a small chance and RNG is the root of all evil.
If you're insistent on RNG being the ultimate decider of whether players' efforts pay off, then at least weigh it off some method of machine learning. Raid encounters for example where the RNG for armor patterns is based on the makeup of the raid. This was something that was discussed often when patterns were first introduced in ROK, and we've not heard much evolution of whatever algorithms were in place. Neiloch and others are simply insisting that those who really want those rare drops do in fact put in the time to run those zones, even if they're as difficult as Oss EH or terribly un-fun as Den. Insisting that we deal with it because RNG is rather lame.
I can't believe the point is being missed by this much. Stop saying nothing will please us. We just gave you roughly 3 pages of 'pleasing' solutions and variations on them. Almost any change would be pleasing because it would be extremely hard to make this current system worse. Who said easier? How is any of this 'easier?' Do you consider simply spending time a part of 'difficulty?' It isn't. Running a zone 20 times vs 1 isn't 'harder' its just something being done 20 times instead of one. I suppose you can call trying to convince people to run something for the umpteenth time or convincing yourself to spend even more time doing it part of the 'difficulty' or maybe drumming up justification but that doesn't seem like a good way to design content for difficulty. We just want an upper limit, a ceiling on getting items. No ones asking that it be super low. We've specifically asked that it be set so high that a 'random' drop could still occur before its even hit. Its really all quite simple, knowing for a fact if I run something x times I will get something I want is more motivating than the chance I may NEVER see the items I want. I say fabled because I am getting PLENTY of other fabled items that are unwanted, meanwhile the other 'fabled' items I actually want seem much more rare for some reason. I imagine the drop rates of legendary and other fabled items are just as spastic but they aren't going to be as noticeable when no one is actively shooting for them. Good. Great. Fine. Just don't make it the sole means of loot distribution when things can be so insanely lopsided. If it were one or the other it wouldn't be so bad tbh. Unfortunately what happens is it 'cycles' for different people at different times. While some people are drowning in the loot they want others are seriously wondering if their chests are repeatedly bugged because they haven't seen it in MONTHS. +1
There is no point in running these zones for loot imo. You are better off getting a second job at Daybreak and buying it from a botter.
There is no "fair" RNG in EQ2 when the same person logs in once or twice a week and gets an Ethereal/Mystical drop within a few hours, and has 3 within a couple months, compared to the person that plays almost every day for 2-3 hours for those same months who gets zero. If that is the RNG the devs are happy with, I'm very happy to play something else and only play EQ2 a few hours a week outside of raiding.
I'm not seeing a single direct defense for the current loot system. Just reasons why not to do any other system and not even direct flaws or arguments against any of those. This leads me to believe this system is literally indefensible yet we are still using it.
There is something terribly wrong with the RNG when I have been able to get two primordial fragments from Sundered Frontier within 3 hours for each; one for each character, and then not able to get another fragment after 14 hours on 3 different days, and counting. This also includes the 4 hours each weekend spent harvesting hiven roots in Phantom Sea (until the last hemotoxin recipe update) for raiding, and I have never got a spellshard or foundation.
