Roughly 9 hours of Rampaging.. 1 Petrified Scale.

diggot

Thank you very much Cryptic for your lovely way of making sure my effort of farming close to 30 Rampages today were rewarded, as always with all these events and things to do. At least i got almost 30 SCR on each of the 3 characters used for farming.
Now i just need 5 more, and with this luck, it'll be next year.

beezeeze

That's RGN for you, but hey you can always put that SCR toward getting yourself a nice set of heroics.

biffsmackwell

gradii said:

Agreed, the rampage token system needs to change.

Oy, don't say that; first thing that comes to mind is 1 guaranteed token per run... 975 of each token per piece.

guyhumual

You want to talk insane drop rates, I've been playing this game since before On Alert, and I just got my first On Alert villain costume drop. That's 4 years of running alerts, no idea how many I've done, but I finally got a rare drop. I got 87 level 40s, probably hundred if not over a thousand alerts in that time, and one rare drop. I have no idea how the math works but it's not in my favor. I think I might have two of those rampage items, one from Gravitar and one from the sky alert, but admittedly I haven't done many rampages.

biffsmackwell

I could be wrong, but I think only first place in DPS (not shown by the scoreboard at the end of the alert) gets a small chance at the rewards. So unless you're building a powerhouse Freeform character, you might not ever really have a chance at the rewards.

riverocean

Personally I think there's something weird with Petrified Scales. I have 11 Superdense Diamonds, 11 Bearings, 5 ignimbrites and like three Petrified Scales. And that's from just casual play - not really trying. Gravi drops diamonds like it's no big deal. But those scales.. it seems like they never ever drop.

jaazaniah1

Last Gravitar I did 20+ runs and got 1 token. Did 3 runs of LI and got 1. That's RNG.

My experience is that SC and LI now seem to give 1 token on average for every 4-5 runs. Gravitar and F&I can go faster and it feels to me that the drop rate is now more like 1:10.

This is based on acquiring 25 sets since the inception of the Rampage system.

riverocean

jaazaniah1 said:

Last Gravitar I did 20+ runs and got 1 token. Did 3 runs of LI and got 1. That's RNG.

My experience is that SC and LI now seem to give 1 token on average for every 4-5 runs. Gravitar and F&I can go faster and it feels to me that the drop rate is now more like 1:10.

This is based on acquiring 25 sets since the inception of the Rampage system.

True.. random is well random. Some people will have great luck. But most will have mixed results. I'm not sure I'd prefer another grindy mcgrindfest though. I wish they would just outright sell a set for Keys in the C-store. I know..I know "pay to win" and all. But none of the alternatives are all that much better.

chaelk

F&I zero but not surprising, havent done many.
gravity- ONE out of about 100 now. of course, on my third acct
LI - 2 before they changed the drop rate. then zero
SC - 5 before they changed the drop rate. then zero

---

classic example of RNG luck. IN WOW discussing with a guild member how to raise money.
another guildee joins in with " do dungeon runs, you get plenty of drops"
"WE've done that, we get nothing"
another guildee joins in "you're wrong. I'll take you on a run and show you."
so 2 wiht good RNG luck and 2 with bad do the run.
we all roll.
at the end one fo the goods says " see all the stuff we got."
we read out our haul " white, grey and a large repair bill"
"What?how"
" you have good luck on the rolls, we don't. so as soon as you rolled, we had no chance."

---

Jaazinah, that is the difference between your luck and mine.
you have 25 sets,
I have zero PIECES.

---

this is also why the rampage queues take so long now, most people have either got what they want or given up.​​

lordwolfy

I feel your pain with the drop rate. I have gotten 1 petrified scale ever since the start of the Rampage system and have run all the rampages. Do you know what I have to show for my effort? 1 scale. That is it...nothing else has ever dropped for me in any rampage alert.

draogn

Rewards through out the game need to be re-evaluated.

The custom alerts should be giving more then 3-4 globals as their final reward (especially FM and Grab) and Red Winters reward being xp only is silly.

Then there are the recog prices, if they planned to add more ways to get tokens then those ways should have been in first. Even then nothing in those vendors should cost 975 tokens. If some of the items were under priced then only those items should had their prices increased (*though not to the degree that they were raised*). 975 tokens should never have been considered for the travel powers. They were hardly worth the original price.

aiqa

Random in this case does not mean you have just as much chance of getting one token to drop for any arbitrary number of rampages you run. Getting a token drop is partly random, but the chance itself is not random at all. It just a matter of running the rampages often enough for token drops to average out.

sistersilicon

biffsmackwell said:

gradii said:

Agreed, the rampage token system needs to change.

Oy, don't say that; first thing that comes to mind is 1 guaranteed token per run... 975 of each token per piece.

Yeah, I used to advocate for that... until I saw the new SCR prices. Now I'm starting to think that Cryptic needs to fix their damn RNG. (Says a Diablo 3 player who "farmed" the Uliana's Strategem monk set by getting three pieces in one spending spree with Kadala after finding one of those treasure goblins that drops Blood Shards. If your RNG only seems to produce losing streaks, you're running a casino.)

jaazaniah1

This is my perspective. To get 25 sets I need 24 tokens (so 600). If the average drop rate were 1:8 across all Rampages (which is what it seems to me) that's around 4800 runs across all the Rampages. Luck is something you see across a small set of runs. Across that large a number the drop rate has to average out (or else there is a fundamental bug in the program that apportions tokens, and who knows, that might be the case). Last Gravitar my luck over 20 runs was bad (1 token). Next time I might get 3 in 8 runs. I've had cases (F&I) where I've gone 25 runs without a drop. I try to stay even-keeled and not get too frustrated or too complacent.

aiqa said:

Random in this case does not mean you have just as much chance of getting one token to drop for any arbitrary number of rampages you run. Getting a token drop is partly random, but the chance itself is not random at all. It just a matter of running the rampages often enough for token drops to average out.

guyhumual

biffsmackwell said:

I could be wrong, but I think only first place in DPS (not shown by the scoreboard at the end of the alert) gets a small chance at the rewards. So unless you're building a powerhouse Freeform character, you might not ever really have a chance at the rewards.

I think you're wrong, my DPS toons have never gotten a drop from Gravitar or Sky Command, my healer got the drop from Sky Command, and my heal/tank/DPS hybrid got the Gravitar drop. This costume drop I just got was from a force tank with PFF as her passive. I wasn't even dealing enough damage to grab agro with fully charged force cascades. I think it's completely random and lady luck isn't on my side.

diggot

lordwolfy said:

I feel your pain with the drop rate. I have gotten 1 petrified scale ever since the start of the Rampage system and have run all the rampages. Do you know what I have to show for my effort? 1 scale. That is it...nothing else has ever dropped for me in any rampage alert.

What i find even stranger then the decision to implement a bad system like this, is how the playerbase hasn't rioted against the nerfs that are kicking on the people already down ...
But then again... i guess that's why CO has gone from 3-4 Rencity instances to 2.. devs decisions are chasing people away.

I've always thought that as a dev, your goal is to make changes that attracts people and improves the game, not the opposite.

Also... If players didn't get many drops from Rampages to start with.. why was it nerfed anyway?.

biffsmackwell

I was talking about the alert villain costume drops, like Foxbat and Jack Fool, not Gravitar or Sky Command. Do those eve have costume drops? I dunno.

You may have been in a team with tanks/people using challenging strikes, could be the reason you didn't pull aggro.

But anyway, like I said, I'm not sure if this is true or not in the first place.

diggot

jaazaniah1 said:

Last Gravitar my luck over 20 runs was bad (1 token). Next time I might get 3 in 8 runs. I've had cases (F&I) where I've gone 25 runs without a drop. I try to stay even-keeled and not get too frustrated or too complacent.

This to me is identical to sticking your head in the sand and keep on playing, no matter what manure the devs throws at you.

Me on the other hand, i've never been one for shutting up when i see wrongdoings or bad judgement in games
in terms of development, changes etc etc. It made me quit WoW, Rift and Wildstar - because bad balancing.

guyhumual

biffsmackwell said:

But anyway, like I said, I'm not sure if this is true or not in the first place.

No I understand, we're both guessing here, but my main, Masquerade, is a DPS beast, often the most dominate toon in the alert. She takes agro from tanks despite having a support passive. It's not always the case but more often then not. I use her a lot but have never gotten a drop from alerts or rampages, I've seen others get drops, but I've never gotten one myself. This time I was not the most dominate character. I was watching the damage output and I could see the chunks of health coming off from my hits vs this other toon, I may well have been second best, I wasn't killing even the low level mobs full charge but I was dealing better then 50%. I needed to spend some time turtling though, and that means no DPS, so over all I have no doubt that I wasn't dealing anywhere near the same damage as my teammate.

jaazaniah1

Well, you can do as you like of course (leaving soon?), but I intend to keep on enjoying playing the game and earning tokens while I do it (and not letting someone else tell me that I shouldn't like the game because there is something they don't like).

I call out problems that look like problems to me (e.g. currencies that bind to character, not to player), but I won't complain about an aspect of the game that has done me no wrong.

diggot said:

This to me is identical to sticking your head in the sand and keep on playing, no matter what manure the devs throws at you.

Me on the other hand, i've never been one for shutting up when i see wrongdoings or bad judgement in games
in terms of development, changes etc etc. It made me quit WoW, Rift and Wildstar - because bad balancing.

diggot

jaazaniah1 said:

I call out problems that look like problems to me (e.g. currencies that bind to character, not to player), but I won't complain about an aspect of the game that has done me no wrong.

Increasing the time it takes to acquire items by roughly 400% has a very negative impact on my fun.
And then not rewarding 9 hours of effort, is pouring salt in the wound.

I'm not saying you should stop playing because something i see as an error. All i'm hoping is that more players
will wake up and smell the coffee. Because if they can increase grinding to such stupid heights without much resistance, then the stupid changes will just keep coming because no one says anything.

One can still voice their opinions AND enjoy the game. But if its your opinion that there's nothing wrong with these changes that has many very aggitated, then continue to enjoy the game as you see fit and don't mind me.

pantagruel01

biffsmackwell said:

I was talking about the alert villain costume drops, like Foxbat and Jack Fool, not Gravitar or Sky Command. Do those eve have costume drops? I dunno.

Open mission award drops (appear in the circle) are random and can go to anyone. Boss drops I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if they use the normal rules for drops, which means the drop goes to the team (or individual) with the highest damage, and resource rewards are split based on team damage (from looking at resource rewards in F&I, I don't believe team-ups count as teams for this purpose).

crypticbuxom

Token convert system (2>1) or a mission where you do one of each Rampage and get a random token box. Maybe both.

Or they can just increase the drop rate or outright remove the decreased drop chance mechanic that is broken in a thousand ways.​​

championshewolf

biffsmackwell wrote: »

I was talking about the alert villain costume drops, like Foxbat and Jack Fool, not Gravitar or Sky Command. Do those eve have costume drops? I dunno.

You may have been in a team with tanks/people using challenging strikes, could be the reason you didn't pull aggro.

But anyway, like I said, I'm not sure if this is true or not in the first place.

Costume drops are assigned randomly to someone in the team if they drop, it's not based on who does the most DPS, takes the most damage or does the most healing or anything like that. Random is just random. Hence why the scoreboard just shows a flat number for everyone. I know it isn't top DPS either because I've gotten the loot drop on my healer before, and I've seen others get the loot drops when I was using my ice DPS.

Why most seasonal event fights that scoreboard doesn't matter either, and the reward is given to you as long as you participate. Hell I got placed on the scoreboard enough just by taking a random AE shot passing by the Mega Destroid event a few times and still got a reward circle out of it. Think the loot crate gave me a a backup device to if I recall.​​

sammiefighter

gradii said:

biffsmackwell said:

gradii said:

Agreed, the rampage token system needs to change.

Oy, don't say that; first thing that comes to mind is 1 guaranteed token per run... 975 of each token per piece.

Better idea which would require the least work would be a rampage daily mission, run the rampage 3 times recieve one guaranteed token.

Yes, i'd agree. The true drop rate equivalent of "rampage tokens" to obtain the items would make very sad / shocked pandas of you. And the daily/weekly, quest think alot higher than 3x1 or even 3x4 for 1 item.

Also I'd have to go digging through the PTS threads, but somewhere back in Halloween setup it was highly implied there is a choice .. or err un/official policy. We can have dailies and locked currencies (SCR, GCR), or random drops and account currencies. With infinite characters devs don't want people bypassing the time-gate via dalies by allowing shared currencies

So, to disappoint the TA fans, no 4x clones of perfect teams to farm GCR daily and syphon it to one character, devs thought of that. Same would work for Rampage the weekly/currency and item would be bound to character. Not sure if devs are interested in a 'both' system, but I'll point you to the rare costume drop rate and SCR cost before you ask. My guess each would option get halved of current rate to keep the current average total rate, plus dev'ing bound+unbound currencies and the fixing the shop to count right sounds hard.

Not saying the system is right (or I even like it), but trying to take a good stab at what the approvalable options might actually be. What of the approved ponies do you like best folks?

jaazaniah1

To me this shouldn't be an issue since you have to put the same amount of time in either way. The multi-character farming just compresses the time needed. Is paying player (i.e. not Life Time or silvers who don't actually buy anything with real money) retention really higher if you force the payoff to go longer?

sammiefighter said:

So, to disappoint the TA fans, no 4x clones of perfect teams to farm GCR daily and syphon it to one character, devs thought of that. Same would work for Rampage the weekly/currency and item would be bound to character. Not sure if devs are interested in a 'both' system, but I'll point you to the rare costume drop rate and SCR cost before you ask. My guess each would option get halved of current rate to keep the current average total rate, plus dev'ing bound+unbound currencies and the fixing the shop to count right sounds hard.?

biffsmackwell

FYI, plenty of Lifetime players spend lots of money on the game. Not sure if that's what you meant because the wording could be taken either way, but, just sayin'.

chaelk

I've had the jack fool neck from an alert, on a ranged support. no I don't have any specialist dps.
can't remember who got the ripper helmet or the street land jacket but it can't have been highest dps on any of mine​​

draogn

biffsmackwell said:

FYI, plenty of Lifetime players spend lots of money on the game. Not sure if that's what you meant because the wording could be taken either way, but, just sayin'.

I'm betting there are some silver players that spend a good amount of money in game as well.

chaelk

I have LTS, gold an silver accts. I spend money on each.
people spend what they can and what they want.​​

jaazaniah1

I just mean that people can chose to play this game for free and never put any money into it (silvers) or get the LTS and not have to put any more money into it since after a certain point the game is paying them to play (i.e. once the cost of the LTS is exceeded by the total value of the monthly zen stipend). I'm LTS and still put real money into the game too.

I'm just of the mind set that if Rampage Tokens, Q (and one might even say Zen; imagine if you had buy zen separately for each character) can go into a single account then why not all the currencies? If they thought that making currencies bind to account helped create paying player retention they would have done away with those sharable currencies.

Up to 485 SCR on the grind towards Valerian's Halo; only about 33 days more grinding with that one guy.

biffsmackwell said:

FYI, plenty of Lifetime players spend lots of money on the game. Not sure if that's what you meant because the wording could be taken either way, but, just sayin'.

guyhumual

jaazaniah1 said:

Up to 485 SCR on the grind towards Valerian's Halo; only about 33 days more grinding with that one guy.

I feel your pain, my main only has a little more then 500 and so I don't expect to unlock anything till next fall

chaelk

.

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

I'm just of the mind set that if Rampage Tokens, Q (and one might even say Zen; imagine if you had buy zen separately for each character) can go into a single account then why not all the currencies? If they thought that making currencies bind to account helped create paying player retention they would have done away with those sharable currencies.

Up to 485 SCR on the grind towards Valerian's Halo; only about 33 days more grinding with that one guy.

altaholics list is the answer to your question
Imagine farming with a huge pile of alts for normal recognition.
I know with my first 2 accts, I could buy everything at current prices, if it was shared.
even my silver acct has a pile on each character already

---

Zen used to be splitable between games, from your wallet. with ARC, they changed it to pick a game before buying. Makes people more likely to spend more, if they want it on more than 1 game.​​

theravenforce

Yeah, I've been noticing recently (since TA hit LIVE), tokens in Rampages have become an annoyance to get.

I did create a thread on this some time ago...

EDIT: Found it! Justice Gear and Tokens

I suggested a few different systems there to the one we have currently.

diggot

I would really like to what exactly what the % is that a token will drop for a player in a Rampage, and how much the diminishing return effects said % per run. And then i would like to know exactly what is done to fix this appaling feature.

chaelk

as far as I can remember from various comments
max of 5 tokens per run, per group of 10 people
so half miss out straight away.
10% chance of getting the token, if you're one of the 5.

how accurate that is, is anyone's guess.​​

diggot

I would like to know, in writing, what is going to be done to sovle this issue that is aggravating ALOT of players. Some players have ran 50+ Rampages in 1 weekend and no tokens. THAT is not rewarding gameplay.

captainhunter1

Yep, random chance of rewards is bad.

Save that stuff for the lockbox mechanics.

They ought to implement a Rampage token system. Every Rampage you win, you receive one Token. You save up Tokens and turn them in later for the items you want. That way your efforts always earn you something towards what you want (pretty much like the Reputation system). Effort should equal reward, not "I just wasted 50 rampages worth of my time for nothing"

nbkxs

Do the same character twice, change, if you score, change, and don't run them again, they won't score again. Keep swapping characters until each of them scores once, or you get all of the ones you need, don't run more than twice each, until the q daily resets. I found that this is the best success. But even then, sometimes sky command refuses to pay out, you'll have to do it straight while it's up to manage the 6 that you need.​​

markhawkman

captainhunter1 said:

Yep, random chance of rewards is bad.

Save that stuff for the lockbox mechanics.

They ought to implement a Rampage token system. Every Rampage you win, you receive one Token. You save up Tokens and turn them in later for the items you want. That way your efforts always earn you something towards what you want (pretty much like the Reputation system). Effort should equal reward, not "I just wasted 50 rampages worth of my time for nothing"

Yeah, and Champs already has enough reps. Maybe just make the things cost astronomical amounts in the UNTIL or UNITY rep stores?

markhawkman

ok, that was partly sarcasm. It'd be kinda like how the rep conversion for "elite marks" in STO works. Not sure how much, but if the devs go for the idea they'll make it high enough that people will whine about it being too high.

diggot

captainhunter1 said:

Yep, random chance of rewards is bad.

Save that stuff for the lockbox mechanics.

They ought to implement a Rampage token system. Every Rampage you win, you receive one Token. You save up Tokens and turn them in later for the items you want. That way your efforts always earn you something towards what you want (pretty much like the Reputation system). Effort should equal reward, not "I just wasted 50 rampages worth of my time for nothing"

This is really bad tho. Because knowing the the devs, they will implement a new Rampage currency that requires you to farm each Rampage 50 times to get enough to buy 1 Token... all for the sake of grinding. When a player sits down an afternoon and decide to farm for tokens to get the Justice gear, farms 30-40 Rampages and gets nothing - that's nothing else then a slap in the face.

chaelk

nbkxs wrote: »

Do the same character twice, change, if you score, change, and don't run them again, they won't score again. Keep swapping characters until each of them scores once, or you get all of the ones you need, don't run more than twice each, until the q daily resets. I found that this is the best success. But even then, sometimes sky command refuses to pay out, you'll have to do it straight while it's up to manage the 6 that you need.

I've found swapping characters does absolutely nothing and farming in a row does absolutely nothing but then I crap out on RNGs in every game.​​

magpieuk2014

I will admit to have given up playing Rampages and looking for Justice Gear (and everything which comes after it) as the whole process is painful and being made even less attractive by poor dev balancing decisions.

There's nothing wrong with a random drop system in principle - it does avoid all the problems that come with scoreboards for damage/healing etc - but there does need to be some reward for persistence as well.