The reason I say this is that...aside from actual missions in VB/Monster Island, Open World Fights, Adventure Packs (Serpent Lantern, Demonflame, Resistance), Comic Series (Whiteout, Aftershock), Fatal Err0r, Steel Crusade, UNITY & UNITY2 missions and Nemesis Confrontation...Rampages are the only things out there that a level 40 can do at full power, without being altered by alerts which are capped at level 30.
And if people don't want to do that...they can always venture into PvP, duels or RP. Personally I find some rampages (Gravitar & Fire and Ice) nice to do from time to time, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one either.
I'm in love with incredibly large scale battles myself, 20~50 Players participating is where I like to be. Here in CO though, the best I can get are Rampages. I want to feel small, but important at the same time, and that's a hard balance that nothing I've played has gotten perfectly. There are a few games that have gotten pretty close, but are still so far.
If I run each alert once a day during their active time
Once per day? I assumed you meant one guaranteed drop per 3 days. At once per day, you've ridiculously trivialized the token drop rate; to keep it in balance, it should be 10 tokens per item of Justice gear, instead of 2.
Once per day? I assumed you meant one guaranteed drop per 3 days. At once per day, you've ridiculously trivialized the token drop rate; to keep it in balance, it should be 10 tokens per item of Justice gear, instead of 2.
The problem is...would people want to continually run these to get one piece of gear if it was one guaranteed drop per 3 days?
People in this thread have already stated that they don't even run some of the other alerts because of various issues with it.
If you are guaranteed to walk away from the time that Gravitar is up (3 day period) with three tokens and pieces of Justice Gear cost this:
^ You have one fifth of the cost for one of your two or three pieces of gear for one character.
So unless you really do only have one level 40, I don't see why making Justice Gear slightly more accessible to everyone by incentivising the continual running of rampages is a bad thing.
If they were to adopt this suggestion alone, I did state in that previous post why I think there wouldn't be anything wrong with it.
Seriously though, if this idea was magically adopted and implemented right now and began during the next rotation, what do you think would happen?
People would run Lemurian Invasion, finish beating up the Harbinger and all come away with one token.
Reaction: "OMG no way! Let's run again!"
They all run again, but this time everyone who has already received a guaranteed token will be running with lower drop rates. Whilst it will not be impossible for them to walk away with 2 tokens, it will be incredibly lucky if they do.
The progression that is meant to be signified by Justice Gear is not even a reality for some players because they either don't like the rampage or they run it and run it and run it for the duration it is up and come away empty handed.
I've been in situations where entire durations of Fire and Ice/Sky Command/Lemurian Invasion/Gravitar are up and I've run them on characters across my account and have nothing to show for it aside from costume unlocks which I've already got...or auras and Q'nite. Not exactly encouraging.
The whole idea is to make Rampages more appealing. If people know that running it three times during it's duration on rotation will allow them to walk away with something(s), they are more likely to join up and try.
Yes, there will be players who no longer want to run Rampages once they have their three tokens, but there are more players who'd still play on, be it for other players sake, potential personal gain or for enjoyment.
To me, it just seems unnecessary to drag out being able to acquire Justice Gear. I get that it's in the name of progression and the idea behind it but when this "progression" is only pursued by a small amount of players, because of the way its designed...that's not much progress and doesn't seem accessible to everyone.
That's just my take on matters. I would never expect Cryptic to take both suggestions and plop that in game because within the space of a month you could deck out quite a few of your characters.
So unless you really do only have one level 40, I don't see why making Justice Gear slightly more accessible to everyone by incentivising the continual running of rampages is a bad thing.
The way to incentivize the continual running of rampages is to make sure people don't immediately get their gear.
No, people are better incentivized to continue running them with random drops.
You aren't. It wouldn't be all that hard for me to get twelve -- just run the alert four times per day with four different characters.
The way to incentivize the continual running of rampages is to make sure people don't immediately get their gear.
The whole point of endgame progression is that it takes a long time.
1 - Okay, but what happens when a rotation goes round, you run it as many times as you have time for and you get nothing? Because of your schedule you miss the other days of the rampage. Does that mean that you should play more CO in order to have a better chance at getting tokens to achieve progression? I don't see that as a viable option for people who aren't constantly on CO.
2 - Right, you've come away with this from either not understanding my suggestion the way I intended or me not being clear enough. I'm going to go with me not being clear enough. This guaranteed drop system would mean that if I took one of my toons: Mentella and ran Gravitar once a day for the duration of her time up and then took the rest of my account out and ran Gravitar in between....at the very most I'd expect out of all the runs I do, to achieve maybe...5 tokens including the three guaranteed ones.
3 - It becomes less of an incentive and more of a burden when either the drop rate is too low or the content is not enjoyable. I am not a developer but I do believe that it would be harder to adjust the actual rampage to be more enjoyable than altering the drops.
4 - I understand this, but when does "a long time" turn into "why bother?". It's not like there is some "Justice Level content" that is the ultimate end game for CO. Endgame progression should be accessible to everyone and even if it has to be dragged out somewhat there should be *something* there to push people on.
If everyone was limited to having 1 level 40 then I could see why my suggestion would be crazy. To some this whole Justice thing is a non issue so they don't care or there may be those who believe that my suggestion is just flat out crazy.
At this point in time, if someone like TT/LordGar/Radioscience starts talking on here, which would be quite odd, this is just a discussion regarding a suggestion. (Not saying they can't chip in, so if you guys happen to be reading...feel free lol).
I am against increasing the amount of tokens needed for the gear...it just seems unnecessary. I'd only suggest lowering the amount needed if they were unwilling to alter drop rates.
By no means should the two suggestions I originally suggested be used with each other. That would be crazy.
1 - Okay, but what happens when a rotation goes round, you run it as many times as you have time for and you get nothing? Because of your schedule you miss the other days of the rampage. Does that mean that you should play more CO in order to have a better chance at getting tokens to achieve progression?
That is, in fact, what endgame gear grinds are about.
3 - It becomes less of an incentive and more of a burden when either the drop rate is too low or the content is not enjoyable.
The drop rate isn't too low. As grinds go, Justice gear is actually pretty modest, there's plenty of stuff in the game that takes longer to get than Justice gear.
No, people are better incentivized to continue running them with random drops.
Just a personal disagree here. I would actually run them with a 3-day incentive. As it is I have run about 80 or so total rampages and here's my progress:
10 Salvage - have these from lockboxes I guess, but never anywhere else
2 Petrified Scales - haven't seen one
2 Superdense Diamonds - no clue
2 Hypercooled Ignimbrites - nope
2 Destreum Bearings - never gotten these...not sure any of this stuff really exists
I literally gave up Rampages to just play an level alts as a use of my 40 hours a week gaming time. Running Rampages has so far netted me zip, zilch, nada so if I'm going to grind out some endgame I'll do other things. If I had a 3-day guarantee then I'd run these ALL the time since I have 5 screens of 40's.
I spent 3 weeks straight farming for Justice gear for ONE level 40 and have zip to show for it so there you go. I can't be the only one dejected by the low low rate. Even a better rate would work, since getting even one component would be a "lure" for me to play them more.
As it is I have run about 80 or so total rampages and here's my progress:
If you really ran 80 rampages with no drops, you're doing something wrong; I don't have exact numbers, but my drop rate appears to be in the 20-25% range. There is some reason to think character rotation is important, I don't generally use characters who will get less than 900Q (so not more than 3x/day with a single character).
Salvage can only be gotten from lockboxes, either directly (by opening them) or indirectly (someone opened one, got a crate of drifter salvage, and sold it). I believe crates run ~100G and contain 10.
If you really ran 80 rampages with no drops, you're doing something wrong; I don't have exact numbers, but my drop rate appears to be in the 20-25% range.
How can one "do something wrong"? You run the rampage, you complete all requirements before the timer expires, and you "win". Then RNGesus either kicks you in the sidekicks or, if you're astonishingly lucky, blesses you with 1/24 of progress toward your ultimate goal.
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Dunno. Not visiting the reward circles? It's not purely random, there's some reason to think that the number of times a given character has run a rampage during a given rotation affects drop rate (you're more likely to get a token the first time you run it), but zero tokens from 80 tries is well outside the plausible range.
I'll also say this, do you guys even know how CO's random number generator even works in this game?
No, but it doesn't matter all that much unless it's saving seeds. There's enough noise being generated by a few hundred players that even a cruddy RNG will look random. They're probably using whatever is standardly available in the language/OS they used to write the game; all major programming languages have PRNGs good enough for gaming available.
So, let's take a step back from whether the RNG is or is not broken (perhaps something about a character can make that character completely unable to get tokens?), and separate this into two problems: how much effort should be required, on average, to get a piece of justice gear, and how much randomness should be involved.
Let's say that the drop rates for tokens became 100% on the first time per day, 80% on the second, 60% on the third, 40% on the fourth, and 20% on fifth and subsequent. Now, change an item of Justice gear to require 10 tokens of each type.
This is roughly the same difficulty as it has now -- much higher token drop rate, much higher token requirement. Would this make you more inclined to do rampages? Less inclined? No effect?
So, let's take a step back from whether the RNG is or is not broken (perhaps something about a character can make that character completely unable to get tokens?), and separate this into two problems: how much effort should be required, on average, to get a piece of justice gear, and how much randomness should be involved.
Let's say that the drop rates for tokens became 100% on the first time per day, 80% on the second, 60% on the third, 40% on the fourth, and 20% on fifth and subsequent. Now, change an item of Justice gear to require 10 tokens of each type.
This is roughly the same difficulty as it has now -- much higher token drop rate, much higher token requirement. Would this make you more inclined to do rampages? Less inclined? No effect?
That's similar to my suggestion. Raise the token requirement, put a daily cap on it, and guarantee at least one token per successful run. Give RNGesus his vig by giving a sliver of a chance to get one or two bonus tokens.
I suggested 20 tokens per token type per piece of gear, but that's just spit-balling. I'm sure they have some spreadsheet of time to acquire vs. rampage length vs. rotation cycle time vs. rampage success rate that would determine how many tokens will finally be required per item.
If they can determine the value that gives them the grind time they want, and still ensures that success == progress, then rampages will be a much more desirable endgame option. And then they could concentrate on the structural problems with USC and LI.
(On the other hand, if rampages have the "nemesis minions won't spawn for weeks at a time" problem, they might as well burn the entire rampage system to the ground and start over.)
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Lots of great discussion here and I'll say from my end I started running Rampages just to get Justice gear. Somewhere about the 20 run mark I thought "maybe I'm not in the right place?" so I went back to Drifter and re-read all the tips thinking I was being stupid.
In the 40 run range I started asking in Zone if the drops were really in Rampages. In the 60 run range I started to think I was just horribly unlucky or the drop rate was a problem. Finally several runs after that...70's,80's, maybe 90's but I doubt I went over that...I had to just sigh and give up.
Sure maybe I did it wrong somehow. I used 3 different characters and completed each rampage and did the rewards circles multiple times over the span of days. One character I specifically took who's my DPS monster because I thought it was score based.
Eventually I gave up.
I could mention I've played Warlord a hundred times (I've been playing since launch) and never seen a costume piece. In fact I just bought the whole set like a month ago at the auction house. So in all my time I never got a single Warlord costume drop and I've been seeing people with parts for years. I don't think I have 3 years to grind out Justice Gear for a handful of characters is where I'm going with this.
I understand the "grind" people want to protect, but look at the population in game...I think some SLIGHTY elevated drop rates could bring people in, back, or just make QoL for us lifers more enjoyable until the end of days.
At least this thread and the tantalizing numbers people are putting up have me wanting to try some Rampages again. And Pantagruel also made me want to try again, like I just got the Captain America speech of "what...you gave up soldier? Assemble and beat that math hero!"
Well, Justice gear is about 40% better than Heroic gear right? One more slot is 33%, and I'd rate the set bonus as adding an extra 7% betterness.
So, Justice Gear, all three pieces, should take 40% longer to get than getting 3 pieces of Heroic Gear does.
Heroic Gear takes about 30 minutes, once a day for three days. So 90 minutes raised by 40% is about 2 hours.
So every 2 hours worth of rampage time should give, on average, 8 tokens. So the drop chance should be determined by the time a rampage takes.
So say a Rampage on average takes 20 minutes to complete - at 100%, that would be 6 tokens every 2 hours, which means that rampage should actually have a 100% chance to drop a token every time, as well as a 33% chance to drop a second token.
If a Rampage takes 10 minutes on average to complete, then it would only need a 66% drop chance to provide 8 every 2 hours on average.
After all, the usefullness of gear should match the effort required to obtain it, and since Heroic Gear set the standard, we should build off that.
Well, Justice gear is about 40% better than Heroic gear right? One more slot is 33%, and I'd rate the set bonus as adding an extra 7% betterness.
So, Justice Gear, all three pieces, should take 40% longer to get than getting 3 pieces of Heroic Gear does.
Huh? If those numbers were true (not convinced they are), it should be something like 625x as long, based on the logic of how mods work (say, r5 to r9). It's standard to have extremely nonlinear gain vs time spent.
Well, Justice gear is about 40% better than Heroic gear right? One more slot is 33%, and I'd rate the set bonus as adding an extra 7% betterness.
So, Justice Gear, all three pieces, should take 40% longer to get than getting 3 pieces of Heroic Gear does.
performance vs. time consumed is not necessarily a linear relationship. That being said, the best solution is to take RNG out of the picture and allow certain ability of getting justice gear after X number of rampages of each type.
Non-random drops aren't nearly as pleasing. Unexpectedness is "exciting", and given the low level of difficulty with most of the game, no RNG would mean getting Justice Gear would simply be time-based.
Non-random drops aren't nearly as pleasing. Unexpectedness is "exciting", and given the low level of difficulty with most of the game, no RNG would mean getting Justice Gear would simply be time-based.
There are many types of psychological rewards and ways to have players feel satisfaction and give them that feeling of accomplishment that MMOs thrive on - there's not only one way to do things. RNG is widely reviled, and we see many instances of MMOs trying to move away from it - active dodge systems that no longer rely on RNG are quite popular, and are becoming the new standard (once the technology improves, I think critical hits will also shift to new, non-rng methods).
Yes the "Jack In The Box" effect has it's merits, but it seems to be one of those older ideas of how to do things that are starting to lose their luster. I know that in WoW when they made Heroic Badges and Frozen Orbs a thing, which you always received and which you could use to acquire other rewards, I and many other players loved it. Certainly there was nobody lamenting the "unexpectedness" that was lost by going several runs in a row and getting nothing for it just because the game's random number generator spat out some numbers that didn't favor you.
I found infinitely more satisfaction in knowing that if I run dungeon X, I will get reward Y, and that once I have enough of Y I can go and buy reward Z. The feedback is just better. What you're doing is giving you the message that you're making progress, and so players want to do it more.
Let's imagine Super Mario Bros. with RNG. You start level 1-1, you run to the right, stomp some Goombas, bop some coin boxes, then you run up the hill, launch yourself, slide down the flag pole, fail the RNG roll and the game sends you back to the beginning of 1-1. You keep doing this until the game randomly decides that you have progressed... the whole time looking at your friend who is also playing the game, but who got to head to 1-2 right away because he didn't fail his RNG roll the first time. This happens on every level. Did the game just get better? Did the excitement of unexpectedness improve the experience? Or are we maybe picturing the player in this example yelling things that would make the Angry Nintendo Nerd blush?
The main issue with the rat example is that this assumes that the desired outcome is to make players play the content of the game as much as possible, in this case to get players to spam Rampages like crazy. But is this the desired outcome? To make players play the game's limited content so much that they become burned out on it? Shouldn't the desired outcome be that players play it when they feel like it, and enjoy it when they do choose to play it, and feel satisfied with the experience? After all, the game maker loses more than they gain when they burn players out. Rats don't get burned out on food pellets because their brains are the size of a peanut, and because it's food and animals are always hungry. The goal should not be "as much as possible". The goal should be equilibrium - players playing the content at an optimal rate, and feeling an optimal amount of satisfaction while playing it. Certainly not players playing the content like crazy and becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the rate of progress.
The core problem is that it's a token reward system with a certain amount of tokens needed to unlock the actual reward that's the whole point of it all. Either place the actual reward in the random drop table, or do what I agree with; make the tokens absolute drops but increase the amount needed for the unlocks to balance it off.
The current mechanic is akin to an arcade that gives reward coupons based on performance that is needed to unlock prizes at the counter, but all the games there only sometimes give out coupons at all. It's frustrating and would drive me away from wanting to bother with wanting any prize at all.
My eyes glazed over at the bickering over RNG conspiracy theories, so I didn't see if this was suggested.
Make Justice Gear BoE. People farm the hell out of Hi-Pan and Warlord for cores to sell. Or add some cores along the lines of the Dragon's Eye and DU ones.
Amen. That's also why I put bonus tokens in my model. You'll advance to World 1-2, and you get a small chance at starting with a fire flower, too. There's still an RNG roll, but there's no concept of outright failure. If it's balanced right, it can reduce the daily grind without drastically shortening the overall time to acquire. "Hey, I got all 3 tokens in one run! I don't have to drag my arse through two more rounds of Lemurian trash mobs!"
Oh, and the rat isn't a filthy casual, it's just trying to maximize it's limited playing time.
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
good description from Spinnytop.(extremely scrambled text from me)
You have on this thread, someone who has collected 9 sets of Justice gear and someone who has zero tokens from 80 runs.
from what different people have told me, it's;
max of 5 tokens per group.
% chance off actually getting the token(most I've seen is 2 in 1 rampage, every other was 1 or zero.)
diminishing returns on repeat runs with that character. (so if you don't make the rolls to start with you have even less chance after)
Then the non scientific reason that statisticians hate : **** happens.
Some people have really awful 'luck' with RNG.
Best example from me;
playing WOW, discussing with a guildmate how to get more money and having 2 other guildmates chime in with just do dungeon runs. You'll get lots of stuff.
we pointed out that we had. They didn't believe us.
1 dungeon run later:
the other 2 said see you get lots of stuff. at which point we pointed out the couple of grey items we had(and I only got mine because everyone passed) plus a repair bill 10 times the Gold I got.
"oh and this is what you get."
"yes , the RNG just hates some people."
We went craft farming.(oh I hate farming)
MS home lottery advertises 1 in 25 wins. People take this as, I buy 25 tickets, I'll win a prize. Wrong.
It just means you have prizes equal to 4% of the tickets sold.
96% of the tickets are losers and you are more likely to be in that group.
Comparing UNITY missions, which are simple, solo missions with a guaranteed reward of between 1-5 tokens. Which basically you can only fail by quitting or not doing them.
To Rampages which are difficult 10 people alerts, is like riding your bicycle to the end of the driveway then entering a road race and expecting to win.
the X625 is a more accurate rate than 2-3 times.
yes the drop needs to be changed somehow. Balancing the drop rate to need is going to be the hardest.
The new area effect hits: new area, everyone stops doing the old best stuff and starts doing that one. Once they get the goodies from that, they stop. Newer people have less chance of doing the runs and less chance of getting the item.
Also if it's too hard to get the rewards , people stop.
See recent complaints about lack of people queuing for Rampages.
BOE- yes and no. still the same problem, those people with the 'luck' get the items and make a pile of Globals. The others who don't will be scratching around, trying to get the money to get the gear, since they are also likely not getting costume drops to sell either.
Guaranteed drop rate- would have to have a steep drop off to counter the 'luck' advantage but 1 per day guaranteed would keep people interested.
Trade in SCR tokens- at least 20 to 1(over the amount you get from UNITY1 or 2, if you want to do both, you deserve the token)
and only 1 per day (hands up all the people with hundreds of SCR tokens)
and the one which is currently up in rotation.
Those, I would be tempted to make BoP except someone may be collecting for a character which is not yet at 40 or one they are planning to make, once they get a build worked out and the a new slot ready. So BoA is still better.
Token swap - drifter exchange- people put up their spare tokens and what they want to swap for.
1 to1 only.
again limit, 1 trade slot per account, useable once per day.
little room time again, no don't ask
I like a lot of what has been said in the last couple pages.
My personal taste is that I like a certain amount of randomness; a certain degree of unpredictability adds a "Yahoo!" effect when something does drop. I find going after the SCR gear a bit tedious just because it is so predictable. There's a little bit of a thrill when the last token for a set of gear comes in. OTOH. I know other people struggle with RNG (or just hate it); for me it's never been hard to build up enough tokens in what for me has been a reasonable amount of time. I do wish, though, that the JG system could some how better mesh the randomness of the happy surprise with a bit more predictability.
I never went after Legion gear. THAT was too unpredictable and pricey for me (though I did eventually pick up a couple full sets via the AH).
The RNG has been good to me today. Got a couple scales on back to back runs on different characters this morning. Just picked up a third. May go for number 4 after the clock resets.
BOE- yes and no. still the same problem, those people with the 'luck' get the items and make a pile of Globals. The others who don't will be scratching around, trying to get the money to get the gear, since they are also likely not getting costume drops to sell either.
Normally, if one of my friends wants SCR gear and I have the tokens, I simply give them whatever piece they want. So, if Justice gear was BoE, I could simply give my friends the gear they want. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who gives things to friends. That also means more incentive to queue up with friends to help them get the gear they want. Unless there really are that many people with no luck and no friends.
It's not hard to get globals, it just takes some time and not blowing it all on every shiny object out there.
Normally, if one of my friends wants SCR gear and I have the tokens, I simply give them whatever piece they want. So, if Justice gear was BoE, I could simply give my friends the gear they want. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who gives things to friends. That also means more incentive to queue up with friends to help them get the gear they want. Unless there really are that many people with no luck and no friends.
It's not hard to get globals, it just takes some time and not blowing it all on every shiny object out there.
^ This. Right here.
If I have friends who need mods, globals, gear (Heroic, Legion) or costume pieces or auras I simply give them out. If we were able to sell/trade Justice Gear I can see the potential problems with being able to do this, but then if people at least know they can attempt to sell the gear they may be more inclined to run rampages to get tokens to get gear themselves.
Also there are people who still run rampages and either don't want to deck out other toons with Justice or don't have more than a couple of characters.
That being said, I would still like to see this system of gaining gear revised, either in terms of the drop rates for longer rampages, the cost of gear or simply making the longer more tedious rampages (LI and SC) more enjoyable to run. Streamlined if you will.
This may seem insignificant, but I would rather the gear itself remain BoP and we instead were able to sell the tokens. J-Gear itself would potentially fetch too high a price for silvers to afford, even after the Resource Cap increase; conversly, on the other hand, it would prevent Golds ever feeling like they are forced to sell J-Gear below a certain price to make it buyable by silvers, leading to much greater potential profits for gold players. By having the tokens themselves be the things that are sold, we keep it affordable for everyone, while at the same time increasing the potential profits for sellers.
Also, we make it easier for people to get the actual piece they want. We all know that certain pieces of Legion Gear fetched massive prices... while others were rather cheap, because of the stats on them. With Legion gear the seller didn't have a choice in which piece they acquired because it was random. Because with J-Gear you can choose your piece, we would likely see a deluge of specific types of pieces that are considered "best". Again, if the tokens are what is sellable, then buyers get to pick their piece, and sellers don't have to worry about picking the "right" piece to sell.
Selling tokens reminds me of selling Frozen Orbs in WoW, and that was basically the thing I spent almost all my time doing after those became a thing... acquiring and selling.
This may seem insignificant, but I would rather the gear itself remain BoP and we instead were able to sell the tokens. J-Gear itself would potentially fetch too high a price for silvers to afford, even after the Resource Cap increase; conversly, on the other hand, it would prevent Golds ever feeling like they are forced to sell J-Gear below a certain price to make it buyable by silvers, leading to much greater potential profits for gold players. By having the tokens themselves be the things that are sold, we keep it affordable for everyone, while at the same time increasing the potential profits for sellers.
I bought the silver cap increase with zen I purchased with questionite from crates. So, even if a player has no real money, they can easily get the cap increase. What makes you think the tokens wouldn't be pricey? F&I is the most likely alert to fail, so I imagine those tokens would be expensive. Knowing you could buy Justice gear instead of relying on RNGesus still means you can see progress being made. Instead of with saving tokens it's by saving globals.
Personally think all of the Justice gear is decent and there are no clear losers like with Legion gear. Even the dodge gear is a good substitute if the legion version isn't available. Especially if you want the set bonus.
F&I is the most likely alert to fail, so I imagine those tokens would be expensive.
It would probably be Lemurian Invasion, actually; sure, it's not actually possible to fail unless people get bored and give up, but it takes 2-3 times as long to finish as F&I.
Yesterday, after getting the BH down to 1/3 it's health bar mysteriously reset to full. Never seen that happen before. I had hit Palliate with Absolve somewhat before that. Is it possible that that caused the reset? If not, what else might have caused it? Returned later and it worked normally. Got scale #5 for this cycle:biggrin:
Comments
I'm in love with incredibly large scale battles myself, 20~50 Players participating is where I like to be. Here in CO though, the best I can get are Rampages. I want to feel small, but important at the same time, and that's a hard balance that nothing I've played has gotten perfectly. There are a few games that have gotten pretty close, but are still so far.
And I will always be @DZPlayer122.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
The problem is...would people want to continually run these to get one piece of gear if it was one guaranteed drop per 3 days?
People in this thread have already stated that they don't even run some of the other alerts because of various issues with it.
If you are guaranteed to walk away from the time that Gravitar is up (3 day period) with three tokens and pieces of Justice Gear cost this:
10 Salvage
2 Petrified Scales
2 Superdense Diamonds
2 Hypercooled Ignimbrites
2 Destreum Bearings
^ You have one fifth of the cost for one of your two or three pieces of gear for one character.
So unless you really do only have one level 40, I don't see why making Justice Gear slightly more accessible to everyone by incentivising the continual running of rampages is a bad thing.
If they were to adopt this suggestion alone, I did state in that previous post why I think there wouldn't be anything wrong with it.
Seriously though, if this idea was magically adopted and implemented right now and began during the next rotation, what do you think would happen?
People would run Lemurian Invasion, finish beating up the Harbinger and all come away with one token.
Reaction: "OMG no way! Let's run again!"
They all run again, but this time everyone who has already received a guaranteed token will be running with lower drop rates. Whilst it will not be impossible for them to walk away with 2 tokens, it will be incredibly lucky if they do.
The progression that is meant to be signified by Justice Gear is not even a reality for some players because they either don't like the rampage or they run it and run it and run it for the duration it is up and come away empty handed.
I've been in situations where entire durations of Fire and Ice/Sky Command/Lemurian Invasion/Gravitar are up and I've run them on characters across my account and have nothing to show for it aside from costume unlocks which I've already got...or auras and Q'nite. Not exactly encouraging.
The whole idea is to make Rampages more appealing. If people know that running it three times during it's duration on rotation will allow them to walk away with something(s), they are more likely to join up and try.
Yes, there will be players who no longer want to run Rampages once they have their three tokens, but there are more players who'd still play on, be it for other players sake, potential personal gain or for enjoyment.
To me, it just seems unnecessary to drag out being able to acquire Justice Gear. I get that it's in the name of progression and the idea behind it but when this "progression" is only pursued by a small amount of players, because of the way its designed...that's not much progress and doesn't seem accessible to everyone.
That's just my take on matters. I would never expect Cryptic to take both suggestions and plop that in game because within the space of a month you could deck out quite a few of your characters.
My Characters on PRIMUS
[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
__________________________
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
1 - Okay, but what happens when a rotation goes round, you run it as many times as you have time for and you get nothing? Because of your schedule you miss the other days of the rampage. Does that mean that you should play more CO in order to have a better chance at getting tokens to achieve progression? I don't see that as a viable option for people who aren't constantly on CO.
2 - Right, you've come away with this from either not understanding my suggestion the way I intended or me not being clear enough. I'm going to go with me not being clear enough. This guaranteed drop system would mean that if I took one of my toons: Mentella and ran Gravitar once a day for the duration of her time up and then took the rest of my account out and ran Gravitar in between....at the very most I'd expect out of all the runs I do, to achieve maybe...5 tokens including the three guaranteed ones.
3 - It becomes less of an incentive and more of a burden when either the drop rate is too low or the content is not enjoyable. I am not a developer but I do believe that it would be harder to adjust the actual rampage to be more enjoyable than altering the drops.
4 - I understand this, but when does "a long time" turn into "why bother?". It's not like there is some "Justice Level content" that is the ultimate end game for CO. Endgame progression should be accessible to everyone and even if it has to be dragged out somewhat there should be *something* there to push people on.
If everyone was limited to having 1 level 40 then I could see why my suggestion would be crazy. To some this whole Justice thing is a non issue so they don't care or there may be those who believe that my suggestion is just flat out crazy.
At this point in time, if someone like TT/LordGar/Radioscience starts talking on here, which would be quite odd, this is just a discussion regarding a suggestion. (Not saying they can't chip in, so if you guys happen to be reading...feel free lol).
I am against increasing the amount of tokens needed for the gear...it just seems unnecessary. I'd only suggest lowering the amount needed if they were unwilling to alter drop rates.
By no means should the two suggestions I originally suggested be used with each other. That would be crazy.
My Characters on PRIMUS
[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
__________________________
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Just a personal disagree here. I would actually run them with a 3-day incentive. As it is I have run about 80 or so total rampages and here's my progress:
10 Salvage - have these from lockboxes I guess, but never anywhere else
2 Petrified Scales - haven't seen one
2 Superdense Diamonds - no clue
2 Hypercooled Ignimbrites - nope
2 Destreum Bearings - never gotten these...not sure any of this stuff really exists
I literally gave up Rampages to just play an level alts as a use of my 40 hours a week gaming time. Running Rampages has so far netted me zip, zilch, nada so if I'm going to grind out some endgame I'll do other things. If I had a 3-day guarantee then I'd run these ALL the time since I have 5 screens of 40's.
I spent 3 weeks straight farming for Justice gear for ONE level 40 and have zip to show for it so there you go. I can't be the only one dejected by the low low rate. Even a better rate would work, since getting even one component would be a "lure" for me to play them more.
Salvage can only be gotten from lockboxes, either directly (by opening them) or indirectly (someone opened one, got a crate of drifter salvage, and sold it). I believe crates run ~100G and contain 10.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
How can one "do something wrong"? You run the rampage, you complete all requirements before the timer expires, and you "win". Then RNGesus either kicks you in the sidekicks or, if you're astonishingly lucky, blesses you with 1/24 of progress toward your ultimate goal.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
- Those players are remembering wrong.
- Those players are doing something wrong.
Continually running the same rampage with the same character counts as 'doing something wrong', though even there 80+ is highly implausible. You should realize quoting TV tropes for evidence is only evidence that you have no clue what you're talking about.Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Let's say that the drop rates for tokens became 100% on the first time per day, 80% on the second, 60% on the third, 40% on the fourth, and 20% on fifth and subsequent. Now, change an item of Justice gear to require 10 tokens of each type.
This is roughly the same difficulty as it has now -- much higher token drop rate, much higher token requirement. Would this make you more inclined to do rampages? Less inclined? No effect?
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
That's similar to my suggestion. Raise the token requirement, put a daily cap on it, and guarantee at least one token per successful run. Give RNGesus his vig by giving a sliver of a chance to get one or two bonus tokens.
I suggested 20 tokens per token type per piece of gear, but that's just spit-balling. I'm sure they have some spreadsheet of time to acquire vs. rampage length vs. rotation cycle time vs. rampage success rate that would determine how many tokens will finally be required per item.
If they can determine the value that gives them the grind time they want, and still ensures that success == progress, then rampages will be a much more desirable endgame option. And then they could concentrate on the structural problems with USC and LI.
(On the other hand, if rampages have the "nemesis minions won't spawn for weeks at a time" problem, they might as well burn the entire rampage system to the ground and start over.)
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
In the 40 run range I started asking in Zone if the drops were really in Rampages. In the 60 run range I started to think I was just horribly unlucky or the drop rate was a problem. Finally several runs after that...70's,80's, maybe 90's but I doubt I went over that...I had to just sigh and give up.
Sure maybe I did it wrong somehow. I used 3 different characters and completed each rampage and did the rewards circles multiple times over the span of days. One character I specifically took who's my DPS monster because I thought it was score based.
Eventually I gave up.
I could mention I've played Warlord a hundred times (I've been playing since launch) and never seen a costume piece. In fact I just bought the whole set like a month ago at the auction house. So in all my time I never got a single Warlord costume drop and I've been seeing people with parts for years. I don't think I have 3 years to grind out Justice Gear for a handful of characters is where I'm going with this.
I understand the "grind" people want to protect, but look at the population in game...I think some SLIGHTY elevated drop rates could bring people in, back, or just make QoL for us lifers more enjoyable until the end of days.
At least this thread and the tantalizing numbers people are putting up have me wanting to try some Rampages again. And Pantagruel also made me want to try again, like I just got the Captain America speech of "what...you gave up soldier? Assemble and beat that math hero!"
So, Justice Gear, all three pieces, should take 40% longer to get than getting 3 pieces of Heroic Gear does.
Heroic Gear takes about 30 minutes, once a day for three days. So 90 minutes raised by 40% is about 2 hours.
So every 2 hours worth of rampage time should give, on average, 8 tokens. So the drop chance should be determined by the time a rampage takes.
So say a Rampage on average takes 20 minutes to complete - at 100%, that would be 6 tokens every 2 hours, which means that rampage should actually have a 100% chance to drop a token every time, as well as a 33% chance to drop a second token.
If a Rampage takes 10 minutes on average to complete, then it would only need a 66% drop chance to provide 8 every 2 hours on average.
After all, the usefullness of gear should match the effort required to obtain it, and since Heroic Gear set the standard, we should build off that.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
performance vs. time consumed is not necessarily a linear relationship. That being said, the best solution is to take RNG out of the picture and allow certain ability of getting justice gear after X number of rampages of each type.
Here is a comprehensive article on RNG in game rewards: http://www.mostdangerousgamedesign.com/2013/08/the-psychology-of-rewards-in-games.html
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
There are many types of psychological rewards and ways to have players feel satisfaction and give them that feeling of accomplishment that MMOs thrive on - there's not only one way to do things. RNG is widely reviled, and we see many instances of MMOs trying to move away from it - active dodge systems that no longer rely on RNG are quite popular, and are becoming the new standard (once the technology improves, I think critical hits will also shift to new, non-rng methods).
Yes the "Jack In The Box" effect has it's merits, but it seems to be one of those older ideas of how to do things that are starting to lose their luster. I know that in WoW when they made Heroic Badges and Frozen Orbs a thing, which you always received and which you could use to acquire other rewards, I and many other players loved it. Certainly there was nobody lamenting the "unexpectedness" that was lost by going several runs in a row and getting nothing for it just because the game's random number generator spat out some numbers that didn't favor you.
I found infinitely more satisfaction in knowing that if I run dungeon X, I will get reward Y, and that once I have enough of Y I can go and buy reward Z. The feedback is just better. What you're doing is giving you the message that you're making progress, and so players want to do it more.
Let's imagine Super Mario Bros. with RNG. You start level 1-1, you run to the right, stomp some Goombas, bop some coin boxes, then you run up the hill, launch yourself, slide down the flag pole, fail the RNG roll and the game sends you back to the beginning of 1-1. You keep doing this until the game randomly decides that you have progressed... the whole time looking at your friend who is also playing the game, but who got to head to 1-2 right away because he didn't fail his RNG roll the first time. This happens on every level. Did the game just get better? Did the excitement of unexpectedness improve the experience? Or are we maybe picturing the player in this example yelling things that would make the Angry Nintendo Nerd blush?
The main issue with the rat example is that this assumes that the desired outcome is to make players play the content of the game as much as possible, in this case to get players to spam Rampages like crazy. But is this the desired outcome? To make players play the game's limited content so much that they become burned out on it? Shouldn't the desired outcome be that players play it when they feel like it, and enjoy it when they do choose to play it, and feel satisfied with the experience? After all, the game maker loses more than they gain when they burn players out. Rats don't get burned out on food pellets because their brains are the size of a peanut, and because it's food and animals are always hungry. The goal should not be "as much as possible". The goal should be equilibrium - players playing the content at an optimal rate, and feeling an optimal amount of satisfaction while playing it. Certainly not players playing the content like crazy and becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the rate of progress.
Also that rat is a casual.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
The current mechanic is akin to an arcade that gives reward coupons based on performance that is needed to unlock prizes at the counter, but all the games there only sometimes give out coupons at all. It's frustrating and would drive me away from wanting to bother with wanting any prize at all.
Make Justice Gear BoE. People farm the hell out of Hi-Pan and Warlord for cores to sell. Or add some cores along the lines of the Dragon's Eye and DU ones.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Amen. That's also why I put bonus tokens in my model. You'll advance to World 1-2, and you get a small chance at starting with a fire flower, too. There's still an RNG roll, but there's no concept of outright failure. If it's balanced right, it can reduce the daily grind without drastically shortening the overall time to acquire. "Hey, I got all 3 tokens in one run! I don't have to drag my arse through two more rounds of Lemurian trash mobs!"
Oh, and the rat isn't a filthy casual, it's just trying to maximize it's limited playing time.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
You have on this thread, someone who has collected 9 sets of Justice gear and someone who has zero tokens from 80 runs.
from what different people have told me, it's;
max of 5 tokens per group.
% chance off actually getting the token(most I've seen is 2 in 1 rampage, every other was 1 or zero.)
diminishing returns on repeat runs with that character. (so if you don't make the rolls to start with you have even less chance after)
Then the non scientific reason that statisticians hate : **** happens.
Some people have really awful 'luck' with RNG.
Best example from me;
playing WOW, discussing with a guildmate how to get more money and having 2 other guildmates chime in with just do dungeon runs. You'll get lots of stuff.
we pointed out that we had. They didn't believe us.
1 dungeon run later:
the other 2 said see you get lots of stuff. at which point we pointed out the couple of grey items we had(and I only got mine because everyone passed) plus a repair bill 10 times the Gold I got.
"oh and this is what you get."
"yes , the RNG just hates some people."
We went craft farming.(oh I hate farming)
MS home lottery advertises 1 in 25 wins. People take this as, I buy 25 tickets, I'll win a prize. Wrong.
It just means you have prizes equal to 4% of the tickets sold.
96% of the tickets are losers and you are more likely to be in that group.
Comparing UNITY missions, which are simple, solo missions with a guaranteed reward of between 1-5 tokens. Which basically you can only fail by quitting or not doing them.
To Rampages which are difficult 10 people alerts, is like riding your bicycle to the end of the driveway then entering a road race and expecting to win.
the X625 is a more accurate rate than 2-3 times.
yes the drop needs to be changed somehow. Balancing the drop rate to need is going to be the hardest.
The new area effect hits: new area, everyone stops doing the old best stuff and starts doing that one. Once they get the goodies from that, they stop. Newer people have less chance of doing the runs and less chance of getting the item.
Also if it's too hard to get the rewards , people stop.
See recent complaints about lack of people queuing for Rampages.
BOE- yes and no. still the same problem, those people with the 'luck' get the items and make a pile of Globals. The others who don't will be scratching around, trying to get the money to get the gear, since they are also likely not getting costume drops to sell either.
Guaranteed drop rate- would have to have a steep drop off to counter the 'luck' advantage but 1 per day guaranteed would keep people interested.
Trade in SCR tokens- at least 20 to 1(over the amount you get from UNITY1 or 2, if you want to do both, you deserve the token)
and only 1 per day (hands up all the people with hundreds of SCR tokens)
and the one which is currently up in rotation.
Those, I would be tempted to make BoP except someone may be collecting for a character which is not yet at 40 or one they are planning to make, once they get a build worked out and the a new slot ready. So BoA is still better.
Token swap - drifter exchange- people put up their spare tokens and what they want to swap for.
1 to1 only.
again limit, 1 trade slot per account, useable once per day.
little room time again, no don't ask
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
My personal taste is that I like a certain amount of randomness; a certain degree of unpredictability adds a "Yahoo!" effect when something does drop. I find going after the SCR gear a bit tedious just because it is so predictable. There's a little bit of a thrill when the last token for a set of gear comes in. OTOH. I know other people struggle with RNG (or just hate it); for me it's never been hard to build up enough tokens in what for me has been a reasonable amount of time. I do wish, though, that the JG system could some how better mesh the randomness of the happy surprise with a bit more predictability.
I never went after Legion gear. THAT was too unpredictable and pricey for me (though I did eventually pick up a couple full sets via the AH).
The RNG has been good to me today. Got a couple scales on back to back runs on different characters this morning. Just picked up a third. May go for number 4 after the clock resets.
Normally, if one of my friends wants SCR gear and I have the tokens, I simply give them whatever piece they want. So, if Justice gear was BoE, I could simply give my friends the gear they want. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who gives things to friends. That also means more incentive to queue up with friends to help them get the gear they want. Unless there really are that many people with no luck and no friends.
It's not hard to get globals, it just takes some time and not blowing it all on every shiny object out there.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
^ This. Right here.
If I have friends who need mods, globals, gear (Heroic, Legion) or costume pieces or auras I simply give them out. If we were able to sell/trade Justice Gear I can see the potential problems with being able to do this, but then if people at least know they can attempt to sell the gear they may be more inclined to run rampages to get tokens to get gear themselves.
Also there are people who still run rampages and either don't want to deck out other toons with Justice or don't have more than a couple of characters.
That being said, I would still like to see this system of gaining gear revised, either in terms of the drop rates for longer rampages, the cost of gear or simply making the longer more tedious rampages (LI and SC) more enjoyable to run. Streamlined if you will.
My Characters on PRIMUS
[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
__________________________
Also, we make it easier for people to get the actual piece they want. We all know that certain pieces of Legion Gear fetched massive prices... while others were rather cheap, because of the stats on them. With Legion gear the seller didn't have a choice in which piece they acquired because it was random. Because with J-Gear you can choose your piece, we would likely see a deluge of specific types of pieces that are considered "best". Again, if the tokens are what is sellable, then buyers get to pick their piece, and sellers don't have to worry about picking the "right" piece to sell.
Selling tokens reminds me of selling Frozen Orbs in WoW, and that was basically the thing I spent almost all my time doing after those became a thing... acquiring and selling.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I bought the silver cap increase with zen I purchased with questionite from crates. So, even if a player has no real money, they can easily get the cap increase. What makes you think the tokens wouldn't be pricey? F&I is the most likely alert to fail, so I imagine those tokens would be expensive. Knowing you could buy Justice gear instead of relying on RNGesus still means you can see progress being made. Instead of with saving tokens it's by saving globals.
Personally think all of the Justice gear is decent and there are no clear losers like with Legion gear. Even the dodge gear is a good substitute if the legion version isn't available. Especially if you want the set bonus.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I can definitely agree that some type of guaranteed tokens would be nice, plus keep some randomness.
I do not want Justice Gear to be BoE. I really like that the top gear in the game requires missions.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained