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A plea to lessen the tiered gear grind (and maybe some of the other gear grinds.)
patrucius
Member Posts: 24 Arc User
In this thread I mainly intend to talk about Illusionist's Gambit companion gear, but the same principles (and possibly my proposed solution) also apply to the Underdark Rings, SKT Rings, and even to a lesser extent, Relic Armor.
I just want to take a moment to first stress that we don't need increased drop rates of the chase tiers of gear drops, the drop rates as they are now are acceptable, and I believe I have a better solution that would help people get the gear they need and cut out a portion of the grind in a more player friendly way. I'd also just like to take a moment to thank the Devs for the IG skirmish, I actually enjoy the skirmish a fair bit and think it's quite fun, I'm just not sure that I'm going to find it quite so fun by the time I finish farming for my companion gear.
Now, I know some people are going to come here and say: "But it's an MMO, of course there's a grind, what would an MMO be without grind?" And to that I say: You're absolutely right, Neverwinter is an MMO, and a core gameplay element of MMOs has always been grinding, so some grind is certainly expected, and is even necessary to retain the attention of the players. However, is it possible to have too much grind? I personally feel that it is, and the grind for companion gear from the Illusionist's Gambit skirmish is a prime example of it. So, why do I feel the grind for companion gear too excessive? Well, it mainly has to do with the chances a player has of getting the gear that they want from the skirmish. From the IG runs that I and a few friends have been doing since the release of The Cloaked Ascendancy, I believe that the drop rate for +4 companion gear is somewhere around 1 in 20 (from gold runs, I don't have anywhere near enough data to guess at the rate for silver runs, and in the several hundred bronze runs between us, none of us have ever gotten a +4 drop, so I'd hazard a guess that the drop rate from bronze is lower, but don't have enough data to be certain about that.) A 1 in 20 chance for a piece of gear from the chase tier isn't that bad, but the odds start to look grim when you factor in all of the varieties of gear. There are 8 different possible pieces of gear that drop from IG: Rings, Belts, Necklaces, Icons, Talismans, Grimoires, Sword Knots, and Pact Blades... Pact Blades?... Pact Blades!? Pact Blades!!!???!!!!
From my experience, the average gold run of Illusionist's Gambit takes about 15 minutes (including queue times, loading time, and between-round voting). At 15 minutes per run, and roughly a 1/1000 chance at getting the right gear, it could easily take 750 hours of running the Illusionist's Gambit skirmish to get the companion gear that they need. That's a little over a month of running IG, without stopping to eat, poo, or sleep; let alone go to work, take classes, or interact with other human beings. A dedicated player with a job can manage maybe 4 hours of play a day, if they spent all of that time farming IG, they (on average) would still take 6 months to get their companion gear. A module and a half would have launched within that time frame, likely including more gear to grind for. That seems at least a little excessive doesn't it? I think even the most hardcore, grind-immune players are going to get burnt out after that many runs of a single skirmish.
The Solution
The solution that I propose, I'm certain, has been put forth before, but I'm hoping that a little math and some persuasive words from me might bolster it a little. Anyway, what if, players were able to trade in 2 (or possibly 3) pieces of gear on the same tier, along with some campaign currency (and in the case of IG companion gear, maybe some ascendant weapon restoration materials... perhaps even...Fleece?) for a specific piece of gear on the same tier as the gear they traded in. The price for a specific piece of +4 companion gear could look something like: 1000 Abandoned Treasures, 30 Fleece, 5 Ground Jade, 5 Vials of Fey Blood, 5 Spell Amber, 5 Volatile Ichor, 5 Petrified Dust, 5 Constructed Iron, 5 Tainted Soil, 40 Arcanic Focus, and 2 (or 3) different pieces of +4 companion gear, you could even throw some Arcane Magical Writings in there to keep the River District Heroic Encounters relevant down the road. If implemented, this system would still require that players run more than a hundred Illusionist's Gambits to get the gear (and fleece) to trade in for the gear they want, and do a fair amount of other farming, while still making the acquisition of their gear far more reasonable than spending a month wearing a diaper, in a locked room, on No-Doze pills,after sacrificing their first-born to the Random Number Gods, to get the gear they want. Such a system would also heavily reduce player burn out (which is quite common, I often see friends and guildmates flock to the game after a new module launches, go ham on Neverwinter for a monthish, then get frustrated by a lack of progress and drop off till the next module launch.)
Similar trade-in systems could also be applied to other gear grinds within the game (and to future grinds), gods know I'd love to trade in both my main character's collections of Greater Blods for some Greater Dods and a couple Greater Helligs...
Thanks for reading.
I just want to take a moment to first stress that we don't need increased drop rates of the chase tiers of gear drops, the drop rates as they are now are acceptable, and I believe I have a better solution that would help people get the gear they need and cut out a portion of the grind in a more player friendly way. I'd also just like to take a moment to thank the Devs for the IG skirmish, I actually enjoy the skirmish a fair bit and think it's quite fun, I'm just not sure that I'm going to find it quite so fun by the time I finish farming for my companion gear.
Now, I know some people are going to come here and say: "But it's an MMO, of course there's a grind, what would an MMO be without grind?" And to that I say: You're absolutely right, Neverwinter is an MMO, and a core gameplay element of MMOs has always been grinding, so some grind is certainly expected, and is even necessary to retain the attention of the players. However, is it possible to have too much grind? I personally feel that it is, and the grind for companion gear from the Illusionist's Gambit skirmish is a prime example of it. So, why do I feel the grind for companion gear too excessive? Well, it mainly has to do with the chances a player has of getting the gear that they want from the skirmish. From the IG runs that I and a few friends have been doing since the release of The Cloaked Ascendancy, I believe that the drop rate for +4 companion gear is somewhere around 1 in 20 (from gold runs, I don't have anywhere near enough data to guess at the rate for silver runs, and in the several hundred bronze runs between us, none of us have ever gotten a +4 drop, so I'd hazard a guess that the drop rate from bronze is lower, but don't have enough data to be certain about that.) A 1 in 20 chance for a piece of gear from the chase tier isn't that bad, but the odds start to look grim when you factor in all of the varieties of gear. There are 8 different possible pieces of gear that drop from IG: Rings, Belts, Necklaces, Icons, Talismans, Grimoires, Sword Knots, and Pact Blades... Pact Blades?... Pact Blades!? Pact Blades!!!???!!!!
PACT BLADES!!!!!!!!!!!!????????!!!!!!!!!!!!?!?!?!?!?!
In addition to the 8 different kinds of gear that can drop, there are also 6 different possible prefixes that a piece of gear can have: Heroic, Bold, Fierce, Obedient, Sturdy, and Defiant. This means that there is a total of 48 possible pieces of gear at each Tier. So a player gets lucky and rolls a natural 20 on their loot roll for an IG run, they now have but a 1 in 48 chance (or only slightly better than 2%) of getting the piece of gear that they actually want (this would of course be higher if they are looking for multiple different pieces of gear, and/or have more than piece of gear that is acceptable for their build.) This boils down to chances that are only slightly better than 1 in 1000 (0.05 * ~0.021) for a player to get the piece of companion gear they are looking for from any given IG (gold) run.From my experience, the average gold run of Illusionist's Gambit takes about 15 minutes (including queue times, loading time, and between-round voting). At 15 minutes per run, and roughly a 1/1000 chance at getting the right gear, it could easily take 750 hours of running the Illusionist's Gambit skirmish to get the companion gear that they need. That's a little over a month of running IG, without stopping to eat, poo, or sleep; let alone go to work, take classes, or interact with other human beings. A dedicated player with a job can manage maybe 4 hours of play a day, if they spent all of that time farming IG, they (on average) would still take 6 months to get their companion gear. A module and a half would have launched within that time frame, likely including more gear to grind for. That seems at least a little excessive doesn't it? I think even the most hardcore, grind-immune players are going to get burnt out after that many runs of a single skirmish.
The Solution
The solution that I propose, I'm certain, has been put forth before, but I'm hoping that a little math and some persuasive words from me might bolster it a little. Anyway, what if, players were able to trade in 2 (or possibly 3) pieces of gear on the same tier, along with some campaign currency (and in the case of IG companion gear, maybe some ascendant weapon restoration materials... perhaps even...Fleece?) for a specific piece of gear on the same tier as the gear they traded in. The price for a specific piece of +4 companion gear could look something like: 1000 Abandoned Treasures, 30 Fleece, 5 Ground Jade, 5 Vials of Fey Blood, 5 Spell Amber, 5 Volatile Ichor, 5 Petrified Dust, 5 Constructed Iron, 5 Tainted Soil, 40 Arcanic Focus, and 2 (or 3) different pieces of +4 companion gear, you could even throw some Arcane Magical Writings in there to keep the River District Heroic Encounters relevant down the road. If implemented, this system would still require that players run more than a hundred Illusionist's Gambits to get the gear (and fleece) to trade in for the gear they want, and do a fair amount of other farming, while still making the acquisition of their gear far more reasonable than spending a month wearing a diaper, in a locked room, on No-Doze pills,after sacrificing their first-born to the Random Number Gods, to get the gear they want. Such a system would also heavily reduce player burn out (which is quite common, I often see friends and guildmates flock to the game after a new module launches, go ham on Neverwinter for a monthish, then get frustrated by a lack of progress and drop off till the next module launch.)
Similar trade-in systems could also be applied to other gear grinds within the game (and to future grinds), gods know I'd love to trade in both my main character's collections of Greater Blods for some Greater Dods and a couple Greater Helligs...
Thanks for reading.
Post edited by patrucius on
3
Comments
All this accomplished was watering down the odds of getting an item specifically applicable to your needs.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
And if they implemented any of the proposed solutions, adding more items with different stat distributions would be great. I'd love some power/recovery stuff for my cleric.