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  • mofoconanmofoconan Member Posts: 17 Arc User
    So we all agree the new gear coming is pretty much trash(no one wants it and its not even on live) - Is it possible to build an exchange system that would allow us to trade in X amount of new gear for marks towards the new weapon set?
    Trade in 5 new pieces for a legendary mark or something along those lines.

    I also wonder again "WTF am I gonna do with 5 Lillends bound"
    Adding companions to chests is a nice thought until you realize you already have them making the NEW drop instantly worthless and in the way.
    Is it possible to trade them in for companion upgrade tokens?

    BLACK ICE TREADS -"What are thooooooose?!?!?!" The equivalent of the velcro grandpa shoes no one would be caught dead in?
  • shadowgod244shadowgod244 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 44 Arc User
    firstly thank you for the keyring i was sick of having a bag dedicated to keys and the such. ok now on to the crux of the matter i like everyone else here think that once again you have gone a step to far with these changes when can you accept that the loot table is so junky that if it isnt castle never or edemo (or fbi for those geting their relic pieces) then it isnt worth doing anymore and these new pieces of gear may be strange and intresting to test but they are for the most part useless, as for the companions how disrespectful are you being to the players who had to pay cash for these exclusives its not right if you want to give a chance to obtain them do another promo dont give them out like candy.

    i strongly ugre that all players spread the word of what stupidty they have once again wrought and have as many people get on the forums as they can to tell them to stop this madness once and for all, that peaking is not and has never been the problem the lack of actual drop rate numbers and diversty to loot is.
  • silverkeltsilverkelt Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,235 Arc User
    its less of a speed bonus then a chicken or gladiators.. but I suppose for some classes like SW, GWF, GF , slotting your speed bonus+ a chicken+ shoes+ gladiators.. you might see some poeple flying without wings.. =P

    Man.. they are really messing up here.. design team is flawed to the max.

    Until they can fix SKT issues, why are they spinning so much time on a issue that was only a issue, because its a issue they made up out of thin air.

    What a mess.

  • cscriv79cscriv79 Member Posts: 398 Arc User


    ** There will be a higher chance to get one of these items in dungeons, skirmishes, or trials that take longer to complete.

    You do mean time wise as in difference between normal and epic.

    Hope you do not mean amount of time it takes new players with low IL/low time invested into game versus time it takes vet players that have spent time building chars to a high level.

    Will we all be sitting at final boss campfires for 10 mins to increase drop chance lol

    I am neither here nor there, for I am NevrCene

    NevrCene: TR
    Melisandre: SW
    Brienne: GWF

    Guild : Mystic Dawn (GH20)
  • agilestoagilesto Member Posts: 516 Arc User
    My personal opinion :
    => About the keyring : finally! A fantastic news. Only thing i regret is that you can't sort it the way you want, i'm a bit obsessive about inventory and seeing an orange rod between 2 blue skirmishes keys, grrr. But that's a very good add to the quality of life.

    => About the loot changes, i'd like to have a list of all the different loots, but 2 main opinions :
    First, i like the diversity you add. Chance to loot companions, mounts, even old or special ones, is very nice, even more because they're not BoC. The new gear, even if useless for endgame players, is very nice for transmutations, and i like it. 1-2 pieces or gear can even be used for people that don't have end-game stuff.

    Second, it's not enough. For me it's not even that the big loot is BoA and not BoE, but the fact that the BASIC loot is not enough to compensate the price of a key. Think that you can make a key only every 12h, so if you HAVE to use it, you want something decent. I didn't say exceptionnal loot each time because that's not possible, but the basic minimal loot should be increased. By a severe margin, now that we have to spend a key each chest.
    I'm not against the big loot being BoA, but the basic loot should be increased and remain BoE. Like with refinment stones, more enchants (not even 8 but more R7 can still be good), chance for mark of potency, wards, or others.

    So basically, this key change won't change anything for me on the classic dungeon chest because i always use my VIP key whatever the bad rewards it contains. But it'll be kind of awful for the campaign chest if the minimal loot isn't increased, by a big margin. I like all the big loot you can have, and the new gear for the transmutes. New big loot isn't the problem, it's definitly the minimal rewards that you can have, and that you will have, that are not enough to compensate the price of the key, or the 12 hours it needs to be created. And for me, that is the main problem, because you didn't listen the players about this minimal loot.
  • meiramimeirami Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 423 Arc User
    Two questions, please.

    1) Are the Loyal Avenger/Commander etc. Companion gear included in any of the loot tables?

    2) Has the chance of getting a Superior Mark been increased any for mSVA? Any less than 30% seems cruel to me.
  • devlin#3775 devlin Member Posts: 142 Arc User
    I'm pretty nervous about these changes and what it will do to my guild/alliance.

    Since I'm a PS4 player, it might take awhile for this to finally make it's way to console. But when it does? There will be such a mass exodus. As it stands, myself, and most in my guild, are either a) farming mdemo (for +5 brutality ring), b) farming CN (for +5 sudden precision and/or shard), c) farming FBI (for relic gear and gold rings).

    No one actually expects to get any of this gear (I've done demo appx 1000 times, CN appx 500, FBI appx 150 times now and still no brutality ring, no sudden precision, no "gold" rings of any sort, though I do have my relic gear so I guess I have that going for me) but the thought that I MIGHT get some of this gear continues to draw me in. But if each of those runs had cost me real life money (since I cant "make" keys at a rate to keep up with the farming) I would have lost my mind. And thats just those 3 dungeons, nevermind any of the others.

    Absolutely 0 of the gear you are introducing has any interest to me, so it's just salvage (which I have too much of anyways). You could have just doubled the current elven armor drops in FBI and it would have the same effect. My "goals" remain the same: gold rings, shard, and soon refinement for relic weapons. <- If the odds of those things (and ONLY those things) remain remotely close to what they are now, I'd need a second job to pay for the keys it would take to obtain them. And the worst part is, even if I WAS lucky enough to get those items (and willing to pay for those keys), I would have ZERO incentive to run those dungeons afterward, since I would at that point either be a) paying money (either zen or RL money) for nothing usable / worth anything to sell (if you even get something that isnt bta), or b) not use any keys and just run them for what actually drops from the boss (hah!).

    Have really enjoyed the game, so kudos in that regard. But if this goes live without (another) rework, it is likely the end for this guy. I'm already frustrated to no end by chest after chest of garbage. I honestly cant imagine paying for that frustration.
  • I appreciate the effort on the new loot gear, some of the effects are neat, but nobody is going to equip any of it. It will all be salvaged as the stats are worse than drow, elven, dragonflight or relic gear. It's like level 70s pulling the fey stuff from Gnarlroot and Celadaine, or the elemental alliance stuff from tiamat when you already have dragonflight.

    @mimicking#6533 what in your list would anyone equip over the relic gear, or even dragonflight? Someone posted the image tooltips for all of it on imgur. 1000 or 1500 of one stat is not going to replace 4 stats in the 600-900 range + hitpoints. The loot has to be an upgrade. Those stats need to be a lot higher to even consider, at least as high as the +4 rings.
  • crizpynutzcrizpynutz Member Posts: 349 Arc User
    I had hoped the bonus chest key system and epic dungeon key cost would have been addressed as well. The epic dungeon keys should be half of what they cost in AD, maybe less. I don't understand why dungeons need unique keys to begin with - just call them bonus chest keys and let them stack. Why does it take 24 hours to craft a damn key? No more than 15 min IMO, after all you have to spend all that time redoing the daily quests in a campaign you completed just to craft a key, then you have to wait until the next day to get it. These 2 things are not fixed.

    I do appreciate the new tab, I like all the novelty loot that can be found but this doesn't fix major issues like legendary marks, bosses that should always drop at least a minimum loot item, better RNG, etc.

    I'll wait until the final update comes to truly determine my feelings, but so far, this is where I'm at.
  • xxmantaraxxxxmantaraxx Member Posts: 362 Arc User
    Here is an idea.

    We will take the keyring/useful items tab, its a nice QoL upgrade.

    We will also take the loot table changes. They are much needed and im excited to collect all the neet gear, if anything, for cool transmute stock.

    But you can keep the key changes, Its not needed and we dont want it.

    If Cryptic wants to further monatize dragon keys, have better loot that we are willing to burn the keys on. When I ran tiamat alot I used dragon keys all the time because it was easier for me to spend some money on zen to speed up the process of getting keys. I would make one or two during the week and then buy keys on the weekend to suplement when I was playing heavily with my guild.

    Thats the way it should be, It takes playtime to gather the components to make a key but zen speeds up the process by giving you access immedieatly to keys. Its my time and my money I should be able to decide whats equatible to me and when I decide to take whats in the chest. I used them when I saw value in it, but that value changed conastantly from gearing alts to, RP to satisfying boon requirements, but if I didnt have a chance to look at the loot I NEVER would have purchased the dragon keys. Leave gambling to the lockboxes with their insanly low Roi and leave dungeon chest keys alone.

    Ara Atheanes GWF
    Traxus Atheanes GF
    Bastiel Atheanes DC
    Ellara Atheanes CW
    Keira Atheanes TR
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    Jerkface McGee HR
    -MANTARA- OP

  • loboguildloboguild Member Posts: 2,371 Arc User
    NOBODY with a sane mind is going to buy ZEN keys at 25,000 AD a piece.
  • lantern22lantern22 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,111 Arc User

    I'm already frustrated to no end by chest after chest of garbage. I honestly cant imagine paying for that frustration.

    . . . this

    From what I can see drop rates are just as bad (or not noticeably different), new gear (whilst humorous) is bad and keys will get used up for endless amounts of useless gear.

    Seems to me like no-one listened to the 50 pages and negative feedback while ago. Nothing new there I guess.

    You have come back months later and pretty much said "Wow guys, here is this polished HAMSTER, we have wrapped it in some very thin tin foil, isn't it great, look its all shiny"

    No. It isn't great, it is still a HAMSTER

    :(
  • devlin#3775 devlin Member Posts: 142 Arc User
    edited January 2017
    I've no problem paying real money to this game, and I have (more than I wish I had, but nevertheless...). If they created cool transmutes and put them up in the zen store, I'd throw money at the screen. If the relic armor had various interesting class specific set bonuses to obtain, I could muster up some money to buy more keys, AND have more reason to use those keys (even if peeking remained).

    But instead, from what I can see, they have removed the peeking function, and then essentially changed nothing else. Other then the potential appearances of these new items (maybe they look cool?), it's just new salvage....In other words, you can no longer peek into chests, but we added the (rare) chance of you getting 3300 rough AD. <- Cool.

    The companions/mount additions are nice for sure. But since there is a pretty narrow field of companions actually worth using, these are basically only useful for collection purposes (or usable until you actually get the good ones).

    The original complaints when this was first announced was less about "we should be allowed to peek" and more about "give us value for our keys". They didnt address the actual issue at all. Even if this gear was SUPER awesome, even if the stats just dominated vivified relic armor, it would only delay the inevitable. In the VERY short term, you perhaps would be ok gambling for those new BIS pieces. But as soon as you got them, there would again be 0 point in running a dungeon again. But since these pieces are NOT BIS (not even close), we are already at this point the second this goes live.

    And while the utility bag is super awesome (honestly, thank you for this change), its disappointing that now that I have a free "bag" to store all my keys, I actually wont have any keys to store since once I use up my current valindras, malabogs, etc, I'll likely never have those keys (nor run those dungeons) again.

    The reality is they want to sell more keys. 100% understandable. But if they ACTUALLY believed the contents of these treasure chests were worth the keys, they wouldnt have to force the use of keys upon us; we would just use them. There could be 1000 things they could add into those chests that, even after I had peeked, I would use up a key.

    What if in chests there was a chance to find:

    - unique appearance change items.
    - unique emotes
    - armor drops (that you didnt have to restore...) where the amount of stats were random, so multiple of the same piece would be a good thing (you got an arm piece with 200 crit, 250 power.....in another run you get the same arms but this one has 100 crit 500 power....choices!)
    - armor had various random class specific bonuses. Ie. The relic armor had its same set bonus, but the arms also has (increases the damage of "x" encounter ability by "x" percent), or ("Increases the radius of "certain heal" but lowers the healing done by X%).
    - companion enhancements (like reinforcing armor with major gems). Eg: "use" this item to increase the damage of your shadow demons backstab by x%
    - extra power points
    - extra feat points
    - extra stat points

    These are just off the top of my head, and maybe some arent the greatest of ideas, but the point is you could have really given us a reason to WANT to use keys even with the peeking mechanic in place. Instead, we are just forced to pay 50 cents a dungeon for a rare chance at salvage.
    Post edited by devlin#3775 on
  • krasensilverkrasensilver Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 27 Arc User
    you guys hilarious still trying to give feedbacks like they listened any of it 50 pages of trash
  • dtronic#6518 dtronic Member Posts: 11 Arc User
    PS4 player here. All the new items are just salvage. They are not worth anything to me. My spending on this game is well into the 4 digits in the past couple months.

    I have bought keys. Bought 100 for the 1st lockbox switch on PS4. Didn't get anything I wanted. Learned my lesson, haven't bought any more lockbox keys since and now buy off AH.

    Bought Legendary dragon keys a couple times when I forgot I didn't have keys on that character.( I have 4 characters 2.8-3.6k).

    I just started another character Black Friday, DC. Bought Knox in a box, bought TOD and IWD campaigns. I just finished all the other campaigns yesterday. Now I'm working on SKT. For the 3rd time. I have fun raising up new characters. I am in the most active guild alliance on PS4. I even have fun with pvp.

    You aren't listening to what your customers want. I am over 40 years old. NW is one of my hobbies. I like running CN or mdemo 10-20 times on my days off from work.

    I have no problem spending $100 for a weekend of fun in NW. But not on keys. I don't like being told how I have to spend my money. If I did, I would get a wife. Not being able to 'peek' is making me buy keys to run dungeons. That take the fun out of this game for me.

    If the game stops being fun, I move on to something else that is fun.

  • dtronic#6518 dtronic Member Posts: 11 Arc User
    I watch Kaligold on Twitch. He mirrors my opinions of the new changes. I can not watch some of the other twitch streams I have watched because they have stopped streaming NW. That would be a huge warning sign to me if I was on your development team.
  • vandignescavandignesca Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    edited January 2017
    The changes are...interesting. I like the idea of rotating rare drops like companions and stuff. Some of the gear...I hope stats are not final :)

    Please expand VIP, and allow higher ranks of VIP to give legendary dragon keys (say 5 account bound keys in a weekly package at a rank equivalent to 17 or above). I think Neverwinter needs a more stable economy thread as well as the impulse/sale buy one. With the new system in place, I might just buy a pack of keys during a sale or wait to buy a pack of keys until a sale. I might not buy keys at all. With legendary keys more needed, it feels like I'm spending money on RNG. I don't like that. I probably won't continue to do that. What I would spend money on is a robust benefit package (VIP expanded/more ranks, like my thread here: http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1223322/neverwinter-vip-program-expanded-suggestions) that gave some perks along with the RNG.
    Love yourself, and focus on the rest of the madness of life later.
  • kieranmtornkieranmtorn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 382 Arc User
    edited January 2017
    The useful items tab is to be commended.

    The dungeon key rewards leave something to be desired. So I will go with the obvious answer: burn all my campaign keys/legendary keys now while I still have some control over the trash I receive. Since the trash doesn't warrant the production of further keys.
  • cellablockcellablock Member Posts: 253 Arc User

    There have been some questions about what the increased drop rates of Legendary Rings really means, and I wanted to give some info there. This is a topic I have some history with....

    When I first came onto the Neverwinter team about 15 months ago (has it really been that long?!), one of the first things I had to do was make some reward tables for a dungeon (not make the loot itself, which had already been made, but make the random tables that determined how it dropped). I started by looking at the previous set of reward tables, and one of the first things I said was “What’s with these crazy low rates on the Legendary Rings? These should be dropping 10 times as often!” I couldn’t convince people of that, but I did manage to get the drop rate to be 2 times as often. (That was the previous Legendary Ring drop rate increase quoted above from much earlier patch notes.)

    The initial drop rate was very small, so twice as often was still very small. But it definitely was an attempt at a real increase --- we’re definitely not trying to trick anyone by increasing stuff by 5% and then writing a patch note claiming “big increase!” or anything like that.

    Cut to the more recent round of changes. One of the things people have called out as frustrating is how incredibly rare the rarest things (like the Underdark Rings) still are. So this time we’ve increased them again, by around x5. This is on top of the previous change, so it’s a total of x10. Hopefully this will be enough to be noticeable. But they are still very rare -- that’s because they were so super-rare to begin with.

    I know this brings up the question of “why were they so super-rare to begin with?” The easy answer would be to say “boy, those people who picked the initial drop rates were dumb, but we are much smarter!” I don’t think that’s right, though, so I wanted to talk a bit more about what goes into picking drop rates. (Feel free to skip the rest of this post if you aren’t interested in the generalities.)

    So why should there ever be super-low drop rates? Well, the original idea of the Legendary Rings was that they were “the thing you don’t have yet”. It’s not much fun to run a dungeon when you have all the unique stuff it drops. You can run it just for numerics (RP and AD), but that’s kind of dull. So it’s good if there’s always a chance of a big win. That means that (even for the most hardcore player) there should be something that can drop that you don’t have yet. But that means there has to be *something* that’s crazy rare (or at some point you’d have everything). The Legendary Rings were meant to play that role. In my opinion, it was overdone. So we’ve raised the rates. But keep in mind the risk whenever we do that: the risk of players saying “there’s nothing in that dungeon I don’t already have, how boring!” (For the Legendary Rings, I think that’s unlikely, because there are so many different kinds, which is part of why raising the drop rate makes sense to me.) So I think there absolutely is a place in the game for extremely rare loot, even if the Legendary Rings weren’t in the ideal spot.

    While we’re talking drop rates, another big tension that’s related is the one between sellable and non-sellable stuff. I’ve noticed this has come up a lot in the thread. Some players don’t like the RNG aspect, and want loot to be more predictable. But some players want loot they can sell. If the loot drops fairly often, though, and it’s BoE, then it won’t sell for much. So the really good sellable loot has to be really rare. Dungeon artifacts (like Lostmauth’s Horn of Blasting) have sometimes played this role in the past. This is also a narrow line to walk -- some players really want a chance to get a thing that sells on the Auction House for 100,000 AD, others want the feeling that they can get the things they want directly from drops without having to get really involved in the larger AD economy. I’m sympathetic to both points of view, but I don’t know any way to satisfy both players *with the same item*. What we’ve been going for is a mix: some items that you can earn steadily (say by accumulating a currency and then buying the item in a store), some that you get randomly but they come pretty often (and thus aren’t worth much for resale), and some super-rare things that have a chance to maintain their value (but they can’t drop that often!). Sometimes we can get around these problems by taking something that’s otherwise pretty rare and dropping a bound version of it with a higher chance -- then there’s a higher chance you’ll get one, but the AD value is maintained (the down side here is you can feel bad that you got a 100,000 AD thing but you can’t sell it -- of course, if you could sell it, so could everyone else, and it wouldn’t be worth 100,000 AD anymore!).

    Recently we’ve been pushing a bit more towards more stuff that more people can have (hence things like the increased chances on some drops with these changes), but of course the flip side of that is potentially less value for those who want to farm and sell. But overall we still want a mix of these strategies, even if the exact mix shifts over time.

    We don’t always manage these tensions (bound, unbound, rare, common) as well as we should. (For example, I think we’ve frequently had a shortage of the sort of inbetween loot -- not so rare that you never see it, but rare enough that it still feels like a win -- loot that can be fun to get even if it doesn’t sell for a ton.) And sometimes we just need to plain make more loot (this is something I’ve been trying to push for, but of course those resources compete with other things like class balance or building new dungeons). But I wanted to give some insight into why some things are more or less rare, or why some things are bound or unbound, and what some of the issues are that we’re thinking about when we make loot and decide how and when to drop it.

    hope everyone will understand this and stop whining hurts my eyes seeing some comments here
  • trgluestickztrgluestickz Member Posts: 1,144 Arc User
    edited January 2017
    I'm happy the devs are announcing this change ahead of time like we asked. This disclosure still should be updated before this change launches to include the loot tables themselves. Those loot tables should tell us what items can all drop and from where along with the exact chance to drop for each item. People would have a lot more trust in this company if they were willing to simply show us that information and many many people have been asking for it. Reputation is money Cryptic and your business model and habit of keeping information vague is causing you to lose a ton of customers, which means you are also losing a ton of money. The instance notify is an interesting idea but given your promises don't state the loot droprate and what the new droprate will be, only that you improved them, its not likely to offer much ease of mind if any.

    The useful items tab I will rate you an A+ on, its dead on exactly what the community asked for. Those that saw to it to implement this change should pat themselves on the back as this was a great move on their part.

    I am also happy to see that y'all have tried to introduce a lot more variety within the loot system. It was not the main problem but its a major quality of life improvement for a variety of desirable things to be able to drop instead of just a few. Some people are falsely stating that nobody asked for that but this is not true, many people did ask for variety improvements including me in addition to the other problems that need to be addressed. I'll give Cryptic a B+ here.

    The biggest 2 problems however do not appear to have been dealt with. THe RNG as stated above is still mostly a mystery and its looking like its still going to be commonplace for people to run a dungeon and come away with junk that is not even close to covering the cost of the key they just spent. The loot table for the BOP fail safe items that you are guaranteed to get a few of even if nothing better drops needs to be improved before this change hits live AND these items need to be actually worth a reasonable amount of AD. As for how much these fail safe items need to be worth, the community has consistently stated that if the ability to chest peak is removed, then rewards need to be consistently worth the amount payed for the key. The second problem is that a campaign key still costs 20 hours to make according to what I found on the preview server when I went to look. This is a huge problem since you intend to remove the ability to preview loot before you take it. These changes will result in players that once did multaple runs only doing things once and then not having much game left to do for the rest of the day. That means the community for this game will start playing for a much shorter amount of time per day then logging off because they have nothing to do. I'm giving cryptic a rating of ? for the RNG increases themselves since we have no idea what the numbers really are, and an F on not changing how long it takes to craft a key.

    The never before seen pieces of gear that will be added to the loot tables don't look to be that useful in the long run but I guess they could temporarily help those who don't have their BIS gear set yet. The mechanics of them are intriguing but also look to be too much of a 2 sided coin to really seriously consider using these gear pieces over a set with no cons. Hopefully, these items look good enough to become popular transmutes cause that's about the only major use they are likely to ever see. I grant a rating of C- if they are all ugly as HAMSTER and noone uses them and B+ if they turn out to be great transmutes.

    Another major problem I see here is it looks like you plan to make a lot of this stuff bound. If you make most improved loot bound, most of them need to be made bound to account at the very least. The community really wants to see more BOP gear they can sell on AH. If too much of this loot is bound, then as soon as we have gotten all the items we want out of the improved dungeon chests, we are now back to how the loot was prior to this change. In short, making a ton of the loot bound makes these changes not sustainable long term.
    Post edited by trgluestickz on
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  • viperwitch23viperwitch23 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 205 Arc User
    Can't you just increase the amount of salvage we get from each dungeon? Salvage drop was replaced with insignia
    Replace it back to Salvage
    So those who run dungeons just get more salvage and then they can save to buy rarer stuff

    There have been some questions about what the increased drop rates of Legendary Rings really means, and I wanted to give some info there. This is a topic I have some history with....

    When I first came onto the Neverwinter team about 15 months ago (has it really been that long?!), one of the first things I had to do was make some reward tables for a dungeon (not make the loot itself, which had already been made, but make the random tables that determined how it dropped). I started by looking at the previous set of reward tables, and one of the first things I said was “What’s with these crazy low rates on the Legendary Rings? These should be dropping 10 times as often!” I couldn’t convince people of that, but I did manage to get the drop rate to be 2 times as often. (That was the previous Legendary Ring drop rate increase quoted above from much earlier patch notes.)

    The initial drop rate was very small, so twice as often was still very small. But it definitely was an attempt at a real increase --- we’re definitely not trying to trick anyone by increasing stuff by 5% and then writing a patch note claiming “big increase!” or anything like that.

    Cut to the more recent round of changes. One of the things people have called out as frustrating is how incredibly rare the rarest things (like the Underdark Rings) still are. So this time we’ve increased them again, by around x5. This is on top of the previous change, so it’s a total of x10. Hopefully this will be enough to be noticeable. But they are still very rare -- that’s because they were so super-rare to begin with.

    I know this brings up the question of “why were they so super-rare to begin with?” The easy answer would be to say “boy, those people who picked the initial drop rates were dumb, but we are much smarter!” I don’t think that’s right, though, so I wanted to talk a bit more about what goes into picking drop rates. (Feel free to skip the rest of this post if you aren’t interested in the generalities.)

    So why should there ever be super-low drop rates? Well, the original idea of the Legendary Rings was that they were “the thing you don’t have yet”. It’s not much fun to run a dungeon when you have all the unique stuff it drops. You can run it just for numerics (RP and AD), but that’s kind of dull. So it’s good if there’s always a chance of a big win. That means that (even for the most hardcore player) there should be something that can drop that you don’t have yet. But that means there has to be *something* that’s crazy rare (or at some point you’d have everything). The Legendary Rings were meant to play that role. In my opinion, it was overdone. So we’ve raised the rates. But keep in mind the risk whenever we do that: the risk of players saying “there’s nothing in that dungeon I don’t already have, how boring!” (For the Legendary Rings, I think that’s unlikely, because there are so many different kinds, which is part of why raising the drop rate makes sense to me.) So I think there absolutely is a place in the game for extremely rare loot, even if the Legendary Rings weren’t in the ideal spot.

    While we’re talking drop rates, another big tension that’s related is the one between sellable and non-sellable stuff. I’ve noticed this has come up a lot in the thread. Some players don’t like the RNG aspect, and want loot to be more predictable. But some players want loot they can sell. If the loot drops fairly often, though, and it’s BoE, then it won’t sell for much. So the really good sellable loot has to be really rare. Dungeon artifacts (like Lostmauth’s Horn of Blasting) have sometimes played this role in the past. This is also a narrow line to walk -- some players really want a chance to get a thing that sells on the Auction House for 100,000 AD, others want the feeling that they can get the things they want directly from drops without having to get really involved in the larger AD economy. I’m sympathetic to both points of view, but I don’t know any way to satisfy both players *with the same item*. What we’ve been going for is a mix: some items that you can earn steadily (say by accumulating a currency and then buying the item in a store), some that you get randomly but they come pretty often (and thus aren’t worth much for resale), and some super-rare things that have a chance to maintain their value (but they can’t drop that often!). Sometimes we can get around these problems by taking something that’s otherwise pretty rare and dropping a bound version of it with a higher chance -- then there’s a higher chance you’ll get one, but the AD value is maintained (the down side here is you can feel bad that you got a 100,000 AD thing but you can’t sell it -- of course, if you could sell it, so could everyone else, and it wouldn’t be worth 100,000 AD anymore!).

    Recently we’ve been pushing a bit more towards more stuff that more people can have (hence things like the increased chances on some drops with these changes), but of course the flip side of that is potentially less value for those who want to farm and sell. But overall we still want a mix of these strategies, even if the exact mix shifts over time.

    We don’t always manage these tensions (bound, unbound, rare, common) as well as we should. (For example, I think we’ve frequently had a shortage of the sort of inbetween loot -- not so rare that you never see it, but rare enough that it still feels like a win -- loot that can be fun to get even if it doesn’t sell for a ton.) And sometimes we just need to plain make more loot (this is something I’ve been trying to push for, but of course those resources compete with other things like class balance or building new dungeons). But I wanted to give some insight into why some things are more or less rare, or why some things are bound or unbound, and what some of the issues are that we’re thinking about when we make loot and decide how and when to drop it.

  • urabaskurabask Member Posts: 2,923 Arc User
    edited January 2017



    We don’t always manage these tensions (bound, unbound, rare, common) as well as we should. (For example, I think we’ve frequently had a shortage of the sort of inbetween loot -- not so rare that you never see it, but rare enough that it still feels like a win -- loot that can be fun to get even if it doesn’t sell for a ton.) And sometimes we just need to plain make more loot (this is something I’ve been trying to push for, but of course those resources compete with other things like class balance or building new dungeons). But I wanted to give some insight into why some things are more or less rare, or why some things are bound or unbound, and what some of the issues are that we’re thinking about when we make loot and decide how and when to drop it.

    Wouldn't the best example of this be Lanolin? It has a relatively high drop rate but it still feels like a win because getting 20k AD a piece adds up over time. Greater Mark of Union/Power/Stability fills this gap too. The thing about these items is that everyone needs them for progress but there's a bit of tedium/time gating involved in grinding for them so they sell at prices higher than the effort it takes to get them. Put in perspective I spent a couple hours yesterday grinding Phantasmal Fortress and got 12 greater marks of union. I can hold onto that until 2x RP and get around 500k-600k AD. To get that amount of AD from grinding dungeons would take all day.


    While we’re talking drop rates, another big tension that’s related is the one between sellable and non-sellable stuff. I’ve noticed this has come up a lot in the thread. Some players don’t like the RNG aspect, and want loot to be more predictable. But some players want loot they can sell. If the loot drops fairly often, though, and it’s BoE, then it won’t sell for much. So the really good sellable loot has to be really rare. Dungeon artifacts (like Lostmauth’s Horn of Blasting) have sometimes played this role in the past. This is also a narrow line to walk -- some players really want a chance to get a thing that sells on the Auction House for 100,000 AD, others want the feeling that they can get the things they want directly from drops without having to get really involved in the larger AD economy. I’m sympathetic to both points of view, but I don’t know any way to satisfy both players *with the same item*. What we’ve been going for is a mix: some items that you can earn steadily (say by accumulating a currency and then buying the item in a store), some that you get randomly but they come pretty often (and thus aren’t worth much for resale), and some super-rare things that have a chance to maintain their value (but they can’t drop that often!). Sometimes we can get around these problems by taking something that’s otherwise pretty rare and dropping a bound version of it with a higher chance -- then there’s a higher chance you’ll get one, but the AD value is maintained (the down side here is you can feel bad that you got a 100,000 AD thing but you can’t sell it -- of course, if you could sell it, so could everyone else, and it wouldn’t be worth 100,000 AD anymore!).



    Part of the problem here is that there aren't many 100k AD items dropping from dungeons. Look at CN, there are the refinement items (1k-4k AD), r5s (300-400 AD), demonic enchants (500-2k AD), r8 runestones (8k AD), r8s enchants (13k AD -50k AD) , Salvage (2k-6k AD), and the Shard (4 million AD).

    I know this is probably nitpicking on a random number you chose but there really aren't many 100k drops because rare drops tend to be worth more than that. A drop worth 100k would preferably be a step between r8s and a rare drop. Most of the items in this price range are worth 100k because they're rare drop artifacts that also drop from lockboxes.

    Can't you just increase the amount of salvage we get from each dungeon? Salvage drop was replaced with insignia
    Replace it back to Salvage
    So those who run dungeons just get more salvage and then they can save to buy rarer stuff

    The problem was insignias was that they're still trying to use them as lockbox drops. They should've been unbound dungeon drops as well including epic insignias. Or hell, add a refinement system to insignias.
    Post edited by urabask on
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  • hanniballa#2401 hanniballa Member Posts: 74 Arc User



    Cut to the more recent round of changes. One of the things people have called out as frustrating is how incredibly rare the rarest things (like the Underdark Rings) still are. So this time we’ve increased them again, by around x5. This is on top of the previous change, so it’s a total of x10. Hopefully this will be enough to be noticeable. But they are still very rare -- that’s because they were so super-rare to begin with.

    Recently we’ve been pushing a bit more towards more stuff that more people can have (hence things like the increased chances on some drops with these changes), but of course the flip side of that is potentially less value for those who want to farm and sell. But overall we still want a mix of these strategies, even if the exact mix shifts over time.

    We don’t always manage these tensions (bound, unbound, rare, common) as well as we should. (For example, I think we’ve frequently had a shortage of the sort of inbetween loot -- not so rare that you never see it, but rare enough that it still feels like a win -- loot that can be fun to get even if it doesn’t sell for a ton.) And sometimes we just need to plain make more loot (this is something I’ve been trying to push for, but of course those resources compete with other things like class balance or building new dungeons).

    Your math is pretty much useless if we don't know the initial drop rate as a percentage! How about some transparency for a change? Five times the initial drop rate, so it looks like this, (initial drop rate)5 = ? That's some fun math bro!


    Less value for those that farm? FARMING IS ALL WE DO IN THIS GAME!!!!!!!!!!! And we can't even make back our investment on keys. How hard is that to grasp? The key should at least pay for itself!!!!!!!

    You don't manage the tensions well? Yeah, we noticed. I have tons of refining stones of various types(bound, unbound), is it to much to ask that they all be unbound? I don't need them and it's not like I'd make a killing selling stacks of them.

    You've pushed for more loot? THANKS A TON DUDE!!!!!!!!! It's clear after 50 pages of us telling you what's wrong, that pushing doesn't do HAMSTER for anyone. And you can't do that because it'd keep with other resources, didn't you guys just make new loot for this update? As far as class balancing and new dungeons go, my HR is still broken, Plant Growth is bugged with no fix in sight. The deungeons, how about just giving us the ones you removed back?
  • viperwitch23viperwitch23 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 205 Arc User
    Guys you looking at this from rare loot perspective
    Developer said that increasing rare loot drop rates will devalue those drops eventually
    That is correct
    In my opinion the solution here is just increasing salvage amount. So key would be earned by by a guaranteed salvage amount instead of dropping costly loot in every chest. Costly loot after a few weeks will become worthless or next to worthless loot.
    Most of you here just talk about FBI/Swala drops and over looking everything else
    Salvage amount increase would earn back the keys and make people buy more keys if the keys can be earned back at last break even
    And help people save up something using multy-runs to buy that expensive rare loot thingy on AH
    My 2 cents
  • loboguildloboguild Member Posts: 2,371 Arc User
    edited January 2017
    Thanks for the insight @rgutscheradev. @beckylunatic. Smart answer. End of discussion.

    I especially wanna highlight the part about dungeon delve history. There was a time where we could farm dungeons and the community likes to get back to these days. I get what's been said about prices, economy and drop rates, but I don't think it's impossible to manage that and give players proper loot for the keys they invested.

    As it stands players will still only do their daily dungeons to get the AD and burn through their keys. That was not what we were asking for. We wanted to get dungeons that are viable running on top of the daily grind routine. If that's not possible within the current system, then it might be time to switch to a completely different approach on what purpose dungeons should serve within the game.
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