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Battle Worn Rod: What we need Cryptic to tell players

bolt#9204 bolt Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 79 Arc User
Hi All,

So I realise Cryptic do not want players to make progress through content so quickly that they dont have time to develop new content and also a challenge makes it more interesting for players. That being said the story of the Rods (Stewart excepted) is a information and guidance desert for most players

The broken rod was hidden within legacy skill nodes, I mean logically who would of thought to look there! One person did as far as I can make out and the news spread to the community. I also note that it was neccessary to adjust the drop rate so players could get it before they claimed their retirement pensions which in the UK is 65

Then there is the battle-worn rod, more of the same (So no lessons learned from the broken rod experience) I saw no guidance as to where it drops, again it seems pretty certain now the battle-worn rod drops from insurgency bosses when they appear. Is that the only source of this rod? Could it perhaps be dropped from the pockets of Velveteen pants + 2 if you make enough of them?

As with the broken rod the drop rate seems to be incredibly low some people have sealed over 100 insurgency instances and killed countless bosses with no rod drops. Overall in the approx month since the BeL content launched I have heard of only one player that they has got it. So again it would be nice with all of these types of items to have an idea of the expected drop rate so they can feedback on whether the game is performing as intended. Even if its pure RNG I cant believe the apparent drop rates players are experiencing.

So I hope Cryptic will look into this and perhaps respond with some useful information, yeah a pipedream I know but no harm in asking :)

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Comments

  • thany#4351 thany Member Posts: 267 Arc User
    edited June 2020
    I gave up on this event/episode. Not funny but frustrating. Bad content. It's not even last rod for restoring box. Battle one/rod should be easy to get. Most of us already have infused rod from Bel. Anyway I have been playing for less than a year and i still can't find out why they release flawed content. Non stop. Bugs, exploits, patches with new bugs... No content/quality control. BTW where is that, promised, leg. insignia for free ?
  • adinosiiadinosii Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,294 Arc User
    I did a brief survey in my alliance yesterday, checking how many people had obtained the rod - a very rough estimate is that 5% have managed to do so. The problem is that we do not know what triggers the rod drop, and a lot of unsubstantiated "theories" are floating around
    • One suggestion is that there is only one rod drop server-wide per insurgence (sounds very unlikely)
    • Another suggestion is that only the first boss killed per insurgence event will drop a rod. (I know for a fact that this is false, because when I got my rod, it was on the second boss I saw on that insurgence event.
    • A more plausible idea is that the rod only has a chance to go to the person who does the most damage and/or who deals the killing blow. That would be consistent with my own experience. When the instance meter reached 90%, I stopped fighting mobs, and just waited in the center for a boss to appear with my biggest single-target encounter and daily all ready to go....I am pretty sure I dealt the killing blow and did more damage to the boss than anyone else, and sure enough, the rod dropped - however, fellow guildies that have tried this approach have not had any luck.
    • Perhaps it is just RNG and the drop rate is just abysmally low - but this would be bad design, as it would mean that the majority of players would not have gotten their rod in time for the Jubilee and the next mod. I know there is no official release date for the next mod yet, but June 30th is really the only date that makes sense. They might have been aiming for June 16th originally, but there are still too many issues - no way it will be ready then. June 23rd is out of the question as that is in the middle of the Jubilee, and that leaves June 30th.
    • Then there is the question of what happens if the rod is "allocated" to one of the people attacking the boss, and that person already has the rod....my guess is that in that case nobody will get the rod. If this is the case, the situation might improve over the next few days, as today is the last day many players need to visit the insurgencies to get their daily 20% (for me it is tomorrow, as I missed one day).
    • The "most fair" way to drop the rod would have been something like "anyone who does some minimum amount of damage to the boss has a 2-5% chance of getting a rod drop." With this, we would see people getting rods regularly, and sure enough, it might take 20-50 tries on the average, but it would not feel as hopeless as many players seem to think it is now.
    Hoping for improvements...
  • lopov88lopov88 Member Posts: 20 Arc User
    "some people have sealed over 100 insurgency instances and killed countless bosses with no rod drops" - make this 200, and still nothing. This "episode" has already had too many fails. Unfortunately no one from Cryptic seems to be addressing it. It will be forgotten very soon, a lot of people have stopped playing it already.
  • ukspawnukspawn Member Posts: 426 Arc User
    adinosii said:

    I did a brief survey in my alliance yesterday, checking how many people had obtained the rod - a very rough estimate is that 5% have managed to do so. The problem is that we do not know what triggers the rod drop, and a lot of unsubstantiated "theories" are floating around

    • One suggestion is that there is only one rod drop server-wide per insurgence (sounds very unlikely)
    • Another suggestion is that only the first boss killed per insurgence event will drop a rod. (I know for a fact that this is false, because when I got my rod, it was on the second boss I saw on that insurgence event.
    • A more plausible idea is that the rod only has a chance to go to the person who does the most damage and/or who deals the killing blow. That would be consistent with my own experience. When the instance meter reached 90%, I stopped fighting mobs, and just waited in the center for a boss to appear with my biggest single-target encounter and daily all ready to go....I am pretty sure I dealt the killing blow and did more damage to the boss than anyone else, and sure enough, the rod dropped - however, fellow guildies that have tried this approach have not had any luck.
    • Perhaps it is just RNG and the drop rate is just abysmally low - but this would be bad design, as it would mean that the majority of players would not have gotten their rod in time for the Jubilee and the next mod. I know there is no official release date for the next mod yet, but June 30th is really the only date that makes sense. They might have been aiming for June 16th originally, but there are still too many issues - no way it will be ready then. June 23rd is out of the question as that is in the middle of the Jubilee, and that leaves June 30th.
    • Then there is the question of what happens if the rod is "allocated" to one of the people attacking the boss, and that person already has the rod....my guess is that in that case nobody will get the rod. If this is the case, the situation might improve over the next few days, as today is the last day many players need to visit the insurgencies to get their daily 20% (for me it is tomorrow, as I missed one day).
    • The "most fair" way to drop the rod would have been something like "anyone who does some minimum amount of damage to the boss has a 2-5% chance of getting a rod drop." With this, we would see people getting rods regularly, and sure enough, it might take 20-50 tries on the average, but it would not feel as hopeless as many players seem to think it is now.
    Asked the question in another thread but basically the question is, "Is this working as intended?"

    Over the past week I've been testing this extensively, accumulating 300+ Insurgencies across 3 characters at differing stages of Marshall/Forger's Box level.
    - Infused Forger's / Turcopolier's Adamantine Amulet (DPS)
    - Burning Forger's / Turcopolier's Adamantine Amulet (DPS)
    - Burning Forger's / Under-Marshal Adamantine Amulet (DPS)

    The past few days has allowed for better testing due to the change in Insurgencies, unsure whether this was intentional or not due to the other associated issues with it. Insurgencies, depending on the server activity can last 45m towards 2 hours in the current state. Side issues with this is,

    - Insurgency instances can stop spawning enemies forcing the player to switch (this has gotten progressively worse over the 3 days, with more instances becoming null)
    - Insurgencies don't "end" correctly, nearing completion of an instance, instead of the percentage bar ending the instance and progressing to the next one, enemies just keep spawning, repeatedly. We've probably had one of those instances where it's literally insane.
    - Insurgencies with seemingly no/little boss spawns. This is probably not so much a bug as it's wild rng but probably worth looking into.

    Some of this and below we could speculate that there's more to it, a hidden mechanic or something we are over-looking, akin to the skill nodes, even that needed adjusting in the end.

    Back to the point,

    I personally have not gotten the battle worn metal rod, at all, on any test subject. At this point it's been verified 100% it drops from Insurgency bosses and an extremely low rate (or/in addition to, an unknown mechanic). Speculatively, it appears DPS characters seem to have had better luck, leaning into the aforementioned theories.

    Server-wide rod drop - Definitely not the case, I've seen it for myself where multiples (3) have dropped across a single Insurgency period. You could expand this to per instance and that I can't verify but would deem highly unlikely and certainly not intentional otherwise that's a bug.

    First boss per Insurgence only As you also said, definitely not the case, many will be able to verify this.

    Most damage / killing blow This seems to be the favorable theory at the moment, when coupled with DPS being more speculatively successful and previous damage / last hit issues previously with Insurgencies when charging amulet by absorbing Magic. This was one of the main things I've been testing, not 100% conclusive but,

    Landing killing blow - This does not guarantee a rod drop, this will be obvious, if the killing blow is what initiates the rng for a chance to drop, I couldn't say for certain as I don't have a rod. Having spoken to some who have, they are certain they did not land a killing blow.

    Most Damage - Similar to above. Having been in this position 50+ times (which sadly isn't near enough for any sort of verification) I still see no rod, again if damage is coupled with rng, then well.. that's rng for you. This is specifically on the boss, I also ran attempts on most damage done within the Insurgency itself, as well as no/little damage, again inconclusive as still no rod.

    You could mix and match the above and even throw in a "first blow", either way we're not really going to know without co-operative and extensive testing (which probably won't happen, but I would love ot think there's perhaps a guild or an alliance out there that has been testing this by populating an instance and enabling the right conditions).

    RNG Obviously plays a major factor, I understand devs had said they are investigating whether it's too low so would be nice to get an answer as to what it currently is. I have no issues with RNG as long as we can have it said that it's working as intended. Even (the fact) if it's rng in rng, is it all working as intended? Are boss spawns 100% rng? After all my testing there's nothing to show that boss spawns are nothing more than rng, I would love to think there's a wild card here, a missing mechanic we are simply over-looking (again). If there is, don't tell us what it is, just that it exists (:

    Chances are, this will be "fixed" or made easier shortly, but would be great to hear exactly where it went wrong and why. I get the feeling the latter will see it moved into a Insurgency completion with a higher drop rate, like previous rod from HE.
  • tepes#1182 tepes Member Posts: 37 Arc User
    It's too bad they swung and missed on the first episode. I don't think anyone was expecting a full mod with this release. My opinion only - I didn't mind the time gating for the amulet and I didn't even mind grinding for the rod. But to kill 200-300 bosses, as an OP no less, without getting the rod is a waste of time and isn't fun. I thought the grind was fun originally. You were getting a small amount of AD and RP and the ability to buy Juma Bags along with the thrill of possibly getting the rod. They could have kept the RNG as is but awarded the rod when you got the achievement for 100 completed and I think most reasonable people would have "fair enough."

    Other than a bug or making a really bad attempt to extend the episode I don't understand the logic? This isn't a BIS item we are talking about.
  • ukspawnukspawn Member Posts: 426 Arc User

    It's too bad they swung and missed on the first episode. I don't think anyone was expecting a full mod with this release. My opinion only - I didn't mind the time gating for the amulet and I didn't even mind grinding for the rod. But to kill 200-300 bosses, as an OP no less, without getting the rod is a waste of time and isn't fun. I thought the grind was fun originally. You were getting a small amount of AD and RP and the ability to buy Juma Bags along with the thrill of possibly getting the rod. They could have kept the RNG as is but awarded the rod when you got the achievement for 100 completed and I think most reasonable people would have "fair enough."

    Other than a bug or making a really bad attempt to extend the episode I don't understand the logic? This isn't a BIS item we are talking about.

    Agreed for the most part. Would just love to hear someone step forward and go, "you know what, this isn't working exactly as we intended" or better yet "it's working as intended, you're all just completely overlooking something because this isn't just a smash and grab"
  • zevra22zevra22 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 57 Arc User
    At this point the Battle Worn rod has wasted so much of our time for not purpose at all, they should pretty much give it away and let us struggle for the next one. I am really furious. This is from today's Patch Notes: "The Battle Worn Metal Rod and rings now have a chance to drop for all players who damage a warlord." This means, of course, that we have all been wasting our time on boring content endlessly spawning and killing bosses for nothing. Bel has me so frustrated and pissed I am ready to quit this for good after 5 years.
  • bigman99#8273 bigman99 Member Posts: 510 Arc User
    edited June 2020
    zevra22 said:

    At this point the Battle Worn rod has wasted so much of our time for not purpose at all, they should pretty much give it away and let us struggle for the next one. I am really furious. This is from today's Patch Notes: "The Battle Worn Metal Rod and rings now have a chance to drop for all players who damage a warlord." This means, of course, that we have all been wasting our time on boring content endlessly spawning and killing bosses for nothing. Bel has me so frustrated and pissed I am ready to quit this for good after 5 years.

    Doesn't quite mean that you are wasting your time, it just means what we have been suspecting for awhile, only the person who actually landed the killing blow on the boss had a chance to get it. This reminds me of the OLDEST days of Everquest when wizards would wait for someone to engage a Named creature and then Killsteal from someone and grab the loot. The developers there had the good sense to realize this pissed people off and changed it quickly. Apparently we have regressed 20 years or so in mmorpg development to see this again.
  • thany#4351 thany Member Posts: 267 Arc User
    edited June 2020
    I still don't get it. What about drop chance rate ? Remained the same or ? I don't think it was all about killing blow. Some bosses have that instant kill. Maybe it was about that.
  • madrigal#2900 madrigal Member Posts: 100 Arc User
    this week alone, i have spent 43 hours in insurgencies - FOURTY THREE HOURS - i have had full time jobs where i put less hours in per week, this is despite it supposedly being 'fixed' today.
    spending that amount of time to get..well nothing at all, is completely ridiculous.
    when we spend $$$ in game to 'support the game' - what do we get back- apart from shafted at every turn?
    it really isnt good enough.
    i really am feeling like jacking this all in and finding somewhere else to lay my money down, where i can at least get some actual enjoyment for my money.
  • greywyndgreywynd Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 7,083 Arc User
    Got a rod on both characters playing in the insurgencies today.
    I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
  • adinosiiadinosii Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,294 Arc User
    Today's changes seem to have improved the situation quite a bit ..and it does seem it previously had only a chance to be awarded to a single person (most damage or killing blow perhaps, as discussed above).

    Anyhow, now it is working as it should have done originally, and people can focus on trying to get that last rod from lockboxes...with 5 attempts per day, that will take a bit of time.
    Hoping for improvements...
  • furdawg#9281 furdawg Member Posts: 9 Arc User
    .... either the RNG got better or i got lucky. did half an hour this morning and got a ring box, then got mine after 30 mins in the insurgencies this afternoon, maybe 3rd boss
  • aelinazaelinaz Member Posts: 39 Arc User
    Just tried to run insurgency. Lag so bad could not move could not enter. Could not get travel post. Everyone was having the issue I had hoped this would be fixed. Does anyone know how you can avoid this?
  • thefiresidecatthefiresidecat Member Posts: 4,486 Arc User
    adinosii said:

    I>June 30th is really the only date that makes sense. They might have been aiming for June 16th originally, but there are still too many issues - no way it will be ready then. June 23rd is out of the question as that is in the middle of the Jubilee, and that leaves June 30th.

    but they have a track record of dropping very buggy things I wouldn't be so sure lol

  • darthpotaterdarthpotater Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,259 Arc User
    This content could be decent, something fresh but they allways manage to make everything new FRUSTRATING.

    Even with the changes, yesterday I did 10 instances and only got 3 bosses... so RNG over RNG. The bosses should appear 100% you know the feeling of wasting the time to not even get the chance for the rod?

    Is very sad that they have to make this kind of things to keep players engaged. Engaged and frustrated. The content should be fun, not frustrating. Every RNG should have a top. Lets say, 20 insurgencies -> guaranteed rod. This is mandatory in my opinion.

    The problem is that they tell that learned of things like alabaster weapons but they dont.
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  • herushanforumherushanforum Member Posts: 15 Arc User
    I have all the achievements for insurgencies (150+ completed) and fought over 10 bosses since the update with no battle worn rod. I got some seals and got one jewelry box but no rod no matter how much or little I hit the boss. This is worse then the chain of scales where the drop rate from cutlass was bad but still better than this. I have gotten over 5000+ chaotic writings for juma which is not bad and worth doing a few insurgencies for but not worth the grind as you have to wait 2 hours between chances and makes it so you cannot do other things in game as well. I think once you have fought all the bosses and hit the 100 insurgencies achievement you get the rod no matter what.
  • demente97demente97 Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    a
  • ene#5785 ene Member Posts: 85 Arc User
    edited June 2020
    A shame, I made over 10,000 chaotic writings, over 200 insurrections and found no rod.

    Have they changed the playing style of DC Healing because it's boring, and is this fun? Being forced to farm hours and hours for a stupid rod.

    The average age of the game is all people who work, cannot have such a low rate as to be dropped, people are getting tired of making insurrections.
  • melotai#0794 melotai Member Posts: 271 Arc User
    I never participated in the event past doing the quests to open it up for 3 of my toons but apparently that is enough participation to get the skill node one. I will keep it for now but more than likely I will just end up discarding it in a few weeks or so.
  • aaron#1767 aaron Member Posts: 75 Arc User
    is it just me or has anyone noticed this problem? about 30% of the encounters in avernus don't even give any completion rewards or the update for completing no matter how soon i get there or damge.
  • aaron#1767 aaron Member Posts: 75 Arc User
    I mean insurrections sorry
  • vastano#2343 vastano Member Posts: 169 Arc User
    lopov88 said:

    "some people have sealed over 100 insurgency instances and killed countless bosses with no rod drops" - make this 200, and still nothing. This "episode" has already had too many fails. Unfortunately no one from Cryptic seems to be addressing it. It will be forgotten very soon, a lot of people have stopped playing it already.

    I have reached the point that when i finish my ammy tomorrow i am done and dusted whereas i would have carried on doing 1 or 2 insurgencies every day now with the countless i have done for something that just does not drop i cant be bothered anymore
    just now did 10 insurgencies and got 1 boss that didnt drop
    it isnt even grind to get something its just pointless grind now
    at least in ddo after every 20 raids you can buy 1 piece of raid gear
    here if your rng luck is non existant you are finished

  • johnosullivanjohnosullivan Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 6 Arc User
    edited June 2020
    Why not give it automatically when players are reaching a threshold like 100 insurgencies (and same with Bel)?
  • johnosullivanjohnosullivan Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 6 Arc User
    All you are getting right now is frustrated players... give them an achievable goal
  • fademist#5406 fademist Member Posts: 58 Arc User
    i wonder why that is that important ...:P
  • herushanforumherushanforum Member Posts: 15 Arc User
    I finally got my rod after something over 50 boss fights since patch so it does finally drop some how but it should have a max grind for it. I think I was over 250 insurgencies and 125 bosses before getting the rod drop and took a day break before getting it today on the 7 boss of 22ish finished insurgencies. Now the dented rod RNG luck that is limited by how many secrets you can get per day doing Bel.
  • arailem#1581 arailem Member Posts: 47 Arc User
    I think I got my battle worn metal rod in sub 100, but it did take the patch to even make it possible.

    However, I can ultimately assume that the 100-200+ insurgencies with no battle-worn rod drop can be correlated to the fact that Rage of Bel has been broken in some egregious fashion since launch. Between the insurgencies failing to populate in multiple instances (and being patched, and breaking not even 48 hours after that) and the chance of insurgencies failing to reward players properly, it's been disheartening for many to even do this content.

    And I wonder why those two ultimately game-breaking bugs (i consider bugs where you cannot continue quests that depend on the insurgencies functioning correctly as game-breaking) even made it to live, when the announcement in Preview Bug reports is that "QA will review all issues found and reported on preview."

    Instead, all I've seen is passive-aggression in replies to bug reports ("I'm sorry the quest objectives did not meet your expectations" isn't a good reply) or just radio silence.
    Sunshine SaltmineIs only game, why you have to be so buttmad?
  • kenzzarooo#4322 kenzzarooo Member Posts: 5 Arc User
    I sent in a ticket to Arc with this issue, basically asking them to inspect my account because I have run over 130 insurgencies (at the time) with absolutely zero drops for me, though others I had in my group have gotten the rod. Since writing this comment, over 200 insurgencies run and, you guessed it, zero rod drops. Part of the response from Arc? "I understand that you have yet to receive the Battle Worn Metal Rod even after a considerable amount of Insurgencies. I understand your frustration about the issue, however, the drops are based purely on luck. There are times when a player can obtain a valuable item or not due to the random chance. Additionally, it is important to consider the level of rarity of an item. The higher the rarity of the item, the higher the difficulty in obtaining it due to its low drop rates. ". Sorry, I don't really think RNG is solely to blame here. Sure, the drop rate is stupidly low, but I've seen better RNG with legendary mount drops than this green rod.
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