This game is so focused on making crafting rewarding that it makes adventuring feel pointless.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Aetrion, Sep 7, 2019.

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  1. Spoon

    Spoon Avatar

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    @bugmaster77

    Just to preface the quoting bits below. I fully agree with your premise and why you are upset. So don't take the corrections below as criticism of your premise or your feelings about that premise, ie that there are timezones and geographical areas that are at privilege in this game, and knowing and minmaxing those is beneficial to those who can and do. That is correct and it is a bad thing.

    However there are a number of things that are not fully accurate in specific statements surrounding that premise and the scope of that which isn't as big as your statements make it seem.

    Cora did respond in the post below that one with an explanation.
    Also when a topic has gone this far it is less likely to get responses to tangents not related to the main thread.
    If it had been a new topic solely on that then that post would have gotten a lot more responses.

    So I would advice starting a new topic if you want more attention to this concept. This topic has been going on for too long anyway and has deviated far from its intent.

    There is indeed a cap quota on specific drops. It is a fact. The most obvious example would be crown-of-the-obsidians.
    There are also lots of other caps to prevent exploits and farming, like the value caps.

    Also to note is that all mmos employ caps for the same anti-exploit anti-farm reasons. How those caps are implemented differ and produce very different experiences. But they all have them.


    Correct, and fully agreed.
    Which is true for all mmo's which allow player trading but especially for the ones with a small staff, like this one.
    It is the old "why we can't have nice things".

    What you are describing here doesn't follow from what we know. Instead what you are describing are issues not stemming from the cap quota. Those issues are quite different ones.

    For instance, uncommon artifacts are not limited by cap quota. So not getting decent artifact drops has nothing to do with the cap quota.
    Artifact drops is all about knowing which tiers and which mobs drop what and where it is more and less likely. Then grind only mobs with better drops and avoid mobs with lesser drops. Timezone etc does not factor into that, nor does the cap quota.
    Instead uncommon artifacts are capped by value, so if a specific player accumulate too much value then they are slammed with a cap block on high value drops.
    Hence it would only affect those getting a lot of stuff already, and would not affect some regular joe, especially if that player doesn't get many high value items. So the opposite result to what you are describing, it limits top tier.

    So that vendor having enough uncommon artifacts to sell and restock is not an issue related to cap quotas affected by timezones.

    What does have cap quotas are specific things that could either crash the economy as a whole, or the business model for the addon store.
    For instance, one such cap quota are crowns-of-the-obsidians. However there according to the devs and what we see then that quota very very rarely caps at all and is there more as an insurance against potential exploits than it is actually capping drops. So the existence of the cap quota on that specific resource - crowns - doesn't actually have a significant enough capping effect on actual drops. Instead there is a dropping chance metric which is applied globally which increases or decrease the chance of them dropping which is the 99.9% factor in how many will drop in any given day.

    Where you are right though is for very specific ultra rare drops like the lot deed drops. For those they are extremely rare and they do reach the cap quota often enough to actually have a limiting effect capping their dropping rate. Which as you say is unfair due to timezones.
    However those are soooooooooo rare that if you are not a >40h/week perpetual grind type of player then you are not even in the ballpark of getting those anyway so that difference is moot or academic.




    tl;dr
    So the assertion that this title is losing player retention due to the loot drops in general then you are correct. However when you tie that into the cap quotas then you are incorrect.
    When you assert that there is an unfair cap quota tied to timezone then you are correct for specific items. However when you tie that into regular uncommon artifact drops and drops in general then you are incorrect.




    Solution:
    The unfairness of the timezone factor on cap quotas would be relatively easy to fix.
    If one instead of resetting quotas on a 24h timer, then if one reset it on an odd value timer then it would migrate across timezones. Also if one would have 2-3 such reset schedules with different odd value timers then it wouldn't even be predictable by players.
     
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  2. Superbitsandbob

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    I've felt for some time now that even if this game is not purposely designed around a clique of long term, highly invested players (not ruling it out), it certainly doesn't do itself any favours in this regard. When you look at how the bugged chest was exploited in Tartarus for example by players who shouldn't have even been there. Nothing was done about it and the stuff that came from it was left in the game as far as I am aware. Who were they and why was it let go?

    The item drop thing is probably the worst design decision I have ever come across in a game that involves loot drops and is completely exploitable by those in the know as you say. Its the fact that it doesn't seem to have been made clear up front that really galls (I'm not talking about a comment in a stream). Maybe it was in the release notes when it happened but I don't remember it. It's like that situation where players who were doing behind closed doors testing were using information in those testing phases to exploit the economy for themselves when that release finally came around. As you say also. Why is everyone so quiet about it. The devs and those who have known about it for however long it has been going on.

    I think this is one of those situations where an open development process like this has failed. I don't want the people developing a game I am investing time into to have friend lists with players on or people they make friends with in the game. It feels all nice and cosy in theory, but it just creates a feeling of mistrust and lacks any transparency.
     
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  3. Superbitsandbob

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    Do you know other MMO's that follow a similar system? I can list loads that have a very low percentage drop chance for rare items but not caps on drops and if they do, is it something that everyone is aware of or no one.

    I think the real issue here is communication. If it was clear and everyone knew about the drop situation then we can make a decision on if it is worth investing our time in. If a few know from information supplied by a dev that is not public then that's bad.
     
  4. Vladamir Begemot

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    So you are saying that it is confirmed, loot drops at a certain time?
     
  5. Spoon

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    Agreed, I think that the info should either be public or private, not in between.

    Which of the systems described did you have in mind?

    Eve has quotas, WoW have quotas, Entropia have quotas especially sweating. STOL had quotas in their crew missions.
    However like you say, none of those publish any such information to players. Also each implement the quotas differently.

    For instance Eve's quotas are just safety catches that are not intended to limit drops but rather catch bugs or exploits.
    WoW had quotas every now and then for when new stuff gets into circulation. However those are more ramp up kinda things and not used much anymore anyway. Or at least not communicated about.
    While much of Entropia's setup is quotas within quotas to limit farming.
    The STOL quotas was mainly by region, so that if a region of space was farmed too heavily then it would drop less.
     
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  6. Barugon

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    No loot drops happen at "a certain time". If an item has a daily cap then that item will also have an extremely low chance of dropping (RNG). If the cap is reached (unlikely) then it stops dropping for the rest of the day.
     
  7. Sulaene Moon

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    How do you know this is unlikely? Do you know the rates or time periods or has Chris confirmed the cap has never been reached?
     
  8. Barugon

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    I didn't say never. I said unlikely.
     
  9. Sulaene Moon

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    I thought it was based on some fact but it’s just an opinion? I thought I missed something that’s all.
     
  10. Barugon

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    If you want to believe that Chris is a dolt and that some high-level player in a better time zone is getting all the best artifacts before anyone else then please do.
     
  11. Sulaene Moon

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    At first I wouldn’t believe that, but all you have to do is look at the prerelease of Tartarus and that fiasco. There is history.

    Edit: You see this every time someone asks why people are camping a certain area and at a given time.
     
  12. Anpu

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    So after a year of playing (mostly casual), the reason I don't ever find anything is because I don't play at a certain time?

    You have got to be kidding me?
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2019
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  13. Rhunen

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    I don't think anything has ever been said about drops only occurring at certain times of the day or year, besides from people speculating. This is barring seasonal stuff like the death bunny or krampus of course. There are safeguards as someone said earlier to keep loot from being doled out too quickly to exploiters, but I seem to remember one of the devs (Probably an Atos stream) saying it has only been tripped a very few times. An average player will likely never trigger it. The real issue with loot is so much of it has very low drop rates. Its not super bad (At least from personal experience) if you just want drops in general, but if you are after something specific it can be a giant pain.
     
  14. Superbitsandbob

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    I think all of the MMO's I have ever played have never had this when I think back to EQ, DAoC, AC and many others. I believe also the Guild Wars games and other modern MMO's. WOW you mention and maybe it is like that now but when I played and now in classic, it is a percentage drop whether you start killing the mob at minute one of the first hour or the last minute of the 24th hour. It seems a very rare system and there is a reason for that I think.
     
  15. Superbitsandbob

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    It's not the first issue though. If it isn't such a big thing why doesn't Chris or someone just explain how it works in the thread. Maybe you think he shouldn't have to but when someone says "Chris told me this is how rare drops work" then it should be general information for all as the system sounds like it is very exploitable by players who know and can play whenever.
     
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  16. Barugon

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    He did explain how it works in one of his livestreams but I agree that it should be documented somewhere. His blog thread was so much better.
     
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