A Serious Question about Rare Loot

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Jason_M, Apr 21, 2019.

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  1. Jason_M

    Jason_M Avatar

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    Hello friends. I belong to a group of players who are mostly in the European-West Asia-East Asia time zones and we've been sharing our experiences about rare loot. We've all been playing quite a while and have been enjoying the top end of the content.

    What we haven't been enjoying are the rare loot drops. None of us have ever gotten a Cabalist Hood. We've done hundreds of sieges both before and after the kerfuffle about forced open and the adjustments that followed. We've been working our tails off to get blueprints for dungeon spawn but some of them seem impossible to get. (We'd love to help you bug test the rotunda.)

    Despite this, it seems that players in the Western time zones are stocking their vendors with all manner of rare items. Some in the dozens.


    Our question is: Is there a game mechanism that controls when and how often rare items drop? Is it unintentionally responding to the larger player-base in the West by applying a cool-down that disproportionately affects Eastern players?

    Just an honest question. Thank you for your time.
     
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  2. Chiasma

    Chiasma Bug Hunter

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    I was trying to farm rotunda blueprint. I looted many dungeon recipes and one spider room blueprint yesterday during European-West peak time but none in non-peak time today.

    Just wonder the rare loot mechanism has a pooled stock at the back. The pool has a reset timer around some peak hour. If the pool is empty, no one will get any rare loot no matter how hard it farm.
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2019
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  3. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Ive been doing things to try and see if whent hey say "30% drop rate" for soemthing, it actually means 30% globally, and if a mechanism that keeps you from earning too much too quickly reduces your chances of being in that 30%

    Ive noticed rare drops in bursts. Typically after NOT farming for a while. But in reality if somone is sellign soemthign you want, you might wanna look at if its easier to make the gold to buy it from them, or to find it yourself.
     
  4. Jason_M

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    It's true that buying something that is very difficult to acquire is usually a lot easier. I'm not a legendary blacksmith, so I commission my work from someone else. I am an adventurer, however, and commissioning an adventurer to do something that I can do and do in fact do very often feels like.... not playing the game.

    I know that rare loot is rare, but the perception has come to pass that rare loot is much rarer for some rather than others. And that is what we're curious to know - is there a loot control mechanism and is it having unintensed effects on some segments of the population.
     
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  5. Turk Key

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    Buying that rare item is the antithesis of fun game play. Going out, working hard, expending resources, planning, grouping, and whatever to finally get the drop is what makes the game exciting. Walking up to a vendor to purchase the item just does not cut it. That said, I am in total agreement with the OP. Something smells fishy, and knowing the real mechanics behind the drops sure would help avoid festering paranoia.
     
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  6. Weins201

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    Sorry but LMAO (again)

    How long does it take you all to do a siege? If you are playing like I think it take a few of you a little effort and time to do this,

    There are players that roll thru just about naything and they time themselves in seconds, not minutes. Then they forsce a respawn or just move on and repeat.

    It is just a mechanic that has exisisted since the beginning.

    ALSO there are those that "Farm" items as soon as they are created when they are dropping 5 - 10 time more before Devs head pop out, and they "nerf" them.

    You are just an unfortunate person playing the game, not gaming the play, soooo ssoorryy
     
  7. Hillt

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    You can tell this is a F2P game when you have questions about loot drops.
     
  8. Anpu

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    I’ve been waiting to join the “Artifacts drop like rain” club. Maybe some day I’ll get there..... :)
     
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  9. Burzmali

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    I would target new artifacts as soon as they are announced, before Port nerfs their drop rate.
     
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  10. Toadster

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    It is a very good question but I don’t think port has opened the doors to far on their loot mechanics. There is some sort of capping system that stops arties from dropping when they reached their desired drops for a specified time period.

    I don’t know if that is hourly or daily or both, but personally I think that is the biggest problem because even if you are playing in private/party mode with those caps you are still competing for drops with all others in that scene.

    Now if there is a daily or hourly capping system this could impact certain time zones more than others depending on the reset time for drops. If after reset the items are cleaned out you can farm forever and there will be no drops.
     
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  11. Toadster

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    And to take this down one more level.... The above is if these items are capped per individual item. Unfortunately, this is probably not the case, and they are actually capped based on a bucket by item type... Artifacts, Blueprints and Dungeons.... now if this is the case you are not only competing with Drops with everyone in that scene, but you are competing with drops against everyone playing the game and farming the same item type.

    So for example if someone consistently farmed the compendium for blue prints and recipes and the daily cap was reached, no other recipes or dungeons would drop for the remainder of the time being monitored.
     
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  12. ErikRulez

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    I actually asked this on one of @Chris ' streams and he stated that COTOs were the only thing that had a control placed on it so they could limit how many were introduced other than using a low drop %. I know sometimes it seems like things drop more easily during some periods of the day or if you think less people might be looking, which is why I asked. This was around the time I was struggling with getting my first envy bow.
     
  13. Weins201

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    on one of @Chris Streams

    the weakest stamen made so far, to bad they cannot fix their game and use the forums to deal with game issues.

    BTW there is Z E R O control on Cotos since I can go to the store and buy 5000 if I wanted to. This is the exact BS excuse they use the day they told a few of us about COTO's in a Duke gathering.

    COMPLETE BS.
     
  14. Sentinel2

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    I think he meant control for COTO drops :D
     
  15. Weins201

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    It does not matter one bit if you say you are going to have "controlled" release / drops, but open up a store that sells them in unlimited amounts there is no control.
     
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  16. eli

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    Here's how I understand it:

    There is a hidden loot cap based upon gold value.

    For simplicity, let's postulate that this cap is 5,000 gold per hour.

    Consider Hypothetical A: you are looting at a rate of 4,000 gold per hour. The loot cap remains invisible to you, and you continue to have loot on every corpse indefinitely. However, you are after a rare with gold value 2,500. This means that after 39 minutes, you only have 2499 left in your hourly allowance, so this rare will be removed from your loot. ~33% of your time is being wasted if you are only after that item.

    That is being presumptive about the cap implementation details, so consider the even more insideous behavior if it were instead computed continually.

    Hypothetical B: you farm at a rate of only 3,000 gold per hour, slower than before. After the initial 50 minutes, your remaining loot allotment will be 2000 gold for as long as you continue looting at this rate. You could farm for days and still have a 0% chance at a 2500 gold item.

    Caveat: of course these numbers are not accurate, my goal is simply to illustrate the mechanism.

    This understanding of loot attenuation confirms my anecdotal experience that good loot comes at a much higher rate when you first start adventuring..
     
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  17. Burzmali

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    I've said it before and I'll say it again. 90% of these problems are because high end players have nothing better to do than endlessly grind. Create a system where city rulers and their retainers can vie for control over regions with guilds serving as mercenaries and wildcards and AL 150 folks would have something better to do than punch trees all day hunting bells.
     
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