Current drop rate system.

The OP brings up a good point hidden in the post. That point is that it takes a group to fight a boss mob. How is this game going to deal with the large number of solo players? Is this game content always going to be beyond our reach?

 

Was going to say this. Helps to bridge the gap between power gamers and the rest of us; also makes those encounters more special (to some extent) rather than a rinse and repeat grind.

 

If i would agree to a complaint about the current drop rate it would be this.

 

I didn't want to be the one to say this, but glad someone did. Go look at the recent Q&A thread. It was asked if any high level content would be created for solo players and the response was 'not for online play'. This is an issue that has been slowly creeping into infringing on my enjoyment of the game. I got really excited for the kickstarter when it was announced there would be single player online mode as it implied to me (but I get it, it was not promised) that content would scale so that the single player could have as much agency as a group in terms of accessing content. I think the Devs think it cannot be done because it would provide an easy path for players to profit harming the economy and incentive for group play. But this harm exists only because:

1. They are taking the easy path to incentivise group play and PVP by offering item rewards instead of offering 'world shaping' rewards. Solo players should have equal opportunities to gain items as groups do. Groups conquering bosses, control points, or PVP objectives should earn faction based increased rewards at vendors, temporary buffs, better temporary travel, better temporary xp, etc....not items only accessible to groups.

2. They don't use game mechanics to gate access to items, such as boss spawn timers, individual timers for loot chance, etc. You could prevent the flooding of the economy and increase the natural distribution of items by simply capping how much loot any single character has access to during a specific period of time. This is only harmful to the people who play 18 hours a day, but not to the extent that they wouldn't retain their huge time advantage.

Right now, as a solo player, I can basically grind xp or resources in 5 skull areas, and that's it. Once EP1 goes live, I'm hoping to have 40 hours of a great story, but after that, as a solo player, what's left? Spend another 600 hours in the mines ?

 

If you walk into a room of 20 players a week after artifact release, and all 20 players can have that artifact by farming or buying it... then nothing is rare about the item.

And to address the person who said players can make better gear... Yeah it is said so in all the game propaganda... and meant to be so.
That's why the recipes for turning drops into better gear is awesome.

 

I agree with the folks that say the drop rate is fine. If anything it might be slightly too high.

 

It doesn't need a group to fight the majority of them I can solo all but daemons ( not tried) and dragons( they next) and i'm certainly not the only one. One day as you get higher in skill things happen much easier.

Apart from when these things happen.....[2/28/2017 6:54:43 AM] Torc'Dawl the Broken attacks Bow Vale and hits, dealing 648 points of critical damage from Swipe.

 

Ouch.

Because getting artifacts is one of the few "end game" type things to do in this game right now. If they're too common, it doesn't really create enough of a challenge.

 

From my point of view golem boss are much much harder than anything - immune to magic. And new golem even burns 600 focus in few seconds

 

Yes indeed...and the only one i killed was in a group using autoattacks and my bear(bear was the clincher i most sure, not sure they were ).....i will be leaving them alone in future...8 people..many deaths...3 obsidian chips and 15 gold.....

 

@mass I understand your frustration and probably affects countless solo players like you and me that want to obtain things for the effort you put into this game. As far as Artefacts go, I had a Kobold Mage drop an Ahnk of Sacrifice in Elysium which surprised me. I have had countless potions and one pattern as well while mining. Bottom line, you adapt to the circumstances and work your skillset so you can solo in places like the rise one day. First time I went in there I did not realize how underskilled and unprepared I was yet that just motivated me to go back and train up what I need to succeed. That is what I will do and sooner or later will be able to do it solo if I want or be a strong contributor if in a group. R/Boris

 

I don't disagree with what you and @Bow Vale are saying. I think, as of right now, you can simply spend the time and level to the current high level content and make it solo. I suppose what I see happening, though, is that a small group of run away power gamers achieving extremely high character advancement that content is being balanced to. As well, the developers have basically stated that their intention is to craft new high level content with groups in mind. These issues coupled with the idea that items are the reward for this type of content tell me that at some point, I'm really not going to have much chance at accessing those high level things solo.

For now, I'm happy to continue leveling and see where things go (I've even had an artifact drop along with some potions and recipes). I do wish though, that the Devs would deviate from the old methods of incentivising through item drops and try more innovative ways of promoting group play and PVP. And like I said before, I do want the drop rate low, so even if things are being soloed, they should be balanced so that they are still rare.

 

That's an interesting idea. I still think for something to be 'rare' it should mean not so many people have it to use, but your idea is intriguing.

 

@mass I think what your seeing is the "old " crowd... who play the games like UO, EQ, AC and more and were used to grinding... making friends and taking months+ just to get a component to make epic gear... some people never got that rare epic gear.... EVER... why because it was rare.

We like playing... and are not of the "ooo shiny!" persuasion... we the "old" have been gaming for decades... instant gratification is not necessary for "that" gear.... So because we are used to that... we will definitely think the drop rate is too high. Different generation is all... we'd rather be a community than an elite player.

 

I gotta admit, I ran into my first seige yesterday and killed a ton of bad guys and they all had new drops that were kinda awesome (boards, explosion potions and such)

 

I still think critters should drop rare crafting items and those items are used in rare recipes. I dont like the artifacts, it has caused far to much unbalance in the game (lich ring example). But once again, worthless to melee. I tried the str ring for a while, it kinda sucks to go from 1000 hp buffed to 600 and was worthless in PvP. Far to unbalanced.. where is the +75 earth ring?

 

The Lich ring has gone to +50 attunement, -100 life attunement and -50% to healing, it means that basically you cant get any healing from anything but death magic now. That should be ok you might think but against high end mobs can hit for large damage and when there a number of them you need guerrilla tactics to take them on at times, which means running away at 10%-50% health and having no easy method of health refill. Wands can get upto or close to 30 attunement now, two of them thus 60 and no downside to healing and in truth the lich ring is not as powerful as it was and takes a play by seat of your pants style ( as death magic should be) to make it work on difficult areas, for my level at least. If an earth ring came in with +75 or even +50 attunement, and no negativity to healing as it wouldn't but maybe something to air etc then it would be much more powerful. The thing with these artificats especially hand held ones is that you can make just as good or better wands i feel to make them be an endgame item , sure mid game when people cant make the top notch gear they very good, but people can make them now and can get better bonus's i feel with player made items. Take the ankh of sacrifice, +50 life attunement and +2 combat regen and +200% reagent use, is that really so much better than a wand with 30 attunement or so and a bonus to life healing, spell critical and damage and intelligence buffs, i dont think it is personally. Which is good.

 

I don't have a problem with rare being rare. I don't have a problem with playing a long time to finally get the thing you are hunting for, and not being guaranteed a rare drop during your play. But, I would like to eventually become powerful enough to solo all the content in the game (even if it takes a long time). The problem I see is partially related to people that spend 12+ hours a day advancing their character. Those people run out of challenging content quickly, so new, more challenging content is created for them or old content is made more difficult for them to continue to play on. This, combined with the fact that they have been balancing the game in general in the direction of less difficult to more difficult, means that the leveling curve becomes steeper and steeper until a 2 hour a day player has no chance to be able to hunt for the latest rare content over the long haul. I had kind of thought that a game focusing on 'selective multiplayer' might address this to some extent, but it was never explicitly suggested that it would.

The other issue is the repetitive nature of the gameplay. This, too, is not necessarily bad for everyone. For instance, I like the game Plants vs. Zombies. Lot's of iterations on the core gameplay there, but there's only so much repetition a player can take before it gets stale. I don't think I could do 300 hours of Plants vs. Zombies and I've probably spent 300 hours in the various mines in Shroud. A lot of it has been fun, but I'm starting to reach my mining threshold . And that's sort of the problem; I'm pretty much stuck in the same 5 skull areas after more than 600 hours of gameplay. Maybe as @Boris Mondragon suggested, I'm just getting a little frustrated, but as I look out at the leveling curve and the increasing difficulty of content balance, I get concerned that the high level content will always sit just out of reach to do solo. Since there's talk of limiting certain items to being drops off specific bosses, I consequently get concerned that I won't ever have the chance to compete for those items (not looking for a guarantee to get a rare object, because then they aren't rare).

So, here's hoping that there's enough varied and storied content to get me leveled enough to have access to all the high level content on my own. I'm around adv lvl 75; I was planning to give the rise another shot around 80.

And be careful, I may very well be in your generation. My first RPG was Ultima III . I tell a scary bedtime story called "Before there was internet" and it's chilling sequel "14400k modems".