Liav said:I like the idea of currency allowing people to buy the super rare pieces they can't get to drop, but only as long as the currency comes from content equally difficult or harder than the content that drops the item they want.
Getting a consolation prize of amazing gear for killing a thousand trivial mobs is nonsense.
I agree that the absolute best gear should also be the absolute hardest to come by, reinforcing your point that the hardest raid encounters should drop the best loot in the game. I also feel, however, that there should be ultra rare drops in a worldwide loot table that aren't quite as good as the best raid gear available, but it offers variety. When I farmed for that Darkstone Breastplate all those years ago, it wasn't because it was an upgrade. It was because I was a breastplate collector. I had all of best gear in the game, and the desire for the Darkstone Breastplate wasn't necessarily to upgrade my character, but to add an extra touch to my collection. The stats weren't quite as good as raid gear but the color of the piece was unique and it might have had a different resistance on it than some of the high end raid gear. Believe it or not, that Darkstone Breastplate was actually harder to acquire for me than the best breastplate in the game. That's because my guild had the raid content on farm, while the Darkstone piece was something that was just extremely rare. I like that. I want people to keep in mind how rare I am saying these pieces should be. It's not like this item is going to drop daily, or even once a week. It was EXTREMELY rare.
Vandraad said:Portalgun said:Loot doesn't always have to be about stats and min/max and game impact.
Then what the heck is the point? Ultra rare drops off ultra rare spawns in the item you get is crap? Nobody wants that. Nobody will put in the time nor effort to even try to get a rare spawn if it is known that no matter what drops it is garbage. Sorry, loot is about stats, it is about power, it is about uniqueness, it is about making others envyous. You don't get any of that off crap drops regardless of their rarity.
Happy to answer.
You are coming at this from your own perspective and I see that a lot on these dev forums, and that's totally fine and awesome and all. However, please consider that not everyone shares your views, wants, desires and ideas etc with regards to everythng in game. There are players that want things that you might consider garbage. Also, pretty sure I didn't use the term ultra rare, just rare. If you want to contribute something positive and suggest that ultra rares should be stats only, totally your call.
- edit for late night grammar
Liav said:I like the idea of currency allowing people to buy the super rare pieces they can't get to drop, but only as long as the currency comes from content equally difficult or harder than the content that drops the item they want.
Getting a consolation prize of amazing gear for killing a thousand trivial mobs is nonsense.
MMOs usually reward people for grinding forever, that's part of its thing. So why not reward the grinding with a piece of rare loot?
Beefcake said:Liav said:I like the idea of currency allowing people to buy the super rare pieces they can't get to drop, but only as long as the currency comes from content equally difficult or harder than the content that drops the item they want.
Getting a consolation prize of amazing gear for killing a thousand trivial mobs is nonsense.
MMOs usually reward people for grinding forever, that's part of its thing. So why not reward the grinding with a piece of rare loot?
The issue I see in this thread is a conflation of "rare" and "statistically amazing" gear.
Rare implies the incidence of drop, but for some reason the term has taken on a simultaneous new meaning of "items should exist with small drop chances that have amazing stats". I disagree with this particular version.
I have no issue with rare items, it's just that farming zonewide trash as you did in Sebilis shouldn't reward you with best in slot gear.
Again, I'm not saying it should be best in slot gear. What I'm saying is that by adding an extremely rare piece of gear to a sand giant camp, for example, provides an extra incentive to farm that camp for a group other than just to grind XP. It could be the determining factor for a tank on whether to XP there, or somewhere else on the grind to 50. It also makes the grind a little less boring knowing that any pull could be that 1 in 10,000 drop that you were hoping for. It allows an otherwise static, redundant camp to still have meaning when most of the players are already level 50. There is nothing wrong with having great loot on non-raid bosses. It doesen't have to be the best in the game, but it could have some sort of unique quality whether it's aesthetic, a rare stack of resistances or stats, or something else. You mentioned that EQOA was one of the highlight moments of your MMO career, and that is where my point originates from. I really liked the loot tables in EQOA. Whether it's the CV, Darkstone Breastplate, Specter Robe, there were items in the game that were highly desirable that didn't necessarily come from raids. Keep in mind these sand giants were no pushover, it's not like someone could solo them. They took a group to farm them. I just looked up the Darkstone Breastplate on Google and lo and behold, there was a thread from someone talking about how one of his favorite memories was looting the Darkstone Breastplate to complete his set. I'm not the only person out there who has a fond memory of obtaining that piece because of how rare it was ... getting that thing made the day of many a player, whether it was your average leveling warrior or end-game raid tank.
Another example to demonstrate my point ... Rubicite plate armor. The chest piece was extremely rare. It had no stats, but it was the ONLY red breastplate in the game at that time. I farmed the hell out of Cazic Thule to get the Rubicite breastplate, purely for aesthetic purposes. I was the breastplate Connoisseur ... and for people like me, super rare drops like that gave an extra special feeling in the game that most other MMO's are missing.
The higher level the npcs the better the stats should be on loot. Typically when your farming a camp in eq or eqoa or most group based mmos a named will spawn....that named mobs typically is always a few levels higher than every other npcs in the area, and typically have drops with really good stats.... Since we are talking eqoa references mainly I'll see if I can remember a few items to give examples.. Crocks island near fp...had old fangtooth and Lil snappa..both dropped nice items that lasted for a few levels (10-15) Farming gnolls near davar manner...dropped that glory offhand with super nice stats for the level and it looks awesome....it was selling for 300k tunar well into the game because of how rare they were and just how good the stats were.... The low level ice goblins near halas...had that rare named that dropped that glowy thing...can't remember name...was good for about 5-7 levels and you needed a grp at that level to kill them.... Now I'll refer to some raid zone examples...pod..farming for robe of ancients..took forever...ultra rare drop...worth 100+ million...some never got it...I got 2 because of the sheer amount of time I spent farming there.... Now plane of sky...farming snow or desolate chains for bpoa...took time..ppl..and skill..for an item worth a ton....
Under no circumstances should there be a currency to let someone obtain rare cool items...if you want it...go farm it....it's almost as bad as doing dailies and weeklies...and instanced dungeons for raid marks to buy raid gear.
bluefoxcode said:I'm gonna go outside right now and start killing ants and spiders hoping to get a winning lottery ticket!
LOL, nice one!
I'd rather not see super high quality equipment dropping randomly from any mob in the world, but I don't have an issue with an item dropping (rarely) from a few different mobs of the same type in a specific area. I'd rather have all humanoids have a chance of randomly being rich and dropping a ton of coin. Archeage had coinpurses and you could get lucky with RNG when you opened them. Or give them a chance to drop rare gems or other expensive materials rather than equipment. I still prefer an extremely rare spawn to an extremely rare drop, though. Rare drop from a rare spawn? Even better.
I'm a fan of RNG, but I like loot tables (for equipment) to be unique, and I don't like things like private loot and loot tokens. I think half of my best MMO stories involve being forked over (lol) by RNG. Testament of Vanear, Paw of Opalla, AC, frenzied, Ghoulbane, Valorium Breastplate, Grimrot...I actually had like a 20 hour session trying to get a Dark Elf Mask for my Ogre Shadowknight on Ragefire in 2015 (long periods without assassin pops, Serrated Bone Dirks, and losing rolls...then three masks in an hour after I got mine). It was almost worse in early WoW because you couldn't camp a specific mob. I must have run UBRS 100 times trying to get Spaulders of Valor off Rend Blackhand. I'd kill him, he'd drop the eyepatch or the polearm again, and I'd still have half the instance to finish before I could make another group and do it all over again. Never got them. Ended up getting the shoulders from Molten Core first.
As far as difficulty goes, I'm hoping it gets back to where a mob of your level, or even a few levels lower, has a pretty decent chance of killing you when you are alone. I think being able to solo effectively should require a good amount of skill/knowledge/strategy and should feel like an accomplishment. It shouldn't be a situation where any player of any class can smoke a mob by facerolling as long as the mob is less than five levels higher.
Top tier "raid quality" gear should only come from raids. Whether it's directly dropped, crafted using dropped materials, or purchased using raid-only currency, or a combination of those methods doesn't really matter imo.
Regarding group attainable equipment though, here's my 2cp >> Killing level appropriate trash should get you level appropriate lowest tier equipment, for example low AC only gear and materials to craft similar gear. Level appropriate group-killable named mobs should drop slightly better equipment, maybe a few AC points higher, and also some slightly more rare crafting materials. Then you would be able to craft the "highest" tier of level appropriate group armor, without becoming too stat driven or breaking the game, but add a couple hp/stats/resists.
Here's an example: Orc pawns or Orc Centurions drop rough leather tunic and possibly rough leather pelts (or you can obtain pelts other ways too). Let's say the tunic is 4AC. Through basic crafting, once your leatherworking skill is high enough, maybe you can use pelts to craft that same 4AC tunic, and then use additional pelts to improve it to 5AC (similar to skyrim smithing). Now let's say you slay emp Crush who drops a Quality leather tunic... let's call that 6AC on the tunic... you would need a higher leatherworkng skill, but let's say you can improve it to a max of 8ac. Maybe as a rare drop, emp crush could ALSO drop an enchanted pelt, which would allow you to craft a 6AC, +2 hp tunic. And then you would need a second enchanted pelt to improve it to 8AC +3hp. But such an enchantic tunic would only be craftable THROUGH drops from mobs... not as a direct drop. The idea would be to encourage killing mobs with your group, xp grinding, socializing etc and also rewarding you with usable loot drops, but hopefully not leading to any sort of incentive for higher level players to farm low level stuff, or putting stat armor in the game that would encourage pre-mature stat creep.
Thoughts?