[dev1047] Thoughts/Feedback on "Legion"

[wish12oz]

Because of what Tile said above. Ok, so imagine you could buy E. Body with Ichor. Most people I know have tens/hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Ichor these days. Ein would be even MORE dead than it is these days if you could just buy every single one of Odin's drops because nobody would ever have a reason to go in. If you designed Legion the same way, the event would instantaneously have a shelf life. Imagine if you could buy every single Limbus drop via Ancient Beastcoins and never have to zone into the area again. Imagine if you could buy every single +2 item in Abyssea with cruor. Bam, dead events walking.

MMO devs have to have some way of ensuring people actually do the content and fight the toughest monsters (e.g., WoW raids). Moreover, the events they design need longevity. It would be nice if all MMO items were obtained through points, but this just isn't realistic. Imagine, if you will, a scenario in Legion where people discover a way to farm a few smaller mobs ad nauseum and amass Legion points hand over fist. The event would be DOA. Anybody who enters would just farm that same mob over and over and nobody would touch the tougher bosses (e.g., Paramount Botulus Rex).

While in theory there is nothing wrong with being able to work towards everything you want, and not having to rely on building your own groups/LS or finding a LS with honest leadership, in practice what you are really asking for is a console RPG, not an MMO.

The solution to your problem is simple, add LOTS of good items, and create a way to make gil from it or something else useful. Lets use einherjar as an example again, lets say you're a WAR, you're gonna need e body, v helm, maybe v body, maybe shadow breastplate too. That's 4 items for 1 job, and doesn't get into being a completionist! Then you're going to need more e and p abjurations to tatter to augment your adaberk and shadow breastplate. After you get all this stuff, you can continue to do the event to get e/p/whatever abjurations to tatter and sell to make gil on.

This is a simple solution and makes the event worth doing basically forever, and by basically forever I mean until the gear from it is outdated by new gear. Everyone is always going to level new jobs and want new stuff for them. And using the earlier figure of 3 months to get e body abjuration, those 4 items alone are going to take you at least a year to acquire if you don't get them as drops. I think that's more then enough.

[Mahoro]

Very very bad thinking. What you just asked for amounts to little more then a skinner's box. The devs attempting to condition and control your behavior through random rewarding of the food pellet from your random hitting of the lever.

I didn't "ask" for it. I stated the reality of the game we play, and countless other MMO's and web-based games. To be fair, you (and I) have zero information regarding the drop rates of Legion HNM's, so perhaps the system is less Skinnerian than most. I merely stated SE's objective is to have people DO the content, beat the actual bosses, and in so doing give the content a degree of longevity.

Frankly Saevel, your post contains some pretty wild assumptions regarding mental conditioning and superiority complexes that I can say with certainty do not apply to me. I think the loot systems in some of FFXI's events are quite egregious. I am by no means an advocate of the types of drop rates VW enjoys, and I would certainly not want Legion to contain the same. What I AM an advocate of is doing the content, taking on the event's challenges (e.g., Odin at level 75), and walking away with the best rewards on a "reasonable" timetable. For example, I am a huge advocate of Abyssea "drop rates," where even the rarest stuff has about a 25-50% drop rate if you bring blue/yellow procs.

I wouldn't expect something like an E. Body to have a 100% drop rate from Odin. However, I am fine with the fact that Odin drops it and that you cannot get it from Therion Ichor, because it is a suitable reward for beating something like Odin. Are you advocating to have every single Abyssea drop purchased with cruor? When do the Skinnerian assumptions end and simple gameplay begins?

The solution to your problem is simple, add LOTS of good items, and create a way to make gil from it or something else useful. Lets use einherjar as an example again, lets say you're a WAR, you're gonna need e body, v helm, maybe v body, maybe shadow breastplate too. That's 4 items for 1 job, and doesn't get into being a completionist! Then you're going to need more e and p abjurations to tatter to augment your adaberk and shadow breastplate. After you get all this stuff, you can continue to do the event to get e/p/whatever abjurations to tatter and sell to make gil on.

This is a simple solution and makes the event worth doing basically forever, and by basically forever I mean until the gear from it is outdated by new gear. Everyone is always going to level new jobs and want new stuff for them. And using the earlier figure of 3 months to get e body abjuration, those 4 items alone are going to take you at least a year to acquire if you don't get them as drops. I think that's more then enough.

I'd say a better solution to my problem is to have reasonable drop rates from Legion HNM's. See discussion above.

[Runespider]

Square love random too much to ever adopt anything sensible, Random number generator will reign supreme till the end of days in a SE MMO.

[FrankReynolds]

It's really simple. let's say the devs want the item to have a %5 drop rate from legion. So the average player has to do 20 runs to get X item. They can implement even higher point requirements. So that the item that takes 20 runs avg. to get can also be bought with the number of legion points acquired for say 100 runs. That way the incredibly unlucky guy who can't seem to get the drop no matter how hard he tries knows that eventually he will be able to get it through hard work.

Making it a random drop doesn't mean that people are not going to stop doing the event when they get their drop. I don't know anyone who got ebody from einherjar, and then kept doing it because they wanted a second one.

They did it because they needed DKP for other events. IE. If you show up for all these legion events, you get points that go towards having the LS help build relics etc for you. Or because they needed ichor for items that don't drop from the NMs (this could still work), or they needed ichor for mythics.

If they make some of the really good / hard to get drops sell-able, then people will never stop doing it.

[Mahoro]

Well if the choices are "Legion HNM has 0.01% drop rate on X item" and "X item can be purchased for 100,000 Legion points," I'd choose the latter too. So I just hope the devs increase the drop rates over stuff like VW bodies, which is just egregious.

[wish12oz]

I'd say a better solution to my problem is to have reasonable drop rates from Legion HNM's. See discussion above.

Reasonable drop rates would make the content outdated faster then my suggestion.....

It's really simple. let's say the devs want the item to have a %5 drop rate from legion. So the average player has to do 20 runs to get X item. They can implement even higher point requirements. So that the item that takes 20 runs avg. to get can also be bought with the number of legion points acquired for say 100 runs. That way the incredibly unlucky guy who can't seem to get the drop no matter how hard he tries knows that eventually he will be able to get it through hard work.

I've been this person, and it sucks a lot.

[Mahoro]

Reasonable drop rates would make the content outdated faster then my suggestion.....

Then they better have a varied amount of good items, yeah? Remember, I am not an advocate of having us farm Legion for years at 0.0001% drop rates. I AM an advocate of doing the content, beating the toughest challenges, and walking away with the best rewards on a reasonable timetable. I am fine with not having E. Body purchasable through Ichor, and instead having it drop from the toughest boss of Ein. I am fine with not having Zelus Tiara purchasable through cruor, and instead having it drop from (one of) the toughest mobs in Abyssea. Thus, I am fine with having the best rewards drop from Legion HNM's so that people actually do the event.

[FrankReynolds]

Then they better have a varied amount of good items, yeah? Remember, I am not an advocate of having us farm Legion for years at 0.0001% drop rates. I AM an advocate of doing the content, beating the toughest challenges, and walking away with the best rewards on a reasonable timetable. I am fine with not having E. Body purchasable through Ichor, and instead having it drop from the toughest boss of Ein. I am fine with not having Zelus Tiara purchasable through cruor, and instead having it drop from (one of) the toughest mobs in Abyssea. Thus, I am fine with having the best rewards drop from Legion HNM's so that people actually do the event.

What's wrong with making it purchasable with points from the toughest HNM in legion? You still have to kill stuff, you just don't get subjected to completely random drop rates.

[Mahoro]

What's wrong with making it purchasable with points from the toughest HNM in legion? You still have to kill stuff, you just don't get subjected to completely random drop rates.

Nothing, if people actually kill the toughest HNM to get said points. But with the system as it stands right now, points are available from any mob.

[wish12oz]

Nothing, if people actually kill the toughest HNM to get said points. But with the system as it stands right now, points are available from any mob.

So if they just make harder mobs give more points you'll have no objections?