[dev1047] Thoughts/Feedback on "Legion"

[Sealdorie]

This event looks really fun! I'm excited that there is no cool down too. Sure it might be super crowded for the first few months, but after a while it should die down just like everything else. I'm also very happy about the point system, and just hope that the items you can get are at least on par with the items that are dropped within the event.

[Krashport]

Read most of these posts "not all" sooo many, my bad if someone had this idea...

I noticed that "Legion" is based in 3 area/zones, My Idea is instead of a new point system why not make each "Legion" area/zone based on Conquest Points, Imperial Standing, Allied Notes. Could just add gear to those systems where we could use points on old/new stuff alike.

[Zaknafein]

Read most of these posts "not all" sooo many, my bad if someone had this idea...

I noticed that "Legion" is based in 3 area/zones, My Idea is instead of a new point system why not make each "Legion" area/zone based on Conquest Points, Imperial Standing, Allied Notes. Could just add gear to those systems where we could use points on old/new stuff alike.

They could, and should add new gear/items to the three existing point systems you mentioned. However it should have nothing to do with legion imo. For the same reason VW gear should not be purchasable with crour. Then people would just burn in w/e area to get the gear vs actually doing the events.

Any point systems for legion, and anything they chose to adopt for VW (hopefully) somewhere down the road should be specific to the event. Same as Einherjar works.

[wish12oz]

I like that there is no reentry timer on this event, but I am smart enough to see it can cause problems. I really hope you guys set it up so that when you arrive the leader trades the item for entry, and your alliance is then put in line for the event. That way groups that arrived first will enter first, and people coming out of the battlefields will be behind the others waiting to go in even if they trade the item to enter as soon as they get out. Let's not create another event where you have to spam trade an item to a door/click on a door repeatedly and hope you get lucky, or hope every one will voluntarily wait in a player made line behind others.

Please make all the items obtainable through points.

Also: This is what everyone I know wants to happen.

In the end, this doesn't surprise me. You might as well ask to buy E. Body through ampoules of therion ichor. It's just not gonna happen.

It would be perfectly fine if it happened, just make it cost 50k+ ichor, that way it takes 3~ months of doing Einherjar every 3 days to acquire it. Whats the problem with actually being able to work towards everything you want, and not having to rely on building your own groups/LS, or that you can find an LS with honest leadership?

EDIT: You also wouldn't have to worry about ZOMG DUMB RANDOM LUCK!

[Tile]

I want items that you can only get from the Bosses. that way even if someone has super points they still have a reason to go in, and it won't die as fast

[Mahoro]

It would be perfectly fine if it happened, just make it cost 50k+ ichor, that way it takes 3~ months of doing Einherjar every 3 days to acquire it. Whats the problem with actually being able to work towards everything you want, and not having to rely on building your own groups/LS, or that you can find an LS with honest leadership?

EDIT: You also wouldn't have to worry about ZOMG DUMB RANDOM LUCK!

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.

[saevel]

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.

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.

Theron Ichor is annoying hard to obtain, ask anyone who's worked on a Mythic before. 50~100K Icor for an E.Body is about right.

Now what they should of done, and failed to do, was introduce multiple sources of HNM gear. They should of created more wyrms, more super NMs and gave them loot pools compromised of the other kings loot. Having a single source of an item that only appears every 72hrs is bad design. Most other MMO gamers laugh at the people who obsess over that, yes FFXI players seem to think it's a good idea. Likely due to the mental conditioning the games placed on you over the years. A points system is the same thing, it introduced a mechanism that you can obtain an item if you place enough work behind it, it removed the random number generator from the equation. Of course doing this will make the 95% happy but piss's in the Cheerios of the 5% who want to feel superior.

Now that being said, there should be slightly different versions of the item. Both of same stats, but the tier II has +1 higher stats, glows and only drops off the super boss. This way players have a mechanism to acquire the gear their after, and the 5% can feel *special*.

I can't say this enough, you do not use skinner's box techniques to force your players to go to events. It only works in a world where your players have no other options, the proverbial cage door being closed. The moment that door is open the rat will leave your electric cage of random food pellets and seek out their own food pellet source via alternatives.

[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.

[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.

[saevel]

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?



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

Then you might want to go open some books, or use google and learn what a Skinner Box is and who Dr. Skinner was. His research and invention (if it could be called that) of that box allowed many other behavioral scientists to do research. There have been many thesis's and phD's based on similar studies concerning constant vs variable reward schedules (basically drop rates) and their effects on animals. Many of this work has since been studied by game studios and used as research for how they design their games. Remember, their not there to make you happy, their goal is to make you pay as much as possible for as long as possible for as little content as possible. To do this they have resorted to the same mechanics that electronic slot machine designers have resorted to, a variable schedule reward system.

I'll share with you two studies done. First involved a skinner's box and a rat with food pellets. Now they tried several different programs, first being that hit the lever and a food pellet would drop (reward), the pellet was 100%. At first the rat would hit it as quick as it could, but quickly it learned that it could always get pellets. The rat then stopped hitting the lever and would only hit it when it was hungry. Next they changed it so that after a set number of press's the food would drop. At first the rat hit the lever as fast as it could, soon it learned the number of press's required to get it's reward and afterwards would only hit it the number of times required to get food when it was hungry. Finally they tried a variable reward schedule, their was a chance the food would drop every time the lever was hit. They found that the rat would constantly hit the lever, and due to there being no discernible pattern, the rat never stopped hitting the lever, even if there was lots of food in the cage. They found the lower the chance of the food dropping the more frantic the rat become at hitting that lever. Thus by controlling the chance of food hitting they could control the rats behavior and actions, forcing the rat to do what they wanted it to do (hit the lever).

Sound familiar, sound like a game we all know and love / hate? Sound like a certain event that we're currently forced to do for gear. Application of that study has been done on humans, especially those involved with gambling addiction. The addiction comes from the irrational part of the brain that desires a positive reward response. They keep playing and paying because "the next one might win".

Another study, this one involving two birds in a cage with a lever and pellet dispenser. First bird had it's foot tied to the bar, it couldn't reach neither the lever nor the food pellets. Second bird was free to move around and quickly discovered that if it hit the lever, food would drop. The researchers then stopped having the pellets drop. The second bird kept hitting the lever but no food would drop. It's reaction was curious, instead of stopping hitting the lever or just flying around, it attacked the 2nd bird who was tied down. With an expected reward removed, the bird attacked the nearest recognizable thing thinking it was responsible. Study concluded that when an expected reward is not given that the animal (or human / player) would resort to blaming easy to identify sources. Also concluded that removal of expected reward is considered an aggressive action and creatures will respond to it as though they had been attacked.

Usage of these behavioral models on humans in video games is considered unethical by the medical community. Humans are not supposed to be treated as rats in a cage hitting a lever to get food pellets. Developers should not create content specifically designed to attract and attack the irrational reward center of human beings in an attempt to get them addicted to hitting that lever.