[DEV 1009] Kings update, drop rates.

[wish12oz]

So it's been a few days now, and it has become apparent that the drop rate from NQ kings on the HQ king pop, is right around 5%.
I am completely outraged at this.
The only item from kings left for me to acquire is a defending ring, it's been that way for a long time, and I was pretty happy initially with this announcement, but this is just stupid.

Let's do some quick math for a second.
99 KS per NQ pop, 5% drop rate on HQ pop, then 5% drop rate on Defending ring.
5% drop rate means 1 in 20 drops drops the item.

So how many kindred seals do you need to get a King Behemoth pop?
99*20=1980.
So you need 1,980 KS per King Behemoth pop, then on top of that, Defending ring is 5% drop rate, so you need
(1980*20) 39,600 Kindred seals per Defending ring on average.

I was expecting to be able to actually work towards this goal and have it be something that I could actually acquire, but this is to much and just downright stupid. You need to increase the drop rate on Defending ring to at least 35% or increase the drop rate on HQ pop items to at least 35%, either of these is ok with me, because then you would only need around 6,000 kindred seals per Defending ring, which is a goal you can realistically work towards with a lot of effort.

Beyond doing this, you need say that you're doing it, and give specifics. If you raise the drop rate on HQ pops, you need to tell us how much you're increasing the drop rate to, same with Defending ring. And yes, I'm mad.

[Runespider]

It's a rare drop, one of THE most rare drops infact.

If it was common nobody would care for it much at all, it's a trophy piece. Be glad you have any chance at it, before this update you had pretty much none. I'm in the same position as you btw, I have everything else from kings long ago this being the last.

[wish12oz]

It's a rare drop, one of THE most rare drops infact.

If it was common nobody would care for it much at all, it's a trophy piece. Be glad you have any chance at it, before this update you had pretty much none. I'm in the same position as you btw, I have everything else from kings long ago this being the last.

I actually had more of a chance at it before the update, so did everyone else who actually wanted it, because I could camp it, pay attention for 7 minutes during 3 hours, and then if I won claim just solo it with my NIN and WHM mule.

And its good because it's good, not because it's rare. You can get almost half your remaining MDT required to cap from this 1 item, and it has -10% Physical damage too! (capped sellra5 is 27%, 23% MDT required to cap, D ring would give -10%)

But seriously, you think 40,000 kindred seals per D ring is ok? seriously?

[Runespider]

But seriously, you think 40,000 kindred seals per D ring is ok? seriously?

It's random, some newb could get one on his first shot. It's not guaranteed to need the numbers you give.

As I said it's still better than before, I know on my server we were lucky to see 1-2 a year and that would only be to a handfull of shells. This fits into "nothing else to complain about" imo.

They will either leave it as it is or make it as common as a jelly ring, you know how this stuff works.

[wish12oz]

It's random

It is random, but this is the average.
AVERAGE
Give it a year and there will be 1 new Defending ring per 40,000 wasted seals. That's how it works.
Which is also the problem, some random guy will get one first pop, and people who try to get it and are smart enough to use it correctly never will.

As a side comment: I've played since NA PC launch and I've only acquired 3000 or so Kindred seals, Leveling 7 jobs to 75 and almost capping merits before abyssea, and before Kindred crests/HKC's existed to take the drop slot of kindred seals. Maybe that information will help you put the average required into perspective.
40,000 is NEVER going to happen, it's just not feasible.

They will either leave it as it is or make it as common as a jelly ring, you know how this stuff works.

It doesn't have to be common, I gave a good drop rate percentage that would keep it rare but also keep it as an eventual goal people could realistically work towards. I just think 40,000 is a slap in the face and an insult.

[GlobalVariable]

Defending ring is as near a myth as drops get, when the NM was a free spawn we'd see what, 1 drop per 2 years? Serious question, anyone got any actual data to go on for it, tell me. I know its always been crazy rare.

edit:
Pardon me if I don't take wiki's data as accurate even if I implicitly trust such a small sample size to be accurate it seems like there would be high probability of many of unreported kills without a drop.

[Arcon]

It's a rare drop, one of THE most rare drops infact.

If it was common nobody would care for it much at all, it's a trophy piece. Be glad you have any chance at it, before this update you had pretty much none. I'm in the same position as you btw, I have everything else from kings long ago this being the last.

Before this update I agreed with you. Now I severely disagree. Before the update you had a very slim chance. Now you have realistically none.

For comparison: In a KSNM run, which is already outside of the reach of some players who burned their KS on other things pre-Abyssea, and since have barely made any Kindred's Seals at all, you have a chance of 0.25%, or 1 in 400 to obtain a Defending Ring. That means that only one item will drop for every 400 KS99 done by people, on average.

Before you actually had to go out and camp it, and I've done it recently, there wasn't as much competition as there used to be, only after maintenance. Most people simply didn't wanna go through the trouble. Those who actually wanted to work towards getting it, those were the people standing there and camping it, and it wasn't that many. While it was still a rare chance, at least you could do something about it. After enough camping, even after three years, it could be yours. 400 KS99 on the other hand is completely unrealistic. All they've done is make it accessible to random people who casually try it every now and then, but people who actually wanna put effort into it are likely to be completely unrewarded for it.

400 KS99, I don't believe any player has ever done that many, even considering other people's pops. If you do one KS99 every day, you'd still be on it for over a year. And there's no way you can ever farm that many pops, it takes at the very least 8h 15min to get 100 KS, then do the KS99, then do the NQ, then do the HQ. That chain alone is worth more than one day of effort put into it, and statistically it's more likely to be a three or four day effort, because Kindred's Seals don't always drop that much.

Which means even if you dedicate every day, all day long, every hour you play just to obtaining a Defending Ring, high chance says you'll still be here this time next year, empty handed, and quite possibly for more years after that. If you're a casual player, high chance says you won't get it in a life time (literally one human life time).

Even with a 100% HQ pop I didn't like this idea very much, because it still means I have to get 2,000 KS on average for a Defending Ring (and knowing my luck it'll be more like 10,000 KS), but at least that I could work on. With the current system I won't even bother, because it took me years of playing casually to get ~500 KS. I'm sure as hell not gonna farm 80 times the amount that took me several years to accumulate.

It seems this update had the casual MNKs in mind, and nothing else.

[wish12oz]

Defending ring is as near a myth as drops get, when the NM was a free spawn we'd see what, 1 drop per 2 years? Serious question, anyone got any actual data to go on for it, tell me. I know its always been crazy rare.

The real drop rate is 5%, which is once every 20 KBs, which averaged once a week real time per spawn basically, so every 20 weeks a new one would drop. Which is every 4 months on average.

edit:
Pardon me if I don't take wiki's data as accurate even if I implicitly trust such a small sample size to be accurate it seems like there would be high probability of many of unreported kills without a drop.

If you camped kings seriously at all, you knew when D rings dropped, and I assure you the rate is right around 3 per year, I don't really care if you believe me or the wiki or anything else, go ask oldschool hardcore HNMLS people on your server.

Or! actually, I know of this LS, they chased off every other HNMLS on their server and recorded drops and kills on their forums, and got every D ring on their server the whole time they were an LS, why don't you go there, check their old posts on their forums, and then you can get specifics regarding how often KB spawned on their server, and how often it dropped D ring.

http://z6.invisionfree.com/NewKazoku...p?showforum=20
Here's the specifics:
In 51 KBs, they got 3 D rings. Which is just over 5%, but since this is a very small sample size, we can assume a small margin of error, so between like 4% and 8% would be their drop rate
11/15/09 - 10/31/2010 is the date recorded for the 51 kills, 349 days. If we assume they got every KB that poped, that's an average of 6.8 days between pops. or once a week like I said.

So this LS's statistics are exactly what I said.

[MarkovChain]

Gotta love BG rejects doing statistics with 50 sample size. Also D ring is useless : Cure 6 etc. Anyone easily caps mdt/pdt if they want to.

[Rorald]

I've personally seen KB pop with no competition and killed with mules many times in the past months before the update, so saying you had no chance before isint right at all.

Agree with the OP, you have to understand that your not going to get 99 ks's with any speed at all and it will take a long time, and after that you have to realize how slim your chances of even getting a kb pop. Kings poped usually onec a week before now youll prolly be lucky if you even see one king a month on your entire server, there is no way you can see that as having a better chance @ getting dring then before.

and @ Mark, its best for slot enough said.

Regardless of all that i was thinking the idea was to actually help people get their BB items but now your basiclly only gonna get it from the ks99 which you could do already.