I would be fine with 100% totem drop rate for all members but them becoming untradeable.
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I would be fine with 100% totem drop rate for all members but them becoming untradeable.
Whatever the solution it's just maddening to go on so many runs to hear "Lol I got a axe for my level 10 marauder!" that has to stop...
...it can't be the hard to change as EVERY OTHER CHEST in game has items that go to loot list and are passable. If what is tripping SE up is the fact that we need tapers/charms to qualify for fight...fine. Make it that you need the rare/ex items to enter. Get rid of totems/charms and allow players to pass weapons. Done.
People fight for loots? Very simple. When I make a party for dezmael, beforehand it's said. You keep what you get, unless you want to give. That's how it is. Everyone exchanges it for seals anyway. So cut the QQ and bear with your luck. If you don't want it or like it, you can leave and won't be missed. I am sick and tired of the drama over dungeon loot.
We want candies! We want candies!
or...
Trick or Treat Square Enix!
Problem 1: You should not have to repeat anything 100-200 times. It is not that we should get the item after doing it 100-200 times, we should not need to do it 100-200 times to begin with. That should be addressed ^.^;
This world has always been about grinding, but some things should not be over-grounded? ^.^;
Problem 2: 'Working...' We should not be 'working'. This should not count as work. This is supposed to be fun.
I am not in favour of making things common. I like things to be rare, and can appreciate some things being ultra-rare.
I am not in favour of SE holding our hands and stopping us from tiring ourselves out. We are not babies, and should be able to tell when we are getting tired and go do something else.
I am in big favour of addressing the underlying problems. In this situation, the 'mechanic' for obtaining an item is to repeat the exact same thing 100-200 times. After a while you reach a point where if you could, you could macro the entire thing quite easily.
If you had to do 100 quests in order to receive a reward, but each quest was sufficiently different, then I believe there would be less complaint.
And I think maybe that is where the answer may lie. We would do the equivalent of 100-200 runs (time wise, skill wise, challenge wise), but each run would be different enough to keep it interesting.
For example:
Varying mobs and critters of different levels or skills.
Changing maps and locations of levers/pitfalls/etc.
Fighting different boses, whose tactics would be different. (Or even the same boss occassionally who changes tactics each time).
Imagine if you will, for Ifrit:
There was no safe spot, and where he jumps each time would be different. This alone would make it a bit more interesting.
Imagine perhaps, Princess:
You can't set the timer to when the guard will appear. Or know when the supporting ants will appear. Or know exactly when Marshall will appear. They would appear randomly, or not at all, or more than you would expect. Or different things would appear to help her. Perhaps she would run away and hide behind a giant ogre.
At the very least, removing the pre-recorded choreography from each fight would make each fight a bit more interesting.
Therefore the challenge falls onto SE. Not to give in and make everything easier, but rather to strive harder to make the content more dynamic, less predictable, and more engaging.
That is what I want solved ^.^
I don't mind the primal weapon drop system. I wouldn't mind a system where you could 'pass the weapons', but making totems 100% isn't something I would like to see. IMO, the weapons should be hard to obtain, not guaranteed after so many runs. Or another solution I'd be in favor of is totems / Nut Charms dropping instead of duplicate weapons.
I'm amazed people actually continued to repeat these fights 100's of times to get 7/7. I'm one of the lucky ones that only had to beat Ifrit about 40 times total to get my 7/7 lol. That's good proof that the system isn't in any way fair to all players. I think the fact that you can go for so many fights with nothing to show is too discouraging and not good design from the devs. I feel I obtained my weapons way too easily and quickly (complaining about being lucky; Ya! I'm serious! lol). The content should be able to survive after each patch and still be viable. The way it is now I wouldn't ever do Ifrit again for personal gain, only to help other players. There is nothing in it for me except piles of Dark Matter. So after seeing other peoples ideas and the dev's stance on how this system should work; I think I have a suggestion that might fit the criteria needed.
Tokens are a good idea I think since, when they drop, you know you are a step closer towards your goal. Some players think making them a guaranteed drop after each win would be a good solution but I disagree. Even if you raise the amount needed per weapon, you will have a set lifespan for the content. (example: 200 wins = 7/7 no questions asked). Having no luck in the equation will make the content monotonous and predictable.
The other idea is to make the weapons dropped from wins fall into loot lists so they can be passed to others if they so please. This is a horrible idea because even with a low drop rate, the system can be easily abused. The devs already acknowledged this; Each player has a chance of getting a weapon after a win but if an entire group is working on gearing a single person, all the other participants are increasing that persons chances at a weapon by 8 times. Even with the passing of tokens, the system is still unfair. ( My first weapon was obtained by totems and was thanks to friends passing me theirs or me buying them off others after a win.)
Having weapons drop from primal fights (even at a low chance) is unfair to others and is a lazy solution to prolonging the content. Instead all weapons should come from the token system. This means that tokens shouldn't be trade-able and should drop at a very consistent, if not completely consistent rate. To remedy the problem with predictable content lifespans, the "luck" factor can come into play when trading in the tokens. Have a price in tokens that requires a good amount of repetition (maybe 15-25 tokens if they are a 100% drop). For this price, have a random primal weapon be redeemed. This means that everyone's first primal weapon will be a predictable or somewhat predictable event. It will serve as a way to excite all players and they will have something to show for their efforts. This means that eventually getting to 7/7 will become a more luck based attempt. Turning in your tokens each time for the set price will most likely give you duplicated weapons in the long run. This would make 7/7 unbalanced so to fix this problem a second price in tokens could be introduced. The second price would be much higher (3-7 times or more) the random weapon price but it would give you the option to choose your own reward. This means all players have the choice to gamble for their 7/7 or to work towards a guaranteed weapon for a higher/more visible effort price. The existence of tokens help to show players that each of their wins is getting then 1 step closed to their projected goals. The only thing that I can see missing from this idea is that since none of the drops from wins are trade-able, there is no reason to repeat the content after 7/7. But this too can be solved with tokens. Tokens can be redeemed for more than just the primal drops. They could make our totems exchangeable for Grand Company seals or other rewards. You can even turn the Token system into a gil sink with the idea of X tokens + Y gil = Z GC seals or whatever other reward you can think of. So as far as I thought this out, it sounds to me like a viable option for primal (even dungeon) rewards.
Anyway TL;DR
1.Remove weapon drops and passable tokens.
2. Make tokens a 100% drop
3. Have a price in tokens that = random primal weapon
4. Have a higher price in tokens that = your choice of primal weapon
5. Make tokens redeemable for other rewards so 7/7's can still do content and get something out of it for themselves
People still equating difficulty with tedium. What we want is visible progress or for the game to not troll us with dupes. No one is asking for handouts, many people have said time and time again that if totems were 100% drops they wouldn't mind them 1) being untradable and 2) cost for weapons getting raised to 20. 140 Ifrit fights to get 7/7 is enough ffs especially when I keep seeing stories like "lol I don't know what you guys are talking about, I got 7/7 in 50 runs~" Can you not see the problem with this?
lol i just quit doing primals and started crafting, i figured i'd do something worth while instead of wasting my time on a bad loot system and crappy drop rates.
By passing the weapon you are making the weapons easier to obtain, don't you get that ?
If SE allowed the weapons to be distributed from a loot pool they would sure as hell drop the drop rate down by 10 times of what it is now.
So yea the weapon becomes super rare and we are left grinding the same content over and over. (that would make me think what's the point)
But by your logic, getting 5 pairs of Ifrit PGL/Monk claws for your rank 38 Monk is okay? Not being able to pass them to your ls mate who needs them and IS a 50 PGL is okay? Having players lay on the ground the whole fight, beat him one time, get a weapon while other players have 50+wins and not even a totem is okay? ...because it takes a ton of skill to be dead the whole fight...
When you can beat Ifrit by yourself, I'll accept a personal, un-passable drop system. Until then, if it takes a group to beat him, the group should decide who gets the reward.
I say either make the weapons drop to your loot list so they can be passed, or else have 1 Inferno Totem, Kupo Nut Charm, etc. drop for each person in the party after every kill. People who don't need or want them can pass those too, as usual.
And 10 items per weapon seems fair to me. If you wanted every weapon from a primal fight, that'd be 70 kills for each primal, and I know a friend who has had to do over 100 kills on Ifrit before he got his SECOND weapon to drop.
Either way, reward the player based on time and effort spent, not dumb luck.
Change loot distribution as a whole.
• Make all current and future Instanced Raid bosses/Primals to drop a single treasure chest. Upon kill, bosses/primals also drop company seals.
• Open a loot list when interacting with a boss treasure chest, containing all of that boss's or primal's respective drops. Let each player pick one reward from the loot list. In other words, players are guaranteed a reward of their choice for completing content. This also gives control to the individual and not linkshell rules, avoiding ninja looting, drama, etc.
• Keep the short lockouts. Modify them to track boss chest redemptions and restrict players from receiving more than one reward per chest, per week. Reward timers reset on a set day of the week for all players. This ensures that players who have received their weekly rewards can still participate in Raids and Primals at any time to help their friends or linkshell members, without allowing gear to be obtained rapidly either.
• Let players choose to receive one token(totem) from a boss chest as a substitute for equipment, tied to the weekly timer. Adjust the token NPC to contain all grade-IV materia and let tokens be traded in for them 1:1. Add more expensive, long-term rewards(e.g. private room furniture, inventory space, mounts) to the company seal and token NPCs. There needs to be an incentive, such as seals and tokens, to repeat content after players have collected all of the gear from a particular Raid/Primal, and there's definitely other ways to do this than what I can think of right now. ihatemateria
I feel like I'm missing something. A weekly timer might be too steep, I don't know. It just bothers me when MMOs are aggressively grindy to the point of being unfair. I don't feel that players should be subjected to drop rates at all when it comes to boss rewards, endgame or not. There's no reason for parties to receive virtually nothing out of a Raid/Primal clear due to pure luck. If they beat a boss, they've earned their reward.
And if this kind of system would be difficult for the developers due to "technical limitations", that's just sad.