Alexander: Who thought this was a good idea??

When 3.1 hit, I was happy and excited about the removal of the loot cap on Alexander: Gordias. I can now gear out all of my 60's relatively easily. We all can, what could go wrong, right?

Well I found out when I went into Floor 4, had a group that wiped 3 times, raged, finally cleared, and then a player who spent 75% of the time eating dirt got 3/4 of the item drops (not including the shielding, they got 2 chest tokens and 1 leg.)

Who thought this was a good idea to allow UNLIMITED items per person, per instance? Now not only is it impossible to get floors done quickly because people don't take it seriously any more, but anyone, regardless of performance, can now, by the grace of RNGesus, get 4/4 items and leave SEVEN other players with nothing to show for the ungodly, shameful affair that took place.

Can we PLEASE get a 1 item per instance rule?
I've talked to other players and I am not the only one very annoyed by this.

It was me, I did it.

Gosh dang it man, do you realise what you've done???

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Originally Posted by Stupiduglytaru

It was me, I did it.

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OMG an afro lala!

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Originally Posted by GaiTsutsugami

Who thought this was a good idea to allow UNLIMITED items per person, per instance? Now not only is it impossible to get floors done quickly because people don't take it seriously any more, but anyone, regardless of performance, can now, by the grace of RNGesus, get 4/4 items and leave SEVEN other players with nothing to show for the ungodly, shameful affair that took place.

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I'm not gonna lie. I've won this RNG lottery before (2 springs and 1 lense from A3.) It feels aweful when you're doing things like A1 trying to get a specific item but can't get it, but it feels -great- when you make out like a bandit with -everything-.

Still, I could agree. Perhaps 1 item/instance so people have to make a decision of what they want.

Yeah, I mean don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's awesome and I'm sure the day will come when I get all 4 items, but it definitely won't be worth it sadly. Not to mention this is supposed to help new players out with getting geared for the new content; I fail to see how that is happening with all of the gear going to one or two people.

Bad game mechanics. What should happen would be to remove all the different token types(pointless), make it one new kind of token and give one of that token to each participating member of the fight. 190 ilvl gear is only a stepping stone atm with trash ilvl 185 dropping from new dungeons.

If people wanna farm all day and gather tokens to gear their alt jobs why not let them do so and force them to roll the RNG dice. The only thing that will come out of this situation atm is frustration and in the end when the gear becomes even more irrelevant noone will bother.

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Originally Posted by GaiTsutsugami

Now not only is it impossible to get floors done quickly because people don't take it seriously any more

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RNG drops aside, I would have thought the reason why nobody takes it seriously was because, for months, everybody and their mother claimed it was brain dead easy that you could AFK your way through.

Turns out not the be the case from what I've seen.

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Originally Posted by DukeGr

Bad game mechanics. What should happen would be to remove all the different token types(pointless), make it one new kind of token and give one of that token to each participating member of the fight. 190 ilvl gear is only a stepping stone atm with trash ilvl 185 dropping from new dungeons.

If people wanna farm all day and gather tokens to gear their alt jobs why not let them do so and force them to roll the RNG dice. The only thing that will come out of this situation atm is frustration and in the end when the gear becomes even more irrelevant noone will bother.

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If they were gonna take out lock outs, they might as well put in entire gears rather than the tokens. The concept of tokens was fine with weekly lockout, and you needed multiple tokens so multiple weeks to get one piece of gear if applicible. Removing lock out works against that philosophy and directly conflicts with the token exchange.

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Originally Posted by Vivi_Bushido

I don't want to sound like that person here, but how is this different from rolling loot in any other instance?

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Every other dungeon instance involves loot that's restricted to specific job and classes, and are...well actual equips. Versus alexander loot which are tokens so yo uneed to run the instance multiple time and win the roll multiple times to get a piece of equipment. Token and no lock out means everyone is going to be rolling on a token everytime because they can all use it.

Afro lala = instant evil......

So....I better do alex just with fc now then.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

If they were gonna take out lock outs, they might as well put in entire gears rather than the tokens. The concept of tokens was fine with weekly lockout, and you needed multiple tokens so multiple weeks to get one piece of gear if applicible. Removing lock out works against that philosophy and directly conflicts with the token exchange.

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Tokens are there so people will need to farm said number to exchange for sets removing the RNG factor altogether, lets say sth similar to allagan tomestones. Adding RNG layers to irrelevant gear like that atm makes it a waste of time, better spend your time in Diadem.

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Originally Posted by Vivi_Bushido

I don't want to sound like that person here, but how is this different from rolling loot in any other instance?

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Because everyone can roll need on everything, for normal loot you usually just comptete with players that share your main stat

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Originally Posted by DukeGr

Tokens are there so people will need to farm said number to exchange for sets removing the RNG factor altogether, lets say sth similar to allagan tomestones. Adding RNG layers to irrelevant gear like that atm makes it a waste of time, better spend your time in Diadem.

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That's fine, if they were similar to tomestones, where you don't have to roll for it. I mean imagine if they made tomestones drops in set of 200s but oyu had to roll on it with other players. That's the problem you'd see right now with how alexander is with the tokens.

The big problem, as discussed here, is that it's akin to the wild west in alex. Which sucks.
However if you can go in with fc mates, then you can farm for days. Essentially this is the fc farming patch. Too bad it's much too late in this game's life. As most people don't run stuff with the fc that often on the 8 person scale.

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Originally Posted by Vivi_Bushido

I don't want to sound like that person here, but how is this different from rolling loot in any other instance?

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You have need/greed protection on full pieces of gear based on the job/role you are playing so that immediately eliminates some competition. With full pieces of gear you narrow down the amount of people based on role then job to around ~1-2 based on party composition, more if you have more of the same type of DPS. If it's free for all the potential is you have to roll against 7 people every time which lowers your chance of winning.

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Originally Posted by Odds_Ends

Afro lala = instant evil......

So....I better do alex just with fc now then.

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You are never safe, my spies are everywhere.

It's clearly 100% different from all other content in the game where ANYONE can walk away with the fruits of 7 other players work; are you kidding me? Cannot believe people are defending this lol.

Or they could just take out the chests and offer everyone a complementary token for just doing it. Every single Heavensward trial and raid does this. Why Normal doesn't and the fact it has such a horrible excuse for a token system is beyond me.

I hope they don't adapt this same system in Alexander Normal 2.

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Originally Posted by GaiTsutsugami

It's clearly 100% different from all other content in the game where ANYONE can walk away with the fruits of 7 other players work; are you kidding me? Cannot believe people are defending this lol.

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I don't think anyone's actually defending it. Several people have agreed it's a pretty bad system.

Honestly, just put together a PF with loot rules or do it with friends. You'll be much happier.

I know "do it with friends" feels like a cop out, but SE hasn't really pushed us players to play together when in reality, that would fix so much frustration in this game.

I was pony farming with a horrible tank who won the only drop we saw. I was livid. I should have done it with friends.

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Originally Posted by Xairos

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It's more on a meta thing of the playerbase than what the developers push for. I mean they designed content in mind that we'd have the dedency to band together and achieve that goal. At least speaking for my server, we have players who sneak into farm parties, players who lie about how far they've seen the fight, players who sell runs, and in general players who can't be assed to play their job properly in a given circumstance. Just yesterday my friend was doing a learning party for Thordan, but the overall dps was so terrible that they could not get past sacred cross. The entire party was equipped with esotaric weapons.

Honestly we shouldn't need the game developers to "push" us to have human decency in an online environment, not completely forego it in favor of being jackasses or benefiting the fruit without the labor. I mean, more often than not, we're seeing people in alexander who can't work their basic job mechanics (like maintaing GL or astral/umbral cycles, and this is something that's introduced to them as early as level 4) or straight up alt-tabbing during a boss fight.

just do Expert and get i185.

good players don't do Alexander Normal.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

just do Expert and get i185.

good players don't do Alexander Normal.

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Lol are you serious?
I know you're desperate to make us all 'git gud' but that is simply not a valid argument, and it makes you sound like a tool.

And yeah, to he people giving the obvious answer (make a party), that is indeed what I shall do. However this post was made even more (believe it or not) out of concern for the rest of the community, who, unlike me, aren't lucky enough to have a great Free Company and great friends made through months and months of playing. I mean I get then it follows that those players stil have a better shot at more gear in a shorter amount of time, but you cannot deny that the system, as it is now, is broken.

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Originally Posted by GaiTsutsugami

Lol are you serious?
I know you're desperate to make us all 'git gud' but that is simply not a valid argument, and it makes you sound like a tool.

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i have never said "git gud" in any meaningful context. there's nothing "git gud" about doing Expert.

i190 gear is meaningless when i200 gear comes from Esoterics and Void Ark, i185 comes from Expert roulette and i210 comes from Savage, Diadem and Hunts (kind of).

all you want i190 gear for is glamours and a very short stepping stone to Eso/Void Ark gear. in which case the i185s from Expert will do just fine.

yes, the system is broken but it's old and outdated content. Diadem is broken too, i hope they spend more time fixing that.

If they would just remove the lock out for void ark there would be no need for Alex but until then I suffer in silence :(

Now if the Alex groups weren't so bad as they have been for the last couple of weeks and not wiping 3-4 times before a kill then sure whatever but the time does not match the reward anymore -_- so we need some kind of completion token or something or lower the number of said items for gear just do something :(

I doubt they'd do anything other than giving out more loot if enough people complain.

At this point, I just need the chest piece to have a complete set for one of my alts ... 2 more shafts to go :-/

The loot in alexander has always been stupid IMO. I hit my 20 times of A4 clears and after only one shaft I said screw it and I haven't done it since because it's a waste of my time. At least in other lockout activities I have a chance to be the only one rolling on my loot instead of never getting any, ever.

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Originally Posted by Eidolon

I'm not gonna lie. I've won this RNG lottery before (2 springs and 1 lense from A3.) It feels aweful when you're doing things like A1 trying to get a specific item but can't get it, but it feels -great- when you make out like a bandit with -everything-.

Still, I could agree. Perhaps 1 item/instance so people have to make a decision of what they want.

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I've had people complain about my RNG greed rolls in Diadem party finder groups. Fair is fair, but I wish people would just stop fussing over RNG when it's fair.

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Originally Posted by GaiTsutsugami

I've talked to other players and I am not the only one very annoyed by this.

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Form a party with those "other players" and farm Alex with them until everyone gets the loot they need. For those who somehow don't have an FC who can do this, put up a PF party.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

You have need/greed protection on full pieces of gear based on the job/role you are playing so that immediately eliminates some competition. With full pieces of gear you narrow down the amount of people based on role then job to around ~1-2 based on party composition, more if you have more of the same type of DPS. If it's free for all the potential is you have to roll against 7 people every time which lowers your chance of winning.

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While you have that sort of "protection" in normal need/greed, you can also end up running it over and over and never actually see anything you can need on in those cases. It balances out.
Be able to need only a few items out of a large loot pool, or be able to need everything from a small loot pool.

RNG has no quarter, it favours no one. We plebians can never hope to understand it's divine will.

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

While you have that sort of "protection" in normal need/greed, you can also end up running it over and over and never actually see anything you can need on in those cases. It balances out.
Be able to need only a few items out of a large loot pool, or be able to need everything from a small loot pool.

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Honestly rolling vs 2-ish people on stuff that might not even drop seems better to me than having potentially one person winning everything and 7 other people in the group getting nothing. I mean this system is great for PF and friends but it's doesn't seem to work well with DF.

You have a 41.4% chance of getting any loot from Alexander any turn.
From Pharos Hard, if you don't have any piece yet, you have a 43.8% chance of getting a piece you can need lot on (healer gear used for the maths). The chance drops if you already have some pieces.
If you're after a specific piece from either, for pharos hard that chance drops to 7.1% for left side gear (incl. belt) from Pharos Hard, and 10% chance for accessory. Per run.
For Alexander it's 13% chance. Per run.
Now taking into account time per run... So far normal Pharos Hard run is about 30 minutes... And an Alexander run shouldn't need to take more than 10 minutes.

Looking purely at the chances of obtaining A piece or a specific wanted piece, the chances balance out.
Taking into account that Alexander can require 1, 2 or 4 pieces to trade for gear, even accounting for the time per run balance out pretty well.

A lot of other MMOs allow a one-time need roll win and after that you're forced to greed. That system works.