Primal battles: the loot problem

FFXIV as a whole has well designed loot systems, with strong effort:reward ratio endeavours (a stark contrast to its predecessor for the majority of its existence).

However, the primal fights regress to a very primitive form of loot distribution: a random drop which may or may not even be usable by anyone in the current party. There are several issues with this system:

• There is no guarantee that the player will ever receive the item they are investing time into attempting to obtain
• There is almost always competition for the item in question, reducing the chances of successfully obtaining the item of desire to 1/16, 1/24 or 1/32
• There is not much incentive to continue entering the battlefield after having received the weapon, increasing competition for the limited weapon drops available even further

This system sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the relatively progressive and rewarding game design present in the rest of FFXIV. Apparently, though I was not one myself, 1.0 players report that a token system was eventually put in place meaning that all fights - even ones where you did not directly receive a weapon drop - contributed towards this final goal. I would recommend either limiting the drop pool to only such jobs which are in the instance (you cannot add members midway through so this cannot be abused), or even better implement a token system which guarantees the drop after x number of kills, probably around the 5-10 mark.

It would be a shame for the game to be marred by such a poor choice of loot system, especially since this is one of the first thing many players are going to see once they hit 50 endgame levels and have to make a decision about whether to keep playing the game or not.

I have killed ifrit 31 times never seen a bow drop

I'm at like 20 times past two days alone I've gotten the bow and the book for sch, I am a black Mage and have never seen it drop. I them completed Garuda a few times thinking I could skip the entry's level fail groups on ifrit. Garuda drops monk weapon 3 times. So then I tried Titan and we got him damn close for past his heart had 3 healers one would Dps on the heart we got him to about 25% all night the air that you can't avoid got us. So I agree maybe even drop 2 items 1 melee, 1 caster 1 tank. Or up the tokens from 10/4 to 80/50 and make it more desirable over AK.

I've defeated Ifrit well over 100 times and not once have I seen the lance drop. RNG drops are fine until a certain point, then it just makes me want to quit. Why waste the time on it? I occasionally try it now but I've basically been forced to move on with just the GC weapon. Hopefully I can get my full DL set so I'm not being 100% carried through the rest of the primals.

As for people who like to say "well it was worse in 1.x", well, maybe it was. However, we're not in 1.x anymore. 1.x got rebooted for a reason.

12,5% change to drop a weapon for your class in a fight that's instant and lasts 10 minutes? Doesn't sound too bad to me.

The system is good, because you can farm him as oft as you want. If he would drop more weapons everybody would get his stuff in few runs and that's not what sqaure want, the wont you to do it 50 times and more. Why? Because that brings them time to bring out new content.

Go in with 8 people from a FC for higher chances at getting what you want.

how is the Ifrit wep compared to the one from GC?

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Go in with 8 people from a FC for higher chances at getting what you want.

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That would only keep you from having to roll against someone else. It doesn't fix the issue of Ifrit frequently dropping the weapon for classes who aren't even in the group. 90% of my kills has the weapon going to waste because it drops for someone who already has it or no one in the group could use it.

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Originally Posted by gigi_frana

how is the Ifrit wep compared to the one from GC?

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Depends on your class and the rest of your gear. If you have a lot of GC items your GC weapon's set bonus might make it worth using, though the Ifrit weapon has a superior ilvl and overall stats.

Don't you ACTUALLY get tokens from these fights? Mind they're Allagan Tomestones but I hear you bet both Mythology and Philosophy

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Originally Posted by Skies

Don't you ACTUALLY get tokens from these fights? Mind they're Allagan Tomestones but I hear you bet both Mythology and Philosophy

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10 philosophy and 4 mythology per kill, at least for Ifrit.

Do your relic quest and stop complainin

/thread

....So would you people prefer a token based fight that can only be done once per week like a certain other game? While it's true I'm not level 50 yet, I would rather have a repeatable fight than a token with lockout period. I can recall worse "end game gear" grinds from various other games. Vanilla WoW was spectacularily frustrating. 40 people in a raid guarenteed multiple people having to compete for a single piece of gear that might drop from one boss, one time a week. I never did complete my warrior's tier 1 or tier 2 gear back then...

If you're using Duty finder then yes this problem will occur rather often. I run primals with a set group of friends, and within 3 days I have 4+ garuda weapons including my entire group getting various useful weapons. I Feel like this system is put in place to really start encouraging people forming set groups to run more complex content like hard mode primals.

With random Duty Finder I can imagine this being an absolutely painful process because you have to compete every time with new people. I know it doesn't fix the random drop, but I highly recommend trying it with a set group before demanding a fix. Also why would you wanna run anything after Ifrit Hard mode on duty finder. That seems terrifying to me lol.

Personally I think we need to move away from this guaranteed coffer on win and move to 20 item drop tables with 75% of them crystals, synth items, or trash. 2% drop rates on actual good items and get THF back for some THIV. jk

Drops could be a whole lot worse.

I have a theory on this... Hear it out.


DEAL WITH IT!!!!

Who cares if you get loot on your first run or your 100th, Especially with these bosses their loot is not good... There is a green for every class that is better, and a blue in the raid and a quest to get a relic that is more amazing then all of them. Hell the GC weapons are like 2-4% less damage then the primal weapons and can easily hold you over til you get you relic or Linkshell weapons.

If you want a game where you don't have to grind ever and everything is guaranteed to drop for you, then stop playing MMO's and go find a single player game. They have already given you 3 boss fights that have 0 trash, guaranteed weapon drops, and only require 8 people. Yet still you guys bitch and want them to hand it to you like you are somehow deserving of free stuff... Its not your RIGHT to get loot for playing this game... it is a privilege to play the game and a goal to get a weapon. That is it.

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Originally Posted by Burritoboy

I have killed ifrit 31 times never seen a bow drop

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30+ times, never seen a lance.
Seen just once a bow.

This was a bad choice from 1.0 in my opinion. I would rather primals and any enemy with this loot system drop specified tokens in addition to a 1 random item. This way, the person who has done 10 or 15 runs and received no drop to show for it has enough tokens to buy the weapon they want from a vendor, thus rewarding time invested in a more gradual way. This 30-60 or more runs for 1 weapon is pretty bad game design in my opinion.

Saying that there were worse gear grinds in the past in no way justifies this poor reward system. Progress is a valuable goal, and one which has been embraced across the board in this very game - except in these encounters.

Yes, you can spam this fight, but if you calculate average amount of time required to invest to get a drop, you'll see that it is far less rewarding than any other activity in the game - and you might not even ever get it!

Here's a thought. Get a FC, run it with them, get your wep. I have Garuda weapons for like 6 classes and I only have 1 50. All because we farm it to gear our members and if no one needs we just greed roll. The weapons are easy to get.

I just completed Ifrit on HM 5 times in row, 4 of the times the SCH weapon dropped and the the other time was a staff(I think the White Mage's), couldnt be positive. At this point I'm simply annoyed...please fix this...

I got mine on the 3rd try, but got rid of it in less than 24 hours for Garuda Bow. Which looks SO SEXY I WILL HAVE YOU KNOW. OHMAHGAWD

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Originally Posted by Arale

This was a bad choice from 1.0 in my opinion. I would rather primals and any enemy with this loot system drop specified tokens in addition to a 1 random item. This way, the person who has done 10 or 15 runs and received no drop to show for it has enough tokens to buy the weapon they want from a vendor, thus rewarding time invested in a more gradual way. This 30-60 or more runs for 1 weapon is pretty bad game design in my opinion.

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THIS.
Oh, this.

Meanwhile, I'm at 60+ Ifrit runs and a dozen Garuda. Never seen a lance drop even once.
I'm not able to express of extremely tired and deeply nauseated I am by this.

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Originally Posted by Arale

This was a bad choice from 1.0 in my opinion. I would rather primals and any enemy with this loot system drop specified tokens in addition to a 1 random item. This way, the person who has done 10 or 15 runs and received no drop to show for it has enough tokens to buy the weapon they want from a vendor, thus rewarding time invested in a more gradual way. This 30-60 or more runs for 1 weapon is pretty bad game design in my opinion.

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Best idea IMO. But you can't expect much from dev's who's idea of end game is chain running the same boss fights/instances over and over again.