Tomes vs random drops

[Neophyte]

I'd rather systems which don't encourage burn out. I think RNG with small and frequent rewards is the way to go. FFXIV seems to excel in low drop rate, high reward, weekly lock out type RNG. I think a system which does not have a lockout, drops frequently, but only has a chance at small upgrades is more enjoyable. That way, every time I log in, I can obtain an upgrade and feel that my time was justified - even if it's just for a small boost. Instead of gaining major upgrades every week (i.e. every week I seem to gain ~20 INT and a bunch of secondary stats), I could gain a minor upgrade every day (i.e. +2 INT per day).

And where's the big difference to the tome system?

With daily/weekly lockout: You either do the same two dungeons (more than once) on a daily basis to progress (hopefully, because of RNG) or you fall behind other players with much more time on their hands to get their daily drop for sure. 20 days not running the same dungeons over and over again? The people who did are now +10-20 ilvls above you.
Also: If you're done, you're done (like now with scriptures).
Difference: You can catch up with a looooooot of time.

Without daily/weekly lockout: You either do the same two dungeons over and over again or you fall behind other players with much more time on their hands. 20 days not running the same dungeons over and over again? The people who did are now +10-20 ilvls above you.
Also: If you're done, you're done (like now with scriptures).

Actually, your system can be implemented with tomestones, too.
Like this:

• Buy base body armor (ilvl 250) for 525 tomes.
• Pay 30 tomes to upgrade the ilvl by 1 and raise the stats by 1-2 points.
• After having paid 825 tomestones you have an ilvl 260 armor.
• Instead of getting one big upgrade 260->270, you get ten "smaller" items from 24man runs (rng drop, 10 runs minimum for the full upgrade) and/or rng dropped form hunts (something like 10%) to level it one by one again. Drops in stacks of 10 in savage.

[Kaurie]

And where's the big difference to the tome system?

With daily/weekly lockout: You either do the same two dungeons (more than once) on a daily basis to progress (hopefully, because of RNG) or you fall behind other players with much more time on their hands to get their daily drop for sure. 20 days not running the same dungeons over and over again? The people who did are now +10-20 ilvls above you.
Well, difference: You can catch up with a looooooot of time.

Without daily/weekly lockout: You either do the same two dungeons over and over again or you fall behind other players with much more time on their hands. 20 days not running the same dungeons over and over again? The people who did are now +10-20 ilvls above you.


Actually, your system can be implemented with tomestones, too.
Like this:

• Buy base body armor (ilvl 250) for 525 tomes.
• Pay 30 tomes to upgrade the ilvl by 1 and raise an stats by 1-2 points.
• After having paid 825 tomestones you have an ilvl 260 armor.
• Instead of getting upgrade items from hunts (or 24 man), you get with x>10 runs and rng dropped form hunts ten "smaller" upgrade items to upgrade your body further level by level.

Agreed, I'd be supportive of small incremental upgrades being purchased with tomestones. While I'd prefer it as a drop, it is a decent compromise.

I don't really care if people out ilvl me if I am not playing in a hardcore fashion. For example, in WoW I am ilvl 840 and 849 on my two characters, which is far below what many others are now, but I am just enjoying my time as I gear up. In FFXIV, where I play more hardcore, I am the max ilvl possible, so that I can perform the best for my raid team. In other words, if you are the kind of player who needs to perform the best for your raid team, putting in that extra time to get there faster is not a big deal. If you are the kind of player who does not need that, you'll have fun incrementally getting better every time you log in, without having to worry about not being the top tier.

[Xlantaa]

Tomes. Okens or whatever. Ensure prize for completing things is the best. RNG is a bullshit when you roll shit all the time. Also is unfair and unbalanced . One person can have luck and obtain all the time items, and other can be stuck days for a single one.

[Neophyte]

Agreed, I'd be supportive of small incremental upgrades being purchased with tomestones. While I'd prefer it as a drop, it is a decent compromise.

I don't really care if people out ilvl me if I am not playing in a hardcore fashion. For example, in WoW I am ilvl 840 and 849 on my two characters, which is far below what many others are now, but I am just enjoying my time as I gear up. In FFXIV, where Iplay more hardcore, I am the max ilvl possible, so that I can perform the best for my raid team. In other words, if you are the kind of player who needs to perform the best for your raid team, putting in that extra time to get there faster is not a big deal. If you are the kind of player who does not need that, you'll have fun incrementally getting better every time you log in, without having to worry about not being the top tier.

Then again, what's the difference to tomes? If you don't care about keeping up with others, you can log in whenever you want and get your (let's say incremental) upgrade with tomes. Just treat them as a "lucky" drop and upgrade your gear by +1. I guess you won't be unhappy with a 100% drop chance just by coincidence on your "drop items", so what's the difference? ^^

All this only boils down to ones question, and that's why the title of this topic is irritating. It's not RNG drops vs. tomestones, because tomestones can co-exist in a RNG system as the so-called "safety net" items (like the primal tokens) some people mentioned. They are literally the same as the tokens, a 100% guaranteed "drop" after a kill/clear, just across more than 1 content.
They could even work with RNG in terms of "by completing you may achieve a random ammount of tomes".
The one difference is: The lockout.

And that's why the topic should be: RNG drops VS. (weekly) lockouts. You either have RNG or a lockout or both.
Tokens/Tomestones are not the system, they are only parts of an RNG/lockout/RNG+lockout system, for example to soften it or as an instrument. Tomestones are pretty equal to an alexander normal loot drop: you can trade it for gear and you can't get more than X per week. The only difference ist that tomestones are guaranteed, you don't need to roll on them).

Both (or all three) different systems serve on purpose: We don't get everything as soon as it releases. SE won't change that.
So, even if the ex dungeons would drop ilvl260 they would be weekly gated, like e.g. Mhach was at release. So back to running 5+ times the dungeons a week. Up to 40 times? 60?

[Eldevern]

The problem with rng as it currently exists, is you can farm indefinitely without getting what you are running for. Hopefully, I don't do Xelphatol/Gubal for BLM gear, I only see hands since I do daily roulette. The only and one item. That's the current problem with the "RNG by SE".

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

The day SE switches from a tomestone system to a system of pure RNG is the day I quit the game. Nothing is more frustrating than running content for hours on end and not getting that last piece you need, and RNG based systems themselves are one of the biggest reasons why I quit playing MMOs. Tomestones are better in that they are guaranteed progression so long as you do the content. Dungeon drops shouldn't be useful if you're already in tome gear, either.

Suffice to say, me and Desire Sensor-esque mechanics don't get along, at all.

[Warghoul570]

I prefer tomes.. you know what your getting instead of constantly grinding a dungeon or raid you hate hoping for not only the piece you need to drop but to hope you don't get outrolled for it

[Kaurie]

Then again, what's the difference to tomes? If you don't care about keeping up with others, you can log in whenever you want and get your (let's say incremental) upgrade with tomes. Just treat them as a "lucky" drop and upgrade your gear by +1. I guess you won't be unhappy with a 100% drop chance just by coincidence on your "drop items", so what's the difference? ^^

The difference is that tomestones work like a chore. You go and do a dungeon with 0 chance or 100% chance to get your item at the end. You're not doing it with hopes of obtaining the item, you're doing it to check off your list. The difference is that you obtain a big upgrade to your gear weekly, and then nothing. Rather than receiving frequent small upgrades to your gear. I said I do care about keeping up with others in FFXIV - and am relatively ahead of the pack (I am ilvl 266 atm, just needing good rolls on twine in my raid team to upgrade my chest/legs, and for a lucky drop or a couple more runs of A10S to obtain the pages for my 270 boots).

All this only boils down to ones question, and that's why the title of this topic is irritating. It's not RNG drops vs. tomestones, because tomestones can co-exist in a RNG system as the so-called "safety net" items (like the primal tokens) some people mentioned. They are literally the same as the tokens, a 100% guaranteed "drop" after a kill/clear, just across more than 1 content.
They could even work with RNG in terms of "by completing you may achieve a random ammount of tomes".
The one difference is: The lockout.

The issue is that places like Sophia/Alex have gear drops, in addition to their currency drop. Experts just have the currency drop. If your first expert per week dropped a random 260 gear piece that would be something, I guess. Still not a method I would use, but it's closer anyway.

And that's why the topic should be: RNG drops VS. (weekly) lockouts. You either have RNG or a lockout or both.
Tokens/Tomestones are not the system, they are only parts of an RNG/lockout/RNG+lockout system, for example to soften it or as an instrument. Tomestones are pretty equal to an alexander normal loot drop: you can trade it for gear and you can't get more than X per week. The only difference ist that tomestones are guaranteed, you don't need to roll on them).

Frankly, I disagree. It's RNG vs Tomestones vs RNG+Tomestones, and Lockouts vs No-Lockouts vs Lockouts+No-Lockouts.

Both (or all three) different systems serve on purpose: We don't get everything as soon as it releases. SE won't change that.
So, even if the ex dungeons would drop ilvl260 they would be weekly gated, like e.g. Mhach was at release. So back to running 5+ times the dungeons a week. Up to 40 times? 60?

I agree, longevity is important. I find that the current system supports a very high need to run something with a very sharp drop off half-way through the patch. I'd prefer slower incremental upgrade possibilities. Potentially, I'd prefer a system if gear in experts drop at ilvl 250, Alex NM 260, Alex Savage 270 and tomestones could be used to upgrade the gear 2x. So you could get your 250 drops in expert and upgrade them to 260 without raiding, or you could get 270 with Alex NM or 280 with savage (or something along those lines). This is in addition to tomestones being a currency to purchase the ilvl 250 gear that drops in expert, as well. This idea is not fully fleshed out though.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I am discussing it, and am all for discussing it. I am not for statements which completely disregard the opposing opinion, when the statements are based on made up facts.

Instead of making doom and gloom statements, or saying that people with opposing views suffer from some form of logical errors of bias in their arguments, just state what your opinion is and why.



I pretty much agree with this. The same system can be found in raids, with Alexandrian pages dropping in addition to random drops. This gives you the excitement of loot that it may have just what you are looking for, but also provides a safety net against poor RNG.

While, I tend to prefer the system in WoW overall for loot, both the Extreme primal and Savage raid loot system works quite well and I am pretty content with it. My only request would be to add more secondary stat options. This could be with randomized stats in the drops and/or providing multiple options for purchasing with your tokens. Guild Wars 2 has a system like this, where you can buy the armor-piece with the secondary stats that you want for the build you're going for.

Actually, that annoys me because those Alexandrian drops may turn out to be worthless. An example being the Dragoon feet. They are worse than the ilvl 260 Shire, thus they'll sit in my inventory/retainer until 4.0 where I'll exchange them for company seals. Yes, I still get a page, thus making the effort not a complete loss, but I would much prefer additional tokens to guarantee Alexandrian pieces similar to how you obtain tarnished items from normal. Same two chests per week restrictions apply though. This way, the static is guaranteed gear drops won't just hit the floor.

Randomized stats in Savage would be awful. Since you cannot farm loot, there's a very good probability you'll get the gear you fancy, only to discover it has worthless stats. No amount of secondary stat variation will change people's preference to min/max. All this does is making gearing up entirely devoted to luck, not skill.

[Talraen]

Question for anyone who favors RNG-only dungeon drops: would you also favor random experience gains? Like, instead of gaining experience for each kill based on the level of the mob, you randomly gain experience each time you do anything, at a very low rate. Essentially, using FFXI's skillup system for experience. Where you can do a leve and maybe you'd gain a full level, or maybe you'd gain absolutely nothing. Does that sound appealing?

Because that's the same concept as RNG-only drops. It's also the original class experience system in 1.0. A system that was so hated that it was changed almost immediately. A system that caused almost all of my friends to quit even before they realized all of the other myriad flaws in 1.0. So... why are we calling for that kind of system, again?