Trends in content types and faux difficulty

[Lux_Rayna]

This thread has nothing to do with people class stacking, and it's not a cry for "give me loot." I simply don't want spamable content with abysmally low drop rates, I want lockouts with higher drop rates. I also don't want content types and loot systems that rely mostly on luck as opposed to the effort and skill it took to clear the content. That should be where the difficulty in getting the item is: clearing the content. The difficulty should not be in hoping that the random number generator decides that the 86th time's the charm and drops the item you want.

Stop trying to derail this thread with another subject.

Of course its about loot. No one is forcing anyone to spam content, if you want it to remain fresh then limit how much you do it. The only reason anyone spams it is because they want the loot, and the loot does not drop easily. And they will keep spamming it until they get loot, which can take god knows how many runs, and so they necessarily end up tired, bored, and frustrated. As you said yourself in the OP, you want effort and skill to be rewarded, presumably with loot. So yes, loot is at the heart of the discussion. You want loot, for if you didnt want loot this thread would not exist at all. You wouldn't care. Your suggestion for non-spammable content is a necessary compromise for increasing loot drop rates...that way you are not asking something for nothing. The entire thread, as well as the OP, pivots around this whole "crappy drop rate" thing. I daresay it is about "give me loot". To be fair, you tried to present a compromise, but at the end of the day what you're really after is some form of reward, ie loot. In your case, you'd rather run a dungeon every few days and have a high chance of loot, than spam it to death and have a low chance of loot. Course you dont have to spam it to death, making this thread rather irrelevant, but you will precisely because its more about the reward and not the content.

Anyway, I call it as a see it. Its not a thread derailment at all, especially when you were talking about rewarding effort and skill, rather than a luck-based system. If that is not a veiled cry for loot, then nothing is. And since you were addressing effort and skill as a basis for these proposed changes, I had to call you out on that. The argument is flawed precisely because effort and skill is not the name of the game at all. Now if these dungeons were challenging, and took a long time to do successfully, I could definitely agree with you. If content wasnt exploited at every turn, and ppl didnt abuse broken mechanics as common community practice, I could definitely agree with you. As it stands, you really just want an easier time of collecting loot. At least admit it. If you think I can't prove it I definitely can. If this was about spammable content, then change lockout period without significantly altering the drop rates. There. Now you can't spam it and won't get bored. Owait you dont want it that way? Why not? Ah yes, dat loot.

[UmJammerSully]

I would honestly prefer it if they tokenize more events in the game than continue with this really annoying super low drop-rate stuff. There is no reason for militia gear to be yet another random drop at the end of hamlet, items purchasable with currency won from doing hamlet would be a hell of a lot more ideal IMO.

You score 18,292 in hamlet, well done, here's 182 'militia tokens'. With 2,000 tokens you can purchase the Militia Belt, with 4,000 tokens you can purchase the Militia Subligar... etc.

[Kaizlu]

Yup, I agree 100% with the OP.

When DH and Ifrit were released I was on the "low droprates, short cooldown" camp. But then after more content was released I just lost hope. My personal example is with Ifrit. I'm 7/7 right now with 50-75 wins, so it wasn't that bad - but there was a guy on my ls who did around 200+ and only got to 4/7. Not only did he spend more time fighting Ifrit, he also has/had really good gear and is a skilled player. And yet, I was rewarded better with my crappy gear, and so-so performance. There's something wrong there.

That's why I haven't really bothered to spam Moogle. And while I haven't cleared CC , AV or Garuda (completed the quests for CC and AV and haven't tried lv50 Garuda) I know that even if I do my best (gear and skill) there's only a really small chance at getting something in the end. So, why do it?

I think we all know these drop rates are here to prolong content, and we can live with it because 2.0 is coming and such. But once 2.0 I don't think everyone will be so tolerant, at least I won't be.

[Firon]

I would honestly prefer it if they tokenize more events in the game than continue with this really annoying super low drop-rate stuff. There is no reason for militia gear to be yet another random drop at the end of hamlet, items purchasable with currency won from doing hamlet would be a hell of a lot more ideal IMO.

You score 18,292 in hamlet, well done, here's 182 'militia tokens'. With 2,000 tokens you can purchase the Militia Belt, with 4,000 tokens you can purchase the Militia Subligar... etc.

^ This and i agree with everything the OP said. I'm sick of RNG and its annoying one thing i found funny in XI upgrading a relic shield was less of a hassle than anything else in that game cause every time i did dyna i knew i was getting closer and closer. I would like to see token system implemented for a lot of things. If the ex darklight raider was like hey i will give you an Darklight _____ for 100 tokens id be cool with that even if it meant having to do the raid 100 times.

[Zezlar]

I would honestly prefer it if they tokenize more events in the game than continue with this really annoying super low drop-rate stuff. There is no reason for militia gear to be yet another random drop at the end of hamlet, items purchasable with currency won from doing hamlet would be a hell of a lot more ideal IMO.

You score 18,292 in hamlet, well done, here's 182 'militia tokens'. With 2,000 tokens you can purchase the Militia Belt, with 4,000 tokens you can purchase the Militia Subligar... etc.

Precisely what I wanted, but alas here we are.

[Ganbachi]

Another idea to Aurum Vale and Cutter's Cry perhaps, is to have daily loot lockout instead of dungeon lockout. For example, If you finish the dungeon with 4 chests you'll be able to enter again the same day and obtain loot from the 5th chest alone. You can enter again without getting any loot if you want to do a run with a friend that didn't get a chance to enter with you before on the same day.

The loot system can be somewhat like Garuda. Where Darklight tokens have 100% drop and be passed to others and random Darklight gear to be dropped into your inventory.

[Lux_Rayna]

Ppl need to get it in their head that spamming shit does not produce faster results. Roll the dice a few times a day, or a week, and move on. Rolling it 30 times in one day doesnt help you at all. You will lose more than youll win due to the low probability. Spamming it works against you.

Spamming only helps when the edge is in your favor, or theres a predetermined outcome (like garuda). If none of these are true it is wiser to avoid spamming and just hope you get lucky.

[Duelle]

First there was Darkhold: a spamable dungeon with a 100% chance to get loot at the end from each chest. Everyone had full sets of everything from that dungeon within a month easily, then sat around twiddling their thumbs waiting for new content again.

I wasn't around when Darkhold was implemented, but I get the creeping feeling that it was alone when implemented.

Next there was Ifrit: a spamable fight with instanced chests so everyone got a chance to get an item. Problem is, it's a random item so you might not even be able to use it. It was incredibly frustrating when within our first 10 runs our tank got the staff and I got the sword. We'd love to have traded, but the items drop directly into our inventories so we can't even help our friends. So you have a low chance of getting a drop (let's be generous and say 10%) with a 1/7 (14%) chance on top of that that it's the drop you want. That's a 1.4% chance of getting the item you want. Later on they added Inferno Totems so you could save up for an item you actually wanted or pass the totem to your friend to help them get something they wanted. Good idea, but the problem again is that it's a random chance drop with a lower end drop rate and you need 10 of them.

Next was Moogle, another spamable fight whose loot system was a carbon copy of Ifrit's and has the same problems because of it.

Making one fight the entire "content" is most of the time a bad idea in and of itself. It's worked very rarely and under very specific set ups (See: Vault of Archavon, Obsidian Sanctum, Eye of Eternity). Not to mention it requires being part of a greater amount of content.

Followed by Aurum Vale and Cutter's Cry: spamable dungeons with abysmally low drop rates. One of the absolute worst types of content in any MMO in my opinion. It's a cheap and lazy way to prolong content and create faux difficulty. The sad part about this is I loved Aurum Vale and liked Cutter's Cry (except for Chimera because of the fact that melee are practically worthless during the fight, but that's a different discussion). The dungeons were cool and had interesting mechanics in them that made them stand out. But then they were ruined by the fact that they were spamable. Darklight has such an abysmally low drop rate that players have to spam the dungeon for a chance at it. This is not fun. This is tedious and burns players out on these dungeons really really quickly.

Spammable dungeons wouldn't be bad, were it not for the fact that they're still on their own. Now would the people in this game feel better if you had seven or eight lv50 dungeons with 24 hour lockouts? I can't really say. Wouldn't bother me at all, but I've played under such a system before.

And this is what worries me. Every single bit of endgame content we have right now is spamable. Because it's spamable, if they want to make the items you obtain by doing this content be "rare," it must have low drop rates. If it didn't, everyone would have full sets of everything again and there would be no sense of pride for getting gear because it's common. The problem is, this content does not reward skillful play or effort. The content instead rewards people who are lucky. That is it.

With the amount of content they have, they can't really do much in terms of offering progression. I mean, you have 2 dungeons (that are prone to speed runs), two primal fights, a moogle fight and...that's it. Now if the two raid dungeons were massive and required several days to clear (which would require the introduction of raid IDs), then you might be able to get away with adding lock outs and increasing drop rates.

By the way, 2 days is too short, IMO. I'd go for the full 7 days, increase drops rates to 100%, add a mechanic to shard stuff to materia only while the drops is in the loot pool, create a larger loot pool to draw from and maybe even split stuff up between the different pieces of content so that players are encouraged to do all of it if they want to complete their sets.

[Nullie]

Personally, I would rather progress towards 100 tokens as opposed to a single random % drop.

This is what I am for and I even said exactly 100 tokens to my shell as well, but keep the same % drop rate and the people who spam can be rewarded with tokens that can be exchanged for a piece. I wouldn't want to do 100 runs and not have anything for all that. I know we are at close to 200 speed runs and still not a single body drop. We alternate CC and AV so this is quite a let down from us. Especially after another shell who just barely starts winning the runs already has 2-3 body drops.

At least by now we could have exchanged for something already.

[Kaizlu]

Ppl need to get it in their head that spamming shit does not produce faster results. Roll the dice a few times a day, or a week, and move on. Rolling it 30 times in one day doesnt help you at all. You will lose more than youll win due to the low probability. Spamming it works against you.

Spamming only helps when the edge is in your favor, or theres a predetermined outcome (like garuda). If none of these are true it is wiser to avoid spamming and just hope you get lucky.

So, just leave it as it is?

Wouldn't it be better to have really hard content and reward those that beat it because it took skill, planning, etc...?

I actually like the idea of not having lockouts, since the content is "always ready" - but sadly that comes with horrible drop rates (which most of the replies here don't like)