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📝Dev Discussion #58 - Drop Rarity 💰
Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.
Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!
Dev Discussion - Drop Rarity
How do you feel when it comes to rare loot? Do you prefer when rare mobs and boss mobs drop something interesting often or less often?
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It depends on how often the boss spawns, if it's an instanced boss, a whole bunch of factors.
So I guess I'll tell you about my favorite boss drops and go from there.
My most favorite boss loot farming moments were:
In FFXIV when the Horse mounts first came out and you needed to collect them all in order to unlock the epic mount Kirin. We had to group up as a guild and spend a whole month just about farming all the Extreme mode bosses and it was a random chance to get the mount horn for each person. It seemed a low enough drop change that it was hard to get, but a high enough of a chance that we all stuck it out and tried to get our drops.
In WOW WotLK I remember looking up boss loot tables from those mods and farming some of them for cosmetics. (I feel like I remember farming a silver plated unique overworld wolf somewhere for something too?) Been a while on those, but I remember the dopamine hit when that stuff finally dropped.
As far as dropping interesting vs uninteresting things, I feel mobs should pretty much always drop something. It would be cool to see regular mobs have a chance to drop resources, or maybe just the occasional interesting thing. (That level 1 Squirrel actually has a chance to drop a legendary amulet if you kill enough of them! XD) Boss monsters that are dropping gear could drop the regular version of a piece of gear pretty often, but then have a chance to drop the upgraded version of that gear rarely?
Drop rare loot too often and it's not "Rare" anymore.
If something spawns often, the rate should be low, if it spawns rarely the rate should be higher.
This goes back to the previous discussion about spawn rates. Where there are lots of good takes on how often and how many different types of bosses are available.
Each boss is a loot box, and getting that item should feel like an accomplishment over a hand-out. So providing something to often reduces the uniqueness of that item.
Sandbox elements work better at farming for loot over long periods of time, versus little effort and you move on.
Also - crafting materials > than finished items.
Having players frequenting boss locations is a great source of friction and player interaction.
now, if you are going for dropping finished items, at least please only have items with randomized stats to really make it worth deconstructing these items for their mats, or only have items in the early game up to T1 or T2 max drop or be acquired through questing/rewards, but no T3 and especially no T4 or T5 stuff,
really hope we don't end up with another theme park experience of just running through raids/bosses for gear since its not really worth putting effort into the artisan system,
However I am not particularly passionate about this I just in general like having rare things be rare.
Although having a 1% chance to drop the mat I need kind of sucks, I would rather have the mob I need respawn 1/100th as often with the guaranteed drop.
Or have the mob spawn 1/5th as often but need 5x the mats
Getting an epic in a dungeon in MMOs, at max level, was a welcome surprise-In raids it was requirement. Heroics/Epics should be guaranteed in large end game raids with a extremely very low chance of dropping Legendary.
Artifacts should be extremely low rate + lots of work and gold. Like maybe parts of artifact drop and you have to assemble them over the course of months.
Low level dungeons should always drop rare, but maybe have 2 heroic item with very low drop rate and 1 epic with almost impossible drop.
Gradation in quality of items going from lowest to highest level is a key, but one thing should stay true-most common drop in dungeons should be:
1. low level dungeons-rare
2.in high level dungeons-heroics with very rare epic.
(17-50) Greens should be common reward for quest completion and for group/hard/ dungeon quests should be rares.
Crafting should be kind of a ''sure thing'' of item quality you need and you should be able to craft better quality items sooner than in any other player, who lets say, quested.
Lets say epics start dropping more frequently at level 40, well you, as a crafter, should be able to craft epics 5-10 levels sooner.
This is a fun idea.
You need a super rare item from a world boss that rarely spawns. When it dies it yields between 1-3 of that item. Now you have yours and you can play on the market too, or be targeted to get killed because people know you got extra of that thing. I can see that actually being a thing in Ashes too. Fun.
Killing a monster shouldn't be a reward. It should be a path to the goal.
Do you want to obtain the best metal ore from which the best blacksmith in the world will be able to forge the most powerful sword? Kill the dragons that live in the cave where this metal can be found.
Do you want to build a house in a forest where legendary herbs grow? Kill all trolls in the area.
Drops are an extremely important topic and as you have taken great care in crearing each aspect I hope you do the same with this as well.
I agree with Liniker that if items that help character in combat (weapons/gear) are in quests and/drops they should be almost useless except for the lowest level of characters. As for allowing gear drops these should be some of the hardest dungeons that victory is not a for sure out come if attempted and as I think crafted weapons should be stronger these limited or rare drop items should be above any capable crafting level. To me this is the challenging part because its how hard do you make it etc. which I have no advice (thus is why you make the big bucks). If quest items are going to be a regular thing and I think they still should be I think currency, consumables, or crafting materials should be the reward. Everyone wants an easy/good pay iff for that work but when everyone has it, it lessens the value. The reward should show the amount of work put in.
With the diversity of crafting dropped items shouldn't be as strong or as common to happen but should still be a thing, including instances where people are excited for what they get. I feel this should be a more common thing during the leveling process and as players get higher levels towards max level it becomes more of a rarity to get completed drop items. As players are slowly more introduced into crafting and communities during their time playing the game completed drop items are not really as effective.
Being a hardcore grinder myself I do enjoy the challenge of getting gear but do to things not being instanced it be a shame for a boss to drop almost nothing because of rng. The right pace is needed so players aren't gear instantly and constantly able to work towards something.
As much as I dislike a lot of BDO progression do to enhancement, it was difficult to get up and was something you grinded forever on. But the system was designed to be something players constantly could work on and gain small gains from. So if the overall player base is constantly able to get things to work towards from drops and don't feel they are playing the game forever and never getting any items it should be a positive.
IE If you have to do something 100 times before other players also doing it and other people getting drops the chance of getting anything sounds very slim. And no player will get excited since they don't get anything for themselves and have t rely on the market and heavy grinding to buy items.
Some creature types like humanoids could drop terrible scrapable gear often for flavor.
Most mobs should drop ingredients for professions.
Rare loot is healthy and fun when that loot is not BoE. When it is BoE, in most cases, the economy turns into a RMT gold buying craze quickly.
The standard is boss drops gear and the gear is the reward as a BoP item. It works I guess.
I'd like to see a system that rewards the player for killing the boss in significant ways that aren't just gear. For example maybe an ability or trait is at a low value as a baseline. And defeating this boss grants me a permanent buff/perk instead of gear or a long term buff perk that fades over a long time (Months/weeks). and that permanent .5% damage increase scales to a max of 2% or 5% or something after 15 boss kills. And different bosses provide perks to different abilities/traits/artisan skills/crafting skills etc.
World buffs are an old trope that can works well sort of but when all world buffs are always accessible and or always the same state, it's just a min max game.
Every boss kill should be rewarding and but not always so weighted around gear for all. Also benefiting from the availability of the boss access in the world should be a major consideration. If the boss with the buff that is OP is not available all the time then the buff is OP and fun but can't be consistently abused. During X season or Y Season in game or during X event or X node type. That buff is or isn't present and can or can't be stack with other world effects world events or world items.
Also I would love if raids would drop components as BOP for the player and then the player takes that BOP item to the crafters to create the gear tied to the component in 50% of cases. The other 50 % should be the feel good interesting drops that are unique to the boss and BoP.
This is very true. If it's a gear set or something it should be attainable through multiple kills and not so RNG that I am unlucky enough to never get the item i need to complete the set. But a super unique mount or tabard or cosmetic can sometimes be okay at a 1% or less. Since it's just cool.
For raid bosses, they should have a 1/3 full loot drop.
For epic raid it should be guaranteed.
When it comes to mats/parts there should be no rng. Just a fair bit of effort to get the required amount for a craft.
A re-craftable cool-lookin' weapon, a crappy piece of armor that can be re-made into higher-level gear, etc from even the low-levels should still be possible, even if rare.
Would also favor hidden in-game "counters" for the highest-end content. A story a guildie of mine once told me was that he was working on DAoC, and there had been a boss that had a 5% drop-rate for a really rare item. Well, a couple of months down the line, multiple raid groups and high-level players had noted they'd never even seen one. The problem? It never dropped because of a bug - and they hadn't realized it, for months.
If there's something super-rare dropping from raids/world bosses/etc, would favor a system that measures how often that the super-rares drop, and if it hasn't dropped in the last 25 successful group-encounters? It drops on the very next one completed - and the players would be none the wiser.
As for for a rare drop from a rare dungeon/raid boss it could be fun to give it 2 identical items however one is cursed and one is perfectly fine. For the cursed one you need to do a quest line to free it from its curse and that shouldnt be a easy quest or a short one let us work for it! and once its curse is lifted depending on how the QL went its either more powerfull or weaker then the non cursed counter part.
as for something els regarding drops.
If you guys are planning on Set pieces maybe create a pity system that allows players who are unlucky on the drops/rolls to still have a chance to get/create those set pieces. Think about a currency that drops from all bosses in that raid/dungeon where the set piece drops and after X amount it will allow us the players to exchange that for the set piece of choice.
- in dungeons, the rare drops should be the least predictable
- in raids the rare drops should be more predictable
- in open world, drops from rare mobs and boss mobs should also take into account how log the creature was alive. The longer it stays alive the better the chances would be. If players farm them often, they should stop dropping valuable stuff.
These rules should be apply also taking into account ZoI state. Lower level nodes should have higher level chances for good items.
What I would hate is a low population server to have low drop rate. Rate should be independent of number of players.
Rare loot is in its name something that should be rare, if i drop an item from a raid boss, dungeon boss, world boss, random spawning elite monster etc etc and it shows up as a "rare" item i dont exactly want to drop the same item the next 10 times i kill the thing
its a fine tuning system wherein players need to feel the rewards from spending their time in doing an activity and playing the game and also have the opportunity to either grind it out for that "rare" drop they are seeking or if the stumble upon it randomly eg first kill of a dungeon boss it drops a rare recipe for an item that feels like a moment of luck as when those rare items actually drop its the groups/guilds/random assortment of adventurers that came to kill the worldboss reaction to that item dropping that adds enjoyment for the player receiving it seeing 30+ "GZ" "LUCKY MF" "BRUH" when you get a good item drop is a moment of excitement for most players as they instantly know they got something good either for them or to sell to another player and progress further into their own personal journey of the MMO
rant over gg ez any%speedrun
As for the rarity, the same thing, "it's the mmorpg".
I also agree with @chaoko954's opinion, since obtaining rare items tends to be unlikely to drop from mobs or bosses, etc. As well as the loot system of the Tibia mmo. The most notable thing is the importance of mobs dropping rare resources, not equipment already made with their skills as happens in NW.
In my opinion, ultra-rare bosses or bosses that appear in events, or dungeons with a higher difficulty system, should be the exception to the drop of legendary items, rare items, etc. And equipment of higher value, competing with the artisans who create powerful equipment, but the probability that they drop ultra-rare legendary equipment must be ultra-low, so that the artisans always have prominence or compete with the items dropped by boss mobs or bosses. worldwide (although Intrepid is unlikely to do this).
Again, I don't mind grind, but i prefer a token system that rewards the grind each time instead of just gambling time away in hope of receiving your item. And with enough tokens collected you can simply get the item you worked for.
Not an MMO, but the only game I've really ever grinded in was a game called Outriders. Drops were RNG, but every run I was getting currency. Currency I could use to reroll a vendor to try and get the item. Now the vendor was RNG too, but currency was plentiful. in 2-3 runs I could reroll. This essentially gave me two chances every run for the item I wanted. The run itself and the currency reward thereafter. I could also use that same currency and other things gained from the runs to upgrade my current gear so that I could still min/max even if the BiS wasn't dropped. In this way, I always felt that my time was rewarded. Every run was useful and because just 1 more run would let me reroll the vendor or whatever, I always wanted to do just one more run.
Forget bosses dropping fully crafted gear. How about they throw us 'semi-crafted' items instead? Imagine this: you and your raid buddies just kicked a gargantuan spider's butt for 45 minutes, and it spits out the [Fangs of Insanity]. But hold up, it's only the blade – the 'semi' crafted part. Now, you gotta haul it to a certified Weapon Smith who'll slap on the handles and maybe tweak it with some other materials. It's not just about the loot; it's shouting, "Crafters make the good shit!" Plus, it adds a cool twist to raid drops.
For everyone talking about the bosses only dropping mats, I want to remind everyone that in previous artisan previews/discussions you get the mob mats from processing the body, though I am still unclear if that is the only method or just a special set of mats. I'm assuming that the level of the mat obtained on processing the mob body has to do with the level of the gatherer, and therefore a good mechanic might be increased chance of higher tier mats from rare/boss mobs. From the artisan preview it appeared that all mats have an internal common-legendary tier system, regardless of their individual rarity. That being said, the gathering process of the rare/boss mobs are gated behind mastery levels (only gather-able if you have x-lvl in the profession) it would kinda feel bad if your party just happened to not have a person of that level and couldn't obtain the mat. It would similarly kinda suck to have to drag a player that is not high enough level/high enough skill for the raid/encounter through it to make sure you can obtain the mat. Now you can say that's the "social" part of the social sandbox, but just wanted to point it out. They could experiment with "X number of rare mats for killing it, if you have a high enough tier gatherer you can gain X number additional mats.", but that seems like the only way to make "Only Mat" drops from bosses feel worthwhile given the currently described mob processing mechanics.
Please, allow for the occasional epic item/weapon drop for a player on trash mobs that is way passed the player's current character level and is sellable/transferable to other characters. It might not even be an item the player can is not going to be useful on their current character.
My longer answer is that the fantasy of rarity matters more to me than fairness or frequency of best in slot gear. Legendary items should be legendarily rare, epic items should be memorable and epic, and so on. Its better to air on the side of scarcity than to make it rain purples, especially in an economy-forward game like ashes. I think a good rule of thumb is, if you can't look at your character sheet and remember exactly where and when you got every piece of gear, acquisition is waaaaay off balance and uninteresting. Rarity should be both discouraging and encouraging. The entire spectrum of rarity can be used to give texture to the world. You can have items that are guaranteed drops that are still iconic and interesting (like time lost proto drake in WotLK WoW). Conversely, you can have items that will likely never drop for you that create lottery winners (like mirror of kalandra in PoE). You can have blue-collar rarities for the solo grinders, creating a steady inflow of desirable materials with some satisfying jackpots that make a day's grind feel all the more satisfying (like a unique 1/512 drop in runescape from a mundane mob). An interesting drop table can make any grind better.
I think player agency and fun is a big factor here. If the grind is too straightforward or boring, the answer is the faster I can grind it out the better. How much can a clever player or guild optimize their farm of choice? How much time can I shave off of a grind based on my own decisions? How much influence does the nearest town have on what I'm doing? Are there any items I could get to make this grind better/faster/easier for me? If bossing is a non-economic system, rarity doesn't really matter all that much.. Even if you double the rarity of a bind on pickup drop in a dungeon, You're really only kicking the can down the road a few more runs. No matter what you do, once a player gears out of that dungeon its dead content forever.Similarly, too-frequent upgrades based around item levels and raid tiers of bosses nobody will care about in 5 months ends up feeling like you're playing the systems rather than the game. I would much rather have rarer items with different layers of acquisition, anchored to the world they occupy, connected to an emergent player driven economy, armed with a bunch of different ways to skin each cat.
Since this is far too short of a post already, let me give a few unsolicited hypotheticals as examples. Let's say there is a node in an area with volcanic activity, and that zone has a bunch of traversable lava vents that are seasonally explorable depending on volcanic activity. It would make sense that any boss in this area could have higher than average drop rates, because it's already gated seasonally. Overall, your acquisition rate would be either in line or slower than regular farmable open world content, because gating must be factored in. Let's add more texture to this example though. Let's say that these dormant vents have a chance to open up during the winter, but only if the nearest node does something specific, and that ease of access to this vent and forging a relationship with its inhabitants is a very good idea. Perhaps the ground is too hot in the dormant vents, so you have to wear special boots while you're down there, or a special breathing apparatus made by artisans. Maybe only a certain type of mount works within the area that could farm out for max efficiency. Maybe many of the monsters within this area are weak to weapons made from a material found commonly in a distant icy biome, which would cut time to kill and difficulty by some non-negligible percentage. Maybe there's a tiny tiny percentage chance for an ancient foe to spawn a single time and never again once its killed, and if someone manages to take him down, his core can be used to eventually forge an item that is situationally VERY overpowered, hell maybe it changes the damn weather when it's used. Its overall effect on the world is minimal from a power standpoint, but it inspires awe.
My point is that rarity gets a hell of a lot more complicated when you start texturing in fantasy elements and barriers to acquisition that can be overcome for faster kills, clears, etc. Rarity should be used as one of many knobs and levers to fine tune the experience, but its up to the other systems at play to layer meaning into the rarity. Ultimately, good items need to be rare enough so that there's never a point where everyone who wants one can afford to get it. It's totally fine to make people work for BiS, perhaps make BiS effectively unachievable by anyone except the most dedicated adventurers, the most influential traders, or the most ruthless conquerors.
One last hot take to wrap up. Damn near everything should be tradeable and have a purpose economically. Untradable equipment from bosses should be very very rare, and used in specific use cases rather than the default. I think that BOP was a system originally implemented as a way to shower people in purples without it throwing the game out of balance economically, because let's face it. gear would be completely worthless in most MMO's if it weren't for BOP due to the rate of acquisition. Sure it's fun to kill bosses and for fat loot to explode everywhere, but it's a novelty that wears off, and when it does it leaves the game feeling cheapened. Bossing in ashes should be a high risk/high profitability money maker where the best teams and guilds can aquire, use or sell the best item bases to crafters and players looking to perfect that already great base into something insane.