My first game was Everquest2. Every MMO i have played since I have found myself disappointed in the lack of crafting complexity, thriving economy and rarity of rare things. I like what I'm reading from people here, Err on the side of making things more rare then less. in EQ2 you could go 8 hours of harvesting before getting a rare. it seemed about right, all these years later i still remember odd times i got 2 within proximity and felt really lucky. It should really hurt the pocket to buy a rare mat on auction. Or the decision to sell one to begin with should be hard. The more rare such things are though the more more common resources need to be able to be sunk into other things. I love the time dependent or seasonality of finding some items, increasing value when holding on to. I wasn't initially
What I'm not seeing is more interactive skill based crafting again like Eq2 or FF14. both games still allowed for auto-crafting for bulk amounts that would just result in an occasional failure and lower grade items but fine for mass processing or bulk crafting quest orders. I suppose the added complexity in other forms can make up for this but I really would like to see it.
Quests concerning crafting were not covered but the more the merrier, create demand for those mats please.
Also i remember these quests heritage quests maybe or Legacy. they were extra long form quests that stayed on the books awhile sometimes with dozens of steps requiring a range of activities including Lore, crafting, traveling, killing mobs, dungeons etc. they had extra nice rewards and were particularly fulfilling.
Salvaging. I haven't seen that mentioned but it seem rather vital. I would like to see most vendor trash and gear/furniture be salvageable, maybe even with a very rare chance to salvage a rare mat on vendor trash. or of course on a corresponding gear piece which was built with a rare with a higher chance.
Anyways some random thoughts of mine thank you, I am very much liking what I see!
Honestly I would love some special grinding loot, something that not everyone have with a low chance of drop from mobs, I think for those who like grinding would be amazing and obviously for those who doesn't like, they could just buy those special items from the players... But for me in particular I would appriciate if the chances of obtaining those items would be very low, like 00.01% , something that you can only get with a lot of effort
For me Lineage2 (c4 - Interlude - HF) system was good.
Mobs can drop good stuff, but... 0.0000x% chance.
Default bosses - also good stuff but with 1-100% chance.
Epic bosses with ~weekly respawn - really unique epic items with 50-100% chance.
The only important thing that should be defferent from La2, is that smth like "Wolf" shouldn't drop smth like "Sword", because where this sword was originally located? in wolf's stomach? it is weird...
So human-like mobs can drop ready equipment, but monster-like or animal-like mobs should drop smth that later can be used to craft equipment (not just small resource, it could be for example smth like monster's eye and then "this rare eye + resources = magic staff", or "rare monster's fang + resources = axe").
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MissionCreepMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited December 2023
Make things as rare as you want--even super rare--but give us streakbreakers.
Something with a 1% chance could go hundreds of kills without a drop.
36% of users will not get that drop after 100 tries.
13% won't get it within 200 tries.
Out of a million players, 43 of them will miss that single drop ONE THOUSAND TIMES in a row!
So there's your answer: Make the ceiling as high as you want but you need to be worried about the floor; that's what will affect gameplay--who stays and who quits.
With a high ceiling, some players will get lucky sometimes and get more than the standard share. And they'll have a ton of dopamine and remember that feeling for a long time.
And that will be amazing for them.
Make sure that everyone else is getting about the expected average via a streakbreaker, so that they don't remember a bunch of bad times of loot failure. (Or not extended ones)
If you don't want us to have too much dopamine, then have the streakbreaker work in BOTH directions, to tamp down good results AND bad ones. But that's playing with fire.
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?
I think for me I would prefer how Black Desert does with the treasures items, those items has a drop rate really low, I think less than 1%, so you can grind for more than 300 hours and still don't get it, but they have a pity system where you can also drop a different item and when you collect 100 of this item you can trade it for the treasure item that you want, this pity item still has a low drop but something that you realistic can drop, like 2 hours of grind you get 2-3, and when grinding to get the 100 you can still drop the completed item with will create an amazing feeling, and if you don't drop it in a grind session you won't feel so bad because you know that you are progressing and will get it eventually.
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?
I do not think its a matter of obscurity. I would hope its a matter of completion. Leveling up i think it’s more a non-factor to have rare things drop more frequently. As well i think within that lower end spectrum it would be nice to introduce parts or special mats needed for a beyond normal rank item used in crafting. Crafting you said is always going to have the best gear. And since this game is a bit different to most mmo’s it’s a great idea to let the newcomers know that and get that feel as soon as possible to inform them of what to expect at max level.
At higher levels i would expect alot less actual immediate loot drops and more grinding to get all the parts or mats for that epic or legendary item. It should feel fulfilling after collecting all the parts and creating the actual item. I think at the top end or rather max level no matter world rare or dungeon or raid the amount of loot should consist of more mats and parts or even designs then direct useable loot. Still allow loot but it should all still be a useable stepping stone to the crafted stuff over what you would typically have before these encounters.
I hope it takes people many months if not a year to craft if possible a artifact(or whatever the one per server is if craftable.)
I prefer less often because of the bigger payoff. Looting something that is very rare is a memorable event.
It also makes the decision-making much more interesting in a game where most items are not bound. If it's actually rare then it will net a good price on the market and now you have to make a meaningful decision!
I'm so glad you asked.
The only answer that can appease everyone is reforging.
Lets say you're a new player with a crap weapon and you clear that first dungeon and get "cool sword". How powerful is cool sword, how rare? Let's put some arbitrary units to power here, 1-50. You were using sword(2) now you have cool sword(5). The cool sword is really common as it's the first dungeon boss sword, so cool sword(5) is super cheap, but let's say you really like the look of cool sword and want to keep it. You might find "better sword(8)" and "bitch'n sword(12)", but cool sword is the look for you, so lets reforge it.
The Crafting
So the casuals will just get the base common swords as they level up, and that's fine. If you want the really good stuff that's where reforging comes in. So you have your forging tools, some iron, and cool sword(5), with enough forging skill you can make that a cool sword(10). Want it to get even stronger? Now you'll need steel, better tools, and more skill to reach 11-20, then all better again with mithril for 21-30, etc.
Once you're a legendary smith swimming in Orichalcum you can pump out powerful blades all day. You can make any blade one of the greatest in the world, you can make cool sword(50), the catch is you need unobtanium to do it and that stuff is rare beyond rare.
I struggled to articulate my answer to this... but this is what I came up with. This, to me, would be appropriate(ish) breakdown. I'd fall into the 2nd Target Audience. I'm trying to get away from discussing drop rates (e.g., 0.01% for boss X or mob Y) and instead focus on our expectation/belief we'd get something. Obviously dependent on how often you play. Easy on the criticism, I'm not particularly proud of how this came out.
Target Audience: Players actively playing 6-12 hours a day.
Top-tier BOP Recipe - Almost impossible (someone in your guild finds one once/month)
Target Audience: 2-6 hours/day. (gear 90-95% stats from Top-tier)
High-tier BOP Recipe - Extremely rare (you or your friend finds once/month)
High-tier BOE Recipe - Very rare (you find once/month)
High-tier BOP Item - Extremely rare (you or your friend finds once/month)
High-tier BOE Item - Rare (You find one of these once every week or two)
Target Audience: 0-2 hours/day. (gear 70-90% state from Top-tier)
Mid-tier BOP Recipe - Very rare (you or friend finds once/month)
Mid-tier BOE Recipe - Rare (you find once every 2-3 weeks)
Mid-tier BOP Item - Very rare (you find once every 3-4 weeks)
Mid-tier BOE Item - Meh rareness (you find every other day)
Here's the kicker. The casual dude that plays 45 minutes a day STILL HAS A CHANCE of getting the almost impossible Top-tier BOP Recipe, but his chances are, well, not something he hopes for. Instead, his hopes are for decent gear that allows him to see all the content over time. Instead of hoping for an "almost impossible" drop, he would try to buy one some day or be gifted it by a friend.
In summary, I recommend it be VERY difficult to find the best items - especially the recipes. Drops should be as rare as possible, stopping just short of our lack of belief we'll ever get the items most appropriate for the hours we play.
Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times.
I think I am going to answer the question specifically.
I think mobs should always drop "something interesting". This should be generally more in the line of a crafting ingredient which has a value to everyone. This is a mob's "farming" value. Nodes should have essentially the same farming value over time at the same level, to balance the game.
It then should then also have a very rare chance of dropping something "Extremely Interesting" that may be a cosmetic item or a recipe or something impossible to obtain intentionally. This is the player reward for spending more time playing.
I hate the mobs that have a rare chance of a specific item. Having to kill the same mob 1000s of times to get a prestige or cosmetic item is IMHO bad game design.
Hooooooooooboy there's a lot I could say and offer on this. Here's a few quick thoughts:
TICKETS AND INDIVIDUALIZED LOOT: This is kinda where I want to see a bit of a difference between common pool and individualized loot. As players play on, fight foes, and get involved with the game world, they should accrue a pool of tickets that correlates with potential personalized drops. This manifests as rare materials, resources, blueprints, and equipment, and the ticket threshold for that level of reward is then deducted from the total pool. If a player swings on the unlucky side for a while, or their deeds outpace the rate that personalized drops are offered, the ticket pool can build up to increasingly higher chances for something beyond rare quality. As the player plays on, their accumulated deeds and participation in the world will help increase the rate at which these tickets are presented, allowing for more powerful and well-vested players to start accumulating enough tickets to go two steps beyond rare quality. Part of this can also help sort out the most unique and heroic of items in a non-competitive way, in that the Grand Aelan Kingsword dropped for LarryLovin because they've been fighting big bad thing all over the world and had a huge impact on the shape of the server, and he IS the hero who shall wield it for a quest that others may want to accompany and support. There could also be ways to increase tickets manually, like every ungathered item and resource, and every unlooted enemy, adds more tickets for those who generated them. Individualized loot may have a special glow when it manifests, so the player knows there's something waiting for them even after it has been looted by others. Rare to heroic items should always correlate with things players do, like an enchanter and potion master won't get a recipe for an epic sword, but they may get a recipe that uses specific materials from afar in order to force trade or travel to obtain some. I can explain this better if anyone wants more details!
TECHNIQUE BASED LOOTING: This boils down to "you get what the tools you've used provide" where items generated for common loot are based on how they were produced. Picking fruit, cutting branches, and felling a tree, should give me different things, and if I wanna make pristine apple pies, I'd better use my fruit gathering tool instead of felling the tree and getting what's easy to pick. If I want the cloth armor on that bandit wizard, fireballs and lightning are probably not a good idea, and things that hit with slashing or piercing impacts will also be bad. If I want the most delicious milk, I'll milk cows instead of snorses, and make sure they get beer and massages in between their grains fortified with a heap of ground bugs.
Wierd, I could swear I wrote in a topic just like this.
Must have been a different one.
Oh well, one more won't hurt.
In what dimension this suggestion will be deployed I don't know but I hope that Intrepit will use a very enormous amount of RNG as often as possible, to ensure that no amount of internet guide using, or location "spawncamping" with tons of no-lifers, and even the biggest amount of vigilance will not guarantee exclusive access to certain loot.
Example:
In World of Warcraft existed very rare mounts in some openworld zones. Like the Timelost Protodrake or Poseidus, the seahorse. Those were some extreeeeeemly scarcely spawning rare-elite's who would drop themself as a mountversion if you killed them.
Which then lead to people spawncamping the locations for either years, or having their BOTS do exactly this.
In other words " Disgustääääääng. " But in general I dislike it when something is getting so meta that participation feels almost like a punishment.
Especially when there something like Auctionhouse in the game in which the wannabe exclusive article is able to be sold because it is not accountbound after picking it up.
... which then had lead me to by sheer coincidence notice that I could buy Poseidus in the Auctionhouse, after something like 10 whole reallife years, during one of my last sessions of WoW before I finally quit forever.
This event made me realize something fundamental.
And that is that "harder" or "rarer" does not automatically translate to better.
Rather it translates to indifference to the average joe.
The price of Poseidus went down from something like 2.500.000 goldpieces (or such) to 4500 due to the effective "farming methods" (bots °cough°) deployed by people who enjoy nothing more but to own as much ingame money as possible.
I will never forget the day where I wrote in the tradechannel " Hey guys I am now going to buy POSEIDUS for a measly 4,5k gold, just for the f°°°ing lulz of it. "
Which I then did and then "learned the mount" surrounded by other players in the same Auctionhouse.
Got me a few amused chuckles from people who payed attention.
It was funny for them too when I explained to them that the pointe was that this unaffordable, monumental mounts price has been defeated by time and the fact that it was farmed and put in the Auctionhouse for 10 whole years.
So what does this have to do with drop rarity now?
Am I saying rarer stuff is bad? Nope, I don't. Rare stuff being rare... is very good.
After all this means a dopamine boost for people who enjoy such
gacha like mechanics of possibly becoming a chosen one.
But it must really be random then. Exclusive to being chosen by the "RNG god" itself.
There is nothing more disgusting to me than "meta's" for such things, guides and botting.
I loath the idea that for all articles in a videogame, the "smartest people" always win over all others.
For a lot of things I can respect that... but not for all things.
Some things should be SO random, even a casual who plays only for two weeks on the server has the same chance of getting something as another dude who has played for two years.
An absolute and horrendously deep amount of random number generation.
Naturally... your chance to encounter this super rare mob/item/ore/whatever is higher if you play longer in the game and look around more often.
But if RNGjesus does not chose you even then... well, it is what it is then.
To tie such things to a randomness so huge that the very idea of making guides completely falls away.
A no-lifer might become a mayor and own a flying mount.
But they cannot necessarily own THAT flying mount that could appear only once every reallife week or so, everywhere in the whole of Verra and exist on the ground only for 5 minutes, before it flies up again and disappears in a mysterious cloud or something.
A beast that must either be tamed (makes sense) or slain and you loot it as a mountversion or something.
Something that can interest collectors & completionists for years to play just for the thing itself.
Prestigue for the truly lucky chosen one.
An interesting concept for pleb and royalty alike.
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VirtekMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I'm all for drop rarity, truly. It creates a reason to return to content and obtain items for power, prestige, or simple fun tinker toys.
BUT if a mob spawn is already rare (and truly rare to spawn, not just continually spawning at a small percentage in the local population of a similar creature), then the drop is, in fact, already rare as well.
Rare monsters should drop rare and interesting items more often than not.
Boss mobs in Ashes are going to be different than every other game, as they will be in an open-world setting rather than instanced. The typical "cooldown" usually given on a per-week basis would not apply, but people are likely to be constantly fighting them and slaying them. This should mean that the boss is still a rare kill on a per-person basis and potentially more rare than an instanced boss. Would need some testing to develop an opinion on this one.
For me something I really loved was the NM (notorious monster) setup that Final Fantasy XI did. Having named monsters that have specific spawn times that drop a specific rare item with their own drop rates that people compete over getting to first. They had hundreds of NMs throughoutthe game some with sellable items and some with character bound items. This could be utilized greatly within the crafting system with rare NM's that drop rare crafting materials. I remember the insanely low odds of the Kraken club in FFXI and if you got your hand on one it was like holding Excalibur.
Certain items in FFXI were held in such high regards that they became actual legends within the game, legends i still talk about with people when reminiscing.
Rare Gear and items all boil down to being a status symbol within the server. If everything is too easy to get then you can't show off to others. It's a very vain concept, but a lot of players work hard in the game so that they can show off that they are better than others. This includes items with super crazy low drop rates.
People want what others can't/ don't have simple as that. And they are either willing to shell out shit tone of gold for it, or devote countless hours to obtain it themselves.
I think item rarity is a fun side-project on the road to collecting all the gear and trinkets you dream of. Some items being more rare, or harder to come by, or grind towards is okay. The issue is when a failed attempt yields ZERO reward, because then it just feels like rolling dice 100-200 times which makes players feel hopeless. If I kill a boss hoping for [Super Mega Rare], and don't get it, it would be nice if the boss at least dropped some special crafting material as opposed to nothing of value.
I do also like the trend I've been seeing lately of individual loot tables as opposed to shared loot tables. It encourages camaraderie and grouping because people farming for specific items or rare drops won't feel like they risk losing it by having company. More reasons to group!
I want bosses to drop rare loot really rare (single digit %). However a few notes:
-Bosses should have a really high chance to drop crafting material (maybe even 80%) to craft their specific item. This way, even when farming a boss for a specific loot drop, you are still progressing on your way to the item, its not just RNG that decides
-If a boss drop their full item, there should be some sort of visual indicator that it is a drop and not a craft (not a full skin, maybe even a different colour or something like that).
-However, this item should not be able to be modified. Here I am talking out of thin air (Narc got to me), but maybe crafters can put a spin on their crafts, change damage types or anything like that. The boss drop should be base and no one can change anything about the stats.
-NO BOUND ITEMS. No items should be bound in my opinion.
--Also, as I understand, Best in Slot comes from crafting. So no boss should just drop the "best" anything, but it should be really close.
--The drop tables should not be static. Having bosses change what they drop (maybe based on season, or story arc or whatever) is gonna do a lot for long term value of a boss. If i get lucky and drop the item on the first kill, i will never return to that boss, however, with rotating drop tables, i have a reason to come back every time it rotates.
-Back to drop rates, what i dont want at max level is to fill my back with blues that i will never use or can sell. So a boss shouldn't have any "filler" drops. If i can get a legendary mace with 5% drop rare, i dont want it to also have a 25% drop rate to drop a blue mace. Make it 5% legendary mace, 80% materials for mace (you can split this into like 40% a bit of material, 30% some materials and 10% a lot of material) and 15% no drop at all. This way, every kill i am either sad that i got 15% (but i know its rare to get that), or got material (which is not super, but thats the expected outcomeso i am ok with it) or am super happy i got the 5% drop. Adding a shittier item in the drop table will make it feel like actual grinding, and considering that shittier item is gonna have a higher % of dropping than what i want, its gonna happen more often. TLDR i would much rather get materials to go find a crafter to make me the mace than a shitty version of the mace i could have gotten.
Its been six months or more since i last posted a comment re one of the discussions but i feel this is an important one to comment on.
There is several points to comment on the questions....
How do you feel when it comes to rare loot?
Rare loot is as it says rare loot. I think depending on the teir should depend on its drop rates.... example ledgenary should be extremly low 0.001% - 0.01% / epic low 0.1% - 0.5% / rare low 1% - 5% / uncommon low often 5% -10% and common / crap often
The % is examples just to explain the point in text. I find and like most of my mates that when playing using old WOW as the example getting a green was exciting but meh. Getting a blue was rare and exciting...getting an epic was OMG moments. Obvisoly ledgenaries were never dropped in the world but i wish they did. They need to be beyound super rare so when they do its a moment of OMFG can not beleive this happened. The item also needs to be something that is only gotten from a drop that also has special ability only it has that is different in the game. Example being a ledganry fishing rod with some stupid stat like +10000 to night fishing on a creek as an example to make it that more special. not bound to person to so it could be sold if youd onto want it etc.....
Do you prefer when rare mobs and boss mobs drop something interesting often or less often?
rare mobs should always drop rare items. These items need to be matched to the level of the mob killed. Again tailiored stats to the mob you have killed. I would suggest also a higher chance of the rare loot being upgraded to epic or ledgeanry etc.
TLDR: Copy L2's system. Trash mobs drop at an extremely low percentage, with weapon/armor component pieces for crafting also low. Group mobs still low, but higher. With mini bosses and world bosses being the big focus on getting full drops, but still allowing the rare chance of getting full weapon/armor from normal mobs, but as said, at an extremely low percentage. As stated above, should be player driven, no plethora of loot pinata's please....Follow L2's example. If you want a more in depth breakdown, read the full post for more details.
Considering the nature that BoP or BoE is not a factor in this game, I believe the L2 style of drops would favor AoC heavily, as everything was focused on crafting, and full gear drops were a rarity, even so in later levels. Standard mobs would drop the weapon component pieces for crafts, as well as recipes, at a pretty low rate. Considering L2 had NOTHING in terms of systems...The game was literally just progression gated behind a huge grind for leveling, large time investment for crafting, a flagging and karma system that is identical to ashes flagging and corruption system, and an open world with player politics driving guild/alliances for boss contesting...I believe adopting their item drop system in a similar form would be a wise choice. Adding this to Ashes will give it the longevity and meaning of worth in items that AoC would need.
Now I definitely wouldn't make it as hardcore as L2 had it, but just to give you an idea of what it was like, here's a quick breakdown. Keep in mind most of these numbers were for the first couple of years, and got even harder with later chronicles.
Basic tier mobs that are solo friendly would be very very low in drop rate, I'm talking like 1 in 500 for just a component piece of a weapon craft, such as a crystal dagger blade, the recipe needing 11 of them for a craft along with the other materials required. But that very same mob also had a chance of dropping the full weapon, but at a .0017 percent chance. Making it extremely rare and crafting being the priority, as getting one to drop would be quite a memorable day for you. Keep in mind they would also drop other materials and what not, but I'll focus on the crafting and full drop elements going forward
If you were to fight a group focused mob that had hp scaled and was designed for parties, it would drop a component more often, 1 in 100 or so for the component piece, and a weapon drop of .005 percent. Might seem still super small, but that was the point, it would drop the crafting material more often to allow it to be farmed for crafting the recipe.
Now, if you were to fight mini bosses out in the world...That are more guild or competitive party focused, this would be a different story. These bosses would have decent spawn window of several hours or even a day or so. Instead of dropping a single weapon component piece, they would drop multiple, at around a 60-70% chance. And a full weapon chance drop of like 3-5%. Allowing for guilds, alliances, and organized competitive players to focus on taking them down.
Finally onto the big honcho world bosses, that top tier guilds and alliances strived to take down every time it spawned...The low level to mid high level bosses wouldn't drop component pieces, they would drop full weapons and armor. At around 10-30%. Along with a chance of dropping a legendary boss specific loot that you could not craft or get anywhere else, which offered unique passives that made them extremely desired. Which fed the guilds/alliances to contest for such with bloodshed...Massive wars, alliances formed, rivals made, etc. Such items would be the queen ant's ring, earing of orfen, ring of baium, etc. Considering how much AoC is pulling from L2, the flagging system, corruption system, tower of carphin (similar to Tower of Insolence in L2, definitely expect a big bad world boss on the top of that sucker), etc...I really do hope they adopt a similar state for their loot tables. Now we know AoC will have one of a kind per server unique loot, but not sure if they will have unique world boss only loot that drops without such a restriction of one per server, I wouldn't doubt it at all, as it would help the competitive nature of the game for the top guilds/alliiances.
I pretty much see AoC as an upgraded experience of the base systems that made L2 great, would be a shame for a more watered down approach that cheapens the rarity of goods and detracts from the games longevity. Making players earn their gear and craft it is a must. The worst thing to do is make gear meaningless and have it drop often at all points of the game...The amount of MMO's I've seen and played that just slap you with equipment piece after another for just doing basic questing, or from hub to hub is astounding. Overall a detriment to gear progression and even their own crafting systems, truly laughable. Now obviously there should be a line not to cross for ashes, as making it too hardcore would detract from players...But honestly, that's already bound to happen, as the current MMO player base isn't use to what AoC is trying to achieve, which I believe will stem from meaningful loot acquirement that takes effort, and not a hand out or participation award system that is what current themepark mmo's force feed players. This won't be your raid night MMO, don't expect it to be so, I look forward to the massive amount of WoW and such players rage around release.
Anyways, the part that has me intrigued though is how to handle the varied rarities. I believe giving a percentage chance of the item being rare, heroic, epic, legendary, and so on would be a good addition to step the system up further for weapon/armor drops. Give it a extra little bit of flavor accordingly.
If AoC could deliver this to me, I would be one happy camper. Especially considering I will never get to see a true lineage 2 sequel, as NCSoft is beholden to their shareholders, and the almighty yet genre destroying p2w mentality =*(.
The way I like loot may seem niche, or maybe not. Getting a special drop from a raid boss always feels amazing, especially when you know the drop chances are low. This adds to the value and general hype around these items. What I would like to see personally is the game being a living world, and by that I mean if I encounter a rare version of a mob that spawns, and it's not guaranteed to spawn as it will have a bit of luck and maybe some quest prerequisites, I should be able to obtain the loot 100% if my party are the ones to kill it. This is because the rarity of the item is already introduced by the rarity of that type of mob.
When it comes to big Raid bosses or open-world roaming bosses, however, I would like to see some items be rare to obtain, while others will drop every time. There should always be a reward for getting the kill on an open-world boss since it is very likely that it will be contested. Say there is a giant fire-breathing Wyrm that spawns on the volcano, this boss will always drop its scales that can be used to craft cloaks or brew fire resist potions, but rarely will it drop its "magma core" that can be used to craft epic equipment. The items that do drop every time from bosses should be able to be used in multiple professions to add to the consumption since they will, eventually, not be as rare.
To echo what others have already said in this thread, I think any discussion about loot rarity has to include discussions about bad luck protection as well. For me, bad luck protection in some form is a must for any loot drops that are progression related. Spending weeks grinding for progression and getting nothing is a great way to burn out, trying to keep people tied to your game via progression RNG is a great way to get people to leave and never look back. Giving people a clear path forward that they can track alleviates that kind of burnout almost entirely.
To tie it into other discussions in this thread about keeping crafting relevant, some simple methods of bad luck protection are just having crafting items themselves be it. Instead of needing 1 super rare drop, you'd need 10 lesser rarity drops for a craft, or having those 10 lesser rarity drops be crafted into the super rare drop that you can then craft the item with. Things like currencies for world bosses, raid bosses etc. would work as well, allowing you to buy crafting mats with the currency that can be used yourself or sold to others that need it.
That being said, rare drops can still exist, they just have to not be progression related. Black Desert's treasure items are a good example of this. Super rare drops that come with a level of prestige, but hold little to no power gains, they're mainly quality of life. Having chase items like these gives people a reason to spend time doing content they otherwise wouldn't, while also avoiding burnout, as there's less frustration in not getting something that's not stopping you from participating in other content. Although I'd argue even for those some level of bad luck protection is important.
The biggest issue with choosing to have no bad luck protection is simply that whether or not you have bad luck protection, some people are going to get lucky, but more importantly, some people will get insanely unlucky, meaning the higher end of the grind curve can look more like an elevator to the moon in terms of grind time. Bad luck protection just flattens this so your more dedicated players are guaranteed to get what they want after a while, instead of just giving them the middle finger. While in a vacuum you could argue bad luck protection is a kind of 'participation trophy', it's more akin to ensuring you're rewarding your dedicated players sufficiently instead of kicking them to the curb when they're having a bad streak.
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?
In my opinion rare mobs should drop something interesting as long as they are indeed rare mobs, meaning they re-spawn in a long time window. In a perfect scenario, the drop chance and quility of the loot would be tied to the spawn time window of the rare mob. I think it makes sense that a rare mob that spawns once every 3/4 days should have a better drop chance on interesting items than a rare mob that spawns once every 12 hours. Even though the rare mob that spawns every 12 hours can indeed drop something interesting, in my opinion it should have a larger loot table than the rares spawning every 3/4 days, so the change of droping something good is increased on the rarer mobs. Also, tying rare mobs with some sort of achievements or to any type of specific currency that could be used on a "secret vendor around the world" would help people feeling engaged to this content and, therefore, incentivized to go and hunt rare mobs.
Regarding Bosses, sure, there should be some items here and there that are good, but I would avoid systems where a boss drops gear to everyone in the group and I would also avoid to give bosses the primary purpose of providing BiS gear. I would prefer Bosses' loot to lean towards profession recipes and eventually rare materials (this last one could be replaced with material nodes inside the dungeon itself, which are not found in the open world).
I would reinforce that loot is a very important system as it is very tied on how the game expands in the future. If a game tends to provide more BiS gear through raids (as I've seen multiple MMO's doing in the past, and also to this date) there will be a high tendency for new expansions turning previous content irrelevant, as gear from the new raid is usually better than the previous ones, therefore negating the need to go to the old raids. This is called the vertical expanding approach. With that being said, I would prefer a more horizontal expanding approach, where raid loot tends to focus on providing resources to professions (both recipes and materials).
Giving a short example, let's say on launch there is raid X which have 2 bosses (Boss A and Boss B ) and raid Y that only has one boss (Boss C). All goes fine and well (...) and suddenly a new expansion arrives with more raids and more bosses, but no player level increasing. This new raids drop new recipes and mats BUT those recipes require people to gather materials from Boss A, B and C (let's say eyes, skins, hearts, horns, etc.). With this approach people would still make content from previous expansions to fulfill the need on the new expansion recipe, therefore, making all content relevant. Also, the new expansion could expand on the profession expertise level helping on this idea that most BiS gear should come from professions.
It always feels really shitty to spend hours in a raid/dungeon/etc, to come out with nothing or meaningless tat that's essentially nothing. The reason I don't like ESO is cos I have to grind the same content 70 times in order to get what I want from it. Please don't make this a grind-fest.
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?
I feel that rare loot should... somehow be on par with rares obtained through crafting (here you go with such wide questions ! )
The idea being that a world where crafting rare items is much more easy than looting items (or vice-versa) feels incorrect.
If crafting an item requires a lot of time / rare ingredients / cooperation between several people, then it should be rewarded by a good item.
If defeating a monster requires a lot of time / specific settings (like some quests chain, or difficult location) / cooperation between several people, then it should be rewarded by good items too.
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Overall let's say I'm ok with having rare items being actually rare.
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And I'd like to see some form of "super rare area drop" that requires intense grinding (or luck) to get (things such as Shadowfang in wow), but perhaps on a more Ashes-like way.
For example it has already been stated than player's action in a given area would reflect on the world (like if we cut too many trees, our good Treant friend will come to play along).
I think having something similar for very-very-very-rare loots would be immersive. If I spend weeks slaying skeletons, one of them could finally drop a message leading to a quest leading to a very rare item... it would be more enjoyable and memorable than "just" getting the same item from a random skeleton.
"We have two lives, and the second one begins when we set foot on Verra."
I think that the item drop should decrease on the mobs that we kill at the end of leveling, to give greater rarity to the max stuff. And to make it easier to level up, leave high drops for low level monsters.
J'ai toujours conter des histoires , maintenant j'aimerais écrite la mienne .
How rare drops should be is variable and highly dependent on the difficulty of the mob/boss and the value of the item both in terms of power (is it going to be an upgrade, is it BiS, are they BOP or BOE, is it going to be a rare and highly valuable crafting mat etc) and intended level of prestige (a rare mount). The main thing is that there should not be time gated lockouts - being able to loot a boss once a week, for example, is silly. It has its positives but it is fundamentally a mechanism of locking players out of content that they want to do. Avoid that and you're golden - drop rates can be tuned as context demands.
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?
If the boss/mob is rarely accessible then stuff should drop often, since you can't farm them. If you can farm them, then rarely.
I don't have strong opinions on this, however I don't want to see my time wasted. As an example, I left wow a couple years after launch because of the loot structure. It's fine that BIS gear was rare and you had to coordinate to get it. However, it took so long, by the time you and your friends managed to get fantastic gear a new expansion was out and all your gear suddenly sucked. FFXIV had this same issue, but to a lesser degree since the gear was more commonly dropped. If we have to wait/farm/coordinate that's fine, but it has to feel like it was worth the time and effort to do it or it will just leave a bitter taste afterword.
And as always the best gear should be produced by the economy, not the bosses (with the exception of materials).
Loot drops are an important feature of of AOC and will undoubtedly have a direct impact on player experience.
- Frequency of rare drops - "Rare" should mean Rare; but it also requires balancing this against having to excessively grind. Simultaneously, the reward should generally be tied to the difficulty and rarity of the encounter but exceptionally low probabilities of rare items could appear anywhere.
- Bad Luck Protection - I personally support a bad luck protection mechanism particularly where it relates to progression-related items. Adding this prevents frustration, burnout and rewards dedication over time.
- Dynamic Drop Tables - Where applicable, I personally like loot tables to change over time to introduce greater variety and to avoid spot-farming. It would be interesting if loot tables could evolve over time based on seasons, story arcs, node level influence on environment and other factors.
- Individual vs Group Loot Tables - I always prefer individual tables as they promote cooperation and reduce friction among group members.
- Relationship between Level and Rarity - I think it makes sense that probabilities increase with difficulty and at low levels the probability may be infinitesimally small or even zero. It shouldn't be a matter of killing a million level 1 mobs to guarantee a super-rare valuable item. Even killing 100 high level mobs shouldn't guarantee rare loot so even 1-5% is a too high drop rate for rare items. The exception might be Crafting Materials as discussed below.
- Crafting Material Loot - I fully support bosses dropping crafting materials instead of completed gear to ensure the significance of the Artisan Professions. Crafters should make the best stuff. It would be great if very high quality crafted items required a multitude of components, the bulk of which might require interactions with other Professions to combine or manufacture.
- Performance related bonuses - While I support performance bonuses, I think this one needs to be carefully balanced so that superstar groups aren't disproportionally rewarded versus other players. Perhaps these bonuses could come in the form of increased luck affecting the probabilities of loot drops. (ie. +5%)
- Monitoring - The team should build a World inventory audit mechanism and associated heatmaps to ensure that the frequency of any item drops is not out of the realm of expectations. For example New World went months dropping very high quantities of high-end reagents. This creates a supply-demand imbalance in the world economy and once excess items enter a system, they are difficult to remove fairly. The inventory audit should also measure global glint and global gold to provide insight into the world economy and potential for inflation.
- Bind-on-pickup vs tradeable items - I believe a mix should exist, even for the same types of items. For example, the same loot table may include bound leather as well as tradeable leather. Tradeable items might have even lower probabilities than Bound items. The majority of items however should be tradeable or salvageable into tradeable items to promote a diverse and open economy.
- PVP-flagged Boss Drops - Participating in PVP should be encouraged and should contribute to higher probabilities of rare loot. Rare still means rare and this shouldn't create a farm mechanism, but it should encourage PVP participation. In such situations, last hit mechanic is probably the fairest mechanism as opposed to most damage that would preclude solo players or non-dps classes.
- Drop Relevance - regardless of level, there should be a relevance of most drops in the context of eventual end-game. Low level mob goo gathered in the first weeks may prove even more valuable once other high level recipes are found. Too many games drop a lot of irrelevant material. This should be avoided to ensure long-term relevance and to again contribute to the global economy.
- Visual effects - when the boss dies, there should be a clear visual indicator of the loot drop. Given some of the special effects that we've seen to-date, I hope that we might see a spectacular animation when a boss drops something really rare. Certain drops may even have a lasting effect on the player to signify that they obtained a rare item of importance.
Aside from rewarding players in a way that encourages broad-based participation, rare items being scarce and challenging to obtain tend to hold higher economic value which in turn generates a dynamic marketplace and player-driven markets. The Artisan professions create a natural demand for materials that should be closely tied in and balanced with the supply of rare materials. In turn, the Crafters can contribute directly to the economy by crafting superior items due to the rarity of those materials.
- A balance in rarity where you would be like "oh NICE i got something good!" and going dry for 2 months
- Rare drops should be rare, legendary drops should be legendary enough it's quite tough to get
- Runescape has decent drop rates, where rare items can range from 1/2000 to 1/5000
- They didn't mind only 2 people having Extremely rare items on the server
- Some would like to see a pity system underneath the drops rarities
- Rare and unique items should drop from rare and unique mobs/bosses
- Assembling 200+ people for a boss and it drops nothing rare is not good
I'm old school raider where we kept track of who got what and you earned points for attending raids and you could trade your points for gear that dropped. I'm done with that. Fact is hard to get gear that gives a real edge is 90%+ of the time in the hands of one's that can only play hardcore.
Being a PvP game, that edge leads to imbalance. I would rather that 50% that comes from you gear power. Rare drops in every slot should give no more then a 2-3% edge or no edge at all. 2-3% still makes it worth chasing but still can be over come with skill. Still rather their not be that edge.
I short, rare bosses, I would rather a loot table that rewards everyone. Maybe vendors that you can trade tokens for loot and rare tokens that maybe randomly 10% of the people that were part of the encounter gets a rare token.
That would mean even cauuals could also with time, measure up in PvP and PvE.
Comments
What I'm not seeing is more interactive skill based crafting again like Eq2 or FF14. both games still allowed for auto-crafting for bulk amounts that would just result in an occasional failure and lower grade items but fine for mass processing or bulk crafting quest orders. I suppose the added complexity in other forms can make up for this but I really would like to see it.
Quests concerning crafting were not covered but the more the merrier, create demand for those mats please.
Also i remember these quests heritage quests maybe or Legacy. they were extra long form quests that stayed on the books awhile sometimes with dozens of steps requiring a range of activities including Lore, crafting, traveling, killing mobs, dungeons etc. they had extra nice rewards and were particularly fulfilling.
Salvaging. I haven't seen that mentioned but it seem rather vital. I would like to see most vendor trash and gear/furniture be salvageable, maybe even with a very rare chance to salvage a rare mat on vendor trash. or of course on a corresponding gear piece which was built with a rare with a higher chance.
Anyways some random thoughts of mine thank you, I am very much liking what I see!
Mobs can drop good stuff, but... 0.0000x% chance.
Default bosses - also good stuff but with 1-100% chance.
Epic bosses with ~weekly respawn - really unique epic items with 50-100% chance.
The only important thing that should be defferent from La2, is that smth like "Wolf" shouldn't drop smth like "Sword", because where this sword was originally located? in wolf's stomach? it is weird...
So human-like mobs can drop ready equipment, but monster-like or animal-like mobs should drop smth that later can be used to craft equipment (not just small resource, it could be for example smth like monster's eye and then "this rare eye + resources = magic staff", or "rare monster's fang + resources = axe").
Something with a 1% chance could go hundreds of kills without a drop.
36% of users will not get that drop after 100 tries.
13% won't get it within 200 tries.
Out of a million players, 43 of them will miss that single drop ONE THOUSAND TIMES in a row!
So there's your answer: Make the ceiling as high as you want but you need to be worried about the floor; that's what will affect gameplay--who stays and who quits.
With a high ceiling, some players will get lucky sometimes and get more than the standard share. And they'll have a ton of dopamine and remember that feeling for a long time.
And that will be amazing for them.
Make sure that everyone else is getting about the expected average via a streakbreaker, so that they don't remember a bunch of bad times of loot failure. (Or not extended ones)
If you don't want us to have too much dopamine, then have the streakbreaker work in BOTH directions, to tamp down good results AND bad ones. But that's playing with fire.
I think for me I would prefer how Black Desert does with the treasures items, those items has a drop rate really low, I think less than 1%, so you can grind for more than 300 hours and still don't get it, but they have a pity system where you can also drop a different item and when you collect 100 of this item you can trade it for the treasure item that you want, this pity item still has a low drop but something that you realistic can drop, like 2 hours of grind you get 2-3, and when grinding to get the 100 you can still drop the completed item with will create an amazing feeling, and if you don't drop it in a grind session you won't feel so bad because you know that you are progressing and will get it eventually.
I do not think its a matter of obscurity. I would hope its a matter of completion. Leveling up i think it’s more a non-factor to have rare things drop more frequently. As well i think within that lower end spectrum it would be nice to introduce parts or special mats needed for a beyond normal rank item used in crafting. Crafting you said is always going to have the best gear. And since this game is a bit different to most mmo’s it’s a great idea to let the newcomers know that and get that feel as soon as possible to inform them of what to expect at max level.
At higher levels i would expect alot less actual immediate loot drops and more grinding to get all the parts or mats for that epic or legendary item. It should feel fulfilling after collecting all the parts and creating the actual item. I think at the top end or rather max level no matter world rare or dungeon or raid the amount of loot should consist of more mats and parts or even designs then direct useable loot. Still allow loot but it should all still be a useable stepping stone to the crafted stuff over what you would typically have before these encounters.
I hope it takes people many months if not a year to craft if possible a artifact(or whatever the one per server is if craftable.)
It also makes the decision-making much more interesting in a game where most items are not bound. If it's actually rare then it will net a good price on the market and now you have to make a meaningful decision!
The only answer that can appease everyone is reforging.
Lets say you're a new player with a crap weapon and you clear that first dungeon and get "cool sword". How powerful is cool sword, how rare? Let's put some arbitrary units to power here, 1-50. You were using sword(2) now you have cool sword(5). The cool sword is really common as it's the first dungeon boss sword, so cool sword(5) is super cheap, but let's say you really like the look of cool sword and want to keep it. You might find "better sword(8)" and "bitch'n sword(12)", but cool sword is the look for you, so lets reforge it.
The Crafting
So the casuals will just get the base common swords as they level up, and that's fine. If you want the really good stuff that's where reforging comes in. So you have your forging tools, some iron, and cool sword(5), with enough forging skill you can make that a cool sword(10). Want it to get even stronger? Now you'll need steel, better tools, and more skill to reach 11-20, then all better again with mithril for 21-30, etc.
Once you're a legendary smith swimming in Orichalcum you can pump out powerful blades all day. You can make any blade one of the greatest in the world, you can make cool sword(50), the catch is you need unobtanium to do it and that stuff is rare beyond rare.
Target Audience: Players actively playing 6-12 hours a day.
Target Audience: 2-6 hours/day. (gear 90-95% stats from Top-tier)
Target Audience: 0-2 hours/day. (gear 70-90% state from Top-tier)
Here's the kicker. The casual dude that plays 45 minutes a day STILL HAS A CHANCE of getting the almost impossible Top-tier BOP Recipe, but his chances are, well, not something he hopes for. Instead, his hopes are for decent gear that allows him to see all the content over time. Instead of hoping for an "almost impossible" drop, he would try to buy one some day or be gifted it by a friend.
In summary, I recommend it be VERY difficult to find the best items - especially the recipes. Drops should be as rare as possible, stopping just short of our lack of belief we'll ever get the items most appropriate for the hours we play.
I think mobs should always drop "something interesting". This should be generally more in the line of a crafting ingredient which has a value to everyone. This is a mob's "farming" value. Nodes should have essentially the same farming value over time at the same level, to balance the game.
It then should then also have a very rare chance of dropping something "Extremely Interesting" that may be a cosmetic item or a recipe or something impossible to obtain intentionally. This is the player reward for spending more time playing.
I hate the mobs that have a rare chance of a specific item. Having to kill the same mob 1000s of times to get a prestige or cosmetic item is IMHO bad game design.
TICKETS AND INDIVIDUALIZED LOOT: This is kinda where I want to see a bit of a difference between common pool and individualized loot. As players play on, fight foes, and get involved with the game world, they should accrue a pool of tickets that correlates with potential personalized drops. This manifests as rare materials, resources, blueprints, and equipment, and the ticket threshold for that level of reward is then deducted from the total pool. If a player swings on the unlucky side for a while, or their deeds outpace the rate that personalized drops are offered, the ticket pool can build up to increasingly higher chances for something beyond rare quality. As the player plays on, their accumulated deeds and participation in the world will help increase the rate at which these tickets are presented, allowing for more powerful and well-vested players to start accumulating enough tickets to go two steps beyond rare quality. Part of this can also help sort out the most unique and heroic of items in a non-competitive way, in that the Grand Aelan Kingsword dropped for LarryLovin because they've been fighting big bad thing all over the world and had a huge impact on the shape of the server, and he IS the hero who shall wield it for a quest that others may want to accompany and support. There could also be ways to increase tickets manually, like every ungathered item and resource, and every unlooted enemy, adds more tickets for those who generated them. Individualized loot may have a special glow when it manifests, so the player knows there's something waiting for them even after it has been looted by others. Rare to heroic items should always correlate with things players do, like an enchanter and potion master won't get a recipe for an epic sword, but they may get a recipe that uses specific materials from afar in order to force trade or travel to obtain some. I can explain this better if anyone wants more details!
TECHNIQUE BASED LOOTING: This boils down to "you get what the tools you've used provide" where items generated for common loot are based on how they were produced. Picking fruit, cutting branches, and felling a tree, should give me different things, and if I wanna make pristine apple pies, I'd better use my fruit gathering tool instead of felling the tree and getting what's easy to pick. If I want the cloth armor on that bandit wizard, fireballs and lightning are probably not a good idea, and things that hit with slashing or piercing impacts will also be bad. If I want the most delicious milk, I'll milk cows instead of snorses, and make sure they get beer and massages in between their grains fortified with a heap of ground bugs.
Must have been a different one.
Oh well, one more won't hurt.
In what dimension this suggestion will be deployed I don't know but I hope that Intrepit will use a very enormous amount of RNG as often as possible, to ensure that no amount of internet guide using, or location "spawncamping" with tons of no-lifers, and even the biggest amount of vigilance will not guarantee exclusive access to certain loot.
In World of Warcraft existed very rare mounts in some openworld zones. Like the Timelost Protodrake or Poseidus, the seahorse. Those were some extreeeeeemly scarcely spawning rare-elite's who would drop themself as a mountversion if you killed them.
Which then lead to people spawncamping the locations for either years, or having their BOTS do exactly this.
In other words " Disgustääääääng. "
Especially when there something like Auctionhouse in the game in which the wannabe exclusive article is able to be sold because it is not accountbound after picking it up.
... which then had lead me to by sheer coincidence notice that I could buy Poseidus in the Auctionhouse, after something like 10 whole reallife years, during one of my last sessions of WoW before I finally quit forever.
This event made me realize something fundamental.
And that is that "harder" or "rarer" does not automatically translate to better.
Rather it translates to indifference to the average joe.
The price of Poseidus went down from something like 2.500.000 goldpieces (or such) to 4500 due to the effective "farming methods" (bots °cough°) deployed by people who enjoy nothing more but to own as much ingame money as possible.
I will never forget the day where I wrote in the tradechannel
" Hey guys I am now going to buy POSEIDUS for a measly 4,5k gold, just for the f°°°ing lulz of it. "
Which I then did and then "learned the mount" surrounded by other players in the same Auctionhouse.
Got me a few amused chuckles from people who payed attention.
It was funny for them too when I explained to them that the pointe was that this unaffordable, monumental mounts price has been defeated by time and the fact that it was farmed and put in the Auctionhouse for 10 whole years.
Am I saying rarer stuff is bad? Nope, I don't. Rare stuff being rare... is very good.
After all this means a dopamine boost for people who enjoy such
gacha like mechanics of possibly becoming a chosen one.
But it must really be random then. Exclusive to being chosen by the "RNG god" itself.
There is nothing more disgusting to me than "meta's" for such things, guides and botting.
I loath the idea that for all articles in a videogame, the "smartest people" always win over all others.
For a lot of things I can respect that... but not for all things.
Some things should be SO random, even a casual who plays only for two weeks on the server has the same chance of getting something as another dude who has played for two years.
An absolute and horrendously deep amount of random number generation.
Naturally... your chance to encounter this super rare mob/item/ore/whatever is higher if you play longer in the game and look around more often.
But if RNGjesus does not chose you even then... well, it is what it is then.
To tie such things to a randomness so huge that the very idea of making guides completely falls away.
A no-lifer might become a mayor and own a flying mount.
But they cannot necessarily own THAT flying mount that could appear only once every reallife week or so, everywhere in the whole of Verra and exist on the ground only for 5 minutes, before it flies up again and disappears in a mysterious cloud or something.
A beast that must either be tamed (makes sense) or slain and you loot it as a mountversion or something.
Something that can interest collectors & completionists for years to play just for the thing itself.
Prestigue for the truly lucky chosen one.
An interesting concept for pleb and royalty alike.
BUT if a mob spawn is already rare (and truly rare to spawn, not just continually spawning at a small percentage in the local population of a similar creature), then the drop is, in fact, already rare as well.
Rare monsters should drop rare and interesting items more often than not.
Boss mobs in Ashes are going to be different than every other game, as they will be in an open-world setting rather than instanced. The typical "cooldown" usually given on a per-week basis would not apply, but people are likely to be constantly fighting them and slaying them. This should mean that the boss is still a rare kill on a per-person basis and potentially more rare than an instanced boss. Would need some testing to develop an opinion on this one.
Certain items in FFXI were held in such high regards that they became actual legends within the game, legends i still talk about with people when reminiscing.
Rare Gear and items all boil down to being a status symbol within the server. If everything is too easy to get then you can't show off to others. It's a very vain concept, but a lot of players work hard in the game so that they can show off that they are better than others. This includes items with super crazy low drop rates.
People want what others can't/ don't have simple as that. And they are either willing to shell out shit tone of gold for it, or devote countless hours to obtain it themselves.
I do also like the trend I've been seeing lately of individual loot tables as opposed to shared loot tables. It encourages camaraderie and grouping because people farming for specific items or rare drops won't feel like they risk losing it by having company. More reasons to group!
-Bosses should have a really high chance to drop crafting material (maybe even 80%) to craft their specific item. This way, even when farming a boss for a specific loot drop, you are still progressing on your way to the item, its not just RNG that decides
-If a boss drop their full item, there should be some sort of visual indicator that it is a drop and not a craft (not a full skin, maybe even a different colour or something like that).
-However, this item should not be able to be modified. Here I am talking out of thin air (Narc got to me), but maybe crafters can put a spin on their crafts, change damage types or anything like that. The boss drop should be base and no one can change anything about the stats.
-NO BOUND ITEMS. No items should be bound in my opinion.
--Also, as I understand, Best in Slot comes from crafting. So no boss should just drop the "best" anything, but it should be really close.
--The drop tables should not be static. Having bosses change what they drop (maybe based on season, or story arc or whatever) is gonna do a lot for long term value of a boss. If i get lucky and drop the item on the first kill, i will never return to that boss, however, with rotating drop tables, i have a reason to come back every time it rotates.
-Back to drop rates, what i dont want at max level is to fill my back with blues that i will never use or can sell. So a boss shouldn't have any "filler" drops. If i can get a legendary mace with 5% drop rare, i dont want it to also have a 25% drop rate to drop a blue mace. Make it 5% legendary mace, 80% materials for mace (you can split this into like 40% a bit of material, 30% some materials and 10% a lot of material) and 15% no drop at all. This way, every kill i am either sad that i got 15% (but i know its rare to get that), or got material (which is not super, but thats the expected outcomeso i am ok with it) or am super happy i got the 5% drop. Adding a shittier item in the drop table will make it feel like actual grinding, and considering that shittier item is gonna have a higher % of dropping than what i want, its gonna happen more often. TLDR i would much rather get materials to go find a crafter to make me the mace than a shitty version of the mace i could have gotten.
There is several points to comment on the questions....
How do you feel when it comes to rare loot?
Rare loot is as it says rare loot. I think depending on the teir should depend on its drop rates.... example ledgenary should be extremly low 0.001% - 0.01% / epic low 0.1% - 0.5% / rare low 1% - 5% / uncommon low often 5% -10% and common / crap often
The % is examples just to explain the point in text. I find and like most of my mates that when playing using old WOW as the example getting a green was exciting but meh. Getting a blue was rare and exciting...getting an epic was OMG moments. Obvisoly ledgenaries were never dropped in the world but i wish they did. They need to be beyound super rare so when they do its a moment of OMFG can not beleive this happened. The item also needs to be something that is only gotten from a drop that also has special ability only it has that is different in the game. Example being a ledganry fishing rod with some stupid stat like +10000 to night fishing on a creek as an example to make it that more special. not bound to person to so it could be sold if youd onto want it etc.....
Do you prefer when rare mobs and boss mobs drop something interesting often or less often?
rare mobs should always drop rare items. These items need to be matched to the level of the mob killed. Again tailiored stats to the mob you have killed. I would suggest also a higher chance of the rare loot being upgraded to epic or ledgeanry etc.
Thats all for now from your local Aussie guy
Considering the nature that BoP or BoE is not a factor in this game, I believe the L2 style of drops would favor AoC heavily, as everything was focused on crafting, and full gear drops were a rarity, even so in later levels. Standard mobs would drop the weapon component pieces for crafts, as well as recipes, at a pretty low rate. Considering L2 had NOTHING in terms of systems...The game was literally just progression gated behind a huge grind for leveling, large time investment for crafting, a flagging and karma system that is identical to ashes flagging and corruption system, and an open world with player politics driving guild/alliances for boss contesting...I believe adopting their item drop system in a similar form would be a wise choice. Adding this to Ashes will give it the longevity and meaning of worth in items that AoC would need.
Now I definitely wouldn't make it as hardcore as L2 had it, but just to give you an idea of what it was like, here's a quick breakdown. Keep in mind most of these numbers were for the first couple of years, and got even harder with later chronicles.
Basic tier mobs that are solo friendly would be very very low in drop rate, I'm talking like 1 in 500 for just a component piece of a weapon craft, such as a crystal dagger blade, the recipe needing 11 of them for a craft along with the other materials required. But that very same mob also had a chance of dropping the full weapon, but at a .0017 percent chance. Making it extremely rare and crafting being the priority, as getting one to drop would be quite a memorable day for you. Keep in mind they would also drop other materials and what not, but I'll focus on the crafting and full drop elements going forward
If you were to fight a group focused mob that had hp scaled and was designed for parties, it would drop a component more often, 1 in 100 or so for the component piece, and a weapon drop of .005 percent. Might seem still super small, but that was the point, it would drop the crafting material more often to allow it to be farmed for crafting the recipe.
Now, if you were to fight mini bosses out in the world...That are more guild or competitive party focused, this would be a different story. These bosses would have decent spawn window of several hours or even a day or so. Instead of dropping a single weapon component piece, they would drop multiple, at around a 60-70% chance. And a full weapon chance drop of like 3-5%. Allowing for guilds, alliances, and organized competitive players to focus on taking them down.
Finally onto the big honcho world bosses, that top tier guilds and alliances strived to take down every time it spawned...The low level to mid high level bosses wouldn't drop component pieces, they would drop full weapons and armor. At around 10-30%. Along with a chance of dropping a legendary boss specific loot that you could not craft or get anywhere else, which offered unique passives that made them extremely desired. Which fed the guilds/alliances to contest for such with bloodshed...Massive wars, alliances formed, rivals made, etc. Such items would be the queen ant's ring, earing of orfen, ring of baium, etc. Considering how much AoC is pulling from L2, the flagging system, corruption system, tower of carphin (similar to Tower of Insolence in L2, definitely expect a big bad world boss on the top of that sucker), etc...I really do hope they adopt a similar state for their loot tables. Now we know AoC will have one of a kind per server unique loot, but not sure if they will have unique world boss only loot that drops without such a restriction of one per server, I wouldn't doubt it at all, as it would help the competitive nature of the game for the top guilds/alliiances.
I pretty much see AoC as an upgraded experience of the base systems that made L2 great, would be a shame for a more watered down approach that cheapens the rarity of goods and detracts from the games longevity. Making players earn their gear and craft it is a must. The worst thing to do is make gear meaningless and have it drop often at all points of the game...The amount of MMO's I've seen and played that just slap you with equipment piece after another for just doing basic questing, or from hub to hub is astounding. Overall a detriment to gear progression and even their own crafting systems, truly laughable. Now obviously there should be a line not to cross for ashes, as making it too hardcore would detract from players...But honestly, that's already bound to happen, as the current MMO player base isn't use to what AoC is trying to achieve, which I believe will stem from meaningful loot acquirement that takes effort, and not a hand out or participation award system that is what current themepark mmo's force feed players. This won't be your raid night MMO, don't expect it to be so, I look forward to the massive amount of WoW and such players rage around release.
Anyways, the part that has me intrigued though is how to handle the varied rarities. I believe giving a percentage chance of the item being rare, heroic, epic, legendary, and so on would be a good addition to step the system up further for weapon/armor drops. Give it a extra little bit of flavor accordingly.
If AoC could deliver this to me, I would be one happy camper. Especially considering I will never get to see a true lineage 2 sequel, as NCSoft is beholden to their shareholders, and the almighty yet genre destroying p2w mentality =*(.
When it comes to big Raid bosses or open-world roaming bosses, however, I would like to see some items be rare to obtain, while others will drop every time. There should always be a reward for getting the kill on an open-world boss since it is very likely that it will be contested. Say there is a giant fire-breathing Wyrm that spawns on the volcano, this boss will always drop its scales that can be used to craft cloaks or brew fire resist potions, but rarely will it drop its "magma core" that can be used to craft epic equipment. The items that do drop every time from bosses should be able to be used in multiple professions to add to the consumption since they will, eventually, not be as rare.
To tie it into other discussions in this thread about keeping crafting relevant, some simple methods of bad luck protection are just having crafting items themselves be it. Instead of needing 1 super rare drop, you'd need 10 lesser rarity drops for a craft, or having those 10 lesser rarity drops be crafted into the super rare drop that you can then craft the item with. Things like currencies for world bosses, raid bosses etc. would work as well, allowing you to buy crafting mats with the currency that can be used yourself or sold to others that need it.
That being said, rare drops can still exist, they just have to not be progression related. Black Desert's treasure items are a good example of this. Super rare drops that come with a level of prestige, but hold little to no power gains, they're mainly quality of life. Having chase items like these gives people a reason to spend time doing content they otherwise wouldn't, while also avoiding burnout, as there's less frustration in not getting something that's not stopping you from participating in other content. Although I'd argue even for those some level of bad luck protection is important.
The biggest issue with choosing to have no bad luck protection is simply that whether or not you have bad luck protection, some people are going to get lucky, but more importantly, some people will get insanely unlucky, meaning the higher end of the grind curve can look more like an elevator to the moon in terms of grind time. Bad luck protection just flattens this so your more dedicated players are guaranteed to get what they want after a while, instead of just giving them the middle finger. While in a vacuum you could argue bad luck protection is a kind of 'participation trophy', it's more akin to ensuring you're rewarding your dedicated players sufficiently instead of kicking them to the curb when they're having a bad streak.
In my opinion rare mobs should drop something interesting as long as they are indeed rare mobs, meaning they re-spawn in a long time window. In a perfect scenario, the drop chance and quility of the loot would be tied to the spawn time window of the rare mob. I think it makes sense that a rare mob that spawns once every 3/4 days should have a better drop chance on interesting items than a rare mob that spawns once every 12 hours. Even though the rare mob that spawns every 12 hours can indeed drop something interesting, in my opinion it should have a larger loot table than the rares spawning every 3/4 days, so the change of droping something good is increased on the rarer mobs. Also, tying rare mobs with some sort of achievements or to any type of specific currency that could be used on a "secret vendor around the world" would help people feeling engaged to this content and, therefore, incentivized to go and hunt rare mobs.
Regarding Bosses, sure, there should be some items here and there that are good, but I would avoid systems where a boss drops gear to everyone in the group and I would also avoid to give bosses the primary purpose of providing BiS gear. I would prefer Bosses' loot to lean towards profession recipes and eventually rare materials (this last one could be replaced with material nodes inside the dungeon itself, which are not found in the open world).
I would reinforce that loot is a very important system as it is very tied on how the game expands in the future. If a game tends to provide more BiS gear through raids (as I've seen multiple MMO's doing in the past, and also to this date) there will be a high tendency for new expansions turning previous content irrelevant, as gear from the new raid is usually better than the previous ones, therefore negating the need to go to the old raids. This is called the vertical expanding approach. With that being said, I would prefer a more horizontal expanding approach, where raid loot tends to focus on providing resources to professions (both recipes and materials).
Giving a short example, let's say on launch there is raid X which have 2 bosses (Boss A and Boss B ) and raid Y that only has one boss (Boss C). All goes fine and well (...) and suddenly a new expansion arrives with more raids and more bosses, but no player level increasing. This new raids drop new recipes and mats BUT those recipes require people to gather materials from Boss A, B and C (let's say eyes, skins, hearts, horns, etc.). With this approach people would still make content from previous expansions to fulfill the need on the new expansion recipe, therefore, making all content relevant. Also, the new expansion could expand on the profession expertise level helping on this idea that most BiS gear should come from professions.
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?
I feel that rare loot should... somehow be on par with rares obtained through crafting
The idea being that a world where crafting rare items is much more easy than looting items (or vice-versa) feels incorrect.
If crafting an item requires a lot of time / rare ingredients / cooperation between several people, then it should be rewarded by a good item.
If defeating a monster requires a lot of time / specific settings (like some quests chain, or difficult location) / cooperation between several people, then it should be rewarded by good items too.
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Overall let's say I'm ok with having rare items being actually rare.
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And I'd like to see some form of "super rare area drop" that requires intense grinding (or luck) to get (things such as Shadowfang in wow), but perhaps on a more Ashes-like way.
For example it has already been stated than player's action in a given area would reflect on the world (like if we cut too many trees, our good Treant friend will come to play along).
I think having something similar for very-very-very-rare loots would be immersive. If I spend weeks slaying skeletons, one of them could finally drop a message leading to a quest leading to a very rare item... it would be more enjoyable and memorable than "just" getting the same item from a random skeleton.
J'ai toujours conter des histoires , maintenant j'aimerais écrite la mienne .
If the boss/mob is rarely accessible then stuff should drop often, since you can't farm them. If you can farm them, then rarely.
I don't have strong opinions on this, however I don't want to see my time wasted. As an example, I left wow a couple years after launch because of the loot structure. It's fine that BIS gear was rare and you had to coordinate to get it. However, it took so long, by the time you and your friends managed to get fantastic gear a new expansion was out and all your gear suddenly sucked. FFXIV had this same issue, but to a lesser degree since the gear was more commonly dropped. If we have to wait/farm/coordinate that's fine, but it has to feel like it was worth the time and effort to do it or it will just leave a bitter taste afterword.
And as always the best gear should be produced by the economy, not the bosses (with the exception of materials).
- Frequency of rare drops - "Rare" should mean Rare; but it also requires balancing this against having to excessively grind. Simultaneously, the reward should generally be tied to the difficulty and rarity of the encounter but exceptionally low probabilities of rare items could appear anywhere.
- Bad Luck Protection - I personally support a bad luck protection mechanism particularly where it relates to progression-related items. Adding this prevents frustration, burnout and rewards dedication over time.
- Dynamic Drop Tables - Where applicable, I personally like loot tables to change over time to introduce greater variety and to avoid spot-farming. It would be interesting if loot tables could evolve over time based on seasons, story arcs, node level influence on environment and other factors.
- Individual vs Group Loot Tables - I always prefer individual tables as they promote cooperation and reduce friction among group members.
- Relationship between Level and Rarity - I think it makes sense that probabilities increase with difficulty and at low levels the probability may be infinitesimally small or even zero. It shouldn't be a matter of killing a million level 1 mobs to guarantee a super-rare valuable item. Even killing 100 high level mobs shouldn't guarantee rare loot so even 1-5% is a too high drop rate for rare items. The exception might be Crafting Materials as discussed below.
- Crafting Material Loot - I fully support bosses dropping crafting materials instead of completed gear to ensure the significance of the Artisan Professions. Crafters should make the best stuff. It would be great if very high quality crafted items required a multitude of components, the bulk of which might require interactions with other Professions to combine or manufacture.
- Performance related bonuses - While I support performance bonuses, I think this one needs to be carefully balanced so that superstar groups aren't disproportionally rewarded versus other players. Perhaps these bonuses could come in the form of increased luck affecting the probabilities of loot drops. (ie. +5%)
- Monitoring - The team should build a World inventory audit mechanism and associated heatmaps to ensure that the frequency of any item drops is not out of the realm of expectations. For example New World went months dropping very high quantities of high-end reagents. This creates a supply-demand imbalance in the world economy and once excess items enter a system, they are difficult to remove fairly. The inventory audit should also measure global glint and global gold to provide insight into the world economy and potential for inflation.
- Bind-on-pickup vs tradeable items - I believe a mix should exist, even for the same types of items. For example, the same loot table may include bound leather as well as tradeable leather. Tradeable items might have even lower probabilities than Bound items. The majority of items however should be tradeable or salvageable into tradeable items to promote a diverse and open economy.
- PVP-flagged Boss Drops - Participating in PVP should be encouraged and should contribute to higher probabilities of rare loot. Rare still means rare and this shouldn't create a farm mechanism, but it should encourage PVP participation. In such situations, last hit mechanic is probably the fairest mechanism as opposed to most damage that would preclude solo players or non-dps classes.
- Drop Relevance - regardless of level, there should be a relevance of most drops in the context of eventual end-game. Low level mob goo gathered in the first weeks may prove even more valuable once other high level recipes are found. Too many games drop a lot of irrelevant material. This should be avoided to ensure long-term relevance and to again contribute to the global economy.
- Visual effects - when the boss dies, there should be a clear visual indicator of the loot drop. Given some of the special effects that we've seen to-date, I hope that we might see a spectacular animation when a boss drops something really rare. Certain drops may even have a lasting effect on the player to signify that they obtained a rare item of importance.
Aside from rewarding players in a way that encourages broad-based participation, rare items being scarce and challenging to obtain tend to hold higher economic value which in turn generates a dynamic marketplace and player-driven markets. The Artisan professions create a natural demand for materials that should be closely tied in and balanced with the supply of rare materials. In turn, the Crafters can contribute directly to the economy by crafting superior items due to the rarity of those materials.
- A balance in rarity where you would be like "oh NICE i got something good!" and going dry for 2 months
- Rare drops should be rare, legendary drops should be legendary enough it's quite tough to get
- Runescape has decent drop rates, where rare items can range from 1/2000 to 1/5000
- They didn't mind only 2 people having Extremely rare items on the server
- Some would like to see a pity system underneath the drops rarities
- Rare and unique items should drop from rare and unique mobs/bosses
- Assembling 200+ people for a boss and it drops nothing rare is not good
Being a PvP game, that edge leads to imbalance. I would rather that 50% that comes from you gear power. Rare drops in every slot should give no more then a 2-3% edge or no edge at all. 2-3% still makes it worth chasing but still can be over come with skill. Still rather their not be that edge.
I short, rare bosses, I would rather a loot table that rewards everyone. Maybe vendors that you can trade tokens for loot and rare tokens that maybe randomly 10% of the people that were part of the encounter gets a rare token.
That would mean even cauuals could also with time, measure up in PvP and PvE.