Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Merit threshold is 5% max hp damage done to the boss (random arbitrary stat ofc), so if you split damage evenly between 20 dps, they all get a merit pull. If you split it evenly between 40 dps, none of them get a merit pull.
So every player engaged with the boss would be affecting your group’s chances of getting a merit pull, on top of non-allied players contesting your group’s chance to tag for the group loot, which is always guaranteed to drop for the winning group.
How does "40 people that got merit for being the 40 people that fought the boss" encourage less zerging than "40 people that killed the boss got its loot, which is limited to just a few items"?
Especially in the context of this
In both situations the raid requires 40 people to kill it (i.e. it's tuned towards that number). In both cases the players bring more people to the location because they know there's gonna be pvp fights over the boss. In both cases the 40 people kill the boss. In one case the boss simply drops some loot, in the other case the boss gives every one of those 40 some little piece of loot.
Where does the zerging requirement change there? Where does the penalization for bringing more people come in? Or how does variability of loot matter here?
Cause I've been talking about loot size, in the context of the looting rights that are currently planned.
Because it’s never going to be just 40 people hitting the boss when there’s no reason not to have your own group of 200 people hitting the boss. I’m saying currently you’re rewarded for zerging the boss itself because your group leads will always get the maximum loot possible regardless with no drawbacks to an inflated group size and tagging is based primarily on total party damage % which is also bolstered by having plain ol’ more people than the other guy.
If the only way to maximize rewards is to aggressively fight people off and carefully consider your group size, now you’re reducing your gains by having a massive group attack the dragon or allowing other groups to do so without aggressively contesting.
Edit: It seems like you’re under the impression everyone would get a merit pull just by being in the winning raid group. That’s just the first qualifier for eligibility for a merit drop if they’ve actually met those thresholds as an individual.
But even if the mechanics fail - the rewards would still be the same even in your suggestion. The core 40-man raid would still do the majority of dmg and they'd win the looting rights, so they'd all get their little piece of loot (again, in your suggestion).
I truly feel like you're operating under a completely different set of looting rules here, cause this makes no damn sense to me in the current system
Nope. If they’re not in the group that got the tag for looting rights, then they shouldn’t get a loot pull. They lost.
I'm so confused.
Merit is something to be tracked individually per player during a boss/raid that makes a player eligible for a merit pull of basic material drops (not full gear or anything Unique). It could be qualifications based on damage, healing, average threat level, or some combo of basically anything that contributes to a combat encounter.
Group loot remains the same, subject to distribution rulesets that already exist and awarded to the group that successfully tags for looting rights.
Players in that specific group with looting rights that are also eligible for a merit pull get one, up to the max for the raid’s intended size if they crunch every number perfectly and kept every enemy player off enough to prevent them from contributing to the fight.
Players outside of that group don’t get a pull, because their group lost anyway. They wouldn’t get drops in the current system or one with merit loot (unless the tagged group abandons the corpse or gets PK’d off of it I guess, since Stephen mentioned if would eventually become a free for all after some amount of time)
Like I keep saying, no, they would not all get a little piece of loot because merit potential is determined relative to all players engaged with the boss encounter, not just your group mates.
The premise is the exact same. The result is the same (that is, the 40-man raid gets the loot). The actions of players are the same. Everything except for the size of loot is the same, but you're saying that less loot somehow encourages more zerg, while to me it's obvious that a bigger reward (i.e. everyone in the raid getting something) would imply a bigger impetus for zerging, because more people would want to get that big reward.
I’m really not sure where I’m losing you. I’ve been very clear that not everyone in the winning party gets merit drops purely by virtue of being in the group that won loot rights.
When max loot is 4 gear items no matter how many people you bring, you should always bring more people to directly fight the dragon. Zero risk full reward.
When max loot is 4 gear items and a chunk of materials for your party, you have think about the risks of bringing more players than strictly necessary to an open world boss because it might lessen your rewards.
How does 40 people for 4 items differ in any way from 40 people for 20 items? The raid still requires 40 people to kill it. Everyone else in the zerg are still only there to kill pvp enemies, not the boss.
You're literally getting more reward in your suggestion. The merit would be exact same, because player actions change in no way, due to the boss being the exact same in both scenarios.
Your suggestion simply adds loot to the equation, while not changing a single other thing.
I do not see how the zerg comes into play here. Especially when you say that no matter who hits the boss - the raid that got the looting rights gets the loot.
I feel like your assumption here is that if a zerg comes to the boss, it's a sure thing that the entire zerg will 100% hit the boss to bring it down quicker. And while yes, that definitely has a fairly high probability, it does not matter one bit, because you yourself said - only the raid with the looting rights gets the loot, so none of that zerg damage will matter.
The "raid" is comprised of 40 people. That's it. If you bring 200 people - that's 5 raids, of which there'd only be one main one, who'll be getting the first hit on the boss (which gives 5-10% advantage) and will be doing the biggest damage to the boss because they're the designated boss fighters, while everyone else will be reacting to any player enemies or stuff like that.
So even in the case of all 200 people hitting the boss - there'll still only be one raid with looting rights, all 40 of whose players will have the merits for the fight. Unless I'm still misunderstanding your merit system and it doesn't care about the looting rights part of the encounter and merits can be "stolen" from the main raid by doing dmg (or equivalent to it actions).
Yep, that’s exactly how it would work.
Five full groups on a boss would split overall damage five ways, and within that split each individual person is contributing some amount of damage. It’s very possible (especially if your group got first tag) that there are players outside your raid group that contributed more damage than some of your group mates.
Let’s say, for my own ease, that there was a five-person raid encounter, and five groups all went at it with the same total damage, but Raid 1 tagged it first so they get looting rights over the group loot. There’s a good chance not all of their damage dealers qualify for a damage based merit pull if it caps at 5 of them.
Raid 1: 10k, 35k, 20k, 18k, 17k
Raid 2: 5k, 30k, 23k, 12k, 20k
Raid 3: 20k, 20k, 20k, 20k, 20k
Raid 4: 15k, 40k, 15k, 15k, 15k
Raid 5: 22k, 18k, 20k, 30k, 10k
Five people met the merit threshold, but only one would get to actually pull loot due to being in the raid that got looting rights. This is an extremely simplified version of course and in most cases the winning group has higher total dps, but it’s just to demonstrate that getting looting rights isn’t indicative of qualifying for a merit pull.
Alright, you’ve gotten lost again. I gave you a heavily simplified version of how merit works, using a very easily understood metric that’s already a determining factor of gameplay. (The tagging system for Ashes is weighed almost entirely on your group doing the most damage to the boss, so if you worry was a dps-centric design, well, that ship sailed)
That simplified example does not translate to ‘only damage dealers would get merit loot’. It’s ’there are backend calculations and thresholds that not everyone can meet as an individual especially when an excess of players are competing for them, so those that do meet those thresholds of damage/healing/threat levels/damage mitigation/buff contribution/etc etc have an opportunity to draw additional material loot for themselves if or when their group wins the already-established dps contest.’
There's 2 teams. Team 1 gets the first hit on the boss, but team 2 performs 1% above team 1 in literally all traceable metrics. Team 1 still gets looting rights, but would they get any loot in your merit system?
That would depend entirely on how it’s balanced, but I personally would design the system in a way that would grant merit rights to team 1 provided both groups were of the intended encounter size.
While majority rule might have a place in certain areas (like with loot tagging on a group basis is already set up), splitting contributions across two properly sized groups would reasonably not wreck your chances of pulling merit. It’s when you start having four, five, however many groups all fighting over the boss that you need to devote teams to PvP to prevent merits from being split further if that’s a concern for your group.
If a group’s only concern is the full gear group loot, I’m sure for some it would be, they can make that choice to focus solely on getting that tag.
You might have an issue with reading, jumping to conclusions and/or general comprehension. EQ1 came out before lineage 2. I started my MMO journey with EQ1.
I'm not arguing that this game might not be a good fit for me. If its not, that is OK. But I was under the impression they wanted to build this game with player feedback. My feedback, whether you like it or not, is valuable. I'm chatting with many other MMO gamers about this matter outside of this chat, and majority, but not all, agree with a modern loot system due to a history of bs dealing with loot. Other people on this and other forums mention it. Whether you like it or not, it is a thing.
The bottom line is, I feel that the challenge should be in the content itself. Not through artificial frustrations that you all are mentioning. If the game sucks so much that you need to have people figure out who gets the loot, and that being a key component of the game, I don't want to be involved in it. It's additionally pathetic to me to have a game's social hierarchy built on it, i.e guild leaders and officers passing out loot. Kiss my ass, I spent time being a key role in a event, no sweat is going to tell me whether I have rights to a piece of loot or not.
Intrepid can take my opinion, and everyone else mentioning this issue, into consideration or not. If they don't, that's cool. I'll go play FF14, GW2, or ESO and no time or frustration wasted.
I still do not understand how your merit system works. You say that people can "steal" merit, but then say that someone who's performed better in every metric does not "steal" the loot (i.e. the group with looting rights simply doesn't get shit cause they failed to get enough merits).
And how would more people matter in any way here, when they would not be interacting with the boss in a meaningful way. Hell, most of the time a big part of the zerg is not even in the vicinity of the boss, cause they gotta stop enemies waaay before those can approach the farming location.
So you say I can't read and then go on and confirm that me calling yall "modern gamers" is correct. Goooot it.
Also, where exactly did I say that other opinions are not valid? I simply stated that I saw a ton of people with the opposite opinion, so I just added a point of feedback from the other side to try and balance things out. My opinion is as valuable as yours.
And as for Intrepid "building the game with player feedback" - that doesn't mean that they are basing their entire design ONLY on player feedback. Because if that was the case - we wouldn't have owpvp all the way back since 2017. Cause every damn "feedbacker" has been yelling at Intrepid that their game is DOA cause it has owpvp.
if a dungeon boss has 20% chance to drop a recipe 1 recipe then 40 man raid boss should drop one 100% of time
That being said some items are rare drops than others of course for that dopamine hit when they do drop.
Raid content should also drop better teir of gear/materials than the dungeon group mobs though of course too.
im also not gonna being up the material to completed item drop here since i think they should still follow the same rule as above.
Also raid bosses do need to have an individual loot table for the raid that contributes the most that gives everyone a couple of glint or what not so everyone get a little taste of some coin (since mobs dont drop cash on death and glint takes that role which would normally be split between everyone in the raid) so the individual tables covers the coin drop split
lmao I've never screwed anyone over loot in my 20 years of mmorpg. I've been screwed sometimes though. what a shining example I am of whats wrong.
We’re talking about the groups that did earn it.
So far not a single person has tried to claim every single person who so much as breathes on the boss should get a payout.
What is being asked for is that the successful raid group actually get rewarded in a way that isn’t prone to gm/office abuse. Players shouldn’t have loot control like that, loot distribution should be handled entirely by the game itself.
no it shouldn't. just join a guild that doesn't do gm/officer abuse. the game will give you different loot options. pick one you like and play with people who like the same one.
not everybody should get rewarded, or even rewarded equally anyways. not everybody contributes equally. its nice to get things, but if not, you should keep trying.
what happens to those people who managed to pvp and kill everybody trying to kill your pve raiders and take the boss? they never touch the boss or are in the same group as the people killing it but their contribution is significant. how do you reward them?
giving the loot to the guild bank and distributing it based on different parameters and merit isn't a bad system.
The game should absolutely handle the loot dispersal. Anything beyond the initial distribution can be handled as the guild wants and the guild members will agree to.
Crowd funding (we’re asking everyone chip in) vs communism (we’re setting lootmaster and you get no input to how we hand it out)
ok lets say we do as you wish. the game gives an item to everybody who participated in killing the raid. then the guild master/officer says "hey, everybody go and deposit everything you got for redistribution based on XYZ". so whats the difference then? you are still subject to gm/officer abuse. if you don't deposit whatever you got, then you never get invited again to anything or you get kicked, the only difference is you get to "steal" something first.
I would like this system to be connected to a specific type of 'merit drop' where each party rolls once, and then they are sorted 1-5 based on their rolls, not contribution, if that raid had the highest contribution to the fight.
Then 5/10/15 items drop, and the top party gets to pick first, then down the list. They can figure out amongst themselves who should get the actual items.
Other contributing parties get 'pity drops' if they were a meaningful part of the encounter (10% contribution sounds fine for me, likely resulting in 8-9 'parties that get loot'. If the 'pity drops' are in the 10-15 drops, these probably go to the 'lesser parties'.
I don't care about this absolute enforcement of winners and losers, nor about guild politics. I care that when an organic grouping of people come together to bring down a boss because none of the groups naturally have enough for the job, that they are incentivized to work together without it ending in friction.
Because I want people to want to participate in content without always viewing others as an obstacle to it, or 'always having their alliances set before they even begin'. I just don't enjoy games like that.
If somone ninja loots from your group kick them out and kill them and reloot it within the 5 minutes, allows players to police themselfs to recover the items
Only the game (mechanics, mathematics) know about the contribution of each single player during a fight, so the game should distribute the items.
During a world boss fight/event, there will be guild-groups, random groups and perhaps solo players around. Only the game is doing the mathematics in the background to be in a position to distribute loot according to the contribution done. No guild-leader knows, what the solo player did (perhaps this player did better than 90% of his guild members). It depends on how long and how active a player invested his time and actions during a fight, that needed to handle the distribution afterwards. Loot mechanics can do that, single players not.
Otherwise the question would be: Why should a player performanig good and investing a his time not get a loot? What's the justification here?
This will not survive until release, ofc it's pointless and opens all doors for abusing.
If Steven wants to shrink this playerbase to an absolute minimum, he can ofc insist of keeping this nonsense, but test phases will show him good feedback - I hope.
The overall progress in the game would simply be slower.
Also, solo players will not be rewarded because AoC's looting rights don't reward everyone who touches the boss (nor have the suggestions here been about that). Solo players must either join guilds or grind their little solo mobs until they can afford to buy big boi items.
He will get feedback from both sides and will have to decide if he wants to listen to the majority of modern players that will leave the game for a variety of other reasons or to his already established TA who're used to this kind of design and have played with it before.