Veteran Maelstrom Arena Needs A Token System

LZH

I have beaten this arena around 40ish times - some people have beaten it 10 times more than me and I can't even imagine how they feel about the reward system. I have gotten flawless. I have been on the leaderboards several weeks in a row. I have put in over 50 hours into this single piece of content.



What have I received as a reward? Absolutely NOTHING. Not a single one of the weapons that I have gotten is end-game usable.


I thought the 100% drop-rate would make getting usable vMA weapons easier but if anything it has made me even more annoyed at how many trash weapons you can really receive. The weapon trait system really needs an overhaul but that is a story for another post. How many hours does Zenimax expect me or any other player to put in before getting a sharpened 2H, axe, dagger, inferno staff, etc? Really the only usable weapons you can obtain from vMA.


Kind of ridiculous that the "hardest solo content" in the game doesn't even reward you.


The arena needs some kind of token system. I am slowly losing motivation to even keep trying to get Maelstrom weapons when the drop rate of a specific weapon with a specific trait is 1/96. Either that or removal or certain traits is absolutely necessary. Decisive, Charged, and Infused need to be removed - how these even became traits is beyond me. Powered needs to be removed with the exception of the Restoration Staff.

Qbiken

Well, now that vMSA has a 100%droprate on weapons it should feel a little more rewarding and the change of getting a good trait is higer than before.

LZH

Qbiken wrote: »

Well, now that vMSA has a 100%droprate on weapons it should feel a little more rewarding and the change of getting a good trait is higer than before.

While that is true, the drop-rate of X weapon went from 1/192 to 1/96. So the odds are still extremely low that you will get something usable from doing vMA.


Honestly, the problem isn't really the drop-rate so much that every trait except for sharpened is garbage.

Ep1kMalware

on the plus side, you didnt get a ring of glory.

LZH

Ep1kMalware wrote: »

on the plus side, you didnt get a ring of glory.

Ring of Glory vs. Decisive Maelstrom Mace. They are both worth around 70 gold to a vendor.

DRXHarbinger

Welcome to my world. 7 months for an inferno. 6 months 3 weeks on trash resto and bows. In the interim I did pick up two sharp 2h, 1 precise dagger and a sharpened axe...4 good weapons in 6 months...

Then one week a sharp inferno, nirn lit, and precise ice staff all get delivered in mail...that's how bad it is on console. Roll on the 16th...but what to farm first. ...vma or dsa...

Decado

Good luck with this, we've been asking this since forever,

If it makes you feel better I've been running it for 6 months probably have over 500 completions and multiple flawless at this point and I still don't have any sharpened destro, my current destroy sit at defending fire and nirn ice. Yet I know soneone who's completed it twice and got the sharpened destro,

This system doesn't reward the skilled it rewards the lucky you will however find people defending this and zos is absolutely silent on the issue

BackFreckle

Remove some traits and run it 5 times get your weapon then never do it again
Or
Have weapons cost 50 token (1 token a run) and have ppl cry about the grind

Either way its a lose lose for zos

Function

I agree, I spent over a week of my life (actual /played time in maelstrom) doing 250+ maelstrom runs for a sharpened inferno.. never got it. I ended up saying *** it and haven't been in there in months..

Here's an old image I took of an alts inventory that was 100% filled with trash maelstrom weapons -

Qbiken

Function wrote: »

I agree, I spent over a week of my life (actual /played time in maelstrom) doing 250+ maelstrom runs for a sharpened inferno.. never got it. I ended up saying *** it and haven't been in there in months..

Here's an old image I took of an alts inventory that was 100% filled with trash maelstrom weapons -

Care to share the build

LZH

BackFreckle wrote: »

Remove some traits and run it 5 times get your weapon then never do it again
Or
Have weapons cost 50 token (1 token a run) and have ppl cry about the grind

Either way its a lose lose for zos

Why does it have to be 5 hours or 50 hours? Is there no middle ground? It doesn't have to be lose-lose for ZOS. Why not 5 runs to get enough tokens to pick a weapon? Most of us would still have to put in 30+ runs to get what we want (sharpened weapons).


Everyone always loves to exaggerate. This isn't a tough solution. Stop making people spend ridiculous amounts of time doing content for no payoff. That is horrible game design.

LZH

Function wrote: »

I agree, I spent over a week of my life (actual /played time in maelstrom) doing 250+ maelstrom runs for a sharpened inferno.. never got it. I ended up saying *** it and haven't been in there in months..

Here's an old image I took of an alts inventory that was 100% filled with trash maelstrom weapons -

Good God. That picture makes me angry haha. Working as intended apparently.

OnThaLoose

I agree, is ridiculous. I've run it probably 150-175 times. No sharp axe. No sharp firestaff. Hell I've never even gotten an ice staff. I got a decisive firestaff and a precise dagger from weeklies, only thing I ever get from the chest is 1h and shields and restos.

In fact, as an example: I've been on vacation this week, and yesterday I rand it 8 times. 7 of those times I got 1h and shields. 4 of those shields were impenatrable. How is that even possible? I get its rng but some of these items have to be weighted differently.

redspecter23

The day they decided to do "all traits" for drops instead of static traits was a sad day.

If particular weapons dropped with only one specific trait, I think we'd be better off. Even if the trait was bad, the weapon enchant itself could be tuned up to keep the weapon viable. In the past when sets like Footman dropped in mostly exploration, the 5pc ability could be powerful. You're giving up a potentially useful trait. When the set was re-released with all potential traits, it needed to be nerfed because you have to balance it against the best traits which are miles ahead of exploration. What you get is a situation where only a few traits are desirable and the rest are decon fodder. What we have now is an exercise in frustrating RNG luck. You're hunting only the 1 or 2 traits that are considered useful. The weapons have to be balanced against these good traits and the trash traits are filler or decon fodder as a result.

nordsavage

Be careful, they might just balance the drop rate more with training. They just want to keep you grinding to keep you playing.

dereck_phantom

Only trait I want on my VMA weapons is sharpened. All other traits are irrelevant. Sharpened pulls bigger numbers. All they keep giving me is weapons with precise and nirhoned. No weapon trait in this game is better than sharpened for both pve and pvp.

Iduyenn

I would love a sistem like in gw2. Fotm!
You get tokens from chests. And if you can put together like 150 Token you can refine them into a new ressource. Trading those things for armor, materials and stuff.

LZH

Iduyenn wrote: »

I would love a sistem like in gw2. Fotm!
You get tokens from chests. And if you can put together like 150 Token you can refine them into a new ressource. Trading those things for armor, materials and stuff.

So GW2 has a token system, FFXIV has a token system, D3 has bloodshards. ZOS can you please get onto the same page as these other games? vMA rewards are NOT fixed with this recent patch.


@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_MattFiror

Jaronking

They should make it so you can only trade a weapon with someone who has completed Vet MA and only for another MA weapon I think that is more than fair.