To start, this is coming from someone that has been subbed since release, someone who makes addons and helps new players with gear and other things. In other words, someone clearly devoted to the game with no ulterior motives or passive-aggressive point to prove. That said, I would like to take a moment to explain why this current long-standing model of RNG traits on top of RNG armor type on top of RNG drops DOES NOT WORK and is extremely unhealthy for the game long-term.

I understand why you decided on this model to begin with. You believed that it would encourage people to keep running content. That is the first misconception and wrong assumption I would endeavor to debunk.

In my experience, this model in fact has the OPPOSITE effect. In Wrothgar for example, I ran all the world bosses and dailies for several weeks off and on when the DLC released, getting nothing but cp150 items or cp160 items with traits like "Prosperous" and "Training." The RNG elements create an experience that is frustrating, off-putting, and futile. The same holds for Veteran dungeons for the most part.

I do not end up "at the end of the day" looking at it as "well, just got to keep doing it for months until RNGesus feels kind", I end up looking at it like "this is clearly no longer any fun and the RNG system is broken and gives me no sense of hope for returns on time invested given it is totally RANDOM, so without some token system where I can at least save up and KNOW that I will get what I need from this eventually IT IS SIMPLY A WASTE OF MY TIME.

It doesn't encourage me to keep with the content and help people even though I enjoy helping people, and enjoy the game. It encourages giving up and abandoning the content, which is what happened for me with Wrothgar: "The New Craglorn." For the most part I haven't been back there for much but occasionally crafting gear. This is generally how I feel about Veteran dungeons as well beyond leveling up required Undaunted abilities, maybe completing quests and achievements, rolling alts, and seeing new things for the first few times.

I may play the content for a while so long as it is new, but the incentive to do "gear progression" simply isn't there in a pure RNG system.

This leads to the sort of toxic burnout you find on the forums all the time, where people devote time to a progression game and never get what they want out of it, have no guarantee of EVER getting what they want out of it, and so go from content expansion to content expansion rushing through everything then hitting the forums with nothing but negativity.

This is your own doing, guys. Sorry to say but it is true.

It has been suggested literally hundreds of times here that you need some sort of token system. Some way to know that even if RNG on RNG on RNG is never going to give you snake eyes drops on armor type and traits 5 times for the given content, at least after X many weeks you will have enough tokens saved up to just buy the set pieces you need in your desired traits.

Yes, MMO's will always have an RNG/time component to gear progression. The challenge is finding the balance between time-to-acquisition and time-to-burnout. The current system serves only to frustrate and burn people out as there is no sense of progression, and instead the total reliance on RNG creates only a feeling of hopeless futility where you could spend precious hours, weeks, MONTHS of your fleeting mortal life and NEVER have anything to show for it.

With a token system at least there would be the "well at least in 3-4 weeks I KNOW I will have something to show for this" factor.

So, that is my experience and my "2 Septim" solution, FWIW.