vMA Weapon Availability - Drop Rate - Keeping Endgame Population Small?

LegendaryArcher · September 2016

Maelstrom weapons are very powerful and by far best-in-slot. They create a huge gap between players with and without those weapons.

When Maelstrom Arena came out, everyone had the same chances to get vMA weapons. Those chances were somewhat reasonable, especially for those getting on the leaderboards, as the weapons came in the three most useful traits: Sharpened, Precise, Defending. Even if Defending could be considered an inferior trait, one still had a chance of 2/3 of the weapon being useful upon receiving it.

With Dark Brotherhood launch, ZOS completely ruined the game for those players looking to be competitive and part of the endgame community. They polluted the loot table with junk traits (Charged, Infused, Nirnhoned, Powered, Decisive) and, while the chances of getting a useful vMA weapon were already terrible before, they made it now completely unrealistic to get the weapon of one's desire.

The endgame community is split into "those who came before DB" and "those who came after DB or didn't get lucky before," while "those who came after or didn't get lucky before" have no humanly realistic chance to get the vMA weapons of their desire in traits that would make the weapon more powerful than a random non-set Sharpened one. As a result, "those who came before DB" aren't letting anyone into their community who "came after DB," since they lack the powerful Maelstrom weapons. You don't believe me? Watch the Hodor or Beyond Infinity videos (or any other famous endgame guilds). See any damage dealers without Maelstrom weapons?

As a result, "those who didn't get lucky before or came after DB" are continuously quitting the game upon reaching the point where they are ready to play competitively or go for harder group challenges like vMoL. The population of "those who came before DB" is still big enough. There are people running around with vMA weapons making an impression that "Arbeit macht frei!" ("Work sets you free!", concentration camp slogan). And it is extremely sad that the new players don't know that "those who came before DB" received those weapons while it was still realistic! They assume they'll get those weapons by just running vMA often enough... and never get them. And quit.

@ZOS_Finn Why are you doing this? Please help your community understand your thought process? You are keeping a fixed amount of people competitive that were here before DB. Do you want to keep the endgame community small? Make it fair. Introduce BiS weapons that are only available through vMoL Hard Mode. Do you want to get rid of the endgame community and only aim at casuals and roleplayers? Nerf vMA weapons, remove stat bonus. You want fair competition? Revert the vMA loot table to how it was before Dark Brotherhood or introduce a Token System.

LegendaryArcher · September 2016

For those who don't understand yet how unfair ZOS's decision was, let's calculate:

Orsinium launched on November 2nd, Dark Brotherhood launched on March 31st. Just running vMA once a week would've granted you 22 weekly rewards per character. Considering Defending an inferior trait, that is ~15 useful golden vMA weapons until Dark Brotherhood per character. Running it with 2 characters each week meant ~30 useful golden vMA weapons, not counting the useful weapons one would've gotten from the chest, since the chest wasn't junk trait-polluted, either.

Yes, you read it correctly. Just running it twice a week would've granted you 30 useful vMA weapons until DB, not counting the chest rewards!

Nowadays, there are players with 1000+ completions without a weapon of their desire. Shame on ZOS and on anyone supporting this system.

luen79rwb17_ESO · September 2016

Back in the days when Orsinium launched Maelstrom Weapons were a rare reward from last boss or weekly leaderboards, then they made it a garateed reward for leaderboars and now everyone can get 1 from last boss.

Before DB / U11 there were many threads and complaints about desired weapon traits too and getting the same weapon type every week.

On the contrary, just by looking around I see loads and loads of ppl running around with Maelstrom Weapons nowadays.

RoyJade · September 2016

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Back in the days when Orsinium launched Maelstrom Weapons were a rare reward from last boss or weekly leaderboards, then they made it a garateed reward for leaderboars and now everyone can get 1 from last boss.

Before DB / U11 there were many threads and complaints about desired weapon traits too and getting the same weapon type every week.

On the contrary, just by looking around I see loads and loads of ppl running around with Maelstrom Weapons nowadays.

Oh, I can run MA weapons on all my 9 characters. But let's be realistic :I have ONE good dps trait. ONE. My sharpened crafted axes are better than my charged one, I still haven't any destruction staffs (with 33 MA weapons), I only have plenty of greatsword, maul, hammer and bow, with one precise bow.

As long as we have a real rng system, we'll have complains. Because you cannot build your character with only rng, especially when one run ask you a lot of energy and concentration for one hour.

clocksstoppe · September 2016

Best in slot my ass. Lose 1/2 set effect items for a small improvement of some ability. The weapon/spell damage bonus is literally the same as a weapon/spell damage enchant.

Jaronking · September 2016

I day @ZOS_Finn @Wrobel make it so you can trade Vet maelstrom arena weapons with players who have completed the content their so many players who get nothing useful from running it but many players with stuff another player needs.Their so many players who left because of Vet MA that its sadi allow us to trade them with people who have completed them or remove all traits but Nirn precise sharpened and defending from the loot table .

RoyJade · September 2016

clocksstoppe wrote: »

Best in slot my ass. Lose 1/2 set effect items for a small improvement of some ability. The weapon/spell damage bonus is literally the same as a weapon/spell damage enchant.

Destro staff on the second bar provide full benefit with nearly no downside (even on a previously 2 sword backbar character).
Maelstrom bow on backbar add a very large amount of dps.
Dual maelstrom add 3k weapon damage to fourth powerful dot (five on DK), Dawnbreaker's dot AND to your main spammable, who are more or less 70% of your dps (depending of your classes). It's enormous, no set can replace them.

Chori · September 2016

LegendaryArcher wrote: »

@ZOS_Finn Why are you doing this? Please help your community understand your thought process? You are keeping a fixed amount of people competitive that were here before DB. Do you want to keep the endgame community small? Make it fair. Introduce BiS weapons that are only available through vMoL Hard Mode.[/b]

You contradicted yourself on the same sentence, because yanno, everybody and I mean EVERYBODY can finish vMoL hard mode

.

You are being just a selfish player towards the rest of the community whether they are casual or not. Changes should be made for the greater good of the overall player base, not just some selected few.

Shadesofkin · September 2016

While yes, Sharpened and Precise are awesome and I'm glad I have a Precise Inferno staff, lets face facts...if you're getting Maelstrom Weapons, you're going to use them and you'll still be above the average population.

Trading is bad, don't introduce it.

Joy_Division · September 2016

I'm guessing BDO wasn't cracked up to what you thought it was.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/254589/veteran-maelstrom-arena-its-time-for-balance

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/257496/veteran-maelstrom-arena-drop-rates

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/262144/veteran-maelstrom-arena-weapons-in-db

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/286312/veteran-maelstrom-arena-why-you-shouldnt-run-it-for-weapons-rant

If you want to keep making threads over the same issue feel free...

potirondb16_ESO · September 2016

I do understand you point @LegendaryArcher ,

We are many who dislike ZoS philosophy about itemization which is improving but still has that kind of you'll get what you want but not what you are looking for feeling.

I understand what you mean when you said vMA is traits polluted, Charged weapon don't work on vMA enchant, infuse does and do work well but powered on a Destro staff or a DW weapon simply don't cut it. I would rather have to farm more to get my weapon then getting one and being disapointed because in fact I know I didn't receive anything good, if only there could be a traits option for example you loot a bag which is Stated Maestrom Arena Inferno Staff and then you opened it and you have all the version of the traits available for that weapon. When you open you pick one, the game tell you are you sure you want to extract this one from the bag because all of the other one will be destroy. And if you click yes ! then you get your vma weapon but no longer have the bag where use to lie all those other traits you were actually not looking for or looking for at a later time.

P.S. Did have 2 characther running before DB and getting on the leaderboard weekly but never got Lucky (shield for 5 week in a row, resto staff for 6 !) That was a *** each Sunday !

Izaki · September 2016

clocksstoppe wrote: »

Best in slot my ass. Lose 1/2 set effect items for a small improvement of some ability. The weapon/spell damage bonus is literally the same as a weapon/spell damage enchant.

You obviously don't Dual Wield then.

Izaki · September 2016

Well I've run vMSA after DB and I got a lot of Best in Slot weapons. 2 Precise Dagger, 1 Sharpened Axe, 1 Precise Resto, 1 Sharpened Battle-Axe, Sharpened Bow. and then around 30 more weapons in junk traits or SnB. Still no sign of a Destro staff at all though. Maybe tomorrow morning when I log on and recieve that learderboard reward... Who knows?