Just gotta add that if you want a specific 2h (Sharpened Maul, for example), you're also facing 1/144 odds.

Meld777 wrote: »

Just gotta add that if you want a specific 2h (Sharpened Maul, for example), you're also facing 1/144 odds.

Updated the OP to make that also clear in the MSA graph and description. Thanks for the input!

kasa-obake wrote: »

Bumping the thread up. Keep up the good work, comrade !

Best way to bump is adding content to the thread, so I added your data to the section about the MSA drops to back up the assumption for 6 weapon drop categories.

Meld777 wrote: »

That's RNG for you. When my gf and I decided to test Ilambris, we both still needed the shoulders. I had 300+ keys banked, took them all and went to the chest. First try: Ilambris Medium Divines.

She had only 50 keys and was worried she wouldn't get it. First try: Ilambris Medium Divines.

Both within 3 min or so. But hey, I ran vMA over 440 times by now and not a single usable Inferno Staff. She ran it ~100 times and doesn't have ANY Inferno. Not even in a bad trait. And I only have 2, which I both got on the event (Decisive and Defending).

So assuming you wanted only a divines Ilambris without a specific weight you had a 1/96=1,04% chance to get it. After 666 runs you have a 99,0% chance to have the desired sharpened MSA inferno staff. Since RNG is the pure evil, you both will get your staffs after 666 runs in order to compensate for your undaunted shoulder luck. Have fun!

Mettaricana wrote: »

I support this post harder than mannimarco supports his ego

Thanks for the support!

lordrichter wrote: »

Gil.Galad wrote: »

Hello,
Solutions:
1. Remove unused traits:
2. Remove bind on pickup restriction:
3. A token system:
4. Improving the Cyrodiil vendor:

There should be no such thing as an "unused trait". I agree about the BoP, but they want people to play content to get stuff. Token system is far too liberal and I don't think that ZOS will like the results.

Better answer... a smarter random drop system.

RNG History
Eliminate frequency of random repeats by decreasing the odds for stuff you have received, and increasing the odds for stuff you have not received, over a certain time frame doing a certain activity.

More Useful Gear
Rather than randomly assembly, the gear should have higher probabilities along the current character build than against it. In this manner, a 2H build will see more 2H and less destruction staff. A person wearing all Training gear, or all Prosperous gear, will see more of that trait, and less of the other traits. Someone who is more skilled in Light will see more Light than Medium or Heavy. Everything still comes up, but not at the same probabilities.

I agree that there should not be such a thing as unused traits and that that's the main problem, but I think it's easier to fix the RNG problem, than balancing all the traits. RNG history is an interesting model but it has to be made transparent.

A smarter drop system would definately be the best solution for the weapon drops, but one has to be careful to keep useful stuff like swords for magicka sets, etc.

The useful gear approach has some problems, if you want to use a different char to farm the stuff you. Take the example of farming burning spellweave: If 4 people want to farm it and assuming a standard group setup at leas the tank won't wear a full dmg setup and have a higher probability to drop the dungeon's heavy armor set. If they implement a system like this there has to be a toggle function. Better would be a prefered drop option, where you can choose if you prefer light, medium or heavy drops and according weapons. Since most of the dungeons have set each you can basically choose the set you want.

Short update from me - I now have 2 precise Burning Spellweave Swords. It's only taken a few hundred more runs to do that. I have had 2 sharpened BSW bows thus far though. Very useful

Bad thing RNG mite be fun if it wasn't so diluted with traits they created for dilution of loot pools. ZOS must be making tons with the current formula due to no budge attitude.
When things get bad, businesses only then change. Like taking 2 years for 1T after 99% of gaming community slammed the game at launch for all the things 1T generally addressed.

Yoohoo4411 wrote: »

I'm going to start making a log of each weapon I get from VMA, until I get that damn sharpened inferno staff.

Got mine yesterday sharpened in my 15th run; already got sharpened lightning staff, great sword, and precise flame as well. Id trade em all for a sharpened maul though.

@GilGalad

I think no productive discussion about any of the game's systems can happen if people focus on 'problems' of the system without outlining why the system is in the state it is.

The loot drop system was deliberately designed to provide the outcomes you discuss. Having rather low chance of getting a bis gear piece is the purpose of the system, not an oversight.

So if you propose to change the system you first need to clearly understand and state its purpose and then provide a compelling reasoning why either the system fails to do what it was designed to do or that an alternative design would be 'better' for the game as the whole and not in some particular cases.

Can the current loot system cause frustration in some people striving to get a specific gear piece? Yes, for sure. It's intended to. The system was designed to allow for a fast access to almost any gear piece. Meanwhile getting a gear piece with a specific trait/type might take any time from one hour to infinity.

If you make obtaining those specific items predictable - in a quite short time (on the game's lifetime scale, say half a year) many people well get all bis gear. Which is awful for an mmo without constant gear level upgrades and thus a vertical progress system. This change alone will significantly degrade the quality of pve experience in the game potentially to the point of no return (depending on how badly you 'nerf' the rng).

Thus as long as we're going to have the lack of vertical progess as one of the staples of eso, there will be a hard limit on how available you can make obtaining bis gear in the game.

Now the question is how can we justify that, say, 4 month average per a bis gear piece is too long and, say, 2 month is just fine?:) And that those 2 months would still allow to have a healthy growing mmo without vertical progess.

Curious:)

.

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

I don't think we can cause we don't fully understand it's purpose or design

Since rng in loot tables with rather long average time to obtain the best items has been a gameplay-defining feature of almost any mmo on the market since the beginning we can safely assume its purpose in ESO is of the same kind as it is everywhere else.

To summarize, this purpose is to increase players retention rate by complicating their process of obtaining the ultimate power in the game (bis gear in the case of ESO). And since gaining more power is one of the key motivations for people in mmos and elsewhere - this feature can be considered a baseline.

Btw, ESO out of most of mmos manages this feature very generously. Since obtaining 'a peice' of the desired set is really easy. And the dps/healing difference between that piece and bis piece of the same set is ~0.5%. So full bis (obtainable in months if not years) vs full training-level gear (obtainable in days/weeks) is 5% at best (TBS setups). You don't need bis gear literally for any content in the game.

GilGalad wrote: »

There is only one place where the few % more DPS matter and that's endgame trial leaderboards. I know people in my guild who ran vMA incredibly often and never got a sharpened Inferno staff, therefore losing a few k DPS that can decide between rank 1 and rank 2 on th leaderboard.

Can we agree that 'can decide between rank 1 and rank 2 on th leaderboard' is both not really probable (since we're talking about 1-3k dps of one guy in the trial group) and is a largely irrelevant issue on the scope of the whole game?:)

GilGalad wrote: »

The problem I see with this system is not the long average time, but the possibility of doing close to infinite runs without a guaranteed drop.

Exactly. Now the question should be: what value does this possibility add to the game? If we find that potentially infinite item acquisition time bears zero purpose within the game we'd indeed have to change the system to put a cap on that tail of the Gaussian.

Let's examine drawbacks and benefits of the system separately.

Drawbacks:

1. The major drawback is players' frustration of putting time into an activity and never reaching the goal.
2. Potential disparity between different people based purely on luck (and not on, say, player game skill or player social skills).

Advantages:

1. Unpredictability. Just like it can be a drawback and a source of frustration it can be a blessing and a source of happiness. If you're certain you will get that piece of gear no matter what the whole activity becomes noticeably more boring. Since now the only thing that stands between you and that piece of gear is time. People might (and do) feel as if this time bears no value and thus has to be reduced, preferably to zero.

The whole system becomes more of a in-your-face waste of time instead of 'maybe this time i get lucky and the universe will smile on me'.

I'd argue that the former system has much higher emotional involvement into it and emotions is the major reason we all play the game. We can tolerate stuff being frustrating. What we can't accept is the stuff to be totally boring.

2. The same disparity between players when its degree is quite low adds to the variety between players builds and playstyles and thus to a better game overall. Yes, this is a forced variety, but on the min-max level pure natural variety is arguably unattainable. Even if the net dps difference between 2 setups is 0.5-1% min-max level will discard the 'weaker' one in favor of the 'stronger' one.

Thus the only reasonable way to introduce variety at this level - is to make artificial gates in gear acquisition. Unpredictable gates. Gates that work.

A properly balanced loot system will try to emphasize the advantages outlined above, while diminishing the drawbacks. And i'd argue that ESO dev team does a rather good job at that.

GilGalad wrote: »

On top of that the system does not reward skill at all, so that the endgame raiders for example could get their vMA weapons faster to actually focus on the trial leaderboards.

I can't agree with this part. Indeed people farming vmsa don't have a challenge of whether they can complete it or not. But instead that might have different types of challenge. The most obvious one is perfect speedruns (and thus a position on vmsa leaderboards). This activity definitely requires a great deal of skill of the player and, it so happens, it perfectly coincides with their farming goals, since a better run is a faster run, thus more effective farming.

In case of farming vet dungeons even though we don't have the leaderboards for them, faster runs is still a challenging activity in itself. This is not mind-numbing exp farming after all:)

GilGalad wrote: »

Forcing people to spend a lot of time and having luck doing content they don't enjoy in order to be competitive in trials is just wrong.

But as we both outlined above none of bis gear makes people 'competitive in trials' besides anecdotal cases (like your example of the difference between 1 and 2 position on trials leaderboards).

GilGalad wrote: »

But I guess even that is calculated by ZOS, because an endgame raid player won't quit the game even after 600 COA runs without a sharpened Inferno.

Yep. Because they also understand they don't really need it:) It's a perfect example of a carrot-on-the-stick of the right size. Make it larger and people will quit the game because 'i can't progress due to stupid rng'. Make it smaller and people will quit the game because 'i achieved max power already'.

GilGalad wrote: »

What I find odd about using RNG as an incentive to keep players doing content is that they don't earn money from it, unless the set drops in a DLC area. ESO+ does not help you when farming gear at all and is using incentives on a convenience level to be attractive.

They don't earn money directly from farming gear activities for 2 major reasons:

1. Any cash-shop additions to help that activity will be unambiguously taken as p2w with obvious implications of it.
2. By increasing players retention rate in this way, they indirectly earn money from other sources since active players are exactly those who buy the stuff from crown store:)

GilGalad wrote: »

If they want people to play the game they should introduce useful sets, but instead we are all running BSW since one tamriel and still only a few own a useful staff.

It's really hard to provide an alternative to the min-max meta. Most of the time any alternative will be sub-meta and thus ignored.

That's on the very top level. Anywhere below that the gear variety flourish happily:)

GilGalad wrote: »

And btw here is a comment from one guildmate about the new trial sets: Im so glad that they aren't that good, so we don't have to farm them all day.

Just like it is expected from a non-vertical progress system. The new sets provide alternatives, not necessity.