There is absolutely no reason for this. Keys are already so easy to get these days. Remember back when your only options were 1 gold and 1 silver key per day (2 gold if it was an IC dungeon), the gold key had only a 50% chance of getting a shoulder, and the silver key had only a 10% chance of getting a shoulder? Now you can get 6 keys per day, each with a 100% chance of getting a shoulder.

And with a few exceptions, "hard mode" isn't hard at all. There are only three dungeons where vet HM is actually noticeably harder than vet non-HM: vRoM, vCoS, and vBloodroot. For all the other dungeons out there, the difference is so marginal that virtually anyone who can beat vet can beat vet HM (with vWGT, vCoA2, and vFalkreath having a slightly bigger but still mostly inconsequential increase in difficulty).

code65536 wrote: »

There is absolutely no reason for this. Keys are already so easy to get these days. Remember back when your only options were 1 gold and 1 silver key per day (2 gold if it was an IC dungeon), the gold key had only a 50% chance of getting a shoulder, and the silver key had only a 10% chance of getting a shoulder? Now you can get 6 keys per day, each with a 100% chance of getting a shoulder.

And with a few exceptions, "hard mode" isn't hard at all. There are only three dungeons where vet HM is actually noticeably harder than vet non-HM: vRoM, vCoS, and vBloodroot. For all the other dungeons out there, the difference is so marginal that virtually anyone who can beat vet can beat vet HM (with vWGT, vCoA2, and vFalkreath having a slightly bigger but still mostly inconsequential increase in difficulty).

Rng sucks tho so I'm for it

So what if you don't get the perfect trait? Armor traits are not nearly as impactful as weapon traits. Running with a couple of bad traits will not impact your DPS in any significant way and you will not be able to tell the difference in actual usage.

Back in the day, people were happy to just get a monster shoulder of the set that they want, regardless of the trait. Now that these shoulders drop like candy, people are picky about getting that perfect trait for that extra 0.5% more DPS.

This game would be a lot more enjoyable for a lot more people if they just stop to do the math and realize what is and what isn't worth optimizing and then stop fretting over the little things that would give them only a fraction of percent of difference. Replacing a well-fitted shoulder with divines will not affect whether or not you could clear a certain piece of content.

Personally I would rather ZOS install a token system for dungeons/trials and get rid of the RNG based garbage we are faced with now. I have dozens of keys I've collected that I don't bother to turn in because I never get the trait I'm looking for anyway.

You get a guaranteed monster helm @Dymence, that is the reward for veteran.

If you have four max level characters, that's 24 keys per day if you spend 3-4 hours doing dungeons with a good group. Do that for a week and you have a good shot of getting what you want, but probably not exactly what you want.

To explain the RNG a bit, let's assume you are after Ilambris.

Glirion's Chest: 1 in 12 (0.083 chance) to find Ilambris.
Weight: 3 different weights (0.027 chance) to find the weight you want.
Trait: 8 different traits IIRC (0.0035 chance) to find the trait you want.

So all in all, on any given trial, you have a 0.35% chance to get the exact shoulder you want, in the exact weight you want and the exact trait you want.

Plug these values into a binominal distribution formula and you get:



Roughly stated, if you open 200 of Glirion's boxes, you have about a 50% chance of getting zero of the items you want and about a 50% chance of getting 1 or greater.

For fun, let's see what happens if you get 1 key per day, for an entire year:



You still have a 27% chance of not receiving the exact item you want.

Now this changes drastically if you are less picky on trait/weight. If you are happy with any weight, divines or infused:



After 100 keys, you have an 87.7% chance of having the shoulder you want in any weight, divines or infused.

The TL;DR of my post is that if you want the perfect item, it will take you a long time to get it. If you want an "okay" item that is 2-4% less DPS, you can get it within a week pretty reliably.

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

So what if you don't get the perfect trait? Armor traits are not nearly as impactful as weapon traits. Running with a couple of bad traits will not impact your DPS in any significant way and you will not be able to tell the difference in actual usage.

Back in the day, people were happy to just get a monster shoulder of the set that they want, regardless of the trait. Now that these shoulders drop like candy, people are picky about getting that perfect trait for that extra 0.5% more DPS.

In PvE, they're not impactful. In PvP they're very impactful. So I'm so for this idea personally.

No, they're not. Missing one or two impen in PvP isn't going to suddenly mean that you'll die left and right. It doesn't matter what context you're in: armor traits are relatively insignificant compared to weapon traits.

As always, surprised by the people who are so vehemently against ideas like this. Is it that they'd be annoyed they spent so much time grinding for keys and don't want others to benefit from an increase? And these are people who always say something like, "if you have all characters maxed out and geared for vet hm dungeons you should have no issue grinding for keys for 4 hours a day." WUT? *** that, I don't want or have the time to spend running the same *** pledges with all toons (and I only have three) nor should any sane person enjoy doing the same content again and again. The RNG in this game borders on the definition of insanity, as in completely irrational.

Vapirko wrote: »

As always, surprised by the people who are so vehemently against ideas like this. Is it that they'd be annoyed they spent so much time grinding for keys and don't want others to benefit from an increase? And these are people who always say something like, "if you have all characters maxed out and geared for vet hm dungeons you should have no issue grinding for keys for 4 hours a day." WUT? *** that, I don't want or have the time to spend running the same *** pledges with all toons (and I only have three) nor should any sane person enjoy doing the same content again and again. The RNG in this game borders on the definition of insanity, as in completely irrational.

Because I remember the days when you were limited to 0.6 shoulders per day per character (1 key with a 50% chance at a shoulder, 1 key with a 10% chance at a shoulder), and now that the shoulder drop rate has increased 10x--a whole order of magnitude--to where we have 6 shoulder per day per character, people are still screaming "MOAR". It's ridiculous.

Furthermore, the RNG is bad only if you are dead-set on getting that perfect trait. Traits on a couple of armor pieces don't really matter. I've met people who won't run a set because they still don't have the shoulder in the perfect trait. Newsflash: Whether one piece is prosperous or divines pales in comparison to whether or not that you are using or not using the set. That's not a RNG problem. That's a player-with-too-much-entitlement-and-no-perspective problem. There was a time when people were happy to just complete a monster set, regardless of whether the traits were crap or not because just being able to wear that set that you wanted was far more important than getting somewhere around 1% extra DPS from having both items be divines. Yes, you read that right: 1%.

The RNG for shoulders is nothing compared to the RNG for weapons. Weapons are far harder to get. Require more time. And weapon traits actually matter. (Though the Update 15 weapon trait rebalance to break the Sharpened monopoly will help a lot.)

Uh, next time 4 , then 5, then just gemme the should that i want.
Just no.

code65536 is right, nothing else. Im ok with Kneighbors idea, 3 keys for HM DLC could be nice to motivate some pple to buy and DO them.

Paulington wrote: »

You get a guaranteed monster helm @Dymence, that is the reward for veteran.

The monster helm reward is not tied to the daily pledge. I'm specifically talking pledges here.

code65536 wrote: »

Dymence wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

There is absolutely no reason for this. Keys are already so easy to get these days. Remember back when your only options were 1 gold and 1 silver key per day (2 gold if it was an IC dungeon), the gold key had only a 50% chance of getting a shoulder, and the silver key had only a 10% chance of getting a shoulder? Now you can get 6 keys per day, each with a 100% chance of getting a shoulder.

And with a few exceptions, "hard mode" isn't hard at all. There are only three dungeons where vet HM is actually noticeably harder than vet non-HM: vRoM, vCoS, and vBloodroot. For all the other dungeons out there, the difference is so marginal that virtually anyone who can beat vet can beat vet HM (with vWGT, vCoA2, and vFalkreath having a slightly bigger but still mostly inconsequential increase in difficulty).

In my opinion, the problem with the current system is that simply doing vet rewards you with nothing. You do a significantly harder version of the dungeon compared to when it would be on normal, and you get the exact same amount of keys.

Then don't do vet without HM. With the exception of vCoS, vRoM, and vBloodroot, "hard mode" is anything but "hard". In most cases, they just add a bit of boss health so the fight lasts a little bit longer. There's no reason why, if you're doing vet, you're not also doing HM. Though for the dungeons that actually have a real hard mode, I wouldn't mind there being a bit more stratification of rewards. But counting the new HotR dungeons, we'd only have 3 out of 30...

Edit: Oops, oh, and the guaranteed helm in vet...

I'm not saying that they're too difficult for me. But you would be surprised how many players actually have difficulties with them. Besides that, the dungeons with the 'old' hard mode e.g. "Leave 4 wraiths alive until the Ebony Blade is drawn" in CoH 2 can easily get screwed up by pugs.

I'm not advocating to get more keys from dailies with this. We are already getting more than enough keys ever since they changed how the pledge system works, allowing us to get 6 keys per day. I'm merely pointing out that it is just strange that there is absolutely no difference in reward between normal and vet pledges.

I would like to get a noticeable difficulty increase for HM in both vanilla and DLC dungeons but the devs said they are moving in the opposite direction. Including on some dungeons they have nerfed before to the point where you almost fall asleep doing them. I guess vDSA and vet 12 man trials are the only ones you can feel somewhat of a challenge. It's really unfortunate they are cutting the low rungs off the progression ladder and pasting them even lower so the jump to the top becomes almost impossible for newer players.

"Lord Warden requires summary execution"
[Yawn, forehead hits keyboard]