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Originally Posted by MithranArkanere
This is GW. There is NO ROOM for "1-of -a-kind" stuff.
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This is GW and cool rare, very rare, unique and 1-of-a-kind items were ALWAYS a part of it.
This is a great aspect of the game that most other mmos don't have at all, using only fixed stats items with pre-designed amount of grind connected to each of them.
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- Retroactive changes are ALWAYS good.
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That's just sooo wrong.
Not always.
Here in this thread we're discussing a perfect example of where they can be something horrible.
Retroactive changes are good ONLY IF:
-they're good. as opposed to being bad. /doh
-they're strict improvements - they aren't changing anything into worse as a side-effect,
-there are strong reasons for implementing them and NO good reasons against,
-applying them won't hurt the game experience of a significant portion of the playerbase, be it ~40% (as would current results of this thread's poll suggest) or 10% or 5%.
-they're not unnecessarily changing the way something works if it's not broken,
-they don't remove differences that make older content more special and unique just for the sake of making everything the same
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So this is what has to be done:
1. Set the same system of drops for the whole game. Regardless of whatever the system is.
2. Keep inscriptions for at least HM bosses, chests, reward chests, treasures; for some collectors and for all NPC crafters.
3. Rework the drops to keep rare the skins that are supposed to be rare. Maybe by adding a system like the trader system, that reduces the drops the more people get them.
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Nothing has to be done, we're in a situation where doing nothing is most likely to be the best way. At this point any change could bring more bad than good. Any possible changes should be considered extremelly carefully and should pass all the points I've posted above. They require a strong reason. And 'making everything the same' is not a good reason at all, I'd rather say it's a reason
against making any unnecessary changes.
1. At this point removing any of the 2 drop systems would be just as bad. So it would have to be a mix of the both. Quite revolutionary.
If there would really be a reason for a revolution, I've suggested one somewhere earlier in this thread (or in a similar one) -- to add a new superior rarity level - a new color (like for example orange) for all the inscribable items. As they're technically guaranteed perfects they should be more rare than regular oldschool golds.
As regular drops those should have low chances, like 5-15% of all golds, depending on skin (think about it - 5% chance to get a perfect Magmas Shield in Tyria instead of current like 0.1%). The percentages could be doubled for bosses and HM locked chests and could be at 50%+ for dungeon endchests up to even 100% for elite reward chests like HoH/Zaishen/FoW/UW/Deep/Urgoz (practically no change for them).
Also, following the current rule that certain skins may only appear at selected rarity levels (colors), the last few skins that don't currently have inscribable copies would simply not drop at the 'orange' rarity at all.
Oh, and the old problem of insc blues and purples reappears - currently they're just as good as insc. golds, which is a big WTF. Clearly it's just wrong. Even according to official
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Originally Posted by Game Update - October 25, 2006
Inscriptions and inscription slots are sometimes found on rare weapons dropped by monsters in Elona.
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sometimes on rares - thats quite opposite of having them at most of random blues and on all purples.
2. Crafters and collectors don't need any changes in what they offer. Reward chests I mentioned above. But I think a proper design would be not to make too high chances for them as HM mob/boss/chest drops - HM is the way for producing mass golds, gold item droprates from all those sources are already high. If insc golds rate for HM chests was as high as 20%, repeaded opening of specific chests could generate stupid amounts of for example insc. Magmas Shields (far more than can be farmed in NF right now). The only solution is either adjusting droprates of selected prestige skins (something I wanted to avoid) or making lower chance for insc versions to drop for those selected skins. So a HM Chest could have 33% for insc. golds but still only 5% (or maybe less) of Magmas from them would drop insc.
3. I wouldn't mess with the droprates. Nothing wrong with them and some not-so-rare skins add a lot to the feeling of an area or culture, even when they drop not so good. Solution simple again, just make the inscribable golds more rare for those skins than for those designed to be basic and common.
Summary: the only change that could work would be some kind of a complete overhaul of drops in all campagins. A big totally revolutionary change, a massive redesign.
The only alternative: Do nothing.
By far the most likely one to happen and I'm totally happy with it.
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Originally Posted by Hyper Cutter
99.99% of what drops in Cantha and Tyria is already useless...
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strange, I still find over 15% actually useful gold weapon drops in Tyria/Cantha. And satisfaction from finding something truly exceptional that happens only there greatly overwhelmes the 99%+ equally perfect and equally boring drops of Nightfall/EotN that end up merched anyway.
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No, they lost their value when people found efficient ways to farm them. Incriptions don't affect rarity at all, they just reveal the actual rarity of a skin (as opposed to the artificial rarity that results from screening the drops with bad inherent mods).
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Oh god, you're clueless and make up pure BS. "Artifical rarity" omg...
"Inscriptions don't affect rarity at all" = probably the most stupid sentence I've read on the internet in the last few weeks.
Something you should think about
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Imagine 2 different semi-rare weapon skins - one exclusive to Factions with no inscribable versions available and one exclusive to Nightfall and dropping only inscribable. Assume that both of them are equally appealing and equally rare - have exactly the same chances to drop in their appropriate regions and that none of them can be excessively farmed for. And somehow the Factions one is a highly valued prestige skin but the Nightfall one is treated as common worthless junk.
Or a different scenario:
Let's have just one semi-rare Factions excluisive skin that doesn't have inscribable versions avaulable. And then a horrible update from hell makes them start dropping inscribable instead, with
no changes to it's droprate at all.
What happens to the value and prestige of this skin?
It's lost forever. It becomes a product for the masses, at best it's a mediocre item now, no longer coveted, considered any special, precious or rare. It doesn't feel rare anymore. (exception: in some extreme cases the existing few perfect original pre-nerf pieces can retain or even gain value among the most hardcore collectors who love original rarities)
Don't you understand that an item can be *actually rare* because of it's combination of stats and skin?
Don't you understand that the skin itself doesn't have to be superrare to have a specific item with this skin to be rare or even unique?
Can you imagine how rare would have the Factions exclusive skins to be to retain their value and prestige under the inscription system? They would have to be so rare that most regular players would never see even 1 of them (shields) or maybe 1 (weapons)! So many great skins would be wasted for making them so elite, not to be even seen by most. But thanks to having the drop quality to differ, all players can experience them as a part of the world and they can still make great valuable rewards if a good one is found.