vostigar commander's box

[beppebeppe]

A question about for example the "vostigar commander's necklace jewelry box". After a lot of farming i opened one and i found a bad necklace (a tank one but i am not a tank). If i open another necklace box the system is so stupid that may give me another identical useless necklace or discard this possibility? The farming may become endless...

[Isp]

A question about for example the "vostigar commander's necklace jewelry box". After a lot of farming i opened one and i found a bad necklace (a tank one but i am not a tank). If i open another necklace box the system is so stupid that may give me another identical useless necklace or discard this possibility? The farming may become endless...

welcome to rng, it's everywhere in rift now.

[Udoing]

Including your face!

welcome to rng, it's everywhere in rift now.

[Aranka]

Gear from those boxes can come in different stats combinations.

https://www.thegharstation.com/2017/...pen-world-4-2/
(halfway the page is a shortlist for the possibilities)

This means, that getting a jewelry box, say for necklace, can give one of those options.

It will/should be one for your calling but not necessarily one for the role you play.
It also means, that you can get the same necklace from 3 different boxes.

pro and con for the system

pro.. you get something for your calling, so you can use it and it may very well be an upgrade to any lower tier item you had for that gear slot.
you are guaranteed an item, not a chance at an item.

con.. you may need to farm more to get the exact item you are looking for

if it is an item with an upgrade path, you may need to wait till you get the exact item you want before upgrading.

[Learan]

A question about for example the "vostigar commander's necklace jewelry box". After a lot of farming i opened one and i found a bad necklace (a tank one but i am not a tank). If i open another necklace box the system is so stupid that may give me another identical useless necklace or discard this possibility? The farming may become endless...

And that's why many people including myself have quit Rift. Countless post saying the same thing yet the devs wont listen. We don't like rng. If we grind or pay for an item we want that item not a chance at the item. If you want to keep rng boxes in the game fine but don't waste players time grinding for a chance at our loot/gear. Otherwise we will take our game time and money elsewhere, and many have...

[BMX]

And that's why many people including myself have quit Rift. Countless post saying the same thing yet the devs wont listen. We don't like rng. If we grind or pay for an item we want that item not a chance at the item. If you want to keep rng boxes in the game fine but don't waste players time grinding for a chance at our loot/gear. Otherwise we will take our game time and money elsewhere, and many have...

One of the many things that is exacerbating the "Active Player Crisis".
RNG should be NERFED at all levels!

[SonoMoenia]

RNG is one of the components that add to replayability and/or continued playability. And it has been in RIFT from the very beginning. Whether a piece of gear drops or not has always been in the game. We all have stories of the "rogue that greeded on a mage dagger" in a PUG dungeon. Or the mage staff dropping in IGP again when there isn't even a mage in the raid. Etc. Etc.

Trion has been trying out all sorts of ways to get us gear.

• The dungeons and TD:LFR now drop individual gear. We like this because rogues can't still our daggers, but we hate this because RNG seems more personally unfavorable to ME.
• They have given us extra chances at loot in the form of IRCs which are earned slowly in game over time or can be purchased. Another love/hate thing here. We hated it 6 months ago because Trion was just ripping us off trying to get us to buy IRCs. Now we hate it because we've been capped at 100 IRCs forever and RNG gives all the frickin' engines to my main, not my alt.
• They added regular gear (hat, ranged, weapon) that is craftable and/or upgradeable and set to be BIS going forward. But we hate it because that makes the mats so expensive and it's grindy. But we love it because that means folks who don't raid can still get cool loot.
• The raids drop items that are then distributed by the raid leader. This is generally loved by us, but the loot tables are smaller. We will only get Belts from Earendorn. Now, they do have some bosses with bigger loot tables - Malannon on normal had the necklace on his loot table but we all hated how it "never dropped" because it's a smaller chance because more items are on the list.
• For folks that will never be raiding, or are slower at getting into the raids, or have alts that are behind their mains in gear - Trion added a special event to get a BIS tier2 item. We hate it because there's a possibility that it duplicates for the group of people that have already done the raid, or made the hat, or wanted a different piece. The other half (or 2/3rd?) of us love chasing sparkles.
• Trion has given us BIS items at every single special event. We love that because we don't have to go do TD:NM any more for the necklace, but we hate it because you have to do the dumb World Events or pay real money. Alternately, we love it because all you have to do are the easy World Events and/or better yet you can just buy it.
• Trion has given us the opportunity to get FOR SURE items that previously were only available as drops. But we hate it because it might not be BEST BIS. Just you know, BIS but more tanky.

One of the main motivations for gamers is the acquisition of gear. It's true across nearly all forms of games. It's not the only motivation of course, but for a very large part of the population it is the number one reason or very high on the list. The desire for that next best shiniest item is what keeps people playing. So if we always got immediately the next best shiniest item - we would quickly become dissatisfied. EVEN MORE dissatisfied than we are with the reality of RNG.

Trion is trying to listen to our suggestions. That's why there is individual loot in dungeons. That's why patrons earn 10 IRCs each week, because patrons wanted to feel like it was worth it. That's why Vostigar gear and jewelry were made available. They don't always get it right (don't sell Captured Intel for cash, please). But they listen and are trying to adjust.

So, on to my subject line. I agree that the 5 different levels of gear (Overlord through Preserver) is too much. The difference in stats is pretty small, and the conflicted joy of getting a Conqueror is telling. You know, it's better than the others but not the best. Like 2nd place is good and all, but it's not 1st place. Perhaps just weed down to 3 levels. (Tank, both, DPS).

As another suggestion, I don't know if the jewelry drops anywhere, but if it does, maybe put the "in the middle" one for sell for intel. Then folks always know what they are getting. It can be useful for both DPS or Tank. And they don't have to be mad that they didn't get best. But now that I type this I realize that we'll only be mad because we can't get BIS without raiding again. Or whatever.

Bleh! I am sooooooooooooo glad I'm not a Dev. This is hard.

[Thunrar]

The issue is that rng is just another way of producing cheap replayability as far as the devs are concerned. I think the theory is that although some people may leave enough people will keep grinding until they get the BiS item to keep the game ticking over.

its more of an issue because the pace of new content is abysmally slow and that content is limited once it arrives. In order to create a false sense of lots of content a system has been created to force you to participate in other areas of gameplay to keep going.

This is NOT NEW, just getting more noticeable and as people have stated with more RNG. In the vanilla version of the game the grind (outside of doing dungeons etc to get extra raid marks) was more about the consumables - you needed them to be competitive, they made a disproportionate difference compared to todays consumables (ie were better based on their stats and your gear stats). So outside of raid until fully pimped out you needed to grind extra marks and also have pots, stones etc ready for next raid.

Now consumables add less compared to gear ( a new tier are probably about due) and the mats are mainly collectible from minions (no in game effort needed).

I know there is always a feeling we are not listened to, but to remove the current RNG box grind, non-rng but time-consuming stellar trigger grind, the rng essence grind and the horror that is fragments would basically leave people logging, raiding and departing, which is also not healthy.

To get rid of those grinds then a meaningful method of getting people to spend time in game doing stuff is needed. Maybe new PA's, maybe just give in and go back to having top tier raid marks at very small numbers from dungeons etc. BUT something has to be there to give people motivation to engage and ideally to do content with lower geared players (dungeons not always the best idea as you get people who want 4x 2.8M minimum ST DPS and a tank which group heals or you cant go, but meh)

And ofc address the grind gap - some of the grinds eg eternal weapon have so many time gates that is very hard unless you get a hard core new player to get someone's gear levelled up (I won't comment more as there are some really good suggestion threads about this).

[Aranka]

the issue with non rng is, that if the rewards are guaranteed for specific actions, a lot of players would perform those actions asap to get bis asap and then complain about not having anything to do after that.

And content lasting 2 whole years on that before introducing a new level cap is nearly impossible.

[Iphigeneia]

There are ways to reduce RNG so that players do not feel like they are working a second job just to get gear to raid in, that still would provide for meaningful, replayable content.

The intel grind is boring as all get out. And you need to do so much of it. The issue is that people are bored of doing the exact same thing over and over and over and are only doing it because of the endless RNG.

Producing interesting and replayable content may be difficult, I admit, but isn't that what customers pay for? Games should be fun, not work, and getting gear anymore surely isn't fun because the necklaces, rings, earrings don't come from killing raid bosses, but from winning a roll after hours and hours of repeating dull, mindless tasks.

[Jeluth]

How hard would it have been for them to add 3 mini bosses to Bastion of Steel to drop the rings and earrings? They did it in IROTP, they did it in NMTD. It gave us something to farm, something to spend IRC and another way to gain tenebrean engines.

Introduce 3 mini mech bosses in BoS, give them a chance to drop rings/earrings, give them a chance to drop Storm Cells and only have the neck vostigar commander's box. One small problem solved.

As for removing suffixed gear, I don't see that happening anytime soon. We tried to convince Vladd when he first introduced that system that it was a bad idea and it created tank vs dps gear and forced people to have two sets of gear (which Trion said they were removing) but since they don't have secondary stats he didn't see them as tank/dps but more as "upgrade" paths that we would get excited over when we did get the overlord. He told us to try it for a few months and if it didn't work he would fix it. Well, we tried it for many months and gave lots of feedback that it didn't work and nothing changed.

[Dico]

RNG does not add anything to replayability. All it does is make the game unfair. Some players are very lucky and others are very unlucky.

the issue with non rng is, that if the rewards are guaranteed for specific actions, a lot of players would perform those actions asap to get bis asap and then complain about not having anything to do after that.

Removing RNG does not necessarily mean that gear is obtained faster. There are some differences between a system with and without RNG.

If you have RNG then at first you obtain better gear very fast, but later it is hard to find improvements. Getting overlord gear in every slot takes a very long time, but it is only slightly better than some combination of vindicator/conqueror/overlord gear.

Buying gear with raid marks is a way of obtaining gear without RNG. The rate at which you obtain shop gear can be adjusted by changing the price. So it isn't necessarily easier without RNG, but it is more fair.

Also upgraded shop gear isn't that much worse than overlord or conqueror gear. Eternal and crit power matter more. So objectively the system isn't that bad, but people feel that way even though the dps-difference is minimal.

[BMX]

Let's see, there are a few places that RNG has no business being. With that said, YUS, RNG is and has been a part of loot drops in instances. That is a given.
However, it can be eliminated at the wholesale level by tying BiS essences to notoriety and placing mounts in the cash shop for peeps to choose the one they like.

Storm Legion had the Torvan, Lycini, for example. Once you got to decorated, you could buy some essences that were better than zone essences. When you became Venerated you were eligible to buy BiS of the time. Is this too much to ask for? Evidently!

This is the RNG fest that has peeps irritated, not the raid/PvP drops...

We get the fact that RNG does have its place, which doesn't need to include DRR's or other zone activities that otherwise could be tied to notoriety.

As for being a developer, being a team of one, for five callings with a ton of souls to scale for an expansion, good luck on that, not to mention maintenance along the way.

The lack of personnel is devastating, honestly.

So how is the "Active Player Crisis" going to be addressed?

[SonoMoenia]

Storm Legion had the Torvan, Lycini, for example. Once you got to decorated, you could buy some essences that were better than zone essences. When you became Venerated you were eligible to buy BiS of the time. Is this too much to ask for? Evidently!

Even in Storm Legion, the essences for notoriety were soon replaced by dropped essences. Sure it was not raid rifts. It was Hunt Rifts. How many times did we kill that dragon for a chance at the Charred something-something essence? Only then it was worse, because the RNG could also be made worse by players just being rude and not sharing or allowing fair rolls.

Discussion is always good though. Until there is actually evidence I can see every day when I log in, I'm not chiming in on this "Active Player Crisis". Population is less than Storm Legion? Yes. Game is dying? No. At least from what I see every day.

[beppebeppe]

An upgrade of the situation: i needed a T2 ring so i bought a “vostigar commander's ring jewelry box”. In it i found a “Tiberius’s ring of the hero”

I didn’t like it so I bought another ring box…and I find another Tiberius’s ring of the hero….

I didn’t like it so I bought another ring box…and I find another Tiberius’s ring of the hero….

I didn’t like it so I bought another ring box…and I find another Tiberius’s ring of the hero….

To summarise with 60.000 intel I bought 4 ring boxes and I often found the same bad hero ring.
This is not random , this is kidding us!
I don’t think to continue farming intel at this point, is completely useless