SSG: Please confirm if there will be Rare Loot Mechanic for "The Chill of Ravenloft"

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

From my end it's pretty simple. I'm not complaining because I didn't get what I wanted. I'm complaining because I spent so much on shard rerolling that I didn't even feel good when I did get what I wanted.

I'd be objectively stupid to want to repeat that process.

I've also no issue with some chase items being hard to get. The artefact rings for example. But when it's basic items that were equivalently not rare before, and basic things like augments, thats a problem from my perspective.

Hopefully this can be clarified soon. I'm not spending anything before it is, and if I don't like what is clarified the best SSG can hope for from me is a basic purchase.

But everyone can make their own decisions, of course. The only folks I'm going to criticise are SSG. YMMV

 

[Sylvado]

52. play 5. I might have issues

Well I have 38, in addition to the 30 there is one for pots, one for scrolls, a crafter, one to fill gems, a couple for xp stones

 

[droid327]

If the answer were no, we would've been told no lol. So the answer is definitely yes, with a possible "but."

So the answer is yes

To be fair, unless the answer was an unequivocal "no", without even the possibility of someone accusing them of even one piece of semi-rare loot, they're not going to just say no. The playerbase is too pedantic about treating every dev response as absolute gospel and a binding contract for eternity

 

[Rusty_helmet]

To be fair, unless the answer was an unequivocal "no", without even the possibility of someone accusing them of even one piece of semi-rare loot, they're not going to just say no. The playerbase is too pedantic about treating every dev response as absolute gospel and a binding contract for eternity

I'm well past fairness. Fair is reserved for people who have built up some level of trust.

 

[cdbd3rd]

.....

And I say that from a professional and personal perspective. <Points at the degree in psychology with a focus in decision-making & choice on her wall.> If you drop by PAX, I can sometimes be found hanging out at the Geek Therapeutics or Take This! booths if I'm not with Standing Stone. :3 Always happy to talk this stuff.

Hehheh. Some kindred spirit here.
Degree in Psychology, works for a game company.
Me, degrees in Programming and other stuff, becomes a wholesale route merchandiser for a dairy company.

 

[Elminster]

Degree in Psychology actually makes perfect sense for an MMO/video game company.

Programming even I can teach you in a weekend, that Psychology side I have no idea what’s what.

 

[LunaticFringe]

Just wanted to drop by here to say you'll be hearing more from folks around the rare drops in the coming days. We don't want the response to be limited to forums only and a few folks want to offer perspectives and thoughts to y'all.

Also, this is a bit off-topic, but I noticed this while reading the thread...


I am always thrilled to see people asking questions about how failure, choice, and decision-making show up in games. But, I should provide a word of caution about asking these types of questions to an AI: It's a bit like asking a mirror to tell you how it reflects. The mirror can't answer that and neither can the AI. The AI is a walking construction of choice psychology, and choice / decision-making psychology is not perfect, under-researched, and sometimes under appreciated, imho.

The long and the short of it is AI misses a lot of important research, notes, and findings around these topics and they have a bad tendency to reduce conclusions down to something that's too simple. This is one of those "that's too simple, so it glosses over seriously important details." 50% as a starting number is handy, but it's not a benchmark.

It also can't tell you what it doesn't know, and AIs aren't usually trained to know "XCOM is a great game to visit if you want to consider failure and probability's role in design." That universe is a wonderful example of augmenting probability to match play, but an AI isn't going to easily associate XCOM with probability/failure. It will happily associate XCOM with aliens though, because that's what it knows of XCOM. It's restricted to primacy of information and a static snapshot so it can attempt to construct "the best possible answer."

Another quick example of why AIs sometimes fail at this stuff is because they rely on one type of decision-making model when these days there are several different models that experts are working with. Not all models are ready for tech use and each design has a different perspective that leads to sometimes similar and sometimes wildly different outcomes.

And I say that from a professional and personal perspective. <Points at the degree in psychology with a focus in decision-making & choice on her wall.> If you drop by PAX, I can sometimes be found hanging out at the Geek Therapeutics or Take This! booths if I'm not with Standing Stone. :3 Always happy to talk this stuff.

Glad to see the interest in AI - my wifey routinely teaches a course in law school on AI and the law. She's also becoming nationally-known in the field. Sadly, she doesn't play DDO. :(

 

[Kimbere]

Or he's a bot. I'm betting a bot.

Can bots wear socks? Or maybe do socks have bots?

 

[Abax11]

Is not that hard either, i don't like the rare loot mechanic -> i won't spend my money on the new expansion. Other folks likes it or don't care about it? Great is your money and you can do wherever you want. Would love a bit of transparency but until that moment i can simply do something else in the game or play another game.

Considering I don't have any advantage doing a pre order i can wait to make a decision, silence also speaks.

btw not only people on forums use this as a factor to buy or not to buy

 

[Hobgoblin]

Great . . . ANOTHER dex race . . .

it's a str race!


still an elf but str this time

 

[Bogrot]

The term "hard" is being used when trying to obtain the rare loot, myself I would use the term "tedious"; this is one word that should never be associated with any game.

 

[Oliphant]

I feel like for years many folks see a lot of DDO tactics as micro (and macro) transaction abuse that is probably necessary given low population, and so still support the game with $, still support game overall in their words. Don't mistake past escalation of this kind of thing evidence you can keep escalating and escalating without eventually hitting the absorption barrier and killing the game.

 

[Rusty_helmet]

Few of the biggest and loudest detractors with some really sizzling commentary. I'll take solace in knowing my worst day will be better than your best. Being optimistic and full of love and joy is a great way to live not that these words make any sense to you.

I now am disinclined to root for you to get your way. Your continued misery brings me comfort and additionally joy. Every post of sadness and unfulfilled wanting I read will be like finding yet another easy to obtain rare loot. Easy for me, not so much for you. I like that.

Sure dude. We are warning about what happens when you anger the largest paying part of the player base. You can keep defending SSG all you like and hoping that the devs continue on this track. I'm just saying that no amount of 64 bit servers or anything else will save them from the continued mass exodus that has occurred since MD. We have laid out explicitly how to handle rare loot. SSG insists on doing it in the most punitively obnoxious way there is. And that has resulted in a lot of lost dollars and people. People are money in this game. And if you look at the DDO Audit, the player numbers have been dropping significantly year over year.

But keep enjoying your free to play experience while you can.

 

[Rusty_helmet]

I feel like for years many folks see a lot of DDO tactics as micro (and macro) transaction abuse that is probably necessary given low population, and so still support the game with $, still support game overall in their words. Don't mistake past escalation of this kind of thing evidence you can keep escalating and escalating without eventually hitting the absorption barrier and killing the game.

Especially given the world economy. Everything is more expensive and all of those things are competing for my same dollars. I feel for you folk that are living paycheck to paycheck.

 

[Cmecu]

They did fix it. Didnt you see the $80 patron coffers that come with 10 extra shared bank spaces?

I am obviously being sarcastic. If that Dev who works on the store is watching, we need bank space and the coffers were a slap in the face. I felt totally insulted by the cost and the amount provided.

Our hope for some kind of bank space fixing passed when the late Humblefriar passed. He didnt work at SSG that long but man was he dedicated to the game, and was eager to help fix many of the issues. Banking was one of them.


Its sad SSG cant make default shared bank like 1000 spaces or even more.
Imagine having a huge shared bank space,
get rid of BTC items and
get rid of the TR cache.
I cant imagine how much system resources this would free up from people having to log in and out all day log trying to find items scattered among 30 bank mules.

 

[Solarpower]

We are warning about what happens when you anger the largest paying part of the player base.

Yep, here we go with the standard delusions about being "largest" part of player base.
As if per schedule.

 

[Rusty_helmet]

Our hope for some kind of bank space fixing passed when the late Humblefriar passed. He didnt work at SSG that long but man was he dedicated to the game, and was eager to help fix many of the issues. Banking was one of them.


Its sad SSG cant make default shared bank like 1000 spaces or even more.
Imagine having a huge shared bank space,
get rid of BTC items and
get rid of the TR cache.
I cant imagine how much system resources this would free up from people having to log in and out all day log trying to find items scattered among 30 bank mules.

There are a LOT more things to be sad about with DDO than this.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

Yep, here we go with the standard delusions about being "largest" part of player base.
As if per schedule.

I'm 6'4. Pretty large I reckon.

 

[erethizon1]

While an exaggeration, it seems like every post and thread is about rare loot. When you look it is about the same 20 or so posters complaining the rare loot is both to hard to get and not good enough to be rare, but still game breaking for them to not be able to obtain. Looks like about 5-6 other fomites joined me on the pro rare side of the fence, or at least stop crying about it side of the fence.

Will be great to hear the rare loot is here again forever, but you all have made some minor tweaks. This will be the eventual answer and they have the feed back they crave to fall into a whole new wave of how dare the game take a for profit stance and the 20 or so posters with about 0 real data know better how to monetize the game.

As I said before though, please make the loot easier to get for them to at least save the forums form this most recent and most annoying waive of doomsayers. The 2025 end of days problem.

The game is better now than it has ever been and every time there is an issue like this that a couple dozen posters get angry about and rant insistently about, when the few of them with backbone really do stop playing and posting, it gets better again.

You seem to have counted every person on your side while significantly rounding down the number of people that are against rare loot. You are more or less correct that there are 20 loudest people on the against side, but far more than that post once then quietly stopped buying anything or have already left in frustration. This isn't a 3 to 1 issue as your post implies. Very few people want to not get the loot they are looking for. Very few people want it to take 6+ months to get a basic version of an item that is so rare they will never see a mythic +1 their entire lives, much less a version with a good bonus.

We already have rare loot. I have a copy of most of the items in the game and less than 1% have a +3/+4 mythic with a reaper bonus. That is rare loot and we have had it for years. Not being able to find a non-bonused version of an item needed to complete a gear set isn't an enjoyable experience and doesn't make the game more fun.

 

[Rusty_helmet]

Yep, here we go with the standard delusions about being "largest" part of player base.
As if per schedule.

Largest? Not hardly. But we make up the vast majority of the dollars spent on the game and keep it afloat.