U71 Lamannia Preview Release Notes

[rabidfox]

Sword of shadows. Took me years to get it. 200+ runs. It sucked, by the time I got it, I was burnt out on melees.

At least SoS was a big upgrade compared to other items; but the RNG for getting one was a pain. They added QoL with raid runes. MD quest loot would be better off with the meh 20th completion loot lists than what it currently is. SSG has taken a big step backwards on what people are used to and the QoL work they've done on loot drops over the years; I have no desire to go back to the way MMOs were in the early days (& the way some grindfest MMOs still are).

 

[Kimbere]

Sword of shadows. Took me years to get it. 200+ runs. It sucked, by the time I got it, I was burnt out on melees.

To fix this problem, 3 years ago they revamped the Epic crafting system in Update 50. They added the ability to get the previously obscenely rare S/S/S system items via runes instead. That change was near universally well-received by the playerbase.

Here we are three years later watching them failing to learn from history and repeating the same itemization mistakes from the last "18 years"...

 

[Mindos]

How many rare loot table items have there been before Myth Drannor was released?
Not counting Jibbers or the fish swords?

 

[rabidfox]

How many rare loot table items have there been before Myth Drannor was released?
Not counting Jibbers or the fish swords?

And post 10/20/30 normalization of loot (because I'm sure if we go back far enough there's all sorts of other loot rules).

 

[Matuse]

How many rare loot table items have there been before Myth Drannor was released?
Not counting Jibbers or the fish swords?

Mysterious Bauble, and there are a bunch of rare drops that are not attached to any specific chests - luckblade, ioun stones, murlynd's spoon, etc.

 

[Anurakh]

Mysterious Bauble, and there are a bunch of rare drops that are not attached to any specific chests - luckblade, ioun stones, murlynd's spoon, etc.

Mysterious Bauble drop was normalized a while back when they normalized all other drops. They just left jibbers and little else as exceptions.

These devs forget their own history.

 

[Nickodeamous]

There is not nearly as much of a change in loot rarity as is being theorized in this discussion. Drop rates remain about the same as ever, it's just that similar to the couple of items in Myth Drannor that were designed to be particularly rare there are a couple of items here given the same treatment.

I'm sorry, but can you clarify the bolded statement? I really don't think Its a couple. I think it's way more than a couple.

Case in point: Golden Age Weapons.

In order to make an Undying weapon, you need the SAME Golden Age weapon. So, if I wanted to make some cool new Undying Handwraps, I would need 1 pair of Golden Age Handwraps. However, there are 49 different Golden Weapons I can pull from the loot table, making it even worse to pull exactly what I need.

Ok, no problem, SSG allowed us to pull 2 Golden Age weapons and trade them for 1 of our choice. I've run MD since the day after it was released (Aug 14th 2024). I have pulled 1 Golden Age weapon out of hundreds of chests. Let's say for sake, I've run 300 quests in total, and lets say that each quest including time it takes to run is 7 mins. that's 2,100 mins or 35 hours to pull 1 Golden Age Weapon (and not the one I need).

Now, lets say I have run the new Raid 15 times and now I have 1250 runes. Well, shoot, I cant get the weapon I need, because only 11 out of the 49 items from the Golden Age are already keyed as Undying versions, which you CAN buy for 1250. 15 runs of the raid take like 15-25 mins on average or lets just say an average of 300 mins or 5 hours. So, for the folks that CAN buy the weapons (those lucky 11), it takes 5 hours, but for somebody that does not have have an option to buy what they want, like me, its looking like somewhere between 35-70 hours to pull 2 Golden Age Weapons (since it took me 35 hours to get 1...) again, RNG being RNG, some are luckier than others.

Anyway, the point is that this is not fun. It has driven me away from playing the game that I love. This is not like previous years at all. It is painful and unfun. This is why I am taking a break and play 90% less than I used to (as have others).

I'm not sure what else to say, but SSG should do the right thing.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

I'm sorry, but can you clarify the bolded statement? I really don't think Its a couple. I think it's way more than a couple.

It's way more than a couple and unlike other chase items it wasn't a flavor or "nice to have", it was essential stats only available with an average 1600 trips to a rare.

That statement you quoted was somewhere between misleading and outright dishonest.

 

[Alternative]

Similar to what we've done for 18 years now, occasionally but infrequently we will put named loot into a rarer drop rate. We are aware of the feedback on some of the deliberately rarer Myth Drannor items. This pack brings in some of the augments that you've been asking to see in greater quantities, and we continue to consider your feedback regarding drop rates for any piece of content now and in the future.

There is not nearly as much of a change in loot rarity as is being theorized in this discussion. Drop rates remain about the same as ever, it's just that similar to the couple of items in Myth Drannor that were designed to be particularly rare there are a couple of items here given the same treatment.

What a load of dishonest BS. It's one thing to make an odd rare item like nebula or jibber, and another to make the full sets of artblade/warblade/crownblade with their respective weapons, golden age shields, about 10 of the better augments, one rune armr and tons of regular golden age weapons and caster golden age longswords.

It's pretty clear you want people to spend a lot more money on rerolls, no need to downplay it with semantics, "a couple items" yeah right mister.

 

[Felsyn]

So.. The mechanic that we hated in Myth Drannor, which is what we assumed would happen here - and has been confirmed by The Loot Guy is being done here with this pack - that you confirm is being done here, is not nearly as much of a change as what we thought and what you confirmed is going on here?

I'm confused.

Farming for rare loot items in Myth Drannor has been so thoroughly unfun that it has made actively hate those quests and do it less and I've played a lot of hours of DDO. You're saying you're giving the same treatment to certain items here. Which part of our theorizing was false, exactly?

reminds me of a "Do you guys not have phones?" moment

 

[Felsyn]

Similar to what we've done for 18 years now, occasionally but infrequently we will put named loot into a rarer drop rate. We are aware of the feedback on some of the deliberately rarer Myth Drannor items. This pack brings in some of the augments that you've been asking to see in greater quantities, and we continue to consider your feedback regarding drop rates for any piece of content now and in the future.

MD loot is not what you have been doing for 18 years. Most quests drop loot when you play them. MD does not.

if this rare loot table is similar to MD than the user metrics are leading you to think that burnout is something to chase.

 

[Potinha]

As far as I am aware the rarer items that have shown up, have gameplay implications, and dont have an alternative way to get them

2014: Cursed blade of jack jibbers

2024 (march): Fried Sword Fish, Frozen Sword Fish

2024 (august): 6x artblade armors, 6x crownblade armors, 6x warblade armors, 4x shield, 3x helms, 3x cloaks, 3x swords, rune arm, 7 artifacts, 6 augments, golden age weapons

And now in 2024 (december?): whatever is rare from this pack

This is a worrying trend

I do not like looting a chest hundreds of times, and not being any closer to getting the item that I want for a build. Especially when there are enough rare items that most builds want one.

I posted this over in the loot discussion, but I'll link it here since this conversation seems to also be about the rare loot


Thank you

I think I know u.

 

[Mary]

Seems a shame since its voiced already- couldnt we just redo the larcener quest with a new map like what was done for the Black Loch?

 

[Tharminator]

Similar to what we've done for 18 years now, occasionally but infrequently we will put named loot into a rarer drop rate. We are aware of the feedback on some of the deliberately rarer Myth Drannor items. This pack brings in some of the augments that you've been asking to see in greater quantities, and we continue to consider your feedback regarding drop rates for any piece of content now and in the future.

The difference is that in the past it was a unique or one off useful item. It was not one item from each quest in a pack including all of the artifacts. You don't pull a bauble it's not the end of being a caster. You can't pull half the items you need to update your tank it hurts not only you but your whole guild or raid party. Not offering accessible artifacts prevents upgrading and therefore progression. With the difference between 32 and 33 gear so minimal, some public raid groups aren't running the new raid as people don't see the time vs effort vs reward there. That even further frustrates us that need to run the new raid to possible pull raid gear. Wow never had problems like this...new update you wanted to run for new gear.

 

[Cordovan]

Seems a shame since its voiced already- couldnt we just redo the larcener quest with a new map like what was done for the Black Loch?

The issue has nothing to do with the map as in the thing that appears when you hit M, it's issues are fundamental to its base construction. The only way to fix this quest is to rebuild it from scratch. There does seem to be some interest in us perhaps re-making this quest at the expense of some other piece of new content however, based on some of the feedback on the forums.

 

[Gavaleus]

• Adjustments have been made to main party room of Partycrashes to improve framerate.

I went to the main party room in Partycrashers on both Live and Lamannia with the same settings (everything maxed out) and got exactly the same FPS in both versions. Visually I can see that the Lamannia version of the quest is different - several light sources have been taken out of the room making it darker than the Live version. But unfortunately it does not seem to have made a difference, at least for me. Elsewhere in the quest (or even if I turn towards a wall in the party room) I get a typical 144 FPS, but when I look towards the center of the party room my FPS drops to 39 on both versions.

 

[Mindos]

I went to the main party room in Partycrashers on both Live and Lamannia with the same settings (everything maxed out) and got exactly the same FPS in both versions.

You can always go to the Nvidia/AMD webpages and report a problem. Give them the game name, the map name (partycrashers) and a short description of the problem. You never know what might happen. (cough, cough, black loch...)

 

[Xgya]

As far as I am aware the rarer items that have shown up, have gameplay implications, and dont have an alternative way to get them

2014: Cursed blade of jack jibbers

2024 (march): Fried Sword Fish, Frozen Sword Fish

2024 (august): 6x artblade armors, 6x crownblade armors, 6x warblade armors, 4x shield, 3x helms, 3x cloaks, 3x swords, rune arm, 7 artifacts, 6 augments, golden age weapons

While I agree with the general sentiment, out of fairness, I have to mention you forgot one rather big addition that's both of the increased rarity variant AND got released after the drop rate changes.

Feytwisted.

Which, at the time it was released, got the same level of complaints, btw.
To the point people pretty much *immediately* started looking for workarounds.
Instead of making the items drop normally, SSG just... patched out the workarounds.

 

[Venatori d' Argonnessen]

While I agree with the general sentiment, out of fairness, I have to mention you forgot one rather big addition that's both of the increased rarity variant AND got released after the drop rate changes.

Feytwisted.

Which, at the time it was released, got the same level of complaints, btw.
To the point people pretty much *immediately* started looking for workarounds.
Instead of making the items drop normally, SSG just... patched out the workarounds.

You are right! I didn't. I thought about it, but did not for a couple reasons

Feytwisted has a couple things going for it that make it a *lot* better than this current system

1. Coolness factor. You see a feytwisted chest, and you *know* you are going to get something on the feytwisted table. It both looks quite neat, and conceptually is really interesting. The items that were originally aligned with one of the seasons got twisted into a similar but different season.

2. Since you know that a chest is feytwisted beforehand, its quite easy to toss up an lfm asking for help getting an item in a way that you can't do with the rare stuff from MD. If you want to power farm (and some people have fun doing this) you can pretty easily split up into individual parties and farm until you get one then rejoin, making it alot easier to get items.

3. Its universal. You can get a feytwisted chest *anywhere* in feywild. If each chest in feywild had its own feytwisted loot list, it would suck a lot more. It also cant ransack, so you arent ever going to just be stuck if you want an item for a build. This also makes it nicer for farming, since you arent locked into doing a single dungeon over and over and over

These combined make it a fair bit different from the current (and old) rarer loot systems that are in place

I wouldnt mind if the MD rare loot system was changed to Feytwisted 2.0 called WildMagic or something, but that does not seem likely at this point, hence my suggestions for other ways this system could be adjusted to be less unpleasant

I also wouldnt want a system like this for anything other than expansions. If regular quest loot is powerful enough to warrant being rare, why dont the items get tuned down to a more standard quest power level?

Cheers

 

[mikarddo]

Similar to what we've done for 18 years now, occasionally but infrequently we will put named loot into a rarer drop rate. We are aware of the feedback on some of the deliberately rarer Myth Drannor items. This pack brings in some of the augments that you've been asking to see in greater quantities, and we continue to consider your feedback regarding drop rates for any piece of content now and in the future.

I will go somewhat against the grain of the overall feedback here and will likely catch fire from doing so which is fine.

I do not consider some rare loot to be all bad - but only when viable alternatives exist so you are not prevented from moving partially forth.

In MD that means that the armors and weapons being rare is not all bad because alternativt also drop, even if somewhat inferior. Worse for the weapons as the Golden Age have powerful upgrades but alternatives from Isle of Dread or Vecna still exist so you can upgrade the rest of your gear while you wait for that lucky drop - and the 2:1 swap is very useful. The rarity is still on the low side though. Similarly, the 15% hp cloak being rare isnt all bad as the effect is extra special and there are +10% alternatives in 3 set augments or the feat.

Still in MD, however, the spell crit augment and the minor artifacts being rare is plain bad as no alternatives exist. If you want to go forth with MD gear you have no choice but to endlessly farm with a very real risk of burning out.

So, you need to consider much more which items to make rare so only the ones with viable alternatives are made so - and you should reduce the rarity somewhat.

All that said - I still prefer the base items to drop regularly and having +mythic, +reaper and +card be the rare factor. You dont need to make base items rare in order to get people to replay the quests - upgrading cards and +m/+r is plenty incencitive.

The only good news I see in your post is that the new pack with include lunar and solar augments as well - including some of the rare ones from MD. I really hope that includes the spell crit augment as that one is a true pain to farm and I wastly prefer runnings quests to running the wilderness.