Would you have purchased MD if the rare loot system had been disclosed in the release notes?
- Thread starter Yeet
- Start date
OJ rushed for 11,236 yards over his career, during 12 game seasons.
Nickodeamous
Well-known member
I pulled the diamond sword today in FF2. It was locked in a chest full of monsters. I won and got the sword. It was part of the normal progression of the game.
What SSG has done is take run of the mill items that are essentially +1 or +2 here or there and made them rare. The normal progression from lev 32 to lev 34 is what, +1 or +2? So, basically, the normal progression is now behind a ridiculous wall, which hardly improves anybody's toon in the least. Would I be happy dealing 10k vs. 9.5k ? Sure! but it ain't game changing...period.
Now, take those rare items and juice them to give us +3/+4? Now they are worth being rare. As of now, there is no combination that makes me want to spend a dime more on this game after shoveling out $130 for nothing more than lag and frustration. But, that's me, and I always say to each their own. I choose not to buy anything until this system is abolished
For the folks defending it, that's ok. That's your prerogative. For me, its standard and not special at all to be called rare. The word rare should mean something. I feel like we are in maintenance mode...I just wanna play the game that I have enjoyed for so many years, and this expansion has really turned me off. I am not paying to reroll anything. It just isn't worth my $$.
What SSG has done is take run of the mill items that are essentially +1 or +2 here or there and made them rare. The normal progression from lev 32 to lev 34 is what, +1 or +2? So, basically, the normal progression is now behind a ridiculous wall, which hardly improves anybody's toon in the least. Would I be happy dealing 10k vs. 9.5k ? Sure! but it ain't game changing...period.
Now, take those rare items and juice them to give us +3/+4? Now they are worth being rare. As of now, there is no combination that makes me want to spend a dime more on this game after shoveling out $130 for nothing more than lag and frustration. But, that's me, and I always say to each their own. I choose not to buy anything until this system is abolished
For the folks defending it, that's ok. That's your prerogative. For me, its standard and not special at all to be called rare. The word rare should mean something. I feel like we are in maintenance mode...I just wanna play the game that I have enjoyed for so many years, and this expansion has really turned me off. I am not paying to reroll anything. It just isn't worth my $$.
Teh_Troll
Master of Baiting
But he never found the real killers, for that reason he'll never be hall of fame.
Well, you're definitely not going to be part of any solution, on the contrary so it seems.
Any case, if you can't respect the voices of the people that do not agree with this system, good for you. You can continue to enjoy playing in the ruins of DDO.
Shear-buckler
Well-known member
Maybe people dont like DDO turning into a gacha game?
Whats next, raid loot in the daily dice?
Personally I was lucky enough not to want any of the rare items. I can still see that it is an aweful system designed soley to sell moree astral shards for rerolls.
PersonMan
Well-known member
There was a time long ago when named items were not substantially more powerful than random gen items (with few exceptions). Iirc 3d6 extra damage used to be upgraded epic raid weapon exclusive. Farming gear did not generally feel essential, it was just a cool thing to get.
@rabidfox I know you did well with the first life push raiding. I am curious how well it would go with purely w/e random gen loot (not farmed gear). Back at 20 cap I figure it would've gone just fine so long as people had their DR breakers.
@rabidfox I know you did well with the first life push raiding. I am curious how well it would go with purely w/e random gen loot (not farmed gear). Back at 20 cap I figure it would've gone just fine so long as people had their DR breakers.
Titus Ovid
Mover and Shaker
Love this.
flacracker0080
Member
I don't buy expansions for loot. I have never cared for rare/named loot in this game and never will.
Teh_Troll
Master of Baiting
I don't care if my car has tires, it still looks good in my driveway.
That is not your driveway, it's an exit.
Positive thinking
Well-known member
Are you sure the driveway isnt a patch of grass in front of a trailer.
I am not sure i even pictured that, my first picture in response would always be “and where is this homely bridge above your head you speak of”
DDO is developed to fill needs, just like our current society only the top 1% have access to the greatest shinnies and they pay big time for that, so only the biggest of the spenders(the 1%) shall spend enough on rerolls in order to have all the games newest and best shinnies, let the 1% spend and let all the jones’s chase them trying to be the GOAT’s. I support this torture implemented by SSG, we all live with SSG torture i play with repeaters in heroic for example.
Rabidfox asked what the benefit to the game is, money money money, and the same biggest cryers and complainers are still playing and paying. Which i can relate to partually I complain about nerfs yet i am still here playing, so apparently i like the torture too.
woq
Well-known member
On MD, looting and heroic/legendary progression of going through the quests, WALL OF TEXT INCOMING! (I'm really bored and need to burn time):
Regular quests way too many crests and levers and long corridors and walking. I still very much like Oghmas Song, Book Burning, Seeds of Decay, Portal to Below, Zulkir's Plan. Honestly - many of the quests are quite nice to me standalone, but together theres just way too much crests and levers. And then you end up with Times Long Past and Key to the Mythal as the finale and you're just COMPLETELY burned out on the crests at that point and want it all to end.
Heroic playthrough:
Fun, fast, good xp. Run between quests is a bit long, but so is in GH and we still do it cuz its easy fun and fast. Once you have a route and path for MD heroic saga, its good and fun xp imo and the augs provide a good item set from 13 =>. You don't need it, but tweaking those gear setups if you don't have a fully minmaxed existing ravenloft / sharn setup is fun to me.
Gear is ok. Rare gear is not needed. Rare gear does not matter. It's fun! Had a good time honestly, currently fitting Heroic MD on my heroic TR playthroughs with a skip on times long past.
Legendary playthroughs:
R10 is awful if you don't have fort bypass. You just don't do damage. That's it. You just don't. GG. Reroll toon. Saves are very high, so most non-specialized endgame toons are out of the play. I have mixed feelings about it - I like that fort bypass is relevant again, but I also hate that I must have over 100% of it because there are so many high fort undead in MD. But it also made niche characters like Turners absolutely terrific again which is lovely. Good change of pace, but honestly I'm kinda over undead a bit? IoD, Vecna, Myth Drannor have been quite undead heavy to me. I wish they used non-skeletons a bit more. Zombies, wraiths. I quite liked the wraith assassin mobs and we need more of that type of monster, especially if they also get teleport with AI that targets backline. Time to give ranged toons and pikers a run for their money.
Repeating the quests over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and still not getting what you want has ruined every single quest in the saga for me with the exception of the really fast ones without rares I want or alternatively ones that are unique and not too abrasive (Oghmas and the chaos of Seeds of Decay on high reaper I quite like for instance).
Quest loot:
I really like the Sun/Moon augment system _on paper_ but the rare augments give it a bad taste, for all the reasons contemplated in all these threads so far by a bunch of different people. I still have not moved on to quest loot gear from MD on my toons other than a few individual pieces and I have many toons and I have farmed MD a decent amount. Not as much as the heaviest grinders, but well I'm probably over a thousand pulls in overall with 1 golden weapon to my name.
The idea is great, execution left wanting imo.
I have also stopped running Legendary MD for the most part - I burned out on it. I sometimes do it to help other ppl farm something, but I don't look to farm it myself anymore, I don't go to solo it anymore, and I don't enter Voices of the Dead anymore at all if I can help it.
There are some key items that are really nice, the standouts:
#1 Absorb booties : they are every so lovely.
#2 The Insightful caster stat belts with +3 profane stat and +6 insightful stat - these are a great "building block" for people only entering the tetris.
#3 The goggles - oh the goggles. They are fantastic. All of them - except the sad Caster ones with inferior stats that also go AWOL when you look the other way. Losing the 10% mag efficiency is a disappointment after you cursed, auged and god forbid reaper boosted them............................
Honestly - I think the enrage goggles would have been one of the good rare drop pool items if the rare drop pools were just a tad less rare.
Fallen/Golden weapons:
Only the caster loot is usable in Legendary. All the melee/ranged items - golden weapons included - are ~useless compared to old existing items even not counting LGS items unless you upgrade them via the raid mechanic. Basically our gearing when it comes to offensive weapons is locked behind both rare loot AND raid which is absolutely a travesty. They are strong, but I like to think they are too rare for that. They could be /more rare/ than regular loot but they went too far with the rarity, imo. Some people I've seen have been lucky and are fairly happy - I'm over a thousand pulls in across quests and slayers and I haven't been able to interact with the weapons in Legendary tier in any way. That has to be excessive...
Summary of quest loot:
Some standouts! But too many items in rare pool. Poor choices in what items are rare and what is not. "How rare" is TOO RARE why is the loot still screaming when we loot it? It's not even bloody yet, breathing and walking out of our chests before we get to open it.
Raid:
Not enough use of the cool monsters in the raid. Disappointing. It is such a missed oppourtunity too. It feels like a mixmatch of old raids rather than a cool MD raid. I like how deadzones play a part there. I like the necromancers / dead magic undead guard use, everything else is a little bit lacking.
Why is there a Marilith?
Why isn't it a Hook Horror + Helmed Horror duo or red wizard on a ledge like MA that keeps respawning undead guards and you gotta deal with more than a buggy snake callback from Sands raid era? The poison mechanic would work fine on a necro/blightcaster enemy boss monster too... Why is it a marilith?
Why are they Slaads and Vrocks instead of the Myth Drannor monsters like Carrion Crawlers and Nothic Scroungers or heck even Displacer Beasts that we haven't seen properly introduced in raid context - ready to absolutely kickpunchclawrip all the melees apart and to the next realm? Where are the scroungers? Why another undead dragon doing dragon things after so many dragon raids? Where are the wraiths that skulk in the backlines and devour safespot dwellers/seekers?
......
But the loot...
Is awesome. I love the raid loot. In particular I really like:
#1: the Large Shield - best thing since Sliced Bread. My favourite item in the game at the moment.
#2 - the Healer amulet, about time for some good ass quality lore and healer artifacts.
#3 the CC Kukri to compete with Lab Edge for some niche activity. Very good swapper / offhand / swap fili set holder item.
#4 The Footfalls (even if they gotta compete with absorb booties, I actually think this is a good thing!)
Sealed in Undeath and Sealed in Fire systems are dope. I very much like all of that.
TLDR:
- Heroic questing = fun, fast, good, almost too easy?
- Legendary questing = fort bypass and saves become a build problem, too many undead, too many crests, too many levers, by times long past and key to the mythal you're burned out on that type of mechanic.
- Rare loot - the beatings will continue until morale improves.
- Raid is a missed oppourtunity in terms of mechanics and monster selection but I really like the loot.
Do I regret buying it? No.
Have I had fun? Yes.
Have I run out of fun? Quests: yes. Raid: no. I still like looting the end chest there and sometimes shenanigans ensue in that raid.
Would I buy another one like it? No.
I think the loot system as it was designed and executed is both predatory and unfun and the devs reaching out to community on this topic has been underwhelming at best and ranging from comically bad to depressing at worst. Not reacting to the player response when the loot odds were datamined and later proven atrocious has been incredibly disappointing to me. The 0,77% odds in WoW mentioned earlier are good odds compared to what we are playing with - I'd have my **** if we were that well off
Thx for attending to my ted talk.
Regular quests way too many crests and levers and long corridors and walking. I still very much like Oghmas Song, Book Burning, Seeds of Decay, Portal to Below, Zulkir's Plan. Honestly - many of the quests are quite nice to me standalone, but together theres just way too much crests and levers. And then you end up with Times Long Past and Key to the Mythal as the finale and you're just COMPLETELY burned out on the crests at that point and want it all to end.
Heroic playthrough:
Fun, fast, good xp. Run between quests is a bit long, but so is in GH and we still do it cuz its easy fun and fast. Once you have a route and path for MD heroic saga, its good and fun xp imo and the augs provide a good item set from 13 =>. You don't need it, but tweaking those gear setups if you don't have a fully minmaxed existing ravenloft / sharn setup is fun to me.
Gear is ok. Rare gear is not needed. Rare gear does not matter. It's fun! Had a good time honestly, currently fitting Heroic MD on my heroic TR playthroughs with a skip on times long past.
Legendary playthroughs:
R10 is awful if you don't have fort bypass. You just don't do damage. That's it. You just don't. GG. Reroll toon. Saves are very high, so most non-specialized endgame toons are out of the play. I have mixed feelings about it - I like that fort bypass is relevant again, but I also hate that I must have over 100% of it because there are so many high fort undead in MD. But it also made niche characters like Turners absolutely terrific again which is lovely. Good change of pace, but honestly I'm kinda over undead a bit? IoD, Vecna, Myth Drannor have been quite undead heavy to me. I wish they used non-skeletons a bit more. Zombies, wraiths. I quite liked the wraith assassin mobs and we need more of that type of monster, especially if they also get teleport with AI that targets backline. Time to give ranged toons and pikers a run for their money.
Repeating the quests over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and still not getting what you want has ruined every single quest in the saga for me with the exception of the really fast ones without rares I want or alternatively ones that are unique and not too abrasive (Oghmas and the chaos of Seeds of Decay on high reaper I quite like for instance).
Quest loot:
I really like the Sun/Moon augment system _on paper_ but the rare augments give it a bad taste, for all the reasons contemplated in all these threads so far by a bunch of different people. I still have not moved on to quest loot gear from MD on my toons other than a few individual pieces and I have many toons and I have farmed MD a decent amount. Not as much as the heaviest grinders, but well I'm probably over a thousand pulls in overall with 1 golden weapon to my name.
The idea is great, execution left wanting imo.
I have also stopped running Legendary MD for the most part - I burned out on it. I sometimes do it to help other ppl farm something, but I don't look to farm it myself anymore, I don't go to solo it anymore, and I don't enter Voices of the Dead anymore at all if I can help it.
There are some key items that are really nice, the standouts:
#1 Absorb booties : they are every so lovely.
#2 The Insightful caster stat belts with +3 profane stat and +6 insightful stat - these are a great "building block" for people only entering the tetris.
#3 The goggles - oh the goggles. They are fantastic. All of them - except the sad Caster ones with inferior stats that also go AWOL when you look the other way. Losing the 10% mag efficiency is a disappointment after you cursed, auged and god forbid reaper boosted them............................
Honestly - I think the enrage goggles would have been one of the good rare drop pool items if the rare drop pools were just a tad less rare.
Fallen/Golden weapons:
Only the caster loot is usable in Legendary. All the melee/ranged items - golden weapons included - are ~useless compared to old existing items even not counting LGS items unless you upgrade them via the raid mechanic. Basically our gearing when it comes to offensive weapons is locked behind both rare loot AND raid which is absolutely a travesty. They are strong, but I like to think they are too rare for that. They could be /more rare/ than regular loot but they went too far with the rarity, imo. Some people I've seen have been lucky and are fairly happy - I'm over a thousand pulls in across quests and slayers and I haven't been able to interact with the weapons in Legendary tier in any way. That has to be excessive...
Summary of quest loot:
Some standouts! But too many items in rare pool. Poor choices in what items are rare and what is not. "How rare" is TOO RARE why is the loot still screaming when we loot it? It's not even bloody yet, breathing and walking out of our chests before we get to open it.
Raid:
Not enough use of the cool monsters in the raid. Disappointing. It is such a missed oppourtunity too. It feels like a mixmatch of old raids rather than a cool MD raid. I like how deadzones play a part there. I like the necromancers / dead magic undead guard use, everything else is a little bit lacking.
Why is there a Marilith?
Why isn't it a Hook Horror + Helmed Horror duo or red wizard on a ledge like MA that keeps respawning undead guards and you gotta deal with more than a buggy snake callback from Sands raid era? The poison mechanic would work fine on a necro/blightcaster enemy boss monster too... Why is it a marilith?
Why are they Slaads and Vrocks instead of the Myth Drannor monsters like Carrion Crawlers and Nothic Scroungers or heck even Displacer Beasts that we haven't seen properly introduced in raid context - ready to absolutely kickpunchclawrip all the melees apart and to the next realm? Where are the scroungers? Why another undead dragon doing dragon things after so many dragon raids? Where are the wraiths that skulk in the backlines and devour safespot dwellers/seekers?
......
But the loot...
Is awesome. I love the raid loot. In particular I really like:
#1: the Large Shield - best thing since Sliced Bread. My favourite item in the game at the moment.
#2 - the Healer amulet, about time for some good ass quality lore and healer artifacts.
#3 the CC Kukri to compete with Lab Edge for some niche activity. Very good swapper / offhand / swap fili set holder item.
#4 The Footfalls (even if they gotta compete with absorb booties, I actually think this is a good thing!)
Sealed in Undeath and Sealed in Fire systems are dope. I very much like all of that.
TLDR:
- Heroic questing = fun, fast, good, almost too easy?
- Legendary questing = fort bypass and saves become a build problem, too many undead, too many crests, too many levers, by times long past and key to the mythal you're burned out on that type of mechanic.
- Rare loot - the beatings will continue until morale improves.
- Raid is a missed oppourtunity in terms of mechanics and monster selection but I really like the loot.
Do I regret buying it? No.
Have I had fun? Yes.
Have I run out of fun? Quests: yes. Raid: no. I still like looting the end chest there and sometimes shenanigans ensue in that raid.
Would I buy another one like it? No.
I think the loot system as it was designed and executed is both predatory and unfun and the devs reaching out to community on this topic has been underwhelming at best and ranging from comically bad to depressing at worst. Not reacting to the player response when the loot odds were datamined and later proven atrocious has been incredibly disappointing to me. The 0,77% odds in WoW mentioned earlier are good odds compared to what we are playing with - I'd have my **** if we were that well off
Thx for attending to my ted talk.
Mindos
CHAOTIC EVIL
Off-Topic: Can trolls be Undead?
Teh_Troll
Master of Baiting
We can be anything we want to be.
rabidfox
The People's Champion
Set bonuses are huge part of gear these days. Giving up named items and using only RNG/crafted gear would be a fairly massive loss of stats and would make doing non-easy content way more difficult. As much as I complain about the sun/moon rare augments, I'd love to see RNG gear have sun/moon slots on them (and for the slot to persit thru blanking them for crafting); it would allow for some interesting alternatives to using named items.
rabidfox
The People's Champion
This isn't how DDO had been working in general for loot. Anyone has been able to farm gear in fairly reasonable time frames for years - especially since S/S/S loot revamp (without paying for shards/etc.), not this 1% spiel of yours. There's a lot hypocrisy involved in how you want SSG to "torture" folks you don't like while complaining about the things SSG does to stuff you enjoy.DDO is developed to fill needs, just like our current society only the top 1% have access to the greatest shinnies and they pay big time for that, so only the biggest of the spenders(the 1%) shall spend enough on rerolls in order to have all the games newest and best shinnies, let the 1% spend and let all the jones’s chase them trying to be the GOAT’s. I support this torture implemented by SSG, we all live with SSG torture i play with repeaters in heroic for example.
Rabidfox asked what the benefit to the game is, money money money, and the same biggest cryers and complainers are still playing and paying. Which i can relate to partually I complain about nerfs yet i am still here playing, so apparently i like the torture too.
Positive thinking
Well-known member
You are right i am content with them torturing end game perfect loot looters regardless of how it makes those people feel. Why? Well thats easy as the exact people complaining about it are the same names of forumites that were quite content with nerfs that affected my gameplay and others i know that were tortured by these changes in the name of balance and lag reduction.
Whats good for the goose is good for the gander and the perfect loot looters goose is cooked in this case moving forward. I have not seen one of these people feel any sympathy for those playing with repeaters in heroics.
In short i am happy overall with the newest set of low drop rates and hope it continues to be the way of the future, keep the rerolls coming and suck up all those hordes of astral shards, keep those jones’ers chasing to keep up with the truly top 1% in the game, spend every last penny in their real life bank account, no sympathy felt for their loss of enjoyment.
It simply is the butterfly effect.