Loot complaint

[gopher65]

Tip 5: "Man, I can kill those things in healer mode": my guild mate Felicia was cleric / zillion of other stuff and would kill everything possible without dying. Being healer + something offensive is pretty powerful in this game.

Healer =! Cleric

I'm a Healer + nothing offensive. Healers also don't have the armour of a cleric. Clerics and battlemages stand supreme as the two best multiclasser mass killers in the game.

Healer/Ranger/Druid and I'm currently levelling up Spiritist (77 now). I have no offensive power in Healer mode at all, and I can kill most anything one on one on the satyr islands without stunning it to death (blue vexes kill me unless I hit them with 2 stuns). I have no techs for melee weapons on my armour or jewlery, and the same base skill as a dragon. I have no melee abilities except Crush and Powerstyle. If I can do it than so can any level 100 dragon in tier IV unteched scales. They have more strength, same weapon skill, more health, more armour, and more specials. You just can't jump in and rush a mob head on. You'll die if you do that. So would I (and I do). You have to be *smart* about how you attack powerful mobs. That's the key. Though I will say, being a Ranger as well as a Healer it is easier to kill the darned things with a crossbow than with a mace.

[Vahrokh]

Healer =! Cleric

Yes, but it's only your choice not being one, you are "weak" for your own will. Even willing to not permastun them is still something you decided not to use.

I could not become "more powerful" instead.

I suggest you roll a melee dragon and find out yourself how easy it is.
You might escape it and even get some drops, with a cost in hoard well beyond the gain you get.

Or maybe the US servers got modded into easy mode, in Unity we had a somewhat different game after all.

[gopher65]

Yes, but it's only your choice not being one, you are "weak" for your own will. Even willing to not permastun them is still something you decided not to use.

I could not become "more powerful" instead.

I suggest you roll a melee dragon and find out yourself how easy it is.
You might escape it and even get some drops, with a cost in hoard well beyond the gain you get.

Or maybe the US servers got modded into easy mode, in Unity we had a somewhat different game after all.

My point wasn't Dragon VS Biped. My point was that using the skills and abilities of a single classed healer in unteched gear I could still kill anything on those islands but a Blue Vex. If I can do it, then a dragon with superior stats can too, if the player is smart.

*Anyone* who rushes headlong into a group of Satyr Island mobs will be killed. If you get 2 striders on you, pretty much anyone dies unless they are reaaaaally lucky, no matter how many classes or how much armour you have.

My point wasn't that dragons are strong or weak. It was that an intelligent play-style can make up for almost any deficient your character might have. So whining that you don't have teched gear yet is no excuse. Choose your fights carefully and figure out the weaknesses of the mob you are fighting. If you do that, you will beat it.

[Dhalin]

Good points.

But a 100% drop rate (1 to 2 comp drops per kill) isn't just me going "omg another one of those??". It's me going ".... that's just stupid".

And I'm on Chaos.

And you're a *dragon* and you can't kill tier V undead 0_o? Man, I can kill those things in healer mode(1 vs 1 only of course), and I have 800 1hc skill and 600 strength and 1700 armour. Someone isn't eating their daily recommended allotment of hoard I see. Those food guides exist for a reason you know!

I am a Lv100 DCRA, Lv54 DRAG.

No, I cannot kill Tier V undead. I can, however, wear T5 scales, and I would like them teched, but it is a bit too expensive, so I decided to settle for T5 scales teched with TIII techs, but as I said, my difficulty in getting ahold of Imbued Armor Splinters has kinda paused my progress in doing so.

[gopher65]

Ah that's different. A level 100 biped crafter would be in the same situation. The game just isn't meant for pure crafters, whatever the box trys to say:P.

[Frith-Rae]

Seems like it woudln't be TOO hard to get an easy balance between what it was before, and what it may be now (don tknow, I've not farmed for tech in over a year because of how bad it was before...).

1- Obviously difficulty should go up by tier, to me - Tier I tech pieces shoudln't be, IMO, that hard to farm - some farming (maybe 1/2 or 1/3 drops). Don't kill the low level players - those techs are going to be replaced. As opposed to Tier V or VI parts, which may never be replaced, and so could have a pretty dang rare drop (though still shoudn't take you know months to get 6).

2- perhaps even slightly more farm,ing for 'popular" techs, and less farmign for not so great techs. I mean there are some stats that just don't effect that much, and some stats that are for some players "Must have on every single piece". The LESS popular ones, the ones that don't do as much - their comps are EASIER to get (thereby if someoen doesnt' want to spend the time to farm doesnt get NO tech but they can settle for something less beneficial, but still helpful). The ones that everyone wants - those comps don't drop as fast.

However, overall - the balance needs to be for effort over time.

It does NOT need to be how it was - at level 40/50 whatever I spent like 20 hours farming regular social wolves to get like 12 fangs or whaterver at the time. I couldnt' solo a pack, so I was taking carefully 2-3,a nd one night for three hours my guildies helped. That is ridiculous. And the sad part is you're only getting away with it in this game because we have not much else to do...*sighs*

However, if many are saying it needs to be not "ooh get four in 10 minutes" drop for soemthing that only takes 10 comps - I do agree. I totally see Gopher's point in making somethings enough of a bit of a pain that you woudl consider paying someoen else a reasonable price for farming them FOR you *(or buying theirs)* than doing it yourself.

The problem was before unless one wanted to spend literally a month (at least for some of us dragons) farming comps for a scale set, every single night - then they'd have to spend the time farming up the gold to AFFORD the comps instead - from players (I dont evern LOOK at Nadia). It wasn't a balance, it was a PITA either way.

I think absolutely there can be a balance between "enough pain in the rear" that someone who doesn't really want to spend days farming can afford to pay the prices other playres change - but not so MUCH of a eye-bleeding-farm that htey aren't too exhorbitantly priced - OR don't take weeks to get.


HOWEVER - I do not feel that teched stuff should be considered the "phat lootz" of Hz - I think everyone who wants to shoudl be able to tech their stuff without spending 6 months of farming or 100 gold. Perhaps if the game had been done differently from the beginning you could make this argument - but to me the way the standard is now - you can't.

Techs are needed for some classes, and some races *cough*dragons*cough* to be able to even compete on an even level with mobs, much less things that are named or harder. The game isn't balanced around single/double class combat without teched gear.

[Krystine]

Yes I was amazed at the drop rate for dire wolve fangs. As they are one of my favorite prey I nomally have plenty anyway. However I also need other comps to go with them. Most of those other comps come from the satyr islands. I went and killed a gross number of mobs there and the drop rates were almost nothing. Killed a bunch of blue vex with not one fringe. Tons of skeletons left me with one sternum. The ghosts were the only ones to drop a decent amount. Wouldn't bother me a bit if wolves dropped less but sure would like the others to be worth hunting. Ended up killing blights and buying from dear old Nadia. I'm a high lvl builder and when others supply the resources for their structures I prefer not to waste them. It is bad enough that t6 resources were given skill lvl 200 above what it should be.

[Silverblaze]

I dont personally play the game for an economy, while I understand its importance, Id rathedr spend my time having fun thatn making the largest pocket book in game. I dont much care about the ingame economy, its why I do most things free and based off of donation. Rl makes me worry about coin, and RL problems. This game doesnt, least it didnt used to. So, my advice is to adapt.

I rarely need to spend my coin on much of anything.

[gopher65]

I rarely need to spend my coin on much of anything.

I think this is the key. Worrying about money is never fun and in real life many of us spend a lot of time worrying incessantly about money. Because of this in a game you should never need to worry about money. All basic things in the game should be fairly easily obtainable by the player.

But, because the game needs a functioning economy, any luxury items a player wants need to cost them coin. Teched gear, crystals, and consumables are all wants, not needs. And any new consumables that are added to the game should also be wants. As a player you should never need to do anything. You should never be forced to do anything specific. Your actions should be largely up to you... within reason obviously. The game has gravity, so humans can't fly unaided. Stuff like that isn't up to the player to decide; it is just built in to the framework of the world.

[Kulamata]

The problem is that teched gear is pretty well needed; as mentioned elsewhere, crafting at max efficiency requires well-teched gear/scales, and certainly adventuring since the WA Evolution does.

Game balance pretty well required that tier V and VI evils' capabilities be set with good teched gear in mind. This is why good teching is necessary. For an excellent discussion of teched gear for the very able, very high rated adventurer, see Kwinn's excellent guide. Note that Kwinn had several different sets of gear, both armor and jewelry, for different prey. If Kwinn felt that specialized highly teched gear was necessary, count on it.

Since tech V's are really a requirement, and not a luxury, drop rates should reflect this. In addition, drop rates should reflect the relative need; for example, Armor V is used a lot, and so the drop rate should be quite high.

The game should always be balanced between too easy and frustrating (for the AVERAGE player). Here, I think that moving the slider more towards the readily available end of the scale has a stronger case than might be apparent at first.

[gopher65]

Hmm. You know, I think a partial comprise might be to make all techs work like Dyes. Drag and Drop. That way a person could get a complete set of their armour and jewelry or scales made, then work on getting just a few of everything they need (getting the easiest complete techs first), then as they worked their way toward the harder ones they would become more and more powerful.

Right now it really doesn't make sense to do this*points up* because of the difficulty finding a crafter to craft things one at a time. It makes more sense to just gather everything up and make it all at once. But even if you did get them made one at a time (or you can do it yourself), you'd STILL have to have all three comps you needed for that item. So that makes it way harder to do.

But dragndrop would fix that, or at least help.

[Kitimandiri]

You mean like have 3 slots on a piece of armor and you can go just drag a completed tech onto the armor? That would be cool because then people could sell completed techs...

[gopher65]

You mean like have 3 slots on a piece of armor and you can go just drag a completed tech onto the armor? That would be cool because then people could sell completed techs...

Just like dye techs. You buy an undyed piece of armour, and you buy a completed dye kit, and you place it on your armour. So yeah, you'd buy completed Tech Kits, and drop them on your armour one at a time. Tier V armour already has 3 "slots". Tier IV has 2 slots, Tier I has 1 slot.

Granted it might be hard for them to reconfigure the whole tech system. Also, with dyes you can replace dyes. Would you want that to be able to happen with techs? If you did, how would you make it work? Which tech would be overwritten? I think it would be easier just to say 'once an item is teched, that's it".

Still, even with that, I think it would be a cool idea.

[Dhalin]

I think this is the key. Worrying about money is never fun and in real life many of us spend a lot of time worrying incessantly about money. Because of this in a game you should never need to worry about money. All basic things in the game should be fairly easily obtainable by the player.

So you're saying that money shouldn't need be used for everyday things?

But, because the game needs a functioning economy, any luxury items a player wants need to cost them coin.

But then you say that "the game needs a functioning economy" ... I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways.

Teched gear, crystals, and consumables are all wants, not needs. And any new consumables that are added to the game should also be wants. As a player you should never need to do anything. You should never be forced to do anything specific. Your actions should be largely up to you... within reason obviously. The game has gravity, so humans can't fly unaided. Stuff like that isn't up to the player to decide; it is just built in to the framework of the world.

As others have said above, Crystals, Techs, -are- needs. If you wanna craft, you need Teched Gear. I'm sorry, you just do. Well, you COULD do without it, but, it will take you at least 3x longer to get anything done without techs.

And for Adventurers, if you don't have Teched gear, you are going to die. A lot, as you get into Tier 4 and beyond. Maybe Tier 1, or Tier 2, heck maybe even Tier 3 could get away with unteched gear, but as you start getting up there, I imagine this gets tougher and tougher and tougher. To do a reasonably good job, you NEED Techs and Crystals.

There is no "luxury" about Teched Gear. It is a Need.

Now, Reklar/etc gear, -that- is Luxury.

[Dhalin]

Also, on another thought.... if Gopher wants to talk Economy in MMORPGs, let me present two examples of other MMORPGs. I know, it is usually bad form to bring up the subject of an MMORPG in another MMORPG's forums, but I see little other way I can explain this without doing so.

The other two MMORPGs I have played in, is Final Fantasy XI, and World of Warcraft.

Both of these MMORPGs have a fairly complex economy, both of which are pretty stable, barring the occasional upset in the market due to the unfortunate and inevitable RMT (Real Money Trading) activity in these games.

Now, let us analyze why these games have healthy markets:

1). You cannot "do it all yourself". In both WoW, and FFXI, you cannot make every craftable item in the game on one character. This forces you to specialize in a craft, and thus, forcing you to buy what you cannot make yourself.

2). Both games introduce equipment that is difficult to obtain yourself at the level you need it, with the exception of early gear. In WoW, when you need Level 10 green items, it is very difficult for a Level 10 player to obtain his own level 10 items. However, by the time you are killing Level 12-14 mobs, they are starting to drop Level 10 greens, which you then sell on the Auction House to other players. In FFXI, many Named Mob (NM) Dropped gear is dropped from mobs higher level. For example, a popular item called Bounding Boots is a Level 7 pair of boots, the mob that drops them is a Level 10-12 mob, that requires a Level 13-15 player to kill solo.

3). WoW has a system that once you wear a magical item, you cannot give it to another player. After you equip it, it becomes "bound" (attuned) to yourself.

4). In Both Games: They have some very nice items that drop pretty rarely. These items are good enough that the playerbase as a whole want them. If you need one, you end up buying it from the market. If you end up being the lucky one who obtains it, but don't need it, you end up selling it. Horizons doesn't have many of these types of items, except for Tech Comps, many people tend to hoard these, or save them for guild, instead of selling them on the market.

In Horizons:

1). You can make anything you will ever need yourself, if you have the patience to grind all of your levels.
2). Nobody really sells teched gear, because there's just too many different combinations that people could want.
3). There are no NPCs that sell anything useful, with the exception of Nadia and the Vielo, which are way too overpriced (though I will admit that Nadia is going to be helped a bit soon).
4). The only other thing one ever needs money for, is Plots, Lairs, Teleports, and if you are a dragon, Hoard Items from Consigners.

[Vahrokh]

I find the difference between WoW and Horizons actually good.

While I'd embrace a modification so that when you do teched gear you need an X component (X tier 1 to 6, increasing cost) to make money exit the system, I'd not copy other things.

Point:

1) It's not a solution. I have every WoW profession but 2 I don't use anyway but I had to level several alts to 70 (I heavily raid so I can't really buy all). This made my main character flat and shallow as WoW characters are and forced me to waste weeks and weeks in raising alts. Still now I have all my relevant professions anyway, so I bypassed the WoW limit but did not get any fun at that.

2) I always found it stupid. If I am level 10 why should NOT I get my relevant / level up gear from the kills I do? In WoW this has never worked, the low level characters will NOT buy gear off the auction house since quests give it to them already and the stuff on the auction house is wicked expensive due to the "twinking" phenomenon (high level characters without PvP skill or money or ability to raid buy create low level alts with overpowered low level gear and enchants and use them for PvP in battlegrounds, this leads to a massive inflation for low level gear). Basically, WoW is very different and cannot really be copied in Horizons.

3) This could work in Horizons, teched items could become "bind on equip" so that you won't see that 2004 tier II craft set passed to a new character in 2008 to avoid spending in reagents again.

4) It'd be an enticing but very dangerous, and it's why in the past the "best" the developers would make was Blighted Gear. The danger is that this drop only or even drop only recipe "epic" gear is better than any crafted gear and this in a craft-centered game means no one will want crafted gear any more, everyone will grind "epics" instead.

Those able to hog and solo a spawn will get full epic gear in a fraction of time, 10 classes people already have a lot of power in this game and this will make them even more powerful, to the point everyone else is surpassed and need to become themselves like that, a phenomenon on Unity was becoming rampant, you would not meet "pure" classed or 2 classed people, everyone went for the same copycat druid / cleric / <I win combos> and that made everyone a copy of someone else.

[Kitimandiri]

"Please click one of the Quick Reply icons in the posts above to activate Quick Reply." I'll leave this in so everyone has a good laugh X )

Real Post:

Bind on Equip is one of those "It's for your own good" things I think. Its fun to be able to pass on armor but I think it leads to begging. Crafters would have a lot more productive business if they were needed to craft new items. It's also an Item/Money sink I think would really benefit the game. The real challenge is deciding what should be bind on equip. Usually its most armor.

[gopher65]

Not saying that HZ should do this, but if I were to design a completely new game I'd have all items bind on equip (and *nothing* bind on aquire, not even quest items).

It's fun to start threads. This way you can derail them as much as you want *cackles evilly*

[Henry Redacre]

Not saying that HZ should do this, but if I were to design a completely new game I'd have all items bind on equip (and *nothing* bind on aquire, not even quest items).

It's fun to start threads. This way you can derail them as much as you want *cackles evilly*

I don't think this is so much a derailment. After all, we're discussing loot and it's attunement qualities it's characteristics. I'd say that if we're still discussing loot, we're still good. =P

As far as loot goes, does it really need to be attuned? I've seen people already mentioning that by disallowing players to pass on their equipment, that business would increase for crafters. While technically that's correct, are there really *that* many people passing down their equipment? I'm also not in a guild, so I really can't speculate on what the practices are like within one. But are there really so many people handing down their teched equipment to others that crafters might actually be able to see a lively business if teched equipment became attuned?

I dunno.. Personally, I don't think there would be so many, but, I'm often proven wrong too, so...

[Kulamata]

I have mules full of equipment that I was never able to pass on; we did that in the earliest days, but not since. Why? Wrong color, wrong techs, wrong kind. Players LIKE having their armor tailored to their exact specifications.