It's super neat to find a rare item at the end of these more difficult dungeons. But it also sucks to get like, a bauble. What about some phat stacks of gold or mundane helmets/armor for shop food?
In the end, the actually value isn't a huge deal to me, just would be cool to feel like you're actually getting treasure even when you miss on the rare items. I mean, why in the world are 5 HC bosses protecting a Bauble?
Agreed. But at the same time, it's kind of like, you don't want the same drop every time, though. I think it's kind of hard to balance it. Like you still want a chance thing going of what you get, but you also don't want the same few items every single time or even every other fight. You'll end up with enough to carpet your house. I'm not sure how they can properly balance it. I don't think we have enough items in the treasure table yet to really do it right.
+1
I've long had an issue with games that use an "RNG only" method of loot. The original Realm, was completely and totally, 100% RNG. In everything, dropings, enchanting, etc… No matter how hard you "worked", at the end of the day, if you had bad luck, there's nothing that could be done.
Rat Labs, it appears, has almost doubled down on this. But simply providing more "rolls" of the dice (bounties, Gambler's keys.) I find this disappointing. It's simply unsustainable. Players who get lucky, and don't work hard for something, while short term are excited, burn out fast. Players who work hard, and don't get reward, will become frustrated and quick.
RNG has it's place, but there must be consistent and attainable rewards, directly tied to effort, to keep people around. This is something every modern MMO has figured out (and why WoW came out with Raid/PvP "points" systems, cashed in your loot from an NPC, in case your loot rolls did you raw.)
I definitely agree with this, the boss and/or the last chest should always drop at least something "valuable" even if it's just decent shopfood . It incentivises and rewards clearing the dungeon, and personally I'd go as far as removing magical/rare drops from all the trash packs and only having them on boss/chests but that's just me. It just makes more sense, why would that level 5 imp at the far corner nobody ever checks be holding onto a lvl 300 weapon anyway? I've always felt it strange that trash can drop some of the best stuff, those people clearing the whole dungeon should have the best chances at the best loot - not that guy bot farming the first trash pack and resetting.
+1 @Bancrese the rng system has often frustrated me to the point I take regular breaks. That's a fundamental issue the realm has always suffered with. The whole 'going into TH and finding GBoNs in your first clear and instantly becoming one of the wealthiest toons on the server' scenario was always an issue, and the same applied to EB in ESH. These have since been rectified, but the larger issue still exists. The wow raid currencies you mention - while they've become redundant in the current version of wow I'm sure the concept could find some use in the realm. For example: adding a unique drop guaranteed off the boss/last chest of each dungeon, which can be traded in for loot, whether it be the actual drops from the dungeon or a lesser version of them - or even bounty chests to help with bad rng. It may alleviate the frustration of the massive rng swings you can expect in the current system. The main issue would be to stop it being too rewarding as it'll just throw more and more loot into the economy. Perhaps make the gear you'd purchase with this currency/drop automatically bind when you buy it.
I think at some point you can argue that it's only people with bad luck who will get annoyed by this - but the fact that the discussion even exists is proof of the issue. Bad luck guy puts in hundreds of hours - gets nothing but shopfood. Lucky guy comes along and does 1 run and gets the drop. Then bad luck guy finally get some his drop and blows it up on 1/2x. Though the scenario is pretty rare, a friend found a floral on day 2 on his first run and I enchanted it 4x for him, I went to farm mine and not only did I not get one for many many runs, I blew 7 up before I got my 4x. Now, I've put in vastly more time and effort into it, but he's got already got a huge advantage by having a level 1 weap on his warrior chanted so early on release with very little effort, just because of luck. When it took me days to get mine. Hardly a fair system, though again, you can argue that - "hey, that's the realm!" - to which I would respond - "but is that system fun and rewarding?"
I think at some point you can argue that it's only people with bad luck who will get annoyed by this - but the fact that the discussion even exists is proof of the issue. Bad luck guy puts in hundreds of hours - gets nothing but shopfood. Lucky guy comes along and does 1 run and gets the drop. Then bad luck guy finally get some his drop and blows it up on 1/2x. Though the scenario is pretty rare, a friend found a floral on day 2 on his first run and I enchanted it 4x for him, I went to farm mine and not only did I not get one for many many runs, I blew 7 up before I got my 4x. Now, I've put in vastly more time and effort into it, but he's got already got a huge advantage by having a level 1 weap on his warrior chanted so early on release with very little effort, just because of luck. When it took me days to get mine. Hardly a fair system, though again, you can argue that - "hey, that's the realm!" - to which I would respond - "but is that system fun and rewarding?"
I've been there. Years ago, I had a n00b friend find EB on his first trip into IH! I never found it in there. He said it dropped off a dark faery. So he instantly sold it for millions, and I never found a copy and ended up buying mine. Luck of the draw? I don't know. Maybe we'll never know. But I do think some people really are luckier than others. I can spend weeks looking for something that someone else finds on a regular basis. It makes no sense.
What I think might even things a bit is even if the loot doesn't drop off a big boss fight, I think it should drop a copper of some kind so you can go to the copper shop and pick something. At least you'd feel you got some type of reward for doing a massive boss fight.
I like that the smaller fights can drop. I think it's good for when you have a lower lvl or when you just don't have the time for the big fight. And it breaks up the boredom, too. It's no fun to keep running the same exact fight over and over again. But doing a big boss fight should have some type of special reward, either a copper or a gambler's key, just give something so you can feel it was kind of worth doing.
Valid ideas.
@Zewpi Yes, obviously anything attained by this metric would be BoE, this is the way WoW went with it. I also realize they're moving away from that, but the "Legendary weapon" and RNG mix with the 2 Legendaries you could get/wear that were random drops, in the last patch, was a way of mixing the two. If you found the best in slot legendary item for a class, you had an advantage, but since everyone could upgrade their Legendary weapon, with time and effort, the gap was less. I haven't played in the new expansion, so I'm not sure what's changed now. Edit: Also, don't forget Blizzard built in their "bad luck protection" into looting. In both Diablo 3, and WoW, so your chance of getting a Legendary item increase the longer you went without getting one, gradually. So, even in their RNG systems, they've understood RNG only is doomed to failure, and have done things to smooth out the harshness of RNG for players.
But yes, even small things like mana/gold guarantees from chests, can help it be less of a slap in the face when RNG is not kind.
I've been there. Years ago, I had a n00b friend find EB on his first trip into IH! I never found it in there. He said it dropped off a dark faery. So he instantly sold it for millions, and I never found a copy and ended up buying mine. Luck of the draw? I don't know. Maybe we'll never know. But I do think some people really are luckier than others. I can spend weeks looking for something that someone else finds on a regular basis. It makes no sense.
Funny story is I played Realm as a kid for only about a year (randomly got the game on a free disc from Sierra, when I bought the Hellfire expansion for Diablo that Sierra did.) Then came back to it about on a whim some time later (I think it was under NG at this point, could have been Codemasters, not really sure the time-frame), and in the hour of playing killed a random Zombie in RR and found DV.
It was really cool, and I used that money to fund getting awesome gear for my two hitters who I had to 1k in a month later. Then I got bored and quit, till I came back just now. So like I said earlier, while the RNG only stuff leads to early engagement, it also leads to quick burnout. And for every 1 story of that, there's 20 others of people who got sick of having bad luck, and just quit. Again, RNG has it's place, but it can't be the end all, be all of a balanced, effective looting system.
@Brancrese I started playing about one year after Realm came out in the 90's. My original toon was a human adv. And I probably never would have made it far if someone hadn't come along and helped me level. I didn't really have a clue what I was doing back then. But what I've found is you never get as bored with a mixed stat toon. And slower leveling is better, too. If you just power level to 1k, then you're going to stand around bored. So I never recommend doing that. I always say, mixed stat and slower leveling. Take the time to even explore the non combat areas of the game. So many people don't visit the temple or Stonehenge or any of the other areas in the game. Even though there's not much to do there, it's just nice to walk around a bit and look at the game world once in awhile.
I don't think we currently really have a balanced system. And some of that is because there isn't enough in the treasure table. They need to put the quest items back in, add some house deco, maybe some new townie clothes. We need more stuff in the treasure table. And I think it should be better spread out. I don't really like having to visit one cave for a certain item that only drops in that one cave. The bounty boxes were supposed to help with that, but I haven't seen it. They usually drop junk.
@Carrigon i can assure you the bounty chests are plenty rewarding - but again it's more rng within the rng system. I'd go as far as to say they're too rewarding considering that you're getting dungeon loot without even doing dungeons, that in itself is strange to me but I understand that it was supposed to increase the viability of playing solo toons.
Anyway, I do think it is incredibly hard to remove rng from a game like this, at its core there have been many things developed to reduce rng but none of them really even it out as if it stops being rng there will be too much loot floating around, but if it stays as it is then it'll likely suffer losses of its casual playerbase as those who don't have the time to run the same dungeon 200 times rarely get any loot. It's pretty hard to balance but I think that if any dungeon currency system was implemented it'd ironically have to be paired with a reduction in base drop chance to stop too much loot appearing - which again has a negative impact on casual players. I'm struggling to think of ways around it that isn't just layering in more rng. Even though this is actually off topic.
+1 Either way make boss/chests as a standard at least drop something shopfoody hoo-rahh
@Zewpi I don't think we would really need to decrease drops, not if we did a special treasure table just for those boss fights, but made it a special copper with a special copper store and then bind that loot to the account. That way, you don't have too much floating in the economy, and you would get "something" as a reward for those boss fights. Like it could be a tiered copper, cheap, medium, expensive. Then you go pick something out in the special store. House deco items, special dyes, townie clothes or quest items. If I were coding this game, that's how I'd do it. The loot would be account binding, special only to that store, but the coppers themselves could probably be traded to other players. Each boss fight would yield a chance of getting the cheap, medium, or expensive one. So, kind of like a souvenir shop. I think it would work. It's a thought, anyway.