Cloud Of Darkness HTBF

Farming content A to buy item from content B is kinda bad taste, it's why it should be fight specific. Basically it's a "guaranteed desired drop every X number of fights" system which is has become very popular nowadays in other games. You'd be amazed at how much effort people will put in once they know the goal is achievable without relying on insane RNG.

Saevel,
it's fun to watch you edit your post 3-4 times with increasing harshness with each subsequent edit.

Anyway, I do agree that acheivable goal is better than RNG.
However, I disagree with your second opinion, I don't think 100-200 VD runs is that bad....but 800-1000 VE runs is kind of silly.

I would rather an artificial "climb" like 1,000 floors of Item-Level Nyzule Isle from some crazy good gear.

Fight specific is good, but still finite. Adding something like exemplar to HTMB wouldn't even be strictly original for FFXI, you already get capacity points for macro orb fights. If you can solo or box VD all well and good, but for those who can't they need other people to have incentive to help them.

I like the exemplar points idea, myself. Works great on Peach Power. Making the VD fights award EP would improve engagement, I believe.

But seriously, why would you admit to everyone that you think this would be a reasonable number? It just makes you look dumb

100-200 VD runs turns into a 0.5~1% drop rate btw, which is the exact system we have with Shinryu right now. Those large numbers are from people who wish to maintain the exclusivity of their trophy. They spent a ton of time / effort / energy into farming the item or buying it and do not wish others to have the same trophy for less effort.

I'm not pulling that number out of nowhere, that is the range the MMO industry as a whole has settled on to be optimal to maintain engagement. If a content is very long and time gated / limited, then every 10~12 fights for one guaranteed reward will maintain engagement assuming the player always wants several other rewards. If the content is faster without time gates, then approximately 18~22 fights for a guaranteed selection, again assuming the player wants other rewards.

The FTP MMORPGs rely heavily on optimizing these systems to maintain long term revenue generation.

Ok now that I have some time, I'll break down a successful point buy content system.

In a different game I play, that is does the whole freemium system (FTP with optional subscription system) here is how they do raid loot.

Raid's have different difficulty tiers, the highest rewards players with 125 raid specific points per completion. Those points can be spent to buy a raid reward at 1250 points each, and each raid has 10~13 total rewards. The raids also reward individual drops on completion from a treasury chest (that also provides the points), there is about a 20~25% chance of an item dropping and while the items are bound-to-character, you can give them to someone else while they are in the chest. Raids have a three day lockout, that can be bypassed with a store item, on top of that each chest can only be looted 8 total times in a 7 day period. Most guilds will have one or two "Raid days" per week where they do five to six raids, each one taking 30 to 90 minutes. Raid groups are twelve in size and only the oldest ones can be done with less on the highest difficulty level. Going one level lower only rewards ~88 points per run, and the lowest difficulty only gives about 50. Dedicated "end game" guilds do the highest difficulty, more casual guilds do the medium if they don't have correct setup, and super casual / teaching guilds do the lowest.

The math works out such that regular dedicated "end game" players can get one item every two months from points with an additional one or two items from direct drops that may or may not share. There are several dozen raids so a guild can't possibly do then all every week and so most establish a rotation with the most recent being done every week and the older ones being rotated in and out.

Most MMO's end up using a similar system, different terms and mechanics but the same overall principle. Each content has a maximum possible reward per week that is reasonable while also having a way for regular players to get a desired item every one to two billing cycles.

That's great but we're talking about a merit battle, even if they make it cost 30 or more merits you could still spend all day every day farming the bcnm and then refill merits. Not really the same thing at all.

Pretty sure the low droprate was initially meant to offset the comparative ease of spamming it. The change to 30 merits was ill-thought out, because they didn't make single loot slots more than 100% and as a result the droprate was far less than tripled on high difficulties. Doubt it's any deeper than that. Prior to the merit change, it was likely expected that good groups would pound out 7 runs in an hour or so.

An alternative explanation would be that by making it incredibly tedious to farm from the BC, they added value to the trove lottery, which rewards people paying for additional characters.

I know you love beating the trophy drum, but how do you reconcile your take with the amount of Shinryu drops being outright given away by trove..? They were made far less 'exclusive', but Shinryu droprate wasn't made less harsh.

Because the same pearl clutchers who want the reward to be super exclusive also want Aman Trove drops to go away. Regardless of the comment the stated goal is the same, to limit the total number of rewards in circulation.


Low drop rates was purely as a way to "keep players doing the content", artificial scarcity. The queue's got to long due to everyone spamming it, that's when they attempted to discourage players even more via the 30 merit limit. The entire content is tash due to everyone just getting the reward from AT now. Gacha should never be more reliable then the content itself.

Imagine if HQ Aminon only had a 1% drop rate on Meso's, but we could get it with AT. How dumb would that be.

The solution to prevent people from spamming the content non-stop is to put a weekly limit to the number of points you could get. SE already does this with conquest tally's, though I could see SE doing it as a daily just to be evil. You can keep doing it for the low drop rate, but the daily / weekly points add up to eventually getting one item every one to two billing cycles.

I'm still not sure I understand. I haven't seen any of these mythical players claiming Shinryu should remain low droprate; seems the forums have pretty universally agreed it's too low. Are you saying it's what the players want, or what SE wants?

If SE wants to limit the total number in circulation, why add it to trove? If they want to make it more common, why not increase the droprate? I don't think it's anything to do with exclusivity or trophies, I'd say they just failed to put adequate thought into balancing the rate.

1-2% is reasonable for very nice items, when a small group can clear the fight 7x in an hour. You treat the 7 runs as a piece of content, and your overall rate is not so bad. It's much less reasonable with the 30 merit change, since it didn't seem to have a considerable impact on the VD droprate, and made high volume spam much slower.

Then your not trying, they are in this thread.

As for the rest, SE isn't exactly known for consistency. AT is essentially a gacha game with a limited number of pulls per billing cycle.

You know this forum has a quoting system, right? This thread is only 2 pages long bro.

I want trove to go away not to make certain things more exclusive, but to remove the super annoying and time consuming gacha game from XI.

I would rather do literally anything else than spend hours using vouchers for trove. But the rewards being there make it a very attractive gacha, which is the point.

Collecting my silver vouchers each month is an absolute chore, but what if I don't do it? Would I fail to get an Orpheus Sash from it? Or an Epam Ring? Or 5-10m gil? How about that Ashera Harness I've been after for years? I could gear my mules with better gear without doing it the normal way, so I must go out and get those vouchers or I could miss out! I think about all the awesome equipment I got over the years (like Regal Cuffs I never got from Omen as it never drops). I remember my father getting a Crep Cloak only a month ago, despite us not touching Shinryu in well over a year, and how much I'd love to have one. How can I ignore that?

Ok, I'm exaggerating in that last paragraph, but only slightly. That's the thing, is that I do feel like I need to do those chores, otherwise I'm missing out on possible rolls, and that is a sucky feeling. It's not good or healthy game design.

Several years ago, I ran events for a Vagary LS every week for 18 months. We killed Plouton countless times and never saw it drop a platemail. We killed 5 NM each week and turned in the key items in Leafallia. 10 players got their platemails in that time, but I never did. Where did I get mine? Last year in AMAN Trove... and I have two now. I should have got mine from Vagary, but the drop rate was ridiculous. I was first in line to get it if Plouton dropped it. Granted, I never did Vagary specifically for that piece (I just wanted to get folks their clears), but it would have been nice. I could have used it for something more than a lockstyle.

Like I said, AMAN Trove is a cancer in the game. It is anti-content, and only encourages those who are easily swayed, or have all the money in the world to burn, to pay for more characters and jump through monthly hoops for more rolls. This was already happening with special gobbiedial keys, but at least the many thousands of items in the pool makes it less enticing to create characters. It isn't as in your face as AMAN Trove, and at least you're guaranteed to get something with each key.

I have suggested a kill reward system many times before. Basically make it so you only get "points" if you clear Normal or higher, and you get more points for doing VD. The fact is that a developer wants to encourage players to do content, but if it works like Shinryu, when AMAN Trove also exists, then it won't work. Cloud Of Darkness drops should be fair, but honestly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the developers did another Shinryu. I have very little faith in them actually caring about the playerbase.

Literally anything SE does wrt ffxi

They really aren't. Inflation means the profits for this game gets less every single year, even if the player numbers stay the same. They have no real additional revenue streams as most games do.

Almost every sub based game has either increased the sub fee over the last few years, or rely more heavily on the cash shop selling stuff.

SE knows for a 100% fact that if they were to raise sub fees for this ancient game, it would lose too many players to cover the rise. Therefore, it has found other ways to encourage players to give them money.

They have a free-to-play campaign, not out of generosity, but because it entices returnees to get back in there and start giving them regular income again. This is all calculated at the top level. I don't blame SE for wanting to make as much money as it can, but this is why we see stuff like AMAN Trove hurting motiviation to do content. Money is their priority above all else.

they will never lower sub price, even though that survey proved the majority think its too expensive. for me its the Wardrobe cost. they should be free... or at the very least $1 each not $2 each, thats robbery tbh.

If the Wardrobes were just pay once
I would probably have a few
At least 3/4
Maybe more

Just a dumb question, has anyone try to proc blue with WS for the drop like the original Shin fight. If I remember correctly nothing will drop back in the original fight unless proc blue. Maybe SE forgot to remove the proc blu condition from the fight in order to get the drop. I don't see the point of making the drop rate so low for this fight.

Was one of the 1st things people tried, so far if there is a proc, noone's found it. Don't know if SE confirmed/denied there was one either

There are like 4 people in that hierarchy. The bottom is the top.


No one ever /sarcasm

Probably should submit bug reports just to prod them.

That's a good thing, the game only lives because the developers find ways to placate the money suits above them to keep the game profitable. Inflation is a destructive rot, and they need to find ways to offset those year on year losses.

The game needs to increase revenue to remain worth investing money into, and having developers assigned to it (even if it's a handful of people now) is investing into it.

Eve online (22 year old "ancient" game btw) recently increased the sub fee to $20 a month, nobody here wants that.

Of course. It is a business at the end of the day. Still doesn't hurt to point out why things like AMAN Trove exist. It certainly isn't to make the game experience a better one, but a more profitable one.

like they didn't do the same thru the backdoor with increased inventory strain and wardrobes.

I think it's pretty accepted at this point that when they changed the drop rate, it affected only those 3 "common" items, which indeed now have a very high chance to appear in the loot pool even on lower difficulties, but nothing about the 5 "rare" drops.

I think they share the drop slot. So probably previously the drop slot itself had a low chance to appear, with the merit change they greately affected the chance of that to happen, but did nothing to the internal split, which is still like 99,9% the 3 basic items, and 0.1% the 5 rare ones.

Something like that, probably?

It affected every slot. But 2*0 is still 0.

(.01% > .02%)

I understood the issue to be something along the lines of, the drop slot itself was increased but could not exceed 100% so much of it was wasted. The ratio of items within the slot was unchanged.

Using complete ***:
Drop slot 1 goes from Very Common->Guaranteed
Drop slot 2 goes from Rare->Uncommon

So, while you spend 3x as many merits, your droprate is only going from 0.705+0.125( 0.830) to 1.0+0.265(1.265) expected items per run, which is considerably less than triple. [TH8 values]

But, this is just speculation. Nobody, certainly not me, farmed enough of it before the change to have meaningful numbers. It could've been straight tripled and totally sucked from the start, just a theory.

Edited to add clarity and change numbers to fit the TH table.

By creating content that validated it.