Update! On 12/11/24, a couple weeks after this video came out, the following changes were made in Update 71 (the following is copy/pasted from the release notes): - The Myth Drannor Saga now has a chance to grant one of the nine Rare Sun/Moon Augments from Myth Drannor as an option in its reward list. This chance is 10% on Normal, 16% on Hard, 25% on Elite, and 34% on True Elite. The Heroic Saga drops Heroic Augments, and the Legendary Saga drops Legendary Augments. - The drop rate of named items from the purple-named landscape bosses in Myth Drannor has been raised.
Yep I'm with you, I'm now ignoring MD, and I've bought every ultimate pack they've brought out, but MD will be the last expansion I buy until they change this system. I'm not a min maxer or a power player I'm a casual player that has been playing since launch, and this loot mechanic tells me I have no chance of ever getting the rare loot and little chance of getting the common named loot so the expansion isn't worth the cost. This loot system rips 2 thirds of the value out of the expansion for me.
I don't mind items being extra rare drops. I remember farming the Ancient Cyclops in Everquest for 30 hours straight to get the J Boots. But combined with the ransack system and it's just stupidly frustrating. I've been ransacking every week for the artifact fire ring and still haven't seen it. It's such an annoyance to do my eight runs and then have to wait another week for a sliver of a chance to get what I want.
Glad this popped up on my feed, felt like something had been changed on drop rates. Going to pass on MD for now after having tried to farm for gear the last month or so. But am worried about drop rate for other content if SSG is going to continue this.
This also assumes that loot on each table is evenly distributed, which it may not be (and prior content suggests it is not). Once hitting a named or rare table we could assume (lets say with 4 items) a 25% chance for any specific item, but it could just as easily be 30%, 30%, 30% and 10%. It is possible that the specific rare you want is yet even more rare.
Seeing the math is incredibly disheartening. Like having a certain amount of chase is really fun. Making a little checklist, finding where I gotta get those items, getting a rhythm down, and then slowly checking off each one. Getting sets of gear for next past lives is fun, finding a sick item that perfectly fits, but looking at the end game gear grind looks awful to me.
Aside from the rarity issue, there's also the fact that due to all sorts of possible builds it's difficult to always have useful loot for all builds on one expansion. For me, IoD was the last expansion that was relevant gear wise, so it's been about two years of playing the game just for the content. MD had just a couple of pieces, an item and an augment, that I could actually fit on my gear regardless of rarity. Now I'm full completionist, reaper capped, and got basically no actual gear left to farm at this point. Since I have no constitution to start it over for an alt, I just found no more reason to keep playing as far as actual progression goes. That's why I came up with the flawless r10 solo challenge for myself - so I would actually have something interesting to accomplish while I wait for that to change. But I'm about to get to the end of that as well - I've done almost every legendary quest that I possibly can, as the last 20 or so left all have specific mechanics that make it virtually impossible to solo. That means I'm again out of things to do and will likely stop playing till new content arrives. Bummer.
07:40 The thing is, these numbers all hinge on that 97/3 split that you've marked as an assumption - you'd need a pretty big sample size (>1000 chest pulls) to have much certainty in those percentages.
Yes it is an assumption which I wanted to be clear about, there's no way to know for sure. But based on what I'm seeing, players have been able to work through some data which doesn't all rely on sample size (see Sarlona Raiding's forum thread I linked in description for more info on that) and 3% seems to be the best guess . We know it's low, so the numbers would change slightly if it's say - 4% or 5%.
I focus on XP and RXP and just playing the game. I try to see how much XP and loot I can squeeze out of every game, not how fast. People will rush through a dungeon as fast as possible and leave a pile of loot and xp behind. I don't like this style of play. No one likes to do this, so I mostly solo. I like to take my time and have fun. The main structure of the game, leveling your tune to TR and Epic TR to get those extra stats and effects.
I stopped playing 8 years ago and now i am having fun returning to the game in a firstlifechar...Secret May be never caring for minmax/bis/reaper/how many PLs some people have etc.
This is the only MMO like this kind I've ever played but from what I heard about WoW I just 'assumed' it would/should take MONTHS to get the 'rare' you wanted. But those numbers are a bit much. I guessing they are REALLY REALLY banking on people to Whale on rerolling chests?
Thx for your thoughts and excellent breakdown once again. For average gamers with family and RL (not Ravenloft 😅) it’s really hard to advance anymore in DDO. I have a subscription running and manage about 6-10h gametime a week, just because I fell in love with DDO around 2005. As you discussed the new VIP-loyalty program lately, why not give VIP a free reroll on every chest once per run? Cheers to the Community!
Late to respond, but you're welcome glad you enjoyed the video. I don't think I'd be for a free rerolls for VIPs. Reason is it would really just encourage the devs to lower the drop rates even more to balance out that benefit, and then players who aren't VIP get hurt by it.
just for the crazy numbers - can you calculate ho long will it take to get those items, but with Mythic +4, the good reaper bonus, and to get some specific curse on it? My guess is like 1500 years or so which makes it very very funny.
Thanks for this Axel. I stopped chasing MD gear and all I hear from guild mates is the terrible drop rates. Gear tetris sucks and I stopped chasing for the most part. If I get it before I TR great ... if not well then maybe the next life. Aranorth/Saranorth/Carraig Divine Punishment Orien Server
I haven't actually played myth drannor yet, but looking at the numbers, i think it's pretty clear the droprates for this are awful. Farming a specific "common" item would, assuming a 10 minutes quest (god forbid it's 25-30) would take you 3 hours and 20 minutes. The rare... for a 10 minute quest it's 49 hours of farming one specific quest. I think it's fair to say a loot system that requires near tripe digits of hours of gameplay to farm a specific item in an average length (for the game) quest is pretty much unreasonable. And that's assuming the player is indeed going with a full party all willing to pass the item. For anyone that's playing solo, the loot does not exist.
I've been reading about the rare loot table on the forums and read about many of the things you displayed. Actually seeing it displayed drives home the point that this is not "healthy."
Yeah, its complicated, i stop playing in 2012 because did VoN 6 about 100 times and never got a shard of SoS, if the game goes to that path again ill quit, sadly
First of all, it’s a fundamental misconception to think that the power of an item can be balanced solely by its rarity. Second, if a developer expects me to repeat a quest 250 times on average to obtain an item, all I think is it disrespects my limited play and life time. This kind of design tempts me to stop playing the game altogether. In my opinion, DDO players don’t play the game because of such items; they play DDO in spite of this kind of nonsense and annoyance.
I would say that I would be fine with the rare loot system if the pieces of loot merited their rarity. As you said, there should be maybe only 1 rare piece per chest, it should be budgeted higher and actually tagged on the item as rare. Maybe rolled statistically similar to artifacts with higher stat budget. Then it could be a cool thing to achieve after hard work or good luck and actually chase. Also, optimally, they should be items that realistically have normal equivalents that are not rare to fill the slot if you dont happen to get the rare item. Basically, it should be such that you are never trying to hunt a specific rare item outside of extreme min maxing (which is a you problem, not an SSG problem) and when you get one to drop it should be a bingo moment. The problem with the current iteration is that these items are basically just like all the rest of the non rare loot except different. Which in DDO terms with the way loot placement and gearing works, just means that certain builds were targeted out as having their gear sets substantially harder to complete than other builds.
Great overview of what seems to be a really unpopular fairly bad idea. If it is SSGs way of farming for cash via astral shards, well, that sucks, but such is online life. I suppose it is marginally better than "find loot boxes, buy loot keys" that I've seen on other games (which is part of why I haven't really played Star Trek's MMORPG for a while). To be honest, frustration with trying to do as much as I want/need to do on DDO solo (and as a reminder to previous conversations, I have infrequent and irregular times with access to internet so grouping is nigh impossible for me) has led me to basically ignore the game to play more City of Heroes Homecoming, which is an easier game to solo in, most of the time. I didn't buy MD because it didn't really interest me much, and I don't feel broken hearted over that choice. I still haven't bought Isle of Dread, and I loved that module in my old PnP days. I understand that the company has to pay bills and salaries and such, but it seems to make it less interesting/enjoyable for casuals like me. Which is fine I suppose as I'm not their targeted player base, and I get that. I do hope that they can alter the rate to make the gear grind less onerous and more enjoyable for the core players. I think the idea of getting some sort of MD BTA tokens that can be taken to someone like Lahar (but in MD) and that can be exchanged for named loot when enough (a lot) have been gathered. Hey, maybe they can bring back Misty to be in MD? There's no lava for her to fall into and die there... 😀
ok you advise letting SSG know your feelings about the new loot mechanic on discord.....where would one put that post exactly? The only channels I see on there is new players, streamers, bug reports, announcements, service news, off topic and then all the classes. No general discussion or something similar, so I don't see anywhere to post a comment about the new loot mechanic or any other aspect of the game outside of character builds.
I would say the general forum discussion. There is already a big main thread on it called Myth Drannor Drop Rates iirc, and also the thread I linked in the description, but there have been lots of them. Of if on the official DDO discord, the devs pop into general chat pretty often if you can catch them.
Super casual here, your videos are always great! My 2$.... I've never cared about what loot I get; I just like playing the game so its hard for me to understand why people want to play the game less. I get not wanting to do the same thing over and over..... I just dont get choosing to do so.
Thank you. I still love the game and all that. I'm not a fan of the rarity in this system so just wanted to voice/discuss that. It's very very important to a lot of players, which I get.
Once you run the quests enough times to know where each trap box is or where mobs spawn you will enjoy something else, like trying new builds or building character power or upping the difficulty you run the quests at or even better, the combination of these. For these loot matters.
LOOT BOX'S/Chests=Astral shards booster. One aspect of DDO its very much like a local store, , it dosnt have the range of supermarkets, and its changed ownership a few times but the staff remain consistent. I hope DDO continues, I sometimes second guess various decisions, though as you say, the higher ups require a certain amount of productivity which the staff try to implement. and again with the second guessing at what point does it become untenable. If its a push to get people to gamble astral shards on chests (essentially loot boxes) then offer bronze silver and gold role chances on chests to improve drop. essentially your buying the item you want from the chest itself.
This is wild to me. The game is way too hard, too inaccessible, too grindy, and impossible to catch up past lives, gear wise, the playerbase is so spread out across servers, levels, difficulty tiers, etc. This is the type of decision that games do to wring the last blood out of the vet playerbase stone.
It's only like that if you want to be a "top player". You can enjoy 99% of the game on 1st life with basic gear, and you can even run endgame raids, maybe just not on Reaper. It's the easy to learn, hard to master kind of stuff, only "master" means grind. But you can definitely be viable with very little time investment.
Once people paying for Scrooge McDuck piles of shards to reroll chest pulls to farm specific items became the norm, it was only a matter of time until they decreased the drop chance for the highly desired items. Those of us complaining about it aren't part of the market audience being milked this way. 🤷
I agree that there are too many items on the rare loot table. It would be better to have only one or two super items for the hardest of the hardcore players. My question is what tiny percentage of players min/max gear down to needing a ultra rare piece to make the "set" work and honestly how much do these ultra rare items even help? If i see a rare item neat but i don't going farming for that sort of thing and i don't think the average player does either. I tend to wear an iod or ranvenloft set and add a sharn set and that gets me to cap running elite difficulty. My concern is less about the rare gear and more about the rarity of the augments. It is nearly impossible to farm the augment you need. We need some kind of vendor to trade a collectable that drops from chests for a choice of solar or lunar gems. Collecting the regular named loot is about the same chance as the rest of the game but a regular Joe player might never get the right augment to use in the sun or moon slot. I love the idea of not having to have an entire set to get a bonus but it needs to be accessible.
I'm not what would be called a casual player by any means, but even I believe the loots rates create an environment that's not conducive towards group play. Gone are the days where someone would pass on loot for the overall benefit of the party. Rather folks will more likely horde gear they can't use on the off chance it maybe be useful later.
I am a passive farmer, in other words I'll just collect stuff to the point where there might be one item left in a set I need. With MD, I am like you I have not farmed a single specific item and figure sooner or later I might put together a set.
I'm fine with extra rare items, but then they need to get rid of the ransack system. I've been ransack for the fire artifact ring like clockwork and still haven't seen it.
Run the damn things so many times and never seen a ring. It's awful. It's harder than Fey Twisted, but easier than raid Fey Twisted and original epic system Spell Storing Ring.
"If you can't solve the problem, you can solve the person who asked it."That's the advice my friend gave to me after his asking questions in the old forum and being ban🤣
To be fair I wasn't happy when they replaced items that have use with the gems on low level drops, it makes it much harder for new players to get anywhere.
Can't even compare the two. Every chest can be feytwisted even the opt ones. And every single item can drop out of it, u could farm some opt chests really really fast. It's not even close.
So far it seems to be a cash grab, with 120+ rolls I still haven't seen a single minor artifact. Sure I can spend more money for Astral shards on the game but the rates are just too low. I've basically given up and for good reason now that I really see the math behind it all. I have all the Gem augment slot drops that I wanted but nothing else makes sense to chase after. Basically useless. 😪
Lately, I've been really disappointed with SSG and how they are handling things. This news about the rare loot system and drop rates really just adds another notch to that record of disappointment for me. The past couple of months I've contemplated more and more about giving the game a break and going back to ESO for a bit. Maybe they need some leadership changes or something.
You should try Guild Wars 2 if you haven't. Also get action cam, horizontal progression (think gearing working more akin to the time around Feywild where you had multiple options to get Artifact Bonuses), No Subscription a d F2P base game... plus the 'full game' is cheaper in GW2 than DDO.
I haven't cared about gear in a LONG while. Just enjoying the game, trying out different builds and playstyles, and those are pretty much countless. As long as FW/Ravenloft/Sharn gear is viable we're cool.
Yea, I don't have the patience to farm every quest 8 times. I run the lot through to the end. I might do it twice before moving on. I get bored of content too fast. I had farmed a quest for the end reward over 100 times without ever dropping the item I wanted. It's RNG.
so rare items in quest chests are about as hard to get as a Jibbers blade and wilderness rares are way way harder. . .right! got it. I knew the drop rates were bad but I didn't know they were this bad. I have been ignoring MD loot too. I just thought about it and realized I didn't want to farm out my set bonuses in addition to the gear it goes on. now I'm just gonna stick with Sharn/Vecna or Feywild gear sets. F Myth D
yeah, bottom line, this loot just doesn't exist to me. I won't plan for it, nor bother to farm for it. I spend a lot of money on DDO, but will never bother spending any funds to try for any of this stuff, period. It's just like the old seal/shard/scroll stuff from sands, which was so rare, I just never bothered. It's just like the ridiculous reaper gear crunching and "cursed" cards (that give *benefits*, not curses...but w/e). Getting any of this gear is so rare, I just say to hell with it. Players that do want to chase it, that's cool and best of luck. But for me, it's nothing but a complete and total waste of time.
Assuming that the maths is even semi accurate then the devs shouldn't have even spent the time and resources making the loot in the first place with these drop rates. It's beyond dumb. I have run the whole chain maybe 3 times since it came out.
Unpopular opinion: is it really a bad thing that some (very few) items are ULTRA rare to get? I think we got lost in calculations here a bit. We assume we HAVE TO get that specific item, and we HAVE TO farm it for 50 weeks nonstop because we're not gonna be fine until we get it. Unless it's something game-changing like Jibbers or unless it really unlocks a unique build, I say it's ok to have super rare items. What if it "takes you" 2 years? You don't have to have them. We used to have very very rare items back in the day. And those items were kind of special. I don't really farm much with my guild, I mostly solo and pug so I'm not really helping my case, and I know people who farm with a dedicated group WILL get those items and rub them in my face, but I don't think it's that bad. Maybe you're right and it's too large a loot table, that is a good point.
This is absurd. Even whaling it out is unpractical. Rerolling a chest 1600 times in a row must be mind meltingly boring and more likely to get you carpal syndrome rather than the item you want. I don't think SSG expects people to do 1600 chest rerolls. I think they are counting on people getting random stuff based on luck and trading the items at the shard exchange.
Damn. I was so excited for MD expansion but got so little loot we have kind of given up on it. Even the first weeks, when in the past the slots are “loose” on expansions we got next to nothing. As always thank you for wading through the details…makes any rerolls, let alone loot farming, a joke. The only way through this is to simply stop buying into it and make-do with regular loot! Lanterns event has been a total joke for named loot. I’m over it! No more rerolls for his gal 🤍 I have gotten Myth Drannor loot (albeit sparingly) but it’s mostly not been applicable to the character I was running.
If the idea is to make you spend more shards it does seem somewhat counterintuitive, if the drop rate is so low it seems more likely that people just won't bother to reroll and either forget it altogether or just adopt a 'I'll get it when I get it' approach.
yeah so this is fucking insane. ssg leaning into the exploitations of rich players with endless astral shards and even that wont save you from these rates.
it is true that there is payment in this game, but it isn't pay to win. Most players can play fine on a low budget. I always assumed it was run as a hobby rather than a money project.
One of DDOs biggest issues is having no compelling loot at all you run new stuff a couple times and you're done. someone hands you unwanted named item that's super common and you're done. the RNG loot is pure junk. Diablo figured this out in 2001 just spinning the reincarnation hamster wheel with no interesting or unpredictable loot is why I no longer play the game. The devs have been aware of this since the first player council as D2 and later POE players (me) informed turbine come SSG that this was DDOs major replayability issue I told them myself and then moved on to POE which I've played for two or three times longer than DDO. I gave up because despite obvious reality DDO players shouted me down ... Sometimes players think they don't want something, when they actually do ...lol this is a blizzard meme I've flipped for this occasion btw. they literally don't know what's good for replay value. POE has maybe 100x the player base that DDO has now. It GROWS OVER TIME. I Wonder why... Hell even Diablo 2 has a much better active player base with multiple 1k viewer streamers.... Meanwhile poor strimtom is happy with 100 viewers I feel for the guy and now SSG has finally grown a spine and you dummy's are shouting again... Because you don't want replay value of content and loot? Nah because you don't know what's good for replayability and you hate change. This could have happened in2015 or 16 the game could be 3 or 4 times larger maybe even more as they learned the obvious lessons from the bigger games and learned to stop listening to their less informed players.
Very interesting take....just to be clear you are saying ultra rare items keep players interested? I really tend to agree you value things in life the most that u worked the hardest for
Are you coming back to play the game now that they did what you wanted? Are you spending the $130 for the MD expansion because it has the "replay value" you've asked for? Because if not then your not flipping the Blizzard meme; you're repeating the 4e Forgotten Realms mistake where they went and took all the criticism of the people who don't want to play in the realms, changed it, destroying a huge amount of interest the actual player base had and still not drawing any significant interest from the people who didn't play it because they already had settings that did what they wanted in the first place and had no reason to switch. I've been playing DDO since before it went f2p. I've never had any trouble finding replay value in it; in fact, it is the only MMO out of over a dozen that I've tried that held my interest for any significant amount of time. And it certainly held my interest long past what POE did. Additionally, I introduced my husband to it and he's been playing it for years too now and generally puts more time in than me. We both looked at this loot system and went "nah we're good" when discussing whether or not to get the MD expansion while it was on black friday sale. We aren't going to play those quests at all because we simply aren't going to spend months trying to farm specific quest for specific items. Not when we can have way more fun reincarnating our characters and playing the whole breadth of the game; not just the same few end game content quests. So it certainly doesn't add any replay value for us. You are interested in different things then us for your preferred gameplay experience and that's fine but just because that's your preferred experience doesn't mean it's what other people want and "they just don't know it." DDO might not have the player bases that other games play but it's also not going to have to have any player base if it changes itself to try and chase players that aren't going to be interested in it no matter what it does because at the end of the day DDO isn't the typical MMO and it draws a non-typical MMO player base because of that. Sabotaging the game-play experience of the actual dedicated player base isn't going to do the game any good in the current stage of the lifecycle it's in; because there's no way it's going to replace the alienated player base fast enough when so few new or returning players are going to come in even if they would enjoy the new experience better.
@@marksoberay2318 this person gets it, doesn't all have to be ultra rare it just needs to be interesting it needs to compete with named gear if it rolls well, be worth looking at. Easy loot kills the loop of killing monsters for reward, xp is too abstract and delayed and reincarnation hamster wheel provides the most tiny power spikes over a protracted timeline. Loot can be spicy and unpredictable every chest or group of monsters. Uncompelling loot makes the risk reward balance awful.
@@cmhsepeefencer yeah this smug expectation that I have to come back and spend money when they finally make some harder to get loot is super silly. but fwiw I just dropped 99 bucks for a year of VIP and I just got saltmarsh basic for what was it 19 bucks? And $49 for hand of vecna top package because I love the ancient lich cosmetic. But the truth is even having spent money on the game I have only slim hopes because SSG can only do so much in the face of such a change averse player base that wants to get everything super easy and never feel any sense of having earned it. There's a great line that goes something like: the wanting is usually better then the having. Anyway slim hopes are better then none.
I don't like this idea at all, one of the things I liked about this game was it didn't take forever to get the gear you wanted, raid loot excepted but that's fair enough. With bad RNG you could still be farming these when the next expansion drops. 😕
I don't feel that bad about this life is tough, people grow through challenges. .. and the things that you value the most are the things you worked hardest for....
I only play 1 charcter ( 13 years playing ). Nowadays I don't have the time to play multiple toons. Even worse when I try to play my 2, one or two tr characters they are so weak and useless they die and go back to my 1 and only main. Bank toons (10?) are organised by level. Cosmetics and Other. Dungeons and Dragons is so complicated. DDO too but it is a big turn off for MMO players. I wish I had more time to play but RL doesn't allow me. BTC is simply not needed or wanted. STOP IT. Make people pay for cosmetics the same as modern games do. DDO is sadly lacking in this repect. To attract modern players. DDO is awesome. The complexity is not. DDO is the best game. I wish I had started to.play when I saw the box years ago.
Re-roll for astral shards. LAZY!!!!!!!! Run the quest again. As for gear tetris - - there are ways around everything - - can't find what you need - - craft it
@@Ungermax84 i think cannith crafting is saving this game for many Casual players. I stopped going for specific gear many years ago. As long as you ignore reaper as an option for very gear dependant builds/classes playing solo, the game is still nice.
U can only run a quest 8 times a week before ransack and crafted gear doesn't compare to some of the gear out there definitely if u are trying some really hard stuff.
If the difficulty of completing quests doesn't increasee in a rate that REQUIRES you to get the new gear, then it's fine. Let them make some really hard to get loot enter the table, and let it take 2 years to really matter whether you got it or not. I'm fine with that. If you invested the 500 days of loot pulls needed to get your hand on that ONE PERFECT piece of gear, then kudos to you for putting in the time necessary to stay ahead of the curve. If it's a 2 year curve, sobeit. However, if you HAVE to have this new gear to not face a straight fucktastic slogfest of a grind to complete, that's an entirely different animal, and were that the case: FUCK YOU SSG. I don't think its the latter, and I'm here for it. We'll see what the future holds, but at least my favorite game is alive and *presumably* well.
Update! On 12/11/24, a couple weeks after this video came out, the following changes were made in Update 71 (the following is copy/pasted from the release notes):
- The Myth Drannor Saga now has a chance to grant one of the nine Rare Sun/Moon Augments from Myth Drannor as an option in its reward list. This chance is 10% on Normal, 16% on Hard, 25% on Elite, and 34% on True Elite. The Heroic Saga drops Heroic Augments, and the Legendary Saga drops Legendary Augments.
- The drop rate of named items from the purple-named landscape bosses in Myth Drannor has been raised.
Reasons why I try to never want a specific item in DDO, I just figure out what the best use is for whatever turns up.
Yep stack those rares over time as a bonus extra.
You'll find the game is more fun when you piecemeal your gear and adopt a "make do" attitude, because you learn to do more with less.
Amen. I am absolutely a "floortoon" where I just use whatever I can find on the floor.
Thx for sharing this, as players we need to push this kind of behavior, not just for us but for the game health
Yep I'm with you, I'm now ignoring MD, and I've bought every ultimate pack they've brought out, but MD will be the last expansion I buy until they change this system. I'm not a min maxer or a power player I'm a casual player that has been playing since launch, and this loot mechanic tells me I have no chance of ever getting the rare loot and little chance of getting the common named loot so the expansion isn't worth the cost. This loot system rips 2 thirds of the value out of the expansion for me.
I don't mind items being extra rare drops. I remember farming the Ancient Cyclops in Everquest for 30 hours straight to get the J Boots. But combined with the ransack system and it's just stupidly frustrating. I've been ransacking every week for the artifact fire ring and still haven't seen it. It's such an annoyance to do my eight runs and then have to wait another week for a sliver of a chance to get what I want.
yeah, the ransack (both loot and exp) is very annoying. Just let me run the same quests a bunch of times if i want to. best way to learn them.
Glad this popped up on my feed, felt like something had been changed on drop rates. Going to pass on MD for now after having tried to farm for gear the last month or so. But am worried about drop rate for other content if SSG is going to continue this.
This also assumes that loot on each table is evenly distributed, which it may not be (and prior content suggests it is not).
Once hitting a named or rare table we could assume (lets say with 4 items) a 25% chance for any specific item, but it could just as easily be 30%, 30%, 30% and 10%. It is possible that the specific rare you want is yet even more rare.
Yep, good point ademisc that's true.
Seeing the math is incredibly disheartening. Like having a certain amount of chase is really fun. Making a little checklist, finding where I gotta get those items, getting a rhythm down, and then slowly checking off each one. Getting sets of gear for next past lives is fun, finding a sick item that perfectly fits, but looking at the end game gear grind looks awful to me.
Aside from the rarity issue, there's also the fact that due to all sorts of possible builds it's difficult to always have useful loot for all builds on one expansion. For me, IoD was the last expansion that was relevant gear wise, so it's been about two years of playing the game just for the content. MD had just a couple of pieces, an item and an augment, that I could actually fit on my gear regardless of rarity. Now I'm full completionist, reaper capped, and got basically no actual gear left to farm at this point. Since I have no constitution to start it over for an alt, I just found no more reason to keep playing as far as actual progression goes. That's why I came up with the flawless r10 solo challenge for myself - so I would actually have something interesting to accomplish while I wait for that to change. But I'm about to get to the end of that as well - I've done almost every legendary quest that I possibly can, as the last 20 or so left all have specific mechanics that make it virtually impossible to solo. That means I'm again out of things to do and will likely stop playing till new content arrives. Bummer.
07:40 The thing is, these numbers all hinge on that 97/3 split that you've marked as an assumption - you'd need a pretty big sample size (>1000 chest pulls) to have much certainty in those percentages.
Yes it is an assumption which I wanted to be clear about, there's no way to know for sure. But based on what I'm seeing, players have been able to work through some data which doesn't all rely on sample size (see Sarlona Raiding's forum thread I linked in description for more info on that) and 3% seems to be the best guess . We know it's low, so the numbers would change slightly if it's say - 4% or 5%.
It's not an assumption, it comes directly from DDO's data file which is accessible with a text editor. The rare drop rate is 3% in the data file.
@@freetoplayddo3858 very interesting
I focus on XP and RXP and just playing the game. I try to see how much XP and loot I can squeeze out of every game, not how fast. People will rush through a dungeon as fast as possible and leave a pile of loot and xp behind. I don't like this style of play. No one likes to do this, so I mostly solo. I like to take my time and have fun. The main structure of the game, leveling your tune to TR and Epic TR to get those extra stats and effects.
Good day to the sexy bald man of DDO
*sexiest
>pfp
>message
🤢🤮
So gross...🤮 PDF file
I still follow you and watch your videos but I stopped playing DDO 3 years ago and every time I watch these videos, it makes me happy that I did.
I stopped playing 8 years ago and now i am having fun returning to the game in a firstlifechar...Secret May be never caring for minmax/bis/reaper/how many PLs some people have etc.
It's still a good game! Thanks for watching even if you aren't playing anymore.
good info, thanks. I didn't realize MD drops were that bad.
@AxelAlexK just wondering, are the augments on the rare loot table or the standard table?
Some augments are rare and only drop on the rare table, some are common and only drop on the common table. So it depends on the specific augment.
A Great numbers guy!
I am an accountant :D I am in Excel all day anyway regardless
This is the only MMO like this kind I've ever played but from what I heard about WoW I just 'assumed' it would/should take MONTHS to get the 'rare' you wanted. But those numbers are a bit much. I guessing they are REALLY REALLY banking on people to Whale on rerolling chests?
It's hard to say. As I talked about in the last part of the video it's a mix of things I think.
Thx for your thoughts and excellent breakdown once again. For average gamers with family and RL (not Ravenloft 😅) it’s really hard to advance anymore in DDO. I have a subscription running and manage about 6-10h gametime a week, just because I fell in love with DDO around 2005.
As you discussed the new VIP-loyalty program lately, why not give VIP a free reroll on every chest once per run?
Cheers to the Community!
Late to respond, but you're welcome glad you enjoyed the video. I don't think I'd be for a free rerolls for VIPs. Reason is it would really just encourage the devs to lower the drop rates even more to balance out that benefit, and then players who aren't VIP get hurt by it.
just for the crazy numbers - can you calculate ho long will it take to get those items, but with Mythic +4, the good reaper bonus, and to get some specific curse on it?
My guess is like 1500 years or so which makes it very very funny.
yeah I could if the reliable data exists on those rates but I'm not sure if it does.
Thanks for this Axel.
I stopped chasing MD gear and all I hear from guild mates is the terrible drop rates.
Gear tetris sucks and I stopped chasing for the most part. If I get it before I TR great ... if not well then maybe the next life.
Aranorth/Saranorth/Carraig
Divine Punishment
Orien Server
I haven't actually played myth drannor yet, but looking at the numbers, i think it's pretty clear the droprates for this are awful.
Farming a specific "common" item would, assuming a 10 minutes quest (god forbid it's 25-30) would take you 3 hours and 20 minutes. The rare... for a 10 minute quest it's 49 hours of farming one specific quest.
I think it's fair to say a loot system that requires near tripe digits of hours of gameplay to farm a specific item in an average length (for the game) quest is pretty much unreasonable. And that's assuming the player is indeed going with a full party all willing to pass the item. For anyone that's playing solo, the loot does not exist.
I've been reading about the rare loot table on the forums and read about many of the things you displayed. Actually seeing it displayed drives home the point that this is not "healthy."
Yeah, its complicated, i stop playing in 2012 because did VoN 6 about 100 times and never got a shard of SoS, if the game goes to that path again ill quit, sadly
They put the shard in the Raids runes purchase list
They gave away a free SoS recently
First of all, it’s a fundamental misconception to think that the power of an item can be balanced solely by its rarity.
Second, if a developer expects me to repeat a quest 250 times on average to obtain an item, all I think is it disrespects my limited play and life time. This kind of design tempts me to stop playing the game altogether.
In my opinion, DDO players don’t play the game because of such items; they play DDO in spite of this kind of nonsense and annoyance.
I decided to take a break from DDO right before this last expansion. They have done nothing in the game to make me want to come back.
I would say that I would be fine with the rare loot system if the pieces of loot merited their rarity. As you said, there should be maybe only 1 rare piece per chest, it should be budgeted higher and actually tagged on the item as rare. Maybe rolled statistically similar to artifacts with higher stat budget. Then it could be a cool thing to achieve after hard work or good luck and actually chase. Also, optimally, they should be items that realistically have normal equivalents that are not rare to fill the slot if you dont happen to get the rare item. Basically, it should be such that you are never trying to hunt a specific rare item outside of extreme min maxing (which is a you problem, not an SSG problem) and when you get one to drop it should be a bingo moment.
The problem with the current iteration is that these items are basically just like all the rest of the non rare loot except different. Which in DDO terms with the way loot placement and gearing works, just means that certain builds were targeted out as having their gear sets substantially harder to complete than other builds.
So your saying there's a chance...
Lol great throwback line!!!
lol
Great overview of what seems to be a really unpopular fairly bad idea. If it is SSGs way of farming for cash via astral shards, well, that sucks, but such is online life. I suppose it is marginally better than "find loot boxes, buy loot keys" that I've seen on other games (which is part of why I haven't really played Star Trek's MMORPG for a while).
To be honest, frustration with trying to do as much as I want/need to do on DDO solo (and as a reminder to previous conversations, I have infrequent and irregular times with access to internet so grouping is nigh impossible for me) has led me to basically ignore the game to play more City of Heroes Homecoming, which is an easier game to solo in, most of the time. I didn't buy MD because it didn't really interest me much, and I don't feel broken hearted over that choice. I still haven't bought Isle of Dread, and I loved that module in my old PnP days.
I understand that the company has to pay bills and salaries and such, but it seems to make it less interesting/enjoyable for casuals like me. Which is fine I suppose as I'm not their targeted player base, and I get that. I do hope that they can alter the rate to make the gear grind less onerous and more enjoyable for the core players. I think the idea of getting some sort of MD BTA tokens that can be taken to someone like Lahar (but in MD) and that can be exchanged for named loot when enough (a lot) have been gathered.
Hey, maybe they can bring back Misty to be in MD? There's no lava for her to fall into and die there... 😀
ok you advise letting SSG know your feelings about the new loot mechanic on discord.....where would one put that post exactly? The only channels I see on there is new players, streamers, bug reports, announcements, service news, off topic and then all the classes. No general discussion or something similar, so I don't see anywhere to post a comment about the new loot mechanic or any other aspect of the game outside of character builds.
I would say the general forum discussion. There is already a big main thread on it called Myth Drannor Drop Rates iirc, and also the thread I linked in the description, but there have been lots of them. Of if on the official DDO discord, the devs pop into general chat pretty often if you can catch them.
Super casual here, your videos are always great! My 2$.... I've never cared about what loot I get; I just like playing the game so its hard for me to understand why people want to play the game less. I get not wanting to do the same thing over and over..... I just dont get choosing to do so.
Samsies, i am happy just playing and being gimp.
Thank you. I still love the game and all that. I'm not a fan of the rarity in this system so just wanted to voice/discuss that. It's very very important to a lot of players, which I get.
Once you run the quests enough times to know where each trap box is or where mobs spawn you will enjoy something else, like trying new builds or building character power or upping the difficulty you run the quests at or even better, the combination of these. For these loot matters.
LOOT BOX'S/Chests=Astral shards booster.
One aspect of DDO its very much like a local store, , it dosnt have the range of supermarkets, and its changed ownership a few times but the staff remain consistent. I hope DDO continues, I sometimes second guess various decisions, though as you say, the higher ups require a certain amount of productivity which the staff try to implement. and again with the second guessing at what point does it become untenable.
If its a push to get people to gamble astral shards on chests (essentially loot boxes) then offer bronze silver and gold role chances on chests to improve drop. essentially your buying the item you want from the chest itself.
This is wild to me. The game is way too hard, too inaccessible, too grindy, and impossible to catch up past lives, gear wise, the playerbase is so spread out across servers, levels, difficulty tiers, etc. This is the type of decision that games do to wring the last blood out of the vet playerbase stone.
It's only like that if you want to be a "top player". You can enjoy 99% of the game on 1st life with basic gear, and you can even run endgame raids, maybe just not on Reaper. It's the easy to learn, hard to master kind of stuff, only "master" means grind. But you can definitely be viable with very little time investment.
so thats why my pull rate has been so damn horrible during the lanterns event. used up all my luck pulling a rare cape In MD on main rip
Once people paying for Scrooge McDuck piles of shards to reroll chest pulls to farm specific items became the norm, it was only a matter of time until they decreased the drop chance for the highly desired items. Those of us complaining about it aren't part of the market audience being milked this way. 🤷
I agree that there are too many items on the rare loot table. It would be better to have only one or two super items for the hardest of the hardcore players. My question is what tiny percentage of players min/max gear down to needing a ultra rare piece to make the "set" work and honestly how much do these ultra rare items even help? If i see a rare item neat but i don't going farming for that sort of thing and i don't think the average player does either. I tend to wear an iod or ranvenloft set and add a sharn set and that gets me to cap running elite difficulty. My concern is less about the rare gear and more about the rarity of the augments. It is nearly impossible to farm the augment you need. We need some kind of vendor to trade a collectable that drops from chests for a choice of solar or lunar gems. Collecting the regular named loot is about the same chance as the rest of the game but a regular Joe player might never get the right augment to use in the sun or moon slot. I love the idea of not having to have an entire set to get a bonus but it needs to be accessible.
I'm not what would be called a casual player by any means, but even I believe the loots rates create an environment that's not conducive towards group play. Gone are the days where someone would pass on loot for the overall benefit of the party. Rather folks will more likely horde gear they can't use on the off chance it maybe be useful later.
Why do they keep "fixing" things that arent broken?
Lol I hadnt even noticed a change!
Why oh why are they doubling down on this? Wasnt the loot grindy enough?
I am a passive farmer, in other words I'll just collect stuff to the point where there might be one item left in a set I need. With MD, I am like you I have not farmed a single specific item and figure sooner or later I might put together a set.
I wish every class had there own specific armors and they just had a crafting system to upgrade them save me a bunch of bank space
The word "rare" has a meaning. I have no expectations for it to be otherwise.
I actually kind of like having some items be way more rare than others , adds some cool factor to actually get something good
@@MeoPic I agree I just think it should be limited to a much smaller percentage of a pack's items is all.
@AxelAlexK fair, fair. Nice job on the video sir
I'm fine with extra rare items, but then they need to get rid of the ransack system. I've been ransack for the fire artifact ring like clockwork and still haven't seen it.
Run the damn things so many times and never seen a ring. It's awful. It's harder than Fey Twisted, but easier than raid Fey Twisted and original epic system Spell Storing Ring.
"If you can't solve the problem, you can solve the person who asked it."That's the advice my friend gave to me after his asking questions in the old forum and being ban🤣
Explains a lot. Like why loot has seemed to suck extra bad lately.
To be fair I wasn't happy when they replaced items that have use with the gems on low level drops, it makes it much harder for new players to get anywhere.
I mean, we secretly had it in Feywild already...
We just called it Feytwisted back then.
Can't even compare the two. Every chest can be feytwisted even the opt ones. And every single item can drop out of it, u could farm some opt chests really really fast. It's not even close.
Let us remember DDO's end goal is lv 40 cap.
So basically all these items are worthless.
True, but if this continues you are going to have the exact same problem at lvl 40.
So far it seems to be a cash grab, with 120+ rolls I still haven't seen a single minor artifact. Sure I can spend more money for Astral shards on the game but the rates are just too low. I've basically given up and for good reason now that I really see the math behind it all. I have all the Gem augment slot drops that I wanted but nothing else makes sense to chase after. Basically useless. 😪
Lately, I've been really disappointed with SSG and how they are handling things. This news about the rare loot system and drop rates really just adds another notch to that record of disappointment for me. The past couple of months I've contemplated more and more about giving the game a break and going back to ESO for a bit. Maybe they need some leadership changes or something.
You should try Guild Wars 2 if you haven't. Also get action cam, horizontal progression (think gearing working more akin to the time around Feywild where you had multiple options to get Artifact Bonuses), No Subscription a d F2P base game... plus the 'full game' is cheaper in GW2 than DDO.
I haven't cared about gear in a LONG while. Just enjoying the game, trying out different builds and playstyles, and those are pretty much countless. As long as FW/Ravenloft/Sharn gear is viable we're cool.
I let SSG know by not buying the expansion
Yea, I don't have the patience to farm every quest 8 times. I run the lot through to the end. I might do it twice before moving on. I get bored of content too fast. I had farmed a quest for the end reward over 100 times without ever dropping the item I wanted. It's RNG.
My luck with pulling named items is already crap, so this is horrible news......yay 🤮
so rare items in quest chests are about as hard to get as a Jibbers blade and wilderness rares are way way harder. . .right! got it. I knew the drop rates were bad but I didn't know they were this bad. I have been ignoring MD loot too. I just thought about it and realized I didn't want to farm out my set bonuses in addition to the gear it goes on. now I'm just gonna stick with Sharn/Vecna or Feywild gear sets. F Myth D
What's kinda bad is if u get the ultra rare items; they become dated w the level change!!!!!!
yeah, bottom line, this loot just doesn't exist to me. I won't plan for it, nor bother to farm for it. I spend a lot of money on DDO, but will never bother spending any funds to try for any of this stuff, period. It's just like the old seal/shard/scroll stuff from sands, which was so rare, I just never bothered. It's just like the ridiculous reaper gear crunching and "cursed" cards (that give *benefits*, not curses...but w/e). Getting any of this gear is so rare, I just say to hell with it.
Players that do want to chase it, that's cool and best of luck. But for me, it's nothing but a complete and total waste of time.
Assuming that the maths is even semi accurate then the devs shouldn't have even spent the time and resources making the loot in the first place with these drop rates. It's beyond dumb. I have run the whole chain maybe 3 times since it came out.
Unpopular opinion: is it really a bad thing that some (very few) items are ULTRA rare to get?
I think we got lost in calculations here a bit. We assume we HAVE TO get that specific item, and we HAVE TO farm it for 50 weeks nonstop because we're not gonna be fine until we get it.
Unless it's something game-changing like Jibbers or unless it really unlocks a unique build, I say it's ok to have super rare items.
What if it "takes you" 2 years? You don't have to have them. We used to have very very rare items back in the day. And those items were kind of special.
I don't really farm much with my guild, I mostly solo and pug so I'm not really helping my case, and I know people who farm with a dedicated group WILL get those items and rub them in my face, but I don't think it's that bad.
Maybe you're right and it's too large a loot table, that is a good point.
This is absurd. Even whaling it out is unpractical. Rerolling a chest 1600 times in a row must be mind meltingly boring and more likely to get you carpal syndrome rather than the item you want. I don't think SSG expects people to do 1600 chest rerolls. I think they are counting on people getting random stuff based on luck and trading the items at the shard exchange.
Generally speaking, ignore all this loot.
Damn. I was so excited for MD expansion but got so little loot we have kind of given up on it. Even the first weeks, when in the past the slots are “loose” on expansions we got next to nothing. As always thank you for wading through the details…makes any rerolls, let alone loot farming, a joke. The only way through this is to simply stop buying into it and make-do with regular loot! Lanterns event has been a total joke for named loot. I’m over it! No more rerolls for his gal 🤍 I have gotten Myth Drannor loot (albeit sparingly) but it’s mostly not been applicable to the character I was running.
If the idea is to make you spend more shards it does seem somewhat counterintuitive, if the drop rate is so low it seems more likely that people just won't bother to reroll and either forget it altogether or just adopt a 'I'll get it when I get it' approach.
Time is money friend.
I like "rare" loot if it is like Everquest Classic - basically about 1 in 5 to 1 in 7. This system is BRUTAL. It's like they never played the game.
yeah so this is fucking insane. ssg leaning into the exploitations of rich players with endless astral shards and even that wont save you from these rates.
it is true that there is payment in this game, but it isn't pay to win. Most players can play fine on a low budget. I always assumed it was run as a hobby rather than a money project.
One of DDOs biggest issues is having no compelling loot at all you run new stuff a couple times and you're done. someone hands you unwanted named item that's super common and you're done. the RNG loot is pure junk. Diablo figured this out in 2001 just spinning the reincarnation hamster wheel with no interesting or unpredictable loot is why I no longer play the game. The devs have been aware of this since the first player council as D2 and later POE players (me) informed turbine come SSG that this was DDOs major replayability issue I told them myself and then moved on to POE which I've played for two or three times longer than DDO. I gave up because despite obvious reality DDO players shouted me down ... Sometimes players think they don't want something, when they actually do ...lol this is a blizzard meme I've flipped for this occasion btw. they literally don't know what's good for replay value. POE has maybe 100x the player base that DDO has now. It GROWS OVER TIME. I Wonder why... Hell even Diablo 2 has a much better active player base with multiple 1k viewer streamers.... Meanwhile poor strimtom is happy with 100 viewers I feel for the guy and now SSG has finally grown a spine and you dummy's are shouting again... Because you don't want replay value of content and loot? Nah because you don't know what's good for replayability and you hate change. This could have happened in2015 or 16 the game could be 3 or 4 times larger maybe even more as they learned the obvious lessons from the bigger games and learned to stop listening to their less informed players.
Very interesting take....just to be clear you are saying ultra rare items keep players interested?
I really tend to agree you value things in life the most that u worked the hardest for
Are you coming back to play the game now that they did what you wanted? Are you spending the $130 for the MD expansion because it has the "replay value" you've asked for? Because if not then your not flipping the Blizzard meme; you're repeating the 4e Forgotten Realms mistake where they went and took all the criticism of the people who don't want to play in the realms, changed it, destroying a huge amount of interest the actual player base had and still not drawing any significant interest from the people who didn't play it because they already had settings that did what they wanted in the first place and had no reason to switch.
I've been playing DDO since before it went f2p. I've never had any trouble finding replay value in it; in fact, it is the only MMO out of over a dozen that I've tried that held my interest for any significant amount of time. And it certainly held my interest long past what POE did. Additionally, I introduced my husband to it and he's been playing it for years too now and generally puts more time in than me. We both looked at this loot system and went "nah we're good" when discussing whether or not to get the MD expansion while it was on black friday sale. We aren't going to play those quests at all because we simply aren't going to spend months trying to farm specific quest for specific items. Not when we can have way more fun reincarnating our characters and playing the whole breadth of the game; not just the same few end game content quests. So it certainly doesn't add any replay value for us. You are interested in different things then us for your preferred gameplay experience and that's fine but just because that's your preferred experience doesn't mean it's what other people want and "they just don't know it." DDO might not have the player bases that other games play but it's also not going to have to have any player base if it changes itself to try and chase players that aren't going to be interested in it no matter what it does because at the end of the day DDO isn't the typical MMO and it draws a non-typical MMO player base because of that. Sabotaging the game-play experience of the actual dedicated player base isn't going to do the game any good in the current stage of the lifecycle it's in; because there's no way it's going to replace the alienated player base fast enough when so few new or returning players are going to come in even if they would enjoy the new experience better.
@@marksoberay2318 this person gets it, doesn't all have to be ultra rare it just needs to be interesting it needs to compete with named gear if it rolls well, be worth looking at. Easy loot kills the loop of killing monsters for reward, xp is too abstract and delayed and reincarnation hamster wheel provides the most tiny power spikes over a protracted timeline. Loot can be spicy and unpredictable every chest or group of monsters. Uncompelling loot makes the risk reward balance awful.
@@cmhsepeefencer yeah this smug expectation that I have to come back and spend money when they finally make some harder to get loot is super silly. but fwiw I just dropped 99 bucks for a year of VIP and I just got saltmarsh basic for what was it 19 bucks? And $49 for hand of vecna top package because I love the ancient lich cosmetic. But the truth is even having spent money on the game I have only slim hopes because SSG can only do so much in the face of such a change averse player base that wants to get everything super easy and never feel any sense of having earned it. There's a great line that goes something like: the wanting is usually better then the having. Anyway slim hopes are better then none.
I must say the new loot system is completely anti player. Great video btw.
I have job, life, Wife, I mean bro, let us be honest. I aint never touching any of those items.
TLDR: Just get the Feywild gear.
Im gonna reluctantly agree here...wish it wasn't true but it is
I just use whatever I get. Nothing to cry about, you can still solo the majority of the game with random loot.😅
I don't like this idea at all, one of the things I liked about this game was it didn't take forever to get the gear you wanted, raid loot excepted but that's fair enough. With bad RNG you could still be farming these when the next expansion drops. 😕
I don't feel that bad about this life is tough, people grow through challenges. .. and the things that you value the most are the things you worked hardest for....
I only play 1 charcter ( 13 years playing ). Nowadays I don't have the time to play multiple toons. Even worse when I try to play my 2, one or two tr characters they are so weak and useless they die and go back to my 1 and only main. Bank toons (10?) are organised by level. Cosmetics and Other. Dungeons and Dragons is so complicated. DDO too but it is a big turn off for MMO players. I wish I had more time to play but RL doesn't allow me. BTC is simply not needed or wanted. STOP IT. Make people pay for cosmetics the same as modern games do. DDO is sadly lacking in this repect. To attract modern players. DDO is awesome. The complexity is not. DDO is the best game. I wish I had started to.play when I saw the box years ago.
That's terrible. I think they just hate us?
I have never seen a game that hates its players and try so hard to make people not want to spend money on it. Keep up the great work DDOdumbasses.
With the lag, drop rates, and the constant nerfing. The game is just unplayable now..
Re-roll for astral shards. LAZY!!!!!!!! Run the quest again. As for gear tetris - - there are ways around everything - - can't find what you need - - craft it
I refuse to equip non-named items after say, level 5
Crafting doesn't cut it.
@@Ungermax84 i think cannith crafting is saving this game for many Casual players. I stopped going for specific gear many years ago. As long as you ignore reaper as an option for very gear dependant builds/classes playing solo, the game is still nice.
U can only run a quest 8 times a week before ransack and crafted gear doesn't compare to some of the gear out there definitely if u are trying some really hard stuff.
If the difficulty of completing quests doesn't increasee in a rate that REQUIRES you to get the new gear, then it's fine. Let them make some really hard to get loot enter the table, and let it take 2 years to really matter whether you got it or not. I'm fine with that. If you invested the 500 days of loot pulls needed to get your hand on that ONE PERFECT piece of gear, then kudos to you for putting in the time necessary to stay ahead of the curve. If it's a 2 year curve, sobeit.
However, if you HAVE to have this new gear to not face a straight fucktastic slogfest of a grind to complete, that's an entirely different animal, and were that the case: FUCK YOU SSG.
I don't think its the latter, and I'm here for it. We'll see what the future holds, but at least my favorite game is alive and *presumably* well.