Druid Events and the new loot lock - we need to talk this one out!

I found the Kur event Farcical to be honest only way I managed to get first hit on 2 Elementals was to run into suicidal battles, I did arrive half way into it though.
I guess some poor sod had to finish them off and got nothing for it.
I asked in global for a group none was forth coming, not a massive problem for me I can solo them if I could of got them alone that is.
I did get the blessing reward at least but frankly found the whole thing A disappointment.

Not keen on loot system as a whole to be honest, I feel now the larger guilds of which I'm a member of one DOM will tend to find groups of 6 within there own players to the detriment of the more casual or lone player.
I Just don't see why Elites and especially bosses in dungeons are group loot only, it works now when there is one or 2 groups within a dungeon but if game grows with no instances 6 groups running around in one dungeon is going to end in a riot. I'd rather an environment where the group I'm not in near me is a help not a threat.

I can see that all the loot from mants and druid events was a problem, especially in the sense that low lvls can do both by tagging along contributing little.
To be honest though that loot is junk to most and just turns into cash which is wasted on the endless skill trainers etc. I'm sure there are some players with lots of money but those that play around with most the skillsets I'd imagine are pretty damn poor half the time.
In the years I've played I don't think I've ever had more than 150k.

What made this needing changing in the first place?

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Originally Posted by rastaah

What made this needing changing in the first place?

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Here's a quote from Citan (in a different thread) that explains the reasoning.

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Originally Posted by Citan

I guess the bottom line is that the current system is obviously not going to cut it in the long term because the loot system heavily rewards mega-groups. Mega-groups are actually really boring, even if the rewards are good. It's not healthy for the long-term of the game. The best system I've seen is EQ2s. If you have other systems to propose, that's cool and I'm all ears! But we can't stay with the exact system we have now forever.

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Originally Posted by alleryn

Here's a quote from Citan (in a different thread) that explains the reasoning.

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It's a change for the worst, and I think that's nearly universally agreed upon at this point. I don't think it's necessarily because the change itself is bad, it's just poorly implemented.

The assumption is that mega-groups (the zerg) are really boring. In some cases that's probably true, but it's only true because current design limitations only allow content to be balanced for solo and group play. If content is balanced for 6, then a smaller group will be frustrated and a larger group will find little challenge in it. From a design standpoint, it's much easier to force everyone into a predictable group size and adjust content to that size. That works fine for some things, like dungeons with simple objectives, but it's a poor design for open world content.

Rift was one of the early pioneers in creating adaptive content. Events were dynamic, grouping was automatic, and everyone could contribute and earn rewards. Guild Wars 2 followed with a similar system that also worked quite well.

As a player, I'm less concerned with the innovative coding that allows for dynamic content. It's neat, sure. I like loot, I like playing with others, but I really want a sense of community. That's what keeps players engaged for the long haul, and my real fear is that this change is directly harming the community. Peak numbers are down at least 30-40% from two weeks ago. Mants/Pask is no longer a chance to catch up with familiar faces. Guild runs have become only about maximizing a chance at success, and players with lesser gear are stuck watching from the sidelines. I used to run lower level dungeons for folks, but I haven't since the change. I'm not going to tell a player that they can't come along, or even worse, they can watch while only a few others loot -- and I won't have a part in it. Tonight, I won't even be logging on.

Community keeps games alive. A better change would have been to create an incentive for cooperative play. Have you seen the amount of cooperation that goes into killing those silly Scape Goats? There's no loot, it's low tech, but it's fun. It wouldn't be hard to simply scale global events (currently limited to druid events) based on progression. Kill the easy green ones, advance to the gold ones. Kill them, advance to the red ones. Kill the red ones, final blue boss. If loot inflation is an issue with the event, then award "participation points" like Dreva's blessings that can be redeemed for keys. Problem solved.

I have no idea why forcing group size is a good idea in dungeons. If players want a challenge, then they can create a group that it's balanced for, but players and guilds should have the option to have fun in whatever way floats their collective boat. That's the whole idea of a sandbox, right? Players ought to be able to create their own experience.

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Originally Posted by mrwarp

So just did the Kur druid event. Nothing really changed. Got a couple pieces of loot this time, but was really annoyed that now it's a "tag and drag" fest all over the place. Here I'll tag these 3 elementals and drag them to the main group and let them do the work for me. But this time it was even groups dragging onto groups. I can only see this getting worse when unleashed on a larger scale.

Also, a couple passing thoughts on the "loot piñata" argument: Why exactly is that such a horrible thing? It's a bunch of foraging stuff and a set level of gear drops. For example the droaches drop level 50 gear. Why would that matter so much to a character with level 60/70/etc skills? The gear for them is mostly useless...sure it may help gear some in the 50 skill area but it's not gonna solve anything else beyond that gear-wise. The stuff made great fodder for augmentation practice, favor and allowed some people to put a few councils in their wallet by vendoring it....not everyone in this game is stinkin' rich.

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Since I don't want to repeat or quote myself read the above reasoning if you wish to in my previous post. On top of the other arguments I made it's simply freebies awarded daily for just being present.

On topic, I agree that overall the changes impacted negatively the number of active players. Imho the zergs were also bad, running Lab with 20+ players was a complete nightmare. I did like the group limit but the loot tag applied to everything seems to not work so well. I still stand for removing the current type of druid events, tag or not. Keep only dreva blessings as reward and make them more involving for all lvls druids.
I'm disappointed myself in general terms, I appreciate the amount of work that's involved in putting out so much new content in a short period of time, don't get me wrong. But if the result is fun to play is another conversation.

I enjoy crafting, crafting is on the backburner (not fun for me)
I try to get enthusiastic about new skillsets, knife was not what I expected and bard became expensive af overnight. There's no dedicated gem to craft bard gear so I can at least see what it does and due to the fact I'm not "stinkin' rich" I can't afford to uncap it so I can run GK for gear and use bard at its full potential.
I would get on board with druid events if I felt like a druid and if I wasn't so sick and tired of people complaining that "High levels don't participate". I'm not even that high level in druid but understand once and for all there's no incentive for me to attend druid events. Even before I didn't agree with getting everyone free loot like candy. I think I'm generally a helpful player but going to kill a bunch of mobs so lower levels can get loot and exp (or they were stuck waiting for us to kill the mobs) is not my idea of "help". Give a man a fish ...kind of situation.
Most of us gave a more or less negative feedback when the druid events were implemented. It's not an "i told ya so" moment but the long term effects are starting to show now-players who started more recently feel like they are being robbed of something they were entitled to, simply because the loot pinata druid events were in place when they started playing. Obviously they are going to complain, can't blame them for that. They can't kill the event mobs even if they group (lower levels), they can't get anything unless they tag and drag. Obviously this feature is not working out as planned.

Again, I appreciate how much work goes into this and the rapid succession of updates. I would imagine it's because you would like to do the early access release but there are too many things left unfinished (not unpolished, just unfinished, like augmenting skills) from previous updates and we simply don't have the time to adjust to changes in the way of playstyle, gear, grinding enough cash etc. If I find this overwhelming as an older player think how overwhelmed a new one must feel with these updates making the game more grindy, more competitive, more hardcore.

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Originally Posted by sudostahp

It's a change for the worst, and I think that's nearly universally agreed upon at this point. I don't think it's necessarily because the change itself is bad, it's just poorly implemented.

The assumption is that mega-groups (the zerg) are really boring. In some cases that's probably true, but it's only true because current design limitations only allow content to be balanced for solo and group play. If content is balanced for 6, then a smaller group will be frustrated and a larger group will find little challenge in it. From a design standpoint, it's much easier to force everyone into a predictable group size and adjust content to that size. That works fine for some things, like dungeons with simple objectives, but it's a poor design for open world content.

Rift was one of the early pioneers in creating adaptive content. Events were dynamic, grouping was automatic, and everyone could contribute and earn rewards. Guild Wars 2 followed with a similar system that also worked quite well.

As a player, I'm less concerned with the innovative coding that allows for dynamic content. It's neat, sure. I like loot, I like playing with others, but I really want a sense of community. That's what keeps players engaged for the long haul, and my real fear is that this change is directly harming the community. Peak numbers are down at least 30-40% from two weeks ago. Mants/Pask is no longer a chance to catch up with familiar faces. Guild runs have become only about maximizing a chance at success, and players with lesser gear are stuck watching from the sidelines. I used to run lower level dungeons for folks, but I haven't since the change. I'm not going to tell a player that they can't come along, or even worse, they can watch while only a few others loot -- and I won't have a part in it. Tonight, I won't even be logging on.

Community keeps games alive. A better change would have been to create an incentive for cooperative play. Have you seen the amount of cooperation that goes into killing those silly Scape Goats? There's no loot, it's low tech, but it's fun. It wouldn't be hard to simply scale global events (currently limited to druid events) based on progression. Kill the easy green ones, advance to the gold ones. Kill them, advance to the red ones. Kill the red ones, final blue boss. If loot inflation is an issue with the event, then award "participation points" like Dreva's blessings that can be redeemed for keys. Problem solved.

I have no idea why forcing group size is a good idea in dungeons. If players want a challenge, then they can create a group that it's balanced for, but players and guilds should have the option to have fun in whatever way floats their collective boat. That's the whole idea of a sandbox, right? Players ought to be able to create their own experience.

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Everything you said here is very true , I'd have to say my biggest reason for leaving is MMORPG is when Dev decisions or 'balancing' takes away from the fun factor OR the sense of community

It is not even remotely similar but when I left RIFT it was over a community thing more than any other reason, I loved RIFT and wish I was still playing it but they ruined it for me.
It may be good for those that play it now, but I left once they started to do certain changes that made it less RIFT and more 'like other games'

EQ2 was brought up in the post above yours and thanks Alleryn for that quote from Citan.

While I don't feel qualified to comment on this games grouping at higher levels I can comment on a lot of other games including EQ2. The loot rules in EQ2 were 'fine' overall. I played that game a long time until they started to mess with PVP too much (I liked its PVP a whole lot and they kept ruining it , again trying to be like other games!)

I would think WOW with all of its 'world boss' kill type events would be a good place to look, RIFT for sure (played that Alpha onward) Rift had a really good way of doing it....and EQ2 more for small group play but not sure they had many huge world group events.

The most annoying thing as a lower level player is the loot is locked then and if the person runs away I now can't do as I used to do and close the corpse etc.

That does bug me already and I'm just low level.


EDIT: I was out of town and had not seen the new update yet :) I see on the 3/29 one it addressed my issue already , sorry if my post overlapped that fix. Thank you as well.

Ok, so if the druid event itself is the problem, how about this solution:

Reduce the druid emergencies to once or twice a month if you really want to keep that in the game. Create a "nature nexus" - a place only druids can enter. It doesn't have to be anything huge, a small space where you can place all the trainers and anything else druid that exists now or in the future. Inside you could also have a daily exercise...maybe something like a gauntlet type quest to help hone your druid skills. That way it could include all levels of druid, the higher you are, the farther you can progress. You could even have different tiers of difficulty. The reward is simply some dreva blessings and/or druid xp based on how far you go. You could even add a teleport skill that can be bought with blessings that will teleport you directly to the place. There! Problem solved! No loot piñata, no tag and drag, no single person mass tagging everything....except for once or twice a month. :)

Perhaps make it so that anyone that does damage to the mob can loot it, and also - you have to be a druid to loot.

http://projectgorgon.com/forum/gener...k?limitstart=0

Some ideas thrown out there when the druid events were implemented