Second opinion: Loot RNG

[Melusine]

Originally posted by Blizzard (in Blue Post):

"Loot RNG
We realize that sometimes RNG can be frustrating. I’m just not sure how beneficial it would be for the game and its longevity, if all of a sudden RNG started being “smart” and avoiding giving out items that are either useless or redundant to players.

“Smart loot” is great for quests and lower level content, but messing around with the randomness of loot attribution in high-end content is, in my opinion, something that would only be detrimental to the game.

LFR already gives out loot that is based on spec, that’s as far as we are willing to go with “smart” RNG in such environments, also, that only happens because of the nature of that specific loot system.
From a design standpoint, it’s perfectly ok for loot not always being desirable. Rarity is exciting."

Ok, from the top, Blizzard knows loot RNG can be particularly frustrating, but then states they don't know how it would be for the game and its longevity. Well, this isn't me trying to suggest blizzard should just give us all whatever we want all the time, in order to keep the customer happy, but they might consider this: the progress of raid teams can either be bolstered well above normal content rate by an insanely lucky streak of roles, or can be crippled by extremely unlucky rolls. the gear curve is now higher than it has ever been and it is absolutely impossible to say that skill > gear, because that ship has sailed. Now, both are required, and not just from the player standpoint, but from the raid standpoint. the fights now have more 1 shot mechanics than ever, sure, but there are also many berserk timers, meaning virtually every fight is a gear check. So, no, the idea of "smart loot" would not be detrimental to the game.

Consider this more disgusting situation. As of this writing, my guild, a 25 man guild, currently 11/14 has done the content every week, and has seen 1 dps trinket drop from any boss, and no one in this same grp has rolled for one and received one. Weapons and offhands have been a bit scarce, as well. The 2 things that make the biggest difference have not dropped, much, and to be honest, this has hurt us in progression more noticeably this round than in ToT or Terrace.

And as for the design standpoint, it may seem perfectly ok for loot to not always be desirable, but realistically, it also instills a degree of apathy and careless attitudes in raiders, because seriously, why bother, when we have been struck down time and time again? And if you really think Rarity is exciting, then why is it exciting? For the same reason that 2 birds in the bush is more exciting than the one in the hand? HAH! Would you say the same about sex? Rarity is exciting? Then if so, your marriages must really suck.

Oddly, I don't tend to hear the same bitching from pvp'ers. they earn the point, they get the loot they need, and continue on with their arena/BG careers in the game, and if they get the wrong loot, that's their fault. They don't usually get bombed with every piece of gear they want in a single week, but they know they will get it, because RNG is removed.

It may be time to do something different than RNG. Earning things may be better than randomly receiving them.

[Deleted]

You could invoke a token system where each raid runtrough gives x amount of tokens, and these tokens could buy current tier raidgear? Don't know how that would be recieved or balanced

[lockedout]

I had no problem with TBC loot system.
Now with content coming out much faster that is no longer an option, I could imagine if it was though.
The bosses drop so much loot now it's ridiculous PLUS an extra roll jeez.

[Vouksh89]

I almost feel like a pure token/point system would work better. Each boss would drop 3 (10m) or 5(25m) tokens, to be distributed.

There would then be a vendor that sold the gear. The gear would adjust in cost in proportion to the boss it would drop off of, as well as the type of item.
Q1: Weapons - 4 tokens, Trinkets - 3, Bracers/belt/neck/rings - 1, other slots - 2
Q2: Weapons - 5 tokens, Trinkets - 4, Bracers/belt/neck/rings - 2, other slots - 3
Q2.. etc.
With the loot that would have come from the last boss needing the most (10 or 15).

Not the best system and I'm sure it could be better, but it would eliminate the horrid RNG some guilds get. It would also allow players to tailor their characters more.

[Deleted]

Oddly, I don't tend to hear the same bitching from pvp'ers. they earn the point, they get the loot they need, and continue on with their arena/BG careers in the game, and if they get the wrong loot, that's their fault. They don't usually get bombed with every piece of gear they want in a single week, but they know they will get it, because RNG is removed.

That's not very odd. For PvP'ers, the variation comes through playing against different human beings. In PvE, once you've beaten a boss, the variation mostly comes from whether you will get your loot or not.

I don't know though. I find the randomness of items somewhat interesting. I don't want raiding to turn into some kind of planned out thing where everyone calculates exactly what and how many bosses they need to kill in order to get their highest dps/hps/surv upgrades and then sort rotations/benching based on that etc. I think that would be more detrimental than guilds suffering from bad RNG, at least for me personally.

[Deleted]

I would be grateful if they just let tier bosses drop two items and the token on top. This tier is ridiculous with healer trinkets, all healer trinkets drop from tier bosses: Sha and Siegecrafter for BiS and the other two worse trinkets drop on tier dropping bosses too. In ToT, two of the int BiS trinkets dropped on Council and DA.

Let's not even talk about cloaks when a large majority of players has the legendary cloak. We had a warforged heroic cloak drop on our Immerseus first kill, awesome. On our second kill, Norushen, someone coined another heroic cloak. Getting a cloak as boss loot is just awful in 10-man.

[Marxman]

I'd like to see a return to a Sunwell sort of turn-in system. You turn-in a piece of gear plus some currency/rare item drop to buy a different piece of gear for the same slot/armor class. Resto Druid pants + Sunmote = Rogue pants, for example.

The last thing the game needs is to change to a total currency-based loot system. It works for PvP because the gameplay is what drives PvP. In PvE, once you beat every boss, it's entirely about loot RNG. Without that, raiding ceases to be interesting once you hit farm mode.

[Deleted]

all they really need to do is make it a little less RNG especially 10m, coz you can kill a boss 20 times without seeing a certain items which is less likely in 25m due to more drops, what they should do in 10m is to either allow them to have "smart" rolls, allowing you to roll for a specific item from a boss only, for example i could choose to roll only for purified bindings of immerseus and if i get loot, ill get that trinket 100% or have each boss drop the same amount of gear for 10m as they do in 25m (6 pieces) but only allow your raid to pick 2 items, this will allow you to have more "Luck" with loot and gear up faster.

[Clrg]

I dont have a problem with loot RNG BUT i have a problem when the boss drop an item for a class that isnt present in the raid, last week we cleared 13 boss in one night and EVERY single boss dropped leather with int, and the only leather in the raid is the rogue, last tier we killed horridon normal + heroic 25 times, and he never dropped the healer trinket, and we never saw the megaera trinket or any of lei shen trinkets.

I would be grateful if they just let tier bosses drop two items and the token on top. This tier is ridiculous with healer trinkets, all healer trinkets drop from tier bosses: Sha and Siegecrafter for BiS and the other two worse trinkets drop on tier dropping bosses too. In ToT, two of the int BiS trinkets dropped on Council and DA.

Good point.

[Mirri]

I like the current system. It makes things exciting and interesting. Imagine the boredom when you know exactly what will drop off the bosses even before you have killed it. Bonus rolls have made things better imo and that addition to the loot system is sufficient in my opinion. Smart loot and being able to pick and choose your loot would be a horrendous addition to the game.

[Basso]

The random loot is what makes raiding somewhat exiting after the boss is down the first time, but also somewhat frustrating, if the items stay the way they are a change is needed, because some items are so insanely strong that you can't compete at all to other players, at the moment that are the trinkets. So if they are not dropping its crippling the way hardly, its not like if that trinket don't drop i only make 0,5% less dps, no the trinkets value going from 10k DPS increase up to 40k DPS increase at some classes, that are more then 10% for some. Its a pretty big gap.

I can't say how they should change, because i also don't really want to have the rng gone because its somewhat needed, but they need to lower the value of some items and give more alternatives to them or they need to stop the rng at least for the specific items.

[Invictus9001]

Consider this more disgusting situation. As of this writing, my guild, a 25 man guild, currently 11/14 has done the content every week, and has seen 1 dps trinket drop from any boss, and no one in this same grp has rolled for one and received one. Weapons and offhands have been a bit scarce, as well. The 2 things that make the biggest difference have not dropped, much, and to be honest, this has hurt us in progression more noticeably this round than in ToT or Terrace.

Getting a new weapon over the course of MoP has been about as difficult as getting laid in Vegas when all the cash you have on you is $20. It might not be impossible, but damn if it wouldn't take a while - and it has taken a long while to get upgrade weapons every single time a new tier of content has been released thus far. I quite literally farmed 3 bosses for 3 months trying to get a damned 502 iLevel weapon for my main.. and a couple of weeks later, SoO drops. I almost managed to facedesk THROUGH my desk. Aggravating as hell, to say the bloody least.

Blizzard needs to modify the loot roll system only slightly to help give more of a chance to correct this... RNG madness. My solution is pretty dirt simple. Make it so a loot roll either PRIORITIZES rolling for a weapon or trinket, if it is available from the boss in question.. or outright make it so you can spend additional coins per loot roll attempt to have a chance at a specific item, which you could designate. The RNG is still there, but at least you'd know you're rolling for that upgrade weapon or new trinket.. and not managing to get yet another pair of shoulders, pants, (etc) that only gets sold to vendor or disenchanted.

Granted, being able to spend additional coins to roll for a specific item would drain one's currency faster. Solve that problem by allowing for more coins per week to be obtained via the Charm Maker quest NPCs. Instead of redeeming (currently) 50 charms for 3 Warforged Seals, make the ratio 50 charms for 6 Warforged Seals (or whatever bloody future currency Blizzard concocts.) A specific item loot roll could cost 2 Seals instead of the current 1 seal. A bonus roll for a specific item could also cost 2 Seals instead of the current 1. Granted, you might be blowing 4 Seals on a chance for ONE specific item - but you'd still have 2 Seals left over in addition to actually taking a SPECIFIC LOOT ROLL STAB at an upgrade. It might still be frustrating to not hit a specific item on a loot roll (played out as I described), but I'd feel a tiny bit better losing on such a roll compared to the "all or nothing cherry-pick via RNG" mentality the current system creates.

[cynsacat]

I like the current system. It makes things exciting and interesting. Imagine the boredom when you know exactly what will drop off the bosses even before you have killed it. Bonus rolls have made things better imo and that addition to the loot system is sufficient in my opinion. Smart loot and being able to pick and choose your loot would be a horrendous addition to the game.

Pretty much this. In a perfect world, we could rely on people to show up even if drops would not necessarily help them because they want to help their fellow raiders; however, in the current setup, everyone is out for his/herself. (And I don't just mean in the current setup; it's like a way of life in a very selfish society.) If loot was predetermined (even in terms of X coins per boss, resulting in the ability to purchase X piece of gear), any last bit of the team mentality would diminish. It'd be every man using the group for his/her best personal gain, and that already is such a big problem in non-competitive guilds, who get treated as stepping stones to other guilds anyway. Random loot distribution is pretty much the only thing forcing people to work together because they can't calculate when to bail.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but that's what I've seen in my years of WoW.

[lopk]

As anyone who took psychology knows, the best way to encourage behavior (in this case, encourage players to raid) is on a variable ratio schedule. In WoW, that means you get your first piece of loot off of the X boss you killed, the second piece off of the Y boss you killed, etc.

I mean, a token system does sounds okay, but it's psychology mang.

[Serissa]

but realistically, it also instills a degree of apathy and careless attitudes in raiders, because seriously, why bother, when we have been struck down time and time again?

Oh, c'mon stop whining! Be honest - loot is one and only reason you (and everyone else) run same content week after week after week for months and years. Do you think anyone would run it even second time if they got everything in first lockout? Not a single person!

And if you really think Rarity is exciting, then why is it exciting?

Not rarity but moment you get something you wanted so much

[Totaltotemic]

the gear curve is now higher than it has ever been and it is absolutely impossible to say that skill > gear, because that ship has sailed.

The loot system that has been this way in raids for 9 years isn't a problem, this is. It didn't used to make or break your raid if you got a heroic ICC trinket to replace your ToGC trinkets because the ilvl difference was quite small. Now the difference between heroic Thunderforged and heroic Warforged is a disturbing as hell 31 ilvl. What used to be the difference between 10 man normal gear and the next tier's 25 man heroic gear is now the difference between one tier's heroic gear and the next. This over-accelerated loot curve destroys healing, stat balance, class balance, and the general progress of the game because the next tier's loot is so much more important than the one before it. It only gets worse when you factor in the ridiculous trinket creep with RoRo/UVLS in one tier and Amp/Multistrike/CDR everywhere the next. We're talking literally 10-20% DPS upgrades from single pieces of gear now, that's stupid.

Of course it's obvious why it happened. It's the same story as WotLK, new difficulty added (2 this xpack, first LFR then Flex) and ilvls bumped up on normal and heroic to accommodate with Forged and upgrades on top of that. Hopefully this is just temporary, because if the next xpack launches and it's 50+ ilvls between 5 man heroic gear and heroic raid gear again, people are going to explode.

[Deleted]

6 Immerseus(5 hc) Kills, 6(1 hc) Shamans Kills, 6 Garrosh Kills = 2 Trinkets(1 from Shamans(first week), 1 From Garrosh(this week))
Also keep in mind we have 3-5 casters in every raid depending on signs, and EVERY caster have coined on all their Immerseus kills some have coined for Shamans some for Garrosh.

Hooray for 10m loot =)

Altho, i do agree with the fact that you shouldnt be able to choose which items you want from the boss loot table or such, just somehow make it so an item that havent dropped for quite some time have its chance to drop increased, or like some have said make it drop 3-4 items and you get to choose 2 items.
Also on tier bosses they really should make it so the boss drops 2 items PLUS tier, not 1 item plus tier.

[kaib]

in my experience from raiding since vanilla, the guys that whine the most about not getting some specific piece of loot are also the ones that cry the most every time blizzard makes gear easier accessible/game becomes more casual friendly.

I agree though that the item level jumps are absurd this last two patches, mainly due to thunderforged/warforged and upgrading. which in a way means that having bad luck on drops matters more then it used to.

[Hulkovius]

From High end Hardcore raiding perspective the RNG is such a pain in the ass. I participated in the race to world first and it turned out that the RNG pretty much hit us with a fiery big motherfin hammer in the face. I am not neglecting that skill and discipline, effectiveness still is an important factor but when it comes to Garrosh Hellscream 10 man HC.

Jesus christ, boss is overtuned ass hell and u need shitloads of gear in a decent grp, few ilvls less in a rly good one. I'd say its tuned for 570 ish but struggeling with 566-567 without weapons and trinkets when other competitors gets completly flooded with these drops is frustrating. I wont neglect that these guys beating us are awesome players but when it comes to this particular factor, U need good dps to kill the boss, it ruins it.

Imo there should be some kinda system where there is never gonna be any loot for disenchanting and 2-4 bosses with trinkets/weapons drops ONLY. This way u always have some reliable loot.

And as some ppl are stating their bad lock regarding bonus rolls etc. Myself rolled extra on every single Trinket boss in SoO Normal and HC week after week and was forced to run flex every week to try getting a trinket upgrade. Trinkets was not to be found until suddenly 5 days after garr HC is slain, I get amp trinket from Immersius in Flex. Woopdifackkingdoo! That was about time..?

Adding:

Some ppl mentioning the Sunwell system where u can turn in itemdrops along with a sunmote, its a great idea.

But most important, WARFORGED AND THUNDERFORGED!? come on, remove that shit.

Remove the fact that u can upgrade gear for valor early on like in SoO is just such a big difference if u are able to upgrade. I havent got enough loot to upgrade and got 2500 valor atm (Havent been to SoO this reset yet) while some ppl go valor starve cuz they have been overwhelmed with gear..

[Soulzar]

I am fairly frustrated with 10m loot right now myself.

Especially as outlined, the tier bosses. Take Sha for example, drops 1 tier, one normal loot. That leave 10 possible items to fill out that one non tier drop... 10 weeks MINIMUM to see every item drop once, now factor in the fact that your odds of seeing one item multiple times and another never, is very high.... And you get the situation where 3 months of clearing a zone you still don't have a key gear piece like a trinket...

My guild is 8/14H right now and I am less geared than locks on our server who are 6/14 normal.... this makes me very sad! How am I supposed to maintain my epeen this way? lol

RNG is RNG and we cant have everything handed to us... but it gets frustrating to go 4 weeks without upgrades ....given the time invested

I am positive also that there is hidden coding the system causes all Warfoged 10m loot to be for classes/specs not represented in the raid that killed the boss..