Official Raid Loot Feedback Thread - USE THIS THREAD for feedback.

[Fallout]

That's people for you. When someone has a bad experience, they will tell more people about that then when they have a good experience.

"I wanted a challenge, but a challenge I can do!"

Doh. When people play game, they are there to have fun. If people are having alot of negative experience in something thats suppose to be 'fun' then people will voice it. People use the arguement that the vocal people are just the minority. Looking at the big drop in population, the opposite is true.

Raiding is the apex of questing. You go through this whole process to fight an 'epic' encounter. Then all you got was a L10 vendor fodder. Its all hype without reward. Its like watching the movie that has great commercials. Only to get a dud moment when you actually watch it.

And to add insult to injury the vast majority of the raid loot is garbage. So in reality, not only does a player have to roll against a chance to get raid loot at all, then there's another roll of chance to get a non-garbage item.

So if you really want to do the math, not only is there a 1 in 6 roll for normal, then you have to roll 1 in 10 (or whatever number) of raid item that is actually usable. The odds become alot smaller then just 1 in 6 (or 1 in 4 on elite).

[Citymorg]

I have now run 6 raids since the system change, I received 1 piece of Raid loot (Stormreaver's Napkin on my Barbarian--don't know if class based rewards apply to raid loot or not). We have had 0-3 items drop. On only 1 raid did nothing drop. Numbers are like this 0,1,1,1,2,2, and 3. I believe that the system is working and is an improvement over the old system. However, I do not believe that the raids are scaling on elite to 1 in 4.

[Alexander_Illusioni]

I also liked the short manning raids. The incentive was there to do this, and there was higher risk always at failure. Why people felt this was bad still baffles me. EVERYONE in this game should be able to shortman these raids AS YOU GO UP LEVELS.

We are now level 14 characters. Doing the dragon raid, a level 10 quest, should be able to be done with only 3 to 4 characters (barring any simultaneous lever pulling stuff). At level 20 we should all be able to manage a level 10 quest easily with only a few people. If anyone does not see this, they do not understand D&D. The difference is, that some builds, can manage some of these raids, at only a few levels above the raid, while other builds it just may take a bit longer for them to be able to do this.

Also raid loot, will in many cases, only be useful for players for a few levels, until new better gear comes out. Take the dragon loot for example (first raid, with loot probably becoming useless first too). The only two items I think that are exceptional at this time, are the sword of shadows, and the Kundarak Delving Suit. (Helm of the Moranon, do you really want this or a +6 helm, ring, or necklace from the loot tables; that you can pass on to any character?) And when similar armor drops in the loot tables with one less AC but heavy fort (or some other sought after trait) the Suit will no longer be the top end gear.

So what this means, IMO, is that getting this gear should be made much easier (more fun) than it is under the current raid loot system. When this game has 20 levels, and the level cap is reached, these lower level raids will rarely be run more than a few times, because the raid loot will not be worth the effort. It may be now, while we are stuck at level 14, near the raid levels, but I do not see it in the future. So please developers, err on the side of making this a fun game to play, not a time sink game. Some of the most fun I have had in this game has been the short manning raids, and the incentive was the extra chance at raid loot.

Perhaps a way to bring this back would be to always have one piece of raid loot drop, no matter what the size of the party, along with the 1 in 6 chance. Go DDO!!!

IMO introducing more raid loot to players will not be "over powering". I know many disagree. I just see much of the loot as great now, will probably just ok at level 20, and realistically when the level cap is at 20, anyone rolling a new character up, will only be levels 12 to 19 for only a few months. So why not give them better odds at getting the raid loot?

[DelverRootnose]

Full 12 person crew. No raid loot. I think something is wrong. I have yet to run in a group where we got to many items.

ran 2 12 man elite reaver raids got 2 items and 4 items. Of coursse I didn't get anything and only the ring was a welcome drop. But at least the number of drops was ok.

[Cinwulf]

yeah not all raids are getting the 1/4 chance on elite. It's supposedly based on how hard the raid is and we do not know for sure which raids those are. From my experience The Reaver is not one of them.

[Blazer]

yeah not all raids are getting the 1/4 chance on elite. It's supposedly based on how hard the raid is and we do not know for sure which raids those are. From my experience The Reaver is not one of them.

I would agree. My experience has been that Velah and DQ are of greater difficulty on elite, while Reaver and Titan are not. Haven't done Abbot on elite, but I'm sure since it's a lvl 17 quest on elite it's going to be tough.

[Alexander_Illusioni]

I still think changing the guaranteed raid loot from 20/40/60/... to 1/20/40/60/... would be a really good idea.

There should be a significant reward for completing a raid the first time. That's a big deal.

Naw, 50% chance at a single item, after the first time completion, is too beneficial. I think the developers do want some effort to be able to get raid loot. I think just getting a chance for end items after every 5 times (with less than 50% chance at the items to choose from) would keep people playing this game more.

Maybe like picking from 30% of the potential items that drop, after every five raids.

[Dirac]

Naw, 50% chance at a single item, after the first time completion, is too beneficial. I think the developers do want some effort to be able to get raid loot. I think just getting a chance for end items after every 5 times (with less than 50% chance at the items to choose from) would keep people playing this game more.

Maybe like picking from 30% of the potential items that drop, after every five raids.

Why Is this too beneficial? The effort to get raid loot is to complete the raid. Obviously, the first time will be the most difficult. You don't want raid loot every time, because of the inflation effects on those that raid all the time. But getting raid loot just the first time won't significantly affect the amount of raid loot in the game, but hugely benefit those that may only do a raid once or twice.

Changing the rep rate to 1/10 or 1/5 only helps those who raid a lot. If we're worried about the total amount or raid loot, we can decrease the odds in general. In my opinion, getting raid loot your first time on a character is the single best idea to address the current raid problems.

Edit: I know I mentioned it before in this thread, but it was its own thread before it was merged with this thread and I now was really intending to comment on Vinos' thread, but it has been merged with this thread, so I really wasn't intending to comment on this thread at all so even doing so twice with the exact same comment is ok. Really.... Having it all in one monster thread isn't confusing at all ...

[Dane_McArdy]

Doh. When people play game, they are there to have fun. If people are having alot of negative experience in something thats suppose to be 'fun' then people will voice it. People use the arguement that the vocal people are just the minority. Looking at the big drop in population, the opposite is true.

I'm not using the argument that a minority of people that are vocal. The arguement I am using is, backed up by decades of research. An unhappy person will tell more people about their bad experience, then a happy person will tell about their good experience. So someone unhappy, will generally tell 7 out of 10 people about the experience. A happy person will tell 4 out 10 people. It's why retailers always try to make a bad experience into a good experience. And the unhappy person will go out of their way to tell people.

So unhappy people make themselves more visible to the general population.

Raiding is the apex of questing. You go through this whole process to fight an 'epic' encounter. Then all you got was a L10 vendor fodder. Its all hype without reward. Its like watching the movie that has great commercials. Only to get a dud moment when you actually watch it.

And to add insult to injury the vast majority of the raid loot is garbage. So in reality, not only does a player have to roll against a chance to get raid loot at all, then there's another roll of chance to get a non-garbage item.

So if you really want to do the math, not only is there a 1 in 6 roll for normal, then you have to roll 1 in 10 (or whatever number) of raid item that is actually usable. The odds become alot smaller then just 1 in 6 (or 1 in 4 on elite).

Again, there are no guarentee's. That has always been the way. While there was a 100% chance of 2 pieces of loot dropping before, any player still could have had the experience of doing all that work on a raid, to walk away with nothing, instead of level 10 fodder.

[Dirac]

I'm not using the argument that a minority of people that are vocal. The arguement I am using is, backed up by decades of research. An unhappy person will tell more people about their bad experience, then a happy person will tell about their good experience. So someone unhappy, will generally tell 7 out of 10 people about the experience. A happy person will tell 4 out 10 people. It's why retailers always try to make a bad experience into a good experience. And the unhappy person will go out of their way to tell people.

So unhappy people make themselves more visible to the general population.

Yes, yes, and again yes. The interesting question is then what do you conclude from this information? Do we just ignore people who are complaining? Should we (or they) attempt to differentiate between ignorable whining, simple venting, and serious negative experiences that can hurt the game? How might we go about doing this? What could be done to address those issues?

[ccheath776]

The real change that needs to occur is that, NO MATTER WHAT, some sort of raid loot needs to drop in every raid. There should NEVER be an instance where absolutely no loot drops. Im guessing the devs tried to play the odds on this one in an attempt to make it fair, but both the devs and us got the hard hitting foot of reality firmly implanted in our groins.

I agree.
Raid loot should drop in every completion of a raid.
But only if you have a full 12 people.
If you have a full 12 and you complete the raid. at least 2 pieces should drop.

[MysticTheurge]

Why Is this too beneficial? The effort to get raid loot is to complete the raid. Obviously, the first time will be the most difficult. You don't want raid loot every time, because of the inflation effects on those that raid all the time. But getting raid loot just the first time won't significantly affect the amount of raid loot in the game, but hugely benefit those that may only do a raid once or twice.

Changing the rep rate to 1/10 or 1/5 only helps those who raid a lot. If we're worried about the total amount or raid loot, we can decrease the odds in general. In my opinion, getting raid loot your first time on a character is the single best idea to address the current raid problems.

Precisely.

People want to see a reward for finishing a raid for the first time. It's a big deal for people, especially for more casual players. Giving raid loot for that, right off the bat, I think would take a whole lot of the sting out of the new system.

Adjusting the auto-rewards so they happen more often really only helps people who are doing it a lot anyway, and those aren't really the people who are suffering the most under this system. It's the people who only do the raid once ever, or maybe raid once every few months that are going to be the most severely impacted by the new random nature of the raid loot. Giving them a piece of raid loot on their first completion is going to ensure that they feel rewarded for doing something that should feel like an accomplishment.

[Fallout]

I'm not using the argument that a minority of people that are vocal. The arguement I am using is, backed up by decades of research.

I'm also using the arguement backed up by decades of research that unless there's feedback, the vendor/provider/(In this case Turbine) won't know things they are doing are making customers happy. They can either pay attention to customers or ignore them. Remember American car makers who refuse to change the driver's side despite selling their product in another country that has opposite driver's side?

>While there was a 100% chance of 2 pieces of loot dropping before, any player still could have had the experience of doing all that work on a raid, to walk away with nothing,

And thats why people short manned. If you do a 2-person team on a raid, I would say your chances of getting a raid loot is pretty **** good. I like the idea of the new raid system to include more people, but the possiblity of 0 raid drops is far too great.

Its simple to fix. As a guaranteed drop, do the same odds, a 6 man raid on normal would guarantee 1 raid loot randomize on a person. A 4 man raid would guarantee 1 raid loot on elite. So a 12 man elite raid would guarantee 3 raid loot. This is on top of the current odds per person to get an item. This increases drop, but have to compensite that out of 12 raid items, only 2-3 are actually useful.

[Dane_McArdy]

Yes, yes, and again yes. The interesting question is then what do you conclude from this information? Do we just ignore people who are complaining? Should we (or they) attempt to differentiate between ignorable whining, simple venting, and serious negative experiences that can hurt the game? How might we go about doing this? What could be done to address those issues?

No, you should not ignore the unhappy customer. But before a course of action can be taken, you need to gather more information.

Is the unhappiness caused from actual game issues, or is it caused by a perception the player had, that unfortunitly, wasn't realistic?

The game is not designed to be enjoyable based only on the end rewards. Yes, that is part of the equation, but how big a part of that equation end rewards is, varies from person to person.

The more value a person puts into that, making it a bigger part of the equation of what they get out of the game, to me it seems that naturally there will be greater dissappointment when the reward isn't up to what the player wants.

In many ways, the game has to be developed with a blind eye, so that it's all set at a level that the majority of players can achieve some level of success. Which means there will be players that won't be too happy with the reward system, because their expectations go above the level set to be reached by a majority of players.

In otherwords, there are those that can't be pleased, short of giving them exactly what they want, and the game can't be built like that.

So, a player that runs a few raids, gets nothing can certainly be an unhappy player because of this. That doesn't make the system wrong or broken or in need of repair or placing. At the same time, they can't say, keep playing, sooner or later, you will get something, it's a random system after all, because that isn't what the player wants to hear.

They want to hear that they are guarenteed to get what they want.

They want the reward without the randomness to it.

If that's the case, what you could end up with somethng like this:

run raid successfully 5 times, you pick 1 item.
Run it another 10 times successfully, you pick another item, can't be the same. (So 15 times total)
Run it another 20 times (Now we are up to 35), one more item.

Which would lead to some, not all, never doing that raid again once they have gotten all they wanted. Which goes against the teamwork philosophy of the game. It becomes more, use and ditch. Not for all, but enough I think that it would have a fracturing effect on the community in general.

[Dane_McArdy]

Man, that got wordy.

Just because a customer is unhappy, doesnt always mean the reason the customer is unhappy is always valid.

The company, any company needs to listen and decide if the reason that made the customer unhappy is one they have the ability to fix. And then they should fix it.

[Laith]

i'm growing to be a fan of the first time assured loot idea.

as good an idea as "1 assured piece of loot per raid" sounds, it encourages short-manning like before. even 1 in 4 is better odds than 1 in 6. excluding people shouldn't be rewarded, even if it is because of your "excellence". That's why we have hard/elite.

Man, that got wordy.

Just because a customer is unhappy, doesnt always mean the reason the customer is unhappy is always valid.

it's kinda like going to the car dealer to buy "the car James Bond drove in that movie" and are then upset that it didn't come with rocket launchers.

sometimes the customer just has unrealistic expectations

well... kinda like that...

[Fallout]

Man, that got wordy.

Just because a customer is unhappy, doesnt always mean the reason the customer is unhappy is always valid.

The company, any company needs to listen and decide if the reason that made the customer unhappy is one they have the ability to fix. And then they should fix it.

It depends.

If 100 people say 100 different things, then you can't listen to all of them.
If 80 out of 100 people say the same thing, then you better listen.

Auto makers can sell left sided driver seat cars to countries that drive on the other side and see how they do.

[MysticTheurge]

It depends.

If 100 people say 100 different things, then you can't listen to all of them.
If 80 out of 100 people say the same thing, then you better listen.

Auto makers can sell left sided driver seat cars to countries that drive on the other side and see how they do.

It still doesn't necessarily mean that those 80 people are right.

If 80 people asked for rocket launchers on their car, you probably still ought to not put them on there.

[Laith]

If 80 people asked for rocket launchers on their car, you probably still ought to not put them on there.

i get the point: being in the majority doesn't make you right, but...

i'm pretty sure this isn't a good direction for the argument to go. i'm just not sure how to compute proper rocket launcher to raid loot ratios

[Dirac]

Man, that got wordy.

Just because a customer is unhappy, doesnt always mean the reason the customer is unhappy is always valid.

The company, any company needs to listen and decide if the reason that made the customer unhappy is one they have the ability to fix. And then they should fix it.

Dane, first let me point out, I realize was kind of pestering you there in that last post because 1. I honestly don't know the answer to those questions and think they are important, 2. I believed you would give a considered thoughtful response, and 3. I greatly respect your opinion.

I don't really disagree with any of your points here (and above). I'm not sure you are giving sufficient consideration to the importance of unique events. My guild runs the Reaver last week and nothing drops versus Indago's first win against the Abbott and nothing drops. These are both negative experiences, but not even of the same order of magnitude in terms of disappointment and subsequent negative feelings towards the game.

I agree with your analysis, but there are bad loot experiences that we should laugh at, and bad loot experiences that can cause people to leave the game. It is worthwhile to thoughtfully identify which is which. Just as we shouldn't change the game mechanics over every person whining about a bad loot run, we don't want to denigrate some peoples' very serious negative experiences. I admit it can be non-trivial sometimes to tell the difference.