EZ Server

Gemstone of the Ages Drop Rate Increased!

Due to the Skin of the Drake changes, an unrelated exploit fix, and a very well thought out PM from a player, I have increased the drop rate by roughly 10%. I'll keep an eye on the number of drops/loots to potentially adjust further.

This is the kind of goodness that happens when people write out intelligent posts/messages (even weakly structured, but well delivered point) and when people report AoE farming exploits. I base a lot of big items off of the number looted weekly. If a few people are exploiting, mass farming, and getting 5x (or more) than the average player, the drop rates stay crappy (or get worse). If the loot rate across the board is low, I can safely justify lower the chance (increasing the chance of seeing one). :-)


-Hate

Praise jesus!

Woot !!!  :D :D

Is this drop rate increase already in effect or after the server resets?

New instances from when I posted or reboot for public zones. :-)


-Hate

Does this mean your adding gsoa to the t9 drop list?  ;D

Aoe exploit?

It's been there. I'll double check for spelling nonsense, but it's been there. The rate may be too low though.


-Hate

I have looted 1 in the last 6 months and it was in t9

I've never seen one drop outside of HOH or postorms and I've seen only 4 total since they were introduced.

i have seen a lot in t6 actually

I've grabbed one from T9, zero from T8. A few from T6 and 7....but most of them from HoH, and most were from before the rate was nerfed.

BTW....what are the chances of adding a shot at them in ToFS? :D

And AA crystals!! :)

Maybe after T10. To prevent boobs from chain farming them, I'll have to set the drop rate appropriately per floor, which will take some leg work.


-Hate

Would someone really do that? It's so boring to farm lower teir content for the random rare.

I'm certain folks would.

From a numbers perceptive I don't see 10% changing much of anything on the drop rate.  Even if you assume the drop rate is 1%(im guessing its really lower than this) a 10% increase on that just moves it to 1.1%.  It only get worse as the drop rate approaches 0.  You would almost have to start at a 100% increase in drop rate (1% to 2% in my example) to see a difference and even then its still pretty insignificant

This was my first thought as well but I figured Hate had some logic we're missing. It's clearly less than 1%. Going from 1/1000 to 1.1/1000 would have no impact.

Those of you saying 10% increase won't affect anything don't appear to understand how probability works.

YES, gsoa has a very very small chance of dropping. (1 in 100k maybe? who knows...)
YES, 10% increase won't be very much of an increase in your individual drop rate per mob. (Now 1.1 in 100k)
BUT, 10% increase is in fact a 10% increase. There will now be 10% more GSOA in the game period. More on the market, more in hard farmers' banks. The price will drop a bit (after a while ... maybe).

Very very small is still very very small, but it is also 10% bigger.

The drop rate is fine.

If its broke don't fix it, if its not broke, fix it.

Or something like that.

GSOA are supposed to be uber rare, for a reason.

Hate's keeping the earring hard to complete, which is IMO as it should be, given the impact it can have on UW melee.

But....this also means we cant really use the earring as the boost for beastlord dps....especially given how dismal the return is for beast pet dps (earring rank 50 places them around 60% of the damage of a similarly geared non UW monk....and still under the dps of a chanter and pet with the same gear).

However, we need patience. Hate's still got his hands full working T10...and I'm sure most of us, even those not yet in T9, would rather he complete T10 before tackling other large projects.

Phah is pretty close. Using his number (which are nowhere near accurate, but I like examples): If it was 1:100,000 before, now it's 1:90,000. Obviously 1 in 90k or 100k seems...useless, but let's put it in perspective.

Halls of Honor (HoHonora) has ~500 mobs (+/- 5, already excluding friendly npcs). That's 500 chances at 1 in 90k. Considering it takes maybe 5-7min to pull and clear the zone, that's 8-12 clears an hour, or 4000-6000 mobs per hour (approximately).

Obviously the drop rate isn't 1:100k or it would NEVER drop. Still, the lowered chance should put more in the market. :-)


-Hate

took me 6 months of daily farming to get my last one to drop...now i expect it in 5.8 months...thank you for the improved drop rate when I am 140 years old and have completed my earring on my warrior this will have saved me years of farming!


 ;D

Just a side not..not complaining! reading this i sound like an ungrateful cunt ..i assure you i am a grateful cunt.er..grateful at least

But that would be an 11.11% increase  ;D

Now that you've confirmed it it does seem like a small adjustment but only way to find out is to wait and see!

Increases are Increases. Thanks Hate.

I personally have gotten 5 or 6 GSoA since I came  back about 6 weeks ago.  Mostly backfarming in t6 for uc2's.

Lvl'd a newb up since this change.  Couple weeks daily farming all the progression zones. Currently in t8 with him now.   Not a single drop at all.   Not 1  :(     hoh farming 100s of tokens, a week in abyss, anguish was quick, 3-4 days in loping.  Nothing.

I just had knee surgery so that gave me the last couple weeks of a good amount of play time and couldnt get a single drop at all. 

Same here.  I did quite a bit of farming in dragons for Dminors, some time in HoH but not a lot, 11-12 Anguish runs and not 1.  In fact, the only time I've ever had one drop was during the double loot weekend not long ago.  So that's 11 toons almost all flagged up to T7 and 1 drop(during DL.)

I got 2 in t9 same day earlier this week

Yeah, I got 2 in one day a while back, not during DL. But then I havent seen one drop in 2 months now, and 0 since the change.

Again, dont think this is an issue, except for the beastlord (IMO the earring SHOULD BE A PAIN TO GET)....but Hate knows about that and will most probably address it when time allows.

Right now if you want to work on earring you absolutely must buy gsoa in a market with very few sellers. I think drop rate should be high enough that folks who play consistently can progress through earring at a reasonable rate without having to buy them from noobs. There is a reason these babies can sell for over 10 mil. Anyone who argues they are worth 5 mil or less is trying to sucker some newb, which also works on occasion.

I'm torn on this, but I'd lean toward keeping it pretty super rare, it's nice to have an item that not everyone has, maybe I'm in the minority.

And for the record, no one in Circle of Legends has one.

I did happen to catch this though...

From Hate:


Your numbers are a little off :D

With fastest travel run speed, 6 clears HoH, it was an average 7.4 minutes to pull the first half of the zone (before Abyss). Maybe 10 seconds to kill the entire pull, and another 5.7 minutes average to loot all the corpses. Thats leaving behind everything but tokens, exp crystals and GSOA (none of the later 2 dropped, btw). Pulling the second half of the zone averaged 7.1 minutes, and 5.1 minutes to loot all bodies. Didnt play with Shadow at all. It might vary some from pull to pull, but if so it'd be by seconds.

HoH is a big zone, with a lot of mobs ) It takes a while to legitimately pull it. And while I CAN pull the zone all at once, doing so doesnt save much time (under a minute) and with the mass numbers of mobs I start to see signs of lag even with a beefy CPU and GPU and overkill on ram (64 gig)....and desync happens often enough even with my system and 100 meg down/up ISP.

Also keep in mind that HoH avatars leave a corpse behind every time, because of coin loot...and the trash "guards" do so about 1 in 5 or 6 from what I can tell. This makes for a ton of corpses and a lot of time to loot. So pulling the entire zone with a 15 minute corpse poof timer means that any distractions and you may end up having corpses rot, at the extreme, and means you spend nearly as much time looting as you do pulling and killing at best.

Just for grins I pulled all the zone at once 4 times to test the time diff. I was able to average 14.7 minutes a pull, and 9.9 minutes to loot all bods. That places it at over 25 minutes at best to clear and loot HoH once. But even if you somehow can pull faster than I (not saying it cant be done....maybe running Chunka on stick figure client for clears would help) your loot times will not change at all.....and even if you somehow get past THAT.....limit of 6 repops per hour for an instance. So.....I'd say pushing it you can clear HoH 3 times an hour.....6 times if you are a GM and dont care about loot :D

Oh, and slight change of topic....but Hate, can we maybe get rid of coin drops on HoH Avatars, and go to plat bags instead? Would be a lot nicer, even for newer players, now that they stack! And maybe get rid of the unneeded trash drops? Some of the augs are literally worthless.

I have had 3 drop in the last week.  First 2 came within 15 minutes of each other while killing enough T2 named to get me 100 dmajors.  The other came from farming hoh tokens.  I have farmed around 1100 tokens and it dropped at the 700ish token mark.

Oh, and please keep in mind my reply isnt a call to increase drop rate. I'm one of the people who think the earring needs to be a Great White Whale.

The HoH example, both the time and drop rate were there merely to illustrate a point. :-)


-Hate

I got one of these once, when the drop rate was really high when it first came out...
Wish I had held on to it to sell it now lol

I'll look at doing that tonight. I'll see what I can't do to make it a bit more...viable. It's quick enough, just need to make sure I understand all that will change with adjustments to the NPC loot table in DB.


-Hate

IMHO, just my thought,

why are we talking about HOH for an end game item? or Anguish for that matter?

GSOA drops should scale up to T9, meaning yes, they will drop in HOH and Anguish, etc, but they should be dropping faster in the upper tiers.

I personally don't like to go backwards to farm an end game item in a zone that really benefits me little in comparison to the end tiers.

example, in 500 hoh mobs you should maybe see 1 drop, however 500 mobs in T9 you should see 2 drop or at least one.

the drop rates should scale up towards T9, meaning the end game is where you should see the most drops for an end game item.

same with gayshards.

now, they should for sure drop starting at T1/T2, but not at a better rate or the same rate as HOH and drops in HOH should not be the same as T7, etc, etc.

+10

I was using that as an example since everyone likes farming HoH. It's easier to relate.



I will likely set the highest tier to be a higher drop rate than the rest as I have tried to base drop rates on kills per hour versus straight 1 in X kills. It may be time to lock this thread as it's going WAAAAY off into derail territory. Very valid post Rent. :-)


-Hate

I agree with Rent.

I agree with chunka here. Even with only 1% increase in drop rate i am seeing 1 more gsoa per 2 days on avg. Ess are stupid easy to farm sls are even easier Eon takes maybe 15 min (yes i am t9) with this being said there is little actual "end game" farm now. It's why the server pop is staying low.

Gsoa is almost the only real market this server has left. More gsoa means a faster burn out on the item. I don't even have enough gsoa to cover my  EoA but i am getting close, but i am also the type of dude who would prob get it on 6 toons.

we don't buy/sell/trade gayshards, SLS's and essences anymore?

not to mention WTB a handie

Careful watch you're starting to sound like the "I got my lewtz this game is too easy prz prevent others from getting what I have" guy.

i have 24 toons ... not like it wouldnt effect me....

People who make that claim (not saying you were) can eat one. Its one of the most stupid comments you can make on EZ, and shows the person to be a small minded imbecile. This server is constantly evolving, for one, and the devs require player feedback more than they would on other games. That feedback isnt always immediate, for reasons that should be obvious.

These are the same assclowns who'd piss and moan that it was "so unfair" live that some players should see end game zones when they couldnt. Aint gonna put in the time and effort, you dont get the goodies. Plain and simple. Here the people who ARE putting in the time drive content. Thats just how it is. Dont like it, Hello Kitty or WoW await. And, again, these players actually working the content are the ones who tend to give the best feedback.

For people who make these comments......if you want a trophy for showing up, I suggest the games listed above, or T Ball.

Oh, and just to inform those players.....I have one character with a rank 14 earring, and I believe it should stay difficult. I'm someone who, while slogging through T5 and 6 while others were finishing T8, implored admin here to keep things challenging.....not, as some have claimed, to keep it "elite" but to keep it FUN. If the game becomes too trivial too quick its boring. THIS IS WHY SO MANY END GAME PLAYERS HAVENT BEEN SEEN ON EZ IN MONTHS.

How did Maslow get your login details  :o

That guy seldom ever had an original thought. Most of the opinions he parroted came from other players he picked up on the forums or in OOC while he was paying others to push him through content.

And if you think he got where he was on his own steam you werent paying attention.

Sorry, soapbox off. As members of my guild will tell you, I'm more a "the journey is the accomplishment" guy than a "where's my shiny" guy. Sometimes I'm too vocal about it.

Eh np just sounded a little Maslowish with the "sweet nectar of the elite" type talk.

I fundamentally believe in a different theory. My opinion is many end game folks don't play anymore because they finished *most* but not all of the content (see Harthek). There is always more to do. More UWs, more Exp mask, more EoA, more RoA, etc.

The reality is, EZ has a TON of content. We should be worried about the newbies not sticking around due to the complexity of the game and sheer vastness of the content. I'm less concerned with the elites not playing - they will be back right after T10 is finished, and then T11 right after that.

And fwiw, people progress how they progress. Always been that way even on live. Never bothered me and a lot of other folks agree. It's the exploits over the years that helped more than "paying folks" which is actually part of the game.

I know. I was just pointing out that Maslow was a hypocritical douche.

 :D

Personally, I hope T10 takes 6 months to complete instead of a couple weeks or so. It would be nice to have a lot of folks back for an extended period. On the other hand, we also need newbies coming up the ranks and we just don't have much of that right now.

Hey now, Kildash and I are working as fast as we can here! I have been pulling in a lot of players that are just starting progression (one actually boxing his way through qvic/ct as we speak). Ancient elite is actually active in guild chat now it seems, which is a bit strange. Ive been back about a week or two, and have been having a blast working my way through t5 content with Kildash. There is indeed fresh blood working upwards, its just time consuming!

Back on topic: Since the drop change Ive actually sold one of these I found the other day off of a coral in t5. It'd be nice if we could see a steady droprate of maybe 1 per week, per person or so.

As powerful as the earring is, that'd be too much.

Thinking on it some, one per week was probably a bad rate, yeah. Didnt take into account people that might buy/sell them.

One per week would still take over 50 weeks (a year) to complete earring while playing constantly. I see one every few months as is. That and people spend all their AA on RoA first so it would take a lot longer than that, and newbs usually sell the first 5 or so GSoA. I did just get one today but the last time I saw one was during double loot around February 12 - that's 3 1/2 months ago and I'm sure not many people play more than me right now. Plus it was DL so you almost can't count that. I've averaged one every 3-5 months if I had to guess. I'm not a math major but I think to go from that to once a week would require at least a 1,600% increase in drop rate.

Since there are more than a couple people with EoA 50 I have to assume the drop rate, at least temporarily, must have been much, much higher. At the current rate, even if someone plays 3x as much as me, a EoA 50 would require buying nearly all of your GSoAs over the course of at least a year or two (and good luck with that in this market).

Unless Hateborne can chime in otherwise, I'm going to correct this assumption since in my experience it is incorrect.  I never saw jack shit for drop rates when it was implemented and haven't seen jack shit since.  The mitigating factor on the Earring SHOULD be, in my opinion, the amount of AA required to level it as much as the GSOA drop.  When they first started dropping, some people had enough foresight to buy them up as quickly as they could from people who had no intention of working on the AA required to level it...for the most part you get far more bang for the buck out of leveling the ROA in survivability.  At the time the Earring quest was re-worked, there were still only a handful of people with max ROA so there was little to no competition for the early adopters who were willing to pay what at the time, some people like me found to be rediculous prices.  Chunka will attest to my  feeling that the price was way too high, I vented a few times to him about my what I thought regarding it, and this was when they were only going for 1-2mil.  People that were getting them to drop needed to strike out their melee and needed the plat far more than an item to bank for the unforseeable future when they'd actually be able to make use of it and people who were end game with large bankrolls had no problem scooping them up.  This is why there were a few people raising their earrings quickly and now that people have seen how sought after the GSOA are, they are more and more likely to hold onto it given the rarity that people always cite in acquiring them when you do need them.

I honestly laugh at the earring, have you seen how much dps it adds? Just roll one more ninja strike toon and call it good. :) stop worrying about the earring :)

This is probably spot on. Seems at first they must have been dropping more often but I bet you're exactly right.

Drop rate when the quest was first reworked was higher. I could get 1 or 2 a day easily enough, whether in HoH, Anguish or T7. I havent seen one in 5 or 6 weeks atm, even working HoH quite a bit for tokens, and T6 a ton for UC2 on new chars. Drop rate is definitely different than it was at start, unless a ton of us had ridiculous rng luck.

As for the earring dps....unsure what UW you have, WB, but even my gimpy rank 14 adds enough dps to my UWX to make it worthwhile. Maxed rank ear with UWXI will add more dps than a 2nd monk with UC2 and 2 NSXI, from what I've seen for numbers.

That's because the drop rate, in a lot of cases, included minions, pets, and things that shouldn't drop loot anyway. Once I clean that up, this removed targets that could drop loot. This alone explains why HoH "feels" worse.


-Hate

I was going off of Rymo's post, his uw11 lvl 50 earring war was doing like 6.7mil dps. I do around 5 mil dps with uw11 uc3. My mnk does 2.5 mil with nsIX and uc2.
http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=4525.msg58510#msg58510

dude the first 3 days after gsoa were droppable me and maslow got 20 of them combined in t6 now i'm lucky to get 1 every 10 clears

At that rate, the drop rate would be just double what v2 charms are in HoH. (Double as in 1:100 going to 1:200, theoretical example with fake numbers)

I have NOTHING to explain this shift as it should never have been that common even at the beginning.


-Hate

Bleh  :'(

I dunno but we seriously did get that many that fast then it went to poop. that rate was way to high. me and wareash got 2 to drop in t9 in 1 pull today all rng

none of you running around with uw11 need any more dps...I mean what the actual fuck do you care about 6.6m/dps vrs 7.6m/dps...just stop please..

the earring just happens..grats to those that bought them all up when they first started dropping... the rest of us will like accidentally have them eventually...maybe...

the mask of illusions is way better for GSOA than the stupid earring.

I need WAY more dps, WAY, WAY MOAR