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[Ponzi]

I second the notion that TOV is bone-dry. I think in 700 essences worth of TOV pull (another discussion-worthy item: TOV essence drops) I saw one GSOA. In 700 essences of OldCommons I saw maybe a dozen. About a dozen in T7, maybe 2 dozen in Anguish... And a metric $#!+load in Qvic and HOH and CT.

The real tragedy is Cazic Thule used to be the best rate by far, but the second all the gems were added as loot it became TOV-level bone-dry. That place barely drops unicorn poop anymore, much less GSOA.

GSOA is a weird item to pinpoint, since it drops so rarely to begin with. Which may be part of the issue to begin with: Even with the entire server after it, it's still a small sample size from a date tracking standpoint.

As far as a long term progression fix, the only reason its worth anything is because of the ease of getting the AAs. Your AA accumulation vastly outpaces your GSOA accumulation. If Hate was ever able to get the XP/AA scaled back like he wanted to without everyone getting hot and bothered, the demand would be way down for GSOA. It's a completely artificial scarcity: it drops at a rate reasonable AA growth would have gotten along with. It doesn't drop at the rate a nation of newly full t8/t9+ hordes who grew up quickly with nexus MGB loving need it to.

Welcome to mudflation.

[Ponzi]

So maybe the issue is qvic. On hates grocery list he wanted to script all the zones. It looks like he did qvic but none of the other zones yet? Anyone know? Maybe that resulted in something?

Scripting the zone shouldn't affect a drop rate one iota.

Look at your basic mass pull zones:

Tofs - no gsoa
Qvic - good to go.
CT - covered above, but hard on ur fingers to mass pull, and recently nerfed
HOH- good to go.
POD - good to go.
Airplane - good to go
Abyss - pretty low in both ess and gsoa. ppl spend minimal time here
Anguish - pretty good to go

etc... Two secret GSOA paradises (at least during dbl loot cuz no one ever messes with them otherwise) are T1/T2 and airplane. The downside, of course being that both have token/crystal limiting factors.

Basically people run these two zones 1/50th as often as they run the others, if that.

No one will admit it though, because the less competition in the WTB Tokens market the month before a dbl loot event, the better. secret's out.

So if you factor in Qvic/t1/t2/airplane/hoh/anguish, there is more GSOA friendly places than not. Its just that 50% of these places are not mass pullable.. and more likely to be enjoyed by people progressing through the actual content.

Hunter loved to troll. Hate does to. Never ever be terribly surprised when something errors on the side of helping aid a player-based economy. Intentional or not, it makes them both smile .

[balidet]

The real problem is the MGB of buffs in the nexus...maybe...since people cant seem to help themselves... they could simple remove MGB from the game...


no pitchforks please..


this may bring some balance back to the force.

[Dimur]

The problem isn't as simple as MGB buffs in the Nexus, but more that people can simply buff beg in /ooc until someone mgb's a round of T8+ buffs and throws on a ridiculous-to-relevant-content exp buff of 100+ % exp.  The fact that you need to do nothing other than be present when the buffs are cast to receive full benefit from them regardless of your tier relative to the buffs being cast is where the issue lies, in my opinion.  You can sit and argue about how lowbies need to be able to gouge the shit out of end-gamers when selling GSOA so they can afford to make their strikes or whatever, but the simple fact of the matter is that if people progressed at the pace which the content was intended then they wouldn't need to fund advancement by selling them in the first place.

Strike augs used to be hard as hell to make, not only farming the components for them but the plat required to buy the ores didn't drop at anywhere near the pace it does now.  Over the years, people constantly brought up the valid point of the amount of time and plat required to be able to make strike augs to be able to advance through content.  And over the years, Hunter and Hate have implemented multiple fixes for this in the form of adding plat bags to progression content.  People used to farm Qvic just to farm the gem drops so they could sell them because LDoN and Tacvi didn't have realistic drop rates.  I remember breaking into PoDragons and thinking I hit the cash cow because of the gems that would drop from chests.  But HoH and Air didn't offer much platwise either unless you chased Shadow for his gem drops while farming v2 upgrades.  And when you hit the next gut-check zone, T5, you had access to plat bags dropping off of the trash.  Other than the fact that the bags didn't stack and you'd constantly have to head back to the zone in to sell, this was a good way to farm the plat you needed to upgrade strike augs as you worked on the kill quest.  T6 was plat city, relative to the previous content with the Mata chests guaranteeing you'd get a solid haul on a full clear.  All of this shit took time, there was immersion and the content was challenging enough to not make it a mindless tag and kill farm.  With the access to the MGB buffs people pump out in Nexus like a hoarde of kids with Pez dispensers, you don't even start to experience the content on level until around T6, not to mention the massive exp gains people get relative to the content the are doing compared to what it was baselined before mask of experience ever existed.  Couple that with every tier of progression post Time being able to drop plat bags at a rate that should, in itself suffice for gearing up and progressing through and you can begin to understand the point I'm trying to make.

After a certain point in progression, you have all the strike augs you need and mana necks are finished but the incoming plat rate stays steady.  When the only plat sinks left are the ones you've already finished, all you do is start to accrue a bankroll.  This is why people pay 10mil per gsoa, because they don't have anything else to spend plat on unless they are doing another UW for alts.  Even then, you have to either backfarm the components or keep grinding relevant content and buying essences for whatever they are selling for.  But since you have nothing else to grind for, it's pretty easy to drop 10mil on something you know you probably won't see for weeks or more...knowing you'll grind well over that much plat just waiting for one to drop anyhow.  They sell for that much and more, because the person buying them estimates how long it'll take to farm the plat back and realize they'll still come out ahead.  They do NOT sell for that much because new players need to make strike augs or mana necks, it just enables them to make them at a rate that exceeds their rate of progression.

How do you fix what's broken?  I don't know, but it's a discussion that is going to have a multitude of varying viewpoints and opinions ranging from it's not broken at all to remove all access to anyone not relevant to the intended content.  It's anyone's guess what the relevant content is, because just like any game it's dynamic and it changes with the ebb and flow.  My opinon is that when you disregard level or progression relevant mitigating factors, that's when the system stresses and breaks.  Level 70's with 3 hour buffs putting them at 100k hp plowing through Qvic, getting up to 300+ % experience gains beyond what the zone was designed around dropping gsoa's that they can turn around and get 10mil+ for?  It's hard to make an argument supporting that as healthy for the server as a whole.  

I could honestly care less about gsoa dropping in progression zones because it allows me to buy them from people who are far from being able to use them for the Ear and gives me something that I can spend my plat on instead of just acquiring more and more.  I think it's weird that the drop rate in lower tiers seem to be at best on par with drop rates at higher tiers of content, but I also used to feel that the hardest part of progressing the Ear should have been the AA's required to advance it.  But with the Pez dispensing exp buffs in the Nexus firing off like the finale at a 4th of July fireworks show, it'd be hard to defend that stance anymore.  I do still take issue with there being no limit to the benefit received from mgb buffs, level 70's shouldn't have access to level 78 buffs.  Maybe either degrade the buffs by a certain % per level cast on or just limit it to current buff level -2 levels.  If people still wanted to dole out buffs, they could mem their level 72 buffs and mgb those to level 70's.  This post isn't meant to sound elitist or argumentative, my game play is not hindered by the current system, I can do what I need to do and changing the status quo doesn't benefit me at all.  This is simply me observing what I see as detrimental to the health of the server and offering up a few points for debate.

tl;dr Lots of babble, too many buff beggars clamoring for MGB's instead of just consuming content in level relevant buffs.

[Subdued]

I can definitely confirm that qvic was stupidly easy with buffs and felt just right without them. The problem doesn't just exist with that though. T1/t2 without buffs were way too easy. It needs a difficulty bump, but the rate at which a new player would acquire crystals if the dragons were buffed would be too low. There has to be a way to accomplish both. That's why I hated t1/t2 so much:  too easy and mobs too far spread out combined with awful t1 crystal rates. I hated it.

Buff the dragons, increase the crystal rate and then drop the essence chance rate slightly to accommodate the increased crystal rate.  Would be a much better zone. As it stands there's no risk because it's all single pulls and by the time you're qvic/ct geared they hit like wet noodles. Qvic unbuffed as a newbie was 1000% harder.

Kathina

[balidet]

The problem isn't as simple as MGB buffs in the Nexus, but more that people can simply buff beg in /ooc until someone mgb's a round of T8+ buffs and throws on a ridiculous-to-relevant-content exp buff of 100+ % exp.  The fact that you need to do nothing other than be present when the buffs are cast to receive full benefit from them regardless of your tier relative to the buffs being cast is where the issue lies, in my opinion.  You can sit and argue about how lowbies need to be able to gouge the shit out of end-gamers when selling GSOA so they can afford to make their strikes or whatever, but the simple fact of the matter is that if people progressed at the pace which the content was intended then they wouldn't need to fund advancement by selling them in the first place.

Strike augs used to be hard as hell to make, not only farming the components for them but the plat required to buy the ores didn't drop at anywhere near the pace it does now.  Over the years, people constantly brought up the valid point of the amount of time and plat required to be able to make strike augs to be able to advance through content.  And over the years, Hunter and Hate have implemented multiple fixes for this in the form of adding plat bags to progression content.  People used to farm Qvic just to farm the gem drops so they could sell them because LDoN and Tacvi didn't have realistic drop rates.  I remember breaking into PoDragons and thinking I hit the cash cow because of the gems that would drop from chests.  But HoH and Air didn't offer much platwise either unless you chased Shadow for his gem drops while farming v2 upgrades.  And when you hit the next gut-check zone, T5, you had access to plat bags dropping off of the trash.  Other than the fact that the bags didn't stack and you'd constantly have to head back to the zone in to sell, this was a good way to farm the plat you needed to upgrade strike augs as you worked on the kill quest.  T6 was plat city, relative to the previous content with the Mata chests guaranteeing you'd get a solid haul on a full clear.  All of this shit took time, there was immersion and the content was challenging enough to not make it a mindless tag and kill farm.  With the access to the MGB buffs people pump out in Nexus like a hoarde of kids with Pez dispensers, you don't even start to experience the content on level until around T6, not to mention the massive exp gains people get relative to the content the are doing compared to what it was baselined before mask of experience ever existed.  Couple that with every tier of progression post Time being able to drop plat bags at a rate that should, in itself suffice for gearing up and progressing through and you can begin to understand the point I'm trying to make.

After a certain point in progression, you have all the strike augs you need and mana necks are finished but the incoming plat rate stays steady.  When the only plat sinks left are the ones you've already finished, all you do is start to accrue a bankroll.  This is why people pay 10mil per gsoa, because they don't have anything else to spend plat on unless they are doing another UW for alts.  Even then, you have to either backfarm the components or keep grinding relevant content and buying essences for whatever they are selling for.  But since you have nothing else to grind for, it's pretty easy to drop 10mil on something you know you probably won't see for weeks or more...knowing you'll grind well over that much plat just waiting for one to drop anyhow.  They sell for that much and more, because the person buying them estimates how long it'll take to farm the plat back and realize they'll still come out ahead.  They do NOT sell for that much because new players need to make strike augs or mana necks, it just enables them to make them at a rate that exceeds their rate of progression.

How do you fix what's broken?  I don't know, but it's a discussion that is going to have a multitude of varying viewpoints and opinions ranging from it's not broken at all to remove all access to anyone not relevant to the intended content.  It's anyone's guess what the relevant content is, because just like any game it's dynamic and it changes with the ebb and flow.  My opinon is that when you disregard level or progression relevant mitigating factors, that's when the system stresses and breaks.  Level 70's with 3 hour buffs putting them at 100k hp plowing through Qvic, getting up to 300+ % experience gains beyond what the zone was designed around dropping gsoa's that they can turn around and get 10mil+ for?  It's hard to make an argument supporting that as healthy for the server as a whole. 

I could honestly care less about gsoa dropping in progression zones because it allows me to buy them from people who are far from being able to use them for the Ear and gives me something that I can spend my plat on instead of just acquiring more and more.  I think it's weird that the drop rate in lower tiers seem to be at best on par with drop rates at higher tiers of content, but I also used to feel that the hardest part of progressing the Ear should have been the AA's required to advance it.  But with the Pez dispensing exp buffs in the Nexus firing off like the finale at a 4th of July fireworks show, it'd be hard to defend that stance anymore.  I do still take issue with there being no limit to the benefit received from mgb buffs, level 70's shouldn't have access to level 78 buffs.  Maybe either degrade the buffs by a certain % per level cast on or just limit it to current buff level -2 levels.  If people still wanted to dole out buffs, they could mem their level 72 buffs and mgb those to level 70's.  This post isn't meant to sound elitist or argumentative, my game play is not hindered by the current system, I can do what I need to do and changing the status quo doesn't benefit me at all.  This is simply me observing what I see as detrimental to the health of the server and offering up a few points for debate.

tl;dr Lots of babble, too many buff beggars clamoring for MGB's instead of just consuming content in level relevant buffs.
Posted on: Today at 04:40:55 PM Posted by: balidet
Insert Quote
The real problem is the MGB of buffs in the nexus...maybe...since people cant seem to help themselves... they could simple remove MGB from the game...


no pitchforks please..


this may bring some balance back to the force.

yes...100% yesssss

It is not the server that is broken its the rampant buffing and its throwing off the entire damn system... Whatever the fix is it is going to suck.

the MGB fix would mean you have to target a group leader to buff the group.... and you may need a second xp mask.../gasp for the other group.

but even if we fix this some tool bags will still be in the nexus "helping" new players buffing them all day...

I don't like stating problems without answers...

Limit buffs to like levels? +1/1-?
Remove the xp mask? __holy!SHIT!__
remove MGB entirely? --meh--
stop all casting in the newbie/nexus zones (you have to buff when you are xping)


what is it going to take?

[Subdued]

Wasn't saying it was hard with 1 group without buffs, just that it wasn't trivial. I would pull 3-4 mobs at a time max when I first zoned in and then added some more when I got more gear and 2.0s/2.5s.  It felt just right.  

T1/T2 on the other hand was always trivial and I was pulling half the zone from the start.

By the way, I hope nobody thinks nerfing buffs or making the early tiers more difficult will in any way help with GSOA prices. On the contrary, if making early tiers harder are the only change then the price of GSOA will go up considerably higher than they are now.

Kathina

[Dimur]

Many people who agree with this are ones also sitting in nexus still giving buffs.....

Neither Hurty nor I do buffs in the Nexus, not sure who you're referring to with this

[gnonim]

I like the +\- 1 or two levels idea.  That makes sense.

Btw, 6 boxed Qvic and got my first 3.0 without outside buffs and without knowing about the focus of healing spell... After getting that heal spell, the other 3.0's were relatively easy.

[Raygan]

I do have to say the OP has been spamming to try and buy these for 10mil which is probably what lead to this thread to start in the first place. Either mad they are being sold for more than he wants to pay or mad that he can't get them more commonly in higher tiers.

Yes I was auctioning to buy these at 10 million each.  that has NOTHING to do with the post. I have made 2 SoA all the way up in the last two weeks when T10 was down.  money isnt the issue.  It's the point that an item like that shouldnt drop in lower tiers at a higher rate than it does in upper tiers.

It also has to do with the fact that BOTH Ultimate Weapon and EoA were initially started to be end-game items...so why not have the quests start at end-game or close to end game (UW started in T7 and EoA T8(or as hunter said after someone finishes RoA 1000))....this thread was started as a "discussion" thread and you have turned it into a "Raygan is trying to hurt the server what an asshole thread"...and i am an asshole so your liking/disliking me doesnt bother me one bit. Why should I complete a FULL set of T10 gear on 2 warriors and not see one GSoA?  maybe you dont understand the significance of that but that is killing THOUSANDS of tough as shit  mobs dieing hundreds and hundreds of times...yet i can go to a zone where i can train every fucking mob in the zone slaughter them all in less than 30 seconds and have a better shot?  Thats not RNG. Thats stupid.  Once again these items were meant for one thing but have turned into something else entirely. It is hurting the server in the long run. Of course I have been all for removing UW from the game and i have several of them on various toons.

[Raygan]

Why ask for an increase in drop rate when they shouldnt drop in early tiers at all?  i f an item is meant for "end game" players than it should drop in ONLY end game tiers....that fixes a fucked up server economy.

[Dimur]

Eli, Ray's absolutely correct as far as the intended target for both the UW and Earring quests, spin doctoring and hyperbole aside, your point should be maintaining that components of the quests dropping in earlier tiers doesn't necessarily mean that part of the equation is broken.  If the intent for the Ear was that you had to farm the components yourself, they would never have been put on the global loot table for custom zones.  You can still farm the ear without buying stones from other people, but it's going to take  lot longer to do and that's because of the horrid drop rate being a constant regardless of tier.  Barring a revamp of tier by tier drop rate for gsoa, maybe consider asking for zone specific type currency that each zone's Level Up wench or similar npc could accept for turning in X number of X item that drops randomly throughout the zone.  Make the gsoa you get from that npc somehow non-tradeable and level lock your Level Up option to only using the zone your character is highest flagged for.  That way you aren't T10 flagged and plowing T6 for easy gsoa farms, and allow the Level Up to buy the previous tier currency at a reduced return rate...so 10 of T8 item X for 1 of the T9, 100 of the T7 for 1 T9, etc.  You could still buy the tradeable, random drop gsoa from players selling but you aren't captive to it since you can work on getting them through normal zone grinding.

As far as level locking or removing UW altogether, that's a fight that has been drawn out time and again and where it's at right now seems to be a fair enough compromise for everyone.  If some retard wants to allocate all their resources working on a single UW and foregoing strike and mana neck upgrades for alts, who cares.  People are going to find things they like about the EZ Grind and they may not be the best or most efficient path, but if it engages and immerses them enough to log on and grind, more power to them.  I'll constantly shake my head at their choice, but it really isn't going to negatively affect my gameplay.

[Subdued]

Why ask for an increase in drop rate when they shouldnt drop in early tiers at all?  i f an item is meant for "end game" players than it should drop in ONLY end game tiers....that fixes a fucked up server economy.

I'm not sure how you expect a reduction in the supply to somehow decrease the price. It would only increase it. So yeah, even if you wanted to remove it from lower tier content completely you would still need to increase the drop rate significantly in the higher tiers in order to reduce the price. Otherwise you'd have higher tier players even more frustrated when their only source of GSOA are the zones they state that there are terrible drop rates in.  

Just removing them from earlier tiers and changing nothing else is probably about the worst fix to accomplish your goal here.

Kathina

[Subdued]

You guys are creating a scenario that doesn't exist. The earring is not being leveled up to 10, 20, 30 or otherwise by players in t2/t3/t4 or even t5. It's not easy for a lower tier player to accumulate 200k AAs for even a level 10 earring without being in t7 or t8 at the least. You would have to try really hard and intentionally not progress in order to have a level 10 earring and still be in t5 or lower. If a player wants to allocate their resources to getting a level 10 earring in t7, who cares? That's not that far from endgame. It doesn't take away from it being a later stage accomplishment.  You guys are completely skewing the arguments here.

Kathina

[Dimur]

Nobody has to point out anyone in Qvic with an EoA 50 because nobody claimed that people were doing EoA in Qvic gear...choosing to ignore points offered up does not mean that the points are invalid.  I'm confused how either of the previous 2 posters are having an issue understanding the point OP was trying to make.  You can certainly disagree with it, but this hyperbole is ridiculous.  I'll do my best to clarify what I understand as OP's point.

1. UW and Earring of Ages were designed and intended to be something that END GAME people could focus on, as per Hunter's original intent
2. EoA's mitigating factor for progressing it is gsoa...the AA required are pretty much negligible given the current plethora of people doling out MGB exp boosts
3. GSoA drop with at least as much frequency or more in lower tiered zones as they do in higher tiered zones

I don't necessarily agree with OP's opinions, but I feel quite compelled to point out that he never once said that anyone in Qvic is sporting an EoA 50, nor did he infer that this is the issue he has with the current system.

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