Rotating Loot Targets

[Neogumbercules]

So there's a thread in the market forum that got me thinking about itemization in the game. I've been out of the loop lately so if I misremembered something, feel free to correct me.

 

Currently, I believe you can use reward merits to purchase the specific items you want if you don't want to engage in the market. It's fairly expensive, but doable. Besides that, you're basically just praying to RNJesus for the pieces you need for your build to drop naturally. Given the sheer quantity of sets available, it seems like this is not viable.

 

So in a nutshell you're heavily incentived to engage with the market because anything you want is likely available there and plentiful.

 

That's fine, and as a player who's inf capped himself multiple times on /AH, I don't have a problem with that. However, there are a lot of players who do not use the market, don't want to use the market, and don't want to farm up hundreds of millions of influence for a build.

 

What I'm suggesting is a pathway to allow such players to "target farm" enhancement sets (and possibly other loot) by simply playing the content in the game. First I'll describe how it works in other ARPGs, and then I'll suggest how it can be implemented in CoX.

 

As an example, I will use a game I've been playing recently called The Division 2. D2 is basically a hybrid of a Diablo style ARPG and a cover based third-person shooter. It's very fun and I recommend it to anyone. The game has "set items" which are pretty much a 1:1 analog to enhancement sets in CoX. You get more set bonuses the more pieces of gear you're wearing.

 

The structure of the game is that it's a large open world map with missions dotted all around it. You can replay any mission you want, and every day the "target loot" for the missions is rotated. What this means is that as you play a given mission, the chances of getting drops for the specific gear set assigned at the moment is much higher. So if I need the backpack for my Heartbreaker set to drop, and The Jefferson Memorial mission has Heartbreaker as it's target loot for the day, I'm gonna be farming that mission. In fact, you're guaranteed to get items from that set from boss kills.

 

This is a good system because it encourages players to engage with all content in the game, not just the most efficient or meta missions to farm for drops based on RNG and kill speed. It spreads the player base around and helps keep the game from getting stale.

 

Homecoming currently has the weekly TF/SF which is kind of a similar idea, but it's not quite as targeted, and you're still just spending merits on stuff slowly or, more likely, selling them and trying to buy the stuff you want from the market. Again it's just funneling people away from content and it farming/marketeering.

 

So the way I would envision this working in CoH is multi-tiered:

 

Tier 1: Target sets for TFs/SFs. Straight up, specific IOs would have much higher drop rates in specific TFs/SFs and these would rotate daily. Can you imagine a system that encourages players to remember that the rogue isles exists? Well you better believe it, because the Strike Force in Cap is dropping LotG today so get your ass to the bird.

 

Tier 2: Zone Drop Targets. Any contact mission, radio/paper mission, or street sweeping activities have an increased drop rate for specific IO sets. Can you imagine people remembering that hazard zones exist? Well you better believe it because Perez Park has Miracle today.

 

Tier 3: Salvage targets. It doesn't just have to be IOs. How about the Katie Hannon task force has a loot target for Rare invention salvage today? Or perhaps the ITF has increased drop rates for incarnate salvage for level 50s? Again this would be spread out through the whole game and all content. Zones, missions, TFs/SFs, hamidon, etc.

 

Now there are issues of course that would need to be solved. The first issue is levels. Perez Park wouldn't be much of a challenge for level 50s street sweeping for Dominator ATOs so.....make ALL hazard zones leveless.

 

As for contact missions...remove the level caps, make enemies con to the player (taking into account their chosen difficulty setting) and make all contact missions repeatable.

 

This change would require the implementation of new tech, and making all zones leveless would in itself be a huge change for Homecoming (I support this no matter what, btw), so I know it's never gonna happen, but I'm bored, and that's my idea. Thanks for reading my Ted talk.

[Psyonico]

I'm kind of on the fence about this one.  Right now things only drop for a certain level range... Want a steadfast protection? No sense in running 50 content.  So that would also have to be addressed.

 

Basically my favorite thing about ESO (the other mmo I know stuff about) is the fact that enemies are level-less.  That being said... I don't know how that would translate to the City ecosystem.  See, the only instanced missions in ESO are dungeons/trials which are designed for a specific number of players, and solo missions that are so easy you can literally just spam your basic attack key and still win.

 

City... Is not that way.  There are missions that certain characters won't be able to solo at level (my personal favorite example is the psychic clockwork king in Tina Mac's first mission.). There are certain characters who, if solo, their only option is "I'll come back to this mission when enemies are -3 to me".  Making the game level-less would remove this strategy.

 

I do like the idea of level-less and being able to run any content at any level (with the possible exception of TFs/Trials) but I also suspect that would be a massive amount of rework.  Every enemy group would need to be viable but not too hard at every level range.  That alone seems like a monumental ask.

 

I do also like the idea of having a better chance to get specific loot, but I really think that without a full-time dev team this is out of reach.

[Neogumbercules]

18 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

I'm kind of on the fence about this one.  Right now things only drop for a certain level range... Want a steadfast protection? No sense in running 50 content.  So that would also have to be addressed.

 

Basically my favorite thing about ESO (the other mmo I know stuff about) is the fact that enemies are level-less.  That being said... I don't know how that would translate to the City ecosystem.  See, the only instanced missions in ESO are dungeons/trials which are designed for a specific number of players, and solo missions that are so easy you can literally just spam your basic attack key and still win.

 

City... Is not that way.  There are missions that certain characters won't be able to solo at level (my personal favorite example is the psychic clockwork king in Tina Mac's first mission.). There are certain characters who, if solo, their only option is "I'll come back to this mission when enemies are -3 to me".  Making the game level-less would remove this strategy.

 

I do like the idea of level-less and being able to run any content at any level (with the possible exception of TFs/Trials) but I also suspect that would be a massive amount of rework.  Every enemy group would need to be viable but not too hard at every level range.  That alone seems like a monumental ask.

 

I do also like the idea of having a better chance to get specific loot, but I really think that without a full-time dev team this is out of reach.

I play/have played ESO as well and enjoy the levelessness (that's a word, damnit)! And it also has a concept of targeted loot in that each zone has specific loot sets and each event type in those zones drops specific parts of each set. I spent plenty of time in the public dungeons in Skingrad getting all the zone set weapons, or repeating the big event with the anchor things to get the amulets and rings. You're right, though, totally different game, different ruleset. Would be a challenge to implement here. There are a ton of challenges beyond just the technical issues to be solved.

 

I haven't tried multi-classing yet in ESO. I heard it's pretty broken.

[MTeague]

Perhaps the devs will go for this, perhaps not. 

I do feel that Enhancement Converters / Converter Roulette is already a pretty good workaround.

[Psyonico]

See: the whole "having to farm specific content to get specific loot" thing is one of the things I didn't like about ESO.  Want that special lightning staff that only drops from White Gold Tower?  Well get ready to run it 100 times!

[Gerswin Jr]

I love the idea of incentivizing fun content that normally has poor reward/time ratio. First Ward arcs, the RWZ praetoria arcs, Faultline,Eden trial, just to name a few.

 

I think converters make the targeted loot idea irrelevant, but I wou

D be all over a tweaked version of this idea that makes obscure content repeatably playable.

 

 

[UltraAlt]

4 hours ago, Neogumbercules said:

However, there are a lot of players who do not use the market, don't want to use the market, and don't want to farm up hundreds of millions of influence for a build.

 

If you don't want to use the market,  you can do what we did before the market.

There are stores where you can buy non-IO and non-set enhancements. The game is built around using those "base" enhancements and no around IO or IO set enhances.

 

I enjoy the market, marketing, and crafting.

However, I'm not a farmer, and I am against farming .... even though I make major inf off of farmers buying from me in the /AH.

 

4 hours ago, Neogumbercules said:

So the way I would envision this working in CoH is multi-tiered:

 

I'm not even clear that some of what your suggesting isn't already going on.

Enemies drop certain salvage and you can see it in the info window for the enemies.

It is quite possible that each enemy type has a chance of dropping certain recipe types as well. I honestly have never paid attention to it, and, obviously, it isn't listed current in the info window.

 

If this is the case, then I would think that the sets would drop on respective enemy types. That is to say enemies with hold powers may already have a chance do drop hold recipes. End manipulation enemies - End Mod recipes. etc.