Increase purple drop rates

[Gravitus]

Is anyone really against this?

 

Considering the amount of time it takes to deck out a single toon and the fact there are tons of toons I want to make; I feel like I’ll never feasibly get to experience more than a single decked out toon.

 

Not to mention the servers could be shut down at any time.

 

I’m not saying increase the rate to stupid level like in Diablo 3, but I think a significant increase would be nice.

 

Anyone against this?

[HelenCarnate]

Not against it but it is fine as is. Drops have already been increased vs live and you can buy purples for 25 mill already crafted vs over 10x as much back on live.

[Vanden]

I see no need for this change.

[Gravitus]

I apologize, all my experience has been on live. I knew some things were different on this version but I assumed they were subtle changes . I’ll take you all at your word  and let it be.

[Ukase]

Let me just say this. Anecdotally - farming aside, I've done the Market Crash tf 6 times with 6 different characters, got a purple with each one.

 

 

Maybe I'm playing more than I was before - I doubt it - but discounting Market Crash, I've gotten more purple drops since this game came back then I did during my entire time playing CoH before - since Issue 4.

 

So..it's just anecdotal, but seems to me that the rate is more generous than it used to be.

 

 

It really isn't hard at all to get a bunch of purples. 100 merit rewards and you can get salvage from the merit vendor, sell it, and buy a purple outright. It's just not that hard.

[ed_anger]

Let me just say this. Anecdotally - farming aside, I've done the Market Crash tf 6 times with 6 different characters, got a purple with each one.

 

afaik that’s a one time thing per character, so not particularly relevant

[Waypoint]

Purple drop rates have increased by a large margin since live. I think they're fine, especially given how easy it is to get merits. Double Hami Raids (120 merit valu) are becoming increasingly common on Everlasting, and Mothership Raids are done a ton (roughly 30-40 reward merits every 30 mins?). That's about 200 merits (two purples) for less than two hours of work.

 

With incarnates, Dr Quaterfield (122 merits) can be done in under two hours. Doing an Apex/Tin Mage (80 merit total) takes under an hour, at least 30 minutes I'd say. That's another 200 merits.

 

If you can find enough people to do a Dr Q, or if you run 3 Apex/Tin Mages, along with a double hami and an MSR, that's four purples in under five hours.

 

The system is fine.

[HoundsTooth]

Anyone against this? [\quote]

 

I agree that purple drop rates need to be increased, or that merit drops need to be increased. I'm surprised that, purportedly, everyone else is so against it.

 

 

It's so strange to me that a game which has been online 4ish months after a 7 year hiatus has such a strong farming culture. Go to the AE building in Atlas Park during peak hours and you'll see dozens of people running farms. Many people playing now have a dedicated spines/fire brute to generate influence.  There is no game studio to lengthen gameplay time to keep subscribers and generate micro transactions. I don't see why you should have an easy path to a purple'd out character in this version of the game.

 

I have accepted that I'm in the minority with this opinion. I just don't understand the other side of the argument.

[Mr. Vee]

It's not so much that people are against it as that it's already so much easier than on live to get decked out characters that we're fine with it as is. Merit rewards for ouro arcs have been increased across the board with a few exceptions and can be repeated for full rewards without cooldown. Merit costs have been halved. All AE content can drop regular rewards including purples. Things that were once behind a pay wall can be bought with in game currency or merits. Converters are plentiful and cheap. You can deck out a character in as many purple/pvp/winter/ATO sets as you can fit for less than two purples would have cost on live. It's pretty much an altoholic's paradise as far as I'm concerned. Sure I'd love it if purples dropped from the sky like snipe recipes but I'm more than set as it is - I don't even bother to farm anymore unless a friend needs a few levels. My banker just does a couple trays of converting and selling when I can stand it and I'm cash flush for decking out new 50s at buy it nao prices. All this and i have barely half the time to play I did on live and maybe a tenth of the time to team.

 

TLDR: If purple rate is increased, great. If not, great.

[SwitchFade]

Purple drop rates have increased by a large margin since live. I think they're fine, especially given how easy it is to get merits. Double Hami Raids (120 merit valu) are becoming increasingly common on Everlasting, and Mothership Raids are done a ton (roughly 30-40 reward merits every 30 mins?). That's about 200 merits (two purples) for less than two hours of work.

 

With incarnates, Dr Quaterfield (122 merits) can be done in under two hours. Doing an Apex/Tin Mage (80 merit total) takes under an hour, at least 30 minutes I'd say. That's another 200 merits.

 

If you can find enough people to do a Dr Q, or if you run 3 Apex/Tin Mages, along with a double hami and an MSR, that's four purples in under five hours.

 

The system is fine.

 

What's really interesting though, is I spent a good bit of time calculating R.O.I. on all these different ways...

 

And it actually worked out that running a farm map is equivalent. 109 merits per hour, 32mill inf per hour....

 

It's a wash, as purps are 100/25-30m. So, I kinda like that now I can do tf's, msr, or run a map alone and it's even return. That said, I wouldn't be adverse to a *slight* purple drop rate increase.

[Waypoint]

What's really interesting though, is I spent a good bit of time calculating R.O.I. on all these different ways...

 

And it actually worked out that running a farm map is equivalent. 109 merits per hour, 32mill inf per hour....

 

It's a wash, as purps are 100/25-30m. So, I kinda like that now I can do tf's, msr, or run a map alone and it's even return. That said, I wouldn't be adverse to a *slight* purple drop rate increase.

 

32mil an hour is fairly slow on the spectrum of farming, if you're doing a fire farm and running the optimal spines/fire build that is floating around out there. You can easily crank out 80 to 100mil per hour by running the meteor map or the cave map. That's four to five purples per hour, if they are 20-30mil. The purple drop rate is fine with how many means there are to acquire currencies (merits or influence).

[ed_anger]

32mil an hour is fairly slow on the spectrum of farming, if you're doing a fire farm and running the optimal spines/fire build that is floating around out there. You can easily crank out 80 to 100mil per hour by running the meteor map or the cave map. That's four to five purples per hour, if they are 20-30mil. The purple drop rate is fine with how many means there are to acquire currencies (merits or influence).

 

TIL someone thinks everyone wants to build spine/fire farmers to run AE farms over and over. hint: we don’t. we’re not all earning 100 mil an hour.

[Waypoint]

I never said that at all. I said that's slow on the spectrum of farming with an optimal spines/fire which earns 80 to 100mil. I'm aware other people don't use fire farms all the time. I'm not a ignorant.

 

My argument was: If spines/fires (which I would say make up the bulk of farmers) make 4-5 purples an hour, hypothetically, increasing the drop rate would just benefit the farmers more, which people are already against doing.

 

I listed a few resources (that happen daily) on how to get a quick two purples, more if you run those more than once a day. The drop rate is perfectly fine right now, from my perspective. With how many people are running mothership raids, Apex/Tin Mages, Hami Raids, and the WSTs, the game gives us a lot of means to get purples, winter-O's, and ATOs. Adjusting the drop rates for purple recipes (when they have already been adjusted from live) wouldn't be a good change.

 

[Stagamantis]

I have 7 level 50s. Out of those 7 My 5th toon is the only one fully decked out to include incarnate. I have roughly half the amount of play time on my 5th toon as I do with my first 50 which was my first 50 back in the day. And that guy is about half way decked out.

 

That being said, I have roughly 1.6 billion influence on my farmer. You could add another 600 mill based on the enhancements I bought off the AH to get him slotted with what I wanted. Either way its been descent amount of farming since I discovered what AE building is and does.

Generally I build all the purples and orange recipes I need for my characters and few buddies from back in the day, stick them in our enhancement table. On a good week, I've had as many as 10 purples drops (once), but usually average around 5-6 a week since I started these farming shenanigans. Out of that 6 maybe 1 or 2 can be used immediately by another character, the rest we're basically using the converter in hope that roll into the set we are looking for. All 3 of us have 6 50's, a pair that we all play together with, and then side characters we run when we're all not on together. To my knowledge my 5th/7th farming 50 is the only character that is fully atuned or +5 with full incarnate. 

 

The last character I leveled to 50, I have completely stop playing just to see how long it would take me to fully farm all its enhancements. I'll start week 4 this week, with this toon getting first dibs on anything I farm, and I have yet to complete any of the 3 purple sets I have choose for the toon, and only 2 of the orange sets. Out of the purple sets, I only have dropped 2 or 3 in each set and the orange sets that are not completed I generally missing the one or two more expensive enhancements I see on AH.

 

This week I logged roughly 14 hours farming and I've dropped 5 purples. Only one that particular character could use. Hope this gives yall some insight from the farming perspective.