Really wondering where everyone finds their loot joy.
Ion and his team will profess til their dying breath that slot machine loot is 1000x more fun. They believe vendors are boring and provide no joy. Just a scheduled gear acquisition.
I disagree completely. Vendors and reasonable currency acquisition provide a sense of never wasting time. They allow me to complete my gear set, which is an amazing feeling.
Slot machines burn me out. I’m not gambler. I feel like every pull is a waste of time because it really generated no progress. Every slot pull has exactly the same chance to get something. It never improves without bad luck protection, dupe protection, or vendors.
This game used to have lots of bad luck protection vendors and I had a lot more fun during those times.
However maybe I’m a crazy minority and everyone else finds electrifying joy from slot machine loot?
I love knowing when I’ll be able to get gear, exact specific gear. I love knowing that my progress will be sure and steady, especially for my core power requirements. I love that I can finish on my main and move to alts. Consistent progress is really addicting to me.
16 Likes
Vendors. So much more vendors.
35 Likes
I enjoy a predictable, continuous reinforcement schedule for consistency layered with a variable reinforcement schedule for added excitement.
In essence, doing both at the same time is better than either individually.
21 Likes
I’m sort of in the middle… with titles like XIV it’s far too easy to get your BiS then have nothing to do for 6-8 months at times. The RNG gives you a reason to keep going back into raids.
Too much RNG is the other extreme and while there could be more bad luck protection going overboard with it will make things too formulaic.
7 Likes
Much prefer PvP vendors and PvP specific gear. Most PvPers do as well.
6 Likes
Make pvp vendors great again, the pvp scene isn’t that hard to please
3 Likes
Vendors. WoD pvp vendor system was nice.
6 Likes
Vendors. I dislike this casino xpac
10 Likes
Both should be in the game and there should be a balance between them. You should enjoy obtaining rewards from different activities. You should be able to purchase filler pieces when you have a bad luck streak.
5 Likes
I like predictable gear drops and predictable item stats with varying levels of drop chances. MoP did it right, IMO.
4 Likes
there’s gotta be somebody to back up Ion’s claim that slot machine loot is more addicting and fun
I really want to hear their voice honestly
That’s gotta be paraphrasing with a hint of exaggeration.
It’s always been a combination of both. Slot machine is nice and being able to work towards something is good as well
Lol I know this has been said a lot but with RNG
I’m either extremely frustrated I wasted my time or I’m just relieved.
It’s not like real life gambling where I’d be maybe happy to hit the jackpot. The RNG just makes me frustrated more than anything which is why I don’t care for it anymore
2 Likes
I thought Ion’s argument against vendors was that it would artificially force a greater power creep. Why? Again, his logic (if I’m conveying it truthfully) was that, with vendors, folks would essentially be guaranteed to reach the current tier threshold before the next tier, and thus the next tier’s raid would not be as challenging and/or the developers would have to increase the difficulty.
If memory serves me, he also said that this style makes more sense at the end of an expansion, where there is an impending gear reset overall between expansions.
All that verbosity aside, I strongly prefer vendors. I would be less annoyed with a “choose a piece of loot for an armor slot, and the RNG is what you’ll get for that slot”, as opposed to double rng: what slot and then what stats/etc.
I am actively choosing to get involved in the narrative. That’s not an rng element on my part. But the rewards being almost exclusively RNG further helps break the immersion. A choice between gear is good, a roll of the dice, eh, not so good - to me at least.
Edit to add a TL;DR for the first two paragraphs: RNG Loot appears to make the game design simpler and quicker because devs don’t have to take into account a vendor “loot table” and further take into account how that would play into future tiers.
2 Likes
I would like to hear this as well. Perhaps they are using data from mount farmers? I know that if there is a chance for a best in slot piece off of a boss at the level I need, I would farm it. But this random stuff that we have right now is not addicting or fun.
1 Like
they are the same
ex
armor costs 100 tokens
dungeon rewards 4 tokens per boss, 5 bosses per dungeon, 20 tokens tot
in 5 dungeons can obtain one piece of gear
each boss has 4 percent to drop gear
5 bosses should equal to 20 percent chance for 1 piece of gear.
20% + 5 dungeons = 100% chance for at least one piece of gear
Of course rng will add loot volatility, especially depending on algorithm’s loot protection that inherently increases %loot based on whether or not loot gained from previous boss, by for example, 20%percent per boss up to a maximum of 100%.
Many fail to realize that token/badge distrubition is tuned in a way that would mirror rng, in terms of time taken to acquire desired loot. Whether you have to run x dungeons to save for token/badges, or dungeon has 1/x chance to drop desired loot, the time will take the same.
1 Like
They are far from the same. If you get random drops you have no choice of items and bad luck can prevent you from getting anything good. If you buy from a vendor you can choose the items you want, for whatever reason you want them. I prefer the vendors.
6 Likes
I like being able to plan my gear out accordingly with reliability and reproducible pathways on alts. When it comes to toys, pets, mounts and cosmetic things I don’t mind the RNG. Current system is opposite to my preferences.
3 Likes
A little of both is fine by me. They have compromised with the titan residuum vendor, though the exchange rate is a bit warped.
I just wish they’d relax the rules on trading personal loot. As a druid main, getting an off-hand with an equivalent i-lvl staff equipped is considered non-tradeable if it’s my 1st off-hand at that i-lvl…silly.