One thing I appreciate about the response here so far, is the willingness to wait to come up with a quality solution rather than an uncalibrated response. In a game of 800+ available mounts, this is seen by many as one of the rarest mounts because of its drop rate and low availability. One could make a case that much of the desire for this mount comes directly from its scarcity. Therefore, lowering the drop rate would directly lower its value.
One thing I have really enjoyed about this conversation, is the discussion of ‘bad-luck protection’. I think it is an important topic of discussion and worth looking into at both a skill-based and time-based difficulty levels. However, I do not believe we should start with the “Holy Grail” of RNG as our pilot test run.
Instead, I think it important to look at what many of the complaints center around – limited time and specific level requirements. I can think of a few scenarios where there may be a potential solution:
- Remove the level limiter. Currently, you can only attempt to loot this mount on a character that is at least level 50. The idea behind this level limiter removal would allow players more opportunities without feeling the need to level up characters to prepare for the holiday event. The weakness in this would come where players make new characters, level them to 10 or 15, run the dungeon, delete, and repeat. This may or may not be a problem depending on how you look at it.
- Remove the daily limiter. Currently, you can only attempt to get this mount once per day per character. If the daily limiter was removed, then there may be less of a need to feel compelled to level up a character for the event to maximize one’s own chances for the mount to drop. This may result in high amounts of burn-out due to excessive running on one character, but this tends to be the nature of time-based difficulty content.
- Remove the daily limiter and level limiter. In this scenario, players could run the dungeon as much as they want on any character they wish. With the instance rewarding roughly 10% of level’s worth of XP per clear, this may or may not need to be adjusted. However, it would give players a secondary reason to run the instance. So, if a player doesn’t get the mount to drop after several runs for that day, the player can think, “Yeah… I didn’t get the mount to drop, but I was able get my warrior up 2 levels today.” This helps steer the player from the idea that all the time they just played was for absolutely nothing.
- Add Bonus Rolls. For the sake of this example, let’s call bonus roll coins ‘Lovely Coins’. Over the course of a holiday, if a daily quest rewards 10 Love Tokens, then a player could spend 10 Love Tokens to purchase 1 Lovely Coin. They would then use the Lovely Coin as a bonus roll for the mount to drop (either after opening the container or killing the boss – doesn’t really matter here). So, in short, a character has twice as many chances with the Lovely Coins. Just to be clear, this currency would be a permanent currency on the character tab, and these ‘Lovely Coins’ would have no cap and would not disappear after the holiday ended. If a player wanted to, then they could farm up 1000 of these.
- Add Unlimited Bonus Rolls. So, take everything from the previous example, and apply here. Then add on the potential of bonus rolling the mount with each additional run. For example, let’s say a player runs the first dungeon of the day, they would have two chances – once with the normal drop and another with the bonus roll. However, if they have additional bonus rolls, then they could also run the dungeon again and use the bonus roll for another chance at the mount. One of the benefits with the bonus rolls would be to drive the players to do the in-game content surrounding the holiday to improve their chances at the mount.
- Remove all limiters and add unlimited bonus rolls. This is culmination all of the previous suggestions… So, in this scenario, any player at any level could run the instance as much as they wanted. Furthermore, if they decided to collect enough Love Tokens to earn the ‘Lovely Coins’, they would essentially have two rolls for the mount every time they ran the instance. This could increase outdoor content surrounding the holiday season as players increase chances at the mount by doing dailies and joining charm farming groups. A potential vulnerability here, would come from so weird scaling phenomenon, where a player would maximize ‘charm farming’ or ‘coin farming’ at anything other than max level. So, development would have to ensure that is wasn’t significantly more beneficial to farm at a lower level.
So, the important thing to note here is that none of these changes involves the tampering of the drop rate of the mount. They instead focus increasing a player’s likelihood of success through in-game gameplay! Now, of course, these potential solutions are not a fix for everyone. We haven’t really talk about bad luck protection nor the concept of undermining previous player’s effort of getting something in-game. However, those subjects may require their own thread of conversation.
Something that may be worth considering would be a test of sorts for potential changes in the future. For example, we have Noble Garden starting on April 18th – about 2 months from now. Perhaps, we could introduce a Rabbit mount with a drop rate of 1 in 3,300 that drops from a giant Yeti in an instantized version of Old Hillsbrad. For each unsuccessful attempt, players would be awarded an Account-bound currency (we can call it Yeti Essence for now). So, each kill gets you a Yeti Essence, and with 4,500 Yeti Essences, you can simply buy the Rabbit. This would give developers a means of testing player behavior when it comes to this type of bad luck protection system, and it would give players a chance to have something new to chase after.
In fact, there could be a tiered system of it:
Permanent Holiday Transmogs at various odds and various costs
Pets and Toys at various odds and various costs
Brown Rabbit (1:500 odds) costs 800 Yeti Essences
White Rabbit (1:1,500 odds) costs 2500 Yeti Essences
White Rabbit with red mount and paws (like DMF Rabbit) (1:3,300 odds) costs 4,500 Yeti Essences
Perhaps duplicate transmogs, pets, toys, and mounts could be rewarded for Yeti Essences to allow for the purchase of something they do not have