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Etherdrifter

Uniques & Loot

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Rifts showed us an interesting way to run a serverwise event; everyone who "participates" gets loot.  Unique hunts have no such mechanism and, generally speaking, its the same small group of players who end up with the valrei item or bone (though there are rare exceptions!).

 

So why not change unique hunts a little:

 

Add in a "part" item for each sorcery item; each sorcery item takes 10 (possibly as much as 25 if the devs hate us enough) parts to create, also add in bone fragments: each bone takes 5 fragments to make.  Everyone who is premium and in local has a 10% chance of getting a part (a-la-rift) and a 20% chance of getting a fragment (rare 80%, supreme 14.5%, fantastic 0.5%), everyone who lands a blow on a unique (or casts a healing spell within 5 tiles of the unique 15 mins before its slaying) has a 100% chance of getting a part (a-la-rift) AND a fragment.  The person who lands the final blow gets 2 parts and 2 fragments (just because).

 

Parts are randomised, though linked to unique (certain uniques drop certain parts).  All uniques drop at least 4 different part types.

 

Existing loot (direct body loot) still drops, no change.

 

 

 

The big thing here is that it rewards EVERYONE who participates in a tangible way (blood still provides a nice consolation prize), massive public slayings are all but gurenteed to give enough parts for a tome and/or a bone (oh look, a new endgame medium of trade), the existing method is slightly more rewarding (no change to the status quo so "private" hunts can still be a thing).

 

 

The "alt farming" argument is the only thing against this method and, to be quite frank, that appears to be "wurm as intended" by the look of all other mechanics (fo enchanting anyone?).

 

Afterthought: Why not give everyone a piece of meat too?

Edited by Etherdrifter
Afterthought
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something along these lines would be pretty cool - if everyone in the fight has a chance to get a fragment, it would encourage making the fights more public (more people -> more drops -> more chance to buy enough fragments for a whole thing in one hit).

 

Definately something for the dev team to consider.

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no

 

-1

 

you have people already showing up at unique slayings with 12 alts, this would only encourage more people to lug out a alt army to these slayings, the lag is something else when you get so many in local

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Nice thoughts but...it wont change anything

 

You see, the point behind closed fights is simple: high value loot for a few people

Even in your scenario there would still be no reason to open fights to the public because why would you want to potentially give others the possibility to get bones and whatnot, at most it will increase the prices on bones as it will be harder to get them  - it's simple math: high value (RARE TO FIND) items = lots of money, if you give the possibility for more # of bones and such to be created - prices will drop, no unique hunting groups would allow that to happen

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How about... dont give anything for those in local, make uniques so hard that people actually gather in great numbers and need healers, give the rewards from hitting and healing, make the uniques have great damage reflection (so that you need to be either healed very often or need to pull back a bit to have someone else hit), easier to hit and much more durable.

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There is yet another (motivational) problem:

 

uniques are currently already wayyy too open to everyone - uniques are supposed to be the absolute most powerful things in PvE, so endgame events for high skilled players

 

How would you feel if you grinded for 3-4-5-6-7 years to get to the point where you can fight uniques properly and then devs changing the rules on you so that every noob and their dog has a chance of getting something and you have a chance of getting nothing? (just like in the case of rifts and me, where I get a lump every time and that's it - which is INSANELY FRUSTRATING)

 

No, I if anything, I would support uniques getting harder - give me a goal, give me a reason to work for my skills for years, and for all the people that want endgame type events but hate pvp

Edited by Thorakkanath
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2 minutes ago, Thorakkanath said:

How would you feel if you grinded for 3-4-5-6-7 years to get to the point where you can fight uniques properly and then devs changing the rules on you so that every noob and their dog has a chance of getting something and you have a chance of getting nothing? (just like in the case of rifts and me, where I get a lump every time, which is INSANELY FRUSTRATING)

 

Thats ME my friend .....been playing for over 7 years now, working on my skills and FS and have been to a lot these fights ......and hey would you like to take a shot at how many times i have landed a item or spell ??? ...thats right 0

 

When Sorcery hit the game i made it my goal to find,buy and make all of the staffs in the game.... and then i sat and waited for them to add in the new spells.

BOOM ...i find out you can only get them from killing Uniques.

So just think of how INSANELY FRUSTRATING that is.

 

While i agree with you that this idea would push these fights underground more so that no one would get to go to them (apart from the hunting groups) i still back up what Lord Etherdrifter is

saying here... i would like something to be done. It's INSANE the way it stands and we all know that these groups have most if not all of the spells now and are just hunting for these items purely for money which i think damages the game for others.

 

So ....to tac on something to this idea why not have the loot like Etherdrifter is saying (like Rifts) but only if you are in the fight and do damage. Noob players / low FS players cannot damage these monsters.... if they can land a hit at all that is. But still have the normal drop of blood and hide for player in local. ?

AND to stop fights going underground have beams for each ....all different colours just like a rift. ?

 

Everyone has a chance at tracking them down.... everyone has a chance at joining the fight. Sounds fair to me.

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+1

let everyone hit the loot pinata to get free endgame items :-)

 

no but really, -1

uniques are already piss easy and require almost no effort except the search part so I don't want to see everyone that shows up getting basically free stuff

 

up the difficulty and make it an actual endgame event with proper loot, make everything drop on corpse and have whoever organizes the slaying deal with the rewards etc

that's the way i'd like to see it, everything basically ran by the community and not shitty ingame mechanics that promote using alts and whatever

 

Edited by Worksock

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8 hours ago, Simyaci said:

How about... dont give anything for those in local, make uniques so hard that people actually gather in great numbers and need healers, give the rewards from hitting and healing, make the uniques have great damage reflection (so that you need to be either healed very often or need to pull back a bit to have someone else hit), easier to hit and much more durable.

 

Harder uniques would also work but the difficulty curve would be tricky and I don't quite trust the wurm devs with numbers yet....

 

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I had to let this topic grow on me for the past 9 hours to form an opinion, and I'll probably disappoint somebody I care about, but here goes.

 

5 hours ago, Worksock said:

uniques are already piss easy

Whatever happened to the "uniques are much more difficult to kill now"-patch from a couple of years back, that also limited the amount of attackers at any one time? The few public slayings I've attended probably haven't lasted a minute, and the last ones had so many attending, that people had random crashes and abysmal framerates (whatever made the client lock up), including myself on a really decent PC.

 

I guess it was also the patch that meant to ridicule the elitist hunting parties, hatching eggs, hoarding scale and drake leather, or making tons of cash. The patch that also did not really work and rather backfired more than anything else, didn't it?

 

Rifts are... well... I fail to see the fun in it. A huge slaughter that sees more casualties than Unique slayings, though mostly out of e.g. inexperience (preferably NOT back off UP a slope), carelessness (not knowing when to back up), slow reaction (not realising you're about to get mobbed by 20+ mobs at once), or over-extension (getting somebody mobbed by 20+ mobs at once), and the likes.

 

And the rewards after jolly co-operation? Descent on the rift resources like vultures :P or maybe like some more civilised folks, peck away on some of them, and consider when you've taken what you feel like you earned, and left enough for everybody else.

 

Also, without high Mining or Woodcutting. their usefulness is greatly decreased. I'm not sure if a failed harvesting action actually uses up a "charge" of the resource, that is, how many times it can be mined or cut, which would be a waste. But all that's fine, I guess, declared as an end game item, supposed to be hard to successfully do anything with it.

 

But since it's not a Rift feedback thread, uuuhh... yes, Uniques are piss easy, they don't require a large amount of people, and usually nobody is expected to die. It's no risk, and possibly high reward, at least for whoever owns the deed the Unique is slain on, and the group they're with. Which is... kinda fine, they found it. Or "somebody" found it, didn't know what to do, and an experienced hunter *cough*opportunist (more or less open about it) offered to help and include you in the loot roll, which I guess is also fine.

 

I mean, I was pretty clueless what I'd do with that Kyklops I once found in the wild :rolleyes:

 

They then invite everybody to join in for the fun and the blood, but not the loot, which... objectively, is also fine.

 

Now I haven't had the pleasure much of being part of such small groups, the most I've ever gotten in a public loot roll was a piece of meat (never gotten a sorcery charge, bone, or skull), so what I'm thinking is, is it also fine that everybody is entitled to get more out of somebody finding a unique, penning it, and organise a slaying, than blood and useless junk like meat, a gland, or the bladder?

 

At least for non-dragons, because more people = less scale/leather per head :P

 

As much as I would love to EARN a skull, or a bone, or a sorcery title (the spells feel mostly underwhelming to me), I'd objectively have to say no. I'm probably not entitled to get stuff out of simply travelling and attending, although it does take quite some time.

 

But Uniques are still (or again?) way too easy to kill, people want blood :rolleyes: as to how exactly that can be achieved, I'll blatantly load that off on the devs :P

Edited by Ulviirala

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uniques are super easy if you have numbers

 

if you're on epic then they aren't.  green dragon requires about 20 people for example where a black dragon is fine with 12, either way numbers aren't easy to get

 

also the way it works currently is perfectly fine on pvp where people work as a group and usually do things fairly so I don't really like these changes aside from the fact that it's literally making it super easy even more so for freedom to get what should be epic's main draw.  why go to epic when you get to stare at a few uniques and boom you have a tome for doing literally nothing

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It isn't a good game mechanic, when generally once a week, there is another slaying, where there is often a 3 charge valrei item drop, which can provide a player with enough for a year of free subscription.  That is what, 20% of Wurm's subscription income?  Probably an exaggeration.  But still.  The value of the drops is so high, that greed must become a factor in these.  I been part of some great hunting groups and also some not-so-great groups.  I've seen unique's get ninjad away from people that found them and people hijack the loot from kills.  Greed is always going to be a factor.

 

I think the loot drops have got to switch to a direct to inventory of participants method, based on RNG.  I think the above is a great option to consider.  Blood and hide has been working out really well.  So for the more valuable items, let's make it based on active hits/heals/spells/pets contribution in the battle and a high skill requirement + prem to be in on the RNG. 

 

What about the guy that spent all day hunting and finds/pens the unique?  Maybe they get a reward immediately as the first person to get targeted.  MAybe they get a 10x bonus to RNG rolls when the battle completes.

 

Will private groups still form to keep loot more rare, or insure only select people get in on the RNG?  Yep.  Until the massive group lag issue is resolved, this is a very good thing.

 

What about people bringing in an alt army to dilute everyone's chances?  There is no answer now, but I have hopes that the new account management system just might require all game accounts to be directly tied to real world identities, which allows one billing account to have many characters, but also would allow the RNG to limit how many characters from a game account could receive a loot chance.  Bring 7 alts to help take it down, but you only get one roll of the dice.  Yes, most hunts that self manage the loot rolls do a fantastic job of this, but not all.

 

I'm always a fan of a rework on Uniques and the way hunts/drops are done.

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We used to have unique that where mostly dead, a few hatchlings where penned and farmed for their eggs.   Then we had respawning unique, and for a time those where true community events.  Now we have penned uniques again who are hunted by the few.  
If lucky the broader Wurm community gets invited for some blood and hide/scale, usually only for blood though. 
It's time for a change to uniques.   When only a handful can get the rewards, something is clearly broken.
Funny how it's the same groups that almost always find them.....

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Public slayings are not really a thing now, so what's all the rant about.

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10 hours ago, MrGARY said:

if you're on epic then they aren't

If you don't have the numbers (and the skills, and equipment), the fights are not less than 60 seconds indeed. On a WU server, we had quite a tough fight against the Forest Giant, killed it after the third try, people improving their FS and other skills for equipment, two Fo priests alternating their Light of Fo casts (because of the spell's cooldown), saccing cloth for favour. And healing really wasn't optional :D

 

So yes, a flat increase in difficulty would be the wrong thing to do. Maybe more of a shift to scale with people in local, to discourage bringing alts for blood farming :P and if someone does bring alts, they'll hopefully have a bad conscience when it goes south :rolleyes: but even that is not a means to an end if the heads of staff decide small hunting groups "should not" be a thing.

 

As it stands though, they can easily be zerg'd. Public slayings is like outsourcing work, that people do for free, like Google with the old Captchas for text recognition.

Edited by Ulviirala

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I tried to put myself in the shoes of both types of participants.. I know there is a big grey area, but i'm gonna split these into the group of the ones that organise slayings and the ones that just participate.

 

So there is the casual unique slayer.. (someone like me and most of the players) that check the forums or the freedom chat once in a while, and if they see a unique slaying close, or one that drops blood that gives good potions (mining, wc), then if it's at an acceptable hour and public, he will participate for some blood, scale, drake and occasional random item.

 

And there is the hunter player, that probably all that is doing is travel around the map from the moment he sees a new spawn, looks for the unique, traps it when he finds it, deeds the area, organises a slaying party..

 

So based on these criteria.. I, as a casual unique slayer.. don't see why I would have any claim to items or to the rules the loot from that unique are split amongst the participants..

Some of these are public and we appreciate it.. but they could all be fully private and we would only know about them when we would see the message in the event window that it was slayed..

 

In my opinion there is nothing holding anyone back from becoming a hunter player and doing that himself, finding the unique, trapping him, and organising a private party to get all the loot, or a public one so anyone can share and enjoy (kudos to Nestangol who organised the last one, fun event :) ).

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5 hours ago, Wurmhole said:

Greed is always going to be a factor.

 

And that, ladies and gentlemen is what got us here (1,400 less premium players than the same time last year) in the first place.

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5 hours ago, Greyfox said:

Funny how it's the same groups that almost always find them.....

 

It makes perfect sense...its those groups that spend time and effort to find uniques.

Sure, random Joe might find one - but kill groups search systematically, and a grid pattern search will always yield better results than just...."OMG OMG, a dragon is attacking me!!!"

 

I don't see the motivation for me to spend a lot of time and effort searching, finding, spending money on deeds and then organizing a public fight - and for what? just to keep people happy? to risk not getting anything for the effort I put into it?

 

I fail to see how people that do not do anything have any right to judge people that actively do something. And I know I am not personally attacked about this, and I don't take it personally anyway, but I really do not understand the logic of all this.

No one is stopping anyone to go out and find/pen uniques and do anything they want with them....

 

And yet I still organize public fights for the most important potions (WC and Mining) - because I do care, if it would be greed then I wouldn't want public fights especially for those...

 

In a lot of ways this is just like all those people that are able to work but are unemployed: 'we want jobs, we want money, the state has to give us money' - but when you present them with a job, they always find an excuse 'this job is too hard, this is too lame, it's too far from home, I don't like the hours, etc.)

 

 

Also PS: for all those that have zero clue but like to talk about things they don't know - valrei items are really really rare, heck I have yet to get any valrei tome, and I have been to a considerable number of events

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More blood and potions on the market from public slayings attendants is good for hunting parties, right?

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14 hours ago, MrGARY said:

why go to epic when you get to stare at a few uniques and boom you have a tome for doing literally nothing

 

I dunno...if the only reason to go to Epic is that you have a chance to get some extra stuff, which doesn't really do much most of the time...then it seems like Epic has more problems than new gods and tomes being available on Freedom.

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On 12/09/2016 at 7:53 AM, zigozag said:

 

More blood and potions on the market from public slayings attendants is good for hunting parties, right?

Blood is dropped on an increasing basis per attendee. As long as it doesn't take away from my stuff i don't care how much others get. If someone random in the crowd receives items which there are only one of and thus taking them away from the organizers you are going to see even less public events. Why invite more people who did absolutely nothing to help when it cuts into your own rewards... when they could put in the effort themselves. I don't know many scenarios outside the game where someone spent countless hours working, posting a newspaper add, and then giving away their entire earning to a random few who showed up. 

 

It makes you wonder who is truly greedy, since that's the favorite word around uniques. The people who put in effort and want to keep their reward, or the people who only show up once the work is done and want the reward.

 

As far as the op it gets even worse, guaranteed results for every hitter im cool with, so long as, again, it doesnt remove existing drop mechanics. But for people just being prem in local? Imagine the lag. I have a pretty high end computer but the last public slaying it was just locked up with only some 60 people in local. If you add a chance (why only a chance, isnt that kindof unfair) for partial rare bones and tomes you're going to have quite the local list.

Edited by Alyeska

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Oh i was just answering to this:

On 09.12.2016 at 3:39 PM, Thorakkanath said:

I don't see the motivation for me to spend a lot of time and effort searching, finding, spending money on deeds and then organizing a public fight - and for what? just to keep people happy? to risk not getting anything for the effort I put into it?

 

It's easy to understand why people don't share dragons, but lately it seems all other uniques are private too (which might be caused by the pick up permission bug if it's still not fixed).

Edited by zigozag

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14 minutes ago, zigozag said:

Oh i was just answering to this:

 

It's easy to understand why people don't share dragons, but lately it seems all other uniques are private too (which might be caused by the pick up permission bug if it's still not fixed).

 

I think his response goes to the people who want full loot drops to be distributed amongst the attendees, not the blood portion. Most people who say they want public fights really mean they want full loot rollouts. A few of the above replies make them clear. I'm unsure why fights on nondragons would be going private, but either bad lag or if there is some sort of pickup bug, those would be my guesses. Or some people are just not int he mood for organizing public events.

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26 minutes ago, Alyeska said:

A few of the above replies make them clear. I'm unsure why fights on nondragons would be going private,

 

Well the non-dragons are the paydirt uniques, where a 3 charge val item could be worth 600eu or more.

 

If things were changed to random drops you would see hundreds of alts in local, not just the 50-100 at regular kills.

 

Also a change to random loots would lead to kill's never being announced and being killed by small select groups.

 

The system works as it is, if someone is unhappy about how these go, they are welcome to find there own unique and bottle it up and run there own event.

 

Anyone can do it, its a sandbox after all.

 

 

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5 hours ago, Alyeska said:

Blood is dropped on an increasing basis per attendee. As long as it doesn't take away from my stuff i don't care how much others get. If someone random in the crowd receives items which there are only one of and thus taking them away from the organizers you are going to see even less public events. Why invite more people who did absolutely nothing to help when it cuts into your own rewards... when they could put in the effort themselves. I don't know many scenarios outside the game where someone spent countless hours working, posting a newspaper add, and then giving away their entire earning to a random few who showed up. 

 

It makes you wonder who is truly greedy, since that's the favorite word around uniques. The people who put in effort and want to keep their reward, or the people who only show up once the work is done and want the reward.

 

As far as the op it gets even worse, guaranteed results for every hitter im cool with, so long as, again, it doesnt remove existing drop mechanics. But for people just being prem in local? Imagine the lag. I have a pretty high end computer but the last public slaying it was just locked up with only some 60 people in local. If you add a chance (why only a chance, isnt that kindof unfair) for partial rare bones and tomes you're going to have quite the local list.

 

My sentiments, partially.

As long as the loot isnt watered down, resulting in less pay per participants, cool.

If it promotes alt hording in local, uncool.

I would like to see a redo on the entire system of mechanics. I find the current system to be quite outdated, and after some recent events with included chatlogs, I would say that most of the 'pro' groups have lost their way. Shameful behavior, really.

It's funny what greed does to a person. You never see it in yourself until long after, and usually only if forced to reflection. We're all guilty of it, and uniques seem to bring the worst out.

Of course, this may be intended.

Edited by Makarus
more wood; big fire

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