Increased Droprates of Alvin/Dodga Quest Parts

[Kuegen]

I'm with Gimp and Xira on this one. The social experiences that go along with this quest are quite important and meaningful to players new and old. Often moreso than the reward of the quest itself.



At the very least, being teamed meant you didn't have to waste 2 minutes waiting for a corpse to go FFA.

And that you might not always get the piece when it drops. Its not as if me and my teammate will always have the pieces that the other needs. We will have to roll. In which case it would be better on my own as I could kill the entire area just as fast on my own.

The socializing argument is odd, but I agree. I've teamed up with people killing mechdogs, but I never made long term AO friends from it. I could team with someone and chat, but we would also chat about how annoying the farm was. It still took almost 30 minutes to farm, thats plenty of time for socializing.

[Gimpynoob]

Grind. Boring. Yet again. Worth it. Etc.

Do a quest intended for a level 30 toon with a level 220 toon and what you get is obviously a boring grind. Do it with an untwinked level 30 toon and it turns into gameplay. Sadly the developers along the years have not bothered with keeping the game interesting but only in reducing the boring grind.

[drainbamage]

Sometimes I wonder about people who avoid socializing in this game.

To each their own While you may not find spending time playing and socializing in MMOs to be fun, some of us do! The more time I'm able to spend enjoying a game the better. I personally find sitting around with a finished toon to be quite boring and even a little depressing, but I can understand there are people who prefer to power through things, fortunately for those players this quest was completely optional and in no way hindering their game experience. A nerf like this means players have less game content to spend time on, and overall less game available to enjoy, and I really can't be happy about that.

Ditch the strawmen, fools. I enjoy "playing and socializing" quite a bit. Farming low drop rate items from grey mobs barely counts as gameplay and you can socialize while doing things that are far more interesting.

If your idea of fun involves mindless make-work for little reward then AO still has plenty of that to go around.

[Lliers]

Being one of those NT's that used to arrive and mass nuke everything for orgmates...

Yes, I agree that it can be a bit annoying for lower level players faithfully killing mobs one by one.

Yes, as a lowbie, I have to agree that I've been there (several times) slowly killing mobs when random high level people who either happened to be passing by or are farming for friends would invite me to team to improve everyone's farming experience -- Even if people were from opposing factions. Doing this particular grind was a play-field leveling painful experience (pardon the puns) united everyone regardless of faction. It was extremely rare to stumble across a jerk who would refuse to team and delete parts he didn't need.

Does the process still go faster if a high level player/NT shows up to do the killing? Yes. Will veteran players who still bear the callouses of farming there still come to help org mates and random people complete this quest. Yes. The only difference is that it will only cost about 15-30 minutes of their time now instead of hours. Will the people who they help still be grateful? Yes. Will noobs never fully appreciate what a grind this was? Yes.

All that being said, at the end of the day, I'm relieved it only takes about 30 minutes to an hour to farm two complete sets of parts for two shoulder pads, whereas for my main it was a process that was completed after 3 months of off-and-on farming.

[Xirayne]

Ditch the strawmen, fools. I enjoy "playing and socializing" quite a bit. Farming low drop rate items from grey mobs barely counts as gameplay and you can socialize while doing things that are far more interesting.

If your idea of fun involves mindless make-work for little reward then AO still has plenty of that to go around.

Then don't, and leave it to the people who do find it fun. As I said, I used to have org raids for this quest, I used to get actual teams and made friends doing this quest. Instead of making it more fun to suit people who don't enjoy spending their game time hunting and exploring they removed the need to put effort into the quest entirely. What they could have done was made the quest items yesdrop! :O so that people could socialize even more, and so that the lazy people could just buy the items. They could have done several things, like have the specific items drop from specific bots, had the items as a reward from some paralell mission chain, anything. But instead they chose to remove it.

And yes, that's one of the reasons I play this game, tons and tons of stuff to do and hours of gameplay that doesn't completely spoil me and leave me bored like in other games.

[Gridpain]

I gotta agree with Gimpy , improved droprates do not help noobs. The low droprate bottleneck put both noobs and vets on the same page

lol what ?

You mean, the newbie that takes 10+ hits to kill a mob and the Vet that can log a toon which AoE the zone are on the same page ?

But yeah, with low droprate, the quest was a good/evil zone : it either show nice people teaming / talking / exchanging drops ... or the worst KS / bad behavior.

[Xirayne]

lol what ?

You mean, the newbie that takes 10+ hits to kill a mob and the Vet that can log a toon which AoE the zone are on the same page ?

But yeah, with low droprate, the quest was a good/evil zone : it either show nice people teaming / talking / exchanging drops ... or the worst KS / bad behavior.

I don't care how noob that noob could be, shouldn't take 10+ hits for a level 30+ toon to kill a level 4 bot. Especially if they are in a team (with vets too?).

And yeah, I can understand KSing and mean people are bad, but it is not an excuse to turn a MMO into a singleplayer game experience.

[drainbamage]

Then don't, and leave it to the people who do find it fun.

No. It's been changed, deal with it.

As I said, I used to have org raids for this quest, I used to get actual teams and made friends doing this quest. Instead of making it more fun to suit people who don't enjoy spending their game time hunting and exploring they removed the need to put effort into the quest entirely.

There is no effort involved in farming. A trained ape could do it. And I wouldn't call a trip to Rome's junkyard "exploration".

What they could have done was made the quest items yesdrop! :O so that people could socialize even more, and so that the lazy people could just buy the items.

Letting people buy their way through quests is terrible.

They could have done several things, like have the specific items drop from specific bots, had the items as a reward from some paralell mission chain, anything.

See, those ideas might actually make it somewhat interesting, and I would be happy if FC eventually redid the entire chain into something along those lines. However, in the short term, a lazy fix is preferable to no fix.

[Xirayne]

However, in the short term, a lazy fix is preferable to no fix.

Not in my opinion.

This is exactly the reason why we have ended up with AS pistols, triples, neleb rods, the useless upgrades for RK weapons, the new battlestation ranges and map, people who only log to do dailies and then log off, people with well over 10k tokens, no teams for LE missions, etc. If you're going to fix something that isn't completely and gamebreakingly broken, you need to do it right and be thinking about the long term.

Once the wheel has gone this way, it doesn't really go back. Any further developments to this quest that requires more than 10-20 minutes of mindlessly killing grey mobs will be revieved as a PITA, epic, end of the world nerf.

[Kuegen]

Good post.

It's pointless here to argue whether farming is fun or not. I believe that it isn't. Socializing is fun, and it may occur when farming, but I don't think the farming is fun. Nonetheless, some people disagree.

I feel like with AS pistols, and all this imbalance, is really the players fault. Everyone cries that they want something, and when they get it, they complain that it ruined the game. ORLY? let the devs make the game stop butting in >.> /rant off

There are other ways they could have changed the quest, but lowering droprates was the easiest. The general consensus was that it takes too long to farm. Lowered droprates fixed that. An equally long quest would have worked, but would be harder to implement. Also, quests break social interaction tbh.

You got a bunch of people who are happy with the change, and a few feeling nostalgic. I still view it as a good change.

[Arriviste]

Take this from the perspective of a slow-leveling, patient, and mostly-independent player who does still does RK missions at 180 for shop food and the helluvit: This is a Good Thing.

The entire time I sought these parts on my main, I never, ever once encountered another player. An orgmate (when I was Omni) NT helped me with the last couple of parts for over an hour of mindless, effortless wipes of all lifeforms in the area. There are so many other things a team can enjoy more at those levels like hunting mobs in the wild and exploring, visiting other encounters, or tackling dynas.

[drainbamage]

Not in my opinion.

This is exactly the reason why we have ended up with AS pistols, triples, neleb rods, the useless upgrades for RK weapons, the new battlestation ranges and map, people who only log to do dailies and then log off, people with well over 10k tokens, no teams for LE missions, etc. If you're going to fix something that isn't completely and gamebreakingly broken, you need to do it right and be thinking about the long term.

Once the wheel has gone this way, it doesn't really go back. Any further developments to this quest that requires more than 10-20 minutes of mindlessly killing grey mobs will be revieved as a PITA, epic, end of the world nerf.

The things you list involve lazy fixes that resulted in serious problems.
All this change does is make the first step of the pads quest quicker.
A new, amazing quest chain for them would be nice, but increasing the drop rate makes them less annoying to get and has zero impact on the rest of the game.

[Xirayne]

The things you list involve lazy fixes that resulted in serious problems.
All this change does is make the first step of the pads quest quicker.
A new, amazing quest chain for them would be nice, but increasing the drop rate makes them less annoying to get and has zero impact on the rest of the game.

I think that changing content, no matter how insignificant it may seem, so that it encourages solo play over team play has a fairly significant impact in a MMO. As you said though, it's perfectly fine for the short term. The current playerbase does not have newer players or low level teams to do this content with. The 10-20 minutes of solo farming does not motivate or leave room for people to find/make teams to do this quest. However, there will be a time(hopefully) where it will no longer be the "short term" and I hope they do address all these things they've done in the past few months/years entirely for these short-sighted benefits.


The problem with that though, is that when it does come time to change content to a more balanced point, it is met with heavy resistance by the current population who has come to be accustomed to the casual, solo-play elements, like what we saw with the s10 nerf and SL quest nerf. This is not as significant as those examples, but it will eventually anger people if it redesgined to be more challenging again. I only wish FC would save themselves the grief and do it right the first time.

[drainbamage]

I think that changing content, no matter how insignificant it may seem, so that it encourages solo play over team play has a fairly significant impact in a MMO. As you said though, it's perfectly fine for the short term. The current playerbase does not have newer players or low level teams to do this content with. The 10-20 minutes of solo farming does not motivate or leave room for people to find/make teams to do this quest. However, there will be a time(hopefully) where it will no longer be the "short term" and I hope they do address all these things they've done in the past few months/years entirely for these short-sighted benefits.

Nothing about this quest encouraged team play. On average you could hope to break even on parts.

The problem with that though, is that when it does come time to change content to a more balanced point, it is met with heavy resistance by the current population who has come to be accustomed to the casual, solo-play elements, like what we saw with the s10 nerf and SL quest nerf. This is not as significant as those examples, but it will eventually anger people if it redesgined to be more challenging again. I only wish FC would save themselves the grief and do it right the first time.

"more challenging again" implies it was challenging in the first place.

[Xirayne]

Nothing about this quest encouraged team play. On average you could hope to break even on parts.

"more challenging again" implies it was challenging in the first place.

Team play was encouraged because more people hunting meant a faster and more interesting completion of the quest. Of course there often was a point where everyone needed 1 of the same item but it was better in the long run and made the quest much more bearable. When you find something that will take you seemingly too long to do on your own, bring friends or find other people doing the same thing to make it easier. In the current state, if you tried to team up now it would take maybe 10 mins, barely enough time to even get to know someone or feel the encounter was worth while.

I find that needing to invest a lot of time and effort into something to be a challenge. Not all challenges should be about needing to hit 5 buttons a second. I feel there should be more challenges where the completion and reward is about the willingness of the player to play and cooperate, not exclusively on the players ability to perform.

[drainbamage]

Team play was encouraged because more people hunting meant a faster and more interesting completion of the quest. Of course there often was a point where everyone needed 1 of the same item but it was better in the long run and made the quest much more bearable. When you find something that will take you seemingly too long to do on your own, bring friends or find other people doing the same thing to make it easier. In the current state, if you tried to team up now it would take maybe 10 mins, barely enough time to even get to know someone or feel the encounter was worth while.

No, teamplay was never encouraged, unless helping someone else get the parts is important to you (and it might be, but that's beside the point). Like I said, on average, you'll break even. The only exception is if the other person is either much faster at killing, or doesn't need the parts and is just helping you do it faster; in other words, if they're carrying you.

I find that needing to invest a lot of time and effort into something to be a challenge. Not all challenges should be about needing to hit 5 buttons a second. I feel there should be more challenges where the completion and reward is about the willingness of the player to play and cooperate, not exclusively on the players ability to perform.

There is no effort invested, just time. And frankly I think there should be LESS rewards for simply sinking time into AO, and more for being skilled or smart.

Farming/grinding is the lowest form of gameplay, on the same level as a rat in a cage pulling a lever to get food pellets. The less of it the better, no exceptions.

[Kuegen]

Team play was encouraged because more people hunting meant a faster and more interesting completion of the quest. Of course there often was a point where everyone needed 1 of the same item but it was better in the long run and made the quest much more bearable. When you find something that will take you seemingly too long to do on your own, bring friends or find other people doing the same thing to make it easier. In the current state, if you tried to team up now it would take maybe 10 mins, barely enough time to even get to know someone or feel the encounter was worth while.

I find that needing to invest a lot of time and effort into something to be a challenge. Not all challenges should be about needing to hit 5 buttons a second. I feel there should be more challenges where the completion and reward is about the willingness of the player to play and cooperate, not exclusively on the players ability to perform.

Well actually... You need 3 parts for a quest. You are in a team of 3. Now you need 9 parts. If you are a higher level, or have much more damage than your teammates, you're actually slowing yourself down. You could kill 3 monsters on your own much faster than 9 with a little boost.

Funny thing is I mentioned to org that I was checking out the new droprates, and someone came to team me, without my request. Has it really killed socializing then?

Oh but yes, I think there is a point to be made in time as difficulty. It might also just be pointless arguing difficulty, as we could objectively view this game (or any game really) as pushing buttons.

[Xirayne]

Well actually... You need 3 parts for a quest. You are in a team of 3. Now you need 9 parts. If you are a higher level, or have much more damage than your teammates, you're actually slowing yourself down. You could kill 3 monsters on your own much faster than 9 with a little boost.

Funny thing is I mentioned to org that I was checking out the new droprates, and someone came to team me, without my request. Has it really killed socializing then?

Oh but yes, I think there is a point to be made in time as difficulty. It might also just be pointless arguing difficulty, as we could objectively view this game (or any game really) as pushing buttons.

I agree And that's one of the main reasons the teamability for the quest died off as the population grew top heavy/twink heavy due to other design choices having an impact.

As for the socializing, no of course it doesn't kill it completely. But as I said in my previous post, ~10-15 mins isn't much in terms of forming teams and meeting new friends.

As for effort, I definitely don't feel like arguing about it. One could need to be balancing a plate on their nose while jumping over green porcupines to get the pads and it still boils down to how long you need to do it.

[Kuegen]

One could need to be balancing a plate on their nose while jumping over green porcupines to get the pads and it still boils down to how long you need to do it.

QFT ^^

maybe if the porcupines were dark red it wouldnt be so easy ;o

[Notcrattey]

I've done that quest like, countless times... and I've -never- teamed with anyone in that part of the quest, unless it was an NT in my org Oo

It's not as if this is a high traffic quest, it hasn't been for a long while.