[2021] Anyone else feeling dread and deja vu about the upcoming drop rate "information?"

Originally posted by PhoenixVanguard

What I'm saying is this; it's very telling of developer priorities when they nerf the drop rate in the early stages of the demo, before the full game is even released, with zero hesitation. BUT when it's time to possibly BUFF the drop rate, there's months of nothing followed by a "well, BEFORE we can do that, we have to give you information blah blah blah blah pbbbbbbt." If you can make the game stingier without bullshit preamble, you can also make more generous without bullshit preamble. You should be asking yourself why they won't.

My guess? The same reason other live services don't; engagement and retention are more valuable than customer experience. But they're going to give us some rehashed variation of the idiotic "we want players to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment" argument that's been trotted out since the early days of MMO.

Originally posted by ZeroRequi3m

As someone who spends a lot of time on this sub (because it's interesting) and has played almost every loot based game I can think of (even more obscure ones such as the Van Helsing games and Grimdawn) Outriders loot issues can be easily broken up as follows:

• There is currently no pity system for drops in general (at least thats how it seems). This is why you're getting players ranging from "I get lots of drops" to "I never get any drops" because the system seems to be based ENTIRELY on RNG. Even in Diablo, a game which throws gear at you there is a pity system to ensure players are always getting something and their time is not being "wasted" so to speak.

• The shop needs to rotate stock. Frankly I'm shocked this didn't make it in the main game as it's frankly a standard in loot based games. Have a shop that offers a small random selection of rotating weekly gear. This gives players an opportunity (that is still based on RNG) to pick up the exact piece of gear they're looking for without potentially investing 100's of hours frustratingly grinding for it. Destiny 2'a Xur is a great example of this.

• There needs to be some way to target what gear you're after. Currently the way the loot pool seems to work is that there's 120 (or so?) legendary gear pieces all in ONE loot pool that applies to all areas and expeditions of the game. There is also no dupe protection hence why you have lots of players dropping endless Cannonball set pieces and making no progress whatsoever towards their goal. That's frustrating game design. You could have assigned certain gear set pieces on a weekly rotation throughout the expeditions. This gives players a higher chance to get what they're after while making sure all expeditions get a fair amount of playtime. The Division 2 does a fantastic job of this.

• Finally, and this is the biggest issue. Outriders entire big deal was that it is NOT a "live service" game. That it's complete and has no reason to keep players grinding for hundreds of hours. There's even a quote from Bartosz Kmite from August 2020 where he said "people maybe don't have anymore time to spend 300 hours to basically grind one item" (https://gamingbolt.com/outriders-is-not-live-service-because-story-is-so-important-for-us-says-developer) and yet the way the game is now, seems to go against that entire philosophy and doesn't respect players time. Heck Outriders is actually the only loot based game I think I've ever personally seen that has NO WAY outside of raw 100% RNG drops to acquire gear. There are no quests or challenges for specific things, no target farming, no exchanging, no rotating shop, no real gear crafting, you are entirely 100% at the mercy of luck. And that's just not good design I'm sorry. Frankly it's even worse feeling then Anthem's loot design and that was a mess too but that was developed in just 18 months and in a "vacuum" where you couldn't even mention the name Destiny. It definitely seems like not one single person looked at any of the other looter games and went "hey whats working well here? What will players probably expect in our own looter?".

Overall there really is no reason the loot acquisition should be so stingy and so heavily focused on raw RNG unless Outriders is actually meant to heavily retain player attention after all. Many players just want to be able to acquire specific gear to make some fun builds to mess around with WITHOUT feeling like they're hopelessly beating their heads against the wall and getting nowhere. Random loot in a looter is great, but you still have to provide SOME FORM of progression for the players. Some light at the end of the bad luck tunnel which currently does not exist. And that's a huge design flaw and problem that has to led to all this backlash against the system.

I realize a lot of this unfortunately are things that should have been looked at properly in development, like REALLY looked at (How the shop not rotating got through to release is genuinely baffling), and that realistically it's far too late. Ultimately I think the loot system isn't salvageable this late but if you guys ever make another game like Outriders, or even DLC I sincerely hope you look at this.

I hope this clears things up a bit and provides some insight, there are so many good loot based games that have largely figured all this out to draw ideas and examples from after all.

Edit: Just to add a clarification, the BIG AREA OF ISSUE is "endgame" gear grinding. During the campaign and while leveling drops are not nearly as much of an issue as that's not when you're usually working on actual builds, that happens after. 99.9% of the posts and threads I've seen criticizing the loot system are focused on CT13/14/15 expeditions and especially just the sheer RNG and lack of any way to work towards certain gear pieces.

Edit 2: Just still thinking about it and honestly I cannot stress enough how much of a difference even just having a rotating shop would make in the game. Most players have maxed currency from breaking down/selling duplicate or unnecessary gear but nothing to spend them on, so now getting dupes or non legendary drops is 2x as frustrating. Again it's all about keeping the players feeling like they're always making progress. There needs to be a carrot on a stick in SIGHT at all times, not potentially 100s of hours down the road.

Originally posted by vapoorer

Thank you for posting this. This makes things a bit more clear for me now.

Lately, what seems to be for the past ~7days my CT15 Gold legendary drops feel to be Meh. As in im not getting alot of drops. prior to this stretch when this happened it only lasted for a couple days. This is the longest its been. I remember this exact feeling in the demo when farming the captain. "Had ~150h in the demo and farmed everyday"

Before this.... legendaries dropped at a good enough rate for me. I almost never went without atleast 1 legendary drop per run.

Now this past 7 days i can go 2-4 runs before i see even 1 legendary drop. Then go another 2-4runs before getting another.

Yesterday it started to feel better again with drops for me.

I play alot. Have over 550h in the game. So i notice when things seem to change whether they have or not.

Maybe it is what it is at times and its in my head or im unlucky, But it feels like a switch is flipped "in lack of better words" and for the next couple days or as mentioned above several days i go from getting 30 legendaries in a day down to 5-10.

It just feels a bit inconsistent.

As a player say you get ~30 legendaries each day for 10 days straight. Then all of a sudden you go from that down to 5-10 for the next couple days playing roughly the same amount of time. Then after those couple days it goes back up to ~30 again.

The swing seems to black and white. No middle ground. meaning, i could see if i went from ~30 down to ~20. I can write that off as just bad luck or RNG. But when the swing is from ~30 down to 5-10....it makes you wonder if something is broken with your account or your being throttled or etc etc.

For the most part When iam getting what i preseve to be normal legendary drops it feels great and in a good place.

But when i get these terrible drop rates it makes me not even want to play. More mentally then actually caring about getting legendaries to drop. "I have every legendary weapon and armor on my 2 level 30 classes so far except 1 pair of boots on my techno"

So i play because i enjoy the game and bc it makes me feel good when i get a legendary.

Maybe a solution to this would be a guaranteed legendary to drop every CT15 gold run you do. There for you never go without seeing atleast 1 per run. Just a thought.