I think it’s entirely understandbale to be frustrated with the situation. To be honest, I’m frustrated too. The devs are probably frustrated as well.
If they are going to change or adjust anything though, that will take time. Getting enough data to make sure that it’s not just a few loudmouth outliers (like us ) could easily take a month and then changing it will also take time. If that is happening, then they probably wouldn’t tell us until it was at the point where they were almost ready to push it live.
Given that the anniversary’s coming up fast, there’s going to be other stuff that’s taking dev time too (hopefully). Hell, it may be that it’s being wrapped into that patch. Ofc it may not be, but getting salty isn’t going to achieve anything other than making the environment more hostile towards devs and that’s self-defeating.
There’s been some great ideas and feedback which have come from threads discussing PBDR (look at the thread title if you’re unsure what that is ) and it’s been nice to see that most people are able to maintain a constructive approach even though it’s very frustrating. It’s a pain in the posterior, but it’s about all that we can do. It’s entirely possible that the ideas and options which have been discussed may help the devs to avoid similar situations in the future and it may even help them work out what to do about the PBDR issue. It may not, but what option do we really have?
I don’t know why the devs have bunkered down atm, but it seems very unlikely that a bit of gamer rage will dig them out. I think that Funcom do care about what the players think, because they want us to be playing the game. The fact that player feedback has been involved with changing stuff in the game shows that. But that’s not to say that they will kowtow if we make enough noise - just like the reticle vs tab targeting at launch, we know there’s red lines that FC will not change. It’s nowhere close to how I’d manage the situation personally, but I do have faith that FC wants to make money from SWL, and we’re kinda instrumental in that.
It’s a sucky situation, but the danger of letting the hulk out is that he may not help and then afterwards we’d be standing around in massively stretched out trousers feeling rather sheepish.
First off, congrats on getting a box to drop! Good timing, too. With you and Illesdan getting one after a month and a half of fruitless farming, it shows there’s still hope for the rest of us.
In a way though, it reinforces how bad the RNG system is. I’d honestly prefer finding out the bug theory was correct. Bugs can be fixed, but there’s not really anything that can be done to fix bad luck. Well, except for praying to RNGesus apparently.
I definitely agree that feedback that is just angry ranting is likely to be completely dismissed. But I also think that feedback without any sort of emotional undertone can also be dismissed as not being important enough. Obviously, there’s a huge middle ground, and yeah, if we’re going to get someone official to listen, it will be more likely to happen if we’re not hostile. I guess part of the problem for me is that I’m still not convinced anyone from Funcom is actually going to bother reading this thread and use it to shape changes to the game, so my writing is aimed at fellow players as opposed to the devs.
As far as Funcom actually caring about what players think, it’s hard to reconcile that with locking new content behind RNG. To me, it seems like a bad-faith attempt to increase playtime and not a sincere attempt to increase players’ enjoyment, and the lack of official communication certainly hasn’t helped. That’s just my perspective, though. Has getting a box after all this time created enough elation to make the month of bad luck worthwhile for you?
I know very well were your feelings come from bud, we’ve been venting together in chat about it for quite some time and you know I kinda agree with you about RNG, but you should keep up the good attitude you have ingame. Its all about good karma vs. bad karma
Seriously, if you let this box becoming your only goal ingame you will grow to hate it, and spoil whatever else you still enjoy.
AWOL finally getting his first box sound like very good news to me as if it really was a bug preventing us to get one my faith would have been close to zero.
Later today I will bring you to do some dungys or hardcore OD, smashing things hard helps a lot !
I think it’s more alike the system WoW used doing Legion for Legendary drops
Where if you did eligible content, you had a chance for a Drop, insanely low: 0.(Good luck!)
but everything that could drop it, but didn’t slightly increased the chances every time till it droped and reseted the bad luck stacks on you.
For Secret World the Eligible content would be, (as far as we Know): Regional summons, Lairs, Elite Dungeons chests, Kaidan reward bags.
and Higher their the content the bigger bonus added, but we might be looking at +0,01% to +1,0% ~
at least that is how i see, how the drop rates could be working, just a theory though… ;p
Also, my Alt got another yesterday, from a Glyph Reward bag
First one i’ve gotten one from them, so i guess Weapon bags count too:
Correction:
The box MAY drop from any weapon/glyph/talisman green bag from ANY zone. Egypt has been confirmed (Dr-Levsky post). Kaidan has been confirmed (multiple posts). Other green bags and zones not confirmed (ex. Champion bag drops). Kaidan keys not confirmed.
Drops from dungeon and scenario reward chests have been confirmed (multiple posts). Assuming you’re correct about lairs and regional summons, then they also drop from those reward chests.
The link between difficulty and % chance to drop is not confirmed.
Don’t worry, I haven’t gotten to a Captain Ahab level of obsession about this box yet. I haven’t even really been farming bags much more than I was before the last content update. I just see this as an acceptable hill to die on. There’s plenty of things I would love to change about SWL, but locking content behind RNG is probably the most egregious and one that can be fixed relatively easily. I just want to see Funcom actually listen to feedback and change something. Even if I do get a box to drop, I’m still going to push back against the RNG aspect of it. If they can’t/won’t change the peculiar box drop at this point, so be it, but hopefully it will at least deter them from doing the same thing with future content.
Also, finishing the museum is literally one of two concrete in-game goals I have left. The other is beating NY E10. So there’s also that reason for a bit of obsession. In the mean time, yes, there is still fun to be had with the right people. The community is the saving grace of this game.
@Meliza Thanks for confirming that it can drop from glyph bags. And maybe my problem is that I have too many stacks of the bad luck debuff. Anyone know how I can get that purged?
@sturmhaven I always assumed it was obtainable from any zone. If the bags had different loot tables, they wouldn’t stack, right? I’ve heard other people mention getting a box from blue chests in lairs. I’m not completely sure about regionals, though.
I’m worried they’d look at this thread and see too many people have got multiple boxes to drop already, and then they’d change the RNG in the other direction. This new content was probably supposed to last 6 months at least.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think that glyph and weapon bags stack from all zones, but not talismans (sure abot the talis, not the others though). Just like you can only get neck and waist drops from KM, then i think they throw in heads in SC etc. I thought someone had said they’d got a box in SC before, but I’ve got no source for that. I do know that KM won’t drop agents, so probably won’t give boxes either.
Well, if i get a Box from Filthy Key’s i’ll let you know ^.~
@Nytha no, the stacks of bad luck are a good thing.
No matter how unlucky you are you are bound to get +100% chance eventually, and then it will reset to +0,00%.
If they use this system for it that is… <.<;
They said they did for Caches doing a Stream a looooong time ago. shortly after Re-launch i think…
I agree, on locking content behind a RnG or Gatting is bad game design.
It’s another thing for say the Museum items which have mobs in specific area or kind that drops them by chance and on top isn’t BoP or Unique.
But also the drop rates of these items are much higher then the Box…
Where in this case the final items is not, but due to the amount of Boxes people get and the people that do and complete the Instance. Ouf!
Also People seem to want to Trade X for Y reward and not often sell them for marks.
(unless we talk amounts that Makes Nemains glyphs look like pocket change.)
Indeed The Bags from Different zones don’t stack, sometimes not within the same zone, i think depends in where in zones Main Story progression you get your first Ring, Wrist, Luck, Occult and Head Talisman.
as the Talisman bags in Kingsmouth rewards only Neck and Waist talismans.
Also funny thing is that if the reward bags that don’t stack with it’s type
they are also not on the same global cooldown when used. XD
Good point. I forgot NE bags have different drops, so it’s possible they don’t drop peculiar boxes. I don’t farm there and I will continue not to do so.
@Meliza It would be nice if it worked like that, but I don’t think it does. It’s probably too hard for them to program. I heard a similar thing about caches, but the cynic in me just think that’s a marketing ploy to get people to buy more keys at a time. What specifically in caches would that pertain to?
Maybe in time the museum items will drop to a reasonable price, but I’m not going to waste a large amount of MoF on them just yet.
Because I can’t find it? But I’m certain it was him who said it. In any case I’m not interested enough to run after him for it. You can, though. I am interested enough to write that Kaidan is not the only zone that it drops in. Specifically for this thread, so that wrong information is not spread.
They should not. They should be making those decisions based on a much larger sample size than a handful of people on forums. I would hope they have some internal tool that tells them what the actual drop rates are.
I would also hope that this Peculiar Box mechanic is not meant to last 6 months. I very much dislike this solution to whatever problem they thought the game had. Though I’m not sure they have a means to measure if their Peculiar solution actually makes a difference to their Peculiar problem.
@Aeryl How dare you try to argue against cynical me with facts and logic. Also, thanks for pointing that out. If the system works for caches then they should have put something like that in for the peculiar box, as well. I imagine it would be slightly harder, though, since the box can drop from multiple different sources.
@sturmhaven I’m sure there’s data tables they can look at to see how well the peculiar box is dropping, but I don’t know exactly what information it would have. If it’s just an amount of all the boxes dropped out of all the bags/chests opened from all players combined, it might look okay. If it lists every individual’s drop rate, then it would show that it’s been unfair to some people, but that would also require an in-depth look that they might not care to waste time on.
I was being hyborbolic (sorry AWOL) when I said it’s supposed to last 6 months, but essentially the only reason for the RNG based box drop is to slow down the consumption of the new content. Even if Funcom had a PR department, I’m not sure they could spin it in any other direction. There is indeed a lack of stuff to do/grind once you reach a certain point, but RNG is not an acceptable solution. I think the amount of people saying it’s a bad idea should be means enough to measure that.
RNG is frequently used as a way to keep people playing. I agree that there’s better ways to use it instead of putting content behind it, but plenty of games have low drop rate items which end gamers grind for. It’s worked out particularly poorly as there are a lot of people who have completed the available content, (even if not always at max level,) so the only thing we’ve been after is the box. If it had been introduced early on whilst people were still levelling up, it’d probably have generated a lot fewer complaints.
Ok, clarification time. I meant it in the context of locking content behind RNG, but yeah, I didn’t word it correctly. I’ll award you one point for that. Obviously, if everything in game dropped the first time, there’d be less reason to redo certain content, but if we’re going to get RNG to artificially increase playtime it should be put on the end loot drops where it belongs and not in a place that blocks access to content.
I also agree that it wouldn’t be near as big of a deal if it were implemented from the start. But Funcom has to know by now that anything they add to the game at this point will be looked at from the viewpoint of long-time players for the most part.
Although, for those looking for a sign of optimism, maybe that’s a positive way to spin things. It could be that Funcom honestly thinks large amounts of new players will join the game so the low drop rates will just seem normal over time. Maybe we’re not as close to maintenance mode as some people have suggested.
) could easily take a month and then changing it will also take time. If that is happening, then they probably wouldn’t tell us until it was at the point where they were almost ready to push it live.
) and it’s been nice to see that most people are able to maintain a constructive approach even though it’s very frustrating. It’s a pain in the posterior, but it’s about all that we can do. It’s entirely possible that the ideas and options which have been discussed may help the devs to avoid similar situations in the future and it may even help them work out what to do about the PBDR issue. It may not, but what option do we really have?
