NI, is it worth the grind?

[madjsoh]

Before people get butt-hurt about the issues raised in this post note that in no way shape or form is it intended to offend ANYONE. That said no doubt people will want to voice their opinions about these topics so if you want to voice your opinion then do so here but if you want to flame please find another thread.

I’ll start by breaking down this post into 2 sections: Green drops, Legendary drops

Green drops:

Over the past month or so the lack of and therefore inflation in cost of green drops has been the subject of many veteran and fed up NI players. I can understand the balancing of drop rates especially that green drops is an extremely difficult task to get "right". However, at its current state in time many players including myself feel like their hard spent hours grinding away are rewarded "poorly" in this department. Drops of course vary from person to person and as such I intend to start making a log of the drops I get per run to back up and further prove this problem. I am also aware that the developers are working on a new and revised drop system to rival the current one. But for the time being we are stuck with the current one and I think I can safely say that many players believe these drop rates need...."revising"

Legendary Drops:
This next section is once again a difficult one to address like the first, but, this is one that once again needs revising and I am aware that this one may not be possible to fix until the introduction the announced "new drop system”. This problem if you haven't clued it out for yourself is the award system of legendries. I have listened to the discussion of many TS conversations, rage posts on the forums etc. (most of these coming from veteran players) and to be honest they're "pissed off" at the kind of players looting such legendary. This I realise is an extreme generalisation and I'm sorry to the few who truly deserved their legendary drop, but, for the most part many of the people looting them sadly do not deserve them. i have been in ragnarok lobbys where the guy who looted the legendary wasn't the person who has grinded their ass of the longest or contributed their due part to the team but rather the guy sitting up at the back with his shield in the air.....leeching. This for me and many other players who feel like they bring something helpful to the team is a major slap in the face and for some people they've had enough. for example today i was part of a ragnarok lobby with many veteran players. Filling roughly 9 out of the 16 slots the rest who joined were poorly equipped for the challenge that is ragnarok mode. in good spirits we initially begun to help them to help the team. Did they accept the help?...NO, did they then contribute to the team?....NO. that run which i refer to could have definitely beaten Odin 100 times over but, rather than "carrying" these players to the boss we left, many of which did not return to play NI that day (which has been becoming more and more frequent)

i am going to post a few rough stats from the past weeks and i know they may not be 100% correct however they are damn near close to it.

252 rag runs (at 3 runs a day equating to roughly 83 days of ragnarok runs) only 2 legendaries that we know of were dropped to people in our group who I can safely say carried the lobby. i think this says enough.

Is the reward we receive for our hard spent hours of grinding worth it at the moment?  Sure as hell don’t feel like it  and the only thing that has kept me playing through it all is the friendships and conversations that have been formed.

Once again I mean no offence to anyone, and if someone does take offence i invite them to come forward via PM and discuss it with me. I also understand that the devs work extremely hard both on the game and in their own personal lives and to them I might seem ungrateful ,for that to happen is not my intention as personally I believe they have created something truly great in NordInvasion. However it just needs....tweaking and I understand this takes time and "patience  " is key, but, for many players this is too little too late.

[Handef_Snizel]

Many good points raised, but as has been said frequently, drops are near impossible to get right. IF the devs were to implement a new system where the higher number of kills, the greater the chance of drops. This would disadvantage shielders, meaning less shielders, meaning less runs. I do agree 252 rag runs and 2 drops is ridiculous, but they are legendaries (yes I know there may be certain people that loot legendaries every second run) If anything this proves its just bad luck. When others get multiple legendaries over a fortnight, it proves they are not overly rare. Those rag runs which dan leads are just filled with bad luck.

(Besides the green drops are all named after stuff from norse mythology, so they would be rare. Scales off of the dragon called Fafnir wouldnt be so common. Waters of Hverglemir are waters from the spring of the tree of life, wouldn't want them being too common either )

[madjsoh]

Many good points raised, but as has been said frequently, drops are near impossible to get right. IF the devs were to implement a new system where the higher number of kills, the greater the chance of drops. This would disadvantage shielders, meaning less shielders, meaning less runs. I do agree 252 rag runs and 2 drops is ridiculous, but they are legendaries (yes I know there may be certain people that loot legendaries every second run) If anything this proves its just bad luck. When others get multiple legendaries over a fortnight, it proves they are not overly rare. Those rag runs which dan leads are just filled with bad luck.

(Besides the green drops are all named after stuff from norse mythology, so they would be rare. Scales off of the dragon called Fafnir wouldnt be so common. Waters of Hverglemir are waters from the spring of the tree of life, wouldn't want them being too common either )

there is no evidence that the devs new drop system will include kills in determining drop chance, furthermore the point raised about legendaries was not in regards to their drop rates which i believe to be "OK" but, rather in regards to the type of person who gets them. do we really want to play a game which promotes leeching for drops and exp to get a better chance as a drop....HELL NO!

the main reason i have made this thread is to voice the opinions of many of the players in TS who sadly have just given up NI all together because they are sick of seeing their hard earned drops going to undeserving noobs.

[Sudoku_killer]

Take a brake it will do You good, 

[Maroon]

Take a brake it will do You good,

Instead of instantly jumping to an ad hominem post, you could also just try and add something to the discussion. :

I understand the frustration, Josh, but it might be worth considering what you play the mod for. Do you play to have fun with a couple of friends, trying to have a good time in this mod, or do you actively search for legendaries? I understand that a run with half of the team being leechers is annoying, and far more so when one of them gets a drop, but can't you say you've had fun for at least a few of those 252 runs?
Yes, drops could use a revision, and yes, the current system isn't optimal, but I don't think that's all there is to this mod.

[Usain_Bolt]

I have no problem with people who do their best, even if their gear isn't top notch. Those who do nothing and still are rewarded are the real thing.
I can imagine looting system beign based on "more experienced players get better loot" principle, where someone with 39 lvl character and a deployable shield wouldn't get any green loots on ragnarok and had smaller chances of looting legendary. After all isn't 50 k assist xp and some gold enough?
Or one where your chances of looting anything are higher when you're closer to mob killed; that would reward shielders more imo.
And i think assassins should spawn behind anyone who is afk for too long

[Titties]

I have no problem with people who do their best, even if their gear isn't top notch. Those who do nothing and still are rewarded are the real thing.
I can imagine looting system beign based on "more experienced players get better loot" principle, where someone with 39 lvl character and a deployable shield wouldn't get any green loots on ragnarok and had smaller chances of looting legendary. After all isn't 50 k assist xp and some gold enough?
Or one where your chances of looting anything are higher when you're closer to mob killed; that would reward shielders more imo.
And i think assassins should spawn behind anyone who is afk for too long

How would a "more experienced players get better loot" principle even be implemented? How would you define someone who is a more experienced player? Someone who has played the mod for a few years? Or people who can get to Odin no problem? I don't think it's fair to say that someone who is only lvl 39 and brings in a dep shield with not the best tier armour (I'm level 44 on my alt, bring in a dep shield and only have red tunic over mail with my archer, but hey I still mananage to get 30+ kills on rag), shouldn't be entitled to getting green drops. A level 39 player could be doing a hella lot of work to help the team (and yes I know there are many people that leech etc etc but ignore that for the moment), for example being a healing, shuffling etc etc. The problem is you're grouping everyone who is level 39 into one pile and saying "Hey this person isn't level 52 or whatever and doesn't deserve any green drops, let alone a legendary". It's not as clear cut as that.

[Usain_Bolt]

I know it sounds brutal, but team with some non-hero players with marketplace items can kill odin, while team comprised entirely of them can't. Now i know some of you guys have lower than 52 lvl alts with good gear and support items on them, but most who join ragnarok with such characters don't.
And finishing ragnarok with a full server gives you a lot of assist xp - isn't it great enough for character that still needs them?
In other words: do you think that a warden with tome and hurricane bow is equally useful on ragnarok as t4 archer with longbow and deployable shield and they both should be rewarded in the same way?

[Maroon]

In other words: do you think that a warden with tome and hurricane bow is equally useful on ragnarok as t4 archer with longbow and deployable shield and they both should be rewarded in the same way?

As long as they both throw in some effort, then yes, they should be rewarded equally. If the Warden dies at wave 4, for example, and the tier 4 proceeds to woop Nord ass with the Hurricane the Warden dropped, then why shouldn't he? It's not about level, or equipment, imo, but effort, and that is nearly impossible to reward with Warband's systems.

[Usain_Bolt]

The best reward system would be in fact based on effort player put into game, but i don't think it's possible to create such system. If you agree with me that not all players should be rewarded equally we can talk about what would be the best way to reward more those who try harder. If you think everyone should be rewarded in the same way just for joining the server and staying alive then i disagree wholeheartedly.

And all of the sudden we're talking about what is the best principle regarding distribution of goods in society. People were waging wars about it, just saying