PvE droprates are too low

Greetings,

After playing the game a couple weeks now, and after some discussion with buddies from Kongregate (and comparing notes) I think it's pretty obvious that the droprates for PvE content are too low compared to PvP. If you consider that some people might want to play single-player mode only, grinding PvE doesn't provide a reasonable means to collect rare items. Case in point -- I went through 13 campaign levels today (not exhausted ones) which is about 40 maps / 40 chests worth of loot, and found a grand total of one rare item (everything else was common or uncommon).

Many games try to incentivize PvP or nerf PvE grinding for fear of it being too easy a source for items but the balance here is beyond that. PvE content does not feel playable. Even as a newb who expects to lose 2 of 3 battles, PvP is a much better way to grind items. That's a problem. It's not a problem that's going to be obvious to the people already in the community who enjoy PvP and accept it as a given -- but it's a problem for trying to expand your userbase. As it is, there's only one really viable play option (multiplayer) and so you're eliminating potential players for no good reason!

Just my 2¢. Enjoying the game.

Cheers,

- Sir V

 

In my opinion MP is indeed a better way to get loot than SP; however, it is also important to point out that the comparison between the two varies considerably depending on a player's collection. A good SP farm build for many battles can beat it and and load the next battle in less than a minute (without exaggeration), this compared to a single MP game that can easily take 15-20 minutes to earn one chest.

 

Indeed there are complexities with PvE that are different and thank you for the great (and on point) example.

I would say you can address those issues separately -- like they have in fact done by making campaigns playable once daily before the reward supposedly is nerfed. In my experience though the pre-nerf rewards are paltry ... so much so that it would discourage me from playing at all if I were an "offline" player (i.e. someone who does not ever want to play PvP).

 

Don't forget that while you may have only received one rare (which seems very unlucky from 13 adventures), you also picked up a few hundred in gold from selling duplicates. 100 gold will buy you a rare, 500 an epic and 2500 a legendary (assuming 18 renown). Plus, you get to pick which item you buy so you can wait for the ones you want.

 

Hunting the Loot Fairy and Hidden Bandit alone is a very efficient and (at least imho) satisfying way to enjoy the item hunt in a SP-only way.

Anyways, I don't think the issue was ever brought up in any significant fashion by pretty much anybody? The truth is, the vast majority of people don't stick too long with the the game anyways.

I think the vast majority of players who have no interest in MP and the community aspects of the game, would simply leave shortly after enjoying whatever they like about the campaign, and that'd be completely unrelated to how easy it is to get more items by simply playing more. After all, you don't need every item in the game to beat SP, or the Challenges.

The collector-type of players, on the other hand, probably enjoy the hunt exactly because hitting the 100% mark is such a massive undertaking.

Not only that. Increasing SP rewards would seriously risk alienating MP players into (re)playing SP for the rewards only, rather then enjoying what they like most. Which would hurt the game. A lot.

In short, I don't see any solid evidence leading to the conclusion SP rewards should be improved across the board. Quite the contrary, I see that as a potential risk.

Now, I mean "improving SP rewards across the board" specifically. Things like Challenges and Mauve Manticore issues, for instance, already give SP players more rewards and more content to be enjoyed, on a periodic basis. The Loot Fairy/Hidden Bandit: great way to give SP players better loot without trivializing the item-hunt and ruining the game-economy altogether.

I'm all for these other, more interesting approaches to rewarding SP players.

 

I am aware of the gold -- totaling about 200 for the 13 adventures -- but that does not alter my view that the droprate is ridiculously low. The implication is that I would need 12.5 times as much grinding for a single legendary. 12.5 x 13 = 162.5 x ~300 legendaries = about 50,000 adventures to collect the set. Those numbers do not justify spending time grinding PvE at all ... and I am sure it discourages players from doing so. It certainly makes me disinterested, for one.

 

This is entirely contextual supposition. You can't tell what the playerbase would be like with more players in it because there aren't more players in it. Given the marketing footprint of this game I think the playerbase is actually quite small. Put another way, enough people know about this game that there should be more of them sticking around.

You said that a lot of PvE type players come play the PvE content and then leave. The people who stick around like the status quo of PvP only. Your conclusion is not to change things because you're part of the latter group.

That is missing the forest for the one or two trees. PvE players leaving early is entirely the problem in the first place. It's not a forgone conclusion that they will leave if you have a game with grindable, or otherwise repeatable PvE content -- in fact that's what most games of this genre do. Loot Fairy is once per day. Bandit is a non-starter as you can't know where he is and the rewards do not outweigh the time commitment of replaying every level every day.

There are many ways to improve the offline experience without harming the PvP existence you obviously enjoy. It's shortsighted to think that you're better off not improving the part of the game you in particular care less about; and it's also shortsighted to presume that the existing community is a reasonable representation of what "players out there" want. They have already been filtered because of the available content after all -- like you said, those who want PvE have come and gone. There's no reason they can't come and stay, and it's not something that would harm PvPers. It would only improve the community (and BlueManchu's bottom line).

 

I agree mostly with Bandreus but I do feel SP rewards should be increased. I like playing SP and yet,I only do quests(of which there is a limited amount) and loot fairy. I feel there is just too little incentive to redo the normals missions. The hidden bandit is not really doing anything since we can't know where it is so we have to run what? About 50 adventures to find it once?

I think the bandit should be at the same place for everyone like the fairy and we should be able to redo 2 quests per day.

 

If you'll excuse me for doing so I also want to point out the fallacy of this logic:

It is incorrect to think that people who have no interest in MP also have no interest in the community. Quite the contrary, as evidenced by many other games in this genre. Playstyle and being social in chat / forums / etc are vastly different things that overlap but do not at all coincide systematically.

Completely false. When there is another method for grinding items present in the game (PvP) that vastly outstrips the single-player version, no one is going to want to play single-player anymore. That is human nature. I doubt very much there is a large player base of single-player only players in this community, unless droprates have very recently very drastically changed. There are some players that straddle both, but entirely single-player folks ... I doubt it. That's the crux of my point.

To illustrate further, a good analogy is in games that have free and paying players in a single environment (unsegregated), but where paying players have (large perceived) unfair advantages. Free players may have every ability to compete by spending more time, but simply won't bother trying because it's unfair.

 

For whatever it's worth, for the vast majority of the game's life, PvP rewards were so far below PvE rewards in terms of value/time that we had to increase PvP rewards in order to incentivize multiplayer participation. A lot of folks who wanted to play multiplayer had to spend hours grinding singleplayer in order to get the gold they needed to buy the items they wanted for multiplayer. Buffing the PvP rewards was key for letting multiplayer players earn their loot by playing the game mode they wanted.

 

That was my assumption, entirely on circumstantial evidence. The two modes are not balanced; and this is why.

It also explains why current players in PvP don't see the PvE rewards as too meager; they are used to it. It sounds like that never changed, but rather the PvP rewards did.

I think you should look for other ways to incentivize PvP participation. Consider unique rewards or content maybe?

Another option would be only allowing treasure to drop in PvP games.

 

Getting the complete set is a bit tricky. I've sold hundreds of excess legendaries, and I'm not quite there yet.

A few of us aren't easily discouraged, but we may well be a minority.
BM has never released official info on exactly how drops are calculated, but a significant effort was put into figuring it out in this thread. Much of the hard data is toward the end. It may help give you a more accurate view of the drop rates. The only nerf was to reduce the treasure percentage of the level 6 kobold mines from about 43% to the standard rate. Adding armor to the trog avengers was a simple act of meanness unrelated to loot.
Flax just covered my next point.
Edit:

Sorry, but this is an absolutely horrible idea.

 

That's exactly what happened.

I agree there is untapped potential in SP that could be used to drive better drop rates. The Loot Fairy and Hidden Bandit are great, and could be expanded even more (the Quest Goblin?). More quests with new restrictions could be added. There could be some way to reward taking multiple different parties through the campaign, maybe even a way to track which items a team finds and play it more like an RPG.

The big difference though is that all these SP ideas take work to create, while MP matches are automatically unique.

 

Why is that a horrible idea? In a game where PvE and PvP droprates are fairly equal, or at least closer, it would add incentive to playing PvP.

 

For starters, the Loot Bandit's stash consists entirely of treasure. More importantly, selling treasure is the only means for new players to buy items. Even if it wasn't, items sell for so little that treasure is still the primary means of farming gold. It would be a ridiculously hard nerf to SP.

Edit: I recently bought a 7-day club membership for my new account to get a Wym's Lavastaff from the club slot. During the next week I farmed more than 32k gp, as well as a Brin's Storm Locket, a Mullik's Blisterstaff, a Chartwell's Ring, a Staff Of The Misanthrope, more than a half-dozen excess Unholy Nimbus, and a couple of (pretty worthless) Massive Harms, which I kept for some reason. As you might guess, I was specifically working on improving my Firestorm build.
I do play many more hours per day than most people, but there is no way I could have reaped that much loot in pvp during the same period.

 

I think you're missing the point. I'm talking about treasure only available in PvP in a context where single player droprates are equivalent to PvP droprates in the first place. The incentive to play single players are many. Finding treasure would be an incentive to play PvP. You could still hand out some treasure during tutorial campaigns I guess.

 

Right now PvE rewards are balanced for the playing through and completion of the campaign. New endgame PvE content (randomized/infinite dungeons is a common suggestion) could have better loot, maybe.

 

I agree that the first time through, and the quests, are great. I just find that replaying quests is wasted content. There's close to zero reason to do it. I have received a singular rare in about the last 50 maps I've completed (none exhausted). The rate could definitely be increased.

Endgame content would be wonderful but unless it's arriving soon I think you guys should adjust the existing PvE stuff.

 

The treasure drop rate in pvp is currently double the rate of pve.
I'm not trying to beat down your ideas, bro. The pvp loot buff seems reasonable to me. We were actually at the point where pvp players were complaining about having to farm the campaign to get 50 gp to play a league.
Pvp is slow. Pve can be fast. I don't know what loot rate you were expecting. Item resale still seems a bit low to me, but the new Randimar's setup has dramatically improved access to rare and better items. This has correspondingly increased the demand for gold.
One rare in 50 maps is definitely below average, but I've had those days too.

 

One rare in 50 maps = no reason to play PvE. That's the problem. It doesn't even have to be contextualized. It's not a rate that permits reasonable time investment for PvE grinding. So it's not good for players who want to play single player. Maybe all of the droprates need to be buffed. That's sort of beside the point.

Incidentally you could just remove the 50 gp price to enter a league. There's no reason you have to force PvP players to play PvE either.