Self-controlled drop rate sliders

There are many things about the invention-driven drops system that many people find annoying. Salvage, for example, has long been a convoluted annoyance. At the current moment, temp power recipes seem to top this annoyance list. These are things that some people find are dropping too much, so that their tolerance for inventory management is exceeded and they opt out of the system (e.g. vendoring); this fuels a volatile salvage market. The same items can be worth dirt or a million, which is annoying.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have items that have excessively low drop/transaction rates relative to their class. Some lower-level Pool A rares and Pool C recipes come to mind. These also count as annoying.

All in all, imbalanced fixed drop rates across the board lead to behaviour that adversely affects the market, such as the vendoring, deleting, and hoarding of items.

What about a method for self-regulation, similar to what AE tickets can be used for, but for the whole game? Self-controlled drop rate sliders.

For instance, I have a low tolerance for salvage management, so I'd like to lower my white salvage drop rate; in return, I could slightly elevate my Pool A drop rate. Or perhaps I exemp down to do a low-level task, but would rather get higher-level salvages for particular needs. Or Maybe I don't want inf at all, and would rather give up inf income for increased drop rates for certain classes of items.

Caps could be used to control how high each rate can be stretched. Inf gain, for example, could stay capped at current levels on live. The sliders could then serve as an inf sink at the source. Uncaring farmers would not drive inflation by converting all drop rates into more inf, and conscientious farmers could grind more efficiently for what they're after without adding excess inf to the system.

One good thing about this mechanic is that relative fixed value for each class of items already exists in game in the form of AE ticket costs and merit rolls. There would be no need to design a whole new table to convert rates between different classes of items. Second, the market could become more resistant to destabilizing trends; if salvage supply of a certain class is near depletion, people can choose to adjust their own sliders to compensate. Finally, integrating this into the drops system would be more resistant to hoarding than currency-based solutions like merits and AE tickets.

Thoughts?

Not a bad idea, though it might be easier to just have an option to accept AE style tickets instead of random drops.

I'm not much for marketing and making sets, so I don't know the high end of things like you do. But from what I do know, something of an improvement would be nice.

The problem with AE tickets is they add an extra step, are a hassle in and of themselves, and are susceptible to hoarding. Mutable drop rates are more passive and retain a mathematical uncertainty. Compare, for example, transaction rates of Pool C recipes before and after merits replaced random TF recipes.

My primary objection to this has to do with the effects of minimalizing the more tedious drops in favor of the rarer items. During the AE hayday, things like common and uncommon salvage just weren't worth the trouble for most people, so they become significantly more expensive and rare.

This isn't intrinsically a problem, but realize that we would see those market trends reappear, with relatively rare items like knockback protection IOs plummeting to trash and uncommon salvage becoming the bottleneck. Only now, it would be much more of a frustration as I would not have the AE's option of directly buying uncommon or rare salvage that I needed when I needed it.

If this were to be widely used, I can only see a larger disruption of certain items than has ever been seen before.

You mention an influence sink, and I think the best solution to that is to simply reduce the influence rewards at various stages of the game if that is truely the problem. I don't see the need for level 50 common recipies to be selling to stores for 100k, for example. I think tinkering with influence input in this manner would only mask it as a problem rather than truely solve it.

It's an innovative idea, KiTTY, and one that should bear some more examination and analysis. The only niggling issue is whether or not there's a way to game this in a way that has an adverse effect on the markets.

AE for example is a system where given flexibility by the dev team, players chose to stretch the risk - reward ratio to an extreme. Would a slider like this also be subject to this sort of manipulation?

That's really my only concern. However, I'm usually very in favor of any idea that let's me customize my gaming experience even further.

Set bonuses that have increased drop rate.

I disagree, random is infinitely more enjoyable than the tedium of hoarding merits or burning big piles of tickets recipe rolls.

I farm MA because it is vastly more efficient than anything else you can do- which is a problem.

Another "hey kids, pick your own rewards!" system larded atop those we're already afflicted with would not be an improvement.

As far as drop rates go the only real thing that would help much is to add random drops back to TF/SFs and reduce merit rewards by 20 for each TF that has over 20 merits ( so you'd get X merits PLUS a random drop. Any TF/SF less than or equal to 20 merits will still be merits only.

This will help the pool C drops come down a little bit as well as help the supply at various level ranges.

Also merit prices could be lowered to help increase non shiny item supply in the market.

No he's right. Merits were almost ok because they fixed a problem with TFs being farmed for drops. Tickets are just silly.

I don't like merits either, but at least they addressed an actual gameplay concern. IMHO they did it poorly, but there was a reason for them to exist.

tickets are just ridiculous.


I can run one farm mission at +0/x8 on my ar/dev blaster (who isn't even kitted out yet) cap my tickets for that map in less than 30 minutes, roll bronze recipes and fill up my inventory with tickets to spare.

compare to 'traditional' farming, where clearning a farm map in 30 minutes will net you a meager handful of set IO drops among all the other stuff.

Tradional farming, you'll probably get a couple of generics (figure 400k worth) some common & uncommon salvage (not worth counting), let's be generous and say two good rares (4 million or so). The money is in those IO set recipes, which you're only getting a few of.

In MA I'm "sacrificing" my salvage and generic drops (less than 5 million inf, being generous) for 30 or so IO recipe drops.

You cannot roll that many recipes without getting quite a few good ones, often REALLY good ones.

They keep nibbling around the edges of MA, patching this or that "exploit", but the problem is much more fundamental. The structure of the whole system is much more efficient than playing the "real" game, and efficiency is like a bug light for farmers.


/edit
I forgot the one advantage of 'traditional' farming- purple drops.
As they are actually rare, I think MA farming still comes out ahead over time because every map pays off, guaranteed.

The whole idea behind this proposed mechanic is to factor existing behaviour that adversely affects the market into the system. Overall, it's about acknowledging different people have different goals and allow them to specialize without disrupting the economy.

People who don't want to bother dumping their salvage on the market every few missions are going to delete, vendor, or otherwise ignore salvage. People whose inventories fill with recipes are going to delete or vendor some of them. Sometimes they do so for good reason, as supply far outstrips demand for many items, but sometimes this behaviour impoverishes the market.

Meanwhile, inf continues to be pumped out, skewing the global inf-to-goods ratio.

At the most fundamental level, this proposed mechanic has a twofold function: 1) allowing people to deal with their own pet peeves as they see fit and/or/while they prioritize what they want at any given time; 2) creating an equilibrium between supply and demand.

Here's a hypothetical scenario to illustrate my proposed mechanic, with numbers made up on the spot. Let's say on default rates, per minion defeat:

(fake stats)
Pool A uncommon		2%
Pool A rare			0.5%
Common salvage		5%
Uncommon salvage		3%
Rare salvage			1%
Tier-1 insp				20%
Tier-two insp			15%
inf					100%

Pool A uncommon		2.2%
Pool A rare			1.2%
Common salvage		0.5%*
Common salvage 26-40	0.5%
Uncommon salvage		0.75%
Rare salvage			0.5%
inf					50%

It's an interesting idea. It's going to be very hard to make something that walks the "useful"/"abusable" line [although if there IS a visible line, we're way way ahead of AE] but I'm interested in seeing someone at least try.

As a user interface feature (which also sets up implicit balance points) I'd position it as something that gives you between "half normal" and "150% of normal" (or 200% if you're a crazy craaazy dev) amounts. Maybe with some sort of exponential weighting... Everyone's going to slam Common and Uncommon Salvage to half normal before they do anything else. If I could set C & U salvage to half AND inf to half in return for 150% chance to drop a pool C or purple, I would do that in a second. And I know that's changing 1 in 2000 to 1 in 1333.

I'm going to disagree with this idea for the sake of disagreeing with it.

I don't know why I bother but unless it escaped you I already said that Merits were somewhat useful and had a real purpose (preventing speed-farming of TFs, helping soloers who don't do TFs).

Tickets on the other hand are completely unnecessary.

Oh yeah, that's right. I didn't think about that.