Soloability and End Game

And, This

And,this. Same problem here.

This is exactly my issue. Currently it's possible to fill the Alpha slot in one evening of play (ok, maybe two) if you run TF's. I would expect soloing to be slower, but come ON! The solo shard drop rate is not just slower, it's so slow it seems designed to make you give up on soloing for shards altogether and just join the TF's. This is a very, very bad design choice in my opinion. The last thing you want to do is frustrate your customers and goad them into doing something they flat do not want to do. In the end all that will accomplish is a whole lot of resentment.

There's a big difference in shard drop rates depending on whether you're fighting Minions, LTs or Bosses.

From here

"Assumed Drop rates" for Shards, based on player testing:
Minion = 1 in 1000
Lieutenant = 1 in 150
Boss = 1 in 50

And I'll throw in that my observed drop rate on PvP kills (rep-worthy kills at level 50, so in either the Arena or RV) is roughly 1 in 30 from a sample of ~2000 kills.

I suspect that the above rate is skewed so much mainly to discourage large-scale "farming" of weaker mobs by AoE-damage specced toons as the primary means of getting shards. "Solo" boss-killing characters have a comparatively good chance to get a drop.

If you run level 50 content which mostly has you either fighting minions or "speeding" to an objective instead of defeating everything in a mission, then you're going to rarely if ever get a shard to drop.

The drop rate for all players is independent - if you kill 200 critters solo then you have the same chance to get a drop as if your team had killed 200 critters. But since generally teams can kill far far more critters in the same amount of time, shards will tend to drop far faster on teams. And fighting in a team also generally means you'll be fighting more bosses.

I've a lot of characters that generally solo, and they've all had shards drop at roughly the above rate. I've gotten at least four level 50s to uncommon boosts purely by soloing.

Lisa, just making sure: you don't solo on -1, do you? Level 49 enemies will not drop shards, period, full stop. You must fight level 50 or higher enemies to even have a chance at a drop.

Also, drop rates without Bosses is abysmal. If you're soloing, you should at least turn on Bosses; that could be another factor in not getting shards.

My diff for the alt i'm trying for is +0/x8 (sometimes drop to x5 if the mobs are rough for it) and i solo sometimes but most of the time teamed with a friend and yes that friend still hasn't got enough to craft the uncommon either.

I've mentioned it before...other players have differing experiences with the RNG but if such a large gap between them exists, it's not the players that needs to adjust.

EDIT: Misspoke...that's supposed to be common not uncommon...that we still don't have enough to craft. That's the first one right?

Well said, Solo'er != Introvert, Teamer != Extrovert. I am socially very much an introvert but I love teaming in CoX and regularly lead teams or TFs.

The reason is that teaming in CoH is something I find to be socially very safe. I don't have to make small talk with my teammates. I don't need to hold philosophical discussions with them on the meaning of life. I just need to point them in the direction of something to bash and go for it. From a social point of view my teammates might as well be AI driven bots and that makes things a lot simpler (I try not to actually think of them that way because that would be kinda mean).

The other nice bit is that teaming in CoX does not require huge amounts of coordination, I have a much harder time playing team games in any situation where I need to use a mic to coordinate. Text communication is slower but it's also serves as a barrier to non-essential communication which in turn encourages the "no small talk" item mentioned above. I can use a mic in teaming (I do in TF2 for example) but I find it a lot more draining and tend not to speak much.

I agree with this, I think they should have given it shards a higher drop rate and increased the number required proportionally (i.e. double the drop chance but double the number needed as well). The RNG is a harsh mistress and doing this would make the bell curve depicting "kills for alpha boost" taller and thinner with fewer people experiencing the outliers.

Then form a self-help SG called the Silent Legion, and solo the Incarnate TFs with 7 others

What sevrer are you on, and when do you usually play? I think I might be able to help you

Q.E.D.

(Played for, and got...)

And it is still my contention that the current drop rates are abysmal. Tying progression through an end game system so thoroughly to random chance just leads to player frustration. No offense at all intended to you, but for every post like yours I've seen about the drop rates, I've seen at least two complaining about not ever getting shards at all. My own personal experience is that shards are an impossibly rare drop and just not worth my time to farm for. Does this defy the overall statistics? Yes it does. But it's real results that myself and others have gotten.

All I'm saying is there has got to be a better way. The current system is far too heavily skewed toward killing mass numbers of mobs quickly. A more objective based approach would be much better IMHO.

I'm not sure how to evaluate how unlucky you are because shards don't drop based on subscription time, but based on kills. If you've racked up fifty thousand kills in a month and a half, I'd say you were terribly unlucky. If you've only generated two thousand kills, you might even be ahead of the game. You could run herostats and start checking on the number of kills you make per session and over a week or month, and see if the drops per kill (which would be fuzzy because shard drop rates vary by rank) are unreasonably low. And you should be sure you're actually killing targets capable of dropping shards, which are basically targets level 50 and higher.

Thinking very conservatively, I'd expect a soloer running at base difficulty claering (or nearly clearing) missions such as newspaper or tip missions to be defeating 30-40 targets, plus some boss-type thing at the end (which could be scaled to an LT). Assuming an average of 35 minion targets only, and one LT on top, you should average one shard every 25 such missions. At a reasonable 15 minutes per mission, that's about 6 hours of play per shard. It takes 12 shard equivalents to craft a common alpha, and you're guaranteed one from Ramiel. Assuming you have enough vanguard merits to craft a Grai, that's 7 shards remaining or 42 hours of play. Assuming you start from zero, that's 11 shards remaining or 66 hours of play.

This is the floor. No one who teams will take this long. No one who plays at higher difficulty will take this long. No one whose missions actually spawn LTs will take this long. Only soloers who never team, never run at higher difficulty, never fight Lts in their missions except maybe at the end, don't have enough merits to craft a Grai, and average 15 minutes per standard mission will take this long on average.

Such a person would have also taken over ten hours to level from 49 to 50. And I should point out that if I make the more reasonable assumption that one in five targets is an LT, the time to level decreases by only a few percent, but the calculated shard rate more than doubles (cutting the earning times down to 17 to 26 hours).

I would be interested to see recorded statistics that imply a reasonable scenario generating a far lower shard drop rate than this.

I think the word you're looking for is "deterministic" not "objective." And any system that rewards kills, deterministic or statistical, will favor those who can kill faster. XP is similarly "skewed" towards mass killing. Ultimately, any system that rewards combat is going to reward the players that a) player more and b) kill faster.

The system is actually skewed towards teaming, not "mass killing." Shard rates jump roughly proportionately to team size due to shard drop mechanics, and task force activities have deterministic guaranteed component rewards for completion. The only people that could possibly be experiencing a low drop rate are soloers that do not run (higher) task forces and kill very slowly. *All* of this game's reward systems reward that subset of players vastly slower than all other players.

That's my sentiments.



And to Arcanaville:

I don't count missions done or mobs killed/hour or something like that (i really shouldn't have to) but my typical play sessions are around 4 hours a day about 3 days a week and so far about 5+ weeks (didn't play much during the holiday week) since i19 getting 3 shard drops (not including the given shard)

So that's about what 60 hours-ish getting 3 shards. By your calculation of 6hours/shard i should have 10.

Maybe i am an outlier, but still is a problem...at least for me...if the majority of upcoming content in the next 6 months or so will require shards and overall time of trying is 1.5 months (which really is what comes to people's mind instead of an exact tally of in-game hours/reward statistic.)

EDIT:
I don't know about reward statistics but having the results i'm getting, the fun factor for the incarnate system and the enthusiasm for its upcoming related content is diminished.

If you're going to discuss whether or not you're getting 'enough' of the rewards, you need to be tracking the source of those rewards. It's no different than saying "I've been playing for months and I'm not getting enough XP." "Well, how many enemies are you defeating?"

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

It's possible objective was the word intended, as in 'mission objective'.

But that has its own issues.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

I disagree completely. Assembling statistics and performing analyses is the job of the Developers, not the players. The fact that some players have the time and inclination to do this themselves does not in any shape or form make it the responsibility of every player that wishes to provide feedback. The player is always free to give his or her personal feedback, especially when it is requested by the Developers, as they have done with the creation of this thread.

It is my opinion that the shard drop rate is far too heavily skewed toward teaming, leading to an "unfun" situation for people that solo or play on smaller teams. This complaint (coming from several people it would seem, based on the various threads I've read on the subject) should then prompt the Devs to do some data mining, which I imagine they have tools for that would make it far easier for them than the player. If that data mining does not support the complaints, so be it.

We can each say "I disagree with you" but ultimately it's not our responsibility to figure out who's right. Neither of us has to prove anything to the other or even the Devs. All we should have to do is give our feedback.

I understand. I said that because that's reality for me. I don't normally take tally because i'm interested in fun than number-crunching when i play.

That's why i gave whatever info that i do know, albeit not precise. But looks like i did forget one...i can only estimate but maybe we do about 2-3 missions every half hour if that helps any.


EDIT:

Sidenote: If i as a player have to rely on statistics to determine if my fun or lack there of is justified...that's an unreasonable expectation of customers to a paid entertainment service.

Yes, soloers do generally progress slower than people that team. But I don't want soloers to progress through the end game system as fast as those that run TF's. I just do not want the disparity in speed to be as large as it is right now. I also feel that "untying" progression from the RNG, even just a little bit, would be a good idea.

There has been talk that later on in the Incarnate system we will need huge numbers of shards as compared to now. There are people that can't get enough shards with the relatively low number needed now. This is a problem. We could potentially be looking at a disparity of not just months but literally years to progress. I can't imagine how anyone would consider that reasonable.

Gosh that is sweet of you...this is the Golden Girl I perceive you as being

Actually, I was on Protecter during a Halloween Costume contest and was thrilled to see you in , err, "person" so to speak. Grin, color me odd, but I enjoy seeing forum regulars in game

I play my Heroes on Victory and Infinity and my Villians on Protector. As far as playtime goes, I am usually, not always but usually, on at very early morning hours--most probably way too early for you...but...thanks for the offer

Lisa.

Grin. I hardly ever team, but I do run at high difficulty. I was poisoning what seemed to me to be a metric ton of bosses during my tip missions on my Spines/Electric scrap this morning...I had it set to a level where if I let my mind wander for a bit, I could easily be killed. I got a lot of drops, but not a single shard. But, reading what you wrote, the gathering of these shards takes time, so I should keep on keeping on.

But, gee, it feels like the Shard drop rate could be increased a touch. Not a whole lot as these things are meant to be special, but, I feel like with all that activity I did this morning, I should have received at least one. I got large inspirations, recipes, SOs, and salvage..no shards.

Lisa.

Feedback is based upon experience.

The more you can quantify that experience, the more useful your feedback is.

It's the difference between "Fix A it's broken!" and "I believe A is broken because it should be doing X and instead it's doing Y." Both are technically "feedback", but only one is useful.

I'm not saying you need to do thousands of "test runs", but you can at least make sure that you're looking in the right place and then keep a rough idea of what you do (How many of what rank of foes have you fought? At what level? How many shards have you found? OK, Zero shards... but after 5 level 45 Minions or ~5000 level 50 Bosses? This is not hard stuff...)

"I believe that oranges are far too rare. We should increase the drop rate of oranges. All you people who say how many oranges you've found must be wrong because I haven't ever seen any of them and I've gone around shaking a lot of trees lately and there are a lot of other people I know who shake trees and they haven't found any oranges either... what do you mean 'are they orange trees'? I shouldn't have to datamine anything..."

[edit: Please note that I'm not saying the drop rate for shards is sufficiently enough when you're soloing. I don't think anyone (certainly, nobody in the last few pages) has suggested this. I might have received plenty of shard drops when soloing, but I still believe the rate of said drops is too low for the casual soloist... especially one who tends to have more fun at lower difficulty levels. However, I'm also able to back up my opinion because I can state that I've been doing the "right things" to get shards to drop, and I have a rough idea of how rare shards are because I've been keeping track of what I've been doing]

I like what what you said Steel_Shaman.

Lisa-Nods her head in total agreement

No, I do not need to do any datamining. I do data analysis for a living. After 8+ hours of it 5 days a week I'm certainly not going to do so in a game. And I certainly do not need to justify my right to give feedback when it's asked for. And attempting to make my perspective look foolish was completely uncalled for.

Thank you Lisa, much appreciated.