Let's discuss the current state of chests and drop rates

tumbleweed-crickets-chirping

Never gets old

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@Sibelios Spot on!

I also purchased the premium seasonal pass. I just did 6 loot tickets for Difficulty 5 season dungeon. 1 Diamond, 1 Ruby, 2 Gold, 2 Iron… Not a single piece of equipment! Some of the contents were as bad as a skirmish wood chest.

This thread was specifically requested by @Kafka over a month ago. No engagement has happened here whatsoever. I was point blank told this:

Nothing has happened.

It’s put up or shut up time quite frankly. Maybe it’s not @Kafka’s fault. Maybe there is so much the CX team wants to share but are hamstrung by the producer or the developer or @Sirrian specifically. Whatever the reason, this has been the way things have been since the beginning of Early Access. Promise better interaction, fail to follow through.

We have repeatedly asked questions about changes that appear to not actually have occurred (“increase in relics!”), about changes that have not been communicated (Don’t remember seeing the 200% increase in food and ore from dungeon chests anywhere), and about the general lack of value in Seasons. These are legitimate questions backed up by numerous player observations and reports. Nothing has been offered in response. Nothing. Nothing.

I’ve been a passionate advocate for this game since early on. I’ve done my best to engage players in the game and here to provide feedback and information to help cultivate a community to grow this game. But at some point you have to ask yourself, what is the point of the effort if no effort is returned. I don’t expect anything here anymore. Just absolutely minimal effort here by the developer to create a community of engagement and feedback.

Onto Update 1.2. Better make it count.

EDIT: P.S. No Dev-splanations needed. No explanation is sufficient. They have failed on several fronts (the number of times this has been documented is easily confirmed through this very forum) and at this point there are no more excuses. They are at risk of losing any hold they have remaining on players’ interests.

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I just opened a lvl 100 Ruby chest from 1.1 hard mode dungeon. I received:

0 Gold (because it’s maxed), 561 Food (which wasn’t maxed because my Kingdom manages the food deal manually due to a lack of available controls), 1 Legendary Rune (close to 100 of these), and 8 Superior shards (which i have nearly 8k of).

The second best chest in the game. And this is normal.

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Bouncing off your post, as this is supposed to be a “discussion” thread and you bring up some solid points,

Tues/Wed this week is 8 weeks since 1.1 launched. 1.2 could land as soon as this coming week.

But, more to your point,

I’d bet a whole lot of currently worthless gold pieces at this point that the CX team is being told not to discuss the recent chest changes or the pending changes that may be very close to production deployment.

Why? Because while there will definitely be positive changes in the update, there will be almost assuredly some changes that will be viewed quite negatively by a significant portion of the existing playerbase. Perhaps potential perceived negatives vastly outweigh any perceived positives.

IMO, Guilds are going to be pushed hard in 1.2. VERY HARD. I would be very surprised if the high-end economy was not converted to be guild-oriented and top-tier guild participation heavily encouraged, if not implicitly mandated, going forward.

The chest changes are likely the devs pre-balancing drop rates for resource drops in a 1.2 world. Expect massive guild-based resource sinks in a post-Bazaar world to be the new norm.

Season Passes don’t provide value, at least in the same way the buying Event tiers do. They unlock additional purchasing opportunities for players. Gold passes enable investments to obtain Legendary things, Platinum passes enable investments to obtain Mythic things (ever notice that the Gold and Platinum passes are the color of their respective max purchasable rarities?). Didn’t buy any pass? Epic is max, period. Trying to obtain gear rarity levels above and beyond the player’s purchased pass level is a futile endeavor that is all-but-guaranteed to fail by design.

I think that item drops were intentionally decreased with the chest adjustments because we are going to get the color-changing/attribute-changing transmuter follower, likely as the showcase feature of Season 1.2. That said… the idea of potentially time-limited/restricted followers is rather unsettling, but quite possible. Care to buy Platinum Passes for future Seasons to max out the potential of these restricted high-value followers?

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This is not a specific issue. It’s a perpetual issue. And what does it matter? It’s a constant choice that clearly is a failing one. We are not children. There are always changes that are both good and bad. But they continually fail to announce the negative ones even when updates materialize. That’s not standard practice. That’s lying through omission.

No one “expects” anything because of massive communication failures around potential changes. Plenty of games give insight to changes that are “upcoming”. If you are changing something now, particularly if it’s a “nerf” due to an upcoming change, then say what the balancing change is. Stop pretending this not disclosing changes is some sort of normal practice. What else are they changing in the background and not disclosing to players?

People who bought the Gold pass likely won’t complete even half of the Legendary item goals. People who bought the Platinum Pass won’t complete hardly any if even one of the Mythic item goals. Plenty of non-pass buyers completed at least one Legendary goal by getting lucky with an Anthrite Shield pull. Several platinum pass purchasers still don’t have an Anthrite Shield to show for it. This randomness is tiresome. So by your definition the design is a failure. Stop pretending as if this was well planned effort with specific incentives that match the value put in.

Prediction Predictions. Why not just inform players as to that as opposed to the constant silence. This was 5 days ago:

If this really is a component of Update 1.2, why not just simply state that something generally is coming. Again, failure. If it does actually materialize in 1.2, what did they accomplish by not confirming anything at this point? Nothing.

Once again, we don’t need Dev-splanations or Dev-predictions. We need clear communications from the developer via the CX team about all changes that occur so that players understand how it impacts their gaming experience. That’s being professional. Constantly failing this is being unprofessional and borderline deceitful.

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That’s a fair statement to present. I’m now more or less finished with the Season, as there’s nothing left that is obtainable for me to realistically reach. Everything that’s left for me on the Goal board is either ascending things to Legendary or Mythic.

“Final” completion stats for me:

As I have said previously, I do believe that the Goal board is designed around some future state of the game where Glyphs/Relics are more obtainable than they are now (perhaps 1.2?). It is frustrating to some degree to leave tasks uncompleted simply because they are impossible to achieve.

In any lootbox/gacha system where there is no maximum pity mechanic, there is always the possibility that the player will walk away empty-handed. Gems of War does not have a pity mechanic on Mythic troop pulls and relies on the Soulforge as a backup pity-like system. I think that PQ3 will probably follow a similar mechanic with no direct pity system in place during the Season, with one of the roles of the Archive as a second chance and/or pity-like system for things that were unable to be obtained during the Season’s scheduled run.

I didn’t say that the system design was failure.

I am walking away from this Season with three Legendary minions. One of them (the Gravel Worm) was a very lucky cache drop, but I crafted and raised the other two from scratch using the resources made available to me with my Gold Pass and some minion Glyphs that were rotting in my inventory. I have only a passing interest in the belt and perhaps the crossbow, but not enough interest to warrant significantly investing in either of them at this time, keeping a copy of each in inventory for future possible consideration. I have an interest in Tangled Skulls, but it is simply too weak of a debuff after considerable testing in Elite Mode to warrant the investment to Legendary or Mythic.

As I did not buy the Platinum Pass, I have no expectations for any of these minions to reach Mythic ascensions during this Season. Ultimate Cache drop rates for Mythic relics also say that’s not going to happen as I do not have access to the weekly Mythic relic purchase in the Rewards shop.

That said, I will say that there are insufficient resources available with the Season Rewards system to achieve all of the ascension Goals currently, ignoring Glyphs entirely. Even with a Platinum Pass and somehow constantly clearing Difficulty X Season Dungeons and rolling favorable RNG within the Ultimate Cache, it is currently not realistically possible to obtain enough season currency to pull enough Legendary and Mythic relics to complete all of the ascension Goals before the Season expires.

The system needs some tweaking, and I’m sure the devs are collecting data to do just that. But it’s not a design failure, as you claim it is. While needing some fine tuning, the system is more or less performing the way the devs designed it to work. I strongly doubt the devs consider the Season system to be a failure as currently implemented. Granted, there are a lot of resource traps and pitfalls in the system to waste a player’s scarce season currency to hinder progress, but that’s likely by design as well to incentivize additional season currency purchases in the Season Rewards shop that refresh weekly.

Given the likely very significant impact of the upcoming Guild rework, possibly landing this coming week, it would be appreciated if the devs gave some sort of preview of the changes that will be coming so that guilds can prepare for these changes and not be completely blindsided by them.

I bought the Platinum Pass - I wish Platinum pass = Mythic anything - I have not had lucky drops
Have done all 9 Dungeon runs on most days and highest drop was Epic Waistguard (only Epic drop I have gotten so far)
So my take away is - extra daily dungeon battles (so extra content/work) for very little reward
Be better if it had an option for spending two tokens for x2 rewards or three tokens for x3 rewards
Overall value of the pass for me = 3/10 (because was easily able to get all skins, spells, minions) - would not purchase again
Most disappointing thing was the lack of inclusion of the shield - my suggestion is provide passes a significant boost IF you don’t have one in your inventory (So you could salvage it if you wanted to risk trying for a different color/attributes)
Or just provide a secondary loot table for Caches for passes (like for battle passes) so you get more/better stuff with passes
Getting a Rare items or Superior shards is pretty underwhelming if you have a season pass given the sheer number of dungeon chests you have opened with disappointingly low rarity items

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Pass level has zero influence on the quality on Season chest drops. A player with the Free Pass gets the same chest drop rates at all chest rarity types as a player with a Platinum Pass.

That’s how the system is designed. Season Pass holders get access to additional quantities of Season currencies than non-pass holders in exchange for extra effort. How a player spends that currency makes all the difference in the world regarding what rewards are obtained in a given Season.

And there’s the problem right there.

You bought ALL the skins. That’s 5 * 400 Season Currency = 2000 total Season Currency spent.

Instead, you could have invested in Season relics in the Rewards shop.

Assuming you could supply the 6 needed Glyphs for both Legendary and Mythic ascensions, a Mythic of Choice (outside of the featured Legendary thing) costs:

  • 150 Gems for the Firecap Relic (0 Gems if you brute force Eveline until she rolls one, which can take multiple days to happen) for Rare.

  • 75 Anthrite * 2 Dire Tusk Relics (at 1 per week), for a total of 150 Anthrite needed for Epic.

  • 150 Anthrite * 3 Red Gear Relics (at 1 per week) = 450 additional Anthrite needed (+2 Glyphs) for Legendary. [600 Anthrite Total]

  • 350 Anthrite * 4 Ruby Chalice Relics (at 1 per week) = 1400 additional Anthrite needed (+4 Glyphs) for Mythic. [2000 Anthrite Total]

In the end, you bought 5 skins for the 2000 Anthrite instead of the parts (outside of Glyphs) for a Mythic thing from the Season.

As it takes 4 weeks to obtain all of the relics needed for Mythic, a player could obtain the parts for 3 Legendary things (assuming the shop resets for a partial 9th week, less needed Glyphs) or 2 Mythic things (again minus Glyphs) in a 8 week Season, presuming that can farm and/or buy sufficient Anthrite to buy relics from the Rewards shop by weekly reset to avoid missing a needed Mythic relic. No touching any Cache is needed at all to achieve this.

Of course, investing that much Season currency into relics places a significant hamper on the player’s ability to chase the Season featured Legendary thing. That’s a decision each player has to make on their own. The system, as currently designed, is not favorable towards players chasing everything in a given Season.

IMO, the season featured Legendary thing is bait and a trap for players to fall into. Unless you are really going to use the featured Legendary thing seriously on your main character, don’t go chasing it. You’ll get much better results picking and choosing specific Season things to pursue and focusing strictly on those things only. After obtaining and ascending the specific things you want from a Season, then and only then go after the Season featured Legendary thing or skins with any leftover Season currency you have at that point.

The way @Lyrian talks about the Season Pass is as if all players had all available information and it was their fault if they invested in the Gold Pass or the Premium Pass and didn’t get what they wanted. Instead, very little information was actually available and it turns out that there was actually information that was hidden from us and also changed during the Pass itself.

@Lyrian, rather than using 20/20 hindsight to tut-tut anyone’s unrealistic expectations why don’t you turn that analysis on to the bait-and-switch tactics of the developer that you so regularly talk about as if they are just doing their job and players are just stupidly falling victim to clear pitfalls that anyone with half a brain would be aware of.

For instance here’s a great bait-and-switch, one amongst many:

So how to evaluate investing in Seasons Gear if said gear inexplicably doesn’t have the same basis for stat progression as other gear.

Same thing with chests: Seasons chests clearly gave different contents (much less gear, a lot more food/ore) from normal dungeon chests, and this was even before the Shards change. How does one evaluate that value if it’s another bait-and-switch.

What about putting out a long list of goals with potential rewards in which there is obviously now no clear path to even reach? Shouldn’t they have been explicit about what a Pass holder can reasonably expect to obtain? Or is silence the acceptable approach and players just have to stupidly decide what to do, all consequences then be on them.

This isn’t about players making the right and wrong decisions about what to invest their limited resources on. This is about a constant lack of information upon which to actually make decisions and leaving players worse off and frustrated as a result.

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I did prioritize the relics every week - (have used 2 Dire Tusks and are yet to buy this weeks)
AND
have been running Eveline a lot over the past few weeks

image

So now I have the relics, but pretty sure I have not got a single glyph during the entire season period, so with only half the ingredients, no higher rarity items for me at this stage
(Independent of that, is any of the new gear worth evolving??)

And sure, getting the skins and relics is why I have not been able to buy many seasonal caches BUT not what has stopped me getting higher than Epic gear (and only 1 Epic gear piece from all the chests opened so far seems really low)

Yes, I realize that dungeon chests are not more likely to have better rewards based on the passes, HOWEVER I have opened literally twice as many as “normal” given the extra tokens provided by the pass, and have one (1) Epic piece of gear to show for it (Huge pile of salvaged minions and spells), it feels very underwhelming

My expectation when I bought the pass was that dungeon chest drops would provide significantly more gear (and thus some of higher rarity) than they did
1 Epic piece of gear in so many chests seems low

Given the changes to chests during the season, not sure if I would have changed my purchase but I might have had different expectations

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Over 90 diamond chests lv 100 and a few worthless epics, no legendary and about relics and glypth I won’t even talk, really tiring and frustrating.Daily routine over 2000 xp points ( it’s a lot of gameplay, I was stupid and didn’t use the old way of scoring xp) and nothing to be happy about.

Without buying diamonds the average player needs two weeks to buy a glypth.

I’m just waiting for a new patch and if nothing gets better we’ll have to say goodbye to each other.

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Well, that changes things then. Thanks for providing the screenshot.

The problem isn’t chest drops (or changes mid-season to them), it’s the lack of Glyphs that are hindering the lack of rewards/value from the Platinum Pass for you.

And as Seasons do not drop Glyphs to enable use of the relics that you purchased, there is likely some sort of system that yet to be implemented that is meant to supply them. That system may very well be ~36 hours away from being implemented. If so, then at least you will be able to backfill your Platinum Pass season rewards. If not, and the game continues to insist on $30 weekend flash offers for a single Glyph, then the situation makes it rather difficult to recommend purchasing Season Passes going forward.

Nothing that screams “must-have”. The theme of the set tends to lean towards high-risk, high-reward for most of the pieces. Generating Big V (or better) gems in large quantities reliably is difficult and unreliable for most classes at this point in the game. The leggings (waistguard) might have a niche use as a source of Reflect, but is reliant on Purple matches which at this time is mostly restricted to Assassins (next Hero class maybe?). Shield basically allows the player to mostly ignore the +Block Citadel perk and reinvest points elsewhere.

Regardless, Mythic anything is highly useful for the raw stats and attributes on the piece. Currently, high-rarity raw stats is the greatest source of power and survivability for a player.

I think the issue is: higher level items are generally better (due to raw stats) and even though I opened a very large number of dungeon chests I have now a total of two (2) Epic pieces of gear from chests (Just got a second one - Green Carriers)
My expectation, based on gameplay, at the time the season pass was introduced was not aligned with the actual likely outcome. There are several other issues, but the key one for me causing dissatisfaction is the difference between what I expected to be likely (allowing for variance) and what actually occurred (allowing for variance).

Yes, the glyph thing is a separate (and significant) issue, which is further compounded by lack of decent returns from salvaging items which is WAY worse at higher levels when you have invested a large amount of rare resources and get none of the back - making gear upgrading basically a one way street (this reduces options for experimentation with new gear setups and new classes/gear)
Perhaps it would have been a better design to upgrade your gear slots (not hero linked) and have the gear up-level/up-grade sync to your hero (once your hero hits L50)

What has been your experience with the Season Caches? I’ve had a very weird experience. I’ve probably used almost all my season currency to get 25 ultimate caches. Out of these, I’ve received:

  • a legendary weapon (0.25% probability)
  • a legendary minion (0.5% probability)
  • a legendary armor (1.25%)
  • two ruby chalices (2% probability)
  • at least two rare minions (7.5% probability)
  • red gears (18% probability)
  • and lots of shards (20% probability) …

but I have not received a Shield of Anthrite (5%). Now, I’m DEFINITELY not gonna complain about getting those legendary items, haha. However, what are odds of getting all three of those legendary items (0.5%, 1.25%, and 2% probabilities) in 25 draws compared to getting one Shield of Anthrite (5% probability) after 25 draws? I’m gonna guess that I’m FARRRR more likely to get 1 anthrite shield after 25 draws compared to getting 3 legendary items after 25 draws. And yet I can’t seem to get the one item that cannot be acquired by any other means. I wish I could magically get another 5000 anthrite gems just so I can test the statistics of how this game is picking items, haha.

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FYI, for everyone, no update today (or this week) per Kafka over on the GoW forums.

Thanks
Appreciate that the information can be shared

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The legendary Gravel Worm that I posted above came from an Ultimate Cache (also pulled an Epic Dark Hound as well). Pulled the shield in something like the 4th or 5th pull from the Ultimate Cache.

RNG is very, very streaky on both ends of the spectrum. Although in the very long run, everything averages out to the the expected posted odds. Same observation also applies to mark farming in Events. It’s heaven when RNG gets “stuck” and a Cache 3/4 player obtains 4+ Diamond Mark drops in that day. On the other hand, RNG can get “stuck” in the other direction and a player can go 1 (or even 0) for 26 or 36 for Diamond Marks on that day.

Thanks. I’ll have to create a GoW forum account so I too can get PQ3 news and information

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Yeah, statistics has always boggled my brain even though I love math. Statistics is like the perfect storm of logic, abstractness, and concepts… if that even makes sense. I’ve always been bad at it, so please correct me if I’m wrong with the following calculation:

Assume these probabilities:

  • Open 25 seasonal Ultimate Caches
  • Legendary weapon (0.25% probability)
  • Legendary minion (0.5% probability)
  • Legendary armor (1.25% probability)
  • Shield of Anthrite (5% probability)
  1. [Scenario 1] Probability of getting at least 1 Shield of Anthrite: [1 - (1-.05)^25] = 0.723
  2. [Scenario 2] Probability of getting 1 each of legendary weapon, minion, and armor, but NOT getting a shield of Anthrite: [25 x 24 x 23 x 0.0025 x 0.005 x 0.0125 x (.93^22)] = 0.000437

This would mean that the odds of [getting Scenario 1 vs Scenario 2] are [0.723 / 0.000437], which is something like [1650 to 1]

Is my math correct here?