I feel like you are trolling me at this point by the way. Apparently I’m both an intimidating hardcore player that is not interested in nuanced takes or other voices but I’m also the one that should lead player engagement because that’s “nicer”?
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Tone in text is hard, I was not in any way having a go at you and I’m sorry it’s come accross that way.
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I try to provide legitimate feedback based on actual things I’m hearing from players and from what I’m seeing as well in my game play. The top things I’m seeing regularly from players is:
- How do I get Epic Runes / Scrolls?
- How can I get the color (Magic) of an item that I want
- How can I get better attributes on my items
I am very enthusiastic about all the changes that have been made to shard availability over the last several months. So are many other players. You rarely see people asking “How can I get more shards?”. That used to be the biggest question many months ago. That issue was also improved by the fact that gear/items that dropped could have an increased level. That’s great!!
Maybe some of these things are addressed in the future and you are aware of it and we are not. In the absence of that knowledge I can only look at the current game state and evaluate it from there.
So I think I’m asking a fair question about how the changes have actually benefitted players. You are saying that it is an improvement. Please say how so? I’m not seeing it. Many people I’m talking to are not seeing it either. Hopefully you get your wish and have more voices. I certainly want the same thing.
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Yes, we need some kind of reforge option to be able to modify the gear to our needs. Perhaps a new follower will do just that.
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Ok, so here’s the comments from the 0.38 Patch Notes explaining the need to differentiate Game Modes, just so we are clear where “my perspective” came from:
So we have an improvement to access to Shards through Skirmishes making them more meaningful and we have an increase to items and “Relics” from dungeon chests. By removing shards from Dungeon Chests this therefore improved at least Evo items like runes/scrolls (although the targetting of rarity is still forever an issue).
So what is the “improvement” or “fix” here:
(all references to improved chance for Relics should be ignored until actual evidence is produced)
It would seem this is actually in direct contrast to the supposed improvements before. What are you seeing @Kafka in your gameplay and what are the developers seeing in their data that suggests these changes were needed. Can you also please address the growing data above about the actual contents of chests relative to the communication here and why this is better for players, particularly as it relates to Seasonal Chests?
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Honestly, I’ve come in here all happy go lucky community manager hat on, all anecdotal and ready to have a great engaging discussion about this and it’s honestly run deeper and branched out more than I expected and I need to go find my statistician, more serious hat.
I’ve just sent a page worth of information to the development team about drop rates and asked some questions.
Basically this isn’t where I thought the discussion was going to go on the forum, but that’s exactly why it’s good to have this discussion. You’ve asked some really good questions @Sibelios please bear with me while I handle this internally and I’ll do my best to come back with as detailed a response as I can. It won’t be today.
If anyone has anything else to add please keep doing so, we’ll keep reading here I just want to take the time to get a proper response for you.
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A fine day of looting! 
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All I know is that it is now much harder for me to target gear of a particular color. I need to gear up alts because my main is hardcore gated at 35. I hope that soon I will have a few more toons in appropriate gear that I am unlikely to ever advance beyond 35. Yet, if I don’t try to at least get the gear, there is nothing for me to do in game.
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I read this thread during my lunch break at work and unfortunately I don’t have the time at the moment re read it but I’m pretty sure I agreed 100% with everything that Sibelios said.
I wanted to state again that the way things were organised was great. If you wanted shards you did a skirmish. If you wanted gear or upgrade materials you did a dungeon. Simple and it worked.
You also get shards from salvaging gear. It’s a bit time consuming but I’d rather do this than just get shards directly from the chest.
As for receiving gear from a dungeon, I believe these next 2 points haven’t been mentioned yet.
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If you suddenly decide you want a particular colour element piece of gear it can take a huge number of dungeon runs to actually get that piece of gear in that colour if the RNG does not favour you. Reducing the gear drop rate for shards will make this even harder.
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Relics are the second biggest bottleneck in the game after glyphs. As mentioned nobody has actually noticed an increase in the drop rate of relics. The gear drops on the other hand do actually provide a small chance at getting these relics when salvaged. In my nine months of play I am pretty sure I have got more relics from salvaging items than from chests, and they were possibly higher tier too. Unless the drop rate of relics from dungeon chests is very significantly increased I would argue that the drop rate of relics may actually be decreased by this move to swap gear drops for shards in the dungeon chests.
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The Season Pass is only 8 weeks, just a reminder.
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Diamond chest level 100 - 679 Gold, 541 Food, 406 Ore, Legendary Fire Scroll.
Diamond chest level 100 - gold, ore, 6x Superior Spell Shards, Food, uncommon Khazdhuli Crossbow
Gold chest level 100 - Gold, Minion Glyph, Mythic Light Rune, Food, rare minion Gravel Worm.
Why the hell gold chest contain so much better loot than diamond chest? I want my keys back.
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So another day of Platinum Pass battles and we finally got a Rare something. Interesting we also got a lot of Food and Ore.
No where in this “Small Fixes and Improvements” do I see any mention that “slightly more” Food and Ore now drops in Dungeons. Yet, that is precisely what it appears has happened. Once again, @Kafka this is why no one engages here or believes anything that is put forth as “improvements” because all the unfavorable changes are never mentioned and we are left to do this BS activity to prove that we are not going insane.
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Just got word back from the team with this one, at this stage looking at it being adjusted for v1.2
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So in this set of chests which were looted post Hotfix Update 1.1.1 there were hardly any instances of up to 3 Food or Ore slots in just one chest. The mix of items seemed more in line with “normal” dungeon chests with the caveat that since the last hotfix, the addition of Shards continues to cram out Seasonal items which is the real value in Seasonal chests. Once again, if I wanted Shards, I would go do Skirmishes. So did the Hotfix address the issue but not include it in the notes? 
Also still too many Runes/Scrolls, not of the right rarities that are most in demand, and Relics are still entirely absent. Onto the next day!
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Back again! Well, so much for the triple Ore/Food issue going away, it’s still there. 9 Level 100 Seasonal Chests and literally nothing of real value (Shards are easy to get, leg/Mythic runes are a dime a dozen, items of hardly any value, etc. etc)
In my 5 days of tracking, we’ve had barely a dozen items, the rest is shards, Runes, Ore and Food. That’s 45 chests. For the F2P player that’s 1/4 of the Season Pass Battle returns (Ignoring Story chests which in theory are lower value, but I guess this gives us a preview of what the Hard and Elite chests will yield). This is supposedly limited run chests of which we are asked to pay $$$ to get more of. Why would you pay money for this? Why is this not being discussed? Where’s the response?
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I’m not tracking like Sibelios but I think it’s fair to say that after todays 9 battles I had a similar experience
There is a noticeable lack of gear drops since the change
It was better when dungeon chests had more gear - it’s kind of what made them different
I am left not feeling great about my spend on the pass - it kind of got a bit of the old switcharoo on what the extra Battles that came from the pass would provide (more chances to get dungeon chests and therefore increased chances to get new gear)
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I didn’t track my chest openings. But it is fact that dungeon chest give less and low level gear.
I would suggest to go back to the last and more obvious system: skirmish chests mainly give shards and dungeon chests gear!
And hopefully gear level will be better adapted to the dungeon difficulty!
To be honest I am getting my better gear from crafting only. But this doesn’t actually help for the Khazduli gear parts.
In addition I want to ask for an improvement of drop rate for weapon shards. It seems that the drop rate for weapon shards is adapted to the one gear place we can use. But if you want to participate every PvP- tournament you need more weapons than e.g. accessory types. Actually I am keeping 32 epic and 12 legendary weapons which all want to be upgraded. So my stock of mayor and superior weapon shards is zero whereas I got thousands of unused accessory shards.
Coming back to the last change for skirmish chests I found that the drop rate of superior weapon shards is strongly reduced whereas I would need an increase. Please reconsider that.
Another additional improvement would be to enable the follower Grungli to exchange shards up to superior. Actually it makes no sense to use him. I am getting my shards up to epic from marks.
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Exactly this: as of right now the only difference between doing a Skirmish or a Dungeon battle in the Battle Pass battles is the chance to get ~1 extra anthrite per Battle. I am absolutely mystified how you go from a good change (Skirmishes and Dungeons feel unique in terms of effort and rewards) to basically what it is now: Shorter Battle / Longer Battle yielding mostly the same stuff. A huge step backwards but apparently someone out there feels like it was a change for the good. Still waiting on all those voices to rise up.
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I think @Lyrian had a good observation here about the articulated rates of Shards from the Seasonal Caches:
We know this team is not that clever when it comes to diversifying calculations about things so I agree its safe to assume that these percentages are likely the same percentages used in determining random shard drops from chests (this same distribution seems to be apparent in the story rewards but not so much in the use of Marks in purchasing shards which seem to have a more even distribution). Given the paucity of higher level evolve materials and the relative importance of upgrading weapons over say, Minions or Spells, the lack of weapon shards is a huge problem. Yet another thing that we didn’t know for sure until we stumbled across some evidence that confirmed the very issue we have been complaining about for months and months.
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Back for more! I know, we get it chests are terrible, but if chests are terrible, and the game is very much about getting chests, then ergo the game is terrible?
The things that continue to stand out to me:
- Clearly Seasons chests have a modified loot table different from the normal Dungeon chest assortment even after taking into about the “QoL Improvements”
- The addition of shards IMHO is still a poor choice. I can get shards from lots of places in the game currently (adding more shards has already been done a number of times so this is a case where the marginal utility of additional shards is poor). More items should be present particularly since people want the items for set and goals completions
- The quality of the items is bad. So far not a single Epic item (EDIT: had one person let me know they did get one Epic belt). At this Level chest with over 50+ chest instances, is it too much to ask for one Epic drop? Once again, you need jackpot items to make this process interesting. Farming for “supplies” every single time is not fun
- Speaking of jackpot items, still not a single relic. Talked to lots of people, barely any Seasonal relics from a chest (I heard from one person who said they got a Red Gear! Radical!). But honestly if you cant give us quality items then you at least need better chance for relics. Remember we have been told that Relic rates from chests have been “improved” 4 times to date. How bad were the drop rates originally if we are still not seeing any.
There is nothing fun or cool or exciting in this event right now. And that’s coming from someone who paid money for the Platinum Pass (imagine how uninspiring it feels to F2P players). Even the cache process is more disappointment than anything (~65% Rares and Superior Shards from the Ultimate cache???). Maybe the Hard Mode or the Elite Mode will have improved rates but I doubt it. It will likely just be more chests that look exactly like what I’ve been chronicling from Battles. Please improve chest content the right way. Make more jackpot items. Actually live up to your own standards in saying that waiting 24 hours for a chest should be worthwhile.
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