Been grinding Zyn's for so long now, many many thousands killed and no crystal drops in 8 days to anyone. Not sure if it's regular variance or a bigger macro change to drop rate behind the scenes by MA. Either case it's got me thinking...
Drop rates for these Power Crystals has several times been a problem with this mission chain and various "fixes" have been attempted over the years that never seem to fully solve the issue. Completing the Zorra mission chain still seems out of reach to most. The mission is plenty costly enough without the added wild card of needing like 60 rare loot drops of crystals and Lazidol parts. Some might argue it's easier and more likely to loot a rare UL gun directly off a mob.
I'm all for a challenge and grinding but it gets unreasonable when MA decides... "yeah we're just not gonna drop this for a couple weeks/months cause reasons - deal with it." And in that situation players get frustrated, give up, leave the planet, steer other away from doing the mission due to it's perceived impossibility which leads to lost revenue for the PP.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Cyrene staff don't have any control over the specific drop rates of items, right? And if the drop rate is nerfed what recourse does a PP have? Contact MA begging them to tweak things when they get around to it? And even then it's 100% MA's discretion how they choose to tweak things which to me often seems to be a case of increase X's drop rate but lower Y's to always keep a bottleneck. You can clearly see a decrease in Lazidol Brain and shell fragments drop rate as power crystal drop rate was increased and I don't think this is coincidence.
Instead, I'm proposing that these epic mission chains were changed to not rely on rare random loot drops where we're at the mercy of MA's loot table algo but are given out as calculated mission rewards. Of course you could still have the crystals be lootable too for that added "jackpot wow" factor and feeling of being able to "beat the system". But having a mission guarantees a minimum acquisition rate outside of being solely at the mercy of MA's loot algo.
For example: A repeatable mission that rewards 1 weakened crystal for every 5000 merfolken killed and a mission that rewards 1 lesser crystal for every 3000 zyn killed. (Of course I would be ok with having to pay TT value of the crystal at that point too.) Could do something similar with lazidol since there is a clear skewing of drop rates of needed rare loots there too (Lazidol Shell Fragments anyone?). Maybe X kills of lazidol + needing some cyrene mission tokens and or combination of unique more common Cyrene loots that currently have no real use like Zyn Lesser Claws. It would be nice for some of those things to have a use lol Though I do hesitate to suggest anything loot based because I feel like that's just going to lead to MA licking their lips and rubbing their hands together saying "that's where the new bottle neck is where we wet our beak boys!" They have no problem making even common loots rare AF when it suits them - they do it all the time. But definitive, specific "Do X, Get X" completable missions can't be messed with. Which is why I lean more towards cyrene mission tokens. They're more liquid and can keep the door open for plenty of missions to generate them. Encouraging people to do regular missions on cyrene and solidifying a markup of the tokens.
Going this route would not only put the control back into the hands of Cyrene staff but would guarantee a specific cycle earnings for Cyrene, would guarantee people could grind to get what they need without being screwed by "luck" or "bad timing" and would give players an opportunity to grind to create those things for players that don't want to grind, not to mention creating healthy markups all around. Cyrene mission tokens would have more use and the crystals would still have a nice markup due to their cost of acquiring. Profitability via crystal "loots" becomes less based on a single lucky loot but on consistent means of marginalizing losses as you grind to get the crystal. This would also keep the crystals from their markup getting too nuts.
I hope this will be considered strongly.
Drop rates for these Power Crystals has several times been a problem with this mission chain and various "fixes" have been attempted over the years that never seem to fully solve the issue. Completing the Zorra mission chain still seems out of reach to most. The mission is plenty costly enough without the added wild card of needing like 60 rare loot drops of crystals and Lazidol parts. Some might argue it's easier and more likely to loot a rare UL gun directly off a mob.
I'm all for a challenge and grinding but it gets unreasonable when MA decides... "yeah we're just not gonna drop this for a couple weeks/months cause reasons - deal with it." And in that situation players get frustrated, give up, leave the planet, steer other away from doing the mission due to it's perceived impossibility which leads to lost revenue for the PP.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Cyrene staff don't have any control over the specific drop rates of items, right? And if the drop rate is nerfed what recourse does a PP have? Contact MA begging them to tweak things when they get around to it? And even then it's 100% MA's discretion how they choose to tweak things which to me often seems to be a case of increase X's drop rate but lower Y's to always keep a bottleneck. You can clearly see a decrease in Lazidol Brain and shell fragments drop rate as power crystal drop rate was increased and I don't think this is coincidence.
Instead, I'm proposing that these epic mission chains were changed to not rely on rare random loot drops where we're at the mercy of MA's loot table algo but are given out as calculated mission rewards. Of course you could still have the crystals be lootable too for that added "jackpot wow" factor and feeling of being able to "beat the system". But having a mission guarantees a minimum acquisition rate outside of being solely at the mercy of MA's loot algo.
For example: A repeatable mission that rewards 1 weakened crystal for every 5000 merfolken killed and a mission that rewards 1 lesser crystal for every 3000 zyn killed. (Of course I would be ok with having to pay TT value of the crystal at that point too.) Could do something similar with lazidol since there is a clear skewing of drop rates of needed rare loots there too (Lazidol Shell Fragments anyone?). Maybe X kills of lazidol + needing some cyrene mission tokens and or combination of unique more common Cyrene loots that currently have no real use like Zyn Lesser Claws. It would be nice for some of those things to have a use lol Though I do hesitate to suggest anything loot based because I feel like that's just going to lead to MA licking their lips and rubbing their hands together saying "that's where the new bottle neck is where we wet our beak boys!" They have no problem making even common loots rare AF when it suits them - they do it all the time. But definitive, specific "Do X, Get X" completable missions can't be messed with. Which is why I lean more towards cyrene mission tokens. They're more liquid and can keep the door open for plenty of missions to generate them. Encouraging people to do regular missions on cyrene and solidifying a markup of the tokens.
Going this route would not only put the control back into the hands of Cyrene staff but would guarantee a specific cycle earnings for Cyrene, would guarantee people could grind to get what they need without being screwed by "luck" or "bad timing" and would give players an opportunity to grind to create those things for players that don't want to grind, not to mention creating healthy markups all around. Cyrene mission tokens would have more use and the crystals would still have a nice markup due to their cost of acquiring. Profitability via crystal "loots" becomes less based on a single lucky loot but on consistent means of marginalizing losses as you grind to get the crystal. This would also keep the crystals from their markup getting too nuts.
I hope this will be considered strongly.
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