I don't think I've looted enough to even combine one piece of clothing.
VERY frustrating...
From my point of view, whatever drop rate is settled upon, I need to know some number which is reliable and sustainable enough to work with. .... All I'm asking is being able to know that before jumping in with both feet. Market price for essence is still climbing steadily, right now around 70k% (or 700 times tt value).
For every item we'd like players to have some preconceived estimation, which currently can be partially derived from market value over time, auction availability, other hunters in the area after the same item, etc.
This thread has been ongoing for quite a while, but I've just watched from the sidelines. However, it does involve, once again, knowledge, estimations and balance issues that you will know are important to me.
In some instance we can circumvent drop chance with player agency (in the case of the missions for the Rift to target a specific piece of clothing after so many kills) but there are also some cases where we can't.
I very much like this part of your answer Kris, and it shows one of the examples of player agency you have given to players. But, there is still the situation where it is practically impossible in a testing of the waters to get useful information about drops, apart from it being very hit and miss (to get 4 of something in one drop, but no other occurrences, as San has mentioned). If we choose to believe others' claims, then this is something to go on slightly, but wouldn't stand any hope at all of me seriously taking part.
We are continuing to see poor resolutions to topics such as droplets: good idea to split pristines up, but bad to make them untradeable unless the droprates for various types are enough for players to gather maybe 45, 52, 57 of 3 types during an event and only have a couple left over after refining. Getting 2, 4, 3 would be highly enraging I would say, so I didn't bother trying.
On juices, the drops may have fluctuated wildly (waves), and I was unlucky not to get any at all this time round, but where the odds are unstated and we get ZERO to even BEGIN to form the slightest of statistical expectations, people like myself may simply stop (or potter around on a turnover of 60 peds an hour instead of 500 or >1000).
Also, I know MA are responsible overall, so we cannot know (nor expect to know) how often you are trying your best against a brick wall. We see that you see our problems as players from some of your answers, though.
BUT, when an older topic such as clothing becomes a more advanced problem of trying for buff sets, and new problems of pretty much exactly the same type repeat, as in the epic pet mission balancing ... frustration can turn towards even less favourable descriptions.
I do, however, congratulate you on the success recently of Cyrene, but note from stats on paneleon kills, for example, that very high turnovers are coming from very few players. Turning down the densities of low spawns will not encourage lower players, however, for stable populations moving forward.
actually you need to grind, sleep, work, toilet time, sexy time in essence place to make one piece updated in a week, if you are lucky enough