Unidentified gear

[Balsa.3951]

can u please decide if all loot comes from unidentified gear or Bags or raw drops?

 

I personal prefer all drops are unidentified gear from mobs that would make bag managment so much easier

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Balsa.3951" said:

> can u please decide if all loot comes from unidentified gear or Bags or raw drops?

They can't. Or rather, it's a lot more work than it sounds and probably not worth the effort.

 

All new maps since PoF launched use unID gear, but the loot tables for other maps (and containers on those maps) are very complex. To substitute unID gear would mean refactoring the loot to make sure there aren't any major economic failures as a result (too much or too little of the "right" sort). Plus there are all sorts of skins that are available through loot in HoT + Core. And besides that, loot in Core scales with level as do HoT containers-with-gear, but PoF/unID gear is strictly L80.

 

And finally, people (who want) can easily maintain 500-900+ MF while opening unID gear; that's not realistic for obtaining HoT/core gear, so that also has to be taken into account.

 

> I personal prefer all drops are unidentified gear from mobs that would make bag managment so much easier

It really does. Maybe some day, it might be worth doing. I wouldn't hold my breath.

(Then again, I've been wrong before, because ANet doesn't let us know what they are working on until it's ready.)

[Lexi.1398]

And miss my 50g unique skin HoT bag drops? Nah. Though, it'd be nice if they combined a few similar in everything but name drops- which HoT has an absolute excess of- unless there's some 1% drop loot difference between a hylek and a saurian box i don't know about.

[Infusion.7149]

I actually TP all my blue and green unid gear since I don't have the patience to do "inventory wars" with high MF

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Infusion.7149" said:

> I actually TP all my blue and green unid gear since I don't have the patience to do "inventory wars" with high MF

 

Good move.

My last check of estimated value: selling common|uncommon on TP gains you the same value you could expect from opening with 400-500% MF

[WolfSparkSmack.2649]

One question - Were precursors removed from item table of green unidentified gear? (Maybe the Istan nerf related?) i used to get precursors from it, now its been long time and havent seen any. Does anybody know something about this matter? thnx

[Danikat.8537]

If they could do it I certainly wouldn't complain. I always open my unidentified gear, just in case there's something good in there, but I like being able to wait until it's convenient to fill my inventory with random equipment.

 

They would have to consider all the items which currently aren't available from unidentified gear though, and make sure they were added to the loot table or still available in another way.

[Balsa.3951]

> @"Danikat.8537" said:

> If they could do it I certainly wouldn't complain. I always open my unidentified gear, just in case there's something good in there, but I like being able to wait until it's convenient to fill my inventory with random equipment.

>

> They would have to consider all the items which currently aren't available from unidentified gear though, and make sure they were added to the loot table or still available in another way.

 

easy solution would be normal gear which is avaiable over every map becomes uidentified gear while special map/Xpact related gear goes into an chest.

 

should be easy from my unqualified point of view

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"WolfSparkSmack.2649" said:

> One question - Were precursors removed from item table of green unidentified gear? (Maybe the Istan nerf related?) i used to get precursors from it, now its been long time and havent seen any. Does anybody know something about this matter? thnx

 

The loot tables haven't been changed. You just got extremely lucky to get any precursors at all. I've opened 1000s of the rares with very high MF and never seen one, whereas another forum poster got many from the common (blue) unIDs (although to be fair, they opened 100s of 1000s).

 

Before we can say that there's been a change, we'd need to know: how many uncommon|green unIDs did you open in the past? What was your MF when opening? How many have you opened recently (around when you think this change might have happened)?

 

Given the the astronomically low drop rate of precursors, unless those numbers are in the 100s of 1000s, it would be difficult to say that there's been a change.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Balsa.3951" said:

> > @"Danikat.8537" said:

> > If they could do it I certainly wouldn't complain. I always open my unidentified gear, just in case there's something good in there, but I like being able to wait until it's convenient to fill my inventory with random equipment.

> >

> > They would have to consider all the items which currently aren't available from unidentified gear though, and make sure they were added to the loot table or still available in another way.

>

> easy solution would be normal gear which is avaiable over every map becomes uidentified gear while special map/Xpact related gear goes into an chest.

>

> should be easy from my unqualified point of view

 

First, what is 'normal' gear? It varies across the different maps, with some types of skins dropping in the shiverpeaks and others dropping in maguuma. The mix of common|uncommon|rare also varies, not only by map but by type of foe.

 

Second, there are major economic reverberations in using unID gear. As I noted above, unID gear is more valuable to veterans, who have high MF and can easily boost it... and it's more valuable to those who can afford time to wait to open while boosting MF to as high as 850%. "Normal" gear drops with MF ranging from 0-400%, while a huge fraction of unID gear gets opened at the higher level. With around 850% (the amount most veterans "could" manage with little effort), common|blue unID won't drop any blues, only greens or better (about 85% green, 15% rares & exotics), compared to ~380%, where the mix is roughly 45|45 greens & blues, the rest rares.

 

And finally, there are loot tables for every foe type in the game. Each one would have to be checked and rechecked and simulations run (based on existing habits) to see how it actually would work... Plus, since the impact would be global, ANet would have to monitor people's habits to see if this ended up changing how people play, and tweak accordingly.

 

In short: not going to be easy.

[WolfSparkSmack.2649]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > @"Balsa.3951" said:

> > > @"Danikat.8537" said:

> > > If they could do it I certainly wouldn't complain. I always open my unidentified gear, just in case there's something good in there, but I like being able to wait until it's convenient to fill my inventory with random equipment.

> > >

> > > They would have to consider all the items which currently aren't available from unidentified gear though, and make sure they were added to the loot table or still available in another way.

> >

> > easy solution would be normal gear which is avaiable over every map becomes uidentified gear while special map/Xpact related gear goes into an chest.

> >

> > should be easy from my unqualified point of view

>

> First, what is 'normal' gear? It varies across the different maps, with some types of skins dropping in the shiverpeaks and others dropping in maguuma. The mix of common|uncommon|rare also varies, not only by map but by type of foe.

>

> Second, there are major economic reverberations in using unID gear. As I noted above, unID gear is more valuable to veterans, who have high MF and can easily boost it... and it's more valuable to those who can afford time to wait to open while boosting MF to as high as 850%. "Normal" gear drops with MF ranging from 0-400%, while a huge fraction of unID gear gets opened at the higher level. With around 850% (the amount most veterans "could" manage with little effort), common|blue unID won't drop any blues, only greens or better (about 85% green, 15% rares & exotics), compared to ~380%, where the mix is roughly 45|45 greens & blues, the rest rares.

>

> And finally, there are loot tables for every foe type in the game. Each one would have to be checked and rechecked and simulations run (based on existing habits) to see how it actually would work... Plus, since the impact would be global, ANet would have to monitor people's habits to see if this ended up changing how people play, and tweak accordingly.

>

> In short: not going to be easy.

 

Without doing all this "complicated things" i can tell you from plain observation that precursors were included in green UND gear's item table (before istan nerf 4 precs from 200k gears opened, after - 0 prec / 200k)(magic find seems to not have huge impact as i got prec on 600%+ same as on 850+, point is - you dont need maxed out MF to get precursor) also pretty easy to see how it effects the game, check few videos in youtube to find that a lot of ppl know this method and use it, so its pretty safe to say that Anet devs can also watch youtube videos, hence no need for all this research etc that you assume Anet need to do in order to adjust settings, they do it all the time and not tell people about it, of course they will be losing money if they do tell about every "little" update designed to stabilize and prevent exploits.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"WolfSparkSmack.2649" said:

> > @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

 

> Without doing all this "complicated things" i can tell you from plain observation

Plain observation is fine for identifying what sorts of drops are included; it's not very helpful in stabilizing the economy.

 

> that precursors were included in green UND gear's item table (before istan nerf 4 precs from 200k gears opened, after - 0 prec / 200k)

Precursors have always been a potential drop from anything that can drop an exotic piece of gear. That includes a Queensdale bandit, a JP, a legendary boss, or sure, unID pieces of gear.

 

> (magic find seems to not have huge impact as i got prec on 600%+ same as on 850+, point is - you dont need maxed out MF to get precursor)

MF has a huge impact. The fact that you got _any_ precursors means you were somewhat lucky. It's a mistake to assume that 200k pieces of gear is enough to determine comparative drop rates _for precursors_. The rate is too low for that number to be sufficient.

 

> also pretty easy to see how it effects the game, check few videos in youtube to find that a lot of ppl know this method and use it, so its pretty safe to say that Anet devs can also watch youtube videos, hence no need for all this research etc that you assume Anet need to do in order to adjust settings,

Again, that doesn't tell ANet anything _usable_ about the impact on the economy. It only tells ANet that people buy or farm unID gear hoping to get precursors. The impact of transforming drops from defined gear to unID gear is going to be profound; they aren't going to do it lightly.

 

> they do it all the time and not tell people about it, of course they will be losing money if they do tell about every "little" update designed to stabilize and prevent exploits.

They generally do not do it all the time, because the economic impacts are substantive. It takes considerable effort to plan, so it's almost never worth the effort to make frequent changes to drop tables. In particular, there's no evidence that ANet changes drop rates often.

 

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As players, it's always tempting to simplify running a game into a series of easy & simple choices. No game company is going to be successful doing so.