Episode 4 Drop Table Update

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Yes. I think PoD was poorly designed and promoted the worst in gameplay. Sega's fault. I'm glad to see people are giving this a chance.
 
Definitely. Like I said, I think the changes were necessary for a long term healthy server.
 
Drop table changes will, unfortunately, always create gaps between older and newer players, because they are always done to fix problems with them. If the only issue was that things were too rare, this wouldn't be a side effect, but the issues with tables when changed is that things are too common more often than not (either because rates are too high, not enough ID variety or not enough enemy variety, in this case it was because of the latter two more than anything else), which in a game like PSO, usually causes stagnation and a lack of motivation to play because not enough things feel rewarding enough.

To better explain the reasoning for the drop table change, before they happened:
  • Point of Disaster was the most played quest in Episode 4, only MA4B really being played frequently as well.
    • Unlike TTF/RT, almost all varieties of enemies are killed which drop a multitude of items just playing one quest only.
    • Yes, you can change things up with 9-8 or whatever, but people will always be drawn towards the best quests.
  • Yellowboze dropped the majority of Episode 4 items alone.
    • V101, V502 and Lame being 3 of these items, all of them quite easily obtainable due to the somewhat high rate of Kondrieu (especially during rare enemy milestones), and Zu and Lizard spawning in both Episode 4 maps.
    • This caused too many items overall and huge over-saturation in many peoples' shops. So many people had multiple V101s, V502s, Lames, etc.
  • The Episode 4 item market was fucked.
    • Items such as Heaven Striker and Lame, despite being the best items, were going for as little as 10 PDs sometimes.
    • V502, which is practically cheating with Hell in Episode 2, was going for a mere 7 PDs despite how OP it is.
    • Other various issues with pricings despite the power of Episode 4 items.
The aim for the drop table change is to promote a more healthy variety of quests in Episode 4, so people have the choice to play many different quests and still have comparable rates to find an item in a run/time frame when hunting for particular items. Furthermore, the difficulty of obtaining some of the better items was questionable, so I will be straight and say they were some deliberate nerfs to drops, but rather due to change in circumstance rather than rates.

By having people play many different quests on many different IDs, it would increase player satisfaction as the table isn't just "Yellowboze PoD" anymore, and more items will hopefully be worth specifically hunting instead of just simply buying them on the market after a few days of play of collecting PDs.

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Another quick revision to the drop tables, some nerfs and buffs. (whenever it goes through)
  • Oran Satellite Lizard: Morning Glory → Slicer of Fanatic (1/1517)
  • Oran Saint Million: Rupika → BOVN (1/64)
  • Oran Kondrieu: Rupika → BOVN (1/8)
  • Greenill Dorphon DLS: 1/853 → 1/1024
  • Ultimate Dragon Scales: 1/42 → 1/36
  • Purplenum Saint Million: Mother Garb+ → Centurion/Ability (1/46)
  • Purplenum Shambertin: Mother Garb → Heavenly/Ability (1/56)
  • Purplenum Kondrieu: Mother Garb+ → Centurion/Ability (1/6)
  • N/H Del Rappy: Photon Crystal → AddSlot
  • VH Pinkal Del Rappy: Photon Crystal → Heavenly/Body (1/2)
  • VH Oran Del Rappy: Photon Crystal → Ignition Cloak (1/16)
  • VH Bluefull/Yellowboze Del Rappy Ignition Cloak: 1/8 → 1/16
  • VH Boss Changes (see Spoiler)
Saint Million: 1/16, Shambertin: 1/64, Kondrieu: 1/2
  • Viridia: Revival Cuirass / Dragon Scale / Phoenix Claw
  • Greenill: Revival Cuirass / Dragon Scale / Glide Divine
  • Skyly: Spirit Cuirass / Dragon Scale / Kusanagi
  • Bluefull: Revival Cuirass / Dragon Scale / Rianov 303SNR
  • Purplenum: Spirit Cuirass / Dragon Scale / Rianov 303SNR
  • Pinkal: Spirit Cuirass / Dragon Scale / Glide Divine
  • Redria: Spirit Cuirass / Dragon Scale / Asuka
  • Oran: Revival Cuirass / Dragon Scale / Asuka
  • Yellowboze: Revival Cuirass / Dragon Scale / Kusanagi
  • Whitill: Spirit Cuirass / Dragon Scale / Phoenix Claw

In short, Oran has received its Slicer of Fanatic drop back along with a new BOVN boss drop, and Greenill DLS was nerfed slightly to make Oran the definitive best for DLS (Greenill's DLS being regarded as an extra item you may find while doing other stuff, so to speak).

Purplenum's boss drops have been changed from the Mother Garb series to the Ability series, just like Viridia so that unit isn't so exclusive to hunt.

As you can also tell, we decided to completely neuter rappies under Ultimate, so that players aren't able to just mindlessly rafoie rappies for an hour or two and get dank items in BPD. You need to actually look for Photon Crystals, even if it does happen to be in a lower difficulty. I would also like to remind people that all IDs get Photon Crystals in Ultimate Desert now as well, which should hopefully circulate them more through playing Ultimate instead of playing lower difficulties.

Dragon Scale got a slight buff in Ultimate from 1/42 to 1/36 because we decided to put Dragon Scale at 1/64 in VH.

Hopefully this should balance out any issues the drop tables still had. This should be the final change unless any oversights are pointed out, but there is still quite a while of infinite SID changes just incase anything else has to be changed.

Also yes, Dragon Scale will be removed from Coren's 10K meseta line-up (most likely moved to the 100K line-up rather than a full removal).
 
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There aren't any massive changes planned for ep 1/2 drop tables, right?

Because an additional 2 weeks of free section ID swaps is going to be problematic for the economy.
 
Nope, we don't plan to touch those tables since they're "sacred".

I forgot to mention in the previous post, but the stance we are taking for Ephinea currently is not "keep it faithful to SEGA BB" (we kind of went away from that a long time ago), but rather to keep it as the PSO people remember while tweaking and improving other areas of the game.

This is why E1/2 has been left alone and things like game balance, as those things are integral to PSO and part of the nostalgia appeal of the game to most people, but the E4 drops have never really been memorable apart from certain things on private servers such as the Skyly Lame and Viridia Limiter, for example (which we have tried to incorporate in these new tables).
 
Matt said:
people will always be drawn towards the best quests.
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Which is kind of part of my point. People want to farm efficiently in this game they will be spamming one quest over and over, it's no surprise at all that people got bored. If they wanted to do something different they had the option, but if they want the best chances they have to deal with the fact they're possibly going to burn themselves out.
 
Except the issue is that the best quest for everything was like one quest, instead of there being lots of best quests for lots of different things. (currently there's WoL1, MA4A/B/C, LMB, LSH, WoL2, MU3, 9-3, PoD, 9-8, etc, beforehand it was pretty much just PoD and MA4B for like 90% of all the wanted items)

People do change things up, but bosses also don't exactly lend themselves to many different quests either, further reducing the variety of things you can run for a chance at what you actually want.

And once again, the SEGA tables were actually dreadful. After using them here for almost a year, it has done nothing but cause issues that wouldn't be a thing if people had to play lots of different quests on lots of different IDs for all the items in the game.
 
I`d really have liked some e4 stuff shuffled into ep2 a bit, even if just the VR areas.

seriously, those maps have absolutely nothing going for them.
 
ToasterMage said:
I`d really have liked some e4 stuff shuffled into ep2 a bit, even if just the VR areas.

seriously, those maps have absolutely nothing going for them.
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Your persistent. =p
 
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I'd love that because there are many areas without a single useful drop.
But how dare you touch the sacred charts aaaaaaaaaaaa
 
Two more weeks of free ID swaps isn't going to be problematic for the economy, especially compared to the headaches that would crop up if you didn't allow ID swaps after completely changing drops.

It's pretty much unavoidable that some people are gonna win out for farming things like v101's and HS's ad nauseum.
It's unfortunate, but I'm expecting that in the end this will be good for the game.

Also, no this is not nearly as bad as Lee. XD
 
Xcross said:
Two more weeks of free ID swaps isn't going to be problematic for the economy, especially compared to the headaches that would crop up if you didn't allow ID swaps after completely changing drops.

It's pretty much unavoidable that some people are gonna win out for farming things like v101's and HS's ad nauseum.
It's unfortunate, but I'm expecting that in the end this will be good for the game.

Also, no this is not nearly as bad as Lee. XD
Click to expand...

I was referring to an additional 2 weeks if ep1/2 were changed. As in, a total of 4 weeks for sec ID swaps. OFC it was needed for ep 4's changes.
 
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