So a lot of people have probably been farming the new Zeinesis/Clifard from Deus Esca or the Ofz Units from Profound Darkness in hope of getting those "endgame" units that are drops only as currently we have no better units in the game aside from the Circuray and their upgraded Circunion version of units...

And I like most of the people have done multiples of both the 12man versions of the Urgent Quests/Triggers and most likely many of the 4man version of Deus Esca and the solo version of Profound Darkness, and more likely than not, not getting any of those "endgame" units dropped at all in any of those runs. Hell, in my case and probably many others didn't even get a unit to drop at all not to mention the 12 star units in a big part of the runs...

Therefore I come here with a suggestion to slightly improve the odds of the people with the "bad RNG" by hoping to introduce a "fail-safe" method.

The "fail-safe" method should be pretty simple, the Deus Esca fight currently gives players the Clifard Fuses, while the Profound Darkness fight(solo only) gives players the Union Boosters. What I suggest is to be able to trade a certain amount of said items with Zig for the units that drop from their respective bosses, Clifard Fuses for Zeinesis Units and Union Boosters for Ofz Units.

The amount of Clifard Fuses and Union Boosters needed to trade for the Units should be up to what SEGA feels like is a good amount to call it "fail-safe". In my opinion doing 20-30 runs of Deus Esca, 12man version and 4man version combined, should be enough to call it "fail-safe" for at least 1 Unit. Should be half of that of Profound Darkness as only the solo version gives Union Boosters.

This method could even also be introduced in the future for weapons as well although weapons already have many options unlike Units...

For example, here is a reddit post of a person that did 119! runs in order to be able to get the entire Ofz Units set. This amount of runs is absurd and not to mention it could have been even more if the RNG wasn't on that person's side. Not to mention the amount of money that had to be spent on Triggers which is close to astronomical!

My suggested method will at the very least give us players a way to reduce that load that comes from bad RNG much like how Scratch Tickets have a similar method of do a certain amount of Scratch Tickets and you will get an item that will let you choose any item that you want from thet Scratch Ticket...

I know most endgame units and weapons on JP have that "pity" mechanic, where you can trade in Ares for Invade units (which upgrade into ofz) and erebos stones for lightstream units. They're just not in the game yet, for some reason.

@Edes In this case would it kill SEGA to add it for our "current best" units as well? Forget the fact that the drop rates for these units are abysmal it's even harder because they're Urgent Quests and Trigger Quests only drops, therefore in addition to the abysmal drop rates you also get an extremely limited amount of tries to even get those RNG numbers rolling, and as far as I know in JP the quests that have that "pity" mechanic aren't that limited.

I'm at odds with RNG for some things on this game. On one hand I understand that the current "easily obtainable" gear (of which I have never seen a single drop so screw that too) is enough to clear all content with flying colors, and the current super top BiS stuff isn't desperately needed to complete anything. This excuses the whole "it's unique for a reason" approach some people may have, to make such gear so limited only the ultra lucky or ultra no lifer can get.

But on the other hand, we live in a gaming age where may games have treated players to being able to get everything at a certain pace, not limiting it to just a few players. Put in the work, you will get the item. No questions asked. This allows everyone to shine equally, more or less. I see both sides have valid stuff, and I'm not sure which to pick, or if to actually pick any side of this.

Circuray is easy to obtain even if zeinesis and cliffard(they weren't called this in JP- naturally) are not. And are comparable to both. I believe zeinesis gives more hp/pp while cliffard is more offense oriented and circuray(with upgrades easily enough to circunion) is somewhere inbetween.

As long as there's a worthy option out there that's easily to obtain- don't see a major importance of luxury items being turned to pity give-aways. When powercreep is necessary- everything older becomes easy to obtain. Like when you can trade in crystals for nems/slaves.. Units just stick around much longer than weapons and 12 star units will probably be the best you'll be using for long long time.

@ZorokiHanuke said in RNG drops fail-safe:

I'm at odds with RNG for some things on this game. On one hand I understand that the current "easily obtainable" gear (of which I have never seen a single drop so screw that too) is enough to clear all content with flying colors, and the current super top BiS stuff isn't desperately needed to complete anything. This excuses the whole "it's unique for a reason" approach some people may have, to make such gear so limited only the ultra lucky or ultra no lifer can get.

But on the other hand, we live in a gaming age where may games have treated players to being able to get everything at a certain pace, not limiting it to just a few players. Put in the work, you will get the item. No questions asked. This allows everyone to shine equally, more or less. I see both sides have valid stuff, and I'm not sure which to pick, or if to actually pick any side of this.

The fact that there will be such "pity" mechanic for later gear proves that it's something that we gonna get anyways, so why not add it for current gear too?

@MoldyAsp33874 said in RNG drops fail-safe:

Circuray is easy to obtain even if zeinesis and cliffard(they weren't called this in JP- naturally) are not. And are comparable to both. I believe zeinesis gives more hp/pp while cliffard is more offense oriented and circuray(with upgrades easily enough to circunion) is somewhere inbetween.

As long as there's a worthy option out there that's easily to obtain- don't see a major importance of luxury items being turned to pity give-aways. When powercreep is necessary- everything older becomes easy to obtain. Like when you can trade in crystals for nems/slaves.. Units just stick around much longer than weapons and 12 star units will probably be the best you'll be using for long long time.

It may not be necessery, but for sure it won't hurt to have them available for the people that put the time and effort to try to get them specifically but aren't lucky with RNG.

I feel that it's important to consider the fact that we are running a very compressed content roadmap. The original balance was for a much more protracted update cycle. So it may make us feel that we're not getting our needed drop quickly enough.

Personally I think a game is much more healthy if most of the people are still working towards the best gear, instead of one where halfway through the update cycle most players are already fully decked out and crying about lack of content and complaining about latecomers with less than the best gear gimping their raid efficiency.

I think it's just that the end game right now kinda sucks. It's just sitting around waiting for 2 specific urgent quests, and then basically pulling a lever on a slot machine. There's nothing else to do that will result in better gear. So naturally I feel kinda bummed when it FINALLY comes up and I pop every booster I have, only to again get nothing. Then it's back to idling in the lobby until the next UQ because I don't want to waste my 700% drop rate on a useless expedition or whatever. And hopefully the next UQ is one of those 2 and not blackened kingdom or something!

EP4 is just really lacklustre so far. I like the new UQs and crafted techs, but the upgrade path is really quite awful and it's actually kind of amazing how little new gear it offers for an RPG expansion. There are 3 new units you can reasonably kinda get after some waiting and grinding (circunion), and then a handful of others that you probably won't get because instead of having over a year for EP4 (JP), we now just have a few weeks and apparently the drop rates weren't adjusted accordingly. All the new weapons are trash and the 14* unicorn drops are essentially unobtainable.

So that's all we can reasonably expect to get without crazy luck: 3 slightly better units.

That's amazingly bad! If people just had other worthwhile stuff to do outside of UQs, I don't think it would be so bad though. Throw some of those unicorn drops into the ridriod quest drop pool or something, I dunno. So much of the content goes unplayed because there's no point and it feels like a waste of time. Or make the new units tradeable so people who get duplicates can spread the luck around!

Honestly if they hadn't given us slave/nemesis so early it probably wouldn't be so bad either.

@Gurgles said in RNG drops fail-safe:

I think it's just that the end game right now kinda sucks. It's just sitting around waiting for 2 specific urgent quests, and then basically pulling a lever on a slot machine. There's nothing else to do that will result in better gear. So naturally I feel kinda bummed when it FINALLY comes up and I pop every booster I have, only to again get nothing. Then it's back to idling in the lobby until the next UQ because I don't want to waste my 700% drop rate on a useless expedition or whatever. And hopefully the next UQ is one of those 2 and not blackened kingdom or something!

EP4 is just really lacklustre so far. I like the new UQs and crafted techs, but the upgrade path is really quite awful and it's actually kind of amazing how little new gear it offers for an RPG expansion. There are 3 new units you can reasonably kinda get after some waiting and grinding (circunion), and then a handful of others that you probably won't get because instead of having over a year for EP4 (JP), we now just have a few weeks and apparently the drop rates weren't adjusted accordingly. All the new weapons are trash and the 14* unicorn drops are essentially unobtainable.

So that's all we can reasonably expect to get without crazy luck: 3 slightly better units.

That's amazingly bad! If people just had other worthwhile stuff to do outside of UQs, I don't think it would be so bad though. Throw some of those unicorn drops into the ridriod quest drop pool or something, I dunno. So much of the content goes unplayed because there's no point and it feels like a waste of time. Or make the new units tradeable so people who get duplicates can spread the luck around!

Honestly if they hadn't given us slave/nemesis so early it probably wouldn't be so bad either.

Pretty much what is written here. The fact that there isn't much to do in the game currently and the fact that the "best upgrades" are locked behind RNG drops on top of RNG of Urgent Quests and their scarcity makes it even worse. In this case giving us an option to get the items after ENOUGH farming should be a thing, considering there is such an option for future gear, like how it is in JP server currently.

For example what do people use Clifard fuses for, after they got all their Clifard Units and/or weapons? considering the weapons and units drop rates, at some point people would most likely want to have some way to use those on SOMETHING instead of hoping to hit the jackpot on the RNG drops to get an item that you can "upgrade" with those Clifard Fuses. Same thing for Union Boosters, only that has less RNG involved since the items that you use the Union Boosters to upgrade with aren't available as just RNG drops, BUT where you get the Union Boosters have RNG drops that are not available in any other way and are considered "best gear" at the moment, so my point still stands for that too.

@Gurgles said in RNG drops fail-safe:

it's back to idling in the lobby until the next UQ because I don't want to waste my 700% drop rate on a useless expedition or whatever. And hopefully the next UQ is one of those 2 and not blackened kingdom or something!

You can at least hold up the timer on your boosters when doing something else by checking the top box on the drinks menu. You HAVE to pick a drink and accept it for it to work. You will know it did when you check your character stats and see the boosts greyed out. That way you can at least do something else while waiting for those UQ's to show up.

Now we gonna get a new UQ that drops one of THE BEST weapons for Bouncers even when compared to 15 star weapons. And I already know that the drop rates will be non-existent, considering the Deus UQ dropped only ONE 14 star weapon across all 4 ships up until now.

Does any content need those really low drop rate weapons, though?

If the hardest content are tuned for those weapons, a better drop rate makes sense. If those weapons are designed to be so powerful they're twice overkill for everything in the game, then it kinda makes sense to have so low a drop rate that only a few people are ever going to have them.

This just makes people that actually try to farm the item depressed because it doesn't drop, therefore it's better to not even put it there with such a low drop rate...

Yes it's just a game but still... Why give people false hope?

MMOs need that RNG to survive. If the best gear was simple to obtain everyone would have it and people would have nothing to strive for. Yes it's unfair that one person may get it quickly and other won't. But in the end- both players would be playing the game rather than having nothing to do. I think players on the whole who play MMOs love the idea of chance. If it's an item that's absolutely needed then it's BS- but like I said.. we have circuray- we have comparable units that are easy to get and farmable. But surprise and chance is what drives longevity in an mmo. Imagine if the scratch cards weren't scratchcards but you could buy each item from a relative price using AC and always get what you needed- Sega would make a lot less money and people wouldn't feel as unique when everyone can easily obtain the same fashion. People want to feel special and thus fight for the rng gods to bless them more than the next person. They are luxury items because no one needs them- but many want them and they can be very difficult to obtain. But I think it's fair enough- cliffard units can be traded for zeinesis and vice versa- you only need 1 piece of each set- legs/arms/back whether they're cliffard or zeinesis to eventually turn it into the set you want- or you can mix and match since they have no set bonuses and are both good either way.

@MoldyAsp33874 said in RNG drops fail-safe:

MMOs need that RNG to survive. If the best gear was simple to obtain everyone would have it and people would have nothing to strive for. Yes it's unfair that one person may get it quickly and other won't. But in the end- both players would be playing the game rather than having nothing to do. I think players on the whole who play MMOs love the idea of chance. If it's an item that's absolutely needed then it's BS- but like I said.. we have circuray- we have comparable units that are easy to get and farmable. But surprise and chance is what drives longevity in an mmo. Imagine if the scratch cards weren't scratchcards but you could buy each item from a relative price using AC and always get what you needed- Sega would make a lot less money and people wouldn't feel as unique when everyone can easily obtain the same fashion. People want to feel special and thus fight for the rng gods to bless them more than the next person. They are luxury items because no one needs them- but many want them and they can be very difficult to obtain. But I think it's fair enough- cliffard units can be traded for zeinesis and vice versa- you only need 1 piece of each set- legs/arms/back whether they're cliffard or zeinesis to eventually turn it into the set you want- or you can mix and match since they have no set bonuses and are both good either way.

Depending on how much farming/tries one needs to do get to get an item with a 100% guarantee, it doesn't have to be as simple as you said. Keeping the RNG is fine, but don't make it the ONLY WAY to get items. Adding a way to get items AFTER ENOUGH FARMING/TRIES won't kill the RNG aspect of the game, but alleviate it instead. Even more so when you can't consistently farm stuff like Urgent Quests/Triggers Quests since you can only do those a limited amount of times. Also the way RNG works, there is a slight chance someone will NEVER get an item, rare but such a thing can indeed happen if the only way is RNG, and that person at some point will most likely than not quit the game because of frustration.

Also Scratch Cards HAVE a fail-safe method with getting any prize you want from it after enough tries, therefore Scratch Cards aren't a very good arguement, instead they further enchance the viability of the fail-safe option for RNG drops.