My NM idea

[Rai]

I sent in this suggestion to SE about NM drop rates and building in a mechamism to discourage monopolization:

The simple fact is, the way the drop system works now with NMs, it only benefits the player who can repeatedly claim for consecutive kills. And these people are the gil sellers. If in a 12 hour period they can get 8 out of 12 kills they have the higher probability of being the one to get the drop.

In effect it has contributed to the creation of the gil sellers by it's very nature. Because there is no built in mechanism to discourage monopolization, in fact monopolization is rewarded.

The control of the supply allows them to increase the price, also the constant competition they represent stresses the regular player base who in turn increase the price when they are able to obtain it due to the increased level of frustration.

What I propose is, attach a database to each character to tracking NM drops. Have the drops recorded per character and have that number of kills and number of each drop factor into the next drop. Quests and missions are tracked so there is no doubt it can be done.

I see this as a NM only effect, not HNM. And only for complete items like Armor or Weapons and not any other drop.

Say NMx drops itemA and ItemB and A is 90% drop rate and B is 10%

kill NMx 1-3 times A is 90% B is 10%   -- player gets ItemA
kill NMx 4-6 times A is 85% B is 15% -- player gets ItemA
kill NMx 7-9 times A is 75% B is 25% -- player gets ItemB

now having gotten the ItemB drop, that players ItemB is flagged and is reset to the original drop rate.

kill NMx 10+ times A is 70% B is 10% and a 20% chance of nothing -- After getting A & B

Each time the player kills NMx again and obtains either ItemA or ItemB the probability of obtaining either drop again is lowered for that player.

Now whether this sort of tracking is permanent or is reset after each conquest update is up to you.

I would like some feedback on what you think.

[Alucath]

Re: My NM idea

Interesting- the problem I see is which player's record are you keeping track of? Sometimes a character will have their higher level buddies help them out when killing an NM for gear (Mysticmaker Profblix for Moldavite earring comes to mind, and hits close to home). So... Because player A (a high level RDM let's say) has killed Profblix 7 times, will player B (a lower level RDM or BLM) not get the drop? I realize that the drop on this NM is Ex/Rare so maybe it would be an NM exempt from such a change. Still something to think about.

That's something I guess they'd have to work out, but it seems like an interesting idea.

Either way, it still kind of encourages monopolizing the drop. Gilsellers have to make their quota.

[Rai]

Re: My NM idea

I had thought of that and it does pose a bit of a problem, I do feel the drop count should have an impact even in a party, otherwise gil sellers will simply drag mules with them to camp NMs.

I thought back to all the NMs I have camped and for the most part I camp when I am able to Solo a NM.

But I think the current drop system is flawed by it's very nature.

[Rostum]

Re: My NM idea

Maybe, in a party situation, it could calculate the average of how many times all the players in the party have killed the NM, and work it out from that?

[Gman]

Re: My NM idea

A perfect world would be...all NM's are forced pop and drop Rare/ex items. Killing the "like" monsters in the area, there is a low % chance they will drop the pop item. Example, run around killing Rock lizards in South Gusta, eventually one drops a trigger item, you run up to the "???" and trade it to pop Leaping Lizzy. He then has a % chance of dropping Bounding boots.

Simple, genious... why hasn't s-e implemented this with more NM's? A few already have it like Tarasque, and the Carbunkle mitts NM works kinda like that too. Forced pop NM's are the way to go. Everyone can get the items they want with a bit of work.

It's one thing to monopolize a certain NM, but it's damn hard to monopolize all of the mobs in the area. And why would you want to when the item that drops is rare/ex anyway?

[Alauna]

Re: My NM idea

1) quit whining.

2) do you realize the complexity of attaching "said database" to each NM? the computations needed to query, log, re-query, re-log, and output percentages based on "characters"?

There are upwards up 3000-4000 differnt "active" players on any server (best guess. Odin can get up to 5000+, depending). Even to create a relational database, it would be gargantuan in size, and queries would take way too long. you'd end up with a massive "lag-time" from when you killed the NM, to when the items dropped.

And the more people 'monopolize' certain NM's, the larger the database gets, and more and more entries are added.

[Rai]

Re: My NM idea

1) quit whining.

2) do you realize the complexity of attaching "said database" to each NM? the computations needed to query, log, re-query, re-log, and output percentages based on "characters"?

1&2) get a clue:

It would not be attatched to the Mob, it would be each Character. Every Character has it's very own database. If Treasure Hunter 1 and 2 and the various items that enhance the effect can influence drops then it is no more intence for a character killing a NM to effect the NMs drop.

Each character has a database attatched to it already! our Job's, our Magic skills, combat skills, craft skills, quests, mission, number of mobs killed, number of times killed.

So playerA kills NMx, time of death it calculates drop, playerA killed NMx 40 times getting drop 13, applies 13x1.5 decrease to base drop % and runs calculation for drop, and it would take a fraction of a second.

There are how many quests in the game? How many per starting city, how many in the outlands or Jeuno? Would you say there are more quests than NMs or more NMs than quests? I would say there are far more quests than NMs in game, so tracking the named ground NMs per each character would take up less space in a characters database than quests do.

Have you been around long enough to remember the Census? Remember talking to the Moogle and having it tell you how many mobs you kill and how many times you died. All that data is already there attatched to each and every single character.

[Rones]

Re: My NM idea

There are 765 notorious monsters in the game currently according to Alla currently, so you can probably add a few its missing. Your idea would take more space though than simple quests and spell data which can be stored as simple binary 0 or 1 for whether each part is done or if you have the spell. Your idea would have to store a counter for every nm in the game for every character in the game. It would be too slow and disorganized to create the counters on the fly as they killed nms and would make queries slower. The space requirements for that could be large when you consider just how many players exist.

You need to have taken some database or algorithm courses to fully understand what you are asking them to impliment. Yes, they can quickly check character data to see if they have various TH effects, that can be done in constant time as it is likely a stored variable on the character. However, quering their nm kill list stored for that character everytime an nm was killed would be slow and not constant time. Not only would this require more storage space, but also more processing time from the servers.

Your example of the mog's during the spring event doesn't apply too well. Yes they have a few counters in each character's data keeping track of kills, deaths, etc. However, there is a difference between 10 counters per character and 765 per character.

[Aeni]

Re: My NM idea

1) quit whining.

1) Quit trolling.

As for the OP, I highly suggest you read Gman's post above. I feel strongly about this issue and feel that forced pop NM IS the way to go. Now, I'm all for leaving HNMs up for grabs, as that promotes heavy competition and, in the absence of a world PvP, it seems to at least promote some challenge to the bored hard core players out there. However, for every day and routine NMs which can be solo'd by many classes with the appropriate job levels or for job specific drops, I believe SE should change all these drops to be rare/ex and then have rare/ex "keys" to create a "force pop." I do not agree with making any kind of "key" to force pop an NM, because I can already envision the problems that can entail (Farmers already make killing off of eyes for Hktk. Clusters)

SE can and should make the changes Gman suggested, because it would be in the community's best interest to do so. In the end, isn't that what SE is suppose to focus on?

[Intensity]

Re: My NM idea

I think if S-E honestly cared about the Gilseller/monopolization issues, they could have worked it out in any number of ways over the past 3 years since NA release. The mere fact that they haven't says to me they could care less.

Doesn't anyone else feel it's semi-disturbing that S-E has rolled out 2 different mass suspension/banning of supposed Gilsellers/buyers yet the same ones we've seen for years are still present? Honestly, I don't think they actually ban anyone for either of those reasons and just tell us they do to keep us satisfied.

Above and beyond my mini-rant though, I've always said the drop system for popular NM's should be exactly what Gulkeeva posted above. Fairly easy to implement too, unfortunately it'll never happen.

[Rai]

Re: My NM idea

There are 765 notorious monsters in the game currently according to Alla currently,

Yes, ok now subtract quest NMs, Mission NMs, BCNM NMs, ENM NMs, Dyanamis NM, and Sky & Sea NMs. Again my proposal is for ground NMs of desired gear.

Just counting Dynamis NMs in the list I got up to 131, Horlais Peak 24(BCNM), Balga's Dais 25(BCNM), Waughroon Shrine 27(BCNM), Qu' Bai Arena 28(BCNM), Ru'Aun Gardens 5, Al'Taieu 7, The Spires 7, oh! also subtract the "NMs" that spawn during Expeditionary Force Mission, umm hard to count those 37.

So just these above are 291 NMs to subtract from the 765 NMs list. And that is not counting nearly all of the quest and mission NMs.

Also I have done numerous BCNM and just the other night an ENM it's funny many times after we open the chest it takes several seconds for our drops to be listed. Just sunday night doing an ENM it took about 4-6 seconds before the drop was listed on my screen, I got the 2500 EXP points listed then nothing I got nervous. If it took 3-5 seconds for an item to filter into the Treasure it would not be the end of the world.

Over the weekend I went to Castle Oztroja to camp 2 NMs, believe me on Leviathan the Gil sellers still out number regular players at those camps 3 to 1 and that's if you bring a couple friends to help.

I don't mind competing against other players but competing against a team of people sharing the characters, that logs in 1 minute before the NM has a chance to pop. The fact that in a 24 hour period those characters logs in everytime it has a chance to pop is just BS. Obviously it is a team of people sharing a character for the purpose of attempting to monopolize a drop.

This is a problem entirely of SE's making, when the problem got out of control they failed to stand up and resolve it. They should either have GMs monitor and remove professional campers or build in a systems to prevent professional camping.

Aeni, I have considered the forced pop too, and believe for many things it would be nice, but I also believe forced pop NM should always drop RARE/EX only items and they should not be 100% drop rate.

There is excitement in camping NM, having competion, but it turns to frustration when you spend 30+ hours camping an NM over 1-2 weeks and walk away from it with nothing. I want there to still be the excitement, I just don't want the Gil sellers to be the winners the majority of the time through attrition.

I already have a full time job working 40-50 hours a week, I don't think my enjoyment should be poisoned by people who's 40-50 hour a week job is fighting me on pulling NMs. I spent 30+ hours camping a NMs for a single item, I finally got it after going back and spending just a few more hours, and it left a bitter taste because how many other things could I have accomplished had I not been up against 4-6 other people who where there every single time I logged on and who are still there every day not matter what time I check.

[Aeni]

Re: My NM idea

Aeni, I have considered the forced pop too, and believe for many things it would be nice, but I also believe forced pop NM should always drop RARE/EX only items and they should not be 100% drop rate.

There is excitement in camping NM, having competion, but it turns to frustration when you spend 30+ hours camping an NM over 1-2 weeks and walk away from it with nothing. I want there to still be the excitement, I just don't want the Gil sellers to be the winners the majority of the time through attrition.

Well, take a look at one particular NM, which drops a pretty decent great sword, called Aerondight. The NM is called Cancer, a crab NM like Arthro. The drop rate, however, is abysmal unless you're lucky. Even with 2 main level 75 THFs, out of 3 times, it didn't drop anything more than crab meat, which is frustrating, to say the least. The pop isn't guaranteed (The PH could be a regular Robber Crab) and it's every 15 min to attempt (The ??? pops every 15 min unless the NM is out, which it then will pop 15 min after the NM is killed) The drop is a rare/ex as well.

What makes this challenging is that it's in a room full of robber crabs and Haunts. Since no on exps off of Haunts, the challenge to "pull" Cancer without massive link with every thing else in the room due to sound aggro makes it so that it's not a "piece of cake" endeavor.

SE can implement NMs in this manner in other zones as well. However, maybe changing the NM pop to be 100% on every 15 min like Hakutaku with a 100% rare/ex drop will be a lot better. Make the NM difficult and you'll have enough fun as is. There's fun through the challenge from environment and the NM itself, but I agree that there is no fun with camping a spot for hours on end only to see less-than-reputable players winning the claim every single time.

[Dragonsword]

Re: My NM idea

A perfect world would be...all NM's are forced pop and drop Rare/ex items. Killing the "like" monsters in the area, there is a low % chance they will drop the pop item. Example, run around killing Rock lizards in South Gusta, eventually one drops a trigger item, you run up to the "???" and trade it to pop Leaping Lizzy. He then has a % chance of dropping Bounding boots.

Simple, genious... why hasn't s-e implemented this with more NM's? A few already have it like Tarasque, and the Carbunkle mitts NM works kinda like that too. Forced pop NM's are the way to go. Everyone can get the items they want with a bit of work.

It's one thing to monopolize a certain NM, but it's damn hard to monopolize all of the mobs in the area. And why would you want to when the item that drops is rare/ex anyway?

Very good idea Gman and I note ur Bst is lvl 75, congratulation ^^ .

One strong argue point is SE's statement which appears prior to whenever we go into the select characters screen. SE stated clearly they dont want us to neglect our ..... (u all can recite it, right). With such value in mind, SE should discourage camping as much as possible. Camping, in its nature, could be a total waste of time, and the time of which SE could do something to release it back to player for their family, friends, works and studies.

[Rai]

Re: My NM idea

Yeah, SE's little statement makes me laugh, I am leveling NIN, I want the Mermaid's Ring so I am attempting the Beastman Treasure guest to get the ring. It involves obtaining 4 RARE/EX items and taking them to a Goblin who them makes the Map with the Treasure's buried location. Well, after 3 days of 3-5 hours per killing the Mobs for the drops I got all 4 items and turned them in. No ring so I will head off again, hopefully my luck will be better this time. I'm not complaining yet but if I get to 0/4 or something I will get so angry.