Ideas to improve the server - feel free to post!

[Midori]

Since Individual is superior to Shared for multiple reasons, why not make it the default drop style? Most players, especially newer ones, have no idea there is a better drop style available, and even if they stumble across a party using Individual, they don't know how it works or how to switch to it.

If for some strange reason, you want to keep the inferior drop style as default, we should at least try to figure out a way to help educate the players who lack the information. What about mentioning the drop styles on the front page of the site, plus add a question about it in the FAQ.

The question for the FAQ could be something like "Why are there two drop styles? How do they differ and how do I switch between them?".

[Lemon]

42 minutes ago, Midori said:

Since Individual is superior to Shared for multiple reasons, why not make it the default drop style? Most players, especially newer ones, have no idea there is a better drop style available, and even if they stumble across a party using Individual, they don't know how it works or how to switch to it.

If for some strange reason, you want to keep the inferior drop style as default, we should at least try to figure out a way to help educate the players who lack the information. What about mentioning the drop styles on the front page of the site, plus add a question about it in the FAQ.

The question for the FAQ could be something like "Why are there two drop styles? How do they differ and how do I switch between them?".

I imagine that it has documentation in the server commands area? Or will in the /help function that may or may not be in the works (based on previous posts).

Plus I would disagree with making individual drops default as that would alter the pso experience that we advertise to new players.  The new drop style is a cool feature that we offer on top of PSO, and I think it would be a mistake to make the defaults differ too much from the original game. Also I prefer shared drops, as to most of the players I play with.

[Midori]

Lemon, the DAR for Individual is 100,67,55,43. Do you still prefer it over Shared now? That's what I'm talking about. People say they prefer Shared because they don't know that Individual is better. It sounds a bit silly to say you prefer to fight over a smaller number of items with your party members, rather than have a larger number of items be fairly distributed among the party.

To clarify, it's totally fine for someone to actually prefer getting less items or to enjoy the competition of racing others to the red box. But what bothers is me is when someone acts like Shared is objectively better for finding items. That's why I think some information and education is needed to help correct those kinds of misunderstandings.

I can tell players in-game that Individual is better for items and explain the math to them, but sometimes they don't believe me. If an official source of this information was available, I could direct these players to it.

Your opinion on the drop systems should be based on facts, rather than false assumptions.

[Misombre]

I see what you mean Lemon. But I don't think that a player who just join Ultima would even realize that the drop style is different (if individual was default) for two reasons

1. He or she is new to pso, so have no clue how it was before.
2. You start playing, items drops, there is no rare at the beginning at the game : you don't see any difference before a looong time. You might even never realize it.

I keep in mind that it is exactly the same for a solo player. Individual drop = shared drop.

In multiplayer you only see your items. You pick them, you might rush to them but nobody cares and you'll soon or later discover that you always get what you see. Nobody will take what's on your screen.

One day (as new player on Ultima in the eventuality where individual drop would be set by default) you will end up in a conversation with some people and discover there is an other drop style, the shared drop one, which was actually the very first drop style on pso. You feel like you will try it for the heck of discovery, and after a while you will probably "meh" it and come back to individual drop style.

[Lemon]

33 minutes ago, Midori said:

Lemon, the DAR for Individual is 100,67,55,43. Do you still prefer it over Shared now? That's what I'm talking about. People say they prefer Shared because they don't know that Individual is better. It sounds a bit silly to say you prefer to fight over a smaller number of items with your party members, rather than have a larger number of items be fairly distributed among the party.

To clarify, it's totally fine for someone to actually prefer getting less items or to enjoy the competition of racing others to the red box. But what bothers is me is when someone acts like Shared is objectively better for finding items. That's why I think some information and education is needed to help correct those kinds of misunderstandings.

I can tell players in-game that Individual is better for items and explain the math to them, but sometimes they don't believe me. If an official source of this information was available, I could direct these players to it.

Your opinion on the drop systems should be based on facts, rather than false assumptions.

yes, but I do believe you just added a qualifier that you hadn't in your original post.  Not everyone plays this game to collect items.  I know that I like shared because It feels more real to me, and I can waste time running around looking at all the useless junk on the ground.

[Misombre]

Hum well I would say that if you don't play PSO to collect items, then why do you even care about the drop style ?

That aside, I understand that the math is not everything, but I do not understand the part about "feeling real" (there is still items on the ground right ? a bit less, sure, but having tons of items on the ground is all but real to me). Also, you said "real to me", so I assume that, as a veteran player (not in regard of Ultima but of PSO I mean) you are just used to the old system. And that's a good news since anyway you can choose your drop style.

But the question was about new players not knowing the individual drop style. I don't think it would be an issue if individual drop was default. Now, is it necessary ? Not neither.

[Midori]

We get boosted exp by default, with the option to decrease it if you prefer to level up slower. I don't see why it should be any different for finding items. Most players do care about finding items, but for those who don't, you would have the option to switch to Shared anytime you wanted.

Maybe part of the problem is the names. At first glance, you would probably assume that "Shared" is about sharing items, teamwork, etc. "Individual" sounds selfish and like it's going against the idea of working together with fellow party members. The names are honestly pretty terrible and confusing. I think for a lot of people they can't be bothered to understand what DAR is and all of the math involved in figuring out which drop style is better, so the names are all that they can really go by.

It might be a good idea to change the names to something like "Crumbs Competition" or "Scrap Skirmish" for Shared, and "Teamwork Treasure" or "Party Promote" for Individual. Or maybe something super simple like "Normal Items" and "Boosted Items".

Edited August 16, 2016 by Midori

[Soly]

No it won't be the default drop style.

@Midori as for your last reply, Ultima has had increased experience since long ago, the different drop styles we barely introduced it not long ago, is not something "default" of Ultima.
I won't even comment in the last paragraph but anyway, the first sentence of this post.

[Midori]

2 minutes ago, Soly said:

No it won't be the default drop style.

@Midori as for your last reply, Ultima has had increased experience since long ago, the different drop styles we barely introduced it not long ago, is not something "default" of Ultima.
I won't even comment in the last paragraph but anyway, the first sentence of this post.

Can you at least post the Individual DAR somewhere public and official so I can point people to it if they don't believe me? Word of mouth could take over from there.

[Depassage]

Could an official topic for weapons ideas and concept be made with the limitations of what can be made and what not, be explained? I think it would be way easier to track down ideas for new items/weapons for GM for future events and this way they wouldn't have to sort over 40 pages of suggestions or to explain more than once why it can't be done?

[Soly]

53 minutes ago, Midori said:

Can you at least post the Individual DAR somewhere public and official so I can point people to it if they don't believe me? Word of mouth could take over from there.

I'll do some day

42 minutes ago, Depassage said:

Could an official topic for weapons ideas and concept be made with the limitations of what can be made and what not, be explained? I think it would be way easier to track down ideas for new items/weapons for GM for future events and this way they wouldn't have to sort over 40 pages of suggestions or to explain more than once why it can't be done?

We aren't actively seeking for new item ideas tho.
If we do, then something will be made about it but just not atm.

[shong]

make photon booster, blue black stone and...whatever the other one is lol, obtainable for either 20 PDs from gallon instead of 50 or also a drop from some monster at a hard but fair rate in addition to the 50 PDs from gallon option

[Shisui]

1 minute ago, shong said:

make photon booster, blue black stone and...whatever the other one is lol, obtainable for either 20 PDs from gallon instead of 50 or also a drop from some monster at a hard but fair rate in addition to the 50 PDs from gallon option

you do the quest world of ilusions like 9 times (maybe more) and then youre able to buy those ^^ so isnt really needed to change that i think D:

[solo guy]

1 hour ago, Nightmare2.0 said:

you do the quest world of ilusions like 9 times (maybe more) and then youre able to buy those ^^ so isnt really needed to change that i think D:

Really? I know the quest isn't easy but I assume you need to do woi on ult for this. No wonder pds are loosing value again : (

[Shisui]

13 minutes ago, solo guy said:

Really? I know the quest isn't easy but I assume you need to do woi on ult for this. No wonder pds are loosing value again : (

in the end its really simple if oyu know the spawns c: (me and howi managed it as 2p to get till olga and we killed olga ^^ ) so if youre lucky  you might get 7 pds per run c:

but mostly i get 4-5