Fix PQ Boss Card Drop Rates

I don’t think this is a new or original suggestion in any way, but all PQ Boss card drop rates are just too painfully low to be ignored. Even as an avid lover of PQing, I still find card hunting PQ bosses to be stressful and generally a huge waste of time. Even if you PQ from the beginning of a level range all the way to the end, you can still end up with an incomplete set and have to resort to suicide to finish it the normal way. So I suggest at the very least halving the rate at which bosses don’t drop their cards.

If you don’t already understand how this would be an immense improvement to the PQ experience, I’ve explained my reasoning below.

Spoiler: Rationale You’ve Probably Heard 100 Times

First of all, no sane card hunter would ever recommend you to farm PQ bosses in the first place. Even the easiest PQ bosses are at least a several hour commitment with average luck. If the card drop rates were increased, I think it would actually encourage people to PQ more as it would be more of a reasonable step in your card hunting journey rather than a full-level range commitment. The way it is now, if you do any amount of balanced game exploration in your leveling journey, you basically forced to skip the set or suicide for several levels. Nobody likes suiciding, and the fact that you even have to resort to that at all is just stupid.

And yes, suiciding to finish the set is not even uncommon. I’ve had to do it for 2-3 levels of straight PQing basically 50% of the time for any PQ except PPQ.

Lets use KPQ as an example. And let’s be modest and say you level up twice an hour at KPQ, and you finish in 10 minutes with 4 people. With 6 PQs an hour and 5 hours, you exceed the level range naturally. This is an incredibly ideal example, usually you have to wait to find people and deal with washers and noobs which slows things down. The variable party sizes also makes a difference of course. Even if a card dropped every PQ, you would be there for at least 20 PQs, aka 3.2 hours before everyone finished their sets, and would have leveled up 6 times. That seems like a pretty reasonable commitment for a card set, right? Even if you were to get 5/5 first, it would take you at least 50 minutes which still isn’t even close to the easy sets. Once again, this is not considering anything at all that could slow you down. And most other PQs are considerably longer with similar drop rates.

And no, the night market should not be the go-to solution for this issue. That is more of a stopgap measure for completionists who are in the unfortunate position of being unable to farm cards themselves. Tell me, do you think the average player gains any satisfaction spending millions of their mesos for a set because the PQ bosses just weren’t worth putting your entire game to a halt? Card hunting should never be about how much mesos you can spend, but about diligence and exploring new areas of the game. The night market, and PQ cards as they currently are both go against the spirit of card hunting.

It would literally take one day to compile an average EPM of all PQs and adjust the card rates to something reasonable accordingly. I don’t understand why even after a massive PQ update, there is a refusal to budge on this simple issue. What keeps people playing PQs is a love for them, not chasing after ridiculously difficult card sets. The only PQ that should probably stay as it is in terms of card rates is PPQ, as the level range is an incredibly generous 50 levels (though as one of the worst PQs, one could argue a card rate buff is still justified). Please fix this.

 

Pictured: Wu Yang admitting PPQ card hunting is actually just hell

 

Thanks for reviving this old thread because I have another amazing card hunting update

On my newest character, I literally completed 2 full horus eye pendants and did MPQ fully from 70-85 and STILL only ended up with 4/5. At that point I just used the night market for my own sanity.

But the worst part? MPQ is completely DEAD. It took a whole month of waiting in one of those two PQ lobbies SOLELY MPQing and after all that effort I still couldn’t complete the set. Countless hours spent alone or missing a mage or unable to find any fourth for the life of us. Really, there is no excuse for the PQ card set system to exist as it is in its current state. When it’s this bad, can you even call it an incentive to PQ anymore?

 

Just because you can buy them, doesn’t mean that should be the most sensible option (which often times, it is).

Mobs like fairy and psycho jack have drop rates adjusted because of scarcity, why aren’t PQ bosses the same way?