Rumour on single target skill vs. AOE skill drop rate

I've been paying attention to this exact topic since the beginning of the rumors so hopefully i can help shed some light.

Here's a screenshot of Kimmy suggesting that the drop rates for event items changing on a skill by skill basis is a "semi thing."



Here's a post by Kimmy that suggests the code allows drop rates to be altered on a skill by skill basis:
https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/the-grand-gachapon-thread.6868/page-2#post-62780

Here's a post by Kimmy basically confirming that the drop rate for certain items use skill IDs individually.
https://forum.maplelegends.com/inde...rop-formula-be-made-public.24611/#post-179759

All this evidence in addition to anecdotal evidence from countless people including myself, it's overwhelmingly likely that certain items that globally drop such as event items or hunting gach have rates affected by skill IDs. Anecdotally, past events had a much more noticeable difference in drop rates per skill than more recent events which suggests that the formulas have been tweaked and improved over time so this is probably not as big of an issue now than it was in the past. This post by Kimmy also backs up this theory: https://forum.maplelegends.com/inde...rmula-be-made-public.24611/page-2#post-180102. I am a bit sympathetic to why they don't even disclose that different skills have different drop rates because it would cause the community to hyper-focus on each skill to determine which is marginally better than others despite the formulas being obviously not perfect. It would just cause too much grief and tension to bring the subject up.

 

So i hit #10 on last summer event with my FP.
Method was simple. Just spammed meteor as long as i could.(mainly ulu2) not even single moment for single target skills. (Whoa, that was intense)

Yielded like 30 boxes/h in average. (Lesser in ws/kent days.) I believe this is enough size for taking as proper sample. A month, #10.

I did know my method was terrible since single-target spammers yielded like 75+/h if they choosed proper way. But i never thought it's unfair since i earned huge amounts of exp, mesos, and chance to help friends around me by leeching. I didnt want to give up such benefits only to get enter just for top 10. And if drop rate does not sensor skill ID? Than mages would get every benefits including event. What a joke. No thanks.

Thats why i feel my challenge was worth to.

Anw, including my past experience for training 2s of 199 mages, AOE skill lowers drop rate of event stuffs and gacha, but no for general drops including cards. Tested for almost thousands of hours and got confidence for it. (Road to 2*200 was super tedious so i did many experimental stuffs during marathon including something illegal lol) Proof? No. Just, believe or not. Im too lazy to make evidences for my words.

 

I remeber back then a GM confirming it back then. I bet some some old guys will remeber Gi, I took his word but I´m not sure if is true or it has ben changed later. Is not hard to believe that something that harms mages is in the game since from way back then there has been a fight against mages to make sure they are not too good or exploitable in grinding areas or farming (even tho that many of those nerfs harmed good mobers as well, uninteninally).

 

To add on to that a bit more (although granted, only one session doesn't account much for statistical purposes), I was hunting cards last night on my I/L, and I had much more success getting them to drop with Thunder Bolt. I tested (this was on Toy Trojans, by the way) using only Magic Claw for a decent while and couldn't find a single card. It was only after I opened up with Thunder Bolt that they started dropping. So, I'm apt to agree with you regarding monster cards at least.

I would be willing to hunt Snails for an hour or two at Thicket Around the Beach III to get more relevant data, as their card drop is good enough that any card luck would even out within a short time.

 

On that logic wouldn't there be threads upon threads of "Why haven't I landed 7 30's in a row?" Sounds like you're taking the stance of we are better of not knowing, which is the opposite of taking the stance of transparency.

So you answered similarly to how I expected you would. There are already certain maps meta for farming mesos. There are already certain maps meta for farming exp. There are already certain maps meta for farming specific items. All this would do is give more information to the players, I fail to understand how that is a bad thing. I understand the drop rate formula is complex, but it sounds like you are saying its so complex that we wouldn't be able to understand; so its better off if we just don't tell you.

It's my opinion that these stances comes off as condescending to us players.

 

I think I'd prefer not everyone to know how drops work as well. Balancing tends to go in a harsher direction when metas evolve and get discovered, and the more public it becomes the more apparent that it needs to be addressed when one sweaty group can get better rates than a more casual group. The game tends to be better for everyone when there isn't a clear path forward, and the more that folks turn the game into a spreadsheet simulator the more balancing that becomes needed, which translates into more tweaking and work to ensure that it's as fair as it can be.

I can live with a few folks trying to figure out an optimal strategy, but when it becomes as pushed into the culture of the game as leech or washing then you'd probably begin to see balancing around the topic, which will tend to punish casual people from participating in playing and overall making the game worse off. Frankly, if you believe you have the best strategy then it's probably in your best interest to keep it quiet.

 

This already HAS turned into that situation, though. You can see right in this thread that loads of players are doing all kinds of unintuitive things like farming with Magic Claw on 4th job mages.

 

At least the Average Joe would not have to worry about the decision to use a normal attack/Power Strike/Blast over Rush when they try to farm for non-event or non-gach items. :X

 

I believe most people would be satisfied enough if a simple question could be answered that wouldn't disclose specific drop rates:

Do different skills affect drop rate?
Yes or No

I'm not a hardcore player so I would definitely like to have a certain "peace of mind" by knowing if, in my limited gaming time, using different skills would affect my chances, even if I wouldn't know which skills.

EDIT: I do of course, understand that even knowing this could have undesired consequences for the balancing of the game. In the end I leave it up to the Staff to know better and I must accept their answer either way.

 

But is that the optimal strategy?

I don't like "solved" games, and releasing the actual rates gets rid of the fuzz that allows for any class to be a good choice. If one of them is better than the others then it influences people's choice in what to play. Demystifying the game doesn't actually make it any better, it just leads to more folks telling new players they've made terrible choices and need to play a different class/wash more/leech more.

Solved games aren't very fun in their final state, while the act of solving a game can be. I won't say anything on the nature of drops, but if evidence points towards something being true then allow that to influence strategy, as results don't really care about my opinions on game design.

 

Let's make Legends an "unsolvable" game like Starcraft Brood War where the stratgey always evolves!