Well, I guess everybody wants to talk about the “guild guardian style drops” thing.
Implementing a “guild guardian” style system for treasure drops (at the current drop ratios) won’t even help as much as people think, but it would be a huge boon to the overall “flow” of the system.
Right now, since rares generally hit mythic last, a guild guardian-style “cut all troops” system would only be accessible after dropping roughly 8k shards into a given kingdom (~400 portal pulls). I’ve calculated the current average xp per portal drop at roughly 31.85xp per portal opened (keep in mind this could drop significantly in the near future for reasons stated below). That gives us approximately 12470 xp after just mythicing our troops, for 8k shards. Enough to get to roughly hoard level 158 on average. This is also enough shards to require at least some participation in delve events with full daily farming clears, or heavy participation and shop purchases and some kind of constant progress.
Right now, if we went above and beyond, and spent, say, 12k shards on any given faction, while hitting the mythic treshold +4 at 8k, our average expectation of xp would be 19110, enough total xp to take a single hoard to about level 195. If we do the same calculation assuming guardian style drops (again, based on current treasure rates and ratios, full treasure drops would me avg 57.74 xp per portal), we’d get 24,288 xp. We’d be looking at roughly hoard level 210. Keep in mind this assumes you use every treasure, and regardless expect a huge amount of extra gold cost for those last 15 levels. In reality, if you can’t beat a faction at 195, you probably can’t at 210, either, but people might be more inclined to seek out those shards to push just a little bit farther if they are just a bit more effective.
The whole chaos shard system has two diminishing return points - the overall “value” of a shard with respect to significant items it can pull (treasures + troops, then the troop half the drop pool becomes “worthless” after you mythic them and we only have treasures) the amount of value you get from the things you get from the shards (you need more treasures and more gold to raise hoard levels, and the gold cost itself is another diminishing returns system). Lets also keep in mind that Chaos Shards are a gated resource only available through limited entry systems in an of itself, so there is no way to accelerate off a set timetable without also a significant amount of resource investment (as well as time).
Simply put, you can make a satisfactory diminishing returns system and keep almost everybody on a consistent reward schedule of a fairly small range without the introduction of “zeros” into your reward tables. Hoard levels already go up to level 1000 (>500k xp), a single one of which is already impossible to reach with all the treasures obtained on any given account since delving was introduced over a year ago, so any increase in the ability to get treasures after you have already completed every faction troop to mythic just translates to the ability to gain a small amount of stat points with an absurd amount of effort or real time waiting, or a combination of both. Making a small amount of stat points available for an absurd amount of extra effort and/or real-time waiting seems right on point with this series of updates.
The likely reason it “won’t happen” is because they are, for some reason, locked into the mentality that “if we do this, it will make things too easy and allow people to accelerate past the schedule we have laid out”. And by that I mean, I don’t think level 500 faction teams (for most delves) are for the most part even supposed to be beatable without just throwing yourself at them over and over or buying your way past them. Theres now a ton of ways to raise your stats a bit that, when you combine them all, raise your chances of getting a good run, but its still a banging head on wall situation for a lot of them. This amount of stat differential won’t even put a dent in any pace of these current systems while appeasing the people that want to put in 20 times the effort for 2% more of the gain. Theres very little downside here, even coming from the angle of “we want this to occupy x amount of time”.
And now I’ve gone in derailed my own thread.
Anyways, as some of you might have guessed, the reason I’m bringing this up in the first place is because treasure drop preview rates for portals aren’t even close to what we are getting now (and never were). Reading between the lines based on the information I’ve received, when the issue is “corrected” (which will happen eventually whether or not I press the issue now, just like with tributes someone will notice randomly, and I want to get everyones opinions out now before a change is made), it will likely result in the rates being hastily adjusted to the rates displayed.
Currently, we are getting over 50% overall treasures rate (current state stated 30%), and the rate of the total drop pool of each treasure is dropping higher than the stated rate in nearly all cases (we are currently getting about ~3x gold rings, ~2x chalices, 1.5x crowns, ~1.3x crowns/sacred treasures, lamps and gold rings are pretty close to the stated rates). The ratios within the treasure pool now significantly favor gold rings, though. The avg xp per portal pull at the stated rates would be about 21.075 (though if this is done and guild guardian style drops are implemented, we get 70.25 avg xp per portal pull after everything is mythic +4, and mythic +4 becomes easier). My estimate for shards to get mythic +4 all under the new rates wouldn’t change much (avg expectation of 10 legendary copies would be just over 7140 - rounded to 7200, since almost nobody does draws of 1, significantly more than the others for these drop rates, so thats our average benchmark). Using this paradigm, our average xp 7200 shards would be 7587 - enough for hoard level 122. An additional 4.8k shards (total 12k) under the “true rate” would leave us at 12645 xp, about hoard level 159, roughly where we get now for spending 8k… so you’d have to push 50% harder for the same exact outcome as now using “true rates”. If we used those additional 4.8k shards on this same faction with the “guardians rule” in effect, we’d get a total of 24447… hoard level of about 211 - roughly the same place we get now for spending 12k shards with “Guardian Rule” with the current drop rates. Either way, you have still have to push way harder to have this many extra shards per month and overcome the diminishing returns for gold as well.
If they see this and nerf the rates to the “true rates” without adding anything to counterbalance they are effectively making a decision to make things harder for people that are already complaining it is too hard. So if this is done, the best way would be to accompany it with the “guild guardian drop system” boost - a treasure nerf for casuals looking to just get the troops or mythic them while only slightly reducing the amount of shards they would need to reach either of these goals; and in the same range of total treasure xp value for hardcore players, more if they pull 12k shards per month (keeping in mind treasure xp required does not scale linearly with hoard levels, so that significantly more xp isn’t that much more stats). Thus, the overall timetables for any given goal remain safe while creating an environment that feels less “wasteful”.
I was going to make this argument after I showed my full math on just how far off everything is right now related to the portal drops, but I guess now is a good a time as any to bring it up.
As a heads up, I probably will end up forcing the issue soon because the existence of a completely incorrect (like, not even close) drop rate display when it has been vehemently stated (multiple times, and now again recently) to be configured from the same data the server uses for drops could be indicative of a larger problem (but hopefully just the wrong table is being displayed). Also, historically, if they do notice before the issue is forced they will probably, summarily and without warning, change the drop rates behind the scenes to match the rate displays and not the other way around, won’t do a news post until they get called out for doing this, and be impervious to any discussion about changing the rates because it was a “bug the whole time”. I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen. So sorry in advance for any nerfs that come from this (but I’ll totally take credit for the buffs).
tl;dr: Regardless of what the actual treasure rates end up as, Guild Guardian style treasure drops would be a good way to facilitate small stat growths with huge effort that is right in line with deeds(l15 kingdoms)/medals/elite levels.
Smallest actionable feedback (If any devs happen to be reading this): If you have all troops in a faction at mythic +4, only treasures will drop there. In terms of overall delve levels, and therefore stat gains, this will convert to, the effect is relatively minor, it would compound nicely with other recent systems, while appeasing a great deal of players, especially if something happens to be nerfed…
