[Master] - Improving Rare Titans

Rare titans are a huge disappointment the way they’re working right now.

They seem really exciting at first—they’re a more challenging fight than regular titans, they have the color reflect mechanic, and they tease an increased chance at a very desirable 4* ascension item. But that’s all it is: a tease. The drop rate on the 4* AM is so low that most people won’t win one even if they kill every rare titan they see for several months. This is frustrating, disheartening, and disappointing. It makes something that should be a highlight of the game into a chore and a letdown.

So my proposal is this: increase the drop rate on the teased 4* AM significantly. Have rare titains drop one of the advertised 4* AM per star of the titan (so a 7* red rare titan would drop 7 rings, guaranteed). The tooltip should also be updated to make this drop number clear, which will really help cut down on surprise and disappointment.

Doing this would turn the appearance of a rare titan back into a genuinely exciting event. It would also bring rare titains into better alignment with the other “rare” ways to get AM, like the rare quests.

I agree. Not one person in my alliance got the tabard on the rare we just defeated. A couple newer plauers were very disheartened and asked what the point is.

This would be great.

2 Likes

Thanks! If you like the idea well enough to vote in favor of it, please click the blue “Vote” bar at the top :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

Removed some other votes and voted for this.

:smiley:

4 Likes

I would love to… But I’m out of votes. I will however vocally (keyboardedly?) Cast my vote.

Off topic, sorry… But never figured out why they have limits on votes…

Because it means you can only vote for the things you care about most. Otherwise, people could just vote for everything and SG would have trouble telling what the community cares most about.

But they do have a mechanism to recover already-given votes so you can give them to different ideas. That way at least you can make sure your top 5 priorities have your votes.

2 Likes

Ahhh thank you. Although 10 votes vs 5would be be better. But that’s here nor there.

Again thanks

I suspect this might still be a frustrating experience, on par with bad War Chest loot. Waiting even longer and potentially getting nothing exciting, even if your odds were better, is no more enjoyable of an outcome.

Brainstorming a bit on ways to address that…

If Rare Titans were even rarer — something like once per month, as you suggested — then I think they could potentially be a guaranteed source of good loot without breaking the game.

The biggest challenge would be balancing the rewards with achievement. As with the Challenge Events and Rare Quests, I think it’d be appropriate that newer players might get less loot than more experienced and stronger players. But titans obviously don’t have the same mechanics of setting a bar to pass as quests/events.

I’d be reluctant to use rank to determine guaranteed loot. People at the margins of loot tiers would probably be frustrated, and it would foster competition over cooperation. It also would problematically incentivize flask usage for personal gain.

A potential way to avert those issues would be to have established guaranteed loot tiers based on the average score of your personal hits. I’m suggesting average and not total score, as using total score would again incentivize flask usage for personal gain, potentially at the expense of others, and would also create a significant P2W advantage for players who choose to buy all offers with titan flasks included.

Instead of competition between players in the alliance, the thresholds could be pre-determined for each titan, and everyone to pass the mark would receive the specificed loot.

As a variation, perhaps the average of your best 5 hits could be considered, so those wishing to use a flask are given the opportunity to increase their average, without excessively incentivizing flask use for personal gain the way using total score for loot tiers would.

There could even be a cooperation bonus, something awarded if the alliance managed to have a high participation percentage, or a high number of players achieving a certain loot tier or higher. That could help further incentivize cooperative behavior over personal gain through flasking.

Other references

Linking some existing topics for future forum research purposes

Calls to Improve Rare Titan Loot

These posters appear aware of how rare titan loot works, and are suggesting alterations, or questioning the premise.

Surprise/Confusion Over Drop Rates of Bonus Mat and Rare Titan Loot

These posters appear mostly or entirely unaware of how the bonus item works.

2 Likes

I’d certainly be ok with increasing the drop probability to 100%. I agree with the risk of disappointed/surprised players. I’ve seen a lot of those posts myself, but I really appreciate you collecting them up so that SG can see the magnitude of the issue all in one place!

Interesting idea. But it definitely penalizes the weaker members of the alliance anyway. It also switches you from flasking to blowing out dragon bombs, time stops, and tornados.

How about this:

  • A+ through C are guaranteed the 4* AM
  • D is guaranteed the 3* AM of the same color
  • A+ is guaranteed a Damascus Blade or Tome
  • A and B have a significantly increased chance at a Damascus Blade or Tome
  • C has a moderately good chance at a Damascus Blade or Tome
  • D has a moderately good chance at a Compass or Gloves

Because A, B and C all get the 4* AM, it should mitigate the “flask till you drop” mindset.

Thoughts?

3 Likes

They could also make 2 new rare titans for d blade and tomes. Have made a post about it.

4 Likes

Good point, though I think it’s appropriate that the weaker/newer/less engaged members of the alliance get less loot, since you shouldn’t get insane loot just for being present and tickling the titan while others do most of the work.

But the use of items to get to a score threshold could be an issue, though rare titans are already when most people will break out more items and flasks anyway.

I’m also not sure that premise bothers me. After all, newer players use item nuking to complete Challenge Events and Rare Quests for guaranteed loot. I don’t see that as unreasonable.

This seems like it would encourage self-motivated behavior for the A+ spot, and for crossing the threshold between each tier.

And there’s no way to bump up from B to A or A to A+ without displacing someone else. I think that will encourage competition instead of collaboration, and I think titans specifically should ideally always work best (i.e. encourage) when collaboration is maximized.

In the current system, gunning for ranking is mitigated by the, “eh, I’ll probably get crap loot anyway” factor. Guaranteed loot for a tier would change that.

That’s why I was suggesting instead having some threshold that as many alliance members who manage to cross get that loot tier, rather than capping the number of people the way the rankings do.

I also think there needs to be some distinction between star levels of titans. A 5* Rare and a 12* Rare presumably shouldn’t give the same loot for the same tiers/thresholds. But maybe that variation could be in something other than ascension mats, like that rest of the loot that comes wirh it.

I’m not sure about this. If there’s significant distinction between top 1, top 2-5, and everyone else, that’s motivation to flask your way into the top spot, or at least a high one.

Again, I think it needs to somehow work more like Rare Quests, where as many as everyone in the alliance can get the same loot if they can meet a certain threshold.

1 Like

Simple change: a rare n* titan is guaranteed to drop n of the special items. So a 10* Rare tiger drops 10 mystic rings.

Edit: if n is too many, then n/2.

3 Likes

That’s an interesting idea. I’m not sure if the code they have will easily support new colors like that, but definitely worth considering. I hadn’t seen this idea, so thanks for mentioning it and linking it!

Hmm, maybe. Do you imagine it would drop them to the top n ranked players in that case, or that the distribution would still be random, but the drop rate for the bonus roll would effectively be vastly increased?

That’s clever. It very organically grows the amount of loot, and actually gives some direct meaning to the star ranking.

Are you worried that it might encourage people to go into smaller alliances in order to up their chance at rare titan loot, or do you think the other advantages of a big alliance will outweigh?

The regular loot day-to-day from the lower-level titans a small alliance can take down is incentive enough to be in a full, or nearly full alliance. One could cap the AM % chance at 50% just to be careful.

Random by whatever logic is currently used. I don’t know if the AM drop is completely random today or weighted. So just a big and proportional increase in odds.

2 Likes

This is an interesting idea.

There could also be an alternative play mode, e.g.:

A smaller alliance would have trouble with bigger titans, which is somewhat of a mitigating factor.

But this could also be addressed with a (members / 30) multiplier on the number of dropped items. So a full alliance gets the full number, and a smaller alliance gets proportionally fewer, but at the same drop rate.

4 Likes

Random seems like a good solution for avoiding competitive gunning for spots, though it still doesn’t address the underlying disappointment those doing well and getting nothing feel.

I think that goes back to the bad War Chest loot comparison:

@Zephyr1 @Kerridoc That was almost simultaneous. Great minds think alike apparently :smile: If you two are thinking a cap based on alliance size, that sounds good to me.

So are we thinking then that the month I proposed is a good frequency, or just keep the current frequency but up the loot to “capped sliding scale based on titan stars?”

1 Like