You could drop a special key for all players who reached endgame.
This special key only drops once in a month!
The key allows the player to enter a "special" dungeon/or instance
The player can take some friends with him (maybe a group of 5?)
The player can also choose to sell the key in the auction house or directly
The weapons, costume pieces, additional content (maybe auras or something like that) you find in this special instance can only be found in this rare dungeon. Not in the shop, not elsewhere...

PROs:
Everyone will be exited! "Who will find the special key this month?" It motivates players to log in every day. Maybe a friend found it and needs a team to go through this special secret instance?

The loot is rare and can´t be bought. So there will be paid high prices in auction houses. Super expensive objects motivate players to make money.

Maybe you could drop it for everyone? So if the player has not reached levelcap yet, he could sell it in the auctionhouse.

If a player finds the key and don´t use it, the key will disappear at the end of the month.

Oh and... of course there will be a superstrong opponent at the end...


Note:
I was trying to find some exiting endgame content, some fresh and new ideas.


sidenote:
You could use the same model for a weekly drop but with other loot and another dungeon of course.

If I read you correctly then it is only one single key for all (only level capped?) to "compete" over per month? If so then Fuck No for a number of reasons.

1) I don't want my access to end-game, even small parts of it, to be stipulated by almost pure RNG. I have to hit the Jackpot to receive it myself, or be very lucky that a friend or guildie wants to take me along, assuming I even have friends playing it or is in a guild.

2) Time for the entire playerbase to get to experience it. At one single run a month over the entire playerbase it better make sure that a full clear gives all participants everything that can be gotten in there, and it better be account unlocks. At a conservative 1000 players it would take 16 years and 8 months (assuming 5-man groups) to get everyone one single run in this instance, with 8-man groups (CoH's group limit) it would take "only" 10 years and 5 months.

3) Making it tradeable (both the key and the loot from inside) will increase rate of inflation due to all the grinding between the people who wants to buy it, since there needs to be adequate goldsinks for the prices asked of these items.

4) I do not think most people will be exited about it but rather disheartened that they yet again miss the chance of entering said instance. This will be exacerbated if a players receives it two or more times in a fairly short amount of time.
Add in RL obligations for most people and it will probably be even more exacerbated.

5) The rarity of both the key and the items from inside the dungeon would foster a pretty big air elitisism, which is not a good thing for this game.

---

This "mechanic" doesn't sound exiting to me, it sounds closer to being punished for not being constantly online due to missing the chances of getting the key or joining a group when one is offline.

You have a point. But there is still the suggestion to use this model weekly or even daily.

Still have the same basic problems, just at a lesser magnitude. Given RL obligations and "bad RNG" it could takes years for some to even have a chance to experience said content.

Yeah I kind of agree. I think some things being almost unattainable rarity are an issue.

Players should still have a chance to experience the content if they work toward it.

Perhaps have it be a program that you get a few lines of the code with each End-game raid run and once you collect all the pieces you take it to a contact who combines them into a functional program that cracks the vault door that's already present in each raid.

Each raid would have an additional boss that can be unlocked after beating the normal final boss. Perhaps a larger boss that provides some related special drop (akin to a Hamidon drop). Thats part of a greater set for that Raid.

Normal Raid set: "Nanite- Infused Earth Tech" Head/Chest/Arms/Legs piece
Additional Boss provides upgrades that allow you to turn that set piece into "Advanced Alien/Earth Hybrid Tech" adding some additional stat and/or increasing the base stats.

The only way you could do a lottery like this is if it's in addition to finding pieces and working toward building the whole thing. Maybe as a perk of buying from the cash shop you get a ticket in the raffle once a month as well as logging X hours in a month in game the previous month.

Otherwise a super rare lottery like you suggest should only reward something like Shop credits so people can spewnd it on what they want.

Whenever I read something like 'it motivates players to log in every day' my brain automatically transcribes it to 'it motivates players to farm'.

Not that farming is necessarily a bad thing. I certainly appreciated the dedication of the farmers who worked hard to supply the market with purples and PVP IOs in CoX. But I think with any ideas that create rare and valuable items, a lot of thought needs to go into how it could distort gameplay.

F'rex, if you're looking at something that would drop only 12 times a year, and give access to highly desirable loot that can't be got any other way, what are the odds that you'll be creating an out-of-game, real world black market for this item? Do you really want the people who do the monthly special raids to be the people who were willing to Paypal someone a couple of hundred dollars? Do you then want to get into a situation where your players are being scammed by people who promise to sell them a key/dungeon run, and welch? Do you want the entrance to the monthly run to turn into a live auction scrum, where the player with the key stands there and asks for bids from a mob of other players? Where only the hardcore players who already have a lot of in-game currency can afford to buy a slot on a run?

Again, this might all be okay within the style of the game, but it's worth thinking over.

One of my favorite systems I saw back in an MMO was if a group went in to beat a REALLY hard end game style boss for a "comic issue" the group as a whole would receive the same type. So if a weapon dropped it would drop a weapon for each player class with in the party giving them all a upgrade for playing in the raid. Then the rest was luck. Another thing I REALLY enjoyed was if a mount or a pet dropped it was given to the group to all have. NOT just a Random roll and get hated on for winning game. Cause having to where ONLY one person get's a item at the end WILL result in a sour community over time which ruins the game. It also promotes heavy Elite Raiding guilds if only one can roll for a gear. I feel if any end-game content is to happen it should be given as a pure reward to everyone with in the time of it's dropping.

Now that was back in the day's of old mmo's when they were a dime a dozen status. But I still feel either a rep grind to obtain gear or another system should be looked at! One content type that should be avoided unless this game wishes to sink into the same whole as the rest of mmo's would be the one get's it in a roll. (usually promotes the ninja greedy players)

I still like the concept. But if we watch the mathmatics:

- drop once per week
- 5 players can enter the instance
- 4 weeks per month / 12 months makes 240 players
- only 240 players would enter the secret dungeon in one year (!)

- So let it drop daily
- 5 players every day / 365 days makes 1.825 players per year
- only 1.825 players would enter the secret dungeon in one year (!)

If VO gets 1.000.000 players the conent would be super-rare and some players would cry.

So you could drop 3 items per day and make the parties bigger - maybe 8 players per group => makes 8.760 players per year => makes 87.600 in 10 years (!)

Drop the item 10 times per day while using 10 man parties => 100 players each day could enter the secret dungeon => makes 36.500 players each year => makes 365.000 players in 10 years (!)

Maybe this is a drop rate where players would say it´s okay.

But the more you drop - the more people have the chance to enter the secret dungeon - the less rare gets the endgame loot.
So at the end this loot would be nothing special anymore.

And I guess the orverall chat would be like this:

Gamma Hammer: "Secret key droped! I got it!"
Megathor: "Cool! Gratulations! Will you invite me so I can join you?"
Starlord: "I pay 10.000 gold if you take me into the dungeon!"
Battleaxe: "I pay 50.000 gold! CASH!"
Cielotech-man: "I pay 100.000 gold! I´m a healer and can do ranged DPS! Fully equiped, ready to go!"

This would be a happening everytime it dropes... something cool and exiting but the devs would have to adjust the droprate.
Not too less - not too much.

Gerald Deemer wrote:

That's why I like the idea of tying it to high level crafting. Make crafting interesting but time consuming and you'll have a lower number of people making these things. Also allow the drop to be crafted into a variety of items and you'll see fewer still as players that took the time to do both craft and gather will want to fill out their characters' slots and friends before selling them.

Add in the option to perhaps use these special drops to not just create raid gear but to upgrade non-raid gear and you could have people updating reputation gear they received from the local police for catching Red Band Thugs, etc.

Also allow crafting of costumes as part of the reputation system, crafting pieces of various NPC garbs and also selling full set unlocks in the cash shop. Maybe....well I'm getting off track, I'm working on a Crafting thesis that I'll post later.

I feel a indepth useage of crafting would help keep the community strongly together.

Gerald Deemer wrote: One thing you don't see to be considering is the number of runs a person has to do before they've gotten "everything" (not counting crafting components and similarly "reuseables") from that dungeon. For instance if it had a costume set consisting of 5 pieces and only one dropped per run I wold need at least 5 runs to collect all.

Personally I don't think we should limit running dungeons in any way, I'd rather see a limit on drops. Yes I know that that will most likely lead to that some thing are reduced to "work" for X days to get item A, "work" for Y days for item B and so on, but I see that as better in the long term than the possibility of having to wait weeks, months or even years (if you're really unlucky) before even being able to enter certain content. As you alluded to, the biggest problem with using dropped items to access dungeons is that the drop rate has to be adjusted based on active players.

That comes down to dev's at that point and the RNG they'll use to set the chances up. I mean. Debating and discussing aside the amount of work needed to obtain crafting component A to get one of let's say five needed and you get only one means. If you are lucky by doing seven runs in total to get enough of component A but now you need six of component B could push this to be a bit grindy. Maybe looking at a daily intake event like how DCUO did with the fun house to give random components and visuals would be another thing to think about. a Once a week ticket into a gamblers din to a giant spin the wheel or gum-ball machine esk dispense of chance would be another thing to think about. You are welcome to disregard this thought but it may help ease the tension of the "OH I NEED TO GRIND FOR THIS NOW.." that players are sick of by now with most mmo's.

blacke4dawn wrote:
That´s the point. Nobody should get everything. This is a rare chance to get to a secret dungeon and if you go there you will be rewarded with super-rare loot. So everyone gets something different out of it. No need to grind and do it 100 times.

I think grinding and farming is so outfashioned. There should be other ways of playing MMO´s in the year 2016.

Gerald Deemer wrote: So you're saying that they should create content (costume pieces and additional dungeons) that maybe only 10% of the player base gets to enjoy them self?
Or are you saying that we should just do it once or twice and be "happy" with what we get out of it regardless of what else it has to offer, especially if some of those other options are much better suited for a specific character concept?
To me, neither of those sound very wise for long term retention of players.

As I said, the rarer a specific piece is the more of a status symbol it becomes, and I don't think introducing blatant status symbols will be beneficial to this game in the long term.

The thing is, you have to give players a goal that they can actively work for, so a system that relies much more on random chance will not be met very well. On a similar level, not making everything attainable within a reasonable time/effort by just playing the game either make many players question why it's there in the first place or, if it's also in the cash shop, look at it as a cash grab.

Grinding/farming is one of the best ways to "balance" effort vs. reward but the key there is to not make it feel like you have to grind/farm to get something worthwhile. You should have a chance at getting anything by just playing the game, but certain activities should be "biased" towards certain rewards.

Honestly - I don't like to keep going back to CoH, because I'm glad that Valiance is doing some interesting and different things. However I have to say if there was ever a good Hybrid solution (subscription or f2p / cash shop combination option) CoH did it the best I've ever seen.

Basically no Pay 2 Win. Plenty of fun costume pieces to buy that can only be gotten free by participating in certain rare events. Some nifty effects and pet addons. I think some emotes, and some generic boosts like some minor xp boosts and some powerups like reds, blues, and wakies.

The integration was excellent. You could take the shop completely off your screen. Did not have to see it. During character creation, the items you could purchase were just right there in the normal list with an unlock icon. If you really liked it and wanted it... buy it. If not... just skip it.

Loved that system. Wife and I just stayed VIP subscription. Had fun with our monthly allotment of shop coins which was a fair amount. Nothing over the top, but a nice thank you for paying. Enough for a boost pack or two, maybe a costume piece, or a nifty art piece for the base.

I like the idea of a complete monthly sub and everyone gets everything, but I also see the benefits of a cash shop. If the go with f2p and cash shop - I really hope they go the above route or something similar. The integration was just awesome.