Please Consider Reverting Stalker's Drop Rate To 100% Or Other Changes To His Rng.

[Conquest101]

Fixed the Stalker dropping blueprints 100% of the time

When I saw this in the latest update, I was incredibly disappointed. Instead of fixing the issues players have been having with getting BPs to drop at all from bosses, DE chose to "fix" this instead?

I was overjoyed when I realized that Stalker was actually dropping BPs 100% of the time. Since the Stalker weapons were introduced, I have 70+ Stalker kills (started keeping track after about 10 or so). I still do not have Despair. I have every other weapon in the game. There is no way to consistently farm for the Stalker weapons. His appearance is RNG. His drop chance is RNG. His BP drop is RNG. It is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

Even purchasing his weapons for platinum is crazily overpriced, or I might very well have done it by this point. But I'd have to pay 800 platinum for ONE weapon.

Please consider reverting the BP drop rate back to 100% or at least tell me it's better than it was originally, when I felt fortunate when I got 1 BP drop in 10 kills.

Other changes could be great as well. A system similar to the current Alert one, where additional BP drops of one weapon reduces the chance to continue getting that weapon. Or make it so that killing EVERY boss at least once guarantees a Stalker visit on your next assassination visit. Anything to remove or limit 1 of the THREE layers of RNG around Stalker drops. I don't want the weapons (or anything) handed to me on a silver platter, but I do want the requirements to be reasonable.

I know I'll get people telling me how they got all 3 weapons in 4 Stalker kills or the like. And that's great for you guys. You were extremely fortunate, but many people were not. Please consider that. Thank you.

Edited August 17, 2013 by Conquest101

[VER1]

You will just have to farm more bosses to make the Stalker appear.

 

The drop rate was ridiculous prior to this patch and also appeared to attack me more often whcih made the collection of blueprints far too easy to acquire.

[Morte_de_Angelis]

You will just have to farm more bosses to make the Stalker appear.

 

The drop rate was ridiculous prior to this patch and also appeared to attack me more often whcih made the collection of blueprints far too easy to acquire.

 

I've killed the J3 Golem like 20+ times yesterday alone.  I was doing Defence / Raid Missions all day today and not once did he appear.

[Kahruvel]

There is no proven correlation between boss kills and Stalker appearances.

[VER1]

I've killed the J3 Golem like 20+ times yesterday alone.  I was doing Defence / Raid Missions all day today and not once did he appear.

 

That's a shame, after the 9.5 update, he was coming after me up to five times a day.

[Ob1Kn00b]

Making a ridiculously RNG-centric creature's drop rates be even further RNG is NOT a fix.  :|

[Conquest101]

That's a shame, after the 9.5 update, he was coming after me up to five times a day.

I DID get 4 more visits during the period of 100% drops, but unfortunately, he dropped 3 Dreads and 1 Hate for me. I did my due diligence. I started every day with 3 or 4 different boss kills. Every time he appeared, I did several more boss runs right after. I played with a couple of low lvl weapons equipped. However, despite one layer of RNG being removed, I was still defeated by the other 2 layers. :p

I edited my post slightly, to suggest other potential changes that might lessen the RNG a bit. Like I said, I'm not asking for the Stalker drops to be handed out like candy, just for the requirements to get them to be reasonable and more in line with the rest of the game.

Edited August 17, 2013 by Conquest101

[kgb_cyborg]

I haven't counted my Stalker visits... but he's appeared fairly consistently throughout my gameplay. I don't go looking for him, but at a bare minimum I would have had 20+ visits between U8 and U9.5. Probably something in the range of 30-40, including dropping in on clanmates during Stalker visits. Not once did he drop a bp. The first bp I got (Dread) was with this "bug". Met him 4-5 more times between 9.5 and 9.6, got 4-5 more Dread bps.

 

Having lent credence to the OP's issues, I gotta say I don't really care. But that's purely personal taste. If Stalker dropped weapons that appealed to me, I would be right there in Conquest101's shoes!

[theasl]

That's a shame, after the 9.5 update, he was coming after me up to five times a day.

I haven't even seen stalker since before 9.5...

[Agent_of_Change]

So long as you have killed bosses any bosses, it's only a matter of time and missions until he shows up, random being random and all that.

 

As to why he should not have a 100% BP drop rate... well two reasons:

 

1. Because he is a joke.  The stalker is only ever really a threat if he happens to show up while you are solo and have low level gear.  Any competent group of players will make short work of him in no time.  If he was a little more difficult (which would be nice) there might be a case for it but as it stands he drops a mod 100% of the time and BP's sometimes which personally for the threat he poses i think is more than enough compensation.

 

2. He only has three BP's to drop all of which are supposedly rare weapons, and the rate at which he shows up for people who play a lot of the game is silly.  Keeping him to the same drop algorithm as the bosses just makes sense.

Edited August 17, 2013 by Agent_of_Change

[Conquest101]

So long as you have killed bosses any bosses, it's only a matter of time and missions until he shows up, random being random and all that.

 

As to why he should not have a 100% BP drop rate... well two reasons:

 

1. Because he is a joke.  The stalker is only ever really a threat if he happens to show up while you are solo and have low level gear.  Any competent group of players will make short work of him in no time.  If he was a little more difficult (which would be nice) there might be a case for it but as it stands he drops a mod 100% of the time and BP's sometimes which personally for the threat he poses i think is more than enough compensation.

 

2. He only has three BP's to drop all of which are supposedly rare weapons, and the rate at which he shows up for people who play a lot of the game is silly.  Keeping him to the same drop algorithm as the bosses just makes sense.

1. Stalker is not a threat because DE chose to make him a loot box instead. When they created three weapon BPs that only he could drop, they changed Stalker from someone to be avoided to someone sought after. At the same time, they can not make him significantly harder for the very same reason this thread exists. He appears completely at random. Which punishes newer players if he is made too difficult.

2. Keeping him to the same drop chances as bosses would make sense if he were actually farmable like bosses, but unfortunately, he is behind another layer of RNG entirely. One that is far more annoying than any boss RNG. Even if this third layer of RNG was replaced by something requiring a large amount of effort like having to kill EVERY boss at least once, I would find this an acceptable trade-off. With effort, I would get a guaranteed CHANCE at a BP rather than a CHANCE at a CHANCE at a BP.

[Rhorge]

Making a ridiculously RNG-centric creature's drop rates be even further RNG is NOT a fix.  :|

Haven't you considered that it's supposed to be this way?

[TunaMayo]

Using underlevelled gear causes him to attack you more, just fyi.

[Rhorge]

Using underlevelled gear causes him to attack you more, just fyi.

Give proof, there is no reason anyone should believe that thus far.

[TunaMayo]

Give proof, there is no reason anyone should believe that thus far.

I thought this was just general knowledge. I tend not to get the stalker when messing around, but get the stalker whence I forma or level a weapon for mastery.

Yesterday I formad sobek whilst leveling furax and dual bronco. 3 stalkers that day.

Before then I hadn't got a stalker since double affinity weekend, when I got about 8 stalkers as my great was constantly underlevelled.

Don't have any numbers for you, just my experience and that of my clans. Try it for yourself if you have a couple of new weapons.

[Agent_of_Change]

I thought this was just general knowledge. I tend not to get the stalker when messing around, but get the stalker whence I forma or level a weapon for mastery.

Yesterday I formad sobek whilst leveling furax and dual bronco. 3 stalkers that day.

Before then I hadn't got a stalker since double affinity weekend, when I got about 8 stalkers as my great was constantly underlevelled.

Don't have any numbers for you, just my experience and that of my clans. Try it for yourself if you have a couple of new weapons.

 

It's not the case, I'm seeing more and more confirmation bias at work here.

 

He just shows up when he shows up, I've had fully leveled of mostly leveled gear for the last two weeks and seen him quite a few times, and then i've spent days doing nothing but leveling gear and not seen him at all.  It's human nature to look for patterns but this is to all appearances actually random.

 

Again on the note of why he shouldn't drop BP's 100% of the time. He is so easy to kill right now there would be no point to him, you might as well just spawn a BP in front of the play with scary music and call it good.  If he is easy to kill don't have it drop 100% of the time.  If he is an actual challenge for experienced players then have it drop 100% of the time.  either way is viable.  One is the way we currently have and it's working because it takes some time to get all the stalker gear which means taht there is an actual reason to buy it if you don't want to wait.  the other would make the stalker the boogie man he is supposed to be to new players and make it and actually accomplishment to beat him (which would then be worth a guaranteed drop).

[Rhorge]

I thought this was just general knowledge. I tend not to get the stalker when messing around, but get the stalker whence I forma or level a weapon for mastery.

Yesterday I formad sobek whilst leveling furax and dual bronco. 3 stalkers that day.

It's a general myth. I had the stalker 5 times in the span of an hour once, all my gear was maxed out. Stalker is completely random and there are no confirmed ways to influence him.