Anyone notice a drop rate reduction (possibly only on solo PvE) ?.

[RimBlock]

So I did a couple of missions and a three HVTs solo yesterday and the loot for some of them was surprisingly low.  I also did one HVT with someone else and the loot was better.  I run these usually daily so have a fiar idea of what to expect based on previous experience.

• Lincoln Tunnel (Hard): No loot from AI at all.  1 item from Boss and 1 item for mission completion (these two were expected).
  

Now this means there were no item drops form any of the mobs at all (gear / weapons).  Also on defending the tech disarming the bomb, I deliberately killed as many waves of attackers as I could without any loot frops from them.

• 2nd Hard mission (I forget which one it was): Same results as above.
  
• 10 info daily HVT: 2 purple drops + Boss drop (gold 182 item).
  
• 5 info daily HVT: 2 purple drops + Boss drop (gold 182 item).
  
• 10 info daily HVT with someone else: 3 purple, 3 blue + Boss drop (214 gear items).
  
• 5 info daily HVT: 2 purple drops + Boss drop (191 & 214 gear items).
  

The hard missions were a big surprise.  I have never seen zero mob drops at all in them.  The HVT missions seemed quite poor (apart from the double gear set drop for one of the missions).  

The biggest surprise was the increase of drops when someone else joined.

I have also noticed that the quality seems to change based on who is in your team.  

I did a run with someone at level 28 and someone else with a GS of 202 a couple of days ago and the drop quality was noticeably worse than usual (the volume of drops stayed as expected).

Anyone else seen drop volume or quality going up or down based on team members / levels or especially solo from yesterday onwards ?

I really hope they have not been 'fine tuning' in favor of groups / drops based on average team GS or something like that.

 

[supercat]

I get more low-GS kneepads and mods.

My teammate is even worse. When me and another guy get a worthless Lone Star piece from HVT, he get worthless gold gear instead.

Hard missions are either filled with blue trash or even no drop at all.

 

[quinch1199]

Its possible the drops aren't entirely random and the world builds them around a metric based off the gear scores of team members as well as perhaps knowledge of how many times the players have run the mission. 

Its conjecture of course and ... unusual ... if the game has this sort of dynamic built inside it, though we DO see world building of a dynamic nature each time we go on S&D missions for example so perhaps there is some level of detail hidden there rather than a set random number generator. 

Question for a developer Q&A?

Either that or you've not sacrificed enough chickens to the god of RNG.

 

[HHHope]

I've noticed a lower drop rate. 

 

[MurphDog6]

The drop rate has gone down in my opinion, don't get as many gear set items in the dz as I did when the new update 1st dropped. Also HVT/HRT tend to drop HE now rather than gear items. It's a nice change from seeing lone star every time it's a fu**ing green though!

 

[RaneMokeev]

The drop rate has gone down in my opinion, don't get as many gear set items in the dz as I did when the new update 1st dropped. Also HVT/HRT tend to drop HE now rather than gear items. It's a nice change from seeing lone star every time it's a fu**ing green though!

On Monday, every HVT I went after dropped a set item...yesterday, all HE.

Dammit, where are those sacrificial RNG chickens....

 

[Big Grumper]

I've noticed a lower drop rate. 

+1.

 

[ChowYunFats]

Is this every night because one day I run four or 5 HVT get garbage or low drope gear but the next day I fun the same way and I pick up decent loot I wonder if it's luck or did Massive plan this like when we run the mission for intel they want us to move around not camp the same safe house just my opinion anyway's 

 

[RimBlock]

Cool, so not just me then.

Last night was also poor for the volume of drops.  I suspect they did some 'fine tuning' on Tuesday / Wednesday sometime in the background.

There also seems to have been a big reduction on weapon mod drops (or a massive increase in weapons).  I have 60+ gold weapon parts and 4 Tools mainly from deconstruction but also with a little 'opportunistic' looting.  I would also say around 50% of my scavenging for mats last night also resulted in green mats which also seems quite high compared to last week.

The Devs have stated quite openly that they would rather the majority of people upgraded via drops than crafting but if they are going to nerf crafting so much as to make it pretty much untenable, why leave it in there at all.  Ok, so yeah, so they can say there is crafting in the game. 

I am now not buying any more blueprints for gear sets or anything else as I just cannot get the mats in the volumes required to be able to use them.  Pre 1.2 it would take an evening or two to be able to craft one HE weapon and, possibly, one equipment piece.  Gear set items may take an extra evening or so.  Now the time looks likely to be 1 week just for a weapon / equipment item unless I am dedicated to only collecting mats and nothing else.

Oh well.