Let's Talk About Ifrit Loot: The Sequel

A new post referring to Ifrit loot changes surfaced recently. If you haven't read it yet, you can view it here.

As discussed earlier, the loot system for Ifrit is very poorly designed. According to the forum post, we will be keeping the old and ridiculous system, but adding a new token system as well. This system will allow a loot list trade-able token to drop as well, and an unspecified number of these tokens may be traded to an NPC to receive the weapon of your choice.



This new token system could  be nice because it puts a limit on the luck based craziness. Most players have a main class, and would prefer the weapon for that class over all others. The token system will help with this. You can save up those tokens and go get the weapon you really desire, while still having a shot at a random weapon, for which you may or may not have any use. Another benefit of this system is the ability to share. If one of us gets our primary class weapon, we can pass our tokens to the other until they get theirs. If there's a LS that wants to reward a particularly helpful member, they can all pass their tokens to that person.

So that's the upside. Here's the downside: We're still going to be watching duplicate weapons fall to the floor instead of being traded to someone who can use them. Let's say one of us saved up our tokens and purchased a shiny new Ifrit lance. The next Ifrit win, the lance drops to the same person...and hits the floor. The other four Lancers without the spiffy weapon are going to be very upset, and with good reason. The person who bought the Ifrit lance from the NPC is going to be upset because they just spent all their tokens on an impressive weapon, which they spent (potentially) many battles saving up for, just to watch the exact same weapon disappear. This makes absolutely no sense. Wouldn't it have been easier just to make the weapon loot list trade-able instead of adding the token and NPC?

As you can see, we have more questions than answers again. Do you need an Inferno Lamp for tokens? Is the drop rate of the tokens as low as that of the weapons themselves? How many tokens do we need to trade for a weapon? And Why tokens instead of making the weapons loot list trade-able? Why two systems in the first place instead of removing the original system? Hopefully someone will respond about the rationale behind these decisions. Otherwise we'll just have to wait and see how it all works out with patch 1.20.

What do you think? Is this a step in the right direction, or are we still on the wrong track?