Honestly I dont see large drop numbers as a bad thing, makes it much easier for the non UO rich/hardcore event players to get these items. I know the people that get rich selling event items probably see it differently.
i dont see the higher drop numbers, as a bad thing by itself. the points system is great, and does ensure that if your attending the events, and get looting rights, that you WILL get event items.
however the two major problems i do see with it is:
the rediculous amount of unchecked botters - this makes it harder for all just to get looting rights. Characters definitely have a much harder time getting rights than they did at the start of the system change, and causes EMs to have to make "artificially hard" bosses that can be really frustrating if your not using a cheat program. Deathspit for example, combined with val elemental. EM bennus go to template it seems, but with the lag caused by 200 characters (about 10 players control around one third of the total chracters at events) make it much harder to get rights than it was when the system was put in place.
what do we do? bot ourselves to adjust to the system? upgrade characters? Id say upgrading characters is perfectly natural, but is technically the reason the system was changed in the first place. because people didnt want to upgrade, and complained.
The other issue is by not knowing the true numbers, which makes it very hard to make an educated decsion when buying, or selling, event items.
If some weeks there are close to the actual 10 to 20, but some weeks much higher, its extremely hard for a buyer or seller to know what the true value will be. Ive underpaid and undersold items for less than half their worth, as well as overpaid / oversold items for double their worth under this system of not knowing the numbers. it just makes a huge aspect of rares collecting, knowing how rare the item actually is, largely unknown and in the best case scenerio an educated guess. thats why you have drops often tank in value when the botters / those with multiples offload, then people dont understand why the price goes back up and the item cant be found anywhere, or frustrating cases (espcially sets) where one peice might be worth 500m, while another piece is worth 50m. we saw this in the Traccor set (helm and chest very low number, others very high number) and will probably see it in the Legends set (helm was much higher number than the gloves) Its much harder to make an educated purchase or sale nowadays because we just dont know any of these numbers for sure. this isnt really good, or bad, just not what people are used to. players have to do a lot more legwork to figure out what the value of an item might end up being.
