Drop system revamp

[Gluttony]

So Gluttony's journey started in April 2010 and after over 2 years of coming to terms with the differences of how this system works there is a constant that I notice on the forums and that is the rage that drops being completely random has on numerous players. It wasn't until the Infested Deck event, before the realization sunk in that looting a vanity item is beyond awesome ...though my heart was promptly place back inside my chest when I realized the rate at which these thing were dropping but that was my first taste. From 04/2010 until 07/2012 absolutely no vanity drops, and that's not for lack of effort. I farmed heavily during the Easter events, and SL has always made new vanity drops available in most campaigns; guess I was just in the wrong place at the right time. Now that I have assimilated into the ranks of the ambassador program, my major issue is having to tell the new players "abandon hope all ye who enter here," and I try to sugar coat it as best I can.

I have already been asked on more than one occasion, "how can I get the undead mask to drop," and after explaining how the random drop system works the convo comes down to one major boiling point: "You mean I can farm this entire event and not get one?" ...and the answer that will ensue is yes. Yes, not everyone will be able to have one of these limited edition masks. Yes, despite hours of farming and hundreds (of thousands) of kills you may still fall short. Yes, this has happened to me before and it can happen to you. At some point the allure of getting a vanity item fades and the realization of how much time you wasted sets in. So, let's fix it shall we?

Proposal, no changes to the system need to be made just a minor addition will suffice. All we need is a luck counter. Think of a trip odometer in a car, when you start your journey you reset it to 0, after traveling to your destination you reset it to begin a new trip... well that's what its there for at least. In game, your luck counter starts at 0, for every finished (yes I mean finished, completed, exited via the circle) map you gain 0.01 to your counter. If you happen to get a vanity drop before the meter hits 100.0 then it resets, if not then you get a mandatory vanity item at that point.

Basically I'm looking for a fail safe to ensure that players don't end up with nothing after two years of patronage. Hours of endless grinding should net something in the end. It pains me to have to tell new players they could come out of a situation empty handed, and really that's all that can be said for the current system.

Now there will have to be some safe guards in place. First, the counter won't be visible to the gamer; this is to ensure they cannot game the system and place themselves in a map that drops only undead masks when they're due to hit 100. Second, the increment of 0.01 cannot be a constant to prevent players from counting up themselves; bosses per map can affect this number or time spent in a map, max kills in a mob, anything really as long as the number cannot be kept track of outside the system. Finally, tell players about the system, having knowledge about some of the internal code allows players to feel secure about spending their time in game; if you keep it from them then rumors of how to manipulate the system begin and eventual outrage only seems to follow.