On Random Experience and Human Flaws

On Random Experience and Human Flaws

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kosmo.5187

Kosmo.5187

One thing developers of MMOs (and other games) have to decide is how much of their game they want to take out of the players’ hands and leave to “chance”. To determine who gets to be the lucky ones, they utilize what is often called a Random Number Generator (RNG). These can function in different ways, but invariably it comes down to the fact that random numbers determine if you were lucky enough to receive a certain item. In this sense it’s almost like playing the lottery.

The developers set the drop rate of items depending on how many they would like to circulate in the world. This is very important, because it determines the value and prestige of these items. Most MMOs have significant aspects that flourish entirely because humans are very reward driven. The chemical processes in the brain allow some people to reach the point of addiction when playing these games, and this is largely due to a chemical called Dopamine.

Continuous rewards for work (the carrot-on-a-stick approach) is therefore a relatively simple way to keep a game afloat. There should always be something to work towards or players lose interest. The number of players who stay to play these games entirely for gameplay (or other) reasons is too small to sustain development in most cases.

Random experience is a common way to ensure that certain tasks will, on average, take a certain amount of attempts (and therefore time). Other time-based restrictions are in rewards like the Laurels, which can only be obtained at a maximum rate of 1 per day and 10 per monthly achievement. This ensures that developers can price items so they know exactly the minimum amount of time it can be acquired in. Other MMOs employ similar tactics to create continuous rewards for work.

Human Flaws

This game utilizes the RNG for many things, including things like the frequency at which you obtain globs of ectoplasm from salvaging items. If a salvaged item has a 75% chance to give you a glob of ectoplasm, many people assume this means that every time they salvage 10 items, they will sit on 7 – 8 globs. This isn’t necessarily true. Just because a flipped coin has a 50% chance of “tails”, you are not guaranteed to get tails when you flip the coin twice. You could have a run of 5 heads, or 10. Even after you flip the coin after getting “heads” 5 times, you still have a 50% chance of getting heads again rather than tails.

Similarly, when you salvage items, you may not have 75 globs of ectoplasm after salvaging 100 items. Some will have less, some will have more. The problem is that you as an individual represent a very, very small sample rate, but because of the way humans function, you also value individual experience very highly. This means that if you receive less, you may be convinced that the chance is indeed not 75%. Something must be wrong!

Some of the people who experience this will then go to a forum, such as this one, and encounter another flaw in human beings: confirmation bias. If you see someone who agrees with you, chances are that you will latch on to this person’s opinion and value it over people who disagree with you, regardless of the evidence. The problem is augmented because people also have a tendency to voice complaints more than satisfaction. This means that people who have been less “lucky” are more likely to come to the forum and tell everyone about it. In this particular case, it may even seem like a lot, because the game has millions of players.

The developers, however, have access to all the data from all the players. When you look at a huge sample rate, the statistics will much more accurately reflect the specific drop rate. This phenomenon is called the Law of Large Numbers (in case you want to look it up).

Remember the saying: “Luck is probability taken personally”.

Think of the possibilities.

On Random Experience and Human Flaws

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Geikamir.6329

Geikamir.6329

As a player I shouldn’t have to look at the big picture and think “Well I may have put in tons of hours and got little-to-nothing to show for it, but at least someone out there is getting all the rewards for the same or less effort than I am. What a relief!”

That’s not fun for anyone but gambler’s. And really only the small percentage of winning gamblers.

Imagine working 40 hours a week and instead of a set wage, your income was decided by pulling a number out of a hat. Not many people would stick to that job. Only the lucky ones that were rewarded more for equal or lesser effort. Oh, and gambling addicts.

Toons: Foreseer, Geikamir, Rapscallion, Specimen, Scythian, Zeau, Ärtifact, and Replica.

On Random Experience and Human Flaws

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Posted by: nirvana.8245

nirvana.8245

I agree, its messed up. But from what I read in these forums, my impression is that people want it that way with their outright defence of the game. It personally doesn’t appeal to me, but it appears it appeals to large audience who like grinding and "random"luck. Coming from a non-MMO gaming background, I now see why MMO’s do not appeal to me. From the way Anet sold the game I had the impression that this game was different from all of those other MMOs that I had avoided like the plague. I guess it was a smart business move to sell it the way they did.

On Random Experience and Human Flaws

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Posted by: Geikamir.6329

Geikamir.6329

In the end they are just a company. This game just happens to be their ‘product’, nothing more. It’s about maximizing profit, even if it means double-speak marketing. There seems to be a rift between what the designers want and what the marketing/financial department gets the final word on implementation. That’s why there are so many design decisions that just don’t make any sense.

Toons: Foreseer, Geikamir, Rapscallion, Specimen, Scythian, Zeau, Ärtifact, and Replica.

On Random Experience and Human Flaws

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kosmo.5187

Kosmo.5187

I’m with you both on some points. Though I tend to log a fair few hours in these games (many more than I should, no doubt), it isn’t spent steamrolling through the content. Having played since launch, there is still some content, especially dungeons, that I haven’t had the chance to see yet. You don’t need to do randomization or time-gated content to keep me happy, but you’re right that a lot of people seem to like it that way. This is probably due to one of the points I made in my original post; the dopamine encourages work for reward behavior on some level. People like having goals to work towards, and this is an easy way to do it without allowing some to push through it very quickly.

These games always have a huge team working on them before launch, and then once it’s out it goes down to a much smaller team. This means that phrases like “if we had the resources” and “we would like to do that at some point” begin to be thrown around, and I suppose it’s for economical reasons that this happens. However, I’ve never actually seen a game like this try to keep their original team on, say, a year after launch to continue developing content for people to play through. Who knows what kind of effect it would have? We’d probably have more things to buy in the gem shop, and there’d be a lot of content to cycle between once that year is up.

It’s just interesting to see that there are so many random aspects and that it remains so prevalent. Even in the gem shop, the Black Lion chests are one example, the dyes are another. It was my original impression that vanity would play a huge part in the shop to generate revenue, but the rate at which items are added to the shop has been so low that I’m not entirely sure this is the case.

However, the point of my original post was more to try and explain the nature of randomness. There had been so many conspiracy posts about manipulation and inconsistent drop rates, e.g. from salvaging, that I wanted to weigh in.

Randomness certainly creates a specific atmosphere and mindset in a large part of the population, and it permeates outside of their own playing space. It is, for example, not always easy to find a dungeon run with people who just want to play for fun. Most people do it almost exclusively because they want a reward as quickly as possible.

I genuinely think that ArenaNet wants to continue making a really awesome game. Sometimes economy/reality gets in the way. There is no conspiracy, just limitations.

Think of the possibilities.

On Random Experience and Human Flaws

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: cargan.5689

cargan.5689

Problem is that a well reasoned explanation as to why there is not a conspiracy only proves you are part of the cover up

Ulfar SOR