Guild Wars 2

The second concept is superior in my mind because:

Hope seems to be an inherent quality of us humans. I suppose that’s why gambling is so prevalent – everyone wants to be the lucky one. However, as you pointed out, in a truly random system, like GW2, there are “losers,” through no real fault of their own.

By allowing people to build up some kind of resource to eventually get what they’ve been denied, you allow the luck/hope element to still provide the thrill of the hunt, while diminishing the justifiable frustration that would arise from a player killing Boss XYZ 1000 times and walking away empty-handed.

With the first concept, it seems to diminish the luck/hope/thrill element quite a bit because everyone knows, within reason, that they’re rewards will arrive in a given time.

In short, keep the gamble, but reduce the impact that “losers” endure.

If you’re looking to flesh out the how-to with these concepts and aren’t simply looking for people’s opinions on which they prefer, I’ll edit this post.

I think that RNG with a failsafe is a good way to go.

Taking the Mystic Forge as an example, let’s say you are trying to forge a Precursor weapon. In a pure RNG system (like we have now), failed attempts are simply failed attempts.

If we add a failsafe though, all failed attempts (failed attempts being defined as any forge attempt that COULD produce a Precursor, but produced something else instead) could drop a token that in enough quantity can be traded for a precursor. This means that failed attempts are now incrementally valuable as well.

Even if the failsafe takes a while to kick in, it creates a system whereby you are guaranteed a success eventually, which removes the negative side of the outliers.

I’m going to get some popcorn…..

Might I add that a simple comment from John (or any Dev) that states emphatically that there is NO secret LUCK factor tied to any player / account / character anywhere in the code (or ever has been), might help to squash some of the crazyiness I envision showing up in this thread. Just a suggestion.

I like the direction of #2 for sure. I have a lot of guildies who have this issue. I think a few things that work in concert with RNG to the detriment of the player experience are difficulty:reward ratio and what is actually rewarding as a drop. Example: The Fractals. There are no tokens granted for players that can get you a Fractal weapon you want. I have run hundreds of Fractals and have received very few Fractal skins. Shouldn’t there be a way to accrue a token of some sort to get the ones we want?

• A non-RNG way to work toward a precursor that doesn’t involve finding the quickest way(which usually involves repeating a small number of events for crafting materials as they have the most value in order to sell and buy what we need). The precursor should be the reward for a meaningful game play experience. It also should take long enough that the market doesn’t crash, but also so ArenaNet is still making a handsome profit off of players buying their legendaries with gems converted to gold(in my opinion there is nothing “Legendary” about being able to buy one with real money but that is a discussion for a different time).

• When the Fractal update happened about a year ago you were going to add a Fractal Weapon box that allowed you to choose what skin you got. What happened to that? That would be a great item to add to that specific content.

• Exotics are not “top-tier” loot anymore but I feel like they still drop that way.

• Events that were bugged were often patched with a band-aid by removing loot from the mobs. Even after the events were fixed properly, often times the loot tables were left bare. (Halla Corpseflayer, Crusader Angaria, etc.)

• Gold bots in the early times of this game would often farm groups of mobs that had good drop rates. A lot of those enemies now don’t drop decently anymore even though bots have been destroyed mostly. Why not bring back some of the loot to those mobs?

• The First Halloween was very rewarding to players for beating the Mad King. We even got BLTC items from it. You guys have really tightened the reins on rewarding loot.

• The second Pavilion Event saw massive cuts to the type of loot players got. I liked the design of the second one better from a game play perspective because it was more challenging, but the loot was decreased across the board and even some of the “rewards” dictated that we spend gold on top of the currency you were letting us earn. There was also a gold sink involved in kicking off the event. So an event got more challenging and we were rewarded less and a gold sink was added. See the issue? That to me isn’t rewarding for players at all.

Brother Grimm.5176:

I’m going to get some popcorn…..

Might I add that a simple comment from John (or any Dev) that states emphatically that there is NO secret LUCK factor tied to any player / account / character anywhere in the code (or ever has been), might help to squash some of the crazyiness I envision showing up in this thread. Just a suggestion.

I’m pretty sure that nobody think there is special code about that.

But we’re a lot to rather think that RNG is bugged in some way, and that’s why, in addition to a “gauss distribution” as described in the previous post, some players are always lucky and some are always unlucky. As the RNG mechanism is all in all quite complex (modified by magic find ; depends on damage done by the player / by his group compared to damage done by other players ; special items with a different table loot ; …), there could be several bugs introduced in the system. Remember that the % of magic find displayed in the hero panel is wrong since months (but the real number is supposed to be correctly applyed), so it wouldn’t be surprising that there are some bugs in the loot mechanism itself.

I do want to point out that we need to be very careful with any system suggested that relies less on RNG and more on doing some particular number of tasks. My minds jumbled at the moment so i can’t think of a better way to describe it.

RNG slows down the flow of supply as players cannot target a specific set of tasks to obtain a particular item. If players have an option to farm X event Y number of times to get Z item, you’ll have a greater influx of supply for that item which could potentially disrupt the market for it as well as those that rely on it.

This may have been what you meant by “flatten the experience”, but I just wanted to make sure.

Can you mix approaches 1 and 2? As in, say, the longer you go without getting a drop of a certain significance (I don’t know how you classify things on your loot tables or if it’s just as simple as rarity), the more likely you are to get it the next time? Obviously starting out with very very small increases to your chances… or is that just too much to deal with, changing every individual’s chances based on time? Does the current magic find system allow something like this to be implemented (even for loot normally unaffected by magic find)?

I don’t have any objection to the token idea, nor do I to non-random methods of obtaining rewards. I’m just thinking a hybrid might make the experience feel less like a big mechanical change which could be nice.

I Love the Idea of your 2nd idea. I personal am in the “loser” scale. Just over 4500 hours and no precursor drop. Thats just a example. Another would be that I just got the Fotm spoon for the first time yesterday. I run 2-3 fotm tiers a day scenes sept 9. The RNG needs to be less and More like. You kill this boss you have 75% chance to get this weapon. that would be great!

Brother Grimm.5176:

I’m going to get some popcorn…..

Might I add that a simple comment from John (or any Dev) that states emphatically that there is NO secret LUCK factor tied to any player / account / character anywhere in the code (or ever has been), might help to squash some of the crazyiness I envision showing up in this thread. Just a suggestion.

He actually DID state this definitively in the question & answer thread, I was glad to hear.

I think the second option would be the way to go. Keeping things as random as possible is always for the best, but since the game is a situation where being an outlier means having a really crappy and frustrating time, I feel taking measures to cull BOTH ends of the spectrum might be a good idea. So people who get two precursors within a week can stand to take some losing RNG, people who play for 1000 hours with no precursor get bonus RNG. If you did it that way and things are balanced already, then there should be slightly less of a net effect on the economy.

cpg.7140:

Can you mix approaches 1 and 2? As in, say, the longer you go without getting a drop of a certain significance (I don’t know how you classify things on your loot tables or if it’s just as simple as rarity), the more likely you are to get it the next time? Obviously starting out with very very small increases to your chances… or is that just too much to deal with, changing every individual’s chances based on time? Does the current magic find system allow something like this to be implemented (even for loot normally unaffected by magic find)?

Building something like that into the logic, you have to consider at what point it kicks in, what the different tiers would be, and when it deflates… is it based on 15 whites means the next one has a 93% to be a blue? And if you get a blue you’re then reset back to whites…. how do you multiply upwards in a fair way… unless you track drops per player, and multipliers per loot tier for each player (and character?)

Other variables then kick in – if you don’t get a white then does that increase the chance of getting one of THOSE because you’re having a lucky streak? I’m sure I’m oversimplifying it, but I’m no maths guru!

Tokenisation, as per the black lion scraps, has made a huge difference to the experience of opening chests.

Magic find clearly has a huge impact too. I actually like the current balance of things as they are. Yeah, sometimes you feel you don’t get the loot you’ve been waiting for, but it gives you that constant excitement that the next time you’ll have a better run.

I’ve always felt in this game, though, that sometimes you have a bad “login” – everything you do on that character during that login has an awful RNG, and then, days later, you have a fantastic one. It’s led me to speculate that GW2 might have a “seed” generator on login that modifies your overall luck for that session. I have no idea if that is true or not.

Brother Grimm.5176:

…
I’m pretty sure that nobody think there is special code about that.

But we’re a lot to rather think that RNG is bugged in some way, and that’s why, in addition to a “gauss distribution” as described in the previous post, some players are always lucky and some are always unlucky. As the RNG mechanism is all in all quite complex (modified by magic find ; depends on damage done by the player / by his group compared to damage done by other players ; special items with a different table loot ; …), there could be several bugs introduced in the system. Remember that the % of magic find displayed in the hero panel is wrong since months (but the real number is supposed to be correctly applyed), so it wouldn’t be surprising that there are some bugs in the loot mechanism itself.

There are CERTAINLY very vocal players that are convinced of the “secret LUCK stat”.

its not really relevant weather there is a secret luck stat or not. If a random works properly, there will be people who will, will seem lucky, or those who seem unlucky, when compared to the data. This is the normal expectation of the bell curve.

So whether it is a bug or not doesnt matter. The point is these people are bound to exist.

Would bringing back the collector NPC’s from Guild Wars help resolve the issue? It’ll still cause an increase in supply but perhaps it would be easier to manage than trying to track which players haven’t received a particular drop.

There’s a lot of junk items that really have no use other than to sell to vendor. If players needed to farm 15 shocking crystals to exchange for a charged lodestone, perhaps that would be an acceptable alternative? There’s still RNG involved but at least your efforts won’t go entirely wasted.

Hiding progress behind NRNG is likely to get frustrating, unless the player specifically knows it’s there. So, in a very basic sense, I’m leaning toward #2.

But there’s a lot to consider for token-based or incremental rewards.
Are the tokens sellable (like Mystic Coins, which really need another use), or would they be account bound/wallet materials? Are the token rewards account bound (like karma gear) or sellable (like precursors)?

Do the tokens guarantee a specific reward? The idea of 250 Precursor Tokens and some other ingredients making a specific precursor has hit the table more than once. Or would the tokens allow a player to buy a specific class of item?

One of the biggest questions, how many tokens would be needed? Are they earned once per day, to avoid the effect of farming? What content has them?

But yes, lots of questions.

Beside that, though, I don’t believe that un-rewarding lucky people is necessarily the way to go. A generic flattening of the reward curve just means that everyone has everything eventually, but we need want to continue having a healthy economy. Instead, allowing positive skew by bringing negative outliers in line keeps those ‘unlucky’ people participating in the economy with an element of impatience.
(Why yes, I did buy around 50 Foxfire Clusters in the past few weeks. =P)

Which leads me to think that #2 is better overall. It shows a sense of progression, a quantifiable amount of work both done and remaining. It maintains motivation more than a hidden RNG bonus. Even Magic Find boosts feel pale in loot when we still get a legion of greys and blues and greens. And when that yellow/rare item hits, it’s not worth enough to get excited about, unless it’s salvaged, which has a gambler’s chance of being a huge disappointment. (That was the most expensive 20 silver mithril ore chunk ever.)

lt;dr – Yes to bringing the back end of the luck curve up a little with incremental/token systems, preferably kept to the wallet to avoid clutter.

And John, thank you so much for not just listening, but actively engaging this topic.

What is this in reference to? RNG rewards from Dungeons and Fractals? The mystic forge?

I don’t want to get too detailed without knowing the context, but obviously human bias plays heavily into these things. Additionally, RNG is often a very good reward distribution system even if players claim to hate it. It’s variable interval reward scheduling. Even if players say they hate it, their brains love it. That’s why people who claim to hate Fractal skins being RNG keep doing Fractals – when they do get a skin it feels great, even if they say they hate it.

Ayrilana.1396:

I do want to point out that we need to be very careful with any system suggested that relies less on RNG and more on doing some particular number of tasks. My minds jumbled at the moment so i can’t think of a better way to describe it.

RNG slows down the flow of supply as players cannot target a specific set of tasks to obtain a particular item. If players have an option to farm X event Y number of times to get Z item, you’ll have a greater influx of supply for that item which could potentially disrupt the market for it as well as those that rely on it.

This may have been what you meant by “flatten the experience”, but I just wanted to make sure.

there is no real logical reason why a player should not be able to target a specific set of tasks in order to get a specific item. There are many methods of limiting output without random. To be honest random is one of the worst means of limiting output. However, i think the strength of random is, surprise, and the possibility of coming out ahead.

I would not eliminate random, however aside from streak breaking mechanics, i think that specific methods that are slower, with limited output also can work well when properly designed into content.

You may have never played gw1, but they had a zone called domain of anguish, beating each submission had a guaranteed way to get tokens, but also you could get random tokens from enemies in the zone. The random tokens was exciting when you got it, and made it interesting, but the tokens for beating an area made it so worst case scenario by defeating the area, you could achieve something.

Darmikau.9413:

What is this in reference to? RNG rewards from Dungeons and Fractals? The mystic forge?

I don’t want to get too detailed without knowing the context, but obviously human bias plays heavily into these things. Additionally, RNG is often a very good reward distribution system even if players claim to hate it. It’s variable interval reward scheduling. Even if players say they hate it, their brains love it. That’s why people who claim to hate Fractal skins being RNG keep doing Fractals – when they do get a skin it feels great, even if they say they hate it.

this is a non specific thread, random is in many facets.
The talk is not really saying to do away with random, but rather how to mitigate it so that one doesnt feel its pointless to try.

for example, there many more people who never play the lotto than those who do. Now if you try to make the reward for a task a lotto ticket, many people will not be interested in doing it.

disclaimer: IMHO… /disclaimer

As a concept, RNG is a dangerous tool. It can be used very effecivly with the small things,… eg: If I’m hunting birds, not all will drop me glorious red feathers, but when used for big things like I killed a bird and got the god slayer axe which is the best itme for everyone and it only has 0,00001%… then its bad. Terribad. It creates unbalances not only in “power” and “prestige” but also in economics. It creates more harm than good.

Its always nice to win the lottery but only when we are all playing the lottery. How would any other challenge would be if they would have a random 0,00001 of automatically wining the game?

So in conclusion, its good for the small to medium things, but terrible for big rewards. Nobody wants to complete hard content with a chance of wining because that also means a chance of loosing. 0,1% of getting the loot is 99,9% of not getting,… 99,9% of the time you only get another disappointment and that is not a pleasant feeling while playing.

I think you should think in another direction. Leave the RNG System as it is.. everything that can be bought with Money at least for me has no Prestige in this game( no legnedaries , no titles, no dungeonrewards where dungeonpathselling is in place) So it doens’t really matter if you have rng or not. People could always buy it. I think what is more important is to get rewards as in SAB! this is for me the perfect rewardsystem:
- A baseweapon Skin everyone can buy/aquire
- A accountboundweapon that Needs you to do the Level yourself in tribunational mode
- You can’t get carried through the tribunational mode because you Need to get to the checkpoint

Give These types of rewards along with some achievments ( Like speedrun duo solo Gambit dungeon achievments ) And you don’t Need any new Content to make Players happy. People that have badluck with rng try to get skillweapons stuff they get for sure and the others are happy still.

Brother Grimm.5176:

There are CERTAINLY very vocal players that are convinced of the “secret LUCK stat”.[/quote]

Because in GW1, there was such an animal. Magic Find was not an advertised number, and was actually modified by activities (opening presents either provided a buff or a
decrease to this number, that lasted until the following years Lunar event. (I think it was the Canthan New Year event).

The current system is not purely transparent, so there might be buffs/debuffs based on things like like attendance, early participation, etc. We do not know. All variations have not been tried to verify or disprove combinations. Nor can they. Without transparency outcomes become speculative.

When dealing with RNG, game devs have to be mindful of gambling laws, and IMHO, (more importantly) human folly. It does no one any good if people become addicted to the reward system of any game, leading to poor personal outcomes to Real Life. There is a fine moral line that must be walked.

That being said, there is a real problem with the current state of affairs in this game and its RNG. Many people have figured out the safest way to get a precursor is to farm Champ bags, Dungeons, and other low risk/high reward activities. The sales of these rewards will net you a precursor faster than trying for a drop. The unfortunate outcome to this will be an ever increasing demand over time. If the RNG stays stable for any of these items, prices will be on an ever increasing spiral. This is creating a different type of gear treadmill. As more items have Legendary quality, the treadmill will widen, frustrations will increase, and more will become disenfranchised to the idea of getting a Legendary.

I am probably the worst sort of person to ask about this, as I don’t consider a random chance of getting good things to be a “reward”, don’t see it as an incentive to do anything, and in fact see purely RNG reward systems as a good reason not to participate in something. Basically, I’m pretty much hostile to the whole concept of RNG “rewards”.

That said, from my perspective option 2 is by far superior. It provides a concrete measure by which someone like myself can feel time/effort is rewarded.

I agree that culling both ends of the super lucky & super unfortunate spectrum is something that should be looked into.

I’m not sure whether I’d want my “luck” balanced based on whether or not I drop or forge a precursor though. While I don’t find RNG particularly thrilling I don’t think that people should be able to expend all their luck like it’s some form of limited currency. You shouldn’t ever feel like you’ve “Used up all your luck”.

John posted a link to the Wikipedia article on “Clustering Illusion” earlier today (or possibly yesterday night) with a very nice .GIF illustrating a random sample distribution > The illusion being the tendency for people to rationalize small fringe streaks and clusters as statistically significant.

The inclusion of rewards systems that dispense less varied rewards may prove beneficial to play retention, satisfaction & attainment. , (E.g. Reward Chest/Boxes that allow you to roll on “Named” weapons of a certain type) and can be purchased with some sort of token system.

I would suggest the use of Pseudo-RNG that Dota2 uses for %hit chance abilities.

Simply put while using the mystic forge as an example: The more you fail, the higher the chance to succeed gets and the more you succeed the higher the chance to fail becomes.

That way you keep the element of randomness while balancing the experience for everyone.

let me just say this, i unfortunately fall into the bracket of people that are RNG-cursed. I love playing the game, and for a long while i was avidly looking forward to finally getting my first ascended weapon/armor chest, but now that i’m rank 821 in WVW, and have completed over 4-hundred and 55 fractal runs, and have still yet to receive one, while many people i know in my large guild that have run far less in both those realms have already gotten multiple chests, just makes me lose hope. I’d love to see a fix to this guys.

Easy,

each time you don’t get a drop fitting into a category rare/precursor/asc drop, etc,
your chance of getting said drop is improved each time until you ultimately GET THE DROP. At which point the timer resets.

Eventual guaranteed drop. I can’t stress how bad this game needs more reward systems to keep players interested. Let’s be realistic people, we’re all RNG cursed. The gambling factor for hours invested in this game is atrocious.

I mean kitten ultima online implemented this system back in 2000 LOL

RNG can be fun in order to provide that “Oh snap, look at the drop I just got” feeling but I feel like the way loot and gear works in GW2 that feeling just isn’t there.

WARNING: Wall of text incoming! TLDR at the bottom.

I would love to have actually obtained my exotics from drops but the rates are so low it’s just not worthwhile doing so. I can earn the money to buy a full set from the TP in the same time it would take me to just get a single exotic drop (I am not taking dungeons into consideration here as that gear circumvents RNG already).

I honestly think part of the issue we have in GW2 and RNG (in regards to gear) is the trading post, or more specifically the global market for “rare” gear. For example, exotics HAVE to be super rare in order to maintain their global economic value, this makes sense, but the issue is that an unrestricted, global trading post means that it’s far easier to obtain “rare” gear from the TP. Obtaining gear this way is just a bit lackluster in comparison to getting it through drops and it isn’t a particularly exciting or fulfilling experience.

Diablo 3 is a perfect example of a similar scenario; legendary gear rates were so low so as to maintain their global rarity and value on the auction house. Removing the auction house, and thus the need to maintain said value, allowed for drops to be far more common leading to a much more fulfilling and exciting loot experience.

Now before everyone starts thinking I’m a nutcase and am going to suggest “remove the TP lol” that is not what I’m going to say. Mainly I just wanted to try and highlight what I perceive to be a problem with the current state of the game. However, I do have a proposal. I want to say now that this is by no means a fully fleshed out proposal and it undoubtedly has issues that I haven’t considered but an idea can’t be iterated on if it isn’t given in the first place.

So, on to the proposed changes. For ease of discussion I’m going to assume we are talking about exotic gear drops specifically here but it could be extrapolated to include other drops. If all stat specific exotics (exotic zerker gloves, exotic dire sword, etc) were made account bound on acquire, soulbound on use, it would be possible to bring the drop rate of exotics up to a more satisfying level, for the sake of argument, say 1 in every 500. Even though these are now far more common we aren’t flooding the market because they’re account bound. However, on top of this we keep the old exotic rates but when these are dropped they are tradeable exotics that have no stats that become soulbound once the stats are chosen (similar to the new crafting backpacks). This gives us the best of both worlds; Tradeable, rarer exotics are still valuable as they allow any stat distribution to be chosen and so are a surefire way of getting the exact stat set you want. The more common, untradeable exotics provide a more satisfying rate of exotic drops but you’ll likely spend longer finding the specific stat combo you want. The higher drop rate for untradeable exotics should provide a more motivating experience making the search for the stats you want seem more obtainable rather than waiting ages for that one exotic drop and finding out it’s something you don’t want anyway.

As I have mentioned, this is far from a complete solution. For starters it doesn’t take into consideration the increase of exotic salvage or the effect this would have on the mystic forge. However, I hope that there are some ideas here that will act as useful and meaningful points for discussion.

To those of you that have made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read

TLDR:
Increase drop rates for exotics but make them account bound on acquire, soulbound on use.
Replace existing exotic drops with tradeable exotics that let you choose their stats.

Darmikau.9413:

What is this in reference to? RNG rewards from Dungeons and Fractals? The mystic forge?

I don’t want to get too detailed without knowing the context, but obviously human bias plays heavily into these things. Additionally, RNG is often a very good reward distribution system even if players claim to hate it. It’s variable interval reward scheduling. Even if players say they hate it, their brains love it. That’s why people who claim to hate Fractal skins being RNG keep doing Fractals – when they do get a skin it feels great, even if they say they hate it.

Fractals are not a good example of a good RNG reward system imo, I know a lot of people who just gave up with fractals, my fractal group disbanded too because it was just not worth the daily 2 hours when we only have around 0.0015% chance to end up with the skin you want

LordHogFred.3691:

RNG can be fun in order to provide that “Oh snap, look at the drop I just got” feeling but I feel like the way loot and gear works in GW2 that feeling just isn’t there.

WARNING: Wall of text incoming! TLDR at the bottom.

I would love to have actually obtained my exotics from drops but the rates are so low it’s just not worthwhile doing so. I can earn the money to buy a full set from the TP in the same time it would take me to just get a single exotic drop (I am not taking dungeons into consideration here as that gear circumvents RNG already).

I honestly think part of the issue we have in GW2 and RNG (in regards to gear) is the trading post, or more specifically the global market for “rare” gear. For example, exotics HAVE to be super rare in order to maintain their global economic value, this makes sense, but the issue is that an unrestricted, global trading post means that it’s far easier to obtain “rare” gear from the TP. Obtaining gear this way is just a bit lackluster in comparison to getting it through drops and it isn’t a particularly exciting or fulfilling experience.

Diablo 3 is a perfect example of a similar scenario; legendary gear rates were so low so as to maintain their global rarity and value on the auction house. Removing the auction house, and thus the need to maintain said value, allowed for drops to be far more common leading to a much more fulfilling and exciting loot experience.

Now before everyone starts thinking I’m a nutcase and am going to suggest “remove the TP lol” that is not what I’m going to say. Mainly I just wanted to try and highlight what I perceive to be a problem with the current state of the game. However, I do have a proposal. I want to say now that this is by no means a fully fleshed out proposal and it undoubtedly has issues that I haven’t considered but an idea can’t be iterated on if it isn’t given in the first place.

So, on to the proposed changes. For ease of discussion I’m going to assume we are talking about exotic gear drops specifically here but it could be extrapolated to include other drops. If all stat specific exotics (exotic zerker gloves, exotic dire sword, etc) were made account bound on acquire, soulbound on use, it would be possible to bring the drop rate of exotics up to a more satisfying level, for the sake of argument, say 1 in every 500. Even though these are now far more common we aren’t flooding the market because they’re account bound. However, on top of this we keep the old exotic rates but when these are dropped they are tradeable exotics that have no stats that become soulbound once the stats are chosen (similar to the new crafting backpacks). This gives us the best of both worlds; Tradeable, rarer exotics are still valuable as they allow any stat distribution to be chosen and so are a surefire way of getting the exact stat set you want. The more common, untradeable exotics provide a more satisfying rate of exotic drops but you’ll likely spend longer finding the specific stat combo you want. The higher drop rate for untradeable exotics should provide a more motivating experience making the search for the stats you want seem more obtainable rather than waiting ages for that one exotic drop and finding out it’s something you don’t want anyway.

As I have mentioned, this is far from a complete solution. For starters it doesn’t take into consideration the increase of exotic salvage or the effect this would have on the mystic forge. However, I hope that there are some ideas here that will act as useful and meaningful points for discussion.

To those of you that have made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read

TLDR:
Increase drop rates for exotics but make them account bound on acquire, soulbound on use.
Replace existing exotic drops with tradeable exotics that let you choose their stats.

i think it might be a good idea to have items that can be sold drop at lower rates, and methods, or drops for your charachter only that have lower rates.
however, i think they would have to make the difference between sellable and not sellable more clear, and i would still allow such items to be salvaged.

(i personally think all non salvageable/npcable gear needs to cease to exist)

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

I do want to point out that we need to be very careful with any system suggested that relies less on RNG and more on doing some particular number of tasks. My minds jumbled at the moment so i can’t think of a better way to describe it.

RNG slows down the flow of supply as players cannot target a specific set of tasks to obtain a particular item. If players have an option to farm X event Y number of times to get Z item, you’ll have a greater influx of supply for that item which could potentially disrupt the market for it as well as those that rely on it.

This may have been what you meant by “flatten the experience”, but I just wanted to make sure.

there is no real logical reason why a player should not be able to target a specific set of tasks in order to get a specific item. There are many methods of limiting output without random. To be honest random is one of the worst means of limiting output. However, i think the strength of random is, surprise, and the possibility of coming out ahead.

I would not eliminate random, however aside from streak breaking mechanics, i think that specific methods that are slower, with limited output also can work well when properly designed into content.

You may have never played gw1, but they had a zone called domain of anguish, beating each submission had a guaranteed way to get tokens, but also you could get random tokens from enemies in the zone. The random tokens was exciting when you got it, and made it interesting, but the tokens for beating an area made it so worst case scenario by defeating the area, you could achieve something.

Like i said, if players could target specific tasks, they could greatly increase the supply of an item. This could devastate a lot of markets. Having RNG slows down the rate at which they acquire these items.

John Smith.4610:

wwwes.1398:

John Smith.4610:

There isn’t such thing is some accounts getting stuck lucky. Yes there’s an RNG, yes it’s random and there are streaks and outliers and an even aggregate distribution.

Can you confirm whether it is an RNG that uses some sort of value from the user’s account or whether it is purely random/session based? I have a friend who swears that smack-talking an anet dev during a beta weekend pvp match doomed his account to poor rng for life.

Absolutely it does not use anything to do with a user.

The relevant quote, for posterity.

Dehuang.2053:

Fractals are not a good example of a good RNG reward system imo, I know a lot of people who just gave up with fractals, my fractal group disbanded too because it was just not worth the daily 2 hours when we only have around 0.0015% chance to end up with the skin you want

That’s exactly why Fractals are a great RNG system. Same as Dungeons chests in GW1, or getting lodestones from chests in GW2. Don’t mistake me for thinking that Fractal rewards couldn’t be better. They can and should be given the effort they take. But as an RNG system they do exactly what they’re supposed to do: Give just enough of a reward that players go again, believing “if I do one more run maybe I’ll get the skin.”

Of course, people will vocally complain that they quit Fractals, or that they’re so unlucky they can never get the skin they want, but I’ve never met a person who actually ‘quit’ Fractals. They still run them, even if it’s occasionally.

• Lottery
  So I feel the biggest ‘RNG’ issues comes when you feel like playing the lottery.
  A lot of people have strong feelings against this, whether they would be considered lucky or not is irrelevant in that situation and already creats a negative loot experience.
  You can see a lot of hatred regarding pre-cursors and black lion tickets stemming from this exact issue.

• Distribution
  Obviously with any type of rng you will not give everyone the same size of pie.
  The biggest issue right now is that there’s no real sense of reward for doing accomplishments. Whether that’s dungeons, fractals or world bosses. It’s either you get a tiny slice, or a giant slice. And because of how that works, you are more often disappointed. And a giant slice in itself is a bad reward. If you were to cut it up in 3 pieces you would make 3 people happy. Debatably just as happy.
  Right now I feel it’s either you’re getting crumbles or the whole pie at once.

• Risk vs reward
  This is pretty much non existant right now it feels like. I can’t come up with anything decent that’s not locked away a super small % drop rate to make it rare. When you would show off your ‘prestige’ item, you don’t show that this person has completed Arah a lot. Or is a master of speedclearing dungeons. Or did lots of high level Fractals. Or is the most useful person during Tequatl. You look at this person with a fractal tonic and you consider him lucky. You look at this person with the wurm’s helmet and consider him lucky.
  Why? Because a lot of people have repeated the hardest content with no rewards. Only crumbles.
  There’s nothing in this game that’s prestegious.

In the days of City of Heroes they added a “streak breaker” to their RNG hit code that guaranteed a hit after X number of misses, based on the hit percentage chance.

If your to hit was over 90%, it allowed only one miss in a row, the next attack is guaranteed to hit. Over 80 but under 90, 2 misses, etc. It still allowed “lucky” people to exist but significantly helped players on an unlucky streak.

Now here you would track loot roll percentages. As for implementation, it could be as simple as number of “misses” needed for a guarantee drop at a specific quality or a more complex statistical analysis that would trigger if the player’s count falls below say 10% of a standard distribution. Depends how much you want to “mess up” the aggregate drop percentage.

Example. A player for his level and luck he has a 5% chance for a rare. The streak breaker would kick in after 19 misses. Or you could, using the stats method make the trigger after 44 or log(0.10)/log(0.95) where 0.1 is the lower 10% distribution threshold and 0.95 is 100% minus the 5% chance to get a rare.

So a 1% chance would have either a 99 miss threshold or a 229 miss threshold.

Of course upon getting a drop or triggering the streak breaker code would reset the miss count.

Just some thoughts.

I would think the best way, since we already have so many tokens, would be some token system that would represent a failed roll. If Precursors are on the same roll table as other items, then this makes sense. Your reward is this item BUT you could have won a precursor. Sorry for the bad luck, try again.

If precursors are on their own table that is only accessed very rarely, then how do you do this? Every attempt gets you x tokens? If this is the case, then there is no need for a roll for a precursor..just make them token bound. It would be nice to have the possibility for it, but honestly, no one is grinding events for a precursor. They are grinding for the loots to sell for a precursor. If the one they want drops, or is equivalent in value to the one they want, then great. But a precursor dropping has become a bit of a joke amongst the community.

The reward system needs to be revamped. The RNG system has two major flaws

1) No progression (every time you attempt it, it’s like you’re starting over)
2) Not fair (by nature, randomness is not fair)

Rather than focus so much on RNG rewards you need more progression rewards. For instance using X number of fractal tokens to unlock a fractal weapon skin. That way if you get lucky with an RNG drop, that’s nice. But if you don’t you’ve made progress towards what you want by getting a token.

Roybe.5896:

I would think the best way, since we already have so many tokens, would be some token system that would represent a failed roll. If Precursors are on the same roll table as other items, then this makes sense. Your reward is this item BUT you could have won a precursor. Sorry for the bad luck, try again.

If precursors are on their own table that is only accessed very rarely, then how do you do this? Every attempt gets you x tokens? If this is the case, then there is no need for a roll for a precursor..just make them token bound. It would be nice to have the possibility for it, but honestly, no one is grinding events for a precursor. They are grinding for the loots to sell for a precursor. If the one they want drops, or is equivalent in value to the one they want, then great. But a precursor dropping has become a bit of a joke amongst the community.

You have to keep the method of getting a precursor the same (i.e. forging high level rare and exotic weapons) because letting you forge ANYTHING to get tokens that can be used to buy precursors will result in massive price spikes across the market as people buy up all of the cheapest items to dump into the forge for tokens.

That’s why I suggested that only attempts that COULD output a precursor should reward precursor tokens.

I would agree that the second method makes the most sense – it would seem like an unfortunate solution to give a minority of players worse rewards in order to ensure that another minority get better ones.

I think in general people like the concept of a super lucky minority. Sure, it’s not them today, but maybe tomorrow it will be them! It’s that sort of RNG element that keeps people playing.

The second suggestion seems superior since it deals with the downside of the super unlucky players without crushing the dream of every player to be one of the super lucky

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

I do want to point out that we need to be very careful with any system suggested that relies less on RNG and more on doing some particular number of tasks. My minds jumbled at the moment so i can’t think of a better way to describe it.

RNG slows down the flow of supply as players cannot target a specific set of tasks to obtain a particular item. If players have an option to farm X event Y number of times to get Z item, you’ll have a greater influx of supply for that item which could potentially disrupt the market for it as well as those that rely on it.

This may have been what you meant by “flatten the experience”, but I just wanted to make sure.

there is no real logical reason why a player should not be able to target a specific set of tasks in order to get a specific item. There are many methods of limiting output without random. To be honest random is one of the worst means of limiting output. However, i think the strength of random is, surprise, and the possibility of coming out ahead.

I would not eliminate random, however aside from streak breaking mechanics, i think that specific methods that are slower, with limited output also can work well when properly designed into content.

You may have never played gw1, but they had a zone called domain of anguish, beating each submission had a guaranteed way to get tokens, but also you could get random tokens from enemies in the zone. The random tokens was exciting when you got it, and made it interesting, but the tokens for beating an area made it so worst case scenario by defeating the area, you could achieve something.

Like i said, if players could target specific tasks, they could greatly increase the supply of an item. This could devastate a lot of markets. Having RNG slows down the rate at which they acquire these items.

It would balance them more based on players instead of the rng chance. The items would come into equilibrium to real value since production could be altered to meet demand like irl. Once equilibrium is met, players slow on targeting those items…thus balance.

I have been playing for Team Fortress 2 for quite some time, long before it was to become the war-like hat simulator that it is now.
When the hat system first came out, the method of getting drops for it was 100% random. It ended up that hats were INSANELY valuable because there was a significant portion of the people that would literally never get a hat drop. If I recall, I was one of those people and I played a LOT.
Valve ended up changing the system to a pseudo-RNG. After X amount of time, you were given a chance for a hat to drop, but you would ALWAYS be given a hat after Y amount of time. I’m not sure at the exact mechanics of the system, but it effectively moved all those hatless “brutally unlucky” people up into a more middle of the road “unlucky that they’re not more lucky” group. It almost universally increased the “class” of all the players, and the only group “suffered” were the lucky group of people that had a number of hats drop within a short amount of time. They only really “suffered” in a sense that their group became less exclusive and their hats became less valuable.
Long story short, Valve tried the pure RNG approach for a while, and something like 95% of the people or more were not happy with it. They changed to a pseudo-RNG system with a build up of luck as time passed, and those people became MUCH happier.

John Smith.4610:

1. Use a specifically non-random NG. The NRNG functions similarly to a RNG, but has characteristics that either squish the distribution so that outliers exist much less or specifically manipulate a player’s experience for loot in a more complicated way that makes it feel rewarding.

2. Implement measures that counteract low-end outlier behavior inside of game design. This would be a system that is something like: If player hasn’t received a rare drop in X time send them Y tickets for random drops.

Obviously these are hyper-simplified descriptions, but I don’t want this to get too long.

Might want to alter the bold bit so as not to be leading.

That aside……a system that removes outliers needs to work for both high and low end. If high end are allowed to remain then players still have that reference to judge by.

Essence Snow.3194:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

I do want to point out that we need to be very careful with any system suggested that relies less on RNG and more on doing some particular number of tasks. My minds jumbled at the moment so i can’t think of a better way to describe it.

RNG slows down the flow of supply as players cannot target a specific set of tasks to obtain a particular item. If players have an option to farm X event Y number of times to get Z item, you’ll have a greater influx of supply for that item which could potentially disrupt the market for it as well as those that rely on it.

This may have been what you meant by “flatten the experience”, but I just wanted to make sure.

there is no real logical reason why a player should not be able to target a specific set of tasks in order to get a specific item. There are many methods of limiting output without random. To be honest random is one of the worst means of limiting output. However, i think the strength of random is, surprise, and the possibility of coming out ahead.

I would not eliminate random, however aside from streak breaking mechanics, i think that specific methods that are slower, with limited output also can work well when properly designed into content.

You may have never played gw1, but they had a zone called domain of anguish, beating each submission had a guaranteed way to get tokens, but also you could get random tokens from enemies in the zone. The random tokens was exciting when you got it, and made it interesting, but the tokens for beating an area made it so worst case scenario by defeating the area, you could achieve something.

Like i said, if players could target specific tasks, they could greatly increase the supply of an item. This could devastate a lot of markets. Having RNG slows down the rate at which they acquire these items.

It would balance them more based on players instead of the rng chance. The items would come into equilibrium to real value since production could be altered to meet demand like irl. Once equilibrium is met, players slow on targeting those items…thus balance.

You’re going under the assumption that all items must have an equilibrium between supply and demand. This isn’t true.

Ok then……why isn’t it true, give some examples….Saying no without adding anything doesn’t help anything.

Option 2 sounds more relevant to the topic than messing with an rng system in some convoluted impossible to maintain way. However, as described it reads like we’d get a token that if double clicked would give us another chance at the RNG treadmill. This is not what we’d look forward too, that would be the equivalent of just adjusting the black lion key drop rate so that everyone gets one every few mobs (2500+ hours and only got 3 blkeys as drops).

What I would personally look forward to is option 2 but something like a black lion ticket scrap type of ‘token’ that I can exchange for the ‘something’ that I would like or equivalent.

Example:
NPC trades X amount of said tokens for a chest of Y rarity. Chest goes through RNG for that rarity table for all possible items of that rarity in game. Items that fall from said chest are account bound so as to not affect the market for those items. This plays well with the wardrobe system and doesn’t affect the market tremendously when you salvage the exotic/ascended chest variants and sell off the materials that aren’t account bound – crafting needs to get cheaper anyway

John Smith.4610:

This is a spinoff of the economy thread to talk about RNG tactics in games in a general form.

[snip]

2. Implement measures that counteract low-end outlier behavior inside of game design. This would be a system that is something like: If player hasn’t received a rare drop in X time send them Y tickets for random drops.

This. Option 2.

People who love your game enough to play it often should not be penalized for unluckiness.

I’ve had pretty good luck, BTW. Other members of my family, not so much.

Guild Wars is a game, not real life. It’s digital.

At a physical sport, I can win by increasing my skill. In an MMO based on random cosmetic rewards, my skill at mashing buttons doesn’t help me get rewards. It’s all luck, no matter how well I play. That sucks.

Essence Snow.3194:

Ok then……why isn’t it true, give some examples….Saying no without adding anything doesn’t help anything.

Just look at whatever items in the game have low supply but high demand. Look at precursors. Whether something will have a low supply and high demand is not in the player’s control but with Anet. They have their own vision on what they would like for each item. Since precursor drop rates are very low, and they’re highly sought after, it’s pretty safe to assume that they intended for this imbalance between supply and demand.

What I don’t like is the part the trading post plays in this.

Take for example champion loot weapons. These are so rare that you rarely see one of them drop yourself. If you want one, it’s much more realistic to farm the money to buy it on the trading post than to fight monsters.

I imagine: IF those weapons would be account-bound, we would see much more drops of these weapons from monsters. —> you feel more rewarded for doing specific game-content instead of farming the most efficient content to buy it. There might be a problem that would come up with account bound drops: you get weapons you don’t want/need. A possible solution would be to make these account-bound weapons salvageable into mats that could create the desired weapon with the right components.

in short: the tradeable nature of drops might change the fun we have in aquiring those drops. Not sure if I’m right with this hypothesis.

Edit: LordHogFred beat me to it, I totally support him.

SRG.3607:

I’m pretty sure that nobody think there is special code about that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_burned_as_heretics

Fear belief.

John Smith.4610:

2. Implement measures that counteract low-end outlier behavior inside of game design. This would be a system that is something like: If player hasn’t received a rare drop in X time send them Y tickets for random drops.

For pete’s sake please impliment #2. 5k hours on this account alone, and i’ve seen 1 precursor drop from a high-end fractal. Thousands of gold in the mystic toilet, and not a single pre.

mtpelion.4562:

I think that RNG with a failsafe is a good way to go.

Taking the Mystic Forge as an example, let’s say you are trying to forge a Precursor weapon. In a pure RNG system (like we have now), failed attempts are simply failed attempts.

If we add a failsafe though, all failed attempts (failed attempts being defined as any forge attempt that COULD produce a Precursor, but produced something else instead) could drop a token that in enough quantity can be traded for a precursor. This means that failed attempts are now incrementally valuable as well.

Even if the failsafe takes a while to kick in, it creates a system whereby you are guaranteed a success eventually, which removes the negative side of the outliers.

You’re thinking about this way too narrowly. The non-randomness of John’s second suggestion would mean that after a certain number of unlucky drops, you’re guaranteed to get a lucky drop. This wouldn’t just apply to the mystic forge, but I’ll use that as my example since you did. If you throw 4 rare level 80 longbows into the mystic forge 20 times and only get rares, no exotics, on the 21st try you would be guaranteed an exotic. Whether that exotic is a precursor or not would still be up to luck. There would also be no actual “tickets”, that’s a figurative description for the guarantee of better luck on your next try.

Brother Grimm.5176:

I’m going to get some popcorn…..

Might I add that a simple comment from John (or any Dev) that states emphatically that there is NO secret LUCK factor tied to any player / account / character anywhere in the code (or ever has been), might help to squash some of the crazyiness I envision showing up in this thread. Just a suggestion.

He quashed that emphatically in the other thread this span off from