Guild Wars 2

djsarcher.9263:

• Option 3 could be global reward tracks, like Achievement Points. I enjoy working toward the next reward and having to make a choice of the skins available as Rewards. I agree with Wanze’s comment though that repeatable reward tracks like those in sPvP might not work so well in other game areas, as they have the potential to encourage farming particular areas, which goes against the philosophy outlined above.

If they basically took the junk achievement and opened it up to say gather 100 pieces of each junk type to earn a exotic chest (and maybe a chance to get an ascended chest). Players wouldn’t just sit and farm a spot. Taking the most common items and turning them into higher value items, could be a good way to address some of it.

Regardless, farming will always be a thing in most games, it’s not going to magically go away. Whether you call it tokens, junk, gold, materials, etc.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

the thing is: a lot of people think that it will be great once there is a token system that guarantees you a precursor… but is this really a satisfying solution?

What would result out of this? Will the focus shift to an endless grind in order to get what you want? I mean, sure, it’s better to have a guaranteed reward rather than no reward, but this can’t be the solution imho. I’d rather see something that gives the skill-factor a hand in getting better than usual rewards. I don’t want to see GW2 turn into an asia-grindfest, but something that rewards players for putting in some effort to play skillful/focussed on aspects rather than mindless afk-shooting while watching the new Walking Dead tv show.

The games is already an endless grind. You grind for gold to get stuff. Obviously you want to do the most efficient way to grind gold, which means that things like open world PvE get neglected while other things like dungeons or certain events get grinded like hell. To put it differently:

deSade.9437:

Yeah, after playing gw2 for so much, I nearly forgot that in some game you don’t have to grind money and then go to the closest bl trader to get your equip, ahaha, weird…

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Lighthammer.3280:

But if you play certain dungeon enough times, and gather enough of tokens/relics, you can just get it off of vendor, for 10000, 100000, 100000000000 tokens or whatever.

This sounds way too grindy. No one enjoys playing a dungeon that often.

Repetition isn’t fun if the content is always the same. Some random events (which aren’t very common in GW2’s dungeons) won’t make a dungeon indefinitely replayable.

Corollary: Use random events to give steady rewards.
And I don’t mean fractals. Those are set events in a random order.

If the content is engaging enough, the rewards matter less. Though, we should still have a way to get better rewards.

As a lot of people stated, RNG is fine for things that occur regularly. Someone even detailed when it is/is not okay to have it, based on regularity and trade status. Uncommon but sellable (foxfire clusters) isn’t so terrible, incredibly rare and sellable (precursors) leads to a submarket driven by gold grind, and incredibly rare and soulbound is just unforgivable.

But we have lots of tools on how we can introduce loot/rewards. Drops, daily chests, token rewards, salvaging, crafting, search/skill content, etc. Maudry’s a step in the right direction, at least. A little overpainful, but at least it’s a plausible goal for those who want it. (I just need to run some fractals. Grr. :P)

munkiman.3068:

Regardless, farming will always be a thing in most games, it’s not going to magically go away. Whether you call it tokens, junk, gold, materials, etc.

True, farming will always occur, and min-max crowds will always try and find optimal pathways to rewards, but I think there are steps that can be taken in the system design that can encourage or discourage farming in terms of singular content farms.

My preference is to encourage playing, where possible, so trying to equalise rewards across content so that players are free to take part in varied content whilst working toward personal goals.

Edit: Oops i see i’m saying some of the things djsacher is saying too, and yes it took me this long to typ :S

I don’t think the RNG system is the thing to discuss in this situation. I’d think first and foremost should be what do we want from this game. What makes us happy playing this game on the reward side…?

What do we want to aim for, to create the anticipation which is needed to log in for?
Do we want something guaranteed based on the time we spent chasing it, or do we want it through “jackpot-drops” and having that special feeling?

First look should be what players want from this game.
The second step is looking into how to facilitate the players in getting to that desired point.

Ppl want precursors and ascended boxes. The problem with ascended boxes is not so much the low drop rate imo, ppl can endure it. It does however suck a lot when u finally get the ascended box and it’s not the typ u want/need. Same goes for precursors… If u aim for a certain precursor, let’s say dusk, but u drop a 70g one at the same chance it kinda sucks.

The current rng system doesn’t cater to entitlement, which other MMO’s do. Which imo created an expectation. In other MMO’s players that play themost and do the hardest content, hardest boss raids or grind the same hard mobs over and over get what they want. This doesn’t exactly fly in gw2.

Reward tracks would suit the gw2 way more. This can however mean certain markets on the tp would become obsolete, depending on how it’s implemented ofc. If ppl get a guaranteed way of obtaining an item, which is a more efficient way of obtaining the item than the not guaranteed way (RNG way), prices will drop. Prices will drop to a point which the player base deems fair opposed to the time consumed doing the guaranteed way. If the guaranteed way is very very time consuming, prices could even rise further.

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

John Smith.4610:

At the heart, there’s 3 basic options:
1. Mostly RNG
2. No RNG
3. Hyrbid RNG (where most games are)

starter concepts for cons of each system:

1. Many players can feel like they have “bad luck”, in fact players with standard to pretty good luck are still likely to feel bad because of how humans interpret data.

2. A completely predictable experience lacks moments when something fantastic happens.

3. You run the risk of getting the cons of both systems without very precise design

An important question may be to ask if a model is still a good concept and a great implementation just needs to be focused on or if the model doesn’t work fundamentally.

I really have to comment on leading in both this post and the OP. By all means post, but please, please, please leave the leading biases out if the intent is to have a productive honest discussion.

edit……I’ll give you an example of what I am referring

Which would you rather have
1) A savory treat which leaves you wanting more
2)A sweet treat which puts on the pounds
3)A sour treat which tests your bravado

The biases are in the 2nd and 3rd. The former being negative and the latter being positive. Given this leading most are apt to choose option 3 and less likely to admit to 2.

Both the OP and this post are reiterations of what’s been said already, I’m not adding new or personal content to the discussion yet.

The problem with GW2 is that there’s pretty much no hybrid systems. It’s RNG or farm, no item can be acquired through the mean you choose. Dungeon weapons? Dedication, no luck involved. Fractal weapons? Luck, no dedication involved.

The key is to diversify. Apply dedication to everything, and leave luck as a boost to that dedication, so when you’re farming tokens for something you get a lucky drop and now you have to farm less.

Also, read this old post: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2659oq/everything_that_is_wrong_with_gw2_rewards/ It describes more than just the problem with RNG.

The entire reward system should be revamped.

I think that what is frustrating to must players is the random nature of the loot table. You can go a hundred hours without an exotic and when you finally get one its unusable by your class/build and low value so you feel very disappointed. On the other hand, token systems are by definition grinds and that. work-not fun. A hybrid system where there is a guaranteed end but you have a reasonable chance of getting the reward because of a licky drop seems to be the compromise. But I really feel that the systematic issue is different. In about 4 hours you can run all the world bosses and in another 4 do must of the popular dungeon runs. It’s reasonable to expect that you will get a dozen or so rares. A bit of gold and many blues and greens. But it feels unsatisfying because all you have done is make gold to give to a random person who got the lucky drop that you wanted.

ScoakaLegs.1406:

To be honest, the way this game continues to be modified to reduce the likelihood of significant rewards concerns me as well as frustrates me. I am all for protecting the economy in this game, but why not reward players for time within the game? In other words, is farming REALLY that big of a deal within reason as long as they continue to"play the game" legally (I.e. no bots for example). One good example I have of this was the first Crowned Pavilion event.

There is an inherent problem with that sort of setup. It automatically turns into a “do this or else” type of thing. They fixed that problem with CoFp1 farming for gold. Then made the same mistake with the first pavilion then fixed it in the second …

My suggestion? Start letting up a bit on farming for “good and profitable drops” as well as more encouragement for your fan base and support to want to continue the need to play this game. Sometimes I feel you simply adjust things to aide you in not affecting the gem market. I get the company needs to maintain a profit, but if you lose players to the game, that also has an adverse affect. Thanks for listening and I am glad you are at least taking all feedback into consideration.

The problem with adjusting drop rates is that soon after the change all those “good and profitable drops” will quickly become less profitable and probably less good in the eyes of players.

Illuminerdi.9153:

daft inquisitor.1605:

Thiefz.3695:

Just a small follow-up on my post from last page. We have a TON of currencies. Just look at the wallet and you will see just how much we have. If you are going to do something token based please use existing currencies. Half the currencies I don’t even use.

Well, the only problem with that is that so many of those currencies are for dungeons. I mean, almost exclusively all of them are.

There might not really be a good way to adopt dungeon currencies to other areas. You could open them up and make them a “global currency” for a zone (Ascalonain Tears being the Ascalon/Charr currency, for example), but then you’ll have an issue with people NOT running dungeons for the currencies anymore (since they can buy dungeon gear from doing “regular content”), so dungeons will become almost empty and obsolete.

Though, I suppose a way around that would be to make dungeons drop significantly more tokens, but you’d also have to jack up the token prices on dungeon gear to accommodate that, which some players might not be happy about…

I think dungeons need to do 2 things: convert to a universal token shared across all of the dungeons and rework the way tokens are distributed from dungeons so that they aren’t given out in big chunks that encourage speedrunning the bosses. Tokens should be cumulative so that every enemy killed in a dungeon adds to an exponential token curve. If you kill a boss without killing any other enemies in the dungeon you should get 5 tokens. If you kill a boss after clearing all the previous enemies and trash mobs, you should get 20 tokens. If you kill a single trash mob you should get 0-1 token. If you kill every trash mob you see in the dungeon you should get 2-5 tokens per mob with token drop drop chance (on regular mobs) between 10% and up to 75%, again depending on how many mobs you’ve killed.

This would eliminate dungeon speedrunning and zerging and thus balance out the dungeon experience that is currently so hostile to new (or sub-80) players and focused on L80 Zerk Exp ONLY!™

I haven’t worked out the math in your example but it looks like you want to punish people for being able to finish a dungeon quickly. Why is killing everything the only right way?

I don’t think that is a very good approach for dungeons or anything else. It would be better to leave the baseline as they are right now but keep the ‘killing mobs give additional tokens’ part. That way you can spend X amount of time doing Y paths skipping most mobs or you can spend X amount of time doing 1 path killing everything and end up with a similar reward per time spent.

An exponential curve doesn’t seem very good either. There should not be a huge difference in rewards if a party missed that one mob which wandered off into a corner somewhere and you might not even know it until the reward dialog pops up.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

the thing is: a lot of people think that it will be great once there is a token system that guarantees you a precursor… but is this really a satisfying solution?

I am certainly not happy with the current system but no I don’t think tokens would be good. Random is bad but guaranteed isn’t actually much better in terms of fun. I am not really sure what can rectify this since it seems like a contradiction.

Tokens are nice in the short term but after a while you just run out of things to do with them. Look at dungeon tokens. After a while all they are good for is for you to buy the rare/exotic gear and salvage them.

Tokens, achievement points, time gates, etc. all feels too fixed/arranged/scheduled(can’t find the right word here, imagine something that gives you the same feelings as being forced to go to boring meetings all day long). They also fail to be timely.

I don’t want something that amounts to the game giving me handouts out of pity.

If you do something and get nothing then there is obviously no reward.
If you do something insignificant and get something awesome it is still not a rewarding experience because it doesn’t feel like you’ve earned it.
If you do something incredible and get something incredible then that is a reward.
Additional problem: “do something incredible” varies a lot from person to person.

Khisanth.2948:

Tokens are nice in the short term but after a while you just run out of things to do with them. Look at dungeon tokens. After a while all they are good for is for you to buy the rare/exotic gear and salvage them.

This is true – but people still do the dungeons for the Gold and/or chance at a Rare drop. Which makes me think that those players must be getting frustrated with both the RNG system AND the token system – so to me the issue is with the token system, not the RNG, as the token system is not serving its purpose well at rewarding the player.

Would it help if tokens could also be used to buy Account Bound versions of the dungeon exclusive drops? Or would that kill the thrill of the RNG when you do get a rare/exclusive drop?

2nd concept is really good in my opinion. I’ve run hundreds of dungeons and killed over 9000 world bosses, but the best rare drop I’ve ever recieved was Venom (15g worth at that time). I tried MF for precursor, but no luck there also. So yes, I feel like I have no luck at all. After all I just don’t touch RNG any more. It is much more reliable to save money and buy the item from TP. I can’t say, that I recieve no exotics from loot, but mostly ones 1,5-2g and it doesn’t look like really “rare” loot. I agree that only token concept is boring, but RNG should be more fair. When you play like 5k hours and best rare loot worth 15g it is not rewarding at all. Here is how I would like to see it working. For example we have a drop rate X for dropping rare loot.
try #1 – drop rate X – no rare
try #2 – drop rate 2*X – no rare
try #3 – drop rate 3*X – no rare
try #n – drop rate n*X – got a rare!
try #n+1 – drop rate X…
Linear function is just an example. It can be any other increasing function.
It is still RNG, but guaranteed RNG. If you continue tries you finnaly get what you want. And even if you got nothing in a patticular run you think like “ok nothing today, but next time I’ll have more chance!” After getting rare loot you can just start from the beginning, or may be even with lower drop rate than X (X/2 for example). It’s need to be investigated to prevent mindless farming and damage to economics. I also would like to see a system “skill for loot” not just “time for loot”. Something like if you do solo dungeon (no exploits ofc) you get better loot, but this is another topic.

Arrow.4619:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m at 185% MF, and drop rates are fine. In the attached picture, all the Ecto you see were salvaged from Rare and Exotics (btw – Ecto salvage rates are fine too). I’ve gotten multiple Precursor drops from monsters and from Zommoros.

Your picture only proves that you play quite a lot and that you’ve probably seen hundrets of thousands of drops, not that RNG has a positive effect on your drops.

Actually, I think what that picture shows is what John essentially said in a post earlier that people sort of look past: Some accounts are “lucky” and some are “unlucky.” That is if the pool is large enough you will inevitably have accounts at either end of the RNG distribution over an extended period of time. No wonder Penguin is such an avid defender of the current rewards system and economy! Its working for him/her thank you very much so leave it alone! lol

MF doesn’t affect salvage.

Mr. Penguin, how many of those rares were from the guaranteed bonus chests on the world champ train, would you say?

Sariel V.7024:

Arrow.4619:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m at 185% MF, and drop rates are fine. In the attached picture, all the Ecto you see were salvaged from Rare and Exotics (btw – Ecto salvage rates are fine too). I’ve gotten multiple Precursor drops from monsters and from Zommoros.

Your picture only proves that you play quite a lot and that you’ve probably seen hundrets of thousands of drops, not that RNG has a positive effect on your drops.

Actually, I think what that picture shows is what John essentially said in a post earlier that people sort of look past: Some accounts are “lucky” and some are “unlucky.” That is if the pool is large enough you will inevitably have accounts at either end of the RNG distribution over an extended period of time. No wonder Penguin is such an avid defender of the current rewards system and economy! Its working for him/her thank you very much so leave it alone! lol

MF doesn’t affect salvage.

Mr. Penguin, how many of those rares were from the guaranteed bonus chests on the world champ train, would you say?

Huh? Where in his post did he say MF affected salvage rates? I looked back in that post string and saw salvaging mentioned in Penguin’s post. However, he didn’t state that MF increase ecto salvage rates either. Unless there’s a post outside of that, I’m going to have to say that neither suggested it.

maddoctor.2738:

If you don’t like the Fractal Skin, your only other option is to delete it. WHY?
If you don’t like the Ascended Ring (or even Ascended weapon/armor you got from the box) you can only sell them for some useless silver. WHY?

(getting seriously off-topic here)

This speaks to the philosophy behind the design of Fractals. Fractals were made as a harder set of content to be done completely optionally by people that enjoyed harder content. If you didn’t like harder content, you didn’t need to feel compelled to do it because you were missing out on better rewards. To accomplish this, rewards are little more than bragging rights items like skins and easy access to a tier of gear that is a mere jot better than what someone could normally get in the rest of the game. To keep exclusivity, they aren’t tradable.

Fractals were never intended to get players rich, because then out come the complainers demanding why do the elitist fractal runners get all the gold and they only get to look on in wonder. Thus, no cottage industry of gathering rings for resale, no fractal skins on the Trade Post, no getting 5 times the gold you would for running a dungeon path.

This was clearer at the outset when it was repeatedly stressed that you wouldn’t HAVE to do Fractals if you didn’t want to. This was before fractals were expanded, before the great reset, and before most ascended gear was even a thing. IMO, players have lost sight of this in the interim, and what was served by bragging rights is now demanding rewards that outstrip other forms of play.

So if we take this and apply it to the current situation, I’d say the best solution would be to add the fractal skins to BUY-1337 for some ridiculous amount of pristine fractals, make the skins tradable for a few of the same. Balance is maintained.

TL/DR: BECAUSE!

Ayrilana.1396:

Sariel V.7024:

Arrow.4619:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m at 185% MF, and drop rates are fine. In the attached picture, all the Ecto you see were salvaged from Rare and Exotics (btw – Ecto salvage rates are fine too). I’ve gotten multiple Precursor drops from monsters and from Zommoros.

Your picture only proves that you play quite a lot and that you’ve probably seen hundrets of thousands of drops, not that RNG has a positive effect on your drops.

Actually, I think what that picture shows is what John essentially said in a post earlier that people sort of look past: Some accounts are “lucky” and some are “unlucky.” That is if the pool is large enough you will inevitably have accounts at either end of the RNG distribution over an extended period of time. No wonder Penguin is such an avid defender of the current rewards system and economy! Its working for him/her thank you very much so leave it alone! lol

MF doesn’t affect salvage.

Mr. Penguin, how many of those rares were from the guaranteed bonus chests on the world champ train, would you say?

Huh? Where in his post did he say MF affected salvage rates? I looked back in that post string and saw salvaging mentioned in Penguin’s post. However, he didn’t state that MF increase ecto salvage rates either. Unless there’s a post outside of that, I’m going to have to say that neither suggested it.

It felt implied by stringing the ecto and MF one right after the other. You only get ecto from salvage – it doesn’t drop in the wild. Had he led with the bevy of rares he was getting, I’d probably have caught on. My bad. ;D

I’d continue to my next point from there but I’m having a bad time wording it coherently. Mostly it boils down to MF is only applied in a limited way, and do you really keep track of how you accumulate your yellows over time, to be able to tell if MF-independent rewards aren’t changing your numbers?

Sariel V.7024:

maddoctor.2738:

If you don’t like the Fractal Skin, your only other option is to delete it. WHY?
If you don’t like the Ascended Ring (or even Ascended weapon/armor you got from the box) you can only sell them for some useless silver. WHY?

(getting seriously off-topic here)

This speaks to the philosophy behind the design of Fractals. Fractals were made as a harder set of content to be done completely optionally by people that enjoyed harder content. If you didn’t like harder content, you didn’t need to feel compelled to do it because you were missing out on better rewards. To accomplish this, rewards are little more than bragging rights items like skins and easy access to a tier of gear that is a mere jot better than what someone could normally get in the rest of the game. To keep exclusivity, they aren’t tradable.

Fractals were never intended to get players rich, because then out come the complainers demanding why do the elitist fractal runners get all the gold and they only get to look on in wonder. Thus, no cottage industry of gathering rings for resale, no fractal skins on the Trade Post, no getting 5 times the gold you would for running a dungeon path.

This was clearer at the outset when it was repeatedly stressed that you wouldn’t HAVE to do Fractals if you didn’t want to. This was before fractals were expanded, before the great reset, and before most ascended gear was even a thing. IMO, players have lost sight of this in the interim, and what was served by bragging rights is now demanding rewards that outstrip other forms of play.

So if we take this and apply it to the current situation, I’d say the best solution would be to add the fractal skins to BUY-1337 for some ridiculous amount of pristine fractals, make the skins tradable for a few of the same. Balance is maintained.

TL/DR: BECAUSE!

I never asked for Fractal Skins and Ascended Rings to be sellable on the TP or anything like that, I know they wanted to have those skins exclusive in Fotm and they didn’t want Fotm players to become super rich selling those skins.

All I’m asking is for a better way to distribute loot within a party, as I call them Party Bound loot, that party members can exchange freely among themselves as long as they remain in a party. No selling on the TP, no skin to gold ratio, no conversions or anything of the sort, just better loot DISTRIBUTION in parties.

How would that upset the economy in any way?

And I don’t think loot distribution is off-topic, the greatest reason that RNG has such low chances in this game is BECAUSE there is no loot distribution option and everyone has to roll on their own tables, that’s the number one reason we have such a punishing RNG system with such highs and lows.

bri.2359:

John Smith.4610:

There’s virtually no DR active on any given day.

John Smith.4610:

Magic find makes a huge difference.

You don’t actually play this game, do you …

On the individual player level, DR is alive and well. It kicks in approx 20-30min after killing the same mobs in a localised area. Even your own devs admitted DR exists. It is not the perception issue you alluded to. I am sure many would be happy to document this for you.

As for MF …
Again, on the individual player level, the effects of MF are none to miniscule. MF does not even impact the major source of player loot, namely chests and champ bags.

I never used MF before EoL was introduced. Because I salvage a lot, my account MF is now 193%. The only thing I noticed going from MF 0% to 193% was the proportion of green item drops increased over blue items. That is it.

You definition of " huge difference" is significantly different than mine

First point, you have to remember that JS is talking game wide that there is virtually no DR. If a player farms one location of course they will experience but most players don’t hang around one area long enough for DR to kick in.

Second point, that’s how you play. You chose to specialize in content you think should give you better loot rather than ordinary content where MF kicks in, which is why you don’t see it. I imagine that there are loads more critters killed where MF kicks in on a daily basis than the few associated around boss chests. Spend time doing ordinary DEs or sweep a map rather than riding the boss train every quarter hour, then you’ll see MF in action.

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

Because he didnt get the same drops as his buddy.

I have to agree again on the idea for reward tracks and alt ways to acquire stuff other than the TP, however I have the cynical feeling that Anet really enjoys the nasty gold inflation, the ultra rare drop rate for exotics and precursors, because that makes them real money selling gems for gold. The proposals for the more rewarding systems serve the players but not the Devs. I think the “fix” for the RNG and loot system in general will require Anet evaluating whether they care more about customer satisfaction and retention or some quick bucks off gold sales.

Wanze.8410:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

Because he didnt get the same drops as his buddy.

Except him getting those same drops and his buddy not (and vice versa) have equally the same chance of occurring. With everyone having the same chance to roll a precursor, I can roll two in a row and everyone else has the same chance to do just that as well. It’s more of an issue about perception and jealousy than unfairness and inequality.

The problem people should focus on is a lack of progression rather than one of fairness and equality.

Ayrilana.1396:

Wanze.8410:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

Because he didnt get the same drops as his buddy.

Except him getting those same drops and his buddy not (and vice versa) have equally the same chance of occurring. With everyone having the same chance to roll a precursor, I can roll two in a row and everyone else has the same chance to do just that as well. It’s more of an issue about perception and jealousy than unfairness and inequality.

The problem people should focus on is a lack of progression rather than one of fairness and equality.

whethe r they had the same possibility doesnt mean they have the same reality. At the end of the day two players with same input get different outputs. Thats his beef.

random is unfair by its nature. If it was fair, it would be predictable, and thus not random

Kootje.9271:

~Snip~

Ppl want precursors and ascended boxes. The problem with ascended boxes is not so much the low drop rate imo, ppl can endure it. It does however suck a lot when u finally get the ascended box and it’s not the typ u want/need. Same goes for precursors… If u aim for a certain precursor, let’s say dusk, but u drop a 70g one at the same chance it kinda sucks.

~Snip~

Please, if you’re going to post something like this, make sure you’re only speaking for yourself, or those that you know want this. Keep in mind, not everyone that plays GW2 cares about Precursers and Ascended boxes, I’d bet that not as many people care about the drops they get as that do, but I won’t speak for everyone else but myself. I do not care, loot is immaterial to me, I play for pure fun and to release tension…and because I can, no other reasons.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Wanze.8410:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

Because he didnt get the same drops as his buddy.

Except him getting those same drops and his buddy not (and vice versa) have equally the same chance of occurring. With everyone having the same chance to roll a precursor, I can roll two in a row and everyone else has the same chance to do just that as well. It’s more of an issue about perception and jealousy than unfairness and inequality.

The problem people should focus on is a lack of progression rather than one of fairness and equality.

whethe r they had the same possibility doesnt mean they have the same reality. At the end of the day two players with same input get different outputs. Thats his beef.

random is unfair by its nature. If it was fair, it would be predictable, and thus not random

Random is random. Everyone has the same chance as another. That’s fair.

I might be a bit too late to the party but meh.
Not going to read 10 pages of replies so if the idea already is written down or it’s too late, sorry.

What I wanted to share is how Path of Exile does hits/misses with attacks.
It can possibly be utilized to create a manipulated RNG system in many cases of GW2, possibly including loot / mystic forge.

When you first hit something, a random number is generated between 0 and a set max, call it X.
Do normal RNG to check if the attack hits based on the hit chance.
Then if you miss your attack, a number based on your hit chance is added to X.
For example if your hit chance is 0.2, 0.2 or a number based on it is added to X.
When X reaches a limit, say 1, it automatically hits no matter what the outcome would have been.
X then either empties completely or re-randomizes, but both ways work with their own pros and cons.

Now these numbers can be really low in the case of for example the chance of getting a precursor as loot or getting it from the forge. But what it does is that it gives a certain progression. For each fail, you are more likely to succeed the next time. By manipulating the numbers, you can control how long time it would take before someone gets a certain item. But, given enough time, everyone can get the item, which may or may not be good for the economy depending on the item.

Either way I would want some way of being able to work towards the goal without starting over for each try. Even if it takes a long time. At least I would know that I’m making a progress and that I will reach the goal after some time.

Getting failure tickets that I can exchange for the object I want.
Manipulating the RNG depending on failure.
Having standard RNG but complementing it with a (relatively) non-RNG way of getting the same item, that instead requires a bunch of time, resources and/or skill.
All 3 would be good ways in my eyes.

I think overall I’d prefer a hybrid model where the game dynamically adapts drop rate. Get lucky, and your drop rate lowers until your overall returned to where the game wants it to be.
Be unlucky, and you get better and better drop chances until you find something.

That being said, I think part of the frustration can be alleviated by removing some of the reliance on RNG. People are always quick to point at Precursor-drop-rates but IMO they make a minimal dent in what we encounter daily.
Exotics overall, crafting mats, dyes, there’s a lot of stuff which is very random to acquire.

Taking dyes as an example, apart from the issue of usually needing a type of cooking ingredient which comes randomly from a rather rare type of plant (the herb-type), there would be a very good way to reliably generate more colours. Sure the colour is afterwards random but that’s consistent with unidentified dyes so I see that as a secondary issue.
Taking that approach (and fixing it for cooking!), there should be patches of mobs which reliably drop a certain type of material at a very high rate. This can be balanced by:

1. Low spawn speed
2. Reliance on a certain event which cannot be artificially prolonged
3. Difficulty of access.

Say I want to farm T5 bones. I’d find out that most undead drop these a lot in the higher-end zones, and when I start killing them I notice that about one drops in every 2-4 kills. Quite the high output but to get them I use a type of tool (add some more slots for this maybe) to consume the corpse, and there’s no other loot on it at all.
Now I want T6 bones. Oh, they drop more in Arah, but only during a specific path I can only do twice a day, one for each of two sub-paths we can take. I do those, and repeat them the next day for my rather reliable income.

And so on, and so on. This doesn’t remove RNG-reliance at all, but it would significantly lessen the perceived effect it has on us.

Carighan.6758:

I think overall I’d prefer a hybrid model where the game dynamically adapts drop rate. Get lucky, and your drop rate lowers until your overall returned to where the game wants it to be.
Be unlucky, and you get better and better drop chances until you find something.

The problem with suggestions like this, dynamically adapting the drop rate, is that it leads to a specific number, so overall all players will have the same chances of getting anything, over a huge time span. However there is one problem I can see with this, if we base this average luck on current rates, then I don’t think anyone will see any useful drops for a very long time. I don’t have any actual data to back it up, but I have the feeling that current -average- drop rates are extremely low.

Also who will make the list of “good” and “bad” drops? Only based on rarity?

Seeing how ineffective Magic Find is (even at very high levels), how exactly is this increase in chances will work, and the equal drop in chances when you do get something. If the increase/decrease is a boost in MF is low, for simplicity -10% MF when you get something good, +10% MF if you don’t get anything good, then it won’t affect the drop rates in any meaningful way

Zaklex.6308:

Please, if you’re going to post something like this, make sure you’re only speaking for yourself, or those that you know want this.

This discussion originates from the fact that ppl complain about loot distribution, this is tied to ascended items, fractal skins, precursors and some other rare drops. So i’m indeed speaking for all the ppl in this discussion.

And if you don’t care about drops, then why post here… RNG doesn’t matter to you

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

I’ll just quote the OP, Mr J. Smith!
“Here’s the premise. RNG is evenly distributed on aggregate. On an individual level this means that while almost everyone falls into a reasonable range in the middle, there are outliers on each side of the distribution that are either highly rewarded or not rewarded at all. These individuals become sample cases and spotlights for experiences that maybe shouldn’t exist.

Please remember to read the 1st post carefully and in in it’s entirety.

Ok. So we have a lottery introduced. The Skritt collecting tickets for a chance at Halloween skins. Her’s a link to a post I asked of people what they think of this : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Let-s-Talk-About-the-Skin-Lottery/first#post4505522. As far as I’m concerned, do what you want with RNG. It doesn’t appear to matter. Make everything a lottery. People do not want skill based rewards. They just want to know they have a chance to win.

John Smith.4610:

At the heart, there’s 3 basic options:
1. Mostly RNG
2. No RNG
3. Hyrbid RNG (where most games are)

1) Terrible. It might work for small projects or mobile/flash games. It shouldn’t be used as a model in any serious game. (IMO) The worst model that can be applied for a game like this.

2) The best but it requires some serious thinking. The expectation should be placed in the content, not in the rewards. Every players knows the rewards, its only frustrating when the reward is not there. eg: Killing the dragon should be the amazing thing that happened, not getting his scales or tooth.

3) Its obvious when games want to keep you in. Feels like a forced way to tell you “hey, keep logging in… you will be rewarded not by what you do but for how many times you do it…”. Its an easy and inclusive solution since you can turn down content, making it easier so more people can do it but only those who did it X number of times gets the reward. I personally don’t like it but I prefer this rather than having all in RNG.

Hybrid RNG its like: “You know you get paid at the end of the month, every month… but there is only a small chance that you will receive your Christmas bonus at the end of the year, no matter how hard or lazy you worked for it”. It’s frustrating for those who tried it hard.

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

I’ll just quote the OP, Mr J. Smith!
“Here’s the premise. RNG is evenly distributed on aggregate. On an individual level this means that while almost everyone falls into a reasonable range in the middle, there are outliers on each side of the distribution that are either highly rewarded or not rewarded at all. These individuals become sample cases and spotlights for experiences that maybe shouldn’t exist.

Please remember to read the 1st post carefully and in in it’s entirety.

Please remember to read up on general statistic and probability carefully.

Everyone has the same probability of getting a drop under RNG. There’s no differentiation between accounts/characters other than MF. If an item has a 10% chance to drop then everyone has that same chance to get it. Since they have the same chance, this means person A getting two in a row would also mean person B has the same chance at getting two in a row as well.

As far as your quote of John’s, nowhere did he state RNG was unfair and unequal. He just stated that there are likely to be outliers but everyone has the same probability of being that outlier.

Roybe.5896:

Ok. So we have a lottery introduced. The Skritt collecting tickets for a chance at Halloween skins. Here’s a link to a post I asked of people what they think of this : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Let-s-Talk-About-the-Skin-Lottery/first#post4505522. As far as I’m concerned, do what you want with RNG. It doesn’t appear to matter. Make everything a lottery. People do not want skill based rewards. They just want to know they have a chance to win.

Ugh. The skritt lottery is even worse than the other RNG in this game. Usually, you get something, even if it’s not useful or what you want. This lottery is random and hidden, which just rankles me even more.

Behellagh.1468:

bri.2359:

John Smith.4610:

There’s virtually no DR active on any given day.

John Smith.4610:

Magic find makes a huge difference.

You don’t actually play this game, do you …

On the individual player level, DR is alive and well. It kicks in approx 20-30min after killing the same mobs in a localised area. Even your own devs admitted DR exists. It is not the perception issue you alluded to. I am sure many would be happy to document this for you.

As for MF …
Again, on the individual player level, the effects of MF are none to miniscule. MF does not even impact the major source of player loot, namely chests and champ bags.

I never used MF before EoL was introduced. Because I salvage a lot, my account MF is now 193%. The only thing I noticed going from MF 0% to 193% was the proportion of green item drops increased over blue items. That is it.

You definition of " huge difference" is significantly different than mine

First point, you have to remember that JS is talking game wide that there is virtually no DR. If a player farms one location of course they will experience but most players don’t hang around one area long enough for DR to kick in.

Second point, that’s how you play. You chose to specialize in content you think should give you better loot rather than ordinary content where MF kicks in, which is why you don’t see it. I imagine that there are loads more critters killed where MF kicks in on a daily basis than the few associated around boss chests. Spend time doing ordinary DEs or sweep a map rather than riding the boss train every quarter hour, then you’ll see MF in action.

One place where this (DR) becomes apparent is the Mad King’s Labyrinth that is currently running. DR kicks in after about 30-45 minutes for me, but it appears to vary between people quite widely. And it is very notable, as in you get 1/10th or less of the previous drops, and the legendary mobs don’t give their loot bags.
For some of my guild mates the DR hasn’t kicked in after more than 1 hour if at all, but relying on selective reporting from them is useless (the plural of anecdotes is not data).

All it does for me is reaffirm the idea that some accounts are incredibly lucky (even if those people sometimes refuse to see, or even acknowledge it), and that it’s something built into the system, even if it is unintentional.

lexx.7386:

Behellagh.1468:

bri.2359:

John Smith.4610:

There’s virtually no DR active on any given day.

John Smith.4610:

Magic find makes a huge difference.

You don’t actually play this game, do you …

On the individual player level, DR is alive and well. It kicks in approx 20-30min after killing the same mobs in a localised area. Even your own devs admitted DR exists. It is not the perception issue you alluded to. I am sure many would be happy to document this for you.

As for MF …
Again, on the individual player level, the effects of MF are none to miniscule. MF does not even impact the major source of player loot, namely chests and champ bags.

I never used MF before EoL was introduced. Because I salvage a lot, my account MF is now 193%. The only thing I noticed going from MF 0% to 193% was the proportion of green item drops increased over blue items. That is it.

You definition of " huge difference" is significantly different than mine

First point, you have to remember that JS is talking game wide that there is virtually no DR. If a player farms one location of course they will experience but most players don’t hang around one area long enough for DR to kick in.

Second point, that’s how you play. You chose to specialize in content you think should give you better loot rather than ordinary content where MF kicks in, which is why you don’t see it. I imagine that there are loads more critters killed where MF kicks in on a daily basis than the few associated around boss chests. Spend time doing ordinary DEs or sweep a map rather than riding the boss train every quarter hour, then you’ll see MF in action.

One place where this (DR) becomes apparent is the Mad King’s Labyrinth that is currently running. DR kicks in after about 30-45 minutes for me, but it appears to vary between people quite widely. And it is very notable, as in you get 1/10th or less of the previous drops, and the legendary mobs don’t give their loot bags.
For some of my guild mates the DR hasn’t kicked in after more than 1 hour if at all, but relying on selective reporting from them is useless (the plural of anecdotes is not data).

All it does for me is reaffirm the idea that some accounts are incredibly lucky (even if those people sometimes refuse to see, or even acknowledge it), and that it’s something built into the system, even if it is unintentional.

It’s been confirmed that no accounts are inherently unlucky. What’s you’re suggesting is the gambler’s fallacy.

There’s is the idea that if you don’t collect loot every second, it slows down DR and the DR for loot is based on when you pick up the loot. In other words, someone picking up loot the second it drops will hit DR quicker than someone who waits 4 minutes to pick it all up. Now this is just based on observations but I doubt any quantitative analysis has been done.

I have nothign against random drops really, BUT if the randoms drops are not the only concern i have to concider for getting somethign, like a secound throw of chance which is a lottory then its not okay. In worst scenarios following would happen: either you farm your butt of to get enough tickets to have a high enough chance to win the skin you wanted. the one next to you just didn´t bothered to farm and brings in one or two tickets. randoms chances allow now that this guy COULD win the skin anway while the one with the higher chance gets nothing.
this is not as unreal as it sounds: when i picked up environment weapons and they had skill with a chance of loosing the weapon then i mostly use skill 1 with 10%. and it happend ALOT that on first use the weapon broke anyway.

scenario two would be that oen farms for 90 hours straight but only got 6 tickets the one enxt to him farmed not even 10minutes and has 600.

adding all these together is jsut is TO MUCH RNG involved for just ONE skin of a set that should have been brought back witht he lions ticket vendor anyway. i mean those who still have the greatsword skinwill still make money with a one year chance drop while other still have to haggle jsut to get the skin to HAVE THE SKIN.

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

I’ll just quote the OP, Mr J. Smith!
“Here’s the premise. RNG is evenly distributed on aggregate. On an individual level this means that while almost everyone falls into a reasonable range in the middle, there are outliers on each side of the distribution that are either highly rewarded or not rewarded at all. These individuals become sample cases and spotlights for experiences that maybe shouldn’t exist.

Please remember to read the 1st post carefully and in in it’s entirety.

Please remember to read up on general statistic and probability carefully.

Everyone has the same probability of getting a drop under RNG. There’s no differentiation between accounts/characters other than MF. If an item has a 10% chance to drop then everyone has that same chance to get it. Since they have the same chance, this means person A getting two in a row would also mean person B has the same chance at getting two in a row as well.

As far as your quote of John’s, nowhere did he state RNG was unfair and unequal. He just stated that there are likely to be outliers but everyone has the same probability of being that outlier.

It is enough that there is a recognition that RNG is a problem for some and extremely generous to others. Hopefully they will do something about it.
Moved to whiteknight ignore list.

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

I’ll just quote the OP, Mr J. Smith!
“Here’s the premise. RNG is evenly distributed on aggregate. On an individual level this means that while almost everyone falls into a reasonable range in the middle, there are outliers on each side of the distribution that are either highly rewarded or not rewarded at all. These individuals become sample cases and spotlights for experiences that maybe shouldn’t exist.

Please remember to read the 1st post carefully and in in it’s entirety.

Please remember to read up on general statistic and probability carefully.

Everyone has the same probability of getting a drop under RNG. There’s no differentiation between accounts/characters other than MF. If an item has a 10% chance to drop then everyone has that same chance to get it. Since they have the same chance, this means person A getting two in a row would also mean person B has the same chance at getting two in a row as well.

As far as your quote of John’s, nowhere did he state RNG was unfair and unequal. He just stated that there are likely to be outliers but everyone has the same probability of being that outlier.

It is enough that there is a recognition that RNG is a problem for some and extremely generous to others. Hopefully they will do something about it.
Moved to whiteknight ignore list.

That’s because a lot people have a misunderstanding about what RNG is and basic statistics involving probability. Everyone has the same chance as each other which means that nobody has an advantage over another as far as drop rates go.

A more meaningful approach than calling it unfair and unequal would be to find a way to reduce players perceptions that RNG is working against them by giving them a sense of progress. Many players would likely be more receptive of RNG if they saw they were making progress rather than trying to win the lottery. This is more of a quality of life issue than one about a flaw.

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

I’ll just quote the OP, Mr J. Smith!
“Here’s the premise. RNG is evenly distributed on aggregate. On an individual level this means that while almost everyone falls into a reasonable range in the middle, there are outliers on each side of the distribution that are either highly rewarded or not rewarded at all. These individuals become sample cases and spotlights for experiences that maybe shouldn’t exist.

Please remember to read the 1st post carefully and in in it’s entirety.

Please remember to read up on general statistic and probability carefully.

Everyone has the same probability of getting a drop under RNG. There’s no differentiation between accounts/characters other than MF. If an item has a 10% chance to drop then everyone has that same chance to get it. Since they have the same chance, this means person A getting two in a row would also mean person B has the same chance at getting two in a row as well.

As far as your quote of John’s, nowhere did he state RNG was unfair and unequal. He just stated that there are likely to be outliers but everyone has the same probability of being that outlier.

It is enough that there is a recognition that RNG is a problem for some and extremely generous to others. Hopefully they will do something about it.
Moved to whiteknight ignore list.

You don’t need recognition for that. Random distribution is not the same as even distribution. But if you look at what most of the people who complain about RNG are saying, they’re pretty much always comparing themselves to someone who gets more stuff than they do. I have never seen anyone complain that the RNG is fubar here because the poster is getting more drops than a lot of people they know. See the problem there? You literally have no way of knowing whether you’re getting your data from an average user who simply chooses to compare themselves to the few “luckier” outliers, or someone who’s an outlier themselves on the lower end.

The simplest difference between a truly random distribution and an even distribution is that the former can and should have clusters. After all, evenness is a very simple, very obvious rule, which is the opposite of randomness.

In the OP, John outlines three different approaches to non-RNG drops. In it, he specifically mentions the two most often mentioned approaches: First would be implementing a counter for “unluckiness”, which would keep track of your “unlucky” drops and act once it hits a threshold. Obviously the issue here is measuring the “unluck”, as different people will think differently on what is an acceptable level. Worst case scenario? It gets implemented, but the threshold is so high that most people give up before reaching it.

Second would be implementing a non-random token system. For this to not fall into the RNG pitfall, you’d have to make it so that you always get a token for a kill. The downside here is that people will find the easiest monster to kill and farm them instead of the tougher ones, unless you give the tougher ones a disproportionate amount of drops.

Personally, I am most interested in the third option that JS laid out. That is, altering the the current RNG function so that the outliers (in both directions) are less likely. Naturally, the problem here is that the people who are in the middle won’t feel any change and the people in the upper portion will feel a negative hit. And I would be willing to bet that a significant portion of the people who claim to be having bad drops are actually in the middle, just that they know some people who are in the top bracket.

As someone who has played the game from beta, I must say the RNG in GW2 is cruel. I took part in the first Halloween, the Lost Shores, Flame and Frost, Aetheblade, etc. I have none of the 2012 Halloween skins, none of the Lost Shores minis, no jetpack, no nothing. Others in my guild got some of these. One guy got all of them as straight drops without playing an hour longer than I did. The best I have ever gotten is a Risen Hyalek from Tequatl, despite running it so many times I have lost count.

Pure RNG is bad, bad, bad. Weighted RNG is merely bad, bad. There will still be people who get nothing, nada, no matter how much they play. I think there should always be an alternative way to get things. The lucky can rely on RNG, the normal can get the occasional hurray, the rest of us are given a reward if we are willing to work for it.

Ascended rings, for example, can be either dropped or purchased. You could tweak the probabilities or prices to make it more challenging, but at least there would be a mechanism for people to turn to if they are cursed, like I am.

You can still leave BLT chests as pure RNG since those are a lottery lockbox to begin with.

As a concept any system that creates rewards based on the number of hours that you play the game is…..well, the reason I left WoW and DAoC and UO and on and on.

If the RNG generator is broken, fix it. These solutions are like the mechanic saying “Your car still makes that really loud ticking noise, but I increased the volume on your radio, so you’re all set!”

I was monitoring, thinking and theory crafting ideas regarding this topic. However, I really think you should let your new player base decide. All the best on this discussion.

Your primary reward mechanism cannot be randomly distributed, very low probability events. People need rewards on a pretty regular schedule for them to feel good. Getting 1 precursor drop every 1000 hours of farming, or whatever it is on average, is not rewarding.

Whatever your main driver is should be dropping every 15 to 30 minutes. Much less than that and people start to disengage.

Again, I still don’t see what this has to do with RNG. You can fine tune your reward schedule using some sort of NRNG if you really want to perfect it, but for that to even matter the core schedule has to be pretty close to begin with.

You literally have no way of knowing whether you’re getting your data from an average user who simply chooses to compare themselves to the few “luckier” outliers, or someone who’s an outlier themselves on the lower end.

Sure, but we can’t know that without knowing what the intended distribution is meant to be. I mean, so share a basic experience, I was Labyrinth farming today for about an hour and a bit, and someone in my group noted that he’d been playing for several hours already with high adjusted MF, and received zero exotics. In my time I’d earned one exotic helm (and a handful of rare items). Was he very unlucky? Was I very lucky? Was one of us about right and the other off the curve? One drop isn’t even a terribly good sample size, I might not get another one for several days and he might get three tomorrow, who knows?

We can’t give feedback as to what’s “right” because we don’t know what “right” is meant to be. All we can do is give feedback on how things FEEL to us, and ANet can decide what, if anything, they wish to do about that. If we note that it “feels” wrong to receive zero of a desired item when other players seem to be getting several of them, it’s for ANet to decide whether they want us to feel bad about that, or don’t care enough that we feel bad about that to do anything about it, but I think it’s fair to say that there is no explanation that would change how we feel about it without actually changing the facts on the ground.

Second would be implementing a non-random token system. For this to not fall into the RNG pitfall, you’d have to make it so that you always get a token for a kill. The downside here is that people will find the easiest monster to kill and farm them instead of the tougher ones, unless you give the tougher ones a disproportionate amount of drops.

Yeah, I mean there are ways around that. for one thing, most players have a problem with low-drop RNG, that is, items which only seem to drop, on average, once every few days or weeks or even years. Those are very frustrating when they never pop. Having a little high-drop RNG would not be the end of the world though, so if for example tokens dropped at about the rate of a blue, or even green piece of gear, I doubt people would complain about not getting one with every kill.

They can also work it the other way, by having some situations where you are guaranteed one token, but might also receive a few more, most people wouldn’t complain too much about that. In either case, it’s easier to track your own averages, since in a given night you would likely receive a dozen or more, rather than taking months to reach that many.

I also think that the token system has more value for specific tasks, killing specific boss mobs and that sort of thing. I don’t believe farming trash mobs should drop these sorts of tokens, and they can decide which activities are worthy of tokens. Maybe they start with a few that are known to be good, and then slowly add more and see whether they get too mobbed, pull back if they are.

One thing that should be avoided are events that “scale up” in mob quantity. This is why trash mobs or summoned champs should not drop these, because it would not be good to encourage max-scaled wheat thresher farms to kill the max enemies and drop the max tokens in a given time, the token drops should be based on actually completing the task, and be identical whether you complete it with five people or fifty or one hundred and fifty.

Personally, I am most interested in the third option that JS laid out. That is, altering the the current RNG function so that the outliers (in both directions) are less likely. Naturally, the problem here is that the people who are in the middle won’t feel any change and the people in the upper portion will feel a negative hit. And I would be willing to bet that a significant portion of the people who claim to be having bad drops are actually in the middle, just that they know some people who are in the top bracket.

So? Do people in the top bracket deserve to be making a lot more? If they do somehow nerf that, then maybe those top bracket people would make less, but one, that would likely be better for the economy as a whole since it would mean that the wealth would be a bit less concentrated, and two, they’ve already done well enough for themselves under the current system, so they shouldn’t complain too much of the golden dice get taken away, they’d still be out ahead of the average. It’s a bit like a casino kicking someone out for card counting (not that I’m implying that they deliberately abuse this luck).

I don’t really think there’re any other options aside from tokens or “progressive RNG”.

I think that combining both depending on the situation would be best:

• For major world boss (Tequatl, Wurm) rewards, tokens make most sense. Like, you can get lucky and receive Tequatl’s hoard on the 1s-5th-Nth run straight away, but if you grind, say, 50 Tequatl kills, you get enough tokens for a weapon anyway.
  • Tokens are received in a fixed (or very low-RNG) manner, like 10 (or 7-13 tokens) per completion, and deposited to account wallet (as it is not a temporary LS currency).
  • Direct drop rates are adjusted accordingly to maintain the average current distribution.
  • This achieves balance between the thrill of winning the jackpot and the frustration of being on the bad side of statistically even distribution.

• The same goes for things like Fractal weapons and tonics. If there’s a serious reason not to use current fractal relics as the currency, an alternative weapon token system can be used.

• Precursors, IMO, should be acquired through feats, not grind; but as we’re not discussing the ways of getting precursors here, I think that progressive RNG can be okay for precursors until a better system is implemented (which can include scavenger hunt, world boss and dungeon tokens and so on, combined with lower chances to get a direct drop).

• Regular exotics should work fine with progressive RNG. Using tokens for those definitely sounds like overcomplicating things.

• Unique rewards such as world boss trinkets should work fine with progressive RNG.

• Regular rares drop often enough to stay with the regular RNG system.

Lishtenbird.2814:

I don’t really think there’re any other options aside from tokens or “progressive RNG”.

I think that combining both depending on the situation would be best:

• For major world boss (Tequatl, Wurm) rewards, tokens make most sense. Like, you can get lucky and receive Tequatl’s hoard on the 1s-5th-Nth run straight away, but if you grind, say, 50 Tequatl kills, you get enough tokens for a weapon anyway.
  • Tokens are received in a fixed (or very low-RNG) manner, like 10 (or 7-13 tokens) per completion, and deposited to account wallet (as it is not a temporary LS currency).
  • Direct drop rates are adjusted accordingly to maintain the average current distribution.
  • This achieves balance between the thrill of winning the jackpot and the frustration of being on the bad side of statistically even distribution.

Personally, I would prefer an achievement system here? Kill teq 50 times and get your choice of weapon. Pretty much for the reasons you state though. I guess I’m just biased against creating another currency.

• The same goes for things like Fractal weapons and tonics. If there’s a serious reason not to use current fractal relics as the currency, an alternative weapon token system can be used.

I agree on Fractals, even though it means that after a certain amount of time you will have everything. Actually I very much agree with the rest of your points. As a rule of thumb, the more rare an item is the less it should rely on RNG.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

RNG is the worst design ever for “rare item”. RNG reward luck over assiduity.
Tokens is the fairest system. You want a thing ? You have to do something this many times.
RNG is : You can have it by doing this. When ? Immediately, or later… maybe… If you try fifty times you can have it… or five hundred… We don’t know. Many players from World of Warcraft were disgusted by there “everything is RNG” policy even for extremely low rate (hello 0.1% drop rate).

RNG is good for high drop rate to add somme mystery. Token for low drop rate to prevent digust. Token and RNG can be mixed. Token have a high drop rate.

Cormac.3871:

Lishtenbird.2814:

I don’t really think there’re any other options aside from tokens or “progressive RNG”.

I think that combining both depending on the situation would be best:

• For major world boss (Tequatl, Wurm) rewards, tokens make most sense. Like, you can get lucky and receive Tequatl’s hoard on the 1s-5th-Nth run straight away, but if you grind, say, 50 Tequatl kills, you get enough tokens for a weapon anyway.
  • Tokens are received in a fixed (or very low-RNG) manner, like 10 (or 7-13 tokens) per completion, and deposited to account wallet (as it is not a temporary LS currency).
  • Direct drop rates are adjusted accordingly to maintain the average current distribution.
  • This achieves balance between the thrill of winning the jackpot and the frustration of being on the bad side of statistically even distribution.

Personally, I would prefer an achievement system here? Kill teq 50 times and get your choice of weapon. Pretty much for the reasons you state though. I guess I’m just biased against creating another currency.

• The same goes for things like Fractal weapons and tonics. If there’s a serious reason not to use current fractal relics as the currency, an alternative weapon token system can be used.

I agree on Fractals, even though it means that after a certain amount of time you will have everything. Actually I very much agree with the rest of your points. As a rule of thumb, the more rare an item is the less it should rely on RNG.

An achievement system would feel better, in a sense. Less otherwise-useless tokens flopping about, and you can still track your progress. And achievements can be repeatable, akin to Agent of Entropy, except instead of 2AP, you get a guaranteed loot box.
It still allows for RNG drops as usual, but getting the achievement loot box would be a certainty.