Guild Wars 2

On my other thread, forumers were discussing about the validity of each sides argument in the case of GW2’s loot system. A few others were discussing topics (streak breakers) set off from the original topic (RNG conspiracy arguments) of the thread which someone pointed out should deserve it’s own thread.

So I want to discuss on ways to provide measures that will make the hypothetically broken loot system provide a more even distribution of expensive crap. Let’s begin…

Now just to be reasonable, alot of people can agree that instances of people getting multiple highly priced items within a short timeframe vs. a good chunk that maybe gets 1-3 a year vs. the rest very rarely if never get anything good is a real thing that is going on. Alot of people can also agree that Arenanet is not evil enough to intentionally develop a borked loot system that is designed to psychologically profile account users and throttle the value of loot accordingly.

With this, it is possible to assume that the loot system is designed fairly but suffers from bugs that make it act the way its been or it isn’t sophisticated enough to really distribute loot properly (or w/e). Also keep in mind when thinking of measures that the loot system hasn’t changed since launch, only the contents it works with. Here is my idea:

• You designate brackets to droppable loot based on gold value (TP determined) as well as player value (statistics determined). Gold value will determine the minimum bracket and player value will determine the maximum. (beta)

• When loot drops for a player, an accountbound counter will either increase or decrease depending on which brackets each piece of loot exists in. This counter will sometimes be applied to the seed and modify the chance you will get an item in better brackets. Lower-end trash, which will be unaffected by the seed, will slowly increase this counter and higher end items like precursors and permanent hair stylist will take out massive chunks, possibly driving the counter into the negatives.

• Methods of acquisition will have modifiers that affect the points applied and deducted from the counter. For example, buying a precursor will reduce the counter less than if the player got the same one as a drop.

• As a countermeasure to the unlikely chance extremes come into play, “Lucky accounts” who get pricey drops all of the time will bottom out their counter. When this happens, their account becomes semi-locked out of higher end drops for an undisclosed length of time. For those who will never get anything but literal piles of crap (as in Piles of Putrid Essence), eventually they’ll max out their counter and their next rare chest is going to be a high-end item and w/e bracket they get it from is going to have double the penalty so they won’t get stuck in a cheap-exo-drop loop.

This is my version anyway. Complex but it gets the job done. :I

I want to hear everyone else’s ideas.

I think the psychology of these sorts of systems is terrible. Knowing that your drops are slagged for some time after getting a really good drop – not superstition that you’re cursed, but that your account is going to be actively unrewarding for some time – is really discouraging.

Eliminating hot streaks, and the excitement that comes with them, is similarly bad for the game – no one ever gets lucky runs that feel good, because the game conspires to ice you if you might. Throwing random rares or exotics into the forge giving you even worse odds than it does now, virtually guaranteeing a loss, until you’ve thrown enough in to make your account ‘due’ for a precursor, is a huge damper; you either commit to farm enough for something to make it due, or don’t even bother.

Stronger salvage and crafting systems do a better job of smoothing out incomes without such side effects. I have not yet encountered a drop system that I’d consider healthier or more fun than independent, identically distributed drops.

Fixing unlucky streaks I can get behind but punishing the those who had lady luck smile on them, no. Players will start to fear getting something good. You might as well shift to a system that simply count the number of times you are up for a particular reward and give it to you on the nth time and reset the counter. No luck, pure deterministic and boring.

Mathematically, any system involving randomness generates streaks, good or bad. So that isn’t the issue. The issue is the perception of people unfamiliar with the mechanics. And the OP’s suggestion doesn’t address perception: if it actually fixed anything (after all the expense of implementing it), those who are complaining now would still believe that someone else was getting luckier.

John Smith has a big thread asking people to discuss RNG and I haven’t seen anyone offer any suggestions that offer systems that would be enjoyed by the masses.

• If it’s entirely skill-based, highly skilled players will enjoy it (until they get bored), but less-skilled players will decide it’s unfair (for example, this is exactly how the acquisition of the liadri mini is treated).
• If it’s entirely dedicated drops, people get bored or complain of ‘grind’ or repetition, as is the case with dungeons.
• If things are too easily acquired, people tend to devalue them (‘everyone has that’); people often covet those things that are less easily found.

The system that seems to offer the best compromise involves some measure of RNG. The problem remains that many people misunderstand what that means. People typically react to getting anything other than 50 heads out of 100 coin tosses as unusual, when it’s common to get something other than 50.

I don’t think there’s anything that ANet can do to help people learn to recognize the difference between predictable streaks and the truly unusual.

There isn’t. But one thing that can be done is to at least bridge the gap in drops players keep seeing. That is their main gripe. If the system actually gave you a definite chance to get an item, for example WoW’s need-before-greed system in raids, that complaining about unfair RNG systems becomes more and more petty.

Eventually you’ll see people who used to complain about how they’ll never get anything will start telling other players to keep trying. That is what is more important.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

John Smith has a big thread asking people to discuss RNG and I haven’t seen anyone offer any suggestions that offer systems that would be enjoyed by the masses.

• If it’s entirely skill-based, highly skilled players will enjoy it (until they get bored), but less-skilled players will decide it’s unfair (for example, this is exactly how the acquisition of the liadri mini is treated).
• If it’s entirely dedicated drops, people get bored or complain of ‘grind’ or repetition, as is the case with dungeons.
• If things are too easily acquired, people tend to devalue them (‘everyone has that’); people often covet those things that are less easily found.

In that one thread i put forth an idea that might work.

Ill be using tequatl here as an example and something else.

Currently the only way to get a sunless weapon is to rely on RNG at tequatl, which is a poor way to get it, ive done him most days for a year without seeing one. Some people have gotten 6 or more, its irritating to me not getting the drop i want.

My proposal? a mix of both, you can get the item from a drop randomly each time you do tequatl, but each time you also do tequatl, you get a token. it takes 10-250 tokens to get a sunless SKIN. By now, i would have one, and i would be perfectly happy. Im sure someone will see some flaws with that though, please point them out

Edit: im not even sure if thats been suggested or not..but it seems fair to me at least.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Mathematically, any system involving randomness generates streaks, good or bad.

Using a stateless RNG will certainly result in streaks and the type of distributions that the OP and others have highlighted. One of the more interesting eye openers for me is that, for a fair ‘coin toss’, if you sum heads as +1 and tails as -1, after a few hundred tosses, the odds of a sum near zero is quite small. It will likely have drifted above or below zero.

The OP proposes a stateful RNG. There is memory to it. This isn’t a bad suggestion in principle but it does raise the issue of the extra state for Anet to track. While a few extra RNG history variables is not significant, it has a subtle effect and, therefore, can be hard to debug. How would you like it if someone made a sign error and your state variable made it less likely that you’d get a nice drop? If the drop is already very unlikely, then it might be hard to tell you are the victim of a bug.

Rather than introduce some sort of per-character memory to the RNG, the standard (not necessarily good) solution in the MMO universe seems to be to make some of the loot RNG and some of the loot token based. The later is simply a function of time earned and puts a floor on when you get the good stuff. The RNG keeps you coming back and hoping, like for the lottery.

Of course, how much is token, and how important the RNG is, is a matter of the settings that the game developers choose. I don’t have any complaints on the GW2 side, from my own experience. I feel I get the nice drops often enough but maybe I’m one of the lucky ones (but if so, this would the first time the luck faerie has ever blessed me in an MMO More likely, Anet has their RNGs tuned in a way that seems fair to me). There are other tune-points out there, like my former MMO, where the forums are filled with folks complaining about RNG.

I will say it again. Discussion about RNG is pointless. You cannot determine how the system works from observation, so any assertion of a perceived problem with the loot system is purely speculative. Furthermore, there is no solution to this that will satisfy everybody. Now, everybody should be satisfied already, if it truly is a fair system, but because there will always be those who think they deserve better, there is nothing to be done.

In the absence of developer involvement, this thread and all other threads discussing the loot system are of no value, and serve only as a place for those with rudimentary understanding of math to (apparently) flaunt their knowledge.

Andred.1087:

In the absence of developer involvement, this thread and all other threads discussing the loot system are of no value, and serve only as a place for those with rudimentary understanding of math to (apparently) flaunt their knowledge.

You will notice however, that this thread was to throw around ideas they could use instead of RNG…Or in addition to RNG…

I think punishing a player for getting a good drop is a bad idea.

It should work the other way- the longer you go without a reasonable drop (rare quality or better), you get a slightly better chance of receiving one from the next mob. This resets once you have obtained a good drop. I believe this system is present in Diablo. (I can’t remember who it was, but this was already suggested in one of the many previous threads).

This mechanic could be applied in all sorts of ways. It could be applied to getting loot from random mobs as you do events/map completion in an area. It could be applied to things like Tequatl/Tri-Wurm- if you don’t get an ascended drop this time, your chances are a little better next time.

Perhaps if you kill a trash mob, it goes up 1 arbirtary point, a veteran increases it by 2, etc.

There would have to be something to make sure that it doesn’t out-compete magic find.

To summarise, create a system where low anomalies/outliers don’t exist.

EDIT: I like Dante’s token idea too. It gives the idea that a player is still working towards something tangible even if they repeatedly don’t get the drop they hope for. Even if you were halfway into the amout of tokens required for the drop, you’d still be happy if you received one.

Do you think the tokens should “reset”/disappear if you obtained the item through a lucky drop?

Behellagh.1468:

Fixing unlucky streaks I can get behind but punishing the those who had lady luck smile on them, no. Players will start to fear getting something good.

The problem is that, while it’s not totally symmetric, you can’t break up the unlucky streaks without at least somewhat breaking up the lucky streaks (holding expected drop rates constant). If you want to break up unlucky streaks, you necessarily break up some lucky streaks as well.

Dante.1763:

tokens

With the exception of a few items that specifically do not use that system (for good reasons) we have a very good token system in the game already. It’s called gold.

Ensign.2189:

With the exception of a few items that specifically do not use that system (for good reasons) we have a very good token system in the game already. It’s called gold.

Can i buy my tequatl bow? when i can, get back to me on that. Because i would gladly throw gold at it for one, because of how often ive done it…and not seen any ascended drops. Gold is not a token. Tokens are what you get for dungeons for completing them that can only be spent on that content. Adding something like that for stuff like tequatl would be nice, for those of us who do not get good drops. Its not that fact that im entitled, but ive done it almost every day, for a year, for one horde, ONE. I doubt i will ever see one, so being able to pick a SKIN, not an ascended weapon would be amazing.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

EDIT: I like Dante’s token idea too. It gives the idea that a player is still working towards something tangible even if they repeatedly don’t get the drop they hope for. Even if you were halfway into the amout of tokens required for the drop, you’d still be happy if you received one.

Do you think the tokens should “reset”/disappear if you obtained the item through a lucky drop?

I do not think they should reset, if you get one from a random drop, grats! But no i dont think they should reset. One token per try no matter what drops you get, that way it stays fair for everyone, including those who are lucky enough to get one

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

John Smith has a big thread asking people to discuss RNG and I haven’t seen anyone offer any suggestions that offer systems that would be enjoyed by the masses.

I have seen this claim several times now, and I have yet to find the thread you are talking about. Could you please provide a link?

Broom.2561:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

John Smith has a big thread asking people to discuss RNG and I haven’t seen anyone offer any suggestions that offer systems that would be enjoyed by the masses.

I have seen this claim several times now, and I have yet to find the thread you are talking about. Could you please provide a link?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/RNG-as-a-concept-Discuss

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Broom.2561:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

John Smith has a big thread asking people to discuss RNG and I haven’t seen anyone offer any suggestions that offer systems that would be enjoyed by the masses.

I have seen this claim several times now, and I have yet to find the thread you are talking about. Could you please provide a link?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/RNG-as-a-concept-Discuss

ty!

Andred.1087:

In the absence of developer involvement, this thread and all other threads discussing the loot system are of no value, .

>Says threads like this have no value due to lack of dev involvement

>Continues posting in said threads, bumping them to the top of the page, thus getting them attention.

I think veteran players might still be haunted by the ancient evil that is known as DR.

Though the demon has been supposedly exercised long ago, telltale whispers of its voice can be heard inside all of my loot bags.

qbalrog.8017:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Mathematically, any system involving randomness generates streaks, good or bad.

Using a stateless RNG will certainly result in streaks and the type of distributions that the OP and others have highlighted. One of the more interesting eye openers for me is that, for a fair ‘coin toss’, if you sum heads as +1 and tails as -1, after a few hundred tosses, the odds of a sum near zero is quite small. It will likely have drifted above or below zero.

Actually the Law of Large Numbers state that more trials will bring the actual result closer to the expected with a decreasing variance from the expected results relative to the number of trials. After a 1000 tosses you may have 8 more heads but 8 out of 1000 tosses is better than 8 out of 100 or 500.

Dante.1763:

Can i buy my tequatl bow? when i can, get back to me on that.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the spoons could be traded for the skins? Two birds, one stone.