Guild Wars 2

I prefer option 2.5.

The main issues I’ve noticed with RNG comes from precursors and the fractal tonic, both of which could have been solved with a token system. The chance of getting either of these from playing normally is extremely low, and the only real way to try for a precursor is to gamble away at the mystic forge where you can spend hundreds of gold and end up with nothing.

A token system would have been a good solution for both of these. What if players could spend 250 pristine relics for the endless fractal tonic? What if players got a number of tokens each time they tried to get a precursor from the mystic forge, which they could trade in for a precursor of their choice? (The chance of getting a precursor from the forge may need to be reduced accordingly.)

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

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.

you can simulate the exact same output from random through other means. in large numbers random is fairly predictable and known.
for example, it is highly likely their is a consistent number for the current random implementation that you can represent like this.
X amount of enemies killed per precursor drop.
which also translates into X amount of player hours per precursor drop.

once you realize this formula, it wouldnt be difficult to create a set of conditions that can simulate the exact same output.

random is a design choice, its not a necessity in terms of predetermining supply.

I think you quoted the wrong post of mine as your post doesn’t have anything to do with what you quoted of mine. I’ll go ahead and answer you anyway.

You’re assuming the determination of the drop rate is based on player action rather than a manually added percentage. I may have read your post wrong. If i did, could you clarify.

Point is, anet can generate the same supply without random, if they choose to do so.

The advantages of random are not really about controlling supply, its mostly the benefits of unpredictability

I brought that up in a previous post. Supply of an item will increase greater under a system with a guaranteed than one on RNG. When players have a guaranteed way, they will flock to that way. Those with a lot of free time will farm that way nonstop flooding the market. With an RNG system, this would not happen.

You are oversimplifying supply. You can design.systems that produce the same behavior.
If precursor from mob drop is .00001 chance you can make precursors drop from killing 100,000 monsters.
If the average player hours in combat is 5000, you can make it take 10,000 runs of a half hour activity

If 200 precursors are generated per day, you can create content that awards to the top 200 scorers (limit pet account per month)

Point is for any randomized supply there exists a direct predictable method to provide the same supply with the same input

First off, something having a 0.0001% does not mean you’ll get it after 100,000 monster kills. If you were to set it exactly at 100,000 monster kills, you’d be cutting off the entire right half of the distribution curve and shifting those that would fall under it to the middle. This produces more supply as now those people acquire the items sooner.

It’s for that very reason that you’d be eliminating the probability of getting an item above the average which is why supply would increase more.

First I’m simplifying for the sake of clarity

Second
No it wouldn’t be cutting the curve because the on average the behavior is accurate. Supply is decided by the total over time which is predictable to a small %.
If the average is truely 1/10 for example, you will get 100,000 out of one million attempts. That 100,000 includes both sides of the curve. To produce the same supply in another system you might make it every tenth attempt.

If you are combining both methods you come up with a different equation.

Point is it just a case of mathematics you can produce the same results over large numbers with. Non random system as a random one. The benefits if random have to do with psychology/game design not output.

Umm. I don’t think you understand how the distribution curve functions.

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

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.

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

It basically has to be defined by the player itself. I think the pvp reward tracks were a step into the right direction. Maybe players should be able to choose more specifically, which reward out of a certain group of items they would like to have. For example players determine first which kind of precursor they would like to receive, if they should get a precursor drop in the future or from forging 4 random weapons.
Same goes for common, rare and fine mats, players just check a box, if they want leather or silk, vials of blood or bones, crystal or charged lodestones.

Of course, people would start out with the more expensive drops until their prices come into equilibrium with the other, cheaper items.
But once all Lodestones have more or less the same price, people wouldnt be forced to farm the same content (Temple of Dwayna and CoE for Charged Lodestones), they would be able to get the Lodestone they want everytime a Lodestone drops for them, from whatever source.

RNG would still be applied as it was before but the possibility of people getting loot they dont want, gets minimized.

For weapons with unique skins from champ bags, it could look something like this, more related to reward tracks:
Make Achievement tracks for each unique champ bag. If champ bag A drops 10 unique named weapons, let the player chose one of the weapons, after opening 10, 50, 250 and 1000 champ bags A. If the amount of new exotic weapons flooding the market would be a concern for the economy, let them just choose to unlock the skin in their wardrobe.

I have a little knowledge how this system works but I just want to say that after 4k hours played on this account, the most valuable items I’ve got were: Carcharias from Claws/Jormag about year ago and Decorative Molten Jetpack from Legendary Red Static Assault Knight during Battle for Lion’s Arch. And since then, nothing. My friend in contrary, got 2 Dusks within month from as she said, WvW runs.

You can probably guess how I feel about that so I’ll welcome any system that will please and reward players more gratefully with love because honesty, I feel it should be changed or at least reworked.

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

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.

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

It basically has to be defined by the player itself.

I’m only pulling this out since it’s a how thing? I may be going for a skin i don’t have. Look you gotta always think of newer players, that’s really it. Yeah a lot of us vets have 99.9 % of the random skins. So, do we have a vendor that gives everything to new players? It’s not an easy solution if you think about it deeply. That’s all i’m thinking.

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

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.

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

It basically has to be defined by the player itself. I think the pvp reward tracks were a step into the right direction. Maybe players should be able to choose more specifically, which reward out of a certain group of items they would like to have. For example players determine first which kind of precursor they would like to receive, if they should get a precursor drop in the future or from forging 4 random weapons.
Same goes for common, rare and fine mats, players just check a box, if they want leather or silk, vials of blood or bones, crystal or charged lodestones.

Of course, people would start out with the more expensive drops until their prices come into equilibrium with the other, cheaper items.
But once all Lodestones have more or less the same price, people wouldnt be forced to farm the same content (Temple of Dwayna and CoE for Charged Lodestones), they would be able to get the Lodestone they want everytime a Lodestone drops for them, from whatever source.

RNG would still be applied as it was before but the possibility of people getting loot they dont want, gets minimized.

For weapons with unique skins from champ bags, it could look something like this, more related to reward tracks:
Make Achievement tracks for each unique champ bag. If champ bag A drops 10 unique named weapons, let the player chose one of the weapons, after opening 10, 50, 250 and 1000 champ bags A. If the amount of new exotic weapons flooding the market would be a concern for the economy, let them just choose to unlock the skin in their wardrobe.

we already have champ bags tied to this…

I like all these attempts to address this issue. As someone who feels like they are a low-end outlier, I certainly wouldn’t mind something that made my loot feel more rewarding.

munkiman.3068:

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

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.

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

It basically has to be defined by the player itself.

I’m only pulling this out since it’s a how thing? I may be going for a skin i don’t have. Look you gotta always think of newer players, that’s really it. Yeah a lot of us vets have 99.9 % of the random skins. So, do we have a vendor that gives everything to new players? It’s not an easy solution if you think about it deeply. That’s all i’m thinking.

I gave some examples on how to let players define their own loot in my post and I am not sure if I understood your concern.

If you already have all the random skins from champ bag A unlocked, good for you. In that case, you cant really complain about RNG.

Golgathoth.3967:

I’d like to start by saying that RNG itself is not the issue here. The main issue (as far as I’ve been able to suss out) is that this game has very, very few ways to decide what type of RNG you’re up against.

Here’s the comparison that makes the most sense to me, since it’s drawn from years of experience: in WoW (yes, that game, but where it’s from is not the point) there are various levels of RNG. Most of the time, if you want a specific gear item you can look it up and see that it only drops from certain bosses, often in the 10-25% range. These are what you could consider typical items, not meant to be exclusive. Other items are meant to be difficult to obtain, and so have drops in the 0.01-2% range, but are still dropped by specific mobs. Then, you have what are known as “world drops”. These are items that have often a 0.05-2% drop range, AND have a very wide pool of mobs it can drop from, often across multiple zones. In other words, for “typical” and most “exclusive” items, you can mitigate the RNG by knowing specifically what to kill, thereby limiting your pool of possible drops. For “world drops”, you essentially cannot mitigate by limiting the item pool.

The underlying problem in GW2 is that almost all desirable specific drops, including exotics with unique skins, are “world drops” or very close to it. Only in a few specific instances can you limit your item pool, as with the Sunless weapon chest. Otherwise, there is no way to specifically “go after” or hunt for what you want – at level 80, you could have a precursor drop from the gate guardian of Arah… or any random Risen mob… or a level 5 fish in Queensdale… or from a champ box… or in a dungeon… or from a JP or other chest. You get the idea. Now, I’m not suggesting that each precursor should have a specific list of mobs it drops from since maybe that’s asking too much, but I definitely would have no problem with other unique skins or more “typical” gear and vanity items having more specific methods of acquisition than a completely random world drop. The chance to drop doesn’t even have to be radically better, it just needs to give you a way to feel like you’re on the right track so to speak. It would also be nice if some more common or less prestigious skins could have more like the 10-25% drop rate, say skins from dungeon bosses.

They do this to support their “no grind necessary” slogan. You see, by spreading out the drops, it makes it extremely difficult for “hardcore” players, bots, and gold farmers alike to “farm” up wealth through a specific method. However, the casual player who wanders the world, goes from map to map, and kills random things without hunting anything, is bound to get some T6’s, a few named exotics, etc. which they can then sell on the TP. Since these items are required in large quantities only for exclusive, end-game, COSMETIC items which do not prevent or limit players from experiencing any aspect of the game in any way (e.g. you are just as effective in a dungeon with a “berzerker’s pearl sword” as you are with Infinite Light), and since there is no clear effective/efficient way to produce these items, the value of these items will always be high on the trading post. This is good for casual players who inevitably come across these items (lodestones, T6’s) because they can sell them for a higher price. And although it’s not apparent at first, this is good for hardcore players, because the rarity and high cost of the big ticket items allows it to maintain it’s prestige. And this is good for the game in general, because even the most casual players can acquire all the gear that they need for most areas of the game with ease.

The only type of people this is NOT good for are the people who want all the best and most exclusive items but don’t want to put in the time or effort necessary to earn these rewards.

munkiman.3068:

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

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.

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

It basically has to be defined by the player itself. I think the pvp reward tracks were a step into the right direction. Maybe players should be able to choose more specifically, which reward out of a certain group of items they would like to have. For example players determine first which kind of precursor they would like to receive, if they should get a precursor drop in the future or from forging 4 random weapons.
Same goes for common, rare and fine mats, players just check a box, if they want leather or silk, vials of blood or bones, crystal or charged lodestones.

Of course, people would start out with the more expensive drops until their prices come into equilibrium with the other, cheaper items.
But once all Lodestones have more or less the same price, people wouldnt be forced to farm the same content (Temple of Dwayna and CoE for Charged Lodestones), they would be able to get the Lodestone they want everytime a Lodestone drops for them, from whatever source.

RNG would still be applied as it was before but the possibility of people getting loot they dont want, gets minimized.

For weapons with unique skins from champ bags, it could look something like this, more related to reward tracks:
Make Achievement tracks for each unique champ bag. If champ bag A drops 10 unique named weapons, let the player chose one of the weapons, after opening 10, 50, 250 and 1000 champ bags A. If the amount of new exotic weapons flooding the market would be a concern for the economy, let them just choose to unlock the skin in their wardrobe.

we already have champ bags tied to this…

But the current form of RNG of champ bags doesnt let you influence, which weapon will drop for you. The achievement track would actually be an extra reward to guarantee an exotic drop after a certain number of completions.

Alternatively, you could have a checkbox in your (fictional) reward panel for each hcamp back, in which you check, which exotic weapon from its loot table you would like to receive the next time an exotic weapon drops for you from that champ bag.

Hi there,
I don’t post very much on the forums but I’m an avid reader of it. I would like to contribute to this discussion in particular since I think it’s one of the major reason why players could leave the game for a while.
There are a lot of other factors but here’s how I would INITIALLY increase the RNG factor of the unluckier players.

INCREMENTAL MF SYSTEM

Problem Analysis
Avoid Reward’s Clustering Illusion for players, mantaining relatively stable important factors like:

• Personal Magic Find ( who worked to have more should be rewarded accordingly )
• TP Economic System ( Markets have to be mantained stable as far as possible )
• Items’ Value ( Precursors still have to be very rare items, like items’ exclusivity in general should stay the same to avoid the “no reason to play more” problem )
• Items’ Acquisition ( particular items have to be still gained in the proper way for those that are dedicated to certain areas of the game, like Fractal Weapons and Ambrite Weapons )

Solution Proposed
My initial approach to this Problem is to have an incremental MF factor for each RNG loot that does not gain an exclusive loot. In particular, most sought items are T6 Rare Materials, Rares and Exotics ( I’ll call it Jackpot Loot from now on ). I would apply a system that would work like this:

Example:
Player opens a RNG Loot which has a Jackpot Loot Chance

• Condition A: he doesn’t get a Jackpot Loot
  - an hidden Unlucky buff will add a stack
  - if the Unlucky buff gets to 100, a visible stack of Bonus Luck buff will be given to the player, which increases its Magic Find by X
• Condition B: he gets a Jackpot Loot
  - both the Unlucky buff & the Bonus Luck buff will be removed from the player

Possible Issues

• Jackpot devalued: I don’t study economics but if there will be a devaluation, it would not stay there for a long time since the system is granted for every player and the RNG factor would leave the supply on a stable level after a while. It’s a matter of the lesser evil: unsatisfied players that could stop playing and provide to the market or slightly devaluation to grant a more contributing playerbase?
• Rares supply: Rares are not too hard to get, especially counting World Bosses, but would they be too much cheap? I think this problem could be adjusted by just working on the MF value provided by the Bonus Luck buff or by the number of stacks needed by the Unlucky buff. Also the Devs could hide these numbers if for any reason they think it should be not known by the player. This point is also compatible with the possible Precursor Supply Issue.
• Veterans not rewarded: MF was reset when it was deleted from Equip Stats without counting players’ age. Also MF can be increased through the Ectos, more affordable with this system. This means that MF must and should be the most important factor for Jackpot Loots over the age of the player.
• Technical Implementation: It should not be a player’s concern, but this system just uses almost the same in-game system for the kill-based sigils, and on certain extent it’s almost sure that there is a Loot Check already with the new Collection System. Implementation of this System should not require entire new Systems. Optimization could be then only problem.
• Unwanted Drop: A player could get an unwanted Jackpot Loot while playing an area of the game where it’s not interested in. For Example: getting a World Boss Exotic between Dungeon runs. This problem is not solved and should not be considered since the System is always active and the Jackpot Loot still has its own value.

Most Wanted Drops
Case by case, here’s how each particular drop will be influenced by this System and could create new advantages:

• Precursors/Most Wanted Exotics: Players will feel to have more chances to gain them gradually playing the game. Also they will at least get a Jackpot Loot which still has value on the Market, making them more invested in using the TP.
• Fractal Weapons: Problem potentially unsolved, unless this system will count these weapons in the Jackpot Loot, which could solve most problems with it ( especially ring drops ).
• Dungeon Chests/Ambrite Fossils: Still Exotics wanted by the players. The more you play that area, the better you’ll get by time.
• PvP Drops: PvP Bags should already have increased Loot Chances, or if not they should have since it would equilibrate with Pve more frequent Unlucky buff stacks.

This is my idea about this particular topic, let’s discuss how to upgrade this idea of mine or let’s get a better system to improve everyone’s experience without damaging the Economic System.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

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.

you can simulate the exact same output from random through other means. in large numbers random is fairly predictable and known.
for example, it is highly likely their is a consistent number for the current random implementation that you can represent like this.
X amount of enemies killed per precursor drop.
which also translates into X amount of player hours per precursor drop.

once you realize this formula, it wouldnt be difficult to create a set of conditions that can simulate the exact same output.

random is a design choice, its not a necessity in terms of predetermining supply.

I think you quoted the wrong post of mine as your post doesn’t have anything to do with what you quoted of mine. I’ll go ahead and answer you anyway.

You’re assuming the determination of the drop rate is based on player action rather than a manually added percentage. I may have read your post wrong. If i did, could you clarify.

Point is, anet can generate the same supply without random, if they choose to do so.

The advantages of random are not really about controlling supply, its mostly the benefits of unpredictability

I brought that up in a previous post. Supply of an item will increase greater under a system with a guaranteed than one on RNG. When players have a guaranteed way, they will flock to that way. Those with a lot of free time will farm that way nonstop flooding the market. With an RNG system, this would not happen.

You are oversimplifying supply. You can design.systems that produce the same behavior.
If precursor from mob drop is .00001 chance you can make precursors drop from killing 100,000 monsters.
If the average player hours in combat is 5000, you can make it take 10,000 runs of a half hour activity

If 200 precursors are generated per day, you can create content that awards to the top 200 scorers (limit pet account per month)

Point is for any randomized supply there exists a direct predictable method to provide the same supply with the same input

First off, something having a 0.0001% does not mean you’ll get it after 100,000 monster kills. If you were to set it exactly at 100,000 monster kills, you’d be cutting off the entire right half of the distribution curve and shifting those that would fall under it to the middle. This produces more supply as now those people acquire the items sooner.

It’s for that very reason that you’d be eliminating the probability of getting an item above the average which is why supply would increase more.

First I’m simplifying for the sake of clarity

Second
No it wouldn’t be cutting the curve because the on average the behavior is accurate. Supply is decided by the total over time which is predictable to a small %.
If the average is truely 1/10 for example, you will get 100,000 out of one million attempts. That 100,000 includes both sides of the curve. To produce the same supply in another system you might make it every tenth attempt.

If you are combining both methods you come up with a different equation.

Point is it just a case of mathematics you can produce the same results over large numbers with. Non random system as a random one. The benefits if random have to do with psychology/game design not output.

Umm. I don’t think you understand how the distribution curve functions.

Yes I do, distribution curve represents how the total results are distrubuted.

The chance of heads is. 50% or 1/2 over a large number of trials. it Will average to 50%. Different people will experience different distributions of heads or tails (this is what the curve shows) but this does not change the overall results, which would represent the supply.

Wanze.8410:

munkiman.3068:

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

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.

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

It basically has to be defined by the player itself.

I’m only pulling this out since it’s a how thing? I may be going for a skin i don’t have. Look you gotta always think of newer players, that’s really it. Yeah a lot of us vets have 99.9 % of the random skins. So, do we have a vendor that gives everything to new players? It’s not an easy solution if you think about it deeply. That’s all i’m thinking.

I gave some examples on how to let players define their own loot in my post and I am not sure if I understood your concern.

If you already have all the random skins from champ bag A unlocked, good for you. In that case, you cant really complain about RNG.

look/ id no

John,

Firstly, thank you for your efforts to discuss this, and the economy as a whole. I’ve been a longtime lurker of your threads – this is my first post in them.

Secondly, way back in the now-lost-annals of the MMO world, an SOE developer published a blog post, titled “Random vs Fun”, which encapsulated my beliefs entirely. To summarize, most players believe they want a truly random RNG, but that a truly random RNG isn’t “fun”, because past failures are no indicator of future successes, while most players believe that “after X failures, I must be due for a success, right?”, even through truly random number systems indicate that each roll has an equal chance of any result.

That being said, the natural way to combat this, to me, is to increase the success probability after each failure (or after X number of initial failures). I will bet, though, that tracking the number of failed rolls for each player for every instance where the RNG could effect the economy (crafting, forge, loot, etc) would be unduly burdensome.

So I’m going to wager that “loading the dice” as a mechanism is probably too difficult. If I’m wrong, then wonderful.

So, what are the alternatives? I have one which might be interesting: Get “rid” of the RNG entirely.

Obviously, a game where everything was “do this X times to get your reward” is unfun. The random element provides both fun and opportunity for risk vs reward that would simply disappear if removed. But the question, to me, is: What is the probability of success there to provide, exactly?

My guess is, an aggregate consistency to the rate at which items of value enter the world, when taken as an overall sample.

If the “average” number of combines in the forge needed for a precursor is “X”, then what if we provided another mechanism to reach X, without simply saying “combine X times to get your reward”?

What if instead of combines returning precursors, they returned a random number of tokens, that, when aggregated globally, created enough tokens to create a precursor after X combines?

This is very, very similar to the system in place for the gift of luck, but tradable. All that’s really happened is that you’ve moved the value from the consumables put into the forge, which are tradable, to the tokens. And if you happen to be an outlier and you fail to get your tokens easily, you can then choose to purchase them instead.

If these tokens were the only way to get precursors by forge, then I would presume that two things would happen: 1) the rarity and rate of precursors as a whole would mostly be unchanged, and, 2) wealth redistribution would be more even. Instead of the lucky combiner getting an expensive precursor to use or resell, anyone, regardless of why they are using the forge, gets a token that represents a portion of the value of that precursor to accumulate, or sell.

Additionally, you’d have progress more incrementally, rather than the all-or-nothing method that exists today.

Thanks again for your time. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

2.5 need to be added next feature patch. Apply it to all account bound RNG items. That will make me want to play fractals again.

I’ve never gotten a drop worth more than say 10g? 781 days and that is my reality.

I just want to add to this discussion as someone who has been negatively impacted by the RNG in this game. I’ve been playing since launch, probably about 2k or 3k hours total played, and I’ve thrown about 2000 rares into the MF. I’ve never received a precursor. The odds of not getting a precursor after 2000 forges are about 6%, however when you take into account the odds to receive a precursor from a drop or a chest, my unluckiness is even worse.

Wasting all of my money and getting nothing back in return really depressed me and sucked a lot of the fun out of the game. You can see that the MF method of obtaining a precursor is broken because whenever anyone asks if they should MF for one or just buy it off the TP, the resounding answer from the community is to just buy it, and I wish now that I had followed that advice.

I think a possible way to fix the issue would be for there to be a maximum number of eligible MF attempts in a row that can fail to produce a precursor. Right now, there is about a 50% chance to obtain one from your first 500 forges, and about 75% from your first 1000. Why not make it a 100% chance in your first 1000? Have the game keep a counter of how many forges it’s been since someone last got a precursor, and when that number reaches 1000, they automatically will get a precursor. Or, have the odds to obtain a precursor improve with every forge that fails until that person gets one, then resetting the odds back to baseline.

The reason I don’t like the concept of reaching a point where your next one is guaranteed through a hidden system is the following example:

I want incinerator. Ive thrown 600 exotics in for it, and had no luck. My ‘hidden guarantee’ is at 99%, but as far as I am aware I could be months away from it.

I do a world boss chain, and end up with 3 exotics that have crap sigils. A trident, a warhorn, and a focus. I toss them into the forge with a mystic shard, and poop out comes the rodgort precurser. My “99% guarantee” resets to zero on a once off, throw away forge giving me something worth about 100g only, instead of the realistic return I deserved of 1300g from Incinerator.

My suggestion for precursers actually moves away from the forge completely. The forging method is perfectly fine as a method of gambling. There is no reason to remove that gamble from the game. The problem is, gambling in the forge is the ONLY way to target a precurser. Flip it around. Have gambling in the force as A means to get it, and have a series of objectives to complete in order to get an account bound precurser from some other means. And this needs to be EXTENSIVE. (Covered alot in the scav hunt commentary so not going to go into it).

Essentially, my problem isn’t that RNG is bad. RNG is fine. However, SOLE RNG is a problem. Why should the only method of my obtaining items be RNG (or buying, which is essentially paying someone off for their RNG).

TLDR

I read through some of the ideas but instead of focusing on a fail safe method why not implement a more specific RNG system.

What I am trying to say is that have certain items acquirable through a specific channel. Such examples can be the current treasure hunting achievement. You have items like Sam, Pendant of Arah, Ulgoth’s Tail and more that can only be obtain through specific events chains.

So if players wants specific weapon skins or items they know where to do to obtain these items.

When it comes to precursors provide alternative methods of obtaining the precursor. Keep the RNG system in the Mystic Toilet but provide us alternative methods of obtaining it like a scavenger hunt or do specific events/quest chains (A very long one over a period of time). Also you can make the precursor obtained this way account bound so the market is not ruined.

munkiman.3068:

Wanze.8410:

munkiman.3068:

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

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.

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

It basically has to be defined by the player itself.

I’m only pulling this out since it’s a how thing? I may be going for a skin i don’t have. Look you gotta always think of newer players, that’s really it. Yeah a lot of us vets have 99.9 % of the random skins. So, do we have a vendor that gives everything to new players? It’s not an easy solution if you think about it deeply. That’s all i’m thinking.

I gave some examples on how to let players define their own loot in my post and I am not sure if I understood your concern.

If you already have all the random skins from champ bag A unlocked, good for you. In that case, you cant really complain about RNG.

look/ id no

Sorry apparently my cat is enjoying a good walk across my keyboard while in qoute. But i will definitely think and respond to this proper, if i can. Apologize for this actually convenient answer, I really actually don’t know. Perhaps it’s just a matter of champ running. But yes, that is a good point and no i don’t have champ unlocks done, even remotely. I haven’t actually tried them either, but i certainly don’t feel like just giving them away is a good solution.

Either way, doesn’t that tie into the reward system or RNG? Does anet just give everyone drops when they fail or succeed? I just want to know what it looks like is all, if we are reinventing the RNGeesus.

Thanks for starting this conversation, John! I think it’s a topic near and dear to the hearts of many players (as evidenced by the fact that we’re already on page 3 despite this thread being less than 8 hours old!)

While I understand the need and importance of RNG for MMO games as a way to preserve longevity and the thrill of getting a “windfall” now and again, I very much agree that an equalizer device to help flatten the bell curve of drops would help solve player frustration over either extreme streaks of bad luck, or envy at “lucky players” who basically just won the lottery. After all, a lot of us play games to get away from the inequities of real life; the perception, rightly or not, that some people can bypass the work and toil we put into getting our cherished items is one that can easily poison a game’s culture and community if left unchecked.

I heartily endorse your #2.5 option, and I’d like to point out that you guys have actually implemented something like this before. It was the reward system used by the Super Adventure Box (SAB), and I feel that it provided rewards to all players in a manner that was regarded as fair and equitable.

1. There was a chance for a player to get a Rare skin from the chests at the end of each level. This rewarded Luck, and it preserved the windfall feeling that’s important to some players for getting a good item as a lucky drop.

2. You could also acquire the skin you wanted by repeating the content several times and accumulating enough tokens to buy an account-bound version of the skin. This rewarded Dedication, and it soothed players with the knowledge that, even if they had the worst luck in the world, if they kept at it long enough, they WOULD get what they were after.

3. Finally, if you really want a particular SAB skin, but don’t like jumping puzzles, you had the option of buying the skin you want from one of the players in category 1. This rewarded Trade, and it has the dual benefits of giving player 1 extra money, and rewarding player 2 for their efforts that they’ve spent elsewhere in the game.

SAB’s reward system was a very neat, effective system for giving players what they want, and I strongly encourage you to adopt similar mechanisms elsewhere in the game.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Umm. I don’t think you understand how the distribution curve functions.

Yes I do, distribution curve represents how the total results are distrubuted.

The chance of heads is. 50% or 1/2 over a large number of trials. it Will average to 50%. Different people will experience different distributions of heads or tails (this is what the curve shows) but this does not change the overall results, which would represent the supply.

You have a normal distribution curve calculated with data consisting of a number attempts. The data is spread out like the typical bell curve with half the data spread across the various intervals on each side.

What happens when you redo the calculation after you take all of the data points above the previously calculated average and change them to be that average? Do you have the same results?

There have been studies done regarding how reward structures effect player motivations. Surprisingly, if you offer one group of people a reward of either $1 or $2 for a task, and a second group of people are guaranteed a reward of $2 for the same task, there will actually be more motivation in the first group to complete the task repeatedly for a longer amount of time.

That being said, I think that when you simplify the problem with gw2’s reward structure, what you’ve got is people earning either $0, $1, or $2. My theory is that you would motivate people more if you combined the current structure with a guaranteed reward over time…. I’m just brainstorming here, but imagine each monster killed drops a token, and there is a vendor who offers valuable items specifically for 500,1000,2500, etc. tokens. However, you’ve discussed your hesitation to add new currencies to the game, which I think is fantastic. So, maybe you could have each set of 250 tokens be tradeable with a vendor for 1 laurel or something. Then their value is completely dependent on the value of the Laurels you can trade them for, and that’s it. Laurels are very valuable because there aren’t very many ways to get them and the supply over time is limited to dailies and monthlies, which makes them somewhat tedious to get as it is, so that would solve two problems with the current reward structure by adding a new route to obtain laurels, and reward people evenly with small things over time without changing your core reward structure.

Just my thoughts.

Random number generation that depends on the history is a really dangerous thing. If you say ‘the odds of a precursor go up every time you forge and fail’, you’re implicitly saying ’don’t bother trying to forge for a precursor unless you’re ready to see it through’ because the odds on the first throw would necessarily be terrible. It works when you want to break up streaks of pretty benign things (crit chance and the like) but on drops, especially stuff like precursor drops, I’d stay as far away from this as I could.

A lot of the time random works just fine – as long as the sample size is large enough that things will virtually always even out. The problem is when the sample sizes for that to happen are too large and the odds of hitting ‘0’ successes is significant; there you need some sort of incremental system that builds up to the whole, where those increments are random and happen frequently enough that the distribution normalizes.

This is really what crafting is for; it’s an intuitive fall back mechanism. Where is our precursor crafting already?

Yeah, I think that if people are complaining about precursor acquisition, we need a slow, somewhat grindy, but achievable method of getting them, similar to the token acquisition for dungeon gear or SAB skins. Something that players can look at and go “OK, I don’t want to gamble, but if I complete X, Y and Z hard content, which will take me maybe 6 months if I play every day, I’ll get my Precursor anyway.” I don’t think that altering the factors behind the RNG would be a good solution.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Umm. I don’t think you understand how the distribution curve functions.

Yes I do, distribution curve represents how the total results are distrubuted.

The chance of heads is. 50% or 1/2 over a large number of trials. it Will average to 50%. Different people will experience different distributions of heads or tails (this is what the curve shows) but this does not change the overall results, which would represent the supply.

You have a normal distribution curve calculated with data consisting of a number attempts. The data is spread out like the typical bell curve with half the data spread across the various intervals on each side.

What happens when you redo the calculation after you take all of the data points above the previously calculated average and change them to be that average? Do you have the same results?

its not clear what your “if” case is here.

the point is there is very little statistical difference between and average that is random, and an average that is based on predetermined events.

this means, supply wise, there is virtually no difference between having a random chance of 1/2 your kills of X monster giving a pebble, as compared to every second monster you kill giving the item. In the case of having a large number of attempts, the resulting items will be virtually the same.

now the distribution of items among players who attempt it may be varied in a random system, but the total supply approaches the given probability.

Point is, it really doesnt matter economically whether your supply is random or your supply is not random.

In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times. According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value, and will tend to become closer as more trials are performed.

the problem lies that while the supply evaluates of a large amount of attempts to the expected value, on an individual level (small number of tries)this is not the case

There is no principle that a small number of observations will coincide with the expected value or that a streak of one value will immediately be “balanced” by the others (see the gambler’s fallacy).

so a probability of 1/10 will over a million attempts evaluate to close to 100,000 items
if i want to have the same supply without random, i can make it every 10th attempt wins, and you will get the same supply of items.

the major difference is, how these items would be distributed among users who attempt the same amount of times. which for random would be represented by a bell curve, but for 10th attempt would look like a straight line.

phys, hate to tell you bro, but you’re falling into Gambler’s Fallacy (or a variant thereof).

I want incinerator. Ive thrown 600 exotics in for it, and had no luck. My ‘hidden guarantee’ is at 99%, but as far as I am aware I could be months away from it.

Throwing exotics into the MF in search of a Precursor really shouldn’t be encouraged practice anyways. It’s just silly gambling.

daft inquisitor.1605:

phys, hate to tell you bro, but you’re falling into Gambler’s Fallacy (or a variant thereof).

no, im not, gamblers fallacy would be expecting that with small numbers things would behave as expected. With large numbers random occurences approach expected variables.

large by the way is pretty large, and the more rare the occurence, the more large the number has to approach expected results.

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

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.

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

I would note that for most of the content in game we do have such a token. Its called “gold”.

sirian.4981:

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

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.

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

I would note that for most of the content in game we do have such a token. Its called “gold”.

The problem with that token is that what you can exchange it for varies for higher level items. Stuff that I could exchange for gold at the exotic level at the launch of the game and year later and now vary significantly. That alone makes it a medium of exchange and not a token.

Full disclosure – I have played since beta. About 10 achievement points, more than 2 k hours played. No precursor. I would think that one of ARena net’s goals would be to encourage varied game play. For example, legendaries requine crafting, dungeons, world completion, and world versus world. It seems to me that achievement points already accomplish this goal. It would therefore why not modify the current achievement system. Maybe an ecomic every 1k a precursor every 5k. Now how you retrofit it into an existing system without blowing up the economy is your area of expertise.

Bit curious what will come out of this thread.

Tighten the loot table – I’ll admit i could be wrong on this not knowing exactly how it works but it seems far too often that with a given enemy I won’t have any idea what I will get from it because the options are too vast. I believe this was done to encourage varied play (oh go do what you want you will have an equal chance to get something no matter what) but to me what it does is suggest there is very little point in doing specific things and focus instead on quantity. Some good examples of how I think it should be are the wind riders in dry top, they don’t seem to drop a large variety of items but i do get a large amount of t5 venom and feel like i have a decent chance at t6 venom.

I didnt take the time to read everything others said, but i strongly believe the core rewarding system is very poor, players have to repeatedly do instances that arent challenging just to have a chance of getting something good. i believe if the content of gw2 was more challenging something like the triple wurm or the aetherpath and players would spend much more time to complete it, you would be able as devs to balance the time spend on the content with giving much much better rewards, such as guaranteed ascended and exotic gear for completing this difficult content. problem is the game is easy and the 2-3 things that are hard in the game (1 world boss, 1 dungeons path, high level fracs) they are awfully un-rewarding. A solution would be to make content harder and logner to complete but at the same time massively increasing the chances of getting good loot.

Essence Snow.3194:

Zero Day.2594:

Bit curious what will come out of this thread.

My bet is absolutely nothing. Any takers?

Well it won’t be this year/soon that’s for sure.

It just seems like a large part of GW2 has been structured around RNG, when it really shouldn’t have been in the first place. And since they’ve made it structured like so, I doubt they will stray from their philosophies too far.

My other beef is that they’re realizing/willing to discuss it now – after implementation of Ascended (time gated & highly costly) gear. One of their reason for it was to bridge the gap between Exotics and Legendaries. The “gap” was/is actually the precursors, the RNG of getting them. To me at least, what they did there left a very sour taste (which still persists) in my mouth.

Repeatable, rewarding, personal, daily quests + personal quest log. TL;DR at bottom

Filling maps with purpose, and giving players a sense of control is the most rewarding. Magic find still has us at the mercy of RNG, so we need to have simple things in the game like other MMOs. ’I’ll give you this if you go do this’. I’m talking about traditional questing, but in a fashion where it’s NOT the surface of the game, and it’s not needed to progress.

People have suggested a token system, a system that builds up till you get an expected reward, but in reality we need another layer to what we do as players.

Waypointing costs money and saves time, you don’t have to deal with that ‘in between area’ between you and your destination. Events are okay for leveling, although very random and the rewards are very RNG if any at all besides experience/karma. With a light quest system in the game, you can fill in that area between waypoints with content that’s WORTH doing because you KNOW you’ll get something.

Repeatable daily quests marked on the map, all around the map in the same location. Lets say theres 6-8 different quests in Queensdale for starters, some quests will give you crafting mats while others will give you large chunks of EXP or karma, some will give you a rare+ armor/weapon for the level area. The quests stay the same but the rewards rotate, so the kill/gather quest that you did yesterday in the fields that gave you a lot of EXP is now rewarding you with armor/weapons.

It displays what it gives on the map, you notice, you change route and find the one that gives you the reward you want. YOU control where you go, and YOU get the reward you’re after. You’re an adventurer and you’re working for the right kind of reward that suits you.

The quests will be daily, it won’t be too difficult and it won’t be invasive to the current leveling system. You can either do them all or do only what you need, you can roam through the maps and get what you want. A 10 reward-type cap would probably be needed, too. Like getting the exp reward 10 times mean you can’t get it from quests in other zones after you cap out.

The designs can follow some standard designs, with some cool GW2 flavors. Group quests, solo quests, you name it. Others won’t get in your way since it’s sort of like an event that doesn’t track all players progress as a whole, and nothing stops you from adding them to your group and playing with them either.

TL;DR— Add a few quests to each zone, repeatable daily with rotating rewards that promotes traveling around and doing things rather than just WPing back and forth . Lets players choose their path and gives purpose for going places, but doesn’t urge them to linger or farm anything. Capping players off on certain reward types per day if rewards are worthwhile enough is cool too.

Rhomulos.2089:

….

Isn’t that what they attempted to do with daily achievements and Laurel currency?
(It’s just a little thinner version than what you explained.)

Maybe Anet should hire a mathematician from a company that makes slot machines. They work with random numbers day in and day out.

I’ve always wondered why playing a slot machine was more appealing than overcoming a difficult challenge by discovering, learning and adapting.

DarcShriek.5829:

Maybe Anet should hire a mathematician from a company that makes slot machines. They work with random numbers day in and day out.

Slot machines are designed to favor the house and to keep you playing. I rather them ignore any advice from gambling houses for a reward system. The current system is already on the edge of being too much a lottery for my taste (for certain things like fractals and precursors).

Right now the most rewarding content in the game is dungeons. Not only is there a good gold/time invested but there are also tokens that I’ve used to equip all of my alts. Even if I get bad drops (which I usually do) I feel rewarded for that content. Fractals is poor gold/time and when you’re lucky you’ll feel it is worth it, but most of the time it’s not. I stop playing them because after 10 runs without anything good being drop’d it’s not worth the time.

For fractals the solution is simple, x number of fractal tokens and you can exchange them for skins. For precursors I’m not sure.

I’d also like to see WvW tokens a.k.a. badges be useful for more than just siege.

RNG is find as a supplement, but it really isn’t an intensive unless the payout is high enough. If the payout was high enough in GW2 it would ruin the economy so really a progression system like PvP or token system would be my preference (with a very, very low chance RNG element in place).

Calae.1738:

I’ve always wondered why playing a slot machine was more appealing than overcoming a difficult challenge by discovering, learning and adapting.

Slot machines payout somewhere around 98% of what you put in. It slowly drains you but most people forget the bad rolls and only remember the good ones. So it feels rewarding. That kind of system really doesn’t work well here.

i’ve been wanting more token systems in-game for a while. it works great with dungeons. please <3

An example of a recent in game addition that many, many people complained about on the boards. Unidentified Fossilized Insects

The item is a completely random drop, you can’t sell it or trade it to another person and there is no other way to get it even though there is a specialized currency in the area already. A system such as this puts each of us at the complete mercy of RNG. At least with other items of rarity there is an outlet for those of us who don’t hit the RNG jackpot, the TP.

We have had events in the past where items are introduced as rare drops but are also sold from merchants (SAB comes to mind). During such events I know that I can get the item I want through three different methods. I can grind specialized currency, I can purchase it from another player on the TP and finally I can hit the RNG jackpot and get a drop. Even if I didn’t get the drop I wanted during a run of SAB I didn’t get frustrated because I made incremental progress. Progress, however small, is still progress.

Repeatable, rewarding, personal, daily quests + personal quest log. TL;DR at bottom

I do not want more dailies than are currently in the game. When there are too many dailies it always makes me feel that I’m not “doing enough,” not “keeping up,” and that’s not fun. If they were going to add anything, I would add weeklies, collections of goals that you don’t need to complete in one sitting, but are slightly more immediate than monthlies.

I think it’s good to have plenty to do each day, but bad to have stuff where you have to finish it that one day or miss out on that opportunity forever.

RNG is find as a supplement, but it really isn’t an intensive unless the payout is high enough. If the payout was high enough in GW2 it would ruin the economy so really a progression system like PvP or token system would be my preference (with a very, very low chance RNG element in place).

But, what if it were higher payout, but only partials? Like BL Ticket Scraps, as an example. Say the odds of getting an exotic to drop were 1:5000 drops, as an average. If they dropped it to 1:500 then that might be too high, too many exotics would enter the market making them all junk and messing with connected markets. But maybe start dropping “exotic fragments” at a 1:500 rate, which you can add 10 of together to generate a random exotic. Numerically it would be more or less the same thing, but it would alleviate dry spells by allowing players to feel that they were making some progress on a regular basis.

Is this suppose to be a discussion on fixing “unlucky” players without messing up the aggregate drop rate too much or coming up with something that isn’t as RNG based? I’m asking because it’s been 9+ hours and not one comment positive or negative about my suggestion. I’ve been conditioned to have at least some shots fired at me.

If you want to look at this from 100,000 ft, it’s a problem with having so many possible drops from everything and how with RNG it drives players to the TP which helps sink gold from the economy as players sell what they don’t want to buy what they do.

Let’s look as swords, and these are just the ones on the TP.

GW2TP lists 562.
38 white
183 blue
148 green
109 rare
83 exotic
1 legendary

Breaking them down by level ranges.
0: 5
1-10: 23
11-20: 43
21-30: 35
31-40: 58
41-50: 58
51-60: 53
61-70: 86
71-80: 201

Lets breakdown of the 201 level 71-80 swords.
White: 6
Blue: 34
Green: 44
Rare: 49
Exotic: 67
Legendary: 1

The pool is simply too large and too meaningless for players to be considered a reward, and this is just swords. Level 71-80 weapons, all types, all quality levels, consist of 3,707 items, 21 legendary, 1170 exotic, which 20 are precursors.

I’ve been here 22 months, with 20 playing level 80 characters. Want to know how many exotic weapons I’ve gotten from drops during that time? Probably less than 5, no more than 10 and I think I got a dup once. Out of 1170. Drop rate requires a microscope.

If you toss in Level 71-80 armor (2085/603 exotic) and trinkets (617/104 exotic) numbers nearly 7000 items. Now a fair chunk be craft only and aren’t on the drop tables (crafters need to make money somehow, not that it’s easy to do) but the pool is enormous to select from. How many players with level 71-80 characters are excited over blues? or even green? I think I’m safe to say nobody. They are merely salvage fodder for EoL and a handful of T5 and the occasional T6 mat and maybe a minor sigil/rune. Or they are forge fodder.

And that’s part of the problem with RNG. Table of drops are too large and most are “junk” to a level 80 character. If they aren’t junk then there’s a fair chance that they aren’t usable by the character or the character already has better gear. It may not be junk, just a helm shaped bag of coins from selling it on the TP.

Maybe I’m not playing the “right” content as I rarely do dungeons and haven’t done fractals, due to the PUG snobs to who you must play their formula builds or not get on a team.

TL/DR version

Nobody commented one my suggestion to provide guarantee drops. RNG is needed due to the shear number of possible drops. And even though a very large number of possible items are exotic, the drop rate is minuscule in basic PvE meaning it’s TP or nothing.

Can you elaborate more on how you would like to see guaranteed drops included? Would it be a system where, for example, killing centaurs will always drop centaur-skinned weapons (which still has some RNG), or that certain Exotics will only drop from a particular boss (and thus opening up the route of intensive farming, but is still partially reliant on RNG), or an even more definitive system of “If you want X, go kill Boss Y. He drops it 100%”? I’m pretty certain the last would never occur since it means supply would quickly outstrip demand and the majority of Exotics would quickly become worthless once players unlocked the skin.

Ruggs.8420:

DarcShriek.5829:

Maybe Anet should hire a mathematician from a company that makes slot machines. They work with random numbers day in and day out.

Slot machines are designed to favor the house and to keep you playing. I rather them ignore any advice from gambling houses for a reward system. The current system is already on the edge of being too much a lottery for my taste (for certain things like fractals and precursors).

Right now the most rewarding content in the game is dungeons. Not only is there a good gold/time invested but there are also tokens that I’ve used to equip all of my alts. Even if I get bad drops (which I usually do) I feel rewarded for that content. Fractals is poor gold/time and when you’re lucky you’ll feel it is worth it, but most of the time it’s not. I stop playing them because after 10 runs without anything good being drop’d it’s not worth the time.

For fractals the solution is simple, x number of fractal tokens and you can exchange them for skins. For precursors I’m not sure.

I’d also like to see WvW tokens a.k.a. badges be useful for more than just siege.

RNG is find as a supplement, but it really isn’t an intensive unless the payout is high enough. If the payout was high enough in GW2 it would ruin the economy so really a progression system like PvP or token system would be my preference (with a very, very low chance RNG element in place).

The mathematicians that make slot games struggle every day with how to make RNG more appealing to people. They use RNG to distribute awards to players in ways that are enjoyable to players. you’re comment about slot machines favor the house has no bearing in this argument and I’m not sure why you brought it up. If Anet is having problems deciding what to do with outliers in their distribution patterns, mathematicians that have to answer this question daily may be the people to ask.

A well implemented RNG distribution system may help GW2.

Interesting fact, there are some video poker machines that pay out over 100%.

If there are machines that do that, I’m certain they will be removed from the floor VERY quickly. No business will tolerate a loophole that loses them money.

First of all, I just want to say thank you for building this awesome game, and also having this specific topic of discussion with us. I’ve played many many mmo’s over the years, my first one Asheron’s Call ranging all the way back to 1999; this issue you described of a purely rng approach to items is something that has only affected me in a couple of the mmo’s I’ve played. However, that said, it was a singular issue of dislike that stood out to me, and usually pushed me away from said games. I, as a player, really get into my characters rp lore/story, their item look, and what items from all aspects of the game that I want to acquire.

In my years of online gaming I eventually tried and played WoW on and off, mainly because I had relatives that played and it was a good way to stay in touch. While I played I found my own ways to enjoy and get into that game, doing the usual process of leveling, reading all of the games side quests/npc text, and finding out what items I wanted. In WoW, which is about 10 years old now, they have a purely RNG based system and because of this you see people creating threads in their forums saying that they have been running X dungeon every day over X amount of characters for X amounts of YEARS, sometimes like 7 years. That to me seems like a horrible, dated method of antiquity, that really could easily be improved upon. This very topic, is the primary reason I quit that game. I had finished playing with my family, they had quit, and my only reasons to stay were a bunch of cool items from various locations that all had about a .002% drop chance. This was frustrating, inspired no hope in me, and led to me walking away from their game.

I do understand, and am very grateful that GW2 has nowhere near the abysmal RNG of other games like the one I just talked about. Nevertheless, the same system being in place, can and does create those many outliers. People will run events/dungeons or whatever in game time and time again, and get frustrated that their 500th fractal run dropped not a single skin, and worse, that their buddy who just joined the game ran a couple and immediately got two of them. Your option two leaves players a fallback in their mind, if all else fails, at LEAST eventually I can start to accrue tokens to just get what I want. This would also help to serve the people that want a singular skin, and when luck supposedly comes their way, it drops the wrong item in the same skin set.

A system in place like your second option would keep your players playing the old content waiting on luck and/or those tokens to eventually get what they want while playing your new content as it comes out and enjoying that story/set of items too. A LOT of people eventually just give, permanently, running things that are purely random. Other people, like myself, hear of players running things so many thousands of times and just want nothing to do with turning my fun game time into a negative grind everyday.