Guild Wars 2

one possibility, to help the problem of not getting the item you want. Is some items are flagged as lucky items, these would be the low drop rate items, like rares, exotics, precursors, etc, and some rare stuff in other categories. These would be tradeable or MForgeable, to become a random amount of luck currency (with a lucky chance for double payout), items luck currency value would be based on how hard they are to get.

then… you have an account bound item creator or vendor, that you can trade luck currency for lucky items (basically hard to get items of various types)
the items can make use of secondary currencies in addition to luck currencies so as not to cancel out certain content specific rewards, like fractal relics for fractal items, karma/gold for precursors, geodes or whatever ties into the insect weapons.

lucky drops should have some visual cue, so you know you got something considered lucky.

this however just creates a system to deal with the problem of how do you decide when someone has “won” for example a rare spear is probably considered the same as a rare greatsword random wise, but not in real value or use.

You would still institute a smaller gradual and predictable means of gaining luck currency in addition to the trade ins.

So when they decide to add a new item, but want it to be tied with a specific content, all they have to do is add a luck currency cost, and a side currency cost asscoiated with a given task.
They could also have some that have achievements associated with it, as opposed to a side currency.

Why not use reward system already in game, which people forgot it exists, dungeon tokens/ pristine fractal relics + vendor.

So instead of pure rng straight out of the box, you combine the two. Meaning if you are lucky, you get your drop early from the chest at the end of the lvl, but if you are not, like myself, you get the option to trade in the tokens/relics for it.

Then you make that mystic toilet, i mean forge to some good use for change, and put in items that would always result in something you want. 100%

Now to give example, you make each dungeon/fractal have its unique artifact that is super rare and drops from explorable end chest. But if you play certain dungeon enough times, and gather enough of tokens/relics, you can just get it off of vendor, for 10000, 100000, 100000000000 tokens or whatever.

Once you get all 8 + fractals, you make it similar to crafting gifts of might and magic, there is this recipe you have to get from rng, or trade dragonite ore for it.

lets say ac,ta, cm and se are one gift, and cof, coe, arah, hotm are another gift, fractals one would be a stand alone gift, and then you miss 4th element to make it really intricate way of crafting something you put your effort into, or got extremely lucky.

Either way you get rewarded, and you feel like you achieved something/ earned something, rather than straight out rng drop.

But i wouldn’t really bother with drops, not before you make changes to current dungeons / add new harder dungeons, because current dungeons are way too boring and way too rewarding for how hard it is so beat them, arah included!

Cheers!

John Smith.4610:

Checking back in. This isn’t meant to be a discussion of just those three ideas that I posted, those were just a primer for options. The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

That being said, this is not a discussion of how you should get a precursor. I’d prefer the discussion to be much more general, solving specific problems is easy once you have an excellent framework.

basically my feeling on random is that the standard way it has been done was wrong. Many developers were operating with the same incorrect ideas that players have. Like

• if he plays 2000 hours, he probably will get it (which is true but ignores the fact he may not)
• the belief lucky streaks will balance out
• not considering how low % chances dramatically changes the amount of time for a system to normalize. (something with a 30% chance normalizes over fewer trials than something with .001% chances) the lower the rate, the more disparate and greater the range in personal player experience.

however, random is probably the simplest solution, with the least amount of planning, and is creates short term unpredictability, at the same time as creating a predictable supply (for the economy)

Still i would say that low % probability is a bad overall system for these types of games. I would generally prefer smaller luck and something more predictable.

Once again SABs first iteration of rewards, i felt was really good.
accountbound based on predictability, and how well you knew the levels/beat the game. IE by knowing the area well you could get a lot more currency, beating bosses gave currency, etc.
the tradeable skins were random drops.

Essentially i think random overall as the main method of achieving goals, is probably bad.

Lighthammer.3280:

Why not use reward system already in game, which people forgot it exists, dungeon tokens/ pristine fractal relics + vendor.

So instead of pure rng straight out of the box, you combine the two. Meaning if you are lucky, you get your drop early from the chest at the end of the lvl, but if you are not, like myself, you get the option to trade in the tokens/relics for it.

Then you make that mystic toilet, i mean forge to some good use for change, and put in items that would always result in something you want. 100%

Now to give example, you make each dungeon/fractal have its unique artifact that is super rare and drops from explorable end chest. But if you play certain dungeon enough times, and gather enough of tokens/relics, you can just get it off of vendor, for 10000, 100000, 100000000000 tokens or whatever.

Once you get all 8 + fractals, you make it similar to crafting gifts of might and magic, there is this recipe you have to get from rng, or trade dragonite ore for it.

lets say ac,ta, cm and se are one gift, and cof, coe, arah, hotm are another gift, fractals one would be a stand alone gift, and then you miss 4th element to make it really intricate way of crafting something you put your effort into, or got extremely lucky.

Either way you get rewarded, and you feel like you achieved something/ earned something, rather than straight out rng drop.

But i wouldn’t really bother with drops, not before you make changes to current dungeons / add new harder dungeons, because current dungeons are way too boring and way too rewarding for how hard it is so beat them, arah included!

Cheers!

A problem i see with using existing tokens to purchase rare items in the future is that it will instantly put alot of wealth into the hands of those that already farmed lots of those tokens in the past. I know its great if all that useless stuff that you have been hoarding in your bank or wallet out of a sudden can be exchanged for awesome rewards but i think if reward structures get changed, everybody should start on a level playing field.

Like token speculators?

The more I think about it, the more I think the problem lies with the way that exotics just drop from anywhere at any time. The feeling you get from attacking some random enemy and getting an exotic item (or even a rare) is not the same as when you get it from a chest or a boss. If the loot tables were adjusted to make super valuable things MUCH MUCH more likely to drop from bosses and chests than from mobs, that would make people happier.

This should be coupled with measures to clip the outliers of RNG and give better/worse luck after a streak, but I think that this would be considered a very positive change.

Also, throw different types of items into the mix. I’m guessing 99.99% of players salvage the blues/greens they get, why even bother? Who’s going to equip a blue piece of armor at level 80? Instead, why not just award the mats and the luck directly? Asking for minis to be added to the loot tables is probably asking too much, but getting random minis is also something that would be fun.

wwwes.1398:

The more I think about it, the more I think the problem lies with the way that exotics just drop from anywhere at any time. The feeling you get from attacking some random enemy and getting an exotic item (or even a rare) is not the same as when you get it from a chest or a boss. If the loot tables were adjusted to make super valuable things MUCH MUCH more likely to drop from bosses and chests than from mobs, that would make people happier.

This should be coupled with measures to clip the outliers of RNG and give better/worse luck after a streak, but I think that this would be considered a very positive change.

Also, throw different types of items into the mix. I’m guessing 99.99% of players salvage the blues/greens they get, why even bother? Who’s going to equip a blue piece of armor at level 80? Instead, why not just award the mats and the luck directly? Asking for minis to be added to the loot tables is probably asking too much, but getting random minis is also something that would be fun.

problem is this would further lower the value of regular monsters. perhaps if regular monsters represented consistent progress, and bosses/special enemies/chests represented spike progress it could work.

However if you just make bosses more valuable you get even more pressure to do things like boss train, or ignoring everything except bosses in dungeons

John Smith.4610:

The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

The RNG in this game just feels bad. The high of getting a good drop is severely outweighed when compared to the overwhelming meh of getting the same old crap again and again. That is assuming you do get a good drop. A drop you or someone actually wants and not just a random exotic that you can’t use, has crap stats and you end up forging or salvaging … again.

It feels like wasted time. I’d love it if I felt I was working towards something rather than having everything I do be a crap shoot that doesn’t matter in the long run. If I knew I was at least earning tokens or that my misses were counting towards a streak-breaker, then I would feel more compelled to put in the work. As it is, I can take large breaks from the game because, whatever – it’s just the same old grind no matter when I do it. I know this game isn’t meant to be grindy, etc, but you do want player-retention, and having a grind is a part of that equation. I don’t see how you can separate the two, really. I mean, I don’t do world bosses anymore because they are new, exciting and fun anymore – it’s because of the loot. And when the loot isn’t there … why am I playing again?

Don’t get me wrong – the bosses are awesome and I loved them when I first encountered them, and I don’t hate them now. It’s just that in lieu of anything else to do, this is as good as anything. But it’s not good, so … meh. It feels bad.

Lighthammer.3280:

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

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

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

I’m very much in favour of things that give you incentive to try new things, explore the environment and do smaller events out in the world. What if such things would increase your weekly/monthly magic find value and then reset back to your standard-magic find value?

some examples that add to your temporary bonus-magic find (which resets every two weeks):

• find shiny objects that spawn in random locations in the open world (in caves, under bridges, behind trees, in veteran-mob lairs,…)
• find hidden chests in dungeons which drop bonus mf
• kill all enemies in a dungeon
• get best player in a sPvP match
• get the most captures in a sPvP match
• kill 5 veterans in a map without waypointing out of it
• get x amount of xp in a map without getting downed
• revive/heal 20 players/npcs in a map
• get gold for escort events – the npc mustn’t go down
• repair a friendly keep/tower with 100 supply
• some enemies in WvW drop bonus-mf orbs

this would increase your magic find value considerably.

The way this could work: make it part of a monthly/fortnightly-luck achievement. Some of those are repeatable, some 1 time only, but all of them would add a temporary magic find boost.

We need to come up with an idea that prevents farming. I was thinking maybe a two tiered system of tokens, or even three tiered. Right now, world bosses give out 1 guaranteed rare per account per day. Perhaps world bosses can drop a token for that region that’s worth a certain amount of regular event tokens. This would give people an incentive to do regular events, while maintaining the value of world bosses, while also making it impossible to farm world bosses to the exclusion of ordinary events. (this might also help with the legendary sand giant that most people ignore in Dry top). Meanwhile, everything still has the regular (incredibly low chance. You want to know how many jormags I’ve killed, and not gotten a jormag’s breath, anet?) to drop the prestige item.

I don’t want to talk about magic find. The problem with RNG is endemic. Magic find is NOT the answer. Boosting it to 300% doesn’t help that much, why would boosting it any more be better? This shouldn’t be about making people do extra work to overcome crappy RNG, while other people DON’T because they’re on the lucky outlier side. It should be about making RNG better, period.

I don’t feel the RNG is bad itself … it’s what you get from it that seems meaningless. For example, I wouldn’t want rare loot falling like rain on me but when I would get a rare, I would hope it would be aligned to my class, my needs and even my preferred build stats.

If a player could set some of these parameters on a character, RNG could give drops more appealing to the player by virtue of how useful they would be. I think recent decision to align some fraction of the armor drops to your class was a good one. That idea could be expanded.

ON the other hand, what drops endgame are irrelevant for most players (unless it’s a precursor of course) … the builds are crafted and purchased, rarely obtained through loot.

I’d rather kill every world boss once for a special reward / “token” than kill the same ones over and over and over again. And why only world bosses? Hand out tokens for doing events which haven’t been done for a while, hand out tokens for players who play different jumping puzzles or explore the map.

Token for world bosses only just seem like an unneccasary grind to me, but I can imagine that getting more tokens for trying different bosses / different activities could feel refreshing.

I’m also for region wide tokens. Some items would require more than one kind of token.

phys.7689:

wwwes.1398:

The more I think about it, the more I think the problem lies with the way that exotics just drop from anywhere at any time. The feeling you get from attacking some random enemy and getting an exotic item (or even a rare) is not the same as when you get it from a chest or a boss. If the loot tables were adjusted to make super valuable things MUCH MUCH more likely to drop from bosses and chests than from mobs, that would make people happier.

This should be coupled with measures to clip the outliers of RNG and give better/worse luck after a streak, but I think that this would be considered a very positive change.

Also, throw different types of items into the mix. I’m guessing 99.99% of players salvage the blues/greens they get, why even bother? Who’s going to equip a blue piece of armor at level 80? Instead, why not just award the mats and the luck directly? Asking for minis to be added to the loot tables is probably asking too much, but getting random minis is also something that would be fun.

problem is this would further lower the value of regular monsters. perhaps if regular monsters represented consistent progress, and bosses/special enemies/chests represented spike progress it could work.

However if you just make bosses more valuable you get even more pressure to do things like boss train, or ignoring everything except bosses in dungeons

Well, I think that the mobs should have loot tables very similar to what they have now. Just no exotics, not even a possibility of exotics. And maybe drop luck and mat bags instead of a constant stream of weapons and armor that, again, will never be used by anyone except to salvage.

But this is off-topic from RNG. And this must be coupled with measures to stop hot and cold streaks. I struggle to think how we can really do this while keeping RNG from being directly tied to your account, but maybe it is tied to a character instead of the account. I think a buff/debuff system would be the way to go.

So what quantifies as bad luck? I’d say the percentage of times you get exotics from a loot table, since presumably there ARE some items flagged as being more valuable than others. But others may differ in that opinion.

I have to agree with some of the comments made early on in this thread. RNG should be used for low-mid level items and it is probably fine as it is. Using RNG for top tier items, in my opinion, is just a lazy excuse not to develop meaningful long term content.

I want the option that allows me the freedom to work towards the item I want and not have to rely on winning the lottery to get it, or save up hundreds / thousands of gold to get it from the person who was lucky enough to win. I’m not saying tokens are the answer either. I really like the way you create a backpack in Living Story Season 2. Do the quests, get the items – travel the world, combine some mats, etc. More content like that would be my preference when it comes to obtaining top tier items.

John Smith.4610:

Checking back in. This isn’t meant to be a discussion of just those three ideas that I posted, those were just a primer for options. The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

That being said, this is not a discussion of how you should get a precursor. I’d prefer the discussion to be much more general, solving specific problems is easy once you have an excellent framework.

In that case. RNG by itself is a terrible idea. RNG with any other subset of systems that allows players to achieve meaningful results in a timely manner is good. See the current state of Dungeon Tokens.

John Smith.4610:

The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

John, could you give us a bit direction here? I’m not quite sure what specifics we could/should discuss… it seems pretty one-sided that many think RNG is bad and tokens could work.

Obtena.7952:

If a player could set some of these parameters on a character, RNG could give drops more appealing to the player by virtue of how useful they would be. I think recent decision to align some fraction of the armor drops to your class was a good one. That idea could be expanded.

I think I’ve seen a few people mention the idea of players setting some kind of parameters. I feel like the idea has potential, but I do have to ask, how would we handle things like market trends?

For example, the player who sees that X item is selling for more, so he sets his parameters to get more of that item.

Or how would we handle the supply of certain items that potentially dries up because demand for those items goes down (the loss of demand meaning that players change their parameters to other stuff that they want).

Including even large groups of players changing their parameters in an organized manner to affect the supply of a particular item.

I’m not really sure what we’re even supposed to be talking about given how this is framed. Should the reward system in game have a large random component? Obviously; there are decades upon decades of meticulous research saying exactly that. Random loot is awesome. The game should have more random loot.

The problem GW2 has is that loot is extraordinarily homogeneous outside the exceptionally rare precursor drop. People do not find usable loot. You do not use anything that you find, and nothing is an upgrade. What you instead find are piles upon piles of trash loot, which you salvage down to piles of components – which turn into the actually desirable loot at a very, very low frequency.

There is nothing in between. Exotics are cheap and easy; precursors are enormously rare. Everything that’s not a precursor is garbage to be recycled. Players miss out on the high points between the low points of finding something rare and cool, because none of that exists; everything is garbage.

I think you’re asking entirely the wrong question.

John Smith.4610:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

John Smith.4610:

The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

John, could you give us a bit direction here? I’m not quite sure what specifics we could/should discuss… it seems pretty one-sided that many think RNG is bad and tokens could work.

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

starter concepts for cons of each system:

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

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

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

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

I propose another approach:

What if the problem itself isn’t in how we get items, but in what we get and how we interact with them?

A few points that might solve problems I think exist:

In how we interact with rewards:

• We should be able to salvage in a bulk, for example “salvage all blue items”
  Having to click through “trash” reinforce the sentiment of being unlucky with rewards.
• Add a gemstore (or not gemstore if you feel generous) item that let us deal with trash items, a mimic or something that eats them and give us something back. (And by trash items I mean literally trash items, not bad quality items in general)
• The same for runes and sigils of lower quality. I would like to have something similar to what you can do in the Mystic Forge, without having to carry around all those runes/sigils of no value to a lvl 80 character and stop doing what I am doing just to get a marginal value out of what I get.
• Luck is a good measure to let us deal with “bad loot”, but I think is not enough, since the benefit is too small per item, add maybe a new material that can only be obtained by destroying items (not the same as salvaging for other mats), and that doesn’t discriminate on what we destroy, this should have a convenience related usage.

What we get:

• Getting skins is a good way of dealing with rewards we can’t directly use.
• Getting mats and luck is another good way of dealing with rewards we can’t use.
• But then, why the most common case is that we can’t use what we get? In GW2 you have to be lucky to use something you get as a drop after you hit lvl 80, most of the time what you wear is something you craft, buy or exchange for some kind of token, which isn’t bad, but is unrelated to the RNG based reward system. Since at this point we have dealt with the Loot system in a similar way as Diablo 3 did with theirs, can we consider setting up conditions that guarantee a certain type of drop? In diablo, once you do X amount of some activity, in a row, you get a guaranteed high quality drop from boss monsters, rewarding longer sessions of play, and sticking with a group. This could be a nice mechanic inside of dungeons, because it doesn’t just improve the way players are rewarded, but also encourage to not skip events if you make those, the condition necessary for this.
  I imagine a good way of implementing this is, for every event inside of the dungeon, you get a “charge” of something, and once you have 5, after every event you get a guaranteed rare, with chance for exotic or ascended. This also increases the chance of getting dungeon specific rares (which now have meaning thanks to collections).

John Smith.4610:

Checking back in. This isn’t meant to be a discussion of just those three ideas that I posted, those were just a primer for options. The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

That being said, this is not a discussion of how you should get a precursor. I’d prefer the discussion to be much more general, solving specific problems is easy once you have an excellent framework.

As a player who since early access hasn’t had a precursor drop in play or from the forge I’d say that I feel hard done by your “luck” mechanism and this makes me play less. You’ve had issues for a long time in my opinion and I frankly don’t see your attitude on this matter changing.

John Smith.4610:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

John Smith.4610:

The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

John, could you give us a bit direction here? I’m not quite sure what specifics we could/should discuss… it seems pretty one-sided that many think RNG is bad and tokens could work.

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

starter concepts for cons of each system:

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

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

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

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

It never worked for me. I’m unlucky in game and that’s not a good feeling to have. When I see others get a precursor now I just log out and play another game.

John Smith.4610:

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

starter concepts for cons of each system:

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

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

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

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

In the interest of not hitting the character cap on my post (which I already did while trying to submit T_T) I have gone through and shaved down my post to the essentials:

I think it can be said that there are a few key principles at work here – Namely: fairness, control, information, and desire.

Fairness, because it’s so subject to interpretation, is most important as perceived fairness. It’s rather easy for us to write a program that uses some kind of pseudo-random number gen, but it’s another thing entirely to convince people that their odds are the same as the next guy.

Control (or “empowerment”) is, again, most important as a perceived thing. If people have perfect control over the outcome (as with a token system) then we see the negatives of that, including – but not limited to – the loss of the “fantastic moment” (as you described it). So instead, people need to feel like they have control over the outcome, without actually having as much control as they think they do.

Information is tied to feeling empowered. I think it’s a key part of allowing the player to be empowered, but once again, too much information means a loss of the fantastic moment, among other detrimental feelings, such as overwhelm with the enormity of the number of tokens needed for every item you want.

Desire is probably the most subjective of all of them and it’s also something that’s subject to the game’s rules. People tend to desire most what is difficult to obtain or has the higher perceived value, regardless of what its inherent value is.

I will mostly talk about empowerment and information. Perhaps pure RNG is something that can provide more information and maintain some of the empowerment of the more predictable alternative (such as tokens) while keeping the fantastic moment intact.

For example, say you loot a mob and then you are asked to literally roll a die for loot, which then tells you what number you got and what loot “pool” you pulled from. Setting aside for the moment the practically of making something like that work in the middle of intense combat, the concept is that the player can now take ownership of the result on a more psychological level.

I remember in another game, where there was a Need vs. Greed system on some loot items, my buddies and I would sometimes joke about one of our guildies hacking the results of his die rolls because he got high rolls really often (you could see the roll number people got when needing/greeding for an item). The point is, we instinctively gave ownership of the roll to him, despite it ultimately being a computer program that calculates the result.

Using a Tequatl kill as an example for how to empower more, let’s say the minimum player expectation (or “desire”) is to get four rares in total, from the boxes if nothing else. We empower the player by letting him/her roll the die and see the result. He rolls a 4, a 6, a 2, and a 7 (out of 20). All very low numbers. He gets two rares (we’ll say the 6 and the 7 pass the necessary threshold). But he’s not happy. He didn’t even get close to his expected minimum.

But we leave him with a mystery box now. He can put a rare into that mystery box and go for another roll. He can put an additional rare in to slightly raise his odds of getting something valuable out of the box. He puts both in, rolls, and gets a 12 out of 20 this time, which is enough to net him two rares. He breaks even.

At the end of it, he’s left with exactly what he had before. But now he feels like he chose his fate. He rolled the die and broke even, but it is his choice in the matter that ended with him having two rares.

I’m not necessarily saying implement a mystery box but the general idea is:

TL;DR – Give people more perceived empowerment and more information to power that perception, without taking away the fantastic moment, and we might have something that is more psychologically gratifying, if nothing else. Any thoughts on this are of course welcome.

John Smith.4610:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

John Smith.4610:

The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

John, could you give us a bit direction here? I’m not quite sure what specifics we could/should discuss… it seems pretty one-sided that many think RNG is bad and tokens could work.

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

starter concepts for cons of each system:

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

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

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

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

My post on entropy with a secondary RNG effect could provide the pro’s of 1 and 2 without the cons. The devil is always in the details and there’s a lot of work in the construction of the unit equation for the entropy loops.

Ensign.2189:

The problem GW2 has is that loot is extraordinarily homogeneous outside the exceptionally rare precursor drop. People do not find usable loot. You do not use anything that you find, and nothing is an upgrade. What you instead find are piles upon piles of trash loot, which you salvage down to piles of components – which turn into the actually desirable loot at a very, very low frequency.

There is nothing in between. Exotics are cheap and easy; precursors are enormously rare. Everything that’s not a precursor is garbage to be recycled. Players miss out on the high points between the low points of finding something rare and cool, because none of that exists; everything is garbage.

I think you’re asking entirely the wrong question.

I entirely agree with this post. I understand that really cool toys and outfits are the bread and butter of the gemshop. I accept that. However, there is very little outside the gem shop that is fun.

Here’s an example – the ambrite weapon skins. Nothing about obtaining them is related to skill or the gem shop. You can’t buy keys, or insects – you farm that and hope you get lucky. Even something like that – a weapon skin that still takes a ton of farming to get geodes for recipes, etc is relegated to the extremely crappy RNG. If you’d throw us a bone every once in a while, people wouldn’t get as frustrated. For several weeks now I have looked at the Zephyrite keys in my bag and think ‘maybe I should farm a bit and see if I get lucky’, then realize it’s horribly boring with no payout and decide hell no. It’s all or nothing and no sense of working towards anything good.

We can look at the new collections as well. I was excited at first and was determined to farm the specific champs that dropped certain things and see how far I could get. I think we know how that ends. I’ve given up on collecting – if I get something, fine, but I know it’s not something I can actively work towards and refuse to shell out all the gold it would take to complete. A few items? Sure, I would pay for a few, but knowing that I won’t even get close through normal play is demoralizing. You can only get faked out by a blue Ulgoth’s tail so many times. Couldn’t we at least forge a crappy tail into an upgrade? Then at least I know I have a path to get it. I don’t care if it takes 5000 hoofs and stacks of leather and dust to upgrade it – at least I know it’s in my reach eventually.

GW2 implementation of rewards and how RNG influences it feels like a giant clusterkitten. You have multiple competing systems/concepts that act together in a way to make rewards feel abysmal.

Here are the core issues as I see them.

First you have magic find. Switching that to an account based system with a 300% cap was good. Having it not affect bags was bad. Moving most of the loot to bags was horrible. Let our MF affect what’s in bags as well and it would help a lot of players feel more rewarded.

Second the way RNG appears to work and that many accounts appear lucky or unlucky. I’m sure from a game wide perspective it looks like a traditional bell curve for rewards and everything looks fine. However, that doesn’t preclude some accounts from being “permanently” unlucky or lucky. I mean, when I can go a month without seeing an exotic drop…it’s kinda bad. Having what feels like an unlucky account makes playing feel like a chore/grind/work. It very easily leads to “what’s the point” and “I give up”. Where as lucky accounts leads to a lot of gold and everything is easy; which may not be much better from a developers standpoint but is less likely to make a person leave. And when you’re dealing with 500K+ active regular accounts, the number of accounts that feel unlucky is in the 50K range. That’s a lot of unhappy people.

Third is what kind of game GW2 is supposed to be. It’s billed as being a casual game that anyone can pick up on and enjoy. But the loot tables are designed around hard core players. This is a bad combination. GW2 seems to have 3 types of players, the hard core players that seem to put in 40+ hours per week (hard core), those that only play up to 15 hours per week (casuals), and those in the 16-30 hours per week (dedicated?). In a casual game the casuals should be able to achieve everything in the time they can afford to play. However this creates an insane runaway inflation because the hard core players will flood the market with easiliy attainable items. If you balance for hard core players so the economy isn’t ruined then the casuals have almost no chance of getting things. Dedicated players seem to fall in a mix between these two groups.

Ironically, account bound systems give anet the means of fixing this by having high drop rates for things and keeping the economy healthy. But using this method seems less preferable/more difficult than just decreasing the drop rate. Even worse, there seems to be some items that have a low drop rate and are account bound which just compounds the issues for some people.

I think GW2 needs to decide if it’s going to be for casual players or not and design around that decision. Trying to hit both doesn’t make anyone happy.

Shaaba.5672:

We can look at the new collections as well. I was excited at first and was determined to farm the specific champs that dropped certain things and see how far I could get. I think we know how that ends. I’ve given up on collecting – if I get something, fine, but I know it’s not something I can actively work towards and refuse to shell out all the gold it would take to complete. A few items? Sure, I would pay for a few, but knowing that I won’t even get close through normal play is demoralizing. You can only get faked out by a blue Ulgoth’s tail so many times. Couldn’t we at least forge a crappy tail into an upgrade? Then at least I know I have a path to get it. I don’t care if it takes 5000 hoofs and stacks of leather and dust to upgrade it – at least I know it’s in my reach eventually.

Collections are a good example of what feels like a very bad RNG reward system. For the Grawl/Hylek/Krait collections I think I averaged about 100 kills each to get the unlock item. This isn’t too bad because they’re plentiful; just boring to do.

Jormag though…based on those other three, I have to kill Jormag between 50 and 200 times. Oh yeah, I can only do it once per day because I’m limited on the chest spawning. Even if I use multiple chars I’d be lucky to kill him more than twice. I just don’t have time for more. That is an insane grind just because of RNG. I’m not even guaranteed the unlock item if I kill him 500 times.

No achieve should ever be locked behind RNG. Make it hard to do based on skill, that’s fine. I can either improve and get it or resign myself to not being good enough. But at least it’s my choice to make the effort. RNG invalidates everything. There is no skill, no matter what I do on anything I can’t improve my chances. Heck, I can’t even work my kitten off to increase MF because it’s a chest! This is a pure RNG mechanic and it’s horrible.

John Smith.4610:

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

It would be nice if GW2 could track your rewards and increase your chances of getting nicer rewards based on it.

With BLC you get a booster and two items I believe. If I get non rare items 5 times then next time I open a chest I get a 1% bonus to finding a rare item. Make this cumulative until I get the rare and reset it back to normal. If I haven’t gotten a rare after 20 time then my next box is a guaranteed rare. Do the same for exotic level drops.

Do this kind of tracking for all drops/chests, not just BLC. I used BLC as an easy example, not because I think it’s the best idea. As a player I know I’ll get something really nice if I stick with it but what it is might still be variable. But currently I have no reason to keep trying because I feel like I never get lucky or get anything remotely worthwhile. Last time I farmed BLC I got 1 scrap every 10 chests instead of 1 scrap every 2 like most people I know. For me, this is just demoralizing and makes me thing “what’s the point? I’ll go do something else”

John Smith.4610:

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

I see no problem with having both 2 and 3 in the game. In fact for items as common as rares as and unnamed exotics I see not reason to move away from pure RNG.

Dungeon tokens are a good example of number 2, as were the LS season 1 meta achievement rewards. Both of these were great, but I wouldn’t want these to be the only ways to get rewards in game.

For stuff like precursors, teqatl skins and fossilised insects I would favour a method that guaranteed one after a certain amount of time but left the rest to RNG. The reason pure RNG is bad here is that you can be working towards something for a long time, and unless you get that one lucky hit you are no closer to your goal than when you started.

Examples of hybrid RNG I would prefer.

1. An achievement related to something with a number of possible rewards. Eg. Kill teq 50 times and unlock your choice of teq skins.
2. Hidden pre-ordained lucky strike. If you are supposed to get a teq skin every 30 kills, then each player has a random number between 1 and 30. Once they hit that number of kills they get their skin.

I can’t see either of these solutions working for precursors. I am also not sure if they could have been applied to Queen’s Gauntlet challenge given the rarity of the backpiece. For stuff like fossilised insects though I would find either far preferable to the current system.

John Smith.4610:

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

starter concepts for cons of each system:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then you have the rare bird like me that just doesn’t give a rats kitten about drops…i.e., I could care less if I ever get something super rare…I’d automatically just sell it for what ever the highest offer is on the table. So whether it’s RNG, no RNG or some Hybrid, I do not care(don’t care about a Precurser, Legendary, rare Ascended stuff(read non-craftable or purchasable), etc., but there are plenty that do care as these discussions attest to, and yes, that most likely means I won’t complete a lot of the Collections out there, but so what, this game is just something I do for fun and to unwind from the RW.

P.S. – Just putting this out there as my opinion and nothing else, an improvement in the system for those that care is probably good for the long term health of the game.

John Smith.4610:

I’m not adding new or personal content to the discussion yet.

I’m looking forward at you doing that, John. I wonder how you, as a player, experience RNG in GW2. Are you a lucky one? Could the fact that you are on one specific side of the bell-curve have an effect on the game…

I also wonder if you consider that people who do get ascended drops might not get the drops they want (stuff with healing power, for example). Exactly this happened to me. I had a few (2-3, can’t remember) ascended drops from rank-up chests in WvW and would consider myself lucky because of this. I’m not happy though, since none of the stat-combinations were anywhere near useful for me.

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

John Smith.4610:

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

starter concepts for cons of each system:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s written right in the posts.

In the OP one option had the negative connotations added to it that it was manipulating players and more complicated. Both of those words manipulate and complicated are leading biases.

In the last post one option’s con was eluded to be nothing more than a figment of players minds basically nullifying it.

Noting that they are reiterations does not change their effect.

If these are unintentional…sure fine those things happen, but please don’t use these type of things when wanting unabated responses. It’s rather important to research to take heed of such things and not disregard them ofc unless you want results to be skewed.

How is this going to work:
When there is some loot that is not salvageable/usable (Fractal Skins) or sellable for nearly nothing (Ascended Rings) allow people in the same party to distribute it how they see fit. Example:

Noooooooooooooooooooooo.

Never.

At least not how other games do it where you have to roll on loot or anything of the sort. That is toxic. If they could figure out a way to make it so that you could choose to trade BoP loot with other players that ran that content with you though, that much would be fine.

I was thinking on this, and I think what we should do is make RNG better, not just move the outliers from people who are lucky to the people who can do a bunch of tasks during a fight. If we start doing that, it’ll be like champs, people doing “tasks” and not just attacking the boss.

Yeah, maybe. It’s at least important that they don’t include “troll tasks” to the boss, like that tail swipe one Teq has. They should only reward you for doing useful and important things.

There are several good ideas here, and I will say that not all of them are specifically about RNG about the economy and loot in general.
So let me start by saying I love loot, I love getting useful loot, in Guild Wars 2 90% of loot does not FEEL useful even if to some degree it is.

First, I’ve seen several suggestions to just drop mats and luck directly once you are level 80, this sounds brilliant to me. I hate getting a loot “bag” as a drop opening just to find “trash” or “junk” items the game has enough junk (whites, blues, greens) that the trash category feels patronizing, I wouldn’t be remiss if they were removed entirely. I also like the idea of directly getting materials that I can so oh that’s somewhat useful, rather than seeing a white and salvaging it purely because of it’s rarity. Continuing with this pattern “rares” are not a useful drop other than they give fancier materials. The only upside I see to keeping the salvage system with all the garbage drops is the goldsink in kits.

Second I see a lot of requests for token systems, I am partially against this. While I like the idea of being able to “earn” rare or useful loot by progressing with tokens, I don’t see why a system that is currently in place couldn’t serve this function. I am opposed to cluttering up inventories and the UI with yet another token that you collect, we have tokens, karma, and gold each of those already have enough potential to allow players access to rare and exciting loot.

Third (this is me) While I detest RNG on the trading post, the controlled RNG that the game uses can be just fine, if the paradigm changes a bit. The Dev’s (as far as I can tell) feel that a Rare item is an exciting and cool drop, and that exotics are elite items limited to just a few per character, ascended and legendary items are to have only 1 or 2 per account. Players see rare drops as something useful for salvage, exotics are the bare minimum for level 80 play and ascended and legendary gear is required for any sort of end game content ie. fractals, dungeons, etc. When a world boss drops a rare the feeling isn’t exciting, it should be a guaranteed exotic with a rare chance for a unique skin, or above par attributes. In addition I would love to see weapon and item skins added directly to the level 80 loot tables. In regards to the RNG I believe just cleaning it up streamlining the drop tables and making more bosses drop unique items (some predictability is good for the player, I love knowing my chances.

Lastly I want to compare to Guild Wars 1’ s loot system, all drops had potential to be useful, even blue items had a chance at perfect stats (sometimes r8 blues were worth more than the rarest of skins) thus rendering most loot usable, again I hate getting 10000’s of items that are “trash” only to be composted into materials that go to my bank tabs, I guess in the end it’s not the RNG that’s the problem, it’s the loot that I’m rolling for.

That being said, this is not a discussion of how you should get a precursor. I’d prefer the discussion to be much more general, solving specific problems is easy once you have an excellent framework.

I have a question on this. The game has been played for two years now. If a player has been playing actively every day of those two years, how many precursors do you believe he should have acquired through standard loot (including fractional numbers if necessary)? With some players reporting that a half dozen or more have dropped for them in moderate play, and others report never having received even one, while the math might claim that’s “working as intended,” it certainly doesn’t seem “fair” from the receiving end.

I know you prefer to downplay the importance of acquiring Precursors, but given that it is a significant element of the RNG system to a lot of players, I think it’s an important factor for discussing how RNG can be improved. Why can we not have a genuine discussion about this element?

John Smith.4610:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

John Smith.4610:

The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

John, could you give us a bit direction here? I’m not quite sure what specifics we could/should discuss… it seems pretty one-sided that many think RNG is bad and tokens could work.

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

starter concepts for cons of each system:

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

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

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

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

What was the system in GW1? That seamed to work well didn’kitten

I just tried to edit the very last 2 words and umm I never put the word kitten in there its spose to say Didn’t It

phabby.8945:

John Smith.4610:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

John Smith.4610:

The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

John, could you give us a bit direction here? I’m not quite sure what specifics we could/should discuss… it seems pretty one-sided that many think RNG is bad and tokens could work.

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

starter concepts for cons of each system:

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

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

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

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

What was the system in GW1? That seamed to work well didn’kitten

I just tried to edit the very last 2 words and umm I never put the word kitten in there its spose to say Didn’t It

For future reference tip, I believe if you remove the apostrophe, it circumvents the overactive filter. It’s treating the two words as if there’s no space between them and as if didn ends at the apostrophe.

klemen.8439:

Cormac.3871:

Klemen, why do you not feel that dungeon tokens do not currently fill the role that your suggestion is intended to?

Well for once, when you hit level 80 with 8 characters and want them to look nice, dungeon tokens are useless. I never use dungeon tokens anymore to get armor. From level 80 dungeons, I buy rares and salvage for maybe few ectos but that’s about it.

Are you saying that you just don’t like the skins, or that you already have the skins?

I’ve been doing that for over a year now and here I am, still 0 legendary, still 0 rare drops (not rare as quality but rare as rare), only shinies I grind gold for because that’s the only guaranteed way of getting something.

I’ve had about two years of heavy play for one precursor drop in the open world (plus two from MF but I wouldn’t count them for the surrender conversation), one ascended weapon and one ascended piece of armor and two rings. Is that what you mean by rare drops? Other than that the best drops I have were worth about ten gold thanks to their runes or sigils. Is this what you would call a good drop rate for someone who got too embarrassed to look at his account age when it reached 3000 hours some time last year?

I am not really sure what you mean by rare here, but I suspect that it would become significantly less rare under the system you propose. If on the other hand when you say that you have never got anything rare you mean you have never got a named exotic after thousands of hours play, then OK, maybe your account is cursed.

John Smith.4610:

…

I’ve didn’t seen this one in the whole topic, so… hear me;
Special loots (epic skins, useable special stuff like potions, nurnishments, etc) are essential, we all know this. But the big question is; How many times I need to kill something to get what I want? I’m in terrible luck with the GW game drops since GW1 Prophecies… always junk and crap, but when finally something nice drops… ascended… guess what? I just don’t have a use for it.

So far in my career I’ve tried to solve this problem with 2 unique way;

1. Each Boss have a reward-track, so within 10 or so kill you WILL get the drop you want – at least once.
2. Bosses should also drop “Special Crafting Components”, which let us combine them to forge the item we want – this is kind of a micro crafting-collectible methood.

I really hope some change will come within this RNG, so far by ~8+ years it was terribly disappointing.

Good Luck John!

John Smith.4610:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

John Smith.4610:

The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

John, could you give us a bit direction here? I’m not quite sure what specifics we could/should discuss… it seems pretty one-sided that many think RNG is bad and tokens could work.

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

starter concepts for cons of each system:

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

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

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

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

The RNG system as a concept is fine because it has that surprise and excitement when and if you get extremely rare loot. To clarify why I only mention extremely or at least highly rare loot (exotic and above), it’s because in the end-game, they’re the only loot worth to mention imho.

But that RNG concept fails when you, as I said in one of my previous replies, have players who receive good things and players who don’t.

Personally, I love the dice system in other MMOs but if that will lead the community to become more hostile towards one another due to unknown reasons, you should keep RNG but fix it!

Fix it in a way where everyone can get something good or at least make us feel that way with an implementation of a hybrid system to RNG with reward tracker that includes items dropped by RNG (exotic drops – from weapons to living story items, ascended drops, etc.) not just tokens or the stuff you get in PvP reward tracker which is pretty much tokens as well.

I hate it when I have to see posts of my guildie on facebook of how he gets new precursors every month. I mean … sure when you have money you can do mystic toilet all day, especially if you’re lucky like him … but I’ve spent 1000gold+ and never got anything … played dungeons for over 500 hours and never got anything … played WvW for over 1000 and never got anything … It was all a grind for me and many other players while some people are pure luck boosted.

TL;DR

What I would love to see is just a balance between those who get nothing and those who get it all.

John Smith.4610:

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

John Smith.4610:

Magic find makes a huge difference.

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

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

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

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

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

But that RNG concept fails when you, as I said in one of my previous replies, have players who receive good things and players who don’t.

Personally, I love the dice system in other MMOs but if that will lead the community to become more hostile towards one another due to unknown reasons, you should keep RNG but fix it!

The Dice system is far worse than the GW2 RNG system. You still have the RNG element of whether an item you might want will pop, and THEN you have the RNG element of whether you win the roll for it, and if you lose, you then hate the other players rather than the game. In an early TOR dungeon I was playing a Trooper and a Jedi rolled on Trooper armor (which he theoretically could wear but had a terrible stat combo for him), and won it, put me off every grouping with anyone in that game again.

phabby.8945:

John Smith.4610:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

John Smith.4610:

The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

John, could you give us a bit direction here? I’m not quite sure what specifics we could/should discuss… it seems pretty one-sided that many think RNG is bad and tokens could work.

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

starter concepts for cons of each system:

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

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

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

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

What was the system in GW1? That seamed to work well didn’kitten

I just tried to edit the very last 2 words and umm I never put the word kitten in there its spose to say Didn’t It

The original had a mostly RNG system, it was just that it was put behind harder content, party wipes meant starting the whole thing over type of stuff. The rewarding stuff was still a drop rate thing, it was just tougher to get at. GW2 actually drops lots more stuff, but the good stuff is more hidden behind low rates than challenge.

I’m not much about farming, but would spend hours doing the underworld ecto farm.

That’s why RNG is more a glaring issue that needs to be addressed in this game. Barring tokens (which are predictable) just about everything else is based on RNG, even salvaging. Adding in a challenge that requires good team play (or even solid solo play) is going to be far more successful than most of the content we see in GW2.

The marionette was a good example, Liadra another, the wurm and updated Teq are also good ones. However, at the end of Liadra, you knew you’d get the goods. Those things are actually pretty widely accepted as good content, accept in the sense that the reward is pretty much more of the same. That’s the thing, the valuable stuff has to be locked behind luck in the world events, since so many people do them at once. So RNG is really bad in that sense and why we look at things like reward tracking, participation or some scaling method to balance it out.

My basic thought, at least until we get challenging stuff that is smaller group oriented, the rest of the world as is, needs a progression method to get at the goods, repeatable tracks (i think we can agree the PvP track system is a good direction), that rewards players for simply playing the content, would go a long way at moving away the focus on the RNG model as the only method at valued rewards.

Ohoni.6057:

But that RNG concept fails when you, as I said in one of my previous replies, have players who receive good things and players who don’t.

Personally, I love the dice system in other MMOs but if that will lead the community to become more hostile towards one another due to unknown reasons, you should keep RNG but fix it!

The Dice system is far worse than the GW2 RNG system. You still have the RNG element of whether an item you might want will pop, and THEN you have the RNG element of whether you win the roll for it, and if you lose, you then hate the other players rather than the game. In an early TOR dungeon I was playing a Trooper and a Jedi rolled on Trooper armor (which he theoretically could wear but had a terrible stat combo for him), and won it, put me off every grouping with anyone in that game again.

I hate the dice need/greed roll system as well. It causes hate and all manners of toxic and bad behavior among players.

However, what is GREAT about the dice system is that the developers can make better gear drop way more often. It works like this:

In GW2 50 players killing Tequatl all roll on the same table with minimal chances of getting an Ascended Box.

In <Need/Greed random game A> 50 players killing a raid boss will get GUARANTEED 1-2 Ascended Boxes and then it’s all on them on how to distribute it.

In GW2 all 50 players might get an amazing drop or all 50 might only get trash, in other MMORPGs the chance of getting amazing loot is 100% (or at least super high) from each boss but you only get a limited amount that you then need to split among the participants.

GW2 doesn’t have a loot distribution system, so the chances of getting anything useful MUST BE SUPER LOW. This is the main problem with the GW2 system and why loot feels so much better in other MMORPGs (despite the roll issues)

In other MMORPGs loot becomes EVEN better if you play with your friends/guildies, something that nearly eliminates RNG. Suppose that there are 2 light armor classes in a dungeon and they both want the same boots dropping by the final boss. Even if you don’t get your boots on the first try, you KNOW you will get them the second time. Even in groups of 20+ people you are guarandeed to get what you want after a number of tries, might vary if the group composition changes but no matter your luck you WILL get what you want. In GW2 on the other hand, you might run Tequatl a milion times and still not get a single Ascended chest drop (not to mention stats that you actually need)

tl ; dr
Dice roll systems are bad in PuGs and general PVE, causing hate and conflict among players, RNG based loot (GW2) is better then. However, a more even/less dependand on luck loot distribution system should be used for more organised play, to eliminate the effects of RNG there. At least give the option.

Dice roll systems are bad in PuGs and general PVE, causing hate and conflict among players, RNG based loot (GW2) is better then. However, a more even/less dependand on luck loot distribution system should be used for more organised play, to eliminate the effects of RNG there. At least give the option.

I don’t believe that there should be “organized play,” or rulesets that would give an advantage to long-term groups over pugs. I greatly value the drop-in, drop-out, have fun vibe of GW2, and strongly resist anything that tries to encourage prior organization.

I think there are ways to add in some of the benefits of the dice system though by means of streak-breaker mechanisms, by making it so the more times you fail, the better your odds of succeeding (a stacking event-specific MF buff), and the more often you succeed on a low odds thing perhaps the less likely you’ll succeed on subsequent rolls (a stacking event-specific MF buff that raises a lot each time you get the rare loot and falls slowly each time you don’t). This should only apply to the really rare stuff, not just yellows and generic oranges.

Tokens also work in this manner, each time you “fail” an RNG roll, you still get a token or two towards getting that thing that didn’t drop for you.

As for “getting something good, but not what you wanted,” this is best solved with “boxes.” I’ve never gotten a Teq armor box, but I did get the Ambrite Collection box, and it worked great, allowing you to drill down to the exact piece of armor you wanted, whether that be a PVT medium chest piece or a Zerker light boot. For these super rare items, instead of picking something at random, maybe offer a “Precursor box” from which you could pull a Dawn or a Rage or anything in between, up to you. Same with event-specific exotics, instead of dropping Final Rest, drop a “Shadow Crate,” which on opening can drop either a Final Rest, Coiler, or Spirit Links, your choice.

Some great posts here, I’m drawing on ideas mentioned by Zaxares on SAB rewards, and Wanze on reward tracks.

I think I would look at the issue of RNG and player reward from a different perspective. RNG is a tool to serve a purpose, so the question is, how do we want to reward players, and does RNG accomplish those goals, or is another tool more suitable?

So what do we want to reward players for? My list would be

• Participation/Success
• Determination/Perseverance
• Luck

RNG as a tool serves Luck rewards very well, i think that much is pretty obvious, but it doesn’t do well at rewarding the others.

Take Dungeons as an example, on completing a dungeon, Tokens, Gold, and RNG Loot are all awarded for completing the dungeon. Tokens are a great way to motivate replaying content, and Gold satisfies a good instant reward for success, whether or not the player gets lucky with the Loot.

Open world rewards are a little different – Karma (a token system), Gold, and Loot are rewards, but the weighting is more toward Karma than Gold. WvW is different again, trading some RNG Loot for WvW tokens

This is where another philosophy question comes in – if we’re trying to encourage players to play a diverse mix of content, how do we balance rewards across different aspects of the game?

• Option 1 is to allow tokens to be exchanged from one type to another, so players can choose which rewards they want to work toward and sacrifice one set of tokens to get closer to their goal.

• Option 2 would be to open up loot tables so that rare RNG drops from content can be worked towards with Tokens from that content.

This is partly why I think Tokens are not valued at the moment, and also the main source of player frustration – because players can’t work towards what they want, they are stuck with hoping the RNG Gods smile on them.

To make this work, it might be necessary to make all items obtained with tokens account bound on acquire to avoid a big disruption to the TP, and also ensure that the determination to earn tokens has a value, as trading Gold for a reward should still be something that needs to be worked towards.

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

I’ve not addressed precursors because I think the frustration with those is not because RNG is bad, but because it is currently the only system that allows players to obtain them (and therefore trade). If the aim of legendary weapons is to reward determination and participation, then account bound versions could be added as high-cost karma rewards (as an example)

tl:dr
I think the dissatisfaction with RNG isn’t stemming from RNG being the wrong system, but that there are RNG-based rewards that are not obtainable through other means, which makes players dependent on RNG and Luck. Removing the dependency by opening up token-based reward tables to cover RNG Loot solves this problem

GW2 has lots of reward structures, it’s just that some of them don’t play nice together, so players can end up feeling stuck/dissatisfied/unrewarded because they content they enjoy doesn’t allow then to work toward the reward they would like.