RNG as a concept: Discuss
I don’t really think there’re any other options aside from tokens or “progressive RNG”.
I think that combining both depending on the situation would be best:
- For major world boss (Tequatl, Wurm) rewards, tokens make most sense. Like, you can get lucky and receive Tequatl’s hoard on the 1s-5th-Nth run straight away, but if you grind, say, 50 Tequatl kills, you get enough tokens for a weapon anyway.
- Tokens are received in a fixed (or very low-RNG) manner, like 10 (or 7-13 tokens) per completion, and deposited to account wallet (as it is not a temporary LS currency).
- Direct drop rates are adjusted accordingly to maintain the average current distribution.
- This achieves balance between the thrill of winning the jackpot and the frustration of being on the bad side of statistically even distribution.
Personally, I would prefer an achievement system here? Kill teq 50 times and get your choice of weapon. Pretty much for the reasons you state though. I guess I’m just biased against creating another currency.
- The same goes for things like Fractal weapons and tonics. If there’s a serious reason not to use current fractal relics as the currency, an alternative weapon token system can be used.
I agree on Fractals, even though it means that after a certain amount of time you will have everything. Actually I very much agree with the rest of your points. As a rule of thumb, the more rare an item is the less it should rely on RNG.
If the achievement is repeatable, then yes, it makes sense. But it has limitations: you can’t get a mini or a breather or the Wand or a rune or a fang or a spoon or a non-Teq chest, only Teq weapons. Keeping the mini and the other stuff to drop randomly might or might not feel right for people. I would still prefer to be able to collect tokens instead; like, if I got my 2-3 Teq weapons, I can then spend them on minis or exos and get some cash instead of a supposedly useless weapon, or get a non-Teq ascended to unlock a pretty skin.
As far as Fractals go, one day you’ll get everything anyway; what they need is just a prohibitive cost, close to like the Dolyak achie in WvW
yeah, looking at a lot of the rng in the recent events, it doesnt really inspire you to play.
The reality is that something with such a low chance becomes essentially just highly unlikely. This cannot be used as an incentive for any action.
Essentially random with low rates is just plain unrewarding. So basically random with a decent rate, that works to make something unpredictable, and serves to incentivize certain play. Random with low rates does very little for gameplay.
Also due to the nature of random, when the rates are really low, it becomes highly unlikely to impossible to defeat the random with numbers. something that is 1/million chance, is unlikely that people will be able to do it enough to normalize the random chances. So it is a really poor method for distributing anything, unless you dont want it to be something anyone ever attempts to get.
These events actually have to happen, and not for just for a rare few players. Players who spend thousands of hours playing GW2 and have never had anything fantastic happen are the real product of the RNG system. There is also a point, one which I have long passed, where if something fantastic happens, it will not be enough to make up for all the past events. There is no way the unlucky masses will get a fantastic event that will make them as or more fortunate than the few who have already repeatedly found fortune.
I agree with you on this, but I don’t think that it’s wrong by itself. Even if a fraction of rewards we obtained by playing were based on RNG, there would still be the lucky & unlucky, the winners and losers. So to me the issue is very much the current system where the most highly demanded items cannot be obtained in any other fashion than luck.
Being lucky is a fun bonus to a reward structure, but shouldn’t be the sole keeper of desirable rewards. In my opinion, this would negate much of player frustration with the current system, if rewards were obtainable by other means.
Case in point is the repeated calls for Precursor crafting – players simply want a method to obtain a desirable reward that will still cost them significantly, but is predictable.
I don’t share the same desire for precursors, but I do think they are the driver for most of the vocal frustration with RNG at present.
The pets in Trick or Treat bags are a good example too:
Zuzu is available from ToT, or for Cobs, but Gwynefyrdd seems to be only available via ToT bags. I wonder why the decision was made to do that rather than add him to the merchant for say 100-200 Cobs – still much harder to obtain, and costly, but alleviates the concerns of those who desperately want one but worry they may never be able to get it.
(edited by Asyntyche.4827)
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.
This idea reappears every once in a while on these forums, and I love the it.
If the game can track how often an event is done, or how often a given world chest is looted, then it can increase rewards for the rarest and decrease rewards for the most common. You could even let top-tier crafting material nodes spawn dynamically in the areas of the game that are least visited, regardless of the area level.
1. It provides a feeling of randomness without RNG. It gives us some of that “woohoo!” discovery as we come across an event that is way down on the list and get a nice payout for doing it. Population play trends over however many hundred thousand players is so much cooler of a randomness generator than a computer algorithm.
2. It creates a treasure hunt feel. While players don’t know for certain the least visited location of Tyria, they can make educated guesses. Where don’t people tend to go? Because the system shifts dynamically, it’s not enough to just avoid starter areas and Orr. Yesterday there was a mad rush to a forgotten corner of Ascalon when someone announced that they were getting good drops there, so perhaps today one should check the corners of Maguuma Jungle. People might sweep through mid-level zones, looking for Orichalcum nodes, which would indicate that area has been targeted as low traffic, and might mean some of the DEs in the area are ripe for payout as well.
There could even be NPCs in the world that wander it, much like the Guild Bounty Mission NPCs. If you find one of these NPCs, you can ask them about their travels and the dialogue would give you clues as to the least visited area in that section of the world.
3. It’s anti-farm. No turning off your brain and running the most profitable loops jumping through hoops. The game now rewards exploration and immersing yourself in the world rather than finding the most profitable area of the game and camping out there forever.
4. It has the potential to be community building. Let your guild/map chat know you found an event that’s paying out. Gather people together while it lasts. Report it to the forums when the luck shifts so the treasure hunters tomorrow know that area has been mined for the time being and they should look elsewhere.
5. It dynamically gets players into parts of the game where they haven’t gone recently by it’s very nature. Suddenly large areas of the game that are rarely visited by level 80 characters are drawing them back.
6. It’s newbie friendly. The starter areas are so heavily trafficked, it’s unlikely the payouts will start happening in any of the early level zones. Newcomers to the game aren’t likely to get overrun by hoards of veteran players swarming in to one-shot everything in sight while they’re still trying to get to level up to their first story mission.
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.
This idea reappears every once in a while on these forums, and I love the it.
This already exists. Dungeon-specific tokens, laurels, karma, game-mode tokens like badges. Tokens are not unanimously appreciated, however, and a lot of players prefer a universal token system (gold) because you can get it almost anywhere and trade it for almost anything. Didn’t they remove a token system from PVP (glory) in favor of more gold a while back? Not sure because I don’t PVP but that was the impression I got. They wouldn’t have done that, and would be adding more items to karma and dungeon vendors if token systems were popular with the player base in general.
Also, tying new rewards to tokens like karma or laurels is problematic. Players who already have a quantity of these tokens stockpiled get a head start towards obtaining the new rewards, and players who don’t have a lot of these tokens or who just spent them on something else (buying gear for alts, for example) feel bad because they have to work that much harder to get the things other players already have.
Introducing a new token for each reward is also problematic. Tying laurels to Dailies and Monthlies led to complaints of time-gating, because players were limited to buying one item every X days. Tying new tokens to specific activities leads to complaints of “more grind” in a game that wasn’t supposed to be grindy, because players who focus on obtaining those rewards will do that content over and over until they get what they want.
There are already token systems in the game. If they were utilized more by the player base, they would be expanded upon, but they are not. In fact many players care about the tokens only to the extent that they can be converted to gold (using karma and skill points to produce items to sell on the TP, for example, and forging/salvaging equipment bought with dungeon tokens), so there is not much incentive to create new tokens that will just be converted to gold.
A series of links about random factors, perception, and business decisions based on these perceptions
https://www.princeton.edu/~osherson/papers/Ranperc.pdf
https://www.problemgambling.ca/EN/Documents/HPG%20Probabilty%20Final.pdf
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jun/08/slot-machine-lose-lose-situation
(edited by Roybe.5896)
A series of links about random factors, perception, and business decisions based on these perceptions
https://www.princeton.edu/~osherson/papers/Ranperc.pdf
https://www.problemgambling.ca/EN/Documents/HPG%20Probabilty%20Final.pdf
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jun/08/slot-machine-lose-lose-situation
There are a lot of pages here and you didn’t give a summary, so I went to a random paragraph and read it. I didn’t find that paragraph useful, just bad RNG I guess.
As an earlier poster said, one of the main problems in adjusting the RNG system here is balancing that across multiple playstyles – casual through hardcore. It would be useful for this discussion if we knew which of these you’re intending to focus on the most now (though my money has always been on the casuals).
With that in mind, John’s 2.5 suggestion (in OP) is probably the best for now.
Also, an important step towards balancing the RNG (at least here) would be making it more visible to a player when DR is in effect. Some method that helps dispel or deflect the discussions that come up around DR, when RNG is discussed. Once that is in place, you should have a better foundation to debug any problems with creating a ‘balanced’ RNG system (screenshot or ‘player status snapshot’ supplied with the bug report).
You could also consider offering a ‘well rested’ account buff, when offline for a certain number of hours/days (up to some modest maximum). It would not last long (perhaps 2-3 hours), but would help the more casual players a little bit. The content of such a buff is up for debate elsewhere, but would probably include increased MF.
There are already token systems in the game. If they were utilized more by the player base, they would be expanded upon, but they are not. In fact many players care about the tokens only to the extent that they can be converted to gold (using karma and skill points to produce items to sell on the TP, for example, and forging/salvaging equipment bought with dungeon tokens), so there is not much incentive to create new tokens that will just be converted to gold.
A valid point, but I believe that’s partially because those vendors don’t deal exclusively in ‘their’ currency – selling and buying.
Why not have Karma vendors only buy your stuff for Karma instead of gold (1 copper in normal vendor == 1 Karma)?
Or trade in Rare items to a vendor in Dry Top for 5 Geodes?
Or a Rare item to a WvW vendor for 5 Badges of Honor?
And so on. Possibly including Laurels and dungeon tokens.
Its less efficient than just selling those items for Gold, sure, but why not allow that ‘end run’ around using Gold/TP for your needs? You could even have these vendors accept non-salvagable items at that point. To re-balance some of this, however, it may require ‘adjustments’ to the items being sold by said vendors. A bit of a left-field idea, but one I’ve not seen covered yet.
I like to view MMOs through the lazy eye of a Systems Admin, and the critical eye of a
Project Manager. You’ve been warned. ;-)
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.
This idea reappears every once in a while on these forums, and I love the it.
This already exists. Dungeon-specific tokens, laurels, karma, game-mode tokens like badges. Tokens are not unanimously appreciated, however, and a lot of players prefer a universal token system (gold) because you can get it almost anywhere and trade it for almost anything. Didn’t they remove a token system from PVP (glory) in favor of more gold a while back? Not sure because I don’t PVP but that was the impression I got. They wouldn’t have done that, and would be adding more items to karma and dungeon vendors if token systems were popular with the player base in general.
Also, tying new rewards to tokens like karma or laurels is problematic. Players who already have a quantity of these tokens stockpiled get a head start towards obtaining the new rewards, and players who don’t have a lot of these tokens or who just spent them on something else (buying gear for alts, for example) feel bad because they have to work that much harder to get the things other players already have.
Introducing a new token for each reward is also problematic. Tying laurels to Dailies and Monthlies led to complaints of time-gating, because players were limited to buying one item every X days. Tying new tokens to specific activities leads to complaints of “more grind” in a game that wasn’t supposed to be grindy, because players who focus on obtaining those rewards will do that content over and over until they get what they want.
There are already token systems in the game. If they were utilized more by the player base, they would be expanded upon, but they are not. In fact many players care about the tokens only to the extent that they can be converted to gold (using karma and skill points to produce items to sell on the TP, for example, and forging/salvaging equipment bought with dungeon tokens), so there is not much incentive to create new tokens that will just be converted to gold.
you missed his point. This idea isnt so much about the tokens themselves, as much as giving rewards for doin different tasks based on how commonly they are done. Essentially discouraging repetitive play and having people going everywhere looking at the things most ignore.
Im guessing he would link the random item vendor to these type of tokens
you missed his point. This idea isnt so much about the tokens themselves, as much as giving rewards for doin different tasks based on how commonly they are done. Essentially discouraging repetitive play and having people going everywhere looking at the things most ignore.
Im guessing he would link the random item vendor to these type of tokens
MMO devs often try to do this, and mostly fail. Because if there are two or more ways to get something, a lot of players will choose the easiest/fastest way and keep doing it until they get what they want.
This is the main complaint/problem behind rewards, especially items like precursors. You can get them doing almost any activity, but the easiest route is to buy it from the TP, so to many players it is the only way. It’s irrelevant that the more fun way is to play the game as you normally would and not worry about it so much, they want a precursor, want it now and consider the fastest or easiest way to get it to be the only way.
you missed his point. This idea isnt so much about the tokens themselves, as much as giving rewards for doin different tasks based on how commonly they are done. Essentially discouraging repetitive play and having people going everywhere looking at the things most ignore.
Im guessing he would link the random item vendor to these type of tokensMMO devs often try to do this, and mostly fail. Because if there are two or more ways to get something, a lot of players will choose the easiest/fastest way and keep doing it until they get what they want.
This is the main complaint/problem behind rewards, especially items like precursors. You can get them doing almost any activity, but the easiest route is to buy it from the TP, so to many players it is the only way. It’s irrelevant that the more fun way is to play the game as you normally would and not worry about it so much, they want a precursor, want it now and consider the fastest or easiest way to get it to be the only way.
It’s the only sure fire way. It has nothing to do with easy. It’s buy or deal with luck. That’s what a lot of players have issue with, not that it’s hard. Hard is fine…..but luck doesn’t abide by the same rules.
I would suggest a completely different rewards philosophy, one that is not centered around RNG at all.
RNG/grinding should never be the “primary” reward mechanism.
Desirable items/unlocks should be reliably given as rewards for successfully demonstrating player skill, for completing challenging content.
I offer the following definition for “challenging content”: content/achievements that are significantly difficult to complete, even when you know the optimal strategy/tactics, with the source of difficulty being proper and precise execution of fighting strategy and tactics (not some luck-based or puzzle-based difficulty, for example). When you play “challenging content” you would be pumped full of adrenaline and tension, always teetering on the edge of total failure.
A sufficiently skilled player (someone with innate talent and/or lots of practice) should never have to grind for anything, unless you think the process of improving skill was also “grinding”.
For the less capable, I think RNG and token grinding are acceptable mechanisms for making the content/items accessible to all. But these should be “secondary” reward mechanisms.
(edited by voidwater.2064)
I would suggest a completely different rewards philosophy, one that is not centered around RNG at all.
RNG/grinding should never be the “primary” reward mechanism.
Desirable items/unlocks should be reliably given as rewards for successfully demonstrating player skill, for completing challenging content.
I offer the following definition for “challenging content”: content/achivements that are significantly difficult to complete, even when you know the optimal strategy/tactics, with the source of difficulty being proper execution of fighting strategy and tactics (not some luck-based difficulty, for example)
A sufficiently skilled player (someone with innate talent and/or lots of practice) should never have to grind for anything, unless you think the process of improving your skill is also “grinding”.
For the less capable, I think RNG and token grinding are acceptable mechanisms for making the content/items accessible. But these should be “secondary” reward mechanisms.
I agree that rng being the primary means of obtaining things of value is a problem.
I think the reality is, people use rng because its easy, and coming up with good methods of giving out other things is pretty hard to do reliably. It costs time and money to develop good distribution systems, whereas rng they just have to plug in simple formulas, decide the type of supply they want to have and divide by the number of monsters killed per hour, and voila, done.
Problem is this type of system while easy to create, is not well designed when the % chance gets too low. The experience of each player becomes wildly different
So if Gwynefyrdd came in 20 colors, the chance to get one color could be attainable to everyone, while still making it very hard to get all colors or the one color you like best.
I don’t like this, because “getting the one you want” should be the goal for ANet. If Gwynefyrdd came in 20 colors, and he was rare enough that you’d only be likely to get one or two of them, then the better solution would be to either drop a “Gwynefyrdd box” that allows you to choose the one you want, or to just always drop a “Blue Gwynefyrdd ,” but have recipes that allow you to craft one of those into any of the other colors by adding a number of reasonably cheap ingredients (like maybe a specific dye, or unidentified color dyes, or some food mats, or whatever).
Likewise it would be nice if all Precursor drops (from non-MF methods) were replaced with a “Precursor box” from which you could draw whichever Pre you prefer.
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
So if Gwynefyrdd came in 20 colors, the chance to get one color could be attainable to everyone, while still making it very hard to get all colors or the one color you like best.
I don’t like this, because “getting the one you want” should be the goal for ANet. If Gwynefyrdd came in 20 colors, and he was rare enough that you’d only be likely to get one or two of them, then the better solution would be to either drop a “Gwynefyrdd box” that allows you to choose the one you want, or to just always drop a “Blue Gwynefyrdd ,” but have recipes that allow you to craft one of those into any of the other colors by adding a number of reasonably cheap ingredients (like maybe a specific dye, or unidentified color dyes, or some food mats, or whatever).
Likewise it would be nice if all Precursor drops (from non-MF methods) were replaced with a “Precursor box” from which you could draw whichever Pre you prefer.
if you can select the color it would kind of defeat the purpose of his solution.
I dont think you will agree with most of what he says, because his premise is to preserve rarity, which you dont really think should exist.
2.5: “Add secondary reward mechanisms (ie. token based system) alongside the primary RNG system; allow progress to be made even when you don’t get the result you want.”
It’s pretty much a no brainer, isn’kitten
Token based > all. If you then want to add an RNG element so people get a nice surprise on their way to their destination, then do that.
Ofc, you will get labelled “grindy”, but tbh, if;
- you are playing a game and
- have a set goal and
- the content has to be repeated to achieve the goal
—> it’s a grindy game.
MMO devs often try to do this, and mostly fail. Because if there are two or more ways to get something, a lot of players will choose the easiest/fastest way and keep doing it until they get what they want.
But that’s the beauty of a dynamically shifting system that rewards the least frequently done content in the game. There is no “easiest/fastest” way to get to a reward because that way is constantly being updated to somewhere else. Shortly after the players identify the easiest/fastest way, it becomes very popular and therefore no longer the easiest/fastest because the game shifts rewards into another area.
City of Heroes had a problem with RNG too. Single-use Recipes for crafting enhancements dropped at the end of every Taskforce but the problem was the table was filled with recipes and more often than not people ended up with a rather lame slow or immobilise recipe (or worse; a confusion recipe of which only five powers in-game could slot for). After beating the tough enemies in the Statesman Taskforce; getting a Pacing of the Turtle (slow) recipe was basically “I beat Lord Recluse the supervillain and all I got was this lousy enhancement recipe”.
They changed it by giving out reward merits at the end of each Taskforce and giving players the choice to roll on the reward table for less merits and risk getting another ‘junk’ recipe OR saving up and buying the recipe they wanted at a larger cost. This also meant that if one particular TF was easily farmable they could lower the awarded merits without immediate change to the TF itself until a change could be implemented or boost merits on TFs that took longer to complete. And each recipe would have a tailored cost based on its rarity so uncommon recipes would be 50-75 merits compared to 125-275 for rare recipes depending on the stats they boosted and if they were a chance-for-boost enhancement.
2.5: “Add secondary reward mechanisms (ie. token based system) alongside the primary RNG system; allow progress to be made even when you don’t get the result you want.”
This was done fairly good in SAB. The dungeon tokens where a good option as having that to the side (secondary). However it was not a secondary it was the main thing as currencies are the main thing in GW2 in general.
No special item that was rewarded for completing a dungeon and one or two special drops (RNG) in there. SAB had that RNG drop + tokens as secondary (while rewarding the same items.. only bad thing about it) and the Molten dungeon had that as well. Thats partly why they where so popular.
However in GW2 almost everything is driving by currency, mainly by gold but also by some other currencies (like the dungeon tokens or now the candy corn) and that is just extremely boring.
Slowly seeing that number going up is not as exiting as every time you do that content that rush of ‘will it drop’.
So in stead of all those currency (you refer to them as tokens) as main way to obtain it, have it as a side (indeed secondary) thing to obtain some nice things while your doing it. But your main rewards should be a guaranteed drop for completing it and a few RNG drops.. All linked to specific content so if I want item X I do not grind grind gind gold (or another currency) like it is now for 90% of the content but I do that specific content (multiple times for the RNG stuff) to obtain it. That is fun.
Next item sends me to other content and so on.
Of course there is a problem that all those cash-shop item are only obtainable for gold or cash meaning another gold grind. Would you be able to get everything in game from specific content (and so gold would become less interesting) there would be less interest of buying gold. But for the game itself it would be much better.
Meanwhile you can then reduce the gold reward. play for the goods, not for the currency. Going for currency is a non fun job, going for the goods is a fun game.
So what you describe there is indeed good, however it’s simply not how it works in the game. Currency is the primary system in GW2.
(edited by Devata.6589)
I prefer option number 1. In number 2, the lucky people will just get luckier as they will get the items they want AND get tokens as well. Let’s just have a system where more people will get their items a bit more easily.
I prefer option number 1. In number 2, the lucky people will just get luckier as they will get the items they want AND get tokens as well. Let’s just have a system where more people will get their items a bit more easily.
My concern with #1 is that when the required grind is known, people will not like it.
With pure RNG, people still try things on the off chance of a lucky drop.
This is maintained with #2 and #2.5, but I think people will not try things if the reward is known to be so very far away.
(edited by Svarty.8019)
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.
This idea reappears every once in a while on these forums, and I love the it.
This already exists. Dungeon-specific tokens, laurels, karma, game-mode tokens like badges. Tokens are not unanimously appreciated, however, and a lot of players prefer a universal token system (gold) because you can get it almost anywhere and trade it for almost anything. Didn’t they remove a token system from PVP (glory) in favor of more gold a while back? Not sure because I don’t PVP but that was the impression I got. They wouldn’t have done that, and would be adding more items to karma and dungeon vendors if token systems were popular with the player base in general.
Glory wasn’t really a token. You used it to buy chests that gives random items when opened then you can salvage those items and throw the results back into the forge for more randomish stuff. It was a terrible reward system. It only resembled a token when they added in the vendor to allow people to get rid of their accumulated glory prior to removing it from the game. Removing it allowed them to unify “loot” for PvE and sPvP. Prior to the change it meant that playing PvP means you giving up stuff you could have been getting in PvE.
On the other hand the PvP tracks that replaced it are tokens. Every match gives a certain amount and you can get more based on performance. At set intervals you have some guaranteed loot plus some random things. This is also why PvP is much better for getting the fossils than grinding Dry Top. A person who is good at PvP would be progressing faster than on that is bad but they would both be progressing. If you were grinding Dry Top instead you can go through thousands of buried chests and come out empty handed.
I prefer option number 1. In number 2, the lucky people will just get luckier as they will get the items they want AND get tokens as well. Let’s just have a system where more people will get their items a bit more easily.
My concern with #1 is that when the required grind is known, people will not like it.
Well at least they got their sense of progression that they have always wanted.
Hey John,
I really honestly hope you did this thread in hopes to find something better than what is int he game now and not just as a release valve for people who are honestly frustrated at the flawed system we have in place. It would be disappointing if nothing changed after this thread. I also feel that you guys garnered quite a bit of ill-will by making that gem shop change without so much as a peep. The reason given for the change in the patch notes is also disheartening.
I will say I was pleasantly surprised that the drops in the Labyrinth are better than last year though. I’d really like to see a push for better RNG mechanics and better implementation of rewards as far as skill based, time based, and luck based. I think you guys would do well to take steps forward for the next release in all aspects of the release in being good for players all around. You guys could use the good will.
I’m all in for rewards based on skill.
RNG should be a supporting method for other tools, call it tokens, quests, raids, whatever.
I have to admit that the devs made a great job with the TP, so if you are not lucky enough, you can still buy the stuff you want… however, only the luckiests ones have the money to compete in the TP-war, and the unlucky ones will still be poor.
Also, in an RNG system like the one we have it is very difficult to satisfy the needs of the people playing, take a look at the “graph” below:
Miserably Unlucky——Just Unlucky——Majority of People——Lucker——Such Precursor, Many Golde, w0w
With this distribution, even people standing in the “Lucker” part of the bar will feel miserable when comparing themselves with the ones in the right extreme of the “graph”. And who do you think are the most vocal ones? Well, I don’t know, but probably the ones that have something to brag about…
So yeah, I’m not happy with the rewards in the game, mainly because of the RNG mechanics. I do have Eternity, so I’m served in that part of the game, but I get shivers when I think about the kitten precursors… Fractal skins? Zero… Tequatl? Nada… Wurm? Cannot even join an organized event… Prestige items from Living Story/Holiday Festivals? Nope
But I do have my Mini Liadri and Mini Clockheart I know every nook and cranny of every dungeon and fractal map, legit dungeon master here! Killed Lupicus with random builds (and got 1 green and 1 blue)
I’m back to my prayers to the FSM… cya…
if you can select the color it would kind of defeat the purpose of his solution.
I dont think you will agree with most of what he says, because his premise is to preserve rarity, which you dont really think should exist.
Yes. Artificial scarcity is nonsense.
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Sure, but we can’t know that without knowing what the intended distribution is meant to be.
The thing is, it’s not really fair to expect ANet to release drop rate info. Firstly, we don’t even know how a single subset, such as exotic daggers, is organized in the tables. Secondly, in the event that they released such a list and it was of a readable size, you would instantly have people raising hell about drop rates of their preferred items being too low. And that would drown out any valid discussion by sheer volume, which is an extremely undesirable result.
We can’t give feedback as to what’s “right” because we don’t know what “right” is meant to be. All we can do is give feedback on how things FEEL to us, and ANet can decide what, if anything, they wish to do about that. If we note that it “feels” wrong to receive zero of a desired item when other players seem to be getting several of them
And here you’re showing the same problem again: “Bad” drop rates mean different things to different people. Some people think “bad drop rates” is all about precursors. Others want more exotic drops. Others focus on the quantity of items they are getting.
There’s also the subset of people who take into account the time used to get those items. That’s one thing the drop tables cannot reflect accurately. These people don’t necessarily care about the absolute quantity of items they are getting, they only have eyes for the quantity/time aspect. And if you ask me, these people should be ignored, at least as long as we have a full RNG system. Unless you’re literally documenting every single drop you’re getting over thousands of drops, it’s all meaningless, anecdotal “evidence”. You can’t just take a deck of cards and pull out 5 card hands for 8 hours straight and think you have a good sample of all 5 card hands.
The way I see it, there are two distinct groups of people talking about drop rates:
- The group of people who complain about not getting that one drop they desire.
- The group of people who complain about not getting as many of the desired drop as other people.
The two groups have different opinions on what to do with RNG as well. The first group wants drop rates improved on an absolute level. The second group wants the outliers (“lucky” and “unlucky” players) dealt with.
They can also work it the other way, by having some situations where you are guaranteed one token, but might also receive a few more, most people wouldn’t complain too much about that.
If we go with a token-based system, I think we need to have high volume on the tokens. Tokens don’t suffer from the space limitations of stacks, so that’s not a problem. Higher volume also means greater precision for smaller samples, which is always desirable. After all, the difference between 0 and 1 is relatively far greater than 10,000 and 10,001.
So? Do people in the top bracket deserve to be making a lot more? If they do somehow nerf that, then maybe those top bracket people would make less, but one, that would likely be better for the economy as a whole since it would mean that the wealth would be a bit less concentrated, and two, they’ve already done well enough for themselves under the current system, so they shouldn’t complain too much of the golden dice get taken away, they’d still be out ahead of the average
The thing is, the people in the “top bracket” are only in it in one tiny subset of items. Someone who has gotten multiple precursor drops in a short amount of time is not in the “top bracket” in the same way as someone who gets a lot of generic exotics. And no, you can’t look at this from the perspective of gold either, since that isn’t always applicable (not all drops are sold) nor is it a constant (markets determine the prices).
From what you said, it kind of looks like you believe in some hidden “account luck” value that determines all of your drop rates forever. I sure hope that’s not the case. From a purely statistical point of view, the people on the top of the bracket are identical to the people at the very bottom: they’re both statistically unlikely events. Saying that someone “deserves” to be at the top because of “luck” is not only ridiculous (luck is not an attribute of a person), but disrespectful as hell since it’s equivalent to stating that the people at the bottom “deserve” to be there because of “luck”.
City of Heroes had a problem with RNG too. Single-use Recipes for crafting enhancements dropped at the end of every Taskforce but the problem was the table was filled with recipes and more often than not people ended up with a rather lame slow or immobilise recipe (or worse; a confusion recipe of which only five powers in-game could slot for). After beating the tough enemies in the Statesman Taskforce; getting a Pacing of the Turtle (slow) recipe was basically “I beat Lord Recluse the supervillain and all I got was this lousy enhancement recipe”.
They changed it by giving out reward merits at the end of each Taskforce and giving players the choice to roll on the reward table for less merits and risk getting another ‘junk’ recipe OR saving up and buying the recipe they wanted at a larger cost. This also meant that if one particular TF was easily farmable they could lower the awarded merits without immediate change to the TF itself until a change could be implemented or boost merits on TFs that took longer to complete. And each recipe would have a tailored cost based on its rarity so uncommon recipes would be 50-75 merits compared to 125-275 for rare recipes depending on the stats they boosted and if they were a chance-for-boost enhancement.
The primary reason for that change was due to speed runners so they could balance “risk vs reward” so a TF that could be run in 10 minutes wouldn’t award the same as one that took 30 minutes. Players optimized for ROT and some TFs languished since they couldn’t be done as quickly as others.
And yes they also realized that players favored certain “items” (to use GW2 parlance) over others so they skewed the costs so unfavorable ones cost less tokens than popular ones.
RIP City of Heroes
It goes back to the idea I posed about usability the majority of loot is not immediately usable, crafting mats and salvage items can be used eventually. But the chances of a new sword or armor piece that you could swap to are so incredibly low, compounding with the fact that when you do get an exotic drop it has a high chance of not being usable by your profession. Personally I would like to see specific loot tables created especially for bosses. give a boss a Guild Wars 1 style loot table where they only drop 4-8 items so you know if you kill that boss enough you will get the item you want. This keeps the surprise of RNG without making you utterly reliant on luck to get the items you want/need
moments when something fantastic happens.
There is a fundamental problem with this justification for impossibly rare random events. These events actually have to happen, and not for just for a rare few players. Players who spend thousands of hours playing GW2 and have never had anything fantastic happen are the real product of the RNG system. There is also a point, one which I have long passed, where if something fantastic happens, it will not be enough to make up for all the past events. There is no way the unlucky masses will get a fantastic event that will make them as or more fortunate than the few who have already repeatedly found fortune.
This. At some point people who have played for a long time and never gotten a “lucky drop” simply leave the game. I’m not sure why so many MMO developers think this is a good idea.
I prefer option number 1. In number 2, the lucky people will just get luckier as they will get the items they want AND get tokens as well. Let’s just have a system where more people will get their items a bit more easily.
My concern with #1 is that when the required grind is known, people will not like it.
With pure RNG, people still try things on the off chance of a lucky drop.
This is maintained with #2 and #2.5, but I think people will not try things if the reward is known to be so very far away.
I’m just saying which of the possible answers presented I prefer. I’m not saying the one I prefer is great. Maybe they should just tweak the numbers but not tell us what the numbers actually are.
I am just really against the idea that a person can get the lucky drops AND tokens on top of it. Maybe the tokens should only go to the person who does not get lucky drops if that is going to be a serious concept. So if you open a bag / chest and it doesn’t give a certain quality of item, you get a token.
The thing is, it’s not really fair to expect ANet to release drop rate info. Firstly, we don’t even know how a single subset, such as exotic daggers, is organized in the tables. Secondly, in the event that they released such a list and it was of a readable size, you would instantly have people raising hell about drop rates of their preferred items being too low. And that would drown out any valid discussion by sheer volume, which is an extremely undesirable result.
Maybe. I’ve been playing The World Ends with You, and in that game, you can check the list of enemies in your menu and it tells _exactly what they drop and at what rates. On the Wiki in some cases you can see estimated drop rates for things like bags based on mass testing. I don’t see why ANet couldn’t just update the Wiki so that every bag and enemy listing included its drop table with base percentages.
And yeah, people would complain, but people are already complaining, at least in this case they would have some data to either back up or refute their “gut” feeling. It’d be better to have people complaining that a 1/10,000 drop rate is lower than they’d like, than for them to be complaining that “whatever the drop rate is, I don’t like it.”
And here you’re showing the same problem again: “Bad” drop rates mean different things to different people. Some people think “bad drop rates” is all about precursors. Others want more exotic drops. Others focus on the quantity of items they are getting.
Yeah, which is why we have to do our best explaining specifically where and how we feel that the drop system is failing, or succeeding. We need to be specific about how much effort we’ve put into areas that should drop the things that we want, how many drops we did get during that period, and what drops we expected. Anet can then decide if they agree with us that we’re being shorted, or assert that it’s working as intended and we’re just expecting too much.
Hopefully less of the latter than the former.
ANet does need to keep in mind that “playing the game” is not a pure math exercise (or if it is it’s on a very high level), it’s very complex, and “farming an area” might involve fighting numerous different types of enemies.
The two groups have different opinions on what to do with RNG as well. The first group wants drop rates improved on an absolute level. The second group wants the outliers (“lucky” and “unlucky” players) dealt with.
Yup, although in practical terms, I think both groups would be satisfied with “I got the amount of items I expected to get," so really it doesn’t matter which solution ANEt goes with, so long as the result meets that criteria. It’s then ANet’s job to find the result that satisfies that criteria and which also has the least exposure for abuse or damage to the marketplace.
The thing is, the people in the “top bracket” are only in it in one tiny subset of items. Someone who has gotten multiple precursor drops in a short amount of time is not in the “top bracket” in the same way as someone who gets a lot of generic exotics. And no, you can’t look at this from the perspective of gold either, since that isn’t always applicable (not all drops are sold) nor is it a constant (markets determine the prices).
Yeah, but the point is, having “streak breakers” on items that limits anyone from getting well above the average number of anything, would probably work out for the best for all players. Like let’s say that there is an item with a 10% chance to drop. The average chance to receive that drop would be 1/10, right? So you’d have some people that might get very lucky and get 5/10, and others that are very unlucky that only get 1/50. So why not have a system where if you get one, a meter records that and goes up, and if you don’t get one, a meter records that and goes down. If the meter records that you’re say 2/10 maybe it does nothing, but if you creep into 3-4/10 territory, then it puts brakes on to lower your drop rate until the score falls back to 1/10 territory. If you start to fall into 25/50 then you get bonus luck until one drops, and then it starts to level back off until you’re back under that threshold.
You couldn’t do that on every kind of item, but maybe on a few specific high-RNG type things.
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
I’ve not kept up with this thread since my post, as honestly I can’t see them improving it whatever consensus is reached. Meanwhile I’ve gathered another dozen or so Tequatl spoons.
I’m pretty much accepting of this, and don’t play the game to get the precursor I wanted, or the Teq weapon skin I’d have liked. It does, however, affect my view of the whole game and what I say when asked what I think of GW2.
But I’ll just drop this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2kikrr/im_a_brand_new_player_and_i_guess_anet_really/
Brand new to game player gets two Tequatl weapons in two days, and she can’t even use either of them yet as she’s not yet got a character to level 80. Do I begrudge her this? Not in the least. She has had an amazing break and has either used up all her in-game luck in the first week, or is going to become one of those super-lucky outliers.
To me, though, it’s a perfect demonstration of what is wrong with pure RNG. Someone not yet able to use the items gets them twice, yet the countless people who have been doing the event regularly since it was released still get nothing.
This is as bad as other games which allow players to roll on loot they can’t use in raids, so a thief ends up with that perfect heavy armour piece the tank has been chasing for months.
People have quit because of the horrible approach to loot. Many more will do so.
Is that really working as intended?
I don’t mind the RNG as it is, however, I’m one of those people that am looking at 20 years at current rate to complete the Tequatl weapon set…
Some kind of implementation around the 2.5 proposal above would be welcome to me. It could possibly be used as a sink for some of the large amounts of Dragonite most of us have lying around as well, maybe even adding some worthwhile drops to the Karka Queen loot table while they’re at it!
I don’t mind the RNG as it is, however, I’m one of those people that am looking at 20 years at current rate to complete the Tequatl weapon set..
At current rate of progress, infinity years here. I’m likely to be first in guild to a full stack of spoons though.
So yes, I do mind.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gwynefyrdd-the-Halloween-miniature
This is a perfect example of why the RNG in this game needs a retooling. 393 posts and counting and countless bags. Should holiday rewards have rarity to this extreme? Heck, I wouldn’t even mind the pup costing an insane amount of candy corn IF the low drop rate of this item wasn’t going to be retooled. When I couple this with the gem shop holiday items and the BLTC gold to gem conversion I am understandably ticked.
You guys hype your content and then you make rewards insanely hard to acquire or just add new stuff int he gem shop that costs us a ton of gold to buy. Are bought items off the gem shop considered rewards? If I earn gold in game, shouldn’t I feel rewarded for purchasing stuff on the gem shop with my gold? Isn’t that by function part of the way this game works?
OKay, I just read something in general that I thought was better served in this thread. There are PvP reward tracks, can there also be PvE reward tracks? I know this seems like what token system would be like, but maybe it’s more like a daily. Do a set amount of tasks and get credit towards a goal. Maybe collect trophies from around the world to hand in like with Nicholas Sandford. These both are essentially a token system, but it doesn’t feel like a straight up token reward. Maybe your reward is a point you can put into any reward track, like what we have with WvW ranks. Some are more expensive than others and will take longer.
Just spitballing here and haven’t thought through the possibilities and liabilities, but I liked the concept.
if you can select the color it would kind of defeat the purpose of his solution.
I dont think you will agree with most of what he says, because his premise is to preserve rarity, which you dont really think should exist.Yes. Artificial scarcity is nonsense.
But the whole monetary system is built upon it (in and out of game)!
The reason why the RNG experience in GW2 isn’t the best feeling, is perhaps due to having so many different items in the game. Older games have a more limited set of items: if there are 5 different valuable items available for a drop, you have a probability of 20% that the one you are looking for is dropping for you.
In GW2, you have 19 different weapons and ~10 attribute combinations. So if something rare or exotic drops, which is seldom enough, the probability of the one item you want is even lower – it is 1/19 * 1/10 = 0.5%. That means even if you get an exotic drop, the probability that it is the correct weapon with the correct attribute combination is 0.05%.
So in fact, you are selling almost all your drops to the TP and have to buy or craft the items you really want. The drop system feeds the TP instead of your inventory, and you buy your stuff from the TP. If instead of items money drops directly into my inventory and I would buy stuff from a NPC vendor, my experience would not change very much. It would be even somewhat better, because the constant disappointment about a rare drop not having the correct type/attributes would not be there.
The ascended weapon and armor chests somewhat address this problem: they reduce the number of combinations per drop, but remove it not completely. This is probably done due to the chess being account-bound. But I’m still mostly disappointed and many unopened chests fill my bank account.
The reason why the RNG experience in GW2 isn’t the best feeling, is perhaps due to having so many different items in the game. Older games have a more limited set of items: if there are 5 different valuable items available for a drop, you have a probability of 20% that the one you are looking for is dropping for you.
In GW2, you have 19 different weapons and ~10 attribute combinations. So if something rare or exotic drops, which is seldom enough, the probability of the one item you want is even lower – it is 1/19 * 1/10 = 0.5%. That means even if you get an exotic drop, the probability that it is the correct weapon with the correct attribute combination is 0.05%.
So in fact, you are selling almost all your drops to the TP and have to buy or craft the items you really want. The drop system feeds the TP instead of your inventory, and you buy your stuff from the TP. If instead of items money drops directly into my inventory and I would buy stuff from a NPC vendor, my experience would not change very much. It would be even somewhat better, because the constant disappointment about a rare drop not having the correct type/attributes would not be there.
The ascended weapon and armor chests somewhat address this problem: they reduce the number of combinations per drop, but remove it not completely. This is probably done due to the chess being account-bound. But I’m still mostly disappointed and many unopened chests fill my bank account.
“Smart Loot” is one way to combat this (see Diablo 3 for a good example of smart loot implementation).
There’s a downside to smart loot and that’s the inability to farm off-character items. GW2 introduced a small smart-loot system recently and there was a small uproar because heavy and medium armor toons would be punished for not getting drops that salvage into silk.
Tokens help with this because you buy what you want with them.
I still like an entropy based system for the very low drop-rate items. RNG is fine for stuff that has a reasonable drop rate (greens, blues, yellows). You’ll see these even on a bad RNG day (or maybe within a few days on a bad RNG week).
For very low drop-rates, an entropy system ensures you don’t deviate from the intended player distribution.
I think at this point it would be interesting to hear what John’s thoughts are on the discussion so far, and whether we’re hitting the right balance between discussing conceptual ideas and potential implementations of those ideas.
I think at this point it would be interesting to hear what John’s thoughts are on the discussion so far, and whether we’re hitting the right balance between discussing conceptual ideas and potential implementations of those ideas.
He’s not going to like anything that deviates from what has become a comfort zone. The economy is rather complex and by this point managing it most likely has fallen into rhythm like any other job. Anything that disrupts it will have a rippling effect, which would require lots of work. So like most any change will be met with animosity (in this case under a guise of pr).
I think at this point it would be interesting to hear what John’s thoughts are on the discussion so far, and whether we’re hitting the right balance between discussing conceptual ideas and potential implementations of those ideas.
He’s not going to like anything that deviates from what has become a comfort zone. The economy is rather complex and by this point managing it most likely has fallen into rhythm like any other job. Anything that disrupts it will have a rippling effect, which would require lots of work. So like most any change will be met with animosity (in this case under a guise of pr).
So essentially what you’re saying is that if he doesn’t agree with you (or anyone else) then it’s because he doesn’t want to put in the effort to make them work rather than your ideas simply not working with the goals that Anet has?
I, and many others, would like a raise at work. Our company make a decent profit every year. They can afford to find a way to give us all raises otherwise they’re just being lazy as it would put them outside their comfort zone and disrupt the rhythm of their jobs.
(edited by Ayrilana.1396)
I think at this point it would be interesting to hear what John’s thoughts are on the discussion so far, and whether we’re hitting the right balance between discussing conceptual ideas and potential implementations of those ideas.
He’s not going to like anything that deviates from what has become a comfort zone. The economy is rather complex and by this point managing it most likely has fallen into rhythm like any other job. Anything that disrupts it will have a rippling effect, which would require lots of work. So like most any change will be met with animosity (in this case under a guise of pr).
So essentially what you’re saying is that if he doesn’t agree with you, Phys, Ohoni, etc then it’s because he doesn’t want to put in the effort to make them work rather than your ideas simply not working with the goals that Anet has?
I, and many others, would like a raise at work. Our company make a decent profit every year. They can afford to find a way to give us all raises otherwise they’re just being lazy as it would put them outside their comfort zone and disrupt the rhythm of their jobs.
No he didn’t say that at all — more like the system is very complex and not likely to change. This was simply his opinion and I didn’t find anything offensive about it, even though I don’t agree with it myself.
I do find your statement about “not working with the goals of ANet” also off the mark. That’s more your opinion rather than fact.
I think John is open to at least investigating new ideas (otherwise this topic wouldn’t exist). I don’t think we’ll see him chime in much because it would taint the idea pool so to speak.
No, I simply applied common human psychology to the situation.
If at work they changed how to do your job you’d most likely find it irritating, b/c we are creatures of habit and rhythm. Things that disrupt our ruts (if you will) are generally not looked upon favorably.
Well that’s exactly how I took it when I read it. I saw it as a minor attack on him using the basis that he won’t implement changes that are outside his comfort zone. It was made to seem that he has a job that requires little effort as the economy can automate itself now and he’d just simply discount any ideas that would disrupt that.
If that’s not your intention then disregard why I said as I was wrong in my interpretation of your post. It’s just that I’ve seen many other people do the exact same thing in the exact same way as a sort of attack if they don’t get what they want. That’s why my initial assumption of the intent of that post was such.
In regards to not working with goals, I never stated in that post whether their ideas were or were not inline with Anet’s goals. All I was saying was that if he did not accept those ideas then it’s likely because they did not fit with Anet’s goals and vision. I wasn’t putting my personal opinion on their ideas although I have in other threads.
(edited by Ayrilana.1396)
I think at this point it would be interesting to hear what John’s thoughts are on the discussion so far, and whether we’re hitting the right balance between discussing conceptual ideas and potential implementations of those ideas.
He’s not going to like anything that deviates from what has become a comfort zone. The economy is rather complex and by this point managing it most likely has fallen into rhythm like any other job. Anything that disrupts it will have a rippling effect, which would require lots of work. So like most any change will be met with animosity (in this case under a guise of pr).
So essentially what you’re saying is that if he doesn’t agree with you, Phys, Ohoni, etc then it’s because he doesn’t want to put in the effort to make them work rather than your ideas simply not working with the goals that Anet has?
I, and many others, would like a raise at work. Our company make a decent profit every year. They can afford to find a way to give us all raises otherwise they’re just being lazy as it would put them outside their comfort zone and disrupt the rhythm of their jobs.
why are you throwing my name in your arguement. My ideas arent particularly relevant to your statement
Sure, but we can’t know that without knowing what the intended distribution is meant to be.
The thing is, it’s not really fair to expect ANet to release drop rate info. Firstly, we don’t even know how a single subset, such as exotic daggers, is organized in the tables. Secondly, in the event that they released such a list and it was of a readable size, you would instantly have people raising hell about drop rates of their preferred items being too low. And that would drown out any valid discussion by sheer volume, which is an extremely undesirable result.
This is not entirely true. Except the conclusion to your secondly. People will take any excuse to raise hell
There is a master list, and it is largely released to players. However, it has multiple nodes of organization, based on the source of items, who was updating it for what, and when, and drop rates aren’t listed. Some connections between items on it are obvious, while some things that seem like they should be near each other… aren’t. But because it is fairly well organized, it wouldn’t be too much to expect that drop tables based on it have some kind of structure within it.
We can’t give feedback as to what’s “right” because we don’t know what “right” is meant to be. All we can do is give feedback on how things FEEL to us, and ANet can decide what, if anything, they wish to do about that. If we note that it “feels” wrong to receive zero of a desired item when other players seem to be getting several of them
And here you’re showing the same problem again: “Bad” drop rates mean different things to different people. Some people think “bad drop rates” is all about precursors. Others want more exotic drops. Others focus on the quantity of items they are getting.
There’s also the subset of people who take into account the time used to get those items. That’s one thing the drop tables cannot reflect accurately. These people don’t necessarily care about the absolute quantity of items they are getting, they only have eyes for the quantity/time aspect. And if you ask me, these people should be ignored, at least as long as we have a full RNG system. Unless you’re literally documenting every single drop you’re getting over thousands of drops, it’s all meaningless, anecdotal “evidence”. You can’t just take a deck of cards and pull out 5 card hands for 8 hours straight and think you have a good sample of all 5 card hands.
These are good points. I’d counter the last one, that if you spent a week in one spot killing monsters and cataloguing the drops, you’d have a fair idea of the pattern of things available there. You don’t need the full picture to be able to make good generalizations.
I think at this point it would be interesting to hear what John’s thoughts are on the discussion so far, and whether we’re hitting the right balance between discussing conceptual ideas and potential implementations of those ideas.
He’s not going to like anything that deviates from what has become a comfort zone. The economy is rather complex and by this point managing it most likely has fallen into rhythm like any other job. Anything that disrupts it will have a rippling effect, which would require lots of work. So like most any change will be met with animosity (in this case under a guise of pr).
So essentially what you’re saying is that if he doesn’t agree with you, Phys, Ohoni, etc then it’s because he doesn’t want to put in the effort to make them work rather than your ideas simply not working with the goals that Anet has?
I, and many others, would like a raise at work. Our company make a decent profit every year. They can afford to find a way to give us all raises otherwise they’re just being lazy as it would put them outside their comfort zone and disrupt the rhythm of their jobs.
why are you throwing my name in your arguement. My ideas arent particularly relevant to your statement
Sorry. It wasn’t in regards to his statement but the fact you guys all have the same general belief on how things should be. That’s why your name was included.
Edit: I’ll revise that particular sentence.
(edited by Ayrilana.1396)