Guild Wars 2

I agree with you though that the idea of a luck incrementer is a bad idea. The game engine is agnostic of what a player values a piece of gear. Most players would much prefer a Berserker’s exotic over a Magi’s, but the game engine doesn’t know this and treats them both as equals. Likewise, player value of different Runes and Sigils fluctuates over time, but the game engine cannot ascess [sp] this in the same terms. Even value itself has changed over time – 5 gold was a fortune at launch, and now it’s a pittance for many. And don’t get me started on the whining about ‘bad’ precursors; there’s a whole other thread for that already.

Really they do need to move more towards “optional” rewards. The new “leveling gear” is a step in the wrong direction, since while you can select the stats, you only have two options, and the weapon itself is non-tradable, usually completely worthless to you, and even salvages for very little. I doubt anyone in the history of the game has equipped one.

But it’s a solid idea. The better implementation was the “free ascended armor” reward from Ambrite collecting, which gave you a box, which opened into a second box, which opened into a third, giving you the exact class, stat combo, and gear slot you wanted. Now all drops don’t need to be that malleable, blues and greens can stay as they are, yellows too, really. Oranges it might be nice if you could at least select stat combos, but with those you can at least sell the ones you don’t want and buy the ones you do.

Anything account bound though should be extremely variable. If you get “a fractal weapon,” or “an ascended weapon/armor” as a drop, it should always be infinitely variable. If you get any fractal weapon, you should be able to pick which weapon type it is. If you get any ascended weapon/armor drop, you should be able to pick the weight, stats, and slot you prefer. You should never get something that is theoretically “great,” but that because of the combination of options it offers it is worthless to you, and you can’t even trade it off to someone who might like it. Precursors should obviously work the same way, instead of getting any specific Precursor, you should just get a Precursor box, from which you can select whichever one you prefer.

Becka Williams.4978:

300% mf is a jump from .01 to .04. I thought the whole point of this thread was to discuss how to make it so that even when you fail, you get a little further on your goal. I don’t think we need to skill gate the changes. Again, it’s about making the game better for everyone, not just changing the select few from those that are lucky to those that are skillful.

It’s not that I want only the top 5% of skilled players to get advantages, even a little effort more than afking content should be rewarded considerably. I won’t suggest any numbers now, since it’s in the hands of the developers. It already works at a certain part of the game, for example daily achievements. You need to know how to dodge damage, how to find different enemies, how to find veterans and kill them… all things an afker would rarely do. So you see, players who put a bit of effort into it are rewarded with a laurel a day.

There could be multiple stages of such rewards, so that you will be rewarded fair. The better you play, the better the rewards. I won’t call this gating in any form, everyone can become a better player if he/she attempts to become better.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

It’s not that I want only the top 5% of skilled players to get advantages, even a little effort more than afking content should be rewarded considerably. I won’t suggest any numbers now, since it’s in the hands of the developers. It already works at a certain part of the game, for example daily achievements. You need to know how to dodge damage, how to find different enemies, how to find veterans and kill them… all things an afker would rarely do. So you see, players who put a bit of effort into it are rewarded with a laurel a day.

There could be multiple stages of such rewards, so that you will be rewarded fair. The better you play, the better the rewards. I won’t call this gating in any form, everyone can become a better player if he/she attempts to become better.

A token/path/meter approach isn’t so bad to reflect this, either. The important part is to decide what accounts for “playing well” or, sigh, “being good.”

What behaviors, actions, or goals identify a good player? How much of a reward should that skill/practice be rated when paralleled with a basic finishing reward?
+50%? +100%? +200%?
Rewarding a speed-dash of content just reinforces more of the same, so what other markers are there? Ranking buff uptime? Most time with enemy aggro? Healing/reviving other players?

I’m definitely for rewarding good play, but the devs should be careful how it plays out.

John Smith.4610:

Buttercup.5871:

In the same manner that my thousands of forges and thousands of hours played feel without ever getting a precursor, so does the Halloween raffle feel having handed in up to 1k tickets and winning nothing (while others who hand in 2 to 3 tickets win).

I understand why it can happen, but that doesn’t make the experience feel any better. It just leaves you with a very bitter taste. You can talk about this all you want, but I consider that it is – bluntly put – your job as game designers to prevent this from happening to me and many, many others like me, over and over and over again.

For the most part, I agree with you.

Just quoting this to say that your understanding of the subject is really nice to see.

I have a deep passionate hatred for the RNG.

I’d vote for 2.5, anything that gives me an out from the RNG’s thumb.

How many people here are professional gamblers? Personally I chose to get a job, earn my paycheck for the time I put in. It may not be flashy, but it’s consistent and i get what I earn. That’s all I want here. I hate when MMOs force me to gamble, I don’t enjoy it.

Look at every Fractal discussion and you’ll see requests for 2.5 I think it’d go over very well.

I’d actually say GW2 is already above the standard in this issue though. We do have a token system for much of the game. It’s called GOLD! We can get around the rarity of items by using gold to purchase it from each other. But, we can’t do that on everything and that’s where we need these systems.
.
Teq hoard? Repeatable achievement after 25 kills you’ll get a hoard, could even do an exponential curve on that till you hit a cap and have it repeat at that point? /shrug

Fractals Pristine Relics already exist.

Things like Gwynddolin(sp) have each ToT bag in the future drop a regular candy wrapper, 40k of them = gwyn /shrug something like that.

I still see that as skill gating. Right now, RNG doesn’t reward skill. I think a reward track might be the way to go. Get 40 teq wins, get a horde. 40 worm wins? armor piece. Yeah, that doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s still over a month of killing teq once per day. Hell, if anet wanted to, they could time gate it so that it only counts once per day. The more I think about it, the better I like reward tracks. We don’t need more currencies in the game to keep track of.

is it really fun if you have to kill Tequatl 40 times? Personally I would enjoy it much more to achieve something really challenging… if I’m good enough it would work on a few tries.

Killing Teq 40 times via standing there in one spot and doing afk damage… I don’t think you have earned that reward. Every labrat could do that.

What do you think about reward tracks in PvE ?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

is it really fun if you have to kill Tequatl 40 times? Personally I would enjoy it much more to achieve something really challenging… if I’m good enough it would work on a few tries.

Killing Teq 40 times via standing there in one spot and doing afk damage… I don’t think you have earned that reward. Every labrat could do that.

Dude, I’ve already killed him 90 times, and not gotten a horde. Is that really fun?

Becka Williams.4978:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

is it really fun if you have to kill Tequatl 40 times? Personally I would enjoy it much more to achieve something really challenging… if I’m good enough it would work on a few tries.

Killing Teq 40 times via standing there in one spot and doing afk damage… I don’t think you have earned that reward. Every labrat could do that.

Dude, I’ve already killed him 90 times, and not gotten a horde. Is that really fun?

And the issue compounds itself because after a while even if you do get it it’s not elation you feel but bittersweet relief. That isn’t a rewarding feeling. IDK. The issue this game suffers from that GW1 didn’t suffer from is that gold and gems are intrinsically tied together. ArenaNet’s income is tied to our reward system. It’s why I think if they ever do that scavenger hunt preccursor thing or some form of it, the precursors and subsequent legendaries from it should be account bound so as not to harm the economy.

I do know I am tired of talking about the RNG in this game though. I am hoping for some real action with it. I feel like for a lot of the updates we take 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Sometimes it’s all roses but most of the time it isn’t. We get a great content patch like Pavilion 2.0 where the fights are more fun, but the rewards are way scaled back(The first Pavilion was rewarding). I feel like they found a cool way to do the Silverwastes, but then they pretty much got rid of creature drops and therefore our Magic Find became useless and it was another case of a step forward and 2 steps back and it’s all because real life income is tied up with the game economy.

My favorite rewards in the game are the Fractal weapons. They visually indicate a weapon you can only get by playing that is not trade-able. The RNG on the fractal weapons is awful though and you guys have never introduced a token system for them. Rewards should go down this path more though. Those kind of rewards don’t keep me from buying stuff on the gem shop either. I have tons of BL weapons and tons of armor sets.

This is an RPG though. We still want to be rewarded with things in game for playing the game. Earning gold and spending it on the gem shop isn’t a reward. It’s a gold sink. There has to be a balance. I get that. It’s just that the balance isn’t in favor of playing the game at the moment. A big part of the issue I have with the game is we get constant updates to the gem shop and big gaps in content updates.

Becka Williams.4978:

Dude, I’ve already killed him 90 times, and not gotten a horde. Is that really fun?

I don’t think so. The way you killed him was irrelevant so far though. You could have put in a lot of effort or you could have done nothing but standing around and hitting something now and then… it would make no difference.

If you put in a lot of effort then it’s really a shame that you haven’t gotten anything yet.
If you put in no effort at all, then I’d say you haven’t earned a better reward anyway.

purecontact.1680:

What do you think about reward tracks in PvE ?

I think there could be a more interesting way to reward players. In sPvP you progress, whether you win or lose. This would be a bad system for PvE imho, since putting in no effort at all would also lead you to very prestige rewards. Slower, but guaranteed as well.

When I see a player running around with some special item, I would like to think that he earned that thingy. Just like you look at players with the yellow SAB weapon and you know: this one mastered that content.

Tokens suffer from the same problem. You could do dungeons, always wipe at the second boss but still have the tokens from the first boss to get enough of them in order to buy that prestige dungeon armor.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Becka Williams.4978:

Dude, I’ve already killed him 90 times, and not gotten a horde. Is that really fun?

I don’t think so. The way you killed him was irrelevant so far though. You could have put in a lot of effort or you could have done nothing but standing around and hitting something now and then… it would make no difference.

If you put in a lot of effort then it’s really a shame that you haven’t gotten anything yet.
If you put in no effort at all, then I’d say you haven’t earned a better reward anyway.

Lemme know how to AFK win at teq, okay? I’d like to put in less work for the “no rewards that I want” I get from teq now.

Becka Williams.4978:

Lemme know how to AFK win at teq, okay? I’d like to put in less work for the “no rewards that I want” I get from teq now.

you park your character next to a turret, stay there the whole fight and auto-attack every enemy that comes close to you. People will revive you if you get downed and then keep doing that.

I still think a reward track is the best idea. The programming’s already in the game, it doesn’t require tokens, or thousands of new things for the server to keep track of. Of course, we leave RNG as an option, but you can work towards stuff, as well. I bet this would be very popular. I don’t care if people laze out on earning, or work their kitten off to get it. Everyone gets their own fun from the game.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

purecontact.1680:

What do you think about reward tracks in PvE ?

I think there could be a more interesting way to reward players. In sPvP you progress, whether you win or lose. This would be a bad system for PvE imho, since putting in no effort at all would also lead you to very prestige rewards. Slower, but guaranteed as well.

When I see a player running around with some special item, I would like to think that he earned that thingy. Just like you look at players with the yellow SAB weapon and you know: this one mastered that content.

Tokens suffer from the same problem. You could do dungeons, always wipe at the second boss but still have the tokens from the first boss to get enough of them in order to buy that prestige dungeon armor.

We have to unlock exploration mode to access a specific reward track.

When you beat SAB in tribulation mode, you unlock the yellow SAB reward track.
Same for triple wurm, tequatl or even dungeons.
You have to beat them (last boss for dungeon) to unlock the associate track (in PvE).

To progress, you have to kill world boss, dungeon’s boss or specific events.
Ex :
Tequatl : 3 event + down boss = 150 point per event + 550 each time you kill him.
World boss : 250 points each
Dungeon : 150 points per boss + xxx once done = 1000 points (total)

It is all about balance and accessibility.

I can farm in sPvP on hotjoin farm server.
I won’t be better at the end but I’ll get the “special item”.

I just think that, no matter what system winds up being implemented (if any at all), you have to put yourself into the shoes of the single unluckiest player in the world and see how the system will treat them individually.

Note: not “the least skilled player” – the unluckiest in a strict luck RNG sense (not talking Magic Find either). As players have identified here, you can be a very skilled player but have no luck and still not be well off because of bad luck alone Luck is the problem variable.

If that single solitary unluckiest player is capable of having a bad time then your system is capable of producing a low-side outlier who is not having fun. No matter how unlikely or improbable, with this many players there are bound to be some.

On the macro level it’s all fine and working as intended. And I understand not everyone can win the lottery. But why does it have to be a lottery? Why can’t skill overcome luck? Why can’t perseverance and sticking to it overcome luck? Why do the odds on the ten-thousandth try have to be the same terrible odds as the first try?

Yes there’s a digital economy to protect and no one is saying not to consider that. But there are real low-end outliers and I’d bet only a sliver of them are posting here. And they have been playing for a long time and they don’t seem to be having as good of a time as they could be.

Make a system that throws the occasional bone to the unluckiest out there.

AlienMenace.7516:

I just think that, no matter what system winds up being implemented (if any at all), you have to put yourself into the shoes of the single unluckiest player in the world and see how the system will treat them individually.

Note: not “the least skilled player” – the unluckiest in a strict luck RNG sense (not talking Magic Find either). As players have identified here, you can be a very skilled player but have no luck and still not be well off because of bad luck alone Luck is the problem variable.

If that single solitary unluckiest player is capable of having a bad time then your system is capable of producing a low-side outlier who is not having fun. No matter how unlikely or improbable, with this many players there are bound to be some.

On the macro level it’s all fine and working as intended. And I understand not everyone can win the lottery. But why does it have to be a lottery? Why can’t skill overcome luck? Why can’t perseverance and sticking to it overcome luck? Why do the odds on the ten-thousandth try have to be the same terrible odds as the first try?

Yes there’s a digital economy to protect and no one is saying not to consider that. But there are real low-end outliers and I’d bet only a sliver of them are posting here. And they have been playing for a long time and they don’t seem to be having as good of a time as they could be.

Make a system that throws the occasional bone to the unluckiest out there.

You’ve put this so well.

Sigh.

This post, this is me. You see, after six hundred and nineteen posts, there should really be enough to cut the knot and act. More words… No. Just close this thread and tell us “hey guys, we know we can’t please everyone, but this is what we’re going to do about it”. And then do it.

The token system seems so natural to players but it may detract from the game’s supposed more casual focus.

In the case of precursor tokens, having then and maintaining the value/rarity of precursors requires the drop rate of actual precursors to drop. By doing so, you are taking them more out of the hands of casuals.

Right now you can tell them, “you may never earn the gold for a precursor but you might stumble upon one!” That goes more and more out the window if you replace some drops with tokens.

Personally I’d enjoy it if the game halved the drop rate/forge rate of all precursors and introduced tokens (collect 1000 for a precursor) at 500-1000x the current drop rate/forge rate (so that players would expect to see a few every month) of precursors to offset the lower precursor drop rates. These tokens should also be tradable so casuals who have no ambition can still partake in this pie.

This would reduce RNG and offer more tangible progression (10 tokens is always 1% of Zap, but 12 gold may not always be 1%), while at the same time maintaining some lottery surprise elation. But, this would admittedly take some of these precursors away from the more casual crowd, albeit compensating them somewhat for the loss.

@DaveGan: you could as well say: play 1000/x hours and you get your precursor for free.

I think getting tokens for doing anything in the game would be absolutely terrible. In a year from now every longterm player would have it without having actually earned it by active play towards it, but rather getting random tokens every few hours.

I think a precursor should be the exact opposite:

• you choose to work for it (a journey would be the best thing)
• it shouldn’t feel grindy (doing a huge set of specific tasks would be the optimum compared to mindless grind/doing the same thing over and over again)
• Legendaries should still be a rare sight (a Legendary should be a prestige object rather than a clone you see every 2 minutes when playing the game).

I’m not sure how common Mawdrey II is currently, but the task to craft one is pretty unique so far. It’s not too easy to craft one and you need to do quite a bit of interesting tasks in order to get the final ascended result.

I think getting tokens for doing anything in the game would be absolutely terrible. In a year from now every longterm player would have it without having actually earned it by active play towards it, but rather getting random tokens every few hours.

And a ton of people got Precursors within the first few months due to RNG. Don’t try to make the existing system out to be one that rewards hard work and skill, it rewards only one thing, luck. You can have the most skilled player in the game playing a hundred hours a week and never get a Precursor, and the most casual, idiotic player every kills a moa in his first week and a Pre drops.

@Ohoni: where did I say that the existing system is fine? It’s terrible.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

@DaveGan: you could as well say: play 1000/x hours and you get your precursor for free.

I think getting tokens for doing anything in the game would be absolutely terrible. In a year from now every longterm player would have it without having actually earned it by active play towards it, but rather getting random tokens every few hours.

I think a precursor should be the exact opposite:

• you choose to work for it (a journey would be the best thing)
• it shouldn’t feel grindy (doing a huge set of specific tasks would be the optimum compared to mindless grind/doing the same thing over and over again)
• Legendaries should still be a rare sight (a Legendary should be a prestige object rather than a clone you see every 2 minutes when playing the game).

I’m not sure how common Mawdrey II is currently, but the task to craft one is pretty unique so far. It’s not too easy to craft one and you need to do quite a bit of interesting tasks in order to get the final ascended result.

My hope is that new Legendaries are created this way from Precursors you get while doing activities like Mawdrey and only activities so that people know how you got a Legendary when they see you with it. I think each Legendary should have its own unique quest involved with it. The issue I see with it is that I am sure an insane amount of money has been made for ArenaNet because people could buy their Legendaries with real money. I don’t want to see that income go away for ArenaNet. I do think it was a mistake not putting the Precursor Scavenger Hunt in the game though. All they would have had to do was make any Legendary made from a precursor in the Scavenger Hunt Account bound on acquire. That way, people that actually want to use a specific Legendary have a non-RNG way of acquiring the weapon without hurting the economy.

can anyone explain to me what this common expression “hurting the economy” means? What would be the problem if certain items get more expensive/less expensive than they are today?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

can anyone explain to me what this common expression “hurting the economy” means? What would be the problem if certain items get more expensive/less expensive than they are today?

It is term frequently (ab)used by people to describe an event that will hurt their pocket. Instead of referring to their pocket though, they’ll call it “the playerbase’s pocket”. Or the pocket of Joe Schmoe, the hard working dungeoneer that under different circumstances could just as well have been you.

In reality, of course, an economy cannot hurt, only players can.

Furthermore, any event that is truly bad for all players can be countered or undone by Anet through an infinite amount of measures, including turning the knobs on droprate ratios.

TLDR: the expression is meaningless and can mean just about anything you want.

Edit: I should add that the term is sometimes used innociously, i.e. without knowledge that it means nothing, simply repeating it as a term of art because others have said it as well and therefore it must be true.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

can anyone explain to me what this common expression “hurting the economy” means? What would be the problem if certain items get more expensive/less expensive than they are today?

In a virtual economy, high end luxury items are the main force that keeps crafting alive. If you make it too easy to get high end items, crafting quickly become obsolete. With crafting being obsolete, the vast majority of items in the game lose demand and soon you will simply sell everything to a vendor because no one wants to buy it.

It is for that reason that highly demanded items are kept rare, in order to keep the economy chugging so that crafting and item drops retain value.

mtpelion.4562:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

can anyone explain to me what this common expression “hurting the economy” means? What would be the problem if certain items get more expensive/less expensive than they are today?

In a virtual economy, high end luxury items are the main force that keeps crafting alive. If you make it too easy to get high end items, crafting quickly become obsolete. With crafting being obsolete, the vast majority of items in the game lose demand and soon you will simply sell everything to a vendor because no one wants to buy it.

It is for that reason that highly demanded items are kept rare, in order to keep the economy chugging so that crafting and item drops retain value.

this is not really true, its true that this economy is driven primarily by precursors and legendaries, but i am familiar with game economies that are not. Most of these other economies are not really very dependent on any one group of items.

The thing about GW2 is that it has a lot more “horizontal progression” than other MMOs. By that, I mean that instead of grinding for ever-more powerful tiers of gear, player prestige is instead gained by wearing rare cosmetic gear.

Now, I’m a player to whom prestige is all but meaningless. When I choose an appearance for my characters, all I care about is that I like how my character looks. I couldn’t care less whether the skins are dirt cheap or that every Ranger and his Bear has one. But this isn’t the case for the vast majority of players. If many (or all) expensive and rare skins became easily available, I’d be willing to bet my entire material storage that you’d see a HUGE amount of discontent from players and a mass exodus from the game. A lot of people play because they want to feel special or superior to other players, and having stuff that most other players do not is a crucial part of that.

As a result, the artificial scarcity created by the economy is a necessary evil. That’s why a lot of us are so concerned about “protecting the economy”, because we recognise what the effects of making things too easy to obtain would be.

(That said, it’s also important not to shut down discussion about scarcity and the difficulty in obtaining some items. The game is always in flux, and if demand and supply do become too out of balance, then sometimes it IS necessary for ANet to step in and make changes to bring it back into equilibrium. They have done this before in the past, with one big example being the change that made it possible to salvage Crystalline Dust from Ectos.)

In a virtual economy, high end luxury items are the main force that keeps crafting alive. If you make it too easy to get high end items, crafting quickly become obsolete. With crafting being obsolete, the vast majority of items in the game lose demand and soon you will simply sell everything to a vendor because no one wants to buy it.

That’s simply not true. If by “high end items” you mean things like Precursors, the margins of crafting any component of them are nonsense-low. The only things with reasonable margins are rarer items, like Beaded Weapons, for example, or foods, or sometimes bags. Basically the things that are good for crafting are things that never drop anyways.

A lot of people play because they want to feel special or superior to other players, and having stuff that most other players do not is a crucial part of that.

For the most part though, this comes from EARNED goods, things that they had to work to achieve, like the new Luminous armor, for example. Anything you can just buy for gold is junk for this purpose.

Ohoni.6057:

For the most part though, this comes from EARNED goods, things that they had to work to achieve, like the new Luminous armor, for example. Anything you can just buy for gold is junk for this purpose.

You actually have to earn a Legendary, because the amount of time it takes to craft it is roughly equivalent to the time it takes to farm the Gold to buy it.

You actually have to earn a Legendary, because the amount of time it takes to craft it is roughly equivalent to the time it takes to farm the Gold to buy it.

It might, or it could take considerably more or less time. It depends on the pace at which you accumulate gold and the methods you use to acquire it. You can no more claim to have “earned” a legendary that you bought with money than you can claim to have “earned” a 1st place karate trophy because you went to the trophy shop and bought it.

A thought occurred to me from people mentioning Mawdry.

Craft a ‘booster’ that increases your chance to loot a precursor.

Make it a scavenger hunt like Mawdrey. Make it somewhat difficult and expensive (but not unattainable) and once you’ve crafted it, you keep it in your bag, or perhaps consume it to create a semi-permanent buff. A specific type of magic find that effects only precursor drops. Once a precursor drops, the buff is gone, or the item is deleted or broken. Possibly even make these boosts specific to a certain precursor, so that you can choose which one you want to drop and your chance at getting, say Dusk, is increased greatly or guaranteed when a precursor eventually drops. Once one drops, you can craft another booster if you like for another precursor.

This is specific to the precursor problem only, and not the general RNG roulette, but it could be workable. It doesn’t guarantee you a precursor, but the more effort you put into the game, the better your chances are for being rewarded.

Shaaba.5672:

A thought occurred to me from people mentioning Mawdry.

Craft a ‘booster’ that increases your chance to loot a precursor.

Make it a scavenger hunt like Mawdrey. Make it somewhat difficult and expensive (but not unattainable) and once you’ve crafted it, you keep it in your bag, or perhaps consume it to create a semi-permanent buff. A specific type of magic find that effects only precursor drops. Once a precursor drops, the buff is gone, or the item is deleted or broken. Possibly even make these boosts specific to a certain precursor, so that you can choose which one you want to drop and your chance at getting, say Dusk, is increased greatly or guaranteed when a precursor eventually drops. Once one drops, you can craft another booster if you like for another precursor.

This is specific to the precursor problem only, and not the general RNG roulette, but it could be workable. It doesn’t guarantee you a precursor, but the more effort you put into the game, the better your chances are for being rewarded.

remember that this thread is not primarily about precursors, but also remember having a random generated to solution to a random generated problem, is probably not going to answer much.
Unless whatever random boosting effect is so drastic that it becomes a small amount of trials to normalize, you will get the same problem.
for example, it might be the case that a magic find booster already doubles your chance of looting a precursor/ascended box etc, however, doubling the chance still doesnt really make it likely.

The current RNG system definitely suffers from a very wide distribution. I know this thread isnt about precursors but I am going to use them as an example because they are one of the popular items….sorry

Remember however, that nearly EVERYTHING in the game is based on RNG, its the programmed chance that becomes a problem at low levels. The lower the chance of event “A” happening the wider the distribution of number of tries it takes for the first success, as such, the higher chance you have of a person not succeeding (getting a desired item) after a very large number of tries and the higher the chance of very frustrated players who see NO return on their efforts.

A few things

1) leave the current systems in place: the forge, drops for bosses/mobs etc, for the very rare items. This still keeps the “OHH, AWESOME!” aspect of getting a rare item. but, after a certain point, “OHH AWESOME” becomes “holy crap…finally” and this is one reason other methods are wanted.

2) point 2 in the OP is just saying that it would give you more of the same chance. I think this could be even more frustrating for some people as they open their “bonus” chances and receive nothing but regular mob loot.

3) the OP point 1 would help some. In any case a more narrow distribution of the RNG even leaving the mean the same would be appreciated.

4) yes, I await the person to chime in and say “You can buy these items from the TP [if we are talking about precursors or alot of rare gear], so there is your non-RNG way of getting it”

Game design: to me, it is just poor game design in a game that prides itself on non-farming to have the by far most reliable way to obtain many rare items be by farming gold -> trading post. As such, the following in light of my first point:

5) I would much prefer to see more achievement and meta achievement rewards.

6) 2b in the OP mentioned tokens. If this is just something like Teq tokens (ie spoons…) That could be just fine for some items like mini teq and items that can be gained elsewhere like an ascended chest (because, of course, you can craft ascended.)

7) An all of the above approach would be great honestly. Some items are certainly not rare enough to go through a meta achievement while others are. Look at the new armor skins in SW. There is a very small chance of getting a box as a drop, you get one from completing a set of missions (story) AND you can purchase them using local tokens. To me, this was a great step in the right direction. The luminescent skin is gated behind both the first skin AND the story achievements. The great thing here is that, while it may take a while and some coordination to get it, I know that if I do xyz then I can get that skin. There is a certainty. Mentioning precursors in this thread again, it is well within the realm of statistics for a given person to forge thousands of sets of rares without ever seeing a precursor. In other words, there is no light at the end of the tunnel unless you simply farm gold but that seems to be a major deviation from the goals the devs had.

Some people absolutely would not want to do some sort of scavenger hunt for an item, thats fine, leave the pure RNG sources in. In fact, if there is some balance concern, make the achievement/scavenger hunt ones that have a 100% probability after completing something account bound. Thats fine. but some alternate 100% method would be great. I know at this point someone is going to come in and say that people advocating an alternate sure method just want the easy way to a precursor. In fact, this is not what I am going for at all. The devs know the drop rate and can see the TP price. Even if a scavenger hunt method took 25-50% longer than it would take on average to get a drop or farm the gold it would still be an actual in game presented goal not complete luck or farming toward a moving target in the tp price.

This thread is so large it should be a CDI. I’m concerned something buried on page 6 is lost to the annals of time.

juno.1840:

This thread is so large it should be a CDI. I’m concerned something buried on page 6 is lost to the annals of time.

well, It was started by John Smith, so he at least has some interest in the topic. though it seems like an odd topic for the BLTC subforum

juno.1840:

This thread is so large it should be a CDI. I’m concerned something buried on page 6 is lost to the annals of time.

+1, Sad to say but it’s likely all ready forgotten.
It might as well be closed. Sorry some decision here have made me see the glass as half empty instead of half full.

I don’t really have an issue with the rng as it stands. It tends to favor me in spurts. My definition of favor is a lot more lenient than most people’s here, however. I’m happy with the occasional exotic, and I’m getting more of those lately by playing with rares in the forge.

I would like to raise awareness of one particular thing.

ANet has rarely if ever given us something permanent without applying some kind of cost or taking something else away. You may well get some kind of improved system for rationing drops, but you’ll need to consider what might get yanked off the table when that happens.

If and when they decide to implement some kind of new token system, it had better be put into the wallet or some other form of UI, and not my kitten inventory. I have enough junk.

juno.1840:

This thread is so large it should be a CDI. I’m concerned something buried on page 6 is lost to the annals of time.

CDIs would be mostly to start discussions on areas the game could improve on. Since there’s no real issue with RNG, except for the misconception that “random” = getting what you want, there’s no need for a CDI.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

juno.1840:

This thread is so large it should be a CDI. I’m concerned something buried on page 6 is lost to the annals of time.

CDIs would be mostly to start discussions on areas the game could improve on. Since there’s no real issue with RNG, except for the misconception that “random” = getting what you want, there’s no need for a CDI.

No real issue with RNG—LMAO. Misconception-ROTFLMAOS.
I assume you are an outlier on the positive side. Maybe review the thread in its’ entirety with an open mind.

John Smith.4610:

This is a spinoff of the economy thread to talk about RNG tactics in games in a general form.
Here’s the premise. RNG is evenly distributed on aggregate. On an individual level this means that while almost everyone falls into a reasonable range in the middle, there are outliers on each side of the distribution that are either highly rewarded or not rewarded at all. These individuals become sample cases and spotlights for experiences that maybe shouldn’t exist.

We do need to be very careful about ideas that flatten the experience entirely as that quickly becomes not fun at all.

There are two concepts that have been discussed in the other thread that I’ll briefly summarize.

1. Use a specifically non-random NG. The NRNG functions similarly to a RNG, but has characteristics that either squish the distribution so that outliers exist much less or specifically manipulate a player’s experience for loot in a more complicated way that makes it feel rewarding.

2. Implement measures that counteract low-end outlier behavior inside of game design. This would be a system that is something like: If player hasn’t received a rare drop in X time send them Y tickets for random drops.

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.”

Obviously these are hyper-simplified descriptions, but I don’t want this to get too long.

edit: added 2.5

Did I just read this? Is someone actually showing that at least one soul at Arenanet understands what it’s like to be on the bottom of the RNG bucket?

I sincerely hope you are not risking your job by posting this, sir. It is about time your superiors allowed you to bring this to discussion.

I believe #2 is acceptable, but the “consolation prize” needs to be substantial. None of this “well, you haven’t had an exotic in 10,000 drops, so here’s a ticket scrap.” (note: I’ve no clue what the average rate of exotic drops is, I made that number up for sake of example".)

The primary reason I have all but left GW2 is because I simply feel the reward for effort is dismal at best. I like to know I’m making progress towards a goal, even if that last drop didn’t give it to me outright. I like to be able to lay down numbers on a spreadsheet and figure out how much I need to do in order to guarantee a result. RNG, as it stands currently, is the polar opposite of that. The caveat to the well defined path is that I don’t like having my patience tried. It’s ok to tell me I have to play casually for a year to get to a certain goal. Telling me I have to play casually for 5 years is too much.
People need to see progress, and RNG doesn’t allow it. Some form of #2 on your list would greatly increase the perception that the game is rewarding. Because no matter what you do, you know you are progressing towards whatever goal you wish to achieve. Just don’t let the monetizers convince you that “progressing” means merely nudging you forward an inch on a 1000mile journey.

im going to throw this in here as an example suggestion that fits into method 2/2.5

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/sug-Fractal-skin-crafting-salv-asc-rings

With regards to Sinister armor and weapon recipes, we players are yet again being hit with an RNG situation where “outliers” are rewarded for their luck while the rest of us are forced to “grind” to obtain the items we want.

I bought this game based on “Anet doesn’t make grindy games”, but I obviously got suckered in. Seriously? Why the hell do I have to grind my face off in game material that I really don’t like, just to obtain items that I would like to use somewhere else in this game?

This is actually worse than the situation with Legendary and precursors because that stuff is mostly just cosmetic. I know there is no economic reason that Sinister recipes cannot drop in WvW, or be purchased from karma vendors. Both of those methods to obtain these items can easily be controlled.

The game designers simply want us to play their flavor of the week material. They want good looking metrics for participation, and that is so much garbage that I’m done with it.

And perhaps after you’re done reading this Mr. Smith, you could sticky this post so we don’t have to bump it? Thank you for reading.

Looking at the Treasure Hunter achievement, it’s a lot of horrible RNG. A lot. Worse, there are some items I had at some point, but ditched because the value was pathetically low at the time.
I’d gladly hop from task to task to fill out the checklist, but with so many RNG items blocking my way, why bother? :\

We wants tasks and choices, not a constant battery of lotteries we don’t even know where the tickets are.

Thanks for giving us a place to vent with little to no assurances that changes will be made to remedy these double lotteries that have been popping up lately masquerading as “rewards”.

Becka Williams.4978:

I still think a reward track is the best idea. The programming’s already in the game, it doesn’t require tokens, or thousands of new things for the server to keep track of. Of course, we leave RNG as an option, but you can work towards stuff, as well. I bet this would be very popular. I don’t care if people laze out on earning, or work their kitten off to get it. Everyone gets their own fun from the game.

The reward track idea does seem to be a good one. Has a good way of visually seeing a form of progression toward something.

Behellagh.1468:

In the days of City of Heroes they added a “streak breaker” to their RNG hit code that guaranteed a hit after X number of misses, based on the hit percentage chance.

If your to hit was over 90%, it allowed only one miss in a row, the next attack is guaranteed to hit. Over 80 but under 90, 2 misses, etc. It still allowed “lucky” people to exist but significantly helped players on an unlucky streak.

Now here you would track loot roll percentages. As for implementation, it could be as simple as number of “misses” needed for a guarantee drop at a specific quality or a more complex statistical analysis that would trigger if the player’s count falls below say 10% of a standard distribution. Depends how much you want to “mess up” the aggregate drop percentage.

Example. A player for his level and luck he has a 5% chance for a rare. The streak breaker would kick in after 19 misses. Or you could, using the stats method make the trigger after 44 or log(0.10)/log(0.95) where 0.1 is the lower 10% distribution threshold and 0.95 is 100% minus the 5% chance to get a rare.

So a 1% chance would have either a 99 miss threshold or a 229 miss threshold.

Of course upon getting a drop or triggering the streak breaker code would reset the miss count.

Just some thoughts.

Such a great game, so much other MMORPGs need to learn from it. I still feel virtually homeless without it.

The big issue I’ve noticed lately over the past few months is that there’s a pattern when it comes to players that are playing every day vs players that are not playing for a long time and come back after a long break. Those players that been gone for a while seem to have increased drop rate. Almost every other friend of mine that came back after a few months break ends up with either really expensive exotic item or a precursor in their hand within a week of them playing again. Is this intentional?

Romo.3709:

The big issue I’ve noticed lately over the past few months is that there’s a pattern when it comes to players that are playing every day vs players that are not playing for a long time and come back after a long break. Those players that been gone for a while seem to have increased drop rate. Almost every other friend of mine that came back after a few months break ends up with either really expensive exotic item or a precursor in their hand within a week of them playing again. Is this intentional?

Any how many others that have come back and not had the same luck? You’re just focusing on the outliers.

They are not outliers. Almost everyone I know, including myself, experienced this after a break of two weeks or more.

I am inclined to agree. It has been far too reliably observable by too many players to not warrant suspicion.