Guild Wars 2

I’ve played my fair share of MMOs.

GW1 & 2, Aion, EvE, D&DO, WoW, Neverwinter, ESO, and maybe one or two I can’t think of off hand.

Out of all of them, the best system has been EvE. RNG is minimal. RNG is the difference between what gets destroyed and what is lootable after blowing up someone else’s ship. RNG is whether or not you get the officer drop or not at the end of an escalation. There is also no such thing as account/character bound.

Not only does it have minimal RNG but one of the best crafting and markets out there. Not to say it doesn’t have it’s own problems. Enough so for me to cancel my sub today.

I recently bought into an alpha called Life is Feudal. A medieval sandbox. Again, RNG is what herb you find or what wild plant you find. Everything else is measured and calculated. Nothing is character bound. However, things do wear out and eventually need replacing.

As for GW2, there is minimal need for RNG. Things can be a sure thing, they just need to be measured and calculated. If everything can be crafted, then the resources can be made as available or scarce as need be. By controlling the resources, and by controlling the gold sources/sinks, you can therefore control the resource/gold ratio which will ultimately control the prices of everything on the market.

Now GW2 doesn’t have the pvp destruction of resources that EvE has and it doesn’t have the eventual breaking that Life is Feudal has, but instead GW2 has account/character bounding as a way to remove the items (the resources they are made of) from the economy. This is perfectly fine.

So to sum up.

-Allow everything to be craftable and tradeable (even Precursors and Ascended).
-Control the availability of resources that are used to craft with.
-Keep BoE as a means to remove resources from the economy.
-Salvaging less than what is put in is another resource sink.

RNG is not necessary. Simply controlling the input/output of resources and gold and allowing everything be craftable is all that is necessary.

So, looking at the new mystic forge recipe, this topic seems relevant.

I use RNG to answer

Apparently my answer is:

I automobile forthcoming thus place 42 insurrection on red periodically.

The drop system + RNG was fine in GW1. Please fix GW2 accordingly and all is good.

Echo from another post:

I noticed something on the Wintersday vendor. He offers boxes with random rewards for 1 unit (I forget the actual currency), but he also has another box with a selectable reward from the same pool for 4 units.

This works fine for those who feel lucky and for those willing to put in more work for guaranteed rewards. We need more options like this.

@Rauderi that seems to be a change they may have done due to player feedback.
Notice how in Silverwastes you can pay 12 tokens for a random extractor or 30 for a specific one.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

I use RNG to answer

Apparently my answer is:

I automobile forthcoming thus place 42 insurrection on red periodically.

win
/closethread

Carighan.6758:

@Rauderi that seems to be a change they may have done due to player feedback.
Notice how in Silverwastes you can pay 12 tokens for a random extractor or 30 for a specific one.

Good times.

Now they just need to update fractal/Tequatl/etc rewards to match it.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Please understand: I do hear the concerns about RNG. I do not profess to be a master of the subject of game economies but sure, I understand the concerns. I just want to point out that this thread isn’t about RNG and the items in questions are available in the TP, so I think we’re covered. (Meaning, let’s keep the RNG discussion in the appropriate thread, please. )

I just want to say that as a long-time gamer, I totally understand and embrace the concept of rarity as an important factor in games and their economies. Maybe come would dispute it, but as far as I understand it, RNG is part of the system that ensures that items hold value. Until I’m convinced there’s a viable alternative (and yes, in the other threads, which I will read!) I can’t view RNG as the demonic system that it’s claimed to be… even while I’ve spent far, far too many hours trying to score the rare items myself!

If you take on board that rare items should be rare, and if you want your own rare items to hold value, then… Ah, but as I said, this thread isn’t about RNG. I’m happy we were able to share the recipe and I wish everyone the best of luck in scoring the nice Wintersday items, whether they choose to seek them or buy them on the TP.

So from this may we gather that the reliance on RNG in this game is due to the game economy?

Ok here’s what I think John.

RNG in itself is okay, but it should not be the only way to achieve something.

Take precursors, just a couple of days ago a thread was on front page about “how many precursors did you get”. Most of the replies said “Zero”. Then, oddly, there were some people getting multiple precursors. It seems, thus, that RNG does not always have the best implications: i.e. it doesn’t necessarily distribute goods justly.

What we need is something like this:
To begin with your chance for precursor is (I don’t know what it is) 0,00001% on a random drop from any mob, on any level. Each time you don’t get a precursor, your chance should then be multiplied by a solid factor. For example in mystic forge you get 0 precursors after spending 50g while someone else gets 3 precursors with 50g. I don’t think 50g is a sum of gold where you deserve to get a precursor out of it, but consider you go on and a certain point you spent 299g. You still don’t have the precursor.

Now lets rethink the concept by adding a multiplier. For every x tries with rare weapons where you didn’t get a precursor, your chance for precursor becomes 100%. The moment you get a precursor, your chance is reset to the original value (0,00001%).
For each time you don’t get a precursor your chance goes up so the next time you have more chance to get a precursor out.

This will give everyone a chance to get a legendary, without eliminating the hard work, but by giving an equal chance to everyone though.

Deamhan.9538:

I’ve played my fair share of MMOs.

GW1 & 2, Aion, EvE, D&DO, WoW, Neverwinter, ESO, and maybe one or two I can’t think of off hand.

Out of all of them, the best system has been EvE. RNG is minimal. RNG is the difference between what gets destroyed and what is lootable after blowing up someone else’s ship. RNG is whether or not you get the officer drop or not at the end of an escalation. There is also no such thing as account/character bound.

Not only does it have minimal RNG but one of the best crafting and markets out there. Not to say it doesn’t have it’s own problems. Enough so for me to cancel my sub today.

I recently bought into an alpha called Life is Feudal. A medieval sandbox. Again, RNG is what herb you find or what wild plant you find. Everything else is measured and calculated. Nothing is character bound. However, things do wear out and eventually need replacing.

As for GW2, there is minimal need for RNG. Things can be a sure thing, they just need to be measured and calculated. If everything can be crafted, then the resources can be made as available or scarce as need be. By controlling the resources, and by controlling the gold sources/sinks, you can therefore control the resource/gold ratio which will ultimately control the prices of everything on the market.

Now GW2 doesn’t have the pvp destruction of resources that EvE has and it doesn’t have the eventual breaking that Life is Feudal has, but instead GW2 has account/character bounding as a way to remove the items (the resources they are made of) from the economy. This is perfectly fine.

So to sum up.

-Allow everything to be craftable and tradeable (even Precursors and Ascended).
-Control the availability of resources that are used to craft with.
-Keep BoE as a means to remove resources from the economy.
-Salvaging less than what is put in is another resource sink.

RNG is not necessary. Simply controlling the input/output of resources and gold and allowing everything be craftable is all that is necessary.

This is probably the best solution IMO. Immobulus is an example of a guaranteed item with high material costs. The only RNG involved is getting the materials (giant eyes).

I’d also like to see someone like Nick (from the original) trade once a week, highly available goods for more rare stuff, in a scavenger hunt like mechanism.

I’m also glad to see the game is loosening its grip on black lion keys. The pure gamble aspect should pretty much always be a small side thing.

Personally I don’t have anything against the RNG itself. I used to play Ragnarok Online for around 2 years. In that game, you would have a really low chance of dropping a card from each monster. These cards were like enchantments you would put in your gear. It was so much fun to try and get those. I could spend hours killing monsters just to get the card I wanted. That was a good implementation of RNG, however, in Guild Wars 2…

Well, there’s simply way too much of it. You get completely random items, most of which are completely useless/worthless and will be used to salvage. It’s everywhere, so you end up prayin for decent loot each time you do anything. When you get nothing one time after another, you get seriously upset.

I think that we need more rewards that aren’t RNG based and are worth something. Titles, exotics with amazing new skins, precursors even.

One does not just walk into Mordor.

A change to the reward mechanism for low prob drops has to be carefully analyzed, a plan developed and then getting the powers that be to schedule it. To be “fair” it’s likely that either account or character info needs to be stored about “misses” so when you miss enough, something happens. Which means you need to drag the database team in as well as the server and client teams. Which means you will need to coordinate implementation to a degree greater than if the change was just changing the color of the commander taco.

So yes it’s been two months but on an object in flight, you can’t just “drop something in”.

Buttercup.5871:

I’m sick and tired of being the outlier.

Same here.

Maybe the drops really are that bad and we are not the outliers, but the norm? Maybe those with decent drops are the outliers? Wouldn’t surprise me all that much.

Rather than having to worry about how to designate what is a “hit” and what is a “miss”, what about an actual token (for the love of the Six, stored in the wallet).

Make something like a “Losers’ Salvage Kit” that doesn’t return any materials, no globs, no sigils… instead, you get some of these “Misfortune Tokens” based on the items rarity. Then a vendor (or several, I’m not sure how many tabs/items become too many on a single vendor) could be added that sell the things people commonly want, costing a value of tokens based on their rarity/drop chance.

So, for example, Greens could be worth 1 token, Golds for 2, and Exotics for 4, Exotics for 6, etc.. (If you want to be insane, you could even make Legendaries worth 10 or 100 or something). Nothing for white or blue, of course.

Then you can have the vendors sell the precursors for 5k, 10k or whatever tokens, and possibly other things like “Named” exotics, sigils, etc. Maybe something for the limited-time skins, etc… so that festivals like Wintersday don’t turn into “Got the meta achievement, no point in doing it anymore since I’m more likely to get struck by lightning twice.”

I think the best part about this idea is that we know that the framework is already in place. Season 2 shows us that adding new currencies and vendors is readily doable (and hope the wallet is eventually expanded to support them soon), it doesn’t require modifying the player data structure to track “misses” or “time since hit” or any of the other sort of suggestions, and it lets the players themselves decides what’s a “victory” and what’s a “fail”, without having to code it.

I think the “downside” of lowering the resell value of precursors is a specious complaint, at best. Anyone selling so many precursors as to be negatively impacted is obviously already sitting comfortably as a right-tail outlier, and have enjoyed the fruits of it long enough that reducing it for the good of the vast, vast majority is warranted.

The hardest part of this, I think, would just be determining what to offer for the tokens and what “reasonable” costs would be for them.

NB: The “placeholder” names I used are tongue-in-cheek for humor, but the idea is sincere.

Behellagh.1468:

One does not just walk into Mordor.

You picked the one movie where one guy does just walk into Mordor and saves the world from unspeakable horrors.

Incidentally, I’m at 4k greatswords now, both rare and exotic. This includes all returns from the forge which I re-flushed. Pooof. All gone.

I have well over 100 Tequatl runs and still no Sunless weapons. Some people have thrown thousands of weapons into the mystic forge and no precursors. Some people have then got either of these on the first few tries. Significant RNG systems can greatly benefit from a token system for those who spend significant time trying to do something and cannot seem to luck out.

The concept of RNG can still be fun and can reward the outliers who are on the wrong end of RNG.

2.5 seems like the best option to me.

Methinks one of the biggest motivators of all for MMO players is the feeling that you’re making palpable, actual progress towards something.

I know in gw1 it seemed an easier time to get those rarer items (eg crystaline sword from UW/mini dhuum – approx 1 in 100 based on my exp).

Having run Tequatl daily since release it is wierd how some of my characters never get a weapon box but my character playing the worst build ever gets them (really bad builds with low DPS ).

Something like 2 is needed (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.)

But instead of random tickets for random drops there needs to be a scaler multiplier on an account to increase the chance of getting those drops which have not occurred on that account eg mini Tequatl (have had 0 drop so far), Teq armor box – those items which are considered on the “super rare drop table” which players really should have a good chance of getting over a longer period of time.

It’s no fun grinding (I mean repeating content >4mo) for a drop which is still not appearing. Unfortunatly tracking this may be a bit of a bind but will significantly enhance the player experience as a whole.

The problem with really random RNG in a map is that someone gets lucky and many get unlucky (who have been unlucky for a long time). Tipping odds in favour of multiple people getting the high end considered drops they have not had in a long time would help those out who are on the extreme side of the outlier table.

I am hoping something truly gets done about the god awful RNG system that affects players so they feel like they actually have a decent shot at something.

The RNG system being replaced by the PvP track for wintersay works for the exotic underwater piece works nicely and takes the 4weeks for a casuals play style to get one piece. If only things like this could stay longer term.

John Smith.4610:

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

- Goodness of RNG vs. non-RNG model depends very much on what do you want the moment of greatness to be. Think about situation like this: you’ve worked hard for a month and at payday your boss gives you an offer. You could either have your salary as normal, or you could flip a coin for 50% chance of no salary and 50% chance for double salary. Expected value for both options is the same (0.5 * 0x + 0.5 * 2x = 1x), so it shouldn’t matter which you choose, right? Regardless almost everyone would choose to have their salary as normal because there is value in predictability.

I think most people tend to be conservative in economic decisions. Randomness is undesirable, but it’s even worse when one doesn’t know the odds. The value of a legendary weapon could range from 10 dollars to 1000 dollars (we don’t know what precursor drop rates are). I’m not going to start emptying my bank account to find out which end it’s closer to. If the price was fixed on a level I would find acceptable, you could have a deal.

Example of good kind of moment of greatness is scoring a critical hit. You hit the monster on soft spot, so the health bar went down faster. It breaks the monotony of fights and adds a bit of random chance to every encounter.

My biggest issue with how rng is handled in this game is just how much fun you potentially may have is based on it. You want a precursor? You can spend thousands of hours farming for the gold to buy one, or get lucky and get one and be happy. You want that x skin, farm for between 1 to infinite amount to get it. RNG is fine for the low end, but ultimately there should be a visible goal. I don’t care about legendary, its either farm way to much which is boring or get lucky. To me legendaries lose all meaning because of this, so does most every skin.

The other thing that rng is not only putting a rng gate on things, but also putting a pay wall infront of that. Weapon skins from Lion’s heart chest are a clear cash grab. I know myself and many others would go for these skins if it wasn’t also behind a rng wall.

Everything in this game revolves around rng, and honestly at times, can be very frustrating and sickening.

It may have already been said, but repeating it anyhow: Make luck and MF mean something. I’m at 150-something percent right now, and i saw ALOT more exotics drop when i only had like 1-10%.

I always figured that “RNG” was a side-show gimmick to the real barrier, and thats the amount of materials being dropped daily, which limits the amount of ascended armor that can be crafted, and therefore is the gold sink in the market.

All the MMOs I’ve played have reward structures based around a few things:

• Currency (gold)
• Participation (Bind on X items, Karma)
• RNG

I think we need a healthy dose of all three to make the MMO resilient to spikes. If everything in GW2 revolves around gold, any inflation would be extremely frustrating.

If everything revolves around participation, players would be grinding the same content repeatedly.

If everything revolves around RNG, players don’t feel rewarded for participation (I got nothing after 5000 tries, but he got it on first try).

One concept used in WoW that I think might be useful for GW2 is the use of Faction/Reputations.

You help a certain faction (like Pact, or Zephyrites etc) and gain standing with them. You then purchase items from their vendors using standard currency (karma and/or coin in GW2 case.

This way you have to play the content in order to get access to the item (instead of farming gold elsewhere and just getting the rewards).

It also reduces the need for too many different types of currencies that have no bearing on each other. Geodes, Bandit Crests, Favour of the Pavillion, Captain’s Council Commendation, Dungeon Tokens…… Just way too many.

Kitty.1502:

My biggest issue with how rng is handled in this game is just how much fun you potentially may have is based on it. You want a precursor? You can spend thousands of hours farming for the gold to buy one, or get lucky and get one and be happy.
Everything in this game revolves around rng, and honestly at times, can be very frustrating and sickening.

I was just “lucky” – and I’m definitely not happy.

5745 hours. Finally got my first precursor drop. On Christmas.

Rage.

Rage is right. Thanks for the lump of coal.

RNG is not a bad reward system for certain items and most MMOs use it; however RNG in GW2 s#cks @ss because everything valuable in game is based on RNG. For example, I can never do an extremely difficult challenge for a good reward because guess what? RNG. Or I can never have something as a goal (like getting a specific precursor for legendary) in GW2 because of RNG.

Personally my gaming purchases to ANet are RNG. They haven’t had a drop from me since Halloween ‘12. We’ll see if they get anything more but I’m not hedging any bets.

My first forum post, but, after 2 years of green and blue drops, with the occasional rare, I would say that a system with RNG and another reward would be the best. If RNG didn’t favor you, like how it doesn’t for most of the players, there should be a different method of acquiring what you want. But seeing as this thread has been out for quite some time and there hasn’t been a change, I’m not even going to expect a change in how the game’s drops works. I think this also stems from how Anet is focused on profit, rather than making this game enjoyable for everyone even if it means a drop in company profits (the traditional business model). An example of Anet being focused on proft: literally releasing the same headpiece gear on the gemstore in different colors, constantly pushing out new weapon sets, etc.

Playing for almost a year. Doing Tequatl the Sunless everyday. Sometimes even more.
2 Tequatl Hoards dropped.
It’ll take me another 10 years to get them all.
And all I care about are skins.

Good luck.

John Smith.4610:

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

So much this! I hadn’t had too many problems with RNG during the span of the game’s life, until Halloween 2014. With the introduction of the new mini Gwynefyrdd. I spent all my time grinding trick or treat bags and spending my hard earned gold buying more trick or treat bags. I spent way more gold than I should have trying to get that ghost wolf, but no dice. I was quite upset once the holiday was over and I still had not gotten it. If Gwynefyrdd had been made tradable, I could have bought it off the TP eventually. If the Halloween vendor had Gwynefyrdd available to trade for corn cobs, like its feline counterpart, then I would have been set. If Gwynefyrdd was a reward for a Halloween reward track, I would have PvPed for days until I earned it. Out of all the bags I opened the only thing I received worth mentioning was the cat mini, which was rather silly to include it in the loot table since it was so cheaply available through the corn cob vendor.

I had a similar experience when Dry Top came out with the Ambrite weapons. I wanted those weapons so badly! I grinded keys and opened chests for weeks without a single fossil dropping. Meanwhile friends who had barely spent any time in the map were finding fossils within opening 10 chests. Needless to say I was getting quite exasperated once I figured I was in the 60+ range of opened chests and still had not found a fossil. Finally, somewhere around chest 80 or so I managed to snag a fossil. I quickly made an axe out of it and called it quits after that. I felt no need to put myself through that again, even though I would have liked to get the rest of those weapons.

The new Rimed Rimmed Aquabreather was done perfectly! It has a chance to drop from RNG Wintersday gifts, or as a reward from the PvP reward track! Everybody wins. I never PvP, but that reward was enough of a cookie to get me into the PvP lobby. I actually had fun! So much fun, that after I finished the Wintersday reward track, I did the Balthazar reward track, and now I am doing the Silverwastes reward track.

Personally, I hate to gamble. I have never bought a lottery ticket, and I have never placed a bet. I was raised with the impression that if one wanted to gamble, they might as well flush their money down the toilet or watch it burn in the fire because that’s basically what they’re doing. I was raised to work for what I want, and to earn it. I worked in retail for a year before finding a much better job, but in that short year, I watched dozens of co-workers waste hundreds of dollars on non-winning lottery tickets. They’d blow $10-20 a pay check to buy a scratch off ticket (we were paid weekly). Excitedly, they’d rush to the break room and start scratching away while I ate my lunch, quietly observing. Their expression would turn from anxious and excited, to disappointed and hollow every time. Nobody ever won anything. By the end of the year, they all spent $500-$1,000 each in useless tickets. It adds up pretty quickly.

Because of my experience in real life and in video games, I have a strong dislike for RNG. I don’t mind it being in the game, just as long as there is another way to get the reward other than through RNG. Whether it’s a PvP reward track, a quest, a collection achievement, a gem store item, a jumping puzzle, a boss – as long as it is something I can progress through to get the reward, I am completely ok with whatever you guys throw at us. However, if the only way to get the reward is through RNG, with an incredibly small chance, then I feel defeated before I even try. Even trying feels like going through a meat grinder since I know I won’t get the item. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy after the hundredth try, and I still have nothing to show for it. This just leaves me feeling frustrated.

The “consolation prize ticket” would be very hard to implement in a satisfactory manner. In a worst case scenario it would even cause more injustice due to the huge value differences between items belonging to the same category (or stuff in general, as there is pretty little middle ground in this game between “drops so often and/or has so bad stats that it is worthless” and “incredibly unaffordable / set for life if it drops”).
Let’s say, for example, there was such a consolation prize ticket for precursor drops. Let’s say that one day before I would get that ticket The Bard drops.
Meanwhile an other guy gets his consolation prize ticket and the very next day he gets a naturally dropped precursor on top of that. That means that these 2 days mean the difference between 1 and 2 precursors (and double the chance for one that is much more valuable than The Bard). So, the “luckier” guy ends up with the considerably shorter end of the stick.
It would still be better than the present situation where some people get almost monthly precursor drops and others who play roughly the same events etc. still have to see their first precursor, but it has quite the potential for infuriating inequalities if you miss out on your consolation prize ticket because you technically got something good although it is pretty worthless in practice.

Solution 2.5 seems to be the most balance option with the possibility to really work toward something worthwhile even if the RNG does not love you as if you were its newborn child. Just do not make the mistake and add the token to one specific activity that you have to farm over and over and over for those tokens. The new “play as we tell you to play” approach has pretty few friends as it is already.

Just got my daily login reward for the day. It was the exotic gear reward. I love that you can choose a class for it. That could have been RNG’ed and it wasn’t and I appreciate that.

The thing that is un-rewarding for a reward is that it was level 78. All my characters are level 80. Could it at least correspond with the level of the character that opens the box so it’s usable? I think that would be a step in the right direction.

Sure, I could salvage it and make money off of it, but at that point, why not just give out a flat amount of gold? I don’t want to come off as being ungrateful, because I really do appreciate the way this new system works. But, as designers, I know you are all striving to make the rewards feel rewarding and also to be rewarding. I think the reward should be the level of the character opening the box. Otherwise, what’s the point?

RNG generator means that I, who has played since launch have still not received a precursor.

RNG means that someone who created a trail account and played for the weekend got one almost immediately.

RNG doesnt reward dedicated players. It’s random.

Sirendor.1394:

Ok here’s what I think John.

RNG in itself is okay, but it should not be the only way to achieve something.

Take precursors, just a couple of days ago a thread was on front page about “how many precursors did you get”. Most of the replies said “Zero”. Then, oddly, there were some people getting multiple precursors. It seems, thus, that RNG does not always have the best implications: i.e. it doesn’t necessarily distribute goods justly.

What we need is something like this:
To begin with your chance for precursor is (I don’t know what it is) 0,00001% on a random drop from any mob, on any level. Each time you don’t get a precursor, your chance should then be multiplied by a solid factor.

A system like this would certainly be more fair. The main issue is game memory. Every item that used this system would have to be recorded with your character information on the server. That could end up being a lot of memory over the entire player base. As it is more common for computers to have more and more memory, and for games to use more and more memory, and for ISPs to be able to transfer more information/ second, hopefully games will start having this type of system rather than RNG.

“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.”

I opened around 49 black lion chests, and had 9 scraps to show for it, then I got a scrap and a ticket in the last one I opened.

I understand not everyone having a precursor drop, but the dry-spells between just getting bad exotics can be months… ugh…

bump… For Great Justice!

quoting :

1. ande.2105

It seriously makes me think either A) Some accounts are just luckier than others from a non-user influenced factor, or B ) The longer time an account is not used it has some kind of hidden buff/boost to drop rates.
I have tried this a few times with my two accounts, and nearly always see the same difference. Something certainly isn’t quite right here. #

This is exactly what I wanted to add. Maybe someone else mentioned it too, could not read all the posts. It is true and the devs are either ignorant or just not admitting that the rng is bugged. I play few hours a day , magic find 270% wtithout boosters.
My brother got bored with the game, he does not log on for days. I have 3 chars
parked at Rhendak, one of the collectible item boss.I was doing it for weeks, literaly weeks.Got his exotic Trident 2×.
Asked my brother to do it since he is not doing anything in the game anyhow so he did it a few times with his thief.
A few times.He got the 80g worth signet 2×. TWO. I did it a hundred times, play many hours a day, I got nothing.

So I said ok, lets test it.Wintersday, endless tonics / for those who does not know, they can be forged.
I tried exactly 9 times and got nothing.He logged on after 2 weeks and got the endless tonic from the first try.

So, they are not telling us the truth.Things are not working as intended. People who play less get better drops. The more you play, the less you get. Shouldn`t it be the other way round ??

Just to throw it out there: One of the best-received events in Ultima Online was the Treasures of Tokuno.

This system had a very special system to distribute rewards. You could kill any type of creature on the Tokuno islands, and it had a small chance to drop a random minor artifact. If the creature you just killed didn’t drop one, then its Fame value (related to the creature’s difficulty) was added to a hidden Tokuno Points variable attached to the player. The next time you would kill a creature and it would drop nothing, it’d make a second roll that was related to the accumulated Tokuno Points and if the roll was passed, then you’d get a minor artifact and the Tokuno Points would be reset to 0.

The second part of the event is that you can trade any combination of 10 minor artifacts for a major artifact of your choice.

I like this system because distribution was fair and more or less guaranteed, you’d usually get an artifact every hour or so. Since there wasn’t really any best monster to kill, players spread out and hunted creatures they preferred hunting, and they’d get artifacts as a bonus. I also like that unlike a token system, the minor artifacts themselves are already usable to the player. However, if you got minor artifacts that you didn’t like (since they were generated randomly), you can dispose 10 of them to get a NON RANDOM greater artifact of choice. This is awesome, because one way or another, the minor artifacts would be valuable (either because you choose to use them directly, or as trade-in material to progress to something else you want).

http://www.uoguide.com/Artifacts_%28ToT%29

By the way, the randomly picked minor artifacts weren’t always less powerful than major artifacts. Leurocian’s Mempo ended up being one of the most desirable items in the game for a long time.

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

Oh I don’t know. I’ve had years of fun in every other title that’s not used RNG for something as basic as crafting materials no matter the tier. Farming is a necessary part of the life in an MMO because it allows players to reach their goals when crafting is part of the progression as it is here.

Economies that rely solely on extremely rare and hard to find crafting mats are not very stable as we’ve seen here, and crafting for progression then becomes a chore when you have an entire account that almost never on any character is able to get the crafting materials to reach top tier gear.

Let’s stop letting the greedy dictate where progression is headed in this game shall we and stabilize the ability of players to progress. If you remove the RNG element from many of the materials in the game that are required to both level crafting and then create crafted items you’ll make it a more fun system because people will be able to progress without breaking the bank.

Much can be said about the ability to get necessary enchants as well. Until those are available from vendors even with a bit more difficult to build up currencies like Laurels for example, you’ll remove the RNG element that makes it extremely difficult for players especially new ones (since everyone seems so concerned with the new players) and you’ll restore the fun element to the game.

As other developers have already tried what you’re doing with this economy and discovered they are losing players left and right because of the heavy RNG and heavy reliance on the Auction House for everything, I would have thought that by now, someone there (since there have been claims of people being gamers on the team) would have noticed that there was a huge problem with a heavy RNG and heavy TP reliant system in the game prior to this. It’s not fun to have to farm gold for months just to build something for progression sorry. It’s a lesson I thought would have been obvious by now.

I’d like to hold up Diablo III as a great example of what TO do in this situation. Eliminate the RNG of many of the items necessary to craft, remove the elements that restrict progression, update the system so that most new players won’t have to spend tons just to get something from the TP that they need (which could easily have been a reward while leveling) and update the rewards system so that players can get what they need at least for one build choice by the end of reaching level 80.

I’d also like to add that even though destiny has had a huge launch, they are now suffering because of their heavy RNG elements and it’s starting to show in their numbers so they are scrambling to try to fix it by making drops more readily available.

Two games who’ve had heavy RNG elements in their systems who’ve had to change drastically because they overestimated the 1%’s desires in their design. Nostalgia can only go so far in a game until it breaks the fun factor.

John Smith.4610:

Suggestions

Number 2.

If X player has been doing Y event for Z time, and does not get >0 R drop where R is a section of rare drops on the drop table, use Z time to increase R drop rate for Y event for that player.

That way precursors are not impossibly elusive, and actually repeating the event doesnt seem like gambling.

How far you want to expand R chance before it resets depends on you, but if R chance is more than one item, and only one item is favored by the playerbase, it should expand to 100 of the drop table eventually, because even 100 is a chance of a chance.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Take it for what its worth. My wife and I spent yesterday in Silverwastes. I had a day off and it was crappy outside (decided to skip skiing for the day) and we decided why not grind out the items we need for the two new luminescent armor pieces. Literally stacks of keys used, dozens of breaches and between us, we got one – that’s right ONE – usable piece for those collections. We only stayed at it to see how long it would take for something to actually be worth a snot.

Also, between us we have several thousands of hours of play time. Neither of us has gotten a precursor drop or one from the forge.

RNG is a wall that prevents anyone from working towards a goal. We’re at the merci of other people’s luck and market demands (price) to get anything worth working for.

My wife and I have spent several. weekend days in Silverwastes with results that are equally as frustrating. She wants the carapace armor items. In all the hours we’ve spent playing, I’ve had 6 Carapace boot boxes drop, and one other carapace piece (can’t recall if it was shoulder or glove) drop. For her? It’s grind grind grind until you have enough stupid crests to go along with 1 gold to buy them.
This has brought up the severity of what happens when RNG gets tangled with account bound. I’ve got boxes piling up that I don’t care for, but she hasn’t had any drop at all, but because they are account bound, my only opinion is to destroy them.

Neural.1824:

I’ve got boxes piling up that I don’t care for, but she hasn’t had any drop at all, but because they are account bound, my only opinion is to destroy them.

You can’t even salvage them?

And another thing or two.

I am sick and tired of hearing “sweet sweet loot” on absolute crap level items. The loot tables are simply loaded (and I mean “loaded” as in deliberately biased) with crap items. I don’t want to hear my character make some astonishing exclamation unless it’s really worth it. These days it’s no different from the random background NPC chatter.

And another thing. If RNG is soooo RNG, why is it that out of the 10 or so exotic weapons I’ve had drop in two years, that 4 of them have been Rockweed Spire? Hundreds of exotic weapons, and I get the exact same one almost 50% of the time.

John Smith.4610:

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.”

Either of these are good for two reasons. One, they preserve the random element that the overarching design process has clearly been built around – it shouldn’t take massive system overhauls and ground-up restructures of the way loot and rewards work to achieve either of these. That directly translates into faster delivery times, less labor costs and less chance for something to wind up broken and buggy.

In two, either would serve to improve the sense of gain incumbent to affected activities. There is no way to form a metric that can accurately measure or contrast ‘that sinking feeling’ anyone that plays MMO’s will surely be able to recall from times when a game’s RNG just kept refusing to favor them with whatever it was they were wanting out of it.

That feeling can likely be pointed at as the single most damaging abstract quantity to the experiences of countless when it comes to loot acquisition in MMO’s. I have no data to back up this assertion – I’m not even aware if there is any to reference.

What I do know is that I absolutely cannot be alone in knowing that I feel much more satisfied with a system, even when its not favoring me today, if I can rely on knowing that I will eventually get what I’m after even if the digital dice hate me forever.

Its hard to put a price on things that remove the feeling of one’s time being wasted, but I’d bet several shiny nickels on that it’d be worth every penny.

Here is the deal, i have been getting lucky with ascended gear but it becomes useless(since how stats-class work, but tht is another topic…) and might end dragged out of the pack, probably gona start saving for future giveway when ANet allow to trade ascended armor/weapons/trinkets, salvage is out of question becouse i dont care about materials.

What if drop system was only based on materials, only some chest could drop gear/weapons/recipes, every one had to craft weapons and gear at the end or buy from tp, this including ascended.

A little rework on the crafting skills to make them avoid craft lots of unwanted stuff, set a hybrid system of quests\event through Tyria(or via LS itself) for certain materials etc.

Buttercup.5871:

Dear John, I’m sick and tired of being the outlier. So please, if you truly understand: get your act together and bring about some actual change. There’s plenty of pointers in this thread for you to act.

Well, easy enough to fix, so long as you accept that nothing in the game would be remotely rare any more. If 3-4 Legendaries becomes the norm, that’s easy enough to do. Only I doubt the devs want to do that – if anything the game needs more ways to feel unique which aren’t shackled to the gemstore.

Carighan.6758:

Buttercup.5871:

Dear John, I’m sick and tired of being the outlier. So please, if you truly understand: get your act together and bring about some actual change. There’s plenty of pointers in this thread for you to act.

Well, easy enough to fix, so long as you accept that nothing in the game would be remotely rare any more.

That actually doesn’t necessarily follow.

Astralporing.1957:

Carighan.6758:

Buttercup.5871:

Dear John, I’m sick and tired of being the outlier. So please, if you truly understand: get your act together and bring about some actual change. There’s plenty of pointers in this thread for you to act.

Well, easy enough to fix, so long as you accept that nothing in the game would be remotely rare any more.

That actually doesn’t necessarily follow.

The only two sets of people who are really worried about rarity are the greedy (those who actually had accounts who didn’t suffer from the low drop rates who then have made enormous amounts of gold in the TP and continue to do so starting on the first day when the island event was first launched and no one did anything about people logging in with multiple characters to loot the exact same chest), and the 1% neither of which are large groups, neither of which should be the deciding factor in the future of the game, and neither of which will end up being particularly effective in increasing the number of players in this title. So you have to ask yourself, which would you rather have? A game based on old outdated novelties that cater to the nostalgia or the terrible side in humanity, or an extremely fun and popular game in which people login not because they have some ongoing endless chore to do but because they all actually enjoy being rewarded for their time spent?

I spent all night tonight on WoW guess what I did. I had the most fun collecting items from chests, from fun hidden places throughout the world. I found pets, mounts, gold, resources that actually mattered in my progression instead of cheap items that made no difference. When I found greys, special greys that were hidden I could actually get a significant amount of gold for vendoring them. I found gear I could actually use, some of which were skins. I also found resources for a fun collection system called Archeology where I could build items that had skins or special meanings, or even had some that were items that were useful.

And to think I did all that without ever stopping at the Auction House. That’s what I mean when I say fun and that’s exactly what I expected this game to have, it’s own versions of course. I can recall the talks in interviews about how they carved out special nooks and crannies all throughout Tyria to have special hidden places so that the players would feel rewarded when they went to those places. That never happened for me. I found many of them while exploring but every time there was a chest or hidden item it wasn’t rewarding, it dropped nothing of use and it was a waste of time save for those special stories that were short like the Giant who’s friend had died.

Collections, chests filled with items people can actually use (skins, armor sets, runes, sigils, items so rare they might as well be recolored as legendary for as hard is it is to get them and I do mean the items for crafting.) Is it really that difficult? I’ve seen multiple titles do it now and they didn’t suddenly close down.

That’s sorta the point. I suspect a relatively large group of players enjoys the AH-based nature of the game, and that requires a significant rarity of items.

Which is a bad solution to ~anything, sure. I’d prefer proper superuniques if they want something you can show off well. That is to say, there’s an item one player on your realm has, and if they don’t use it for a bit or don’t log on, they lose it and someone else can get it. Or one person with a title.

These could be viably rewarded for something difficult ingame, while everything else can be made more reliable.

Going to recommend 2.5, myself. Being able to claim any sort of progress towards a goal is a big step towards correcting the system. I’ve never seen a precursor drop, after 1.5k hours, most of it spent wandering. Been There, Done That twice, and just today dropped half a million Karma on Obsidian shards to keep working on crafting. That’s a pretty serious investment of time and effort, and it’s small change compared to some of the people in this thread who have many times that amount invested.

For people who have had that kind of luck, the RNG has added exactly nothing to the game experience. And I know that if I log in tomorrow, none of that makes any difference either. It’s not a good feeling to know that RNG makes each roll “all or nothing,” heavily weighted towards “nothing.”