"Not a guaranteed drop."

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Rauderi.8706

Rauderi.8706

Specifically, the title statement comes from the wiki page for Ley-Line Bezoar.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ley-Line_Bezoar

And I’ll be honest, it irritates me. Getting a Gerent kill isn’t too difficult with a semi-decent group. (Last night’s was brutally fast, actually.) But, it involves more of the taxi metagame that is utterly frustrating to deal with. Get in squad, world is full, find other squad, world is also full, continue spamming world taxis or resign to do something else that night.
The rest of the boss-parts of the collection are all guaranteed, so why is this one not? I really can’t risk having a pathetic drop rate on this, just because of the stupid logistics involved. (Find squad before event start, map-spam until hopefully getting in, wait 20 minutes…)

And if anything makes me paranoid about the drop rate, it’s one other part of the collection: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tail_of_the_Star_God_Fragment
I’ve been through three cycles of the event there, murdered hundreds of Grawl, and finally got the item to drop nearly an hour later. An hour. Of running around as an OP 80, silently spitting venom whenever another player appeared, because they’d be taking my kills.

tl;dr – Some of items in our Collections need a “balance pass” on their drop rates.

Many alts; handle it!
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

If the drop rate is guaranteed for everything, it gets boring. If it’s almost guaranteed, it’s just annoying for all the people who don’t get the drop. If the drop rate is low enough to be meaningful, say “25%”, then most people won’t need more than 5-6 tries. However, given how many people who play, some will need a lot more attempts — and that’s when it becomes horribly frustrating.

For example, in Henge Away from Home, I got three of the elemental drops within 1-2 kills; my friend got all four with 1 kill. My fourth? took over 40 kills.

So I don’t think it’s possible to have an RNG drop and be “balanced” for everyone.

What might be a better solution is to have a guaranteed drop, “Piece of Ley-Line Bezoar” plus the random drop of the full item. Then you can combine 10 (or maybe 20) pieces to get the full one. Get lucky? You can stop early. Unlucky? well, there’s still a clear end in sight.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Rauderi.8706

Rauderi.8706

What might be a better solution is to have a guaranteed drop, “Piece of Ley-Line Bezoar” plus the random drop of the full item. Then you can combine 10 (or maybe 20) pieces to get the full one. Get lucky? You can stop early. Unlucky? well, there’s still a clear end in sight.

I will always support this approach to RNG drops.

It’s the same with Crystalline Ore, actually. Usually, I get 1 from a noxious pod (which should totally have a home instance node!), though I saw 3 at some point, and a 10 drop got me suitably motivated. Each of the elite marks for the weapon collections is 50, so it’s a bit of a grind, but having progress toward an end gets me more motivated for the map.

Many alts; handle it!
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

It’s unfortunately a lot harder to implement, maintain, and troubleshoot. In their shoes, I’m not sure I would do it.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Moonyeti.3296

Moonyeti.3296

If the drop rate is guaranteed for everything, it gets boring. If it’s almost guaranteed, it’s just annoying for all the people who don’t get the drop. If the drop rate is low enough to be meaningful, say “25%”, then most people won’t need more than 5-6 tries. However, given how many people who play, some will need a lot more attempts — and that’s when it becomes horribly frustrating.

For example, in Henge Away from Home, I got three of the elemental drops within 1-2 kills; my friend got all four with 1 kill. My fourth? took over 40 kills.

So I don’t think it’s possible to have an RNG drop and be “balanced” for everyone.

What might be a better solution is to have a guaranteed drop, “Piece of Ley-Line Bezoar” plus the random drop of the full item. Then you can combine 10 (or maybe 20) pieces to get the full one. Get lucky? You can stop early. Unlucky? well, there’s still a clear end in sight.

A good way to balance RNG extremes is with a pity timer. Every time you don’t get the drop, the next time you have a better chance of it dropping. Keeps some RNG flavor, but tempers it for the extremely unlucky rolls (like taking over 40 times to get a 25% drop)

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

A pity timer is a feels-good-man approach way to balance RNG extremes; I’m not sure it’s a “good” way because I think it’s hard to code and importantly, hard to fix if something goes wrong.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

It’s not hard to code a pity timer unless you want to make the formula really complicated with some kind of weird logic or something. You could do this almost entirely within the confines of most enterprise database languages with a few lines of code and a new table or two (which will be what is used in binding data to accounts characters to begin with as well as what drives rolling loot tables as otherwise these could easily be hacked) and while only ever needing to insert a single line into the game client’s source code just to make the call (and/or replace whatever lines for existing calls there already are), which is a very minor change in terms of shipping patches and can be entirely devoid of any logic which effectively nullifies most possibilities of outstanding bugs or weirdness.

My guess is things are RNG because RNG keeps people playing longer. Anet knows if rewards got handed out, people would just rush to completion and the smallness of the community involved in the content would show itself while punishing new players or ones caught behind.

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: SlippyCheeze.5483

SlippyCheeze.5483

It’s not hard to code a pity timer unless you want to make the formula really complicated with some kind of weird logic or something.

I suspect it would be more challenging than you imagine, because it’s hard to define what should increase, or consume, the pity timer. Is it just the skins, or also miniatures? Does the timer count for each individually, or does getting one reset it for all of them? Do you count only the super-rare things, or also rare ones?

eg: it’s not necessarily just code complexity, it’s the business rules that you need to define, that make this challenging.

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

It’s not hard to code a pity timer unless you want to make the formula really complicated with some kind of weird logic or something.

I suspect it would be more challenging than you imagine, because it’s hard to define what should increase, or consume, the pity timer. Is it just the skins, or also miniatures? Does the timer count for each individually, or does getting one reset it for all of them? Do you count only the super-rare things, or also rare ones?

eg: it’s not necessarily just code complexity, it’s the business rules that you need to define, that make this challenging.

Can be made for collection items which are again tied to the account, as these RNG drops were what the OP made the thread about.

Yeah, doing something for the entire game is nigh impossible, but drops that are only ever useful once per account and aren’t tradeable and are already specially-defined for collections and so on wouldn’t be that difficult to implement in all sense of the word.

That said, who really knows with ANet’s engine. Supposedly development for collections take months just to pump out a single one.

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

That said, who really knows with ANet’s engine. Supposedly development for collections take months just to pump out a single one.

Because they have to test all the facets of the collection. It would take longer if there was any sort of Pity meter, because they’d have to implement it on the 100s of existing 1-use-only items and any new ones.

I don’t know if ANet’s code is well architected, if the configuration management is solid, if they have robust change management policies. I suspect there’s a lot of room for improvement.

But even if all of that was perfect, making small changes in Enterprise systems is a lot more complicated than making major changes in a small program. It’s almost certainly never as easy as we think it should be.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Labjax.2465

Labjax.2465

If the drop rate is guaranteed for everything, it gets boring. If it’s almost guaranteed, it’s just annoying for all the people who don’t get the drop. If the drop rate is low enough to be meaningful, say “25%”, then most people won’t need more than 5-6 tries. However, given how many people who play, some will need a lot more attempts — and that’s when it becomes horribly frustrating.

For example, in Henge Away from Home, I got three of the elemental drops within 1-2 kills; my friend got all four with 1 kill. My fourth? took over 40 kills.

So I don’t think it’s possible to have an RNG drop and be “balanced” for everyone.

What might be a better solution is to have a guaranteed drop, “Piece of Ley-Line Bezoar” plus the random drop of the full item. Then you can combine 10 (or maybe 20) pieces to get the full one. Get lucky? You can stop early. Unlucky? well, there’s still a clear end in sight.

Why would it boring if it’s guaranteed? Isn’t it just a collection piece? Like one of those “one piece out of 500 needed” situations? (yes, I figure I’m exaggerating saying 500)

I can see the boring argument being used in relation to RNG existing, period, in a game. But not in relation to one piece of a gigantic collection.

Or words to that effect.

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Djinn.9245

Djinn.9245

Specifically, the title statement comes from the wiki page for Ley-Line Bezoar.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ley-Line_Bezoar

And I’ll be honest, it irritates me. Getting a Gerent kill isn’t too difficult with a semi-decent group. (Last night’s was brutally fast, actually.) But, it involves more of the taxi metagame that is utterly frustrating to deal with. Get in squad, world is full, find other squad, world is also full, continue spamming world taxis or resign to do something else that night.
The rest of the boss-parts of the collection are all guaranteed, so why is this one not? I really can’t risk having a pathetic drop rate on this, just because of the stupid logistics involved. (Find squad before event start, map-spam until hopefully getting in, wait 20 minutes…)

And if anything makes me paranoid about the drop rate, it’s one other part of the collection: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tail_of_the_Star_God_Fragment
I’ve been through three cycles of the event there, murdered hundreds of Grawl, and finally got the item to drop nearly an hour later. An hour. Of running around as an OP 80, silently spitting venom whenever another player appeared, because they’d be taking my kills.

tl;dr – Some of items in our Collections need a “balance pass” on their drop rates.

I agree. But asking Anet to be consistent across any form of content would seem to go against some core philosophy of theirs lol.

it’s this luck based mystic toilet that we’re all so sick of flushing our money down. -Salamol

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

That said, who really knows with ANet’s engine. Supposedly development for collections take months just to pump out a single one.

Because they have to test all the facets of the collection. It would take longer if there was any sort of Pity meter, because they’d have to implement it on the 100s of existing 1-use-only items and any new ones.

I don’t know if ANet’s code is well architected, if the configuration management is solid, if they have robust change management policies. I suspect there’s a lot of room for improvement.

But even if all of that was perfect, making small changes in Enterprise systems is a lot more complicated than making major changes in a small program. It’s almost certainly never as easy as we think it should be.

That just assumes they only use acceptance testing methods as a means of verifying the integrity of their code. Well-made unit tests and some good design and the entire process can end up automated. The only things that should need to be tested this way in such an inefficient manner are of changes in design (not applicable), new code logic (not applicable), or new assets and physics interactions (not applicable), for these can have unpredictable interactions with some of the more internal workings of the engine and are much more at the mercy of suffering from a lot of weird scenarios and unexpected interactions.

I work on enterprise systems for a company with around 22k employees for a living and am the Advanced Technology test lead. If ANet can’t get a grip on testing a few DB event calls they have serious engine-server architecture or business structure problems, and their talented programmers’ skills are largely going to waste.

Given the nature of the general quality of software and game stability as opposed to most others, I’m going to assume these guys have it nailed down. Doing something like this would be far from monumental.

(edited by DeceiverX.8361)

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: AliamRationem.5172

AliamRationem.5172

I’m fine with the suggestions to change this. I see little reason it necessarily has to be this way.

Approaching the complaint from the perspective of what we as individual players can do to minimize frustration, though, I feel like you might be showing up to the map too late. For TD, I find most maps that organize for the meta usually begin doing so about 15 minutes prior to start time. If you’re showing up much later than that, you might have trouble getting into the map.

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Rauderi.8706

Rauderi.8706

I’m fine with the suggestions to change this. I see little reason it necessarily has to be this way.

Approaching the complaint from the perspective of what we as individual players can do to minimize frustration, though, I feel like you might be showing up to the map too late. For TD, I find most maps that organize for the meta usually begin doing so about 15 minutes prior to start time. If you’re showing up much later than that, you might have trouble getting into the map.

Nah, it’s not that. I got two Gerent kills in the same map, just to be sure, it’s just that the loot didn’t show up.
But as an update, I got the doodad on my second run. …which actually took less time, effort, and pain than farming Grawl for an hour. >.>

Many alts; handle it!
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: LanfearShadowflame.3189

LanfearShadowflame.3189

Wow, that’s not a guaranteed drop if the collection is active? That just seems….wrong.

My husband and I both got ours on our first attempt. =/

I completely understand the Tail of the Star God thing though. It took my husband like 10 minutes of grawl killing to get his. It took me 2 hours or more of just killing grawl as fast as they’d spawn. We’ve debated on whether or not him doing the heart in the bird form actually had any affect on this drop rate or not. We really don’t know.

Don’t look at me like that. Whatever you’ve heard, it’s probably not true.

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Ookamikun.6472

Ookamikun.6472

Yeah, this is a legendary collection from a meta boss, it should be a guaranteed drop.

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Ashantara.8731

Ashantara.8731

If the drop rate is guaranteed for everything, it gets boring.

True that, but at least event boss drops should be guaranteed. At least they have been for the collections I did, so it is unfair if they are not for other collections. There should be a level of consistency there.

"Not a guaranteed drop."

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: TwiceDead.1963

TwiceDead.1963

I just… Don’t do legendaries.

Their skins are ugly(Personal opinion) and borderline annoying at times (rainbow ponies), and their function? Convenient, sure, but nothing I couldn’t get done in an hour, as opposed to the years I’ve heard someone spend on obtaining them.

All respect for people with the willpower and patience for such a long-term goal though, but personally I’ll make do with what I got.