Guild Wars 2

Galen Grey.4709:

Gw2 is a rat race for rewards if you make it a rat race for rewards.

In the same way WoW isn’t about level and gear grind because you can just run around the starter zones all you want. Or how a shooter isn’t about shooting because you can just run past the enemies. Or the same way a racing game isn’t about racing because you can just stay at the starting line.

It’s an old fallacy.

The game is what game does. If the game presses you to do something, that’s what the game is about. If these things were truly optional, they would be optional in context of the gameplay.

In fact, that’s what was advertised: different strokes for different folks, maybe some get more rewards or unique rewards, but not at expense of ordinary players. That was the promise. It fell through.

Legendaries are the truly optional goals, really. That’s what a purely optional goal is: something you can chase if you want to, but something the game doesn’t even remotely press you to do.

Galen Grey.4709:

How would it be a living world if all you do is add stuff?

…That’s generally what “living” means. Life grows. If you remove stuff it’s more of a “Dying World”, really.

Galen Grey.4709:

Living world as the name implies means a world thats living, ie that it evolves and reacts to whats happening in it.

Well, in that case ANet have done a pretty crap job with it, haven’t they? Most of the “Living World” updates concern something that comes out of nowhere, affects a tiny specks of land or gameplay and then goes away never to be seen again.

It’s not “Living” and it’s definitely nothing to do with the “World”. It’s not a story. It’s not something that actually affects the game. It’s just random temporary content.

It would actually be perfectly fine if “Living World” meant some sort of a huge change to the entire game (let’s say, now it rains fire on all maps because Flame Legion got their claws on some ancient magic) that is then supplanted by yet another change. But it’s not what’s happening, is it?

It’s a swindle.

Galen Grey.4709:

…there’s seas of players all around…

All around the two-three popular farming spots, sure.

But the world is barren.

Vayne.8563:

World of Warcraft had 8 years to fill in details.

ArenaNet had 9.

But, sure, there are lots of nice tidbits here and there. Small bits of dialogue, sometimes interesting events, easter eggs… It adds to the game and it’s appreciated, and it’s something that most other MMOs don’t have.

But the core experience lacks a pretty good deal of polish and depth you’d expect even from a Single-Player RPG. Hell, jumping animation and physical control isn’t done properly.

I’m having a hard time imagining some executive manager justifying Living Story approach to content developers.

“Hey, we have a huge world we want to fill with a huge number of players with lots and lots of things to do! Let’s make more content for it! More maps! More gear! More enemies! More mini-games! More events!”

“Yeah! And then take them all out two weeks later!”

“W… Wait, what?”

Vayne.8563:

I almost agree. I’d certainly agree if people would stop using the word promise. Statements are not promises…

Pretty sure the Manifesto and all these blog posts were all promises.

At the very least, if my friend tried this sort of logic to weasel out of something without a sarcastic smirk on his face, I’d start to seriously question my judgment in people.

ANet have dealt a serious blow to my trust in game developers in general.

Fungalfoot.7213:

One of the most common complaints about the game is that the cosmetic progression is a bust and I can’t help but wholeheartedly agree with that assessment.

“No subscription! Look whatever you want to look like! By the way, 5$ for a one-time change of clothing.”

I’ve been leveling an alt some time ago, and I have to say, it’s a pretty droll experience without people running around.

You’d think that would be the whole point of an MMO.

But no. No one’s around. Everyone’s somewhere else.

Ah. Thanks.

I have no problem with having different things for different people to do in the game. In fact, it’s kittening amazing. It was one of the big and juicy promises prior to release. That’s how it should be done.

The alternative is forcing every player to do a bunch of things they don’t necessarily want or aren’t even any fun – and that’s where the game is now, and where it’s heading.

WoW, for example, has its famously horrible leveling grind. You can argue you “don’t have to do it” – and you really don’t, just go ahead and run around the starter zones – but it’s a futile argument because of the overall design. GW2 now falls victim to the same fallacy (and the same argument to defend it) – and the way you acquire Ascended gear is easily the most egregious example… so far.

It’s disappointing. It’s a broken promise.

I think you aim too high. The variety of gear is rather abysmal to begin with.

Vayne.8563:

I think there’s probably more attention to detail in this game than any other MMO I’ve ever played.

You should really try World of Warcraft. The Options menu alone would be a small booklet if printed out.

…I have no idea what you just said.

I’m slowly coming to a sad realization that these sorts of bugs may be a bit too high-brow for ANet’s engineers to discover.

A great and brutal summary of some of my own feelings towards this game. At the very least it’s nice to hear it with so many people trying to brush off the problems as if they don’t even exist.

Quite honestly I still miss my WoW trial. I know I’d have to put up with all the same crap and more and even worse even if I had the money to waste on subscription and leveling there, but just like in GW2, you can still play against type – you can have fun just running around and doing whatever. Annoying, sure, but you can just ignore the grind and the dumb parts if you like. You shouldn’t have to. You really… Shouldn’t have to…

You shouldn’t have to invent your own game inside another game to have fun. Seriously.

Shufflepants.9785:

It is “I don’t know”, but it’s the kind of “I don’t know” that is almost certainly a “definitely not”.

Well, no. You have no evidence one way or another.

In fact the only kind of evidence (anecdotal) we have is contrary to your position. I’d wager the reason you’re getting negative response is because it’s obvious to most here that you’re just being contrary for the sake of proving a point that anecdotal evidence is unreliable – although true in itself, it doesn’t make the opposite false.

As I said: somehow a lot of people have trouble settling for “I don’t know.”

Shufflepants.9785:

it seems as though most people do not notice any problem or else there would be thousands of people posting on the forums complaining about it

Ah. Well, okay, then you’re just straight out wrong. Feel free to ask in global chat what people’s drop-rates are like.

Actually it’s a form of argument from ignorance. (Unlike the name says, it doesn’t mean you’re ignorant, just means it’s fallacious.)

Shufflepants.9785:

And maybe I’m a secret government robot who is learning how to take over the world by lurking in game forums.

What, like the fifty cent squad? Who knows.

Actually I was trying to imply that you are, for some reason, taking a side in an argument where the correct answer to “Does it do this, or that?” is “We don’t friggin’ know.”

“I don’t know” is such a simple phrase, but for some reason most people have trouble with it.

Mourningcry.9428:

No, I never claimed that at all. I just said the rate of events changes. He gets more attempts; but each event has the same changes.

And the more attempts they get, the better chances (and more loot) they get. There’s no way to avoid that.

Mourningcry.9428:

As to, why? It’s simple – I’m content with an equal shot.

Well, that irrational considering what I’ve just explained, but okay. It’s personal taste. People like different things.

I don’t think most people like it though. More importantly, a game designer should never be content with their original design going awry.

Mourningcry.9428:

The rules of probability are sufficient.

Game design must have deterministic rules: “Action produces result”, not “Action produces result or no result and you don’t know why and there’s no way to change it.”

That’s not how rules work. Rules aren’t random.

Mourningcry.9428:

One could argue that in an environment of inevitability, there’s no point in playing because the outcome is already known.

Playing for the sake of achieving an outcome in a purely virtual world is the most irrational thing you can possibly do.

Games are art, and entertainment. Not a job or a task. They’re played for fun, and fun in games comes from being tested against a set of rules. That’s what games are.

Throwing a dice for the sake of rolling a six isn’t that entertaining, and it’s a known waste of time.

Mourningcry.9428:

It sounds as if you’re implying that effort should yield reward.

Uh…

Yes?

Mourningcry.9428:

Simply put, whatever level of effort you may deem as a rewardable effort may seem utterly trivial and undeserving of any reward to another.

Yep.

One of the original promises of GW2 is that it would have content to satisfy all kinds of players: where hardcore dungeon runners would receive huge rewards for doing hard stuff, and where ordinary players would still get their own.

The answer to different expectations of players is to have a gradation of difficulty in your game.

Not to frustrate both parties by making their effort not matter.

Mourningcry.9428:

Which is the beautiful quality of RNG. It doesn’t care who the player is, what they’ve done, or for how long they’ve done it.

Neither does a bolt of lighting to your head.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Math and statistics, on the other hand, are objective. What matters in the game is that they do the task they’re supposed to, and random probability in reward calculations is meant to solve a practical problem of dividing an indivisible item.

It’s also used to introduce unpredictability to give an illusion of complexity where there is none. But each goal must not cancel out the other.

Mourningcry.9428:

As mentioned above, I don’t think anyone ever claimed it was otherwise.

Got it.

Shufflepants.9785:

My point is that even if there actually were a faulty RNG, it would not necessarily produce the kinds of results people are claiming

But it might.

Steam says it’ll be able to emulate keyboard & mouse all on its own, so it seems like a problem that’s solved already.

It’ll work.

Oh and, GW2 allows you to use modifier keys, so it’ll double-work even with the larger amount of skills. I have all 10 skills assigned to just five buttons, personally.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

By suggesting there be some guarantees in getting an item, you throw the idea of rarity out the window.

The other way around, actually.

By assigning the chances too low to resolve in a reasonable amount of attempts, you destroy the intended rarity of an item and assign its rarity value to almost pure random.

Sure the item will maintain “some” rarity, but not the intended one. You don’t just assign weapon damage to a random number, do you? It has to be more or less precise. Otherwise it just won’t work in practice.

Loot is no different. You need precision in its distribution.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Then you turn the game into a pure grind fest, because the grind then guarantees an outcome.

Ironic, don’t you think? What does the game look right now exactly? Is there no grind? Where do most players spend their time in the world?

But yes, you’re right, it’s an inevitable outcome of such a system. It’s an inevitable outcome of having a known reward for a known task. The ultimate outcome is that you can actually do it.

If you simply remove the outliers from the graph, then yes, people “grinding” will receive more of a reward than anyone else (just like they do now). That’s perfectly logical. But, the key question is, whom would that hurt exactly?..

Mourningcry.9428:

I’m not concerned with the outcome as long as the process treats each event equally.

Why though?

On a side-note, that’s not actually possible. You said so yourself: the more attempts you go through (grind tons of mobs, for example), the better your chances. That’s just how it works.

Mourningcry.9428:

I don’t agree with this, and don’t believe that there is any need for inevitability.

A game is not a game without rules.

Mourningcry.9428:

Your premise comes down to the inevitability that a certain outcome will happen and that makes the proccess fair, correct?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Magic Find can help alter the equation, but the base line % is the same for everyone, thus is fair.

As I said, it’s a bit hard to wrap your mind around, because you see “You have the same chances!” and logically that means “It’s fair, because it’s the same.” But it’s not. It’s simply random.

Random luck is the very opposite of fairness.

Is it fair when a millionaire finds a bunch of cash lying on the road? Is it fair when a good person gets into a car accident? Is it fair when you get rewarded for doing something terrible or stupid? Is it fair when a criminal gets away scoff-free? Is it fair if your house burns down?

There’s also something called a Gambler’s Fallacy: “I’ve already played for so long, so my chances have got to be improving by now.” It’s perfectly logical – again – because the Law of Large Numbers says: the more you try, the closer you get to the average, right? But it’s not true. Your chances to “win” on your thousandth attempt are the same as on your first.

What’s worse is that those are some of the least counter-intuitive things in statistics.

Mourningcry.9428:

Can you elaborate on what you mean by what I bolded? How are the percentages different for the each event?

They’re not. But that doesn’t mean it’s “fair”.

Even though you might have the same “chance” (i.e. 1 in 1,000) as the other guy, you don’t actually have “the same chances” in a random environment, in the sense that you do not get the same outcome, or even close to the same outcome.

You may think that having the same “chances” no matter what would put someone who grinds for hours and hours on the same footing as someone who logs out occasionally, but it really doesn’t. That grinder could very well be getting a thousandfold more epic loot than you. Or they could be getting nothing at all.

It’s just luck of the draw. It’s unfair by definition.

In fact, if you want to offer players “same chances”, you’ll want to follow some of the basics described in OP. Without proper thresholds, intended controls of an item’s rarity become a competing force aimed towards pure random, at which point designer’s original intentions towards rarity, time gating, rewards, and fairness of loot and combat fly out of the window.

Because ANet don’t know how to statistics.

Here’s a lengthier explanation.

Behellagh.1468:

I’ve always liked Mersenne Twikittener, downside it’s slower and possibly, jukitten possibly mind you, it may impact performance due to the shear number of random numbers generated every second in the game. Of course if that’kittenhe case they could kittenill use it only for loot drop rolls, MF forging and the like.

Edit: Honekittenly? Every words with the letter pair kitten is getting kittened? Jukitten isn’t a bad word. kittenill isn’t a bad word. Arrgh!

AHAHAHAHA

Wow, thanks for the laugh. Good grief.

What the the heck, mods?

Mourningcry.9428:

I appreciate the idea that each of my chances at the MF, for each loot drop, I have the same shot at getting something nice as the guy that has been grinding away for hours. Yes, I may not get as many chances, which is their reward for his efforts, but each of those is just as good as any of theirs.

Hm. The solution to RNG problem wouldn’t affect that though. I was talking about bringing the outliers (“unlucky”) players on the level field with what designers expect to be “average”, which is what they use to determine rarity of the loot in the first place.

Also – and this is a bit counter-intuitive – that wouldn’t work. Random is random. No one has the “same chances” in a random environment. It’s just luck of the draw.

(And “luck of the draw” is terrible game design.)

mtpelion.4562:

I’d like to see the unique skins drop as crafting recipes instead of items. That way the players who get them to drop can make more of them and bring the prices down to a more reasonable level.

That’d be neat.

tigirius.9014:

What makes it worse is DR…

Oh great. That’s the fourth even worse flaw I didn’t think of when writing the OP. That’s just great.

My hunch is, ANet rely on metrics (i.e. data collection) rather than player feedback, and that’s a mistake because they’re probably looking at collective data of all players combined, rather than individual outliers.

tigirius.9014:

I don’t think that’ll happen because mmo gamers today simply throw their money at anything anymore giving the devs a false sense of players being happy about what they are doing.

/sadface

marnick.4305:

77 isn’t hundreds in my maths. Maybe I’m wrong. Here, have my degree. It’s probably worthless.

Fair point. Could be delivered in a way that didn’t make you out to be a jerk though.

On that second point, I see no reason to talk to you further.

BlueZone.4236:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13tuac/im_the_studio_design_director_on_guild_wars_2_ama/c7762pk

But GW2 was designed without those restrictions, and we’ve always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2.

Boo! Boooo!

(Sound of tomatoes and empty soda cans hitting Mike O’Brien’s head)

The extreme cool-down times on most skills annoy me to no end.

I pretty much spec my characters around skills with cool-down of 30 seconds or less. What’s the fun in conjuring fire and hurricanes if you can only do it once every two minutes?

At least have more utility skills, or something. Maybe it works for your balance equations, fine, but you have to consider having a bit of fun in this game, too. Let me cook more than one Green Moa per minute with precision lightning, or something!

Why are we asking unrelated questions?

Oh, here’s something important.

Here’s a link to a tech-savvy guy/gal from another thread discussing how GW2 might use a faulty RNG algorithm altogether. That’d be fun, right?

marnick.4305:

If you would use proper examples, it wouldn’t undermine your credibility.

What’s with the personal attack?

marnick.4305:

1/ Mystic Clovers have a 1/3 chance. That’s not “once in a blue moon”.

Remember the sample size? What matters isn’t just the chance, but how often you take it. Mystic Clovers are some of the most expensive items in the game, and you need to produce hundreds of them.

marnick.4305:

2/ Ascended items are kinda rare but have a guaranteed once every 1 runs

No…

marnick.4305:

3/ rare drops are guaranteed every dragon/boss
5/ Exotics can be made guaranteed through dungeon runs and crafting with every stat combination you might like.[

Yes. They also drop from mobs, which is on a random loot table.

marnick.4305:

4/ Precursors HAVE to be extremely rare because they lead to legendary items.

Pretty much the entirety of the OP is me explaining that “random loot” is simply a way of controlling an item’s rarity, whereas after a certain threshold it deviates from this goal and descends into realm of pure luck.

Deniara Devious.3948:

It is possible that the random number generator (RNG) of Guild Wars 2 is borked.

WARNING: Very Technical Stuff ahead.

…

Good god, please post a topic about this.

I mean, I know ANet doesn’t seem to be very active on the forums, but they’d have to see this if it’s a possible issue.

The better question is, why do we have to stand completely still to use so many skills?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Without RNG, there would be no rarity, and no demand for the item, since everyone would have the same thing.

As my original point, that’s the whole point of RNG drops in games: to maintain rarity of indivisible items. The problem is, beyond a certain degree of chance, you’re no longer maintaining an intended degree of rarity, but leaving it up to sheer luck.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The Trading Post provides a way for players to trade goods on an open market. If RNG isn’t your thing, you can buy it and skip the whole “random” talk.

Yep. Trading Post and Crafting are typical way of mitigating effects of random loot.

But they don’t solve the problem, the just smooth the edges. In fact, there’s no guarantee that precursors and other such rare items are anywhere close to being as rare as intended. Remember, the lower the chances, the more it’ll take to average out.

And, still the question is, what’s the point of all that? Why?

Anthony.7219:

99.9% of the game IS different.

Down with the 0,1%!

Anthony.7219:

ITS A GAME.

The whole point is to keep you busy. The whole point of keeping you busy is to keep the servers full so the game is more attractive to new buyers, and so the gem store has customers.

So basically a glorified slot machine.

That’s why I wasn’t working on that assumption. GW2 was advertised as “different”, after all.

(Doesn’t mean it is…)

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You need to apply the theorem from a game wide perspective, not from an individual player’s one.

But you do. In the end, the whole point of the game is the player playing it, no?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The item still maintains its rarity, and RNG helps to keep it at such a level. So RNG is working as intended.

Quite right. Across thousands of players doing thousands of tasks thousands times a day, it will average out. (Maybe.)

What’s the point of that though? Why would you do this?

Anthony.7219:

Karma, Laurels, non-binding loot sold on AH, these all provide alternative ways to get gear with the STATS you want

Quite right. Thankfully it’s relatively easy to have decent gear in GW2.

This doesn’t mean the problem goes away, just that it’s smaller in scale. Where it really rears its ugly head are Rare, Exotic, Ascended, Precursor, Unique, Crafting Material and other such drops which significantly affect player income if nothing else.

Anthony.7219:

It is gambling, and it is working as intended.

Well, I’m working on the assumption that this isn’t the intention because that would be horrible and cruel.

Anthony.7219:

…and goal for top-end players to work towards.

If you do assume it’s gambling though, the “goal” and “work” parts go out of the window.

Random is random.

IndigoSundown.5419:

What are the odds that ANet employs at least one person who is conversant with statistics, and that they understand what the system they decided to use means with regard to obtaining anything via RNG?

Considering it’s an extremely basic flaw that has a known solution (my WoW example)…

Actually that’s my point: they should employ someone like this. Or else let them do their job. Or at least look up what it is that a known RPG designer does to make their game “balanced”.

Anthony.7219:

Yes, but my point was that you can obtain options (although not certain specific pieces) at the same stat level for all of these things. Even some of the drops are common enough that while YOU might not get them, you’re guaranteed to get them if you do enough runs because you accumulate a little thing called “gold” that you can buy them with, so only soul-bound or extremely expensive items should be considered in this super-rare drop category. (IMO)

Correct. Crafting and Trading Post are typically used to mitigate the randomness of the drops in an RPG.

Anthony.7219:

Also, can someone please show me where the law of large numbers says that if you roll a 1000 sided dice a certain number of times you’ll roll a 73?

I was about to type up something with my limited knowledge, but then I remembered a saying…

“If you think you understand statistics, you don’t understand statistics.”

Anthony.7219:

If you go on this dungeon run 6905 times, just under 1% of people will not have the drop. STILL A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER.

Yep!

There’s no such thing as absolute certainty in statistics, too. There are only ways to calculate certainty and probable value of error, and those aren’t guaranteed to be true either.

One way or another, you need some way to mitigate the randomness of the system. In MMOs this usually means Crafting: the logic is, even though you might have missed out on an Epic Drop by the time you should’ve had it, at least you have the materials to craft it by then.

Ditto for Trading Post.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

That’s just a theory based on the assumption that any random number rolled enough times will average close to an expected number.

Right.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact the Law of Large Numbers is an established fact, not a theory.

This is actually kind of a big deal. It’s the foundation of the entire field of Science.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you get a Precursor in your first 100 attempts, your personal views would be that RNG is favorable, thus that is the average for that player. If another person attempts 5,000 forgings, and yet doesn’t get a Precursor, their personal view would be that it’s impossible.

Yep.

That’s what my whole point is about: if you select a very low probability, it will take an enormous amount of attempts before it averages out and becomes “fair”.

A six-sided die is the most common example, and it’s something you can test at home with some pen and paper. It’s a random roll. You don’t know where it’ll end up. But if you keep track of the numbers, it will come closer and closer to average the more you roll – by 100th attempt, it’s most likely you’ll have to keep track using decimal places after 3.

It’s totally random, but somehow it averages out.

That’s the whole point of random numbers in games: sooner or later, they average out and become “fair”. Those “fair” numbers is what’s ultimately used in all the calculations and all the discussions of combat balance and item rarity. The problem is, when you’ve set the probability too low in your estimations of rarity of something, it might take a couple thousand years for it to get to that point – and until then, it’s all up to luck.

And luck isn’t fair.

Anthony.7219:

What specific things in this game are random drops only (sorry, long time MMO player, casual in this game)? Almost everything is token-based purchase.

Off the top of my head: crafting materials, blue, green, rare, exotic, ascended weapons/gear, unique skins.

Mourningcry.9428:

The LLN doesn’t delcare ANet’s implementation wrong, bad or a mistake. You did.

ANet’s implementation will, no doubt, confrom to the LLN. How could it not? Your issue is you don’t like what the expected return is, or how how long it would take to realize it.

Actually, if you read the very beginning of the post, I’m saying it goes against the intent of applying rarity to indivisible items, where using a large chance will keep the rarity of an item certain due to law of averages, whereas using a very law chance will deviate from idea of rarity and into realm of pure luck (which is not the intent of randomized loot/randomized damage).

Mourningcry.9428:

Opinion. It may very well be intended. And again, some of us may feel ok with this and that it should be there.

Well, you’re right, I’m making an assumption that most players do not wish to take part in gambling with rewards distributed at total random.

I assumed that would be insane.

If that’s your idea of a good game, I have nothing to say to that.

Mourningcry.9428:

You think this is a solution. Some may consider it a weak implementation to cater to an entitled audience.

Aaaaand we’ve about reached the peak of absurdity. Please don’t go any higher.

Actually there is an Interface Toggle in the controls. I’ve bound it to Ctrl + R, very useful. It also hides your health though, so not great for running around hostile mobs.

Mouselook Toggle is on the top of my list of wanted features. Why isn’t it here!?

The Law of Large Numbers is not subject to personal opinion. It exists.

Likewise for the rest.

Screw Living Story.

ANet should dump it and focus on something more substantial. A few more Dynamic Events somewhere in the world would be better than the entirety of Scarlet’s Invasion.

They won’t though. One thing gets the PR department salivating, the other, not so much.

…But all that would require work.

ANet is already too busy doing the “Living World” updates to bring their Dynamic Event system up to scratch with what they were promising the game would be like.

Wow. Rude.

To repeat, everything you’ve said has already been addressed in the OP, along with reasons as to why it’s wrong.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you provide the same guaranteed loot for each enemy that you kill, you end up killing the game. What good does having 100 Final Rests in my inventory do? I can’t sell it, seeing as how everyone else has the same.
…
Now onto the idea of RNG modifiers for loot tables. That’s also a bad idea. The more you fail = increasing odds that you’ll still get loot. That leads to more guaranteed drops, which is completely counter productive to the idea of item rarity.
…
One more thing. Being random, there is no true average, only the illusion of it.

All of these points are already in the OP. Did you read it?..

Theftwind.8976:

So if you log in today and the first 1000 returns on your list of returns based on your seed number are lousy rolls you will get the same 1000 lousy rolls when you log in tomorrow!

I know it’s easy to scold ANet for doing bad things, but that would be a bit too much. I really doubt that could be the case.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It’s actually 0.004%. You now have four times more chance to get the item.

Yeah, you’re right.

The problem is, four times almost nothing is still almost nothing.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Your Magic Find isn’t high enough.

Why…

Okay, whatever. But it still needs a reminder: Magic Find has an absolutely pathetic impact on your chances of getting good loot.

Let’s say there’s a Rare item that rarely drops from mobs. Let’s say a 1 in 1,000 chance, or 0,001%. Let’s say you get your Magic Find up to a full 300%. Congratulations! It’s now a 0,003% chance. Feel any better about it?

Quite right.

Making Karma useful could very well mitigate some issues with the “RNG” in the game. In fact, wasn’t that the whole point of it? Almost all quest-givers reward you with level-appropriate gear for Karma, so… It’s, like, huh?.. I guess it’s just another idea in GW2 that never saw proper implementation…

It’s like ANet is afraid that without meaningless grind and chase for a chance at shinies people will just up and stop playing. Honestly the worst part of it is… They might be right. GW2 is a pretty good overall, sure, but is it really good enough to warrant spending hundreds of hours in?

Oh hey. A reasonable discussion. Thanks for the nice bunch of replies, everyone!

Galtrix.7369:

If I didn’t get the item I wanted, I would do that event again and I would probably get that item. If not, within 5 runs I would get the item I needed without fail … I could go for years in GW2 without getting the item that I want.

I’m not sure ANet even understand there IS such an issue (hence the topic). Blizzard know it because they read lots of player feedback, but if ANet just looks at their metrics they come up with a pool of hundreds of thousands of players among which it probably does average out to what they intended. Or maybe they don’t even look. Who knows.

Jared.8497:

In general I strongly dislike RNG. I’d rather kill 2,000 of something with a visible incremental (reliable) gain towards a goal than kill half that and just get lucky on one of them to gain the goal.

I think everyone would rather have that, honestly. Actually it’s one of the things Crafting is supposed to be about. Speaking of which…

mtpelion.4562:

I actually wish that items like weapons and armor, with the exception of boss chests, never dropped and need to be crafted/purchased instead.

Yep. It’s a fairly disaster-proof way to do it.

If you MUST have random drops in your game for some reason, and you can’t use 0,001% drop probability for your extremely rare gear (because it will take a thousand years to average out), then tie that probability to random crafting mat drops and have a recipe that requires a lot of them.

Hilariously enough though, in GW2, even crafting mats have too low of a drop rate to average out over a reasonable amount of time.

Lil Puppy.5216:

Your WoW example is flawed since it just adjusts the drop table by a very small amount each kill for whatever loot that monster is supposed to drop. It doesn’t “fix” RNG, it just adjusts the probability a tiny bit each kill.

Yep. It doesn’t really fix the issue. However, it goes a long way towards minimizing it, and it works.

Lil Puppy.5216:

So math is tough but I haven’t seen anyone actually come up with a better system…

I’m not sure there even is one. I think using probabilities much higher than 1 in 10 is asking for trouble (again, 400 or more tries just for a one-in-six chance). The answer seems to be not to use it.

Lil Puppy.5216:

Rolling dice is exactly what the RNG does. Rolling that die happens for EVERY SINGLE DROP thus it will never average out.

Yep. The gambler’s fallacy. That’s usually the problem for using random numbers in combat because you’re dealing with a very small sample. When talking about loot, however, you’re looking at an average over an account’s lifespan, so what people are and aren’t supposed to have after certain amount of time/kills/whatever.

Requiem.8769:

1:00 is most relevant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWtvrPTbQ_c

I’m glad you brought that up. I didn’t think of mentioning it. But I think it deserves mentioning not just for straightforward implications but coupled with the fact that, well.

Delivering rewards or punishment at complete random is a form of torture.

I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m really not. I won’t go into gruesome details. The bottom line is, it’s that bad.