So long have I cursed RNGesus. Forsaken the Gwad of Lewt. I am not alone. What if there was a way to cast these two from their throne. Ahh but there is. I have a link to a [url=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WTvRQWIdta4qmb3OGGVc7AGyr9Ah26HXlNZcpRpuRw4/edit?usp=sharing]google spreadsheet[/url] which shows what I will try to explain.
So lets take a world boss that spawns every hour. Anyone can help kill this boss and if you do even 0.1% of it's health in damage you have a chance at loot from it. It has 20 items on it's loot table and can be killed 168 times per week. Even hard core gamer would only kill it about 125 times a week.
So here we have our sample drop table.
%Rate | Drop Chance | Item
30.74% | 1000 | Junk 1
30.74% | 1000 | Junk 2
30.74% | 1000 | Junk 3
00.53% | 0018 | Vanity Pet
01.64% | 0055 | Avg Loot 1
01.64% | 0055 | Avg Loot 2
01.64% | 0055 | Avg Loot 3
01.64% | 0055 | Avg Loot 4
00.89% | 0030 | Good Loot 1
00.89% | 0030 | Good Loot 2
00.21% | 0007 | Someone Else's Epic 1
00.21% | 0007 | Someone Else's Epic 2
00.21% | 0007 | Someone Else's Epic 3
00.21% | 0007 | Someone Else's Epic 4
00.21% | 0007 | Someone Else's Epic 5
00.21% | 0007 | Someone Else's Epic 6
00.21% | 0007 | Someone Else's Epic 7
00.21% | 0007 | Someone Else's Epic 8
00.21% | 0007 | Someone Else's Epic 9
00.03% | 0001 | The Epic you actually want.
Each time you kill the world boss 1 item drops. 1 in 3 chance it's junk loot. 1 in 187 for the vanity pet and 1 in 3362 for the epic you want. So mathematically 6 months of killing it 19 times a day and your assured to get it ... maybe. Of course the next patch comes out 3 months later rendering it useless but hey you got it!
Not with my idea. For each time you kill this boss and don't get a piece of loot the drop rate of that boss increases by the following formula. ROUND( 1.00 / ( ITEMS ON LOOT LIST - 1) ).
So if you killed the boss 30 times the each item has it's loot chance increased by 1.57 which rounds to 2. So now the odd have shifted greatly.
1 in 3 chance it's junk loot. 1 in 168 for the vanity pet and 1 in 1120 for the epic you want. Yes you read that right, with only 30 kills (Effort) the odds to get the ultra rare item cut in a 3rd.
This system however also tracks how many times you've looted an item. Each time you do the Chance reduces by one. Also any item looted once no longer receive the extra loot chances for 1st time looting. This is using the following formula. if LOOTED THIS ITEM = FALSE then ROUND( 1.00 / ( ITEMS ON LOOT LIST - 1) ) + BASE LOOT CHANCES else BASE LOOT CHANCES - TIMES ALREADY LOOTED.
Now lets look at Mrs Unlucky (aka me).
Kills boss once odd to get her epic she wants 1 in 3362
She doesn't get it.
Now lets look at Mr Lucky
Kills boss once odd to get his epic he wants 1 in 3362
He gets it!
30 Kills later
Mrs Unlucky odds 1 in 1120
Mr Lucky odds - Never, this item only has a 1 chance and he has looted it. It's a unique item.
Mrs Unlucky
100 = 1 in 550
250 = 1 in 226
500 = 1 in 109
So having killed it 500 times (19 hours a day for 26 days killing it) the odds have gone from a mere 3rd of a single percent to almost a full 1%. Even she'll get it soon right, within next 100 for sure?
Mrs Unlucky continued
600 = 1 in 85
700 = 1 in 71
1000 = 1 in 45
So 1000 kills and it's still possible to not have it but the odds of getting the item you want are now better then the odds of getting Average Loot and are a full 2.23% chance. Compared to the start which was 0.03% it's actually possible. Lets put that into a time perspective.
Casual gamer 4 kills a day 1 before work 3 after work before bed.
Active Gamer 9 kills a day on average more some days less others.
Hard Core Gamer 19 kills a day on average.
Gold seller 24 kills a day.
Casual time spent 8.25 months. Active time spent 15 Weeks (3.6 months). Hard Core time spent 52 days (7.5 weeks). Gold Seller time spent 41 days (6 Weeks) Mr Lucky time Spent 1 Hour.
Keep in mind this is assuming the worst luck in the world but with dedication even someone with such bad luck can turn a 1 in 3362 chance into a 1 in 45.
Apologize if you've already got this planned but I've not been able to follow everything.
[EDIT: Was reminded of m bypass timers I used for the raid. Actual kills were over 500 a friend on TS painfully reminded me.]
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.
Whether this or something similar, or CoH's method (providing several types of reward merits & vendors), I approve of loot luck streakbreakers, and streakbreakers in general.
However, using merits & vendors seems more appealing to me, as long as it doesn't go out of control with too many currency variants. When kept simple, it is a very visible/understandable approach, since a player can quickly see how close they are getting to "breaking" their unlucky streak by buying any item with merits. If there's something the merits system cannot accomplish but the drop chance adjuster can, I'm willing to change my preference.
Depending on the implementation of any drop chance adjuster (as in the OP's example), tracking every character's prior luck (per boss? per trial/TF? per grade of droppable item? or per item?) also sounds like it could grow significantly more complex than tracking one or two merit currencies per character. It would need some thought and care, like any system - including the merits method. I'll be interested to hear what existing plans/options MWM is brewing...
I saw a quote a while back that seems to be related to this subject matter:
"There is no such thing as bad luck; just insufficient sample size."
I'm no mathematician, but I thought it sounded interesting.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Random is [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness#Misconceptions_and_logical_fallacies]random[/url]. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
...and pseudo-random is NOT random :)
With or without a streak breaker, the psuedo-randomness that a computer can provide is really not the same as true randomness anyway. I'm not against streak-breakers per se, but there has to be a limit on how good your "luck" will ever get. I like pseudo-random rewards (like purple drops), I like predictable rewards (like merits and INF). I think a mix of the two ought to be fine.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Streak breakers are fine in appropriate situations (like for combat-oriented rolls). But I'm not so sure they're needed for loot drops. At least as long as loot drops are designed properly (with standardized computer RNGs) then streak breakers should at least never be necessary.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
"Totally random is totally fair." I hate that thinking. Totally random is, at best, equally UNfair. I firmly believe that the random drop BS is just a mechanism to increase and extend play hours without adding more content. Keep somebody coming back to do the same bit of content 100 times by dangling the carrot of uber-gear and saying "See, this person got the Goody in only four tries! Keep going, It's bound to pay off soon!" This is what breaks people in Vegas. Slots are for suckers.
I'm with Kitsune, bias the reward toward effort, but I'd go a step further. Several steps in fact. Miles even. She maintains that even if you devote yourself entirely to getting a thing, go totally hardcore, to a level that only those without much of real life can undertake, you can work your way up to a 1 in 45 chance. yippee.
This is like offering someone a job and saying: "Your pay will be part of a random drawing at the end of the week. Well, it's random on a bell curve.You could make $20 for the week, or you COULD make $5000! Most folks make a descent living on average. BUT! If you work extra hard, and put in 10 times the hours as anyone else, you can increase your odds of making the $5 grand from 1/1000 to 1/50. How does that sound? What? Well of course it's still just a chance. You might still just get what the average person gets after putting in those hours. And there's still a tiny chance that you only get $20. But its a BETTER chance at the big payoff. Isn't that GREAT?!""
I say, if you must have some kind of sliding scale, or semi-random chance, there should be a way to increase your chances to 1/1. That should be crazy difficult, I grant you, but possible. I doubt that I have the math, and I certainly don't have the ability to graph this coherently within the forum. But the ratio of effort to reward should be linear and predictable at the very least. If you want to leave in the random chance of "Woo-Hoo! First try, b!&@#es!" then fine. But at least when this happens to some lucky person, let me sigh and continue toward an actual goal with a real reward waiting at the end of it.
As I've already said, I like a mix of INF, Merits, and pseudo-random drops. The INF and merits are there for the constancy some people want, and the random drops are there for the thrill of that "OMG! I got a purple!" moment some of us like too. I never started playing any game with the understanding that it would be equal random drops for equal play time, and I don't WANT it to be that way. I don't interpret a 1/1000 chance of getting something to mean "you get this after every 1000th iteration, like clockwork". That's not how it works and not how I want it to work. I like the "I just got a purple!" feeling BECAUSE it's so infrequent and so awesome. If you made it happen more regularly it would get stale and it would make the purple itself less valuable, which is the reason for wanting it so much in the first place.
In short, all this "equal drops for equal time spent grinding" idea does is give very regular, predictable "wages" to the power-levelers and gold farmers. As far as I'm concerned, games like this are a form of recreation for the player, not a form of employment. If you're annoyed that you're not getting "paid" as much as someone else who grinded the same missions for the same ungodly amounts of time, I personally don't care. That's how the pseudo-random-number-generator-based cookie crumbles. Better luck next time.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The main problem with introducing any kind of streak breakers for rare loot is that no matter what the "tricks" are for supposedly giving you better odds there will always be people who'll think the scheme is still "unfair" in one way or another.
Let's take a semi-silly hypothetical where if you make your character hop up-n-down in place 10,000 times they'll get some kind of better chance to earn a particular type of rare loot. Some people might look at that and say "Awesome! that'll be easy to do" and happily start hopping for their bonus. But obviously there will be others who'll say "Screw that noise! I'll never waste my time doing that" and will go off to complain once again how the whole thing is "unfair". Even if the streak breaker in question eventually gave you a 1:1 chance there's still going to be arguments over whether or not the amount of time it takes you to get to 1:1 is fair or not. It'll never be settled one way or the other.
Ironically enough the "fairest" solution to anything like this is the simple unfiltered RNG roll we started with. Sure that means one person might get something on roll number one and another person might get it on roll number one million but it ensures that everyone has a EQUAL chance to get it with every roll regardless of any other circumstances.
Basically the TL;DR verison of this is what I said earlier: Random is random.
QFT
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Every roll is independent of each other roll. I have personally been after an item from a raid that had a 3 day timer on it. Well 2 days 18h timer to be exact. I used to run the raid twice a week and eventually after a few years wore down to 5-6 times a month. I easily clocked over 375 kills on this boss to get an item with a 3% drop rate with 2 drop chances. So 3% chance and I failed to get it 750+ times.
Also every 20th run (starting after year 3) gave a massively increased chance of named loot from the raid boss. 4 guaranteed items randomly selected showed up on a list. I got this list maybe 40 times. The named loot list had about 26 items on it and 4 would show up randomly every 20 raid completions. (This was done to help people like me who couldn't get lucky)
I did finally get it after 5 years, well after it had been obsolete by most peoples standards. It was the last item I needed for my original dream build. So long did I work on it that I could solo this raid myself every few days and took me 10 minutes. Sufficient sample size says my next 21 runs would have yielded a 100% chance of the item to pull it in line with the actual drop rate. Anyone who believes in sufficient sample size forgets that psudo random can fail to ever turn a certain result under certain environments.
I fail to be affected by the illusion of probability. Any item with a 95% drop rate can still fail to drop (and has) 10 or even 30 times in a row. If I want McGuffinX and it has a 5% drop rate the according to Illusion of probability I will get it 100% of the time on the 20th kill. So why then can it not be true? Why then can it not be coded that a 5% drop rate will always yield an item every 20th kill no matter what RNGesus says?
You can argue, because then it has a better then 5% drop rate. Fine, do the math, find out the drop rate needed to produce 5% with the assumption that after X kills the drop becomes 100%. I never bothered collecting shinny Pokemon. I never bothered going for the high quality battle pets in WoW. I tend to craft much of my own gear in DDO at lower levels and FFXIV now. Most my crafting classes are only slightly behind my main class. Even my FC is starting to ask me to craft for them now because I've become known for the sure thing, that and I do it happily for free.
I won't kill the boss of the raid every week for my epic that won't drop. I will kill him each week for the points that allow me to purchase the gear my luck disallows me to get normally. I won't sit alone in a zone farming X creature for hours on end for that vanity pet or quest objective with low drop rate. I will say F it and kill it when passing by every few days or when a friend say they are doing it. I have a life and I'm a gamer. If I could opt for A Never have a random drop but get a currency to buy my loot or B get random drops. I'll earn my currency even if the drop rates SHOULD be quicker method. Why, because Probability only works with a large enough sample size.
I alone can not kill enough to compete with 1-3 million other users getting the same drops. If 750 kills of a 3 day timer over 5 years to get 1 of a 3% drop rate is not enough of a sample size I ask you. What is for a lone person. At what point do you just give it to them before they throw up their hands and say, F it, I give up. I have never gone after another item that hard or invested so much. I never will again. I don't actively play that game anymore. I log in once a week to maintain the guild as is expected of the leader but the moment it dropped and I realized how long I went after this bauble of an obsolete item ... I mostly moved on, but I have friends there, and friends are worth coming back for if nothing but to talk to.
To this end, I ask, give me a path to whatever I make my MCGuffin, not behind a paywall for real $, not at the mercy of price gougers on a market board. Let me ... My Anti Villain get it herself through well a intentioned deadly virus or acts of villainy so kind that it would make Anthem herself want to award me a medal ... after slugging me in the face for last weeks virus.
If I could play this game my way, I would never directly engage in doing even a single point of damage to an NPC. I play CoH that way most of the time, I just traveled with those who liked face rolling. I spent most my time as an invisible healer. The Willow-o-Wisp Cleric to use an Old D&D character I played. I get my McGuffin by being useful to others or making it myself. Getting my hands dirty isn't a job for me, it's a job for Death Knights and Paladins. If they two of them fight while both working for me, how unfortunate, wasted resources.
I am not asking you to give me my loot because I sit in town RPing. I ask you to give me my loot because when I chose to do something, I put forth effort for that something and I want to know, for a fact, I will get it 100% chance if I keep at it, might take a week or a month, beyond 3 months of dedication and you've lost my interest.
I am also not asking you to give me gear out of scope. I don't ask for raid gear from PvPing or PvP gear from world bosses. I'm asking for a Pink bathing suit if I help subdue enough of the South Shore Death Blossoms who ALL wear the outfit. I swear If I can't take out 2,000 trash mobs and their boss and not once can I avoid destroying their outfits so throughly I can't wear it, when it amounts to 2 pieces of cloth that if destroyed would leave them nude. Then clearly that 25% drop rate needs fixing. Also Pink Bathing suit is now a request. Having to subdue through non violent means an NPC named Death Blossom who gifts you the outfit a request too. Neither of which do I expect to get, I will stop rambling now.
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.
It sounds to me, Cute Kitsune, that your problem is that you insist on acquiring the gear you want via random drops alone. That's never been the only way to get stuff and shouldn't be the exclusive method anyone uses, in my opinion. If you did a particular raid umpteen times and still never got the McGuffin, that's unfortunate, but totally possible within the realm of pseudo-randomized drops. What I believe SHOULD happen in a game like this is, when you do multiple raids or trials or TFS to try to get the thing you want, you will most often not get it, BUT you may eventually collect up enough other stuff that other people want that you can trade or sell that stuff to get/buy the McGuffin.
As long as the "not what you really wanted" rewards are perhaps something someone ELSE wants, and as long as the less desirable stuff still has SOME trade value, the market can help smooth out these sorts of problems, I feel.
If you insist on not using the market and you want EVERYTHING to drop randomly for you, I don't agree with that. If the gear drops worked that way, nobody would ever need to use the market and it would go largely unused, and that would be a failure of the game in my opinion.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Having more options on how to get the proper items a person needs is always a good thing. Merit Vendors, Auction House, Random Drops, Tickets from player made missions, Buying it directly from a Cash Shop. All of these things should make it so that there is SOME way for you to get the EXACT item you need or want. I hate the Random Number Generator as much as the next guy, but I agree that RNG should be Random. Yes you will get someone that rolls a natural 20 5 times in a row and gets all the Purple drops they ever wanted, and yes you'll get someone that consistently rolls a natural 1 and only gets the crappiest of the crappy drops. That's just life.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
It's worth noting that there is more than one model for an RNG. The typical one you see in computer games is that of dice: specifically, the RNG is treated as an X-sided die (or dX), where X is every possible value it can come up with. (Often thought of as a d100, particularly where %-chances are discussed.)
If it is truly random, streaks will occur, and there's no telling what each consecutive result will be.
Those who want streak-breakers would probably like a different model for their RNG. The "deck of cards" model. In this model, each possible result is, instead of a side of a die, a card in a deck. So if you had a table that said you had a 40% chance of Item A, a 30% chance of Item B, a 20% chance of Item C, a 9% chance of Item D, and a 1% chance of rare-item R, then there would be 40 "cards" in the deck labeled "A," 30 labeled "B," 20 labeled "C," 9 labeled "D," and 1 labeled "E."
The difference in the "deck of cards" model is that, as each result is drawn, it's removed from the deck for future checks.
This model guarantees that streaks are eventually broken, but has the problem of also guaranteeing EXACT results by the time all cards are gone through. It can also become problematic if there's any reason why multiple people would draw from the same deck; what happens when they split up so it's different people drawing?
Introducing a reshuffling mechanic which replaced the cards before the deck ran out would also re-introduce the possibility of unbroken streaks; it is possible that rare Item R would never be drawn if, say, the deck were always reshuffled when it got down to 50 or fewer cards. If R's card were always in the 50 that were left...
Perhaps this post is apropos of nothing, but I thought it an interesting point to bring up when discussing RNGs and streak-breaking, if nothing else.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Again, I like a combination of INF, merits, vendors you can buy stuff from, the market, and good old, old-fashioned pseudo-random drops.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Heh, that was always one of my dad's favourite sayings.
Spurn all ye kindle.
And building on Segev's foundation of nothing ... there's also the incremental modifier that advances until reset (which I have posted before in these forums).
Suppose you've got a d1000000 (that's 1 million) and you have to roll higher than 1 million in order to get the reward. But each mob you defeat gets added onto your dice rolls. So pets add +1, Minions add +2, Lieutenants add +4, Bosses add +6, Elite Bosses add +10, Archvillains/Heroes add +30 and Giant Monsters add +50. Just keep adding and adding and adding as you progressively defeat opponents and keep a running tally of the +modifier until you successfully roll the "over 1 million" result on a defeat and get your OMFGWTFBBQLOLCAT Rare Item Of [b]Ultimate Rarity[/b] ... at which point the +modifier tally resets back to zero.
Use different sizes of dX to "throttle" the rarity of the {insert reward here} and you're good to go. You can even use a psuedo-RNG to make the dice rolls with.
This system features a sort of built in streak breaker (ie. receiving a reward) while also offering a shifting balance of odds at succeeding based upon [i]perseverance[/i] by the Player. The resulting behavior would be one familiar to almost any Diablo II player from 14+ years ago ... Bitter. Bitter. [i]Sweet[/i]. ... that encourages Players to keep on playing. At the same time, the system is inherently designed to "remember" progress (in the form of the +modifier) so that you don't reset to zero by having to log out.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
"Sir Apropos of Nothing" was a fun book.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I can and will use the AH. Wind wool cloth in WoW, Essences in DDO, Leather in FFXXIV. These are common drop requiring mindless repetition and are sold in bulk to craft with. These are also item who have no rarity at all. Now try to by that BoE purple everyone wants with a drop rate so small it drops once every 2 months per server. How about an EERoS in DDO, often priced on the Shard Exchange for $300 US or higher. This is for the actual tradable things. How about those rare bind on acquire drops off of rare spawns that are hunted by the whole server?
I think you missed my when I said
This kind of refutes your whole post starter. I know I TLDR but I try to be complete. I don't want random drops at all if it isn't weighted in favor of rewarding effort in some way, even if that way is small. I will put forth the effort but I will get discouraged after a time if I believe it to be fruitless. Knowing that 1% drop is still 1% after 200 kills makes me feel no closer to it then kill number one. In fact it makes me feel further away cause I can see how much time was wasted in the pursuit of nothing.
If (big if) the AH/Marketboard/Exchange/Open Trade offer the item I actually want a reasonable rate. Then I will never grind for anything but the currency / goods / ect needed to trade for my McGuffin and I will spend my time that way knowing I can just help friends until I've scrooged up enough and trade.
The largest pitfall to ANY market is resellers. My personal view is no item should be allowed to be reposted for 30 days after it has been purchased of the market board. If you stack purchased and non purchase it warns you the whole stack will be on timer.
Resellers ruin markets in the interest of self gain and in the end harm themselves and everyone else.
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.
I used to believe this, too. It took me a year to figure out how to use the CoX auction house effectively. After they combined the Hero and Villain sides into a single market (which eventually included Praetoria), it took me another six months to figure out the dynamics of the new market situation.
On the other hand, I have never been one to go chasing after extremely rare items. Especially in CoX. I used IOs that I crafted myself for 90% of my character enhancement. If I needed a particular rare for a particular IO, I simply used a lower level IO or in rare cases, an SO. On more than one occasion I would happen to receive a rare drop (such as almost anything Mu), and sell it on the market to earn more than enough money to buy the common/uncommon salvage I needed.
But CoX was a unique situation. The market had some very interesting controls built into it. For example, on a couple of occasions I was able to buy a high value set piece IO for almost nothing, which I could then turn around and relist to earn enough profit to buy a complete uncommon set.
Don't get me wrong. I didn't spend hours and hours studying the market (which is probably why it took me so long to learn it!). As I grew more skilled and confident, however, I found it to be an interesting side game that gave CoX an extra bit of replayability.
Kind of like a really difficult puzzle locking the entrance to a dungeon with especially lucrative drops. ;-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Reselling was the best!
Co X did have effort-based rewards. Whenever you defeated anything you got influence, so there it was. HOW MUCH influence you got was a different question, as was the question of how much INF people wanted for their purples they had. But they were there. Now, how much INF people wanted for their purples was based on suypply/demand and it sounds like you're saying "we needed more supply" which you might have been right about to some extent, I don't know. I didn;t think it was all that bad really, and I certainly don't blame randomness for the scarcity of the hard-to-get stuff.
It sounds like you're saying "let's get rid of the random salvage and IO recipe drops completely because I don't like the randomness of them" well, that's just you. Some of us loved the feeling of getting a random purple drop every 6 months or so, despite the fact that we had no control over which one would drop or when or how often. It was like winning the lottery, but you didn't have to buy a ticket. I personally didn't try to grind for any one specific purple recipe drop that way, ever, because I knew how futile that would have been. I just took them as they came and went "woo-hoo!". I liked that. Why take that away just because it's not reliable or predictable? That's what winning the lottery should be like, the totally random, very infrequent, out-of-the-clear-blue-sky "YOU WON!" moment.
Have all the boring grindy predictable rewards you want, but add on the random drop just for me, okay?
Also, the rarity of the item, it's popularity among players, supply, demand, etc is what dictates how much people will charge for stuff. If purples were more abundant, i wouldn't have gotten so excited when one dropped or me, because they'd be cheaper to buy anyway. Some things need to be rare and hard to get because it makes the game MORE fun. If everyone could routinely acquire everything, then everything would be pretty easy to get. BORING!
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Another angle that probably has to be discussed when it comes to pseudo-random drops: repeatability of content.
The game has a finite amount of content for us to do. The pseudo-random reward at the end of a TF is a good way, in my opinion, of getting people to want to re-run that TF. Without that, you end up doing everything like one time and then moving on.
If the reward at the end were more regular or predictable, you'd do it exactly as often as you need to get the one thing you want out of it, then stop doing it forever. Again, it's all Skinner boxes and rats, but I personally don't have a problem with a little cheese now and then if it get's servers somewhat more populated and people willing to re-run some good content a lot more often than otherwise.
I think the TFs would tend to FEEL more like work and less like play if they had predictable drops at the end than they did with random drops. With random drops you're taking a chance, there's a thrill to that, a sense of risk. There is, as the casino people say, some "action" coming our way, as players. WIth predictable drops it very quickly starts to feel like a job. You never win anything, you just get "paid" for the "work" you do. I think very soon we'll all feel like not bothering to show up for work anymore, because its too repetitive and grindy and feels too much like a job.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Does anyone else remember when there was a bug in the incarnate trial random drop tables and common salvage wasn't dropping nearly enough? I couldn't help thinking about that as this thread unfolded. Sometimes you really do need the more common drops*.
The thing that was nice about CoX is the best rewards, VR recipes, were not limited to TF completion, raids, or taking out a giant monster, rather it was just a chance on any level 50 (or higher) enemy. I myself got more than one purple from street sweeping in PI. I mean, yes there are people who never got one dropped, a good friend of mine never did, but they dropped enough that they were not completely out of reach if you wanted them. And that isn't counting gaining them through alternate means, such as with alignment merits. I don't think it is a matter of weighting the drops, but having the drop list be decent to begin with, at least when it comes to a major reward. You may not get the best reward, but the most common reward should have enough value to be worth the effort. Maybe after multiple runs and you didn't win the big drop,, you can sell/trade for it based on the rewards you did gain.
*Actually, from a salvage standpoint, I like how the incarnate system eventually evolved with the upgrade, downgrade, sidegrade, and breakdown options. Converting salvage is how I eventually got to having T4 incarnate powers on my main (who never seamed to get V. rare salvage dropped). Through the effort of running incarnate content I eventually earned the reward I wanted without having to weigh the drop tables any. I realize this salvage was character bound, but it is still something to look at as an alternate method of gaining rewards.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
Thinking back to CoX, when I soloed, I usually soloed my Mastermind through tip missions to get hero merits to get rare recipes (because B.O.T.L.E.R. would sell them to you set to any level you wanted, not just "You're level 50, so you get the level 50 +Stealth Proc"). So I guess I like predictable rewards too. Also, the Merits for completing TFs was the only way to even it out and avoid the "Quickie Katie Hannon TF" problem.
But here again, this doesn't mean getting RID of the pseudo-random drops that happened every time you defeated a badguy, I'd still keep that. I'd just add in other ways of getting stuff you want on top ofit. Also, having enough of that stuff that you're not paying $100 for a single IO piece would be a goal, I feel. But then, things like that tend to have temporary spikes in demand based on new content being released, so SOME of that, for short spurts, is expected I guess.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
More Supply would solve one of my largest concerns but that would require having better drop rates or a streak breaker.
Whoa slow down there! I've never once even implied that. No, in fact I have been accused of just the opposite before. Drops are expected and desired. Them actually dropping at a reasonable rate is also expected and desired.
Is a healthy mix unacceptable?
You might get excited by seeing 1 Purple, ANY purple, once every 2 months but I only get excited if I see a purple that is of any use at all (to me or any of my friends) and typically my threshold is every 150 hours played time. (actual play not being afk in town over night)
Please remember a named item is not always a good item. [url=http://www.wowhead.com/item=14557/the-lion-horn-of-stormwind]The Lion Horn of Stormwind[/url] is a great example.
Another thing my McGuffin might not even be IOs or the equivalent. It might be cosmetics, Achievements (which some can require rare drops) Vanity Pets. Useable Souls, beards (sentient or not) Manhole Covers. In fact, I'd not do the last one because it endangers my future followers when I take over the world. The rest are free game. Wind-Up Anthem vanity pet with or without her soul in it would be adorable.
(Play time assumes maximum level, useful drop I or my friends already have still count as useful the 1st time or two after we have all we need of it. 150 hours is as much a rule as parlay is to pirates)
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.
Just looking at that playtime and I have realised how fast my Wildstar gear "grind" has been in comparison. I raid for 12 hours a week *maximum*, and since October last year (roughly) I am now almost fully "first" raid" kitted out in legendary items.
You have to remember that this is a "one or two shots at getting an item" a week chance.
CoX in comparison was far slower in my mind.
/side note: Wildstar also has a "alternative" means of acquiring *Some* of the raid drops. You still need to have defeated the boss, but you can then buy one or two items that are linked to him. These are NOT the legendary item drops, but the normal "rare" drops.
CoX had the *definite* method of eventually getting all the items, Wildstar was just *some* of the items.
Speaking purely in speculative mode, so don't read too much into this, but I wonder if it would be possible to have the "drop table" for a given foe change based on how it was defeated. Within a certain amount of time since it spawned, within a certain number of hits since it was last at full hp, with it having lasted for at least a certain number of hits since it was last at full hp, if it was affected by crowd control, how long it was affected by crowd control, if it got off a certain power of its own, how much damage was dealt to it of a certain energy type, if another kind of foe were defeated within a certain amount of time before or after it was defeated...
And for bosses, there could even be factors tied in from how the mission leading up to their defeat was performed. Time limits, subquest goals achieved, enemies defeated or specifically left undefeated...
Put things like that together such that it influences what is on the loot list and what the odds are for any given piece of loot. Give players a secondary game of beating things in [i]just the right way[/i] to get the kind of loot they want with higer probability.
Note that this could theoretically be used to make multiple options on how to beat these creatures: it doesn't have to be "do it this way for the unambiguously best loot." It can be "do it this way for the rare drop to have more chance of being Simons Seance, and do it this other way for it to have a better chance of it being a Positron Packet." So if you want one more than the other, and have figured out how to tweak the odds, part of your personal victory condition becomes beating it in a certain way.
This could lead to intraparty strife if it's impacting how others get their loot and there are conflicts over what's wanted, so perhaps it would need to be personal-deed-based to manipulate drop rates for each PC. Or maybe that's just one more thing that parties need to be in sync on: what KIND of Mad Mime's Malevolent Merry-Go-Round run are you doing as this raid?
Might increase replayability by making the missions feel different for different sub-goals.
Would definitely require leaving clues around for players to figure out how to manipulate the odds towards a given kind of loot, though. Otherwise, it's just a guessing game, and that's not as much fun. There may be players who like "guess, check, and statistics," but I suspect there are more who'd find it interesting to get in-game justifications for the way beating a certain creature changes what it is likely to drop. Both so they can discover it themselves, and so that, if they do look it up on, say, a wiki, they get a sense of verisimilitude and have an easier time remembering it. Beating the Origami Dragons with fire increases the odds of Mystic Ash dropping, while beating it with physical damage might increase chances of Razor Confetti, for example.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I FREAKING LOVE this idea. And I totally think it can/should involve group goals, teamwork, etc. Invdividual stuff is fine too, but team stuff should be in there, I feel.
Defeat Dr. Dread WITHOUT using the Kosmic Key on his unbreakable Dread Lock, get a greater chance of getting the extra-rare Dread's Head Lock IO set Proc/Unique, etc. This could be tied to "Master of "type badges etc too. You could award a badge for defeating Dr. Dread the hard way the first time a toon does it, and then every time after that you don't get another badge, but you still roll on the different swag table.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
And a badge for doing it the hard way!
I wouldn't be against different rewards based on how an enemy is defeated, but I don't know how often I would want it to come up. Certainly not on rank and file mobs, but the end boss of a mission or an arc, or perhaps certain "tricky" targets.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
Interesting idea there Segev. In an ideal place it would work well. I'm more inclined to beleive that it would lean more toward the intra-party strife so far as in-mission goals are concerned. Making it work for personal pc goals is much, much more difficult to set up. So much so that I don't think the time to tune it for individual pc goals would end up being worth it for the over-all health of the game and could still end up causing problems for pcs on teams if someone's personal goals can end up impacting another player's. We want ease of teaming avoiding sets ups for possible griefing or pseudo-pvp.
We do have plans for a pretty robust achievement system. I can see a possible way to take the basis of this idea of working torward particular achievements can earning a roll off a better drop table can work. It can still lead to some strife if people mess up, but I think that was something that was inevitable once we decided to include achievements based on play as it is. I'll be sure to being it up once we come back around to the achievement system.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
The Incarnate Trials in CoX awarded badges for stuff like this. Like for NOT using the molecular acids/grenades at the end of the Lambda trial, etc. When you got the badge, you also usually got a bonus Incarnate component drop with it. I could see doing that too.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Honestly guys, I wouldn't let the potential for griefing ruin this, I think it's a stellar idea. Griefers will try to grief, and you can't make the game totally failsafe from that. I think the rewards for showing some teamwork and group strategy like this are awesome. I used to love that stuff in Incarnate Trials in CoX and though it might have led to some yelling ans screaming, it was worth it all things considered.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I can see the potential problems, of course. What if, at the beginning of the mission, you were presented with the "Outcome/reward" choices? You click on the thing you are "going for" in this particular run and you get a running tally or "you failed to meet X condition" message during the mission. You can decide to play it out, or exit and run again. Or you click on a "Take it as it comes" freestyle button and let the chips fall.
I reckon the Group Leader makes the choice. Hopefully after taking a quick straw vote of the party. I could also expect to see in Public chat: "Group forming for Dr. Dreadful TF/Doom Manacles Reward" or similar, so that folks could no what they were signing up for.
Honestly, I wasn't worrying about griefers when I said it could lead to intra-party strife.
If Leonard the Leopard's raid has a boss who, if you sneak by his security system and ambush him unprepared, is more likely to drop a Maltese Rhinocerous, but if you instead plow through his security has had time to set up his traps and thus will instead have more of a chance to drop a Security SIM Card, then a party could have players who want each of those, and now there's not just "we're doing a Leonard the Leopard run" stipulation, but a "and we're doing it as a stealth run" stipulation to add in. Because the guy putting it together wants everybody on the team on board to increase odds of getting the kind of item HE wants.
Obviously griefers can make this worse, though I wasn't thinking about them so much as the inherent problems of people in all good faith wanting opposing things.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
That sort of thing happened often enough in CoH, though. It was not uncommon to see people advertising for a 'Speed Lambda' or a "Master STF". As long as the goals for the run are made clear beforehand, it shouldn't be any more problematic than it was in CoH.
I agree with Mendicant and I think the fun value added far outweighs the downside, which is itself nothing we're not already used to.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
It isn't too far off from what I previously posted about. I was bing very broad in my statements because there is a lot of ground to cover when we talk about individual actions and mission goals and such.
I'm hesitant to state that specific actions will directly result in specifc reward drops in the game world. That is akin to hunting the specific named spawn for a chance at specifc named loot. Which is something we wanted to avoid when we spoke about this in game play. Tying specific rewards to specific mission completions is probably a s close as we would get.rather like completing a specifc mission,arc, or TF can reward a specifc costume piece / set.
The example of sltealth this part of a mission or complete the mission stealth style giving a chance of the specific drop, if we were to implement something like it, would more than likely be something along the lines of; earn specific achievements yields a roll. on a particular loot table, or weighted roll on a loot table. The loot table gets better (or the weighted roll gets Certainly the momentum meter and the role it plays in reserves filling adds a new dynamic to play in comparison to the old gamebetter) as this type of achievement is earned over time - not necessarily to a specifc mission.
This is what I meant about a more in-depth ahvievement system - it is not just what necessary done in one mission that gets tracked, but over the course of play with the character.
And it is still possible for players to cause problems when going for speicifc ancievments. I acknowledged this previously as well saying that we knew it was an unavoidable consequence of providing achievements, but we are a still adding them.
And since we will have the achievements system, it is easier to hook into the loot system than to create a separate "specific actions to specific rewards" system that would yield more complications for mission designers.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I want the LFG System to act sorta like a Chat Lobby... that shows details about the Lobby.
In this case, how big the Team is, what TF (or other) is running, what other details in the description
(like Master Of.. and what entails to get it; no Deaths, no this, no that, etc...)
.. and if its OPEN to All (not just to SG members), anyone can highlight that Team from the list and click Join. ;)
Please be careful assigning loot to methods of victory.
Method A: Brute Force SIM Card goes from 2% drop rate to 8% or Stealth Rhino goes from 2% to 8%.
Method B: Brute Force gains 8 Brute Currency and 2 Subtle Currency. or Stealth gains 2 Brute Currency and 8 Subtle Currency.
SIM Card cost 400 Subtle Currency
Rhino cost 100 Subtle Currency
Doing both is still helpful. In 13 stealth runs I'd get my Rhino but 52 Brute Runs I could get it too.
Method C: Combine the two ideas.
Method D: Allow the player to chose, Loot Chance or Currency.
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.
We wouldn't need to weight a difference between brute force or stealth runs with the achievement system if we aren't marrying specific loot to specific actions. Instead you play the mission how you want to play it and get better loot results as you continue to play the game. Tying specific loot to specific actions or specific play styles adds layers of complexity to mission designers and also complicates certain aspects for loot drop rates already planned for the system.
That being said, I'm fully invested to providing a means for players to earn their way for specific loot as is. The system hasn't been vetted yet, but we have gone over it.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Thank you, that puts my mind at ease and settles easily my largest concern in any MMO. RNG vrs Me. I always lose that fight.
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.