42 replies to this topic

[Kid]

Desild, on 03 December 2012 - 10:34 PM, said:

So glad I'm a communist, and am able see past the nihilistic capitalism and twisted socialism that threatens civilization and our way of life, today and everyday in games and beyond. All economies are meant to be ruined, and the secret to them, is how to twist them so they can last longer before they do.

Too bad I want to dream of a transcended economy and put society in a state of equivalent change and opportunity. It's is a sad cycle...

So long as mankind exists on this planet, no, not going to happen. There are always jerks with power that want to ruin everything, just for shit and giggles.

Paux8uwin, on 04 December 2012 - 04:05 AM, said:

RNG itself isn't the problem, but the amount of it used in the game and how reliant certain things are on it is a bit ridiculous. Good example is the dye system right now, there are so many dyes in the game right now, with so many of them being redundant, that getting an Abyss Dye from an unid dye is much more rare than it should be. Abyss dye should really be closer to 3-5g comparing it to black dye from GW1 but right now it's up to like 18g last time I checked,

Or you can try your luck with unidentified gray dye (rare version). Kind of narrow the colour spectrum a bit. Even if you end up with black, celestial or white, you can sell it for some money.

[Trei]

Alleji, on 03 December 2012 - 08:57 PM, said:

...Legendary precursors, on the other hand, are NOT okay. It's such a massive thing that when it drops for you, it will impact your entire game. It's not farmable, it's not obtainable by any other means (1/10000 chance in mystic forge is equally random), it cannot be gained by skill. Few people just get lucky. Making them drop at a high rate from a one-time lag-ridden event that many people couldn't participate in and others simply chose not to because of how boring and badly executed everything leading up to it was just piles an extra layer of bullshit on top.

Not to say that high, (but still random) chance = good and low chance = bad. Not quite. For example, I think all the various lodestones are ok to have because they can be farmed and eventually the rate at which they can be obtained will average out. For people not actively farming them, they're just a nice bonus.

+ Having an alternative guaranteed path to obtain something that's RNG-dependent fixes the problem in 9 out of 10 cases.

It shouldn't even be an alternative IMHO.

If it had been up to me, I would make short quests or encounters of extreme difficulty, with severe unique profession-based limitations, that a player must solo through to be rewarded with a specific range of precursors.

What comes to mind is something in the direction of the old-school circa.2005 demon encounters for the hunter class-quest weapon Rhok-Delar in WoW (aka "you must solo that demon as a hunter, without your pet, with a melee weapon"), except it would be much shorter, much more difficult and instanced.

These are the kind of encounters I would be totally fine with throwing in all kinds of resist requirements, incidentally.

Then that guy I see shooting flowers all over?
Ah I might chuckle... but I would also know and have to respect the guy, because he managed to overcome a foe of legendary difficulty.

Edited by Trei, 04 December 2012 - 04:35 AM.

[Reason on Cooldown]

Surprising no one has innovated a unique looting system yet.  How about this?  Right now we have a magic find stat....why not expand that into something more specific.  Allow character to build 'tracking' gear (not as a separate gear set per se, but as part of their regular build).  And you can build your tracking based on what kind of loot you are looking for.  These tracking enhancements can be used to affect what types of items you find (helmets, swords, etc...), what kinds of stats they have, WHERE to find the best places for such items to drop, and INCREASING the odds that it will drop from likely targets (recovery).  Perhaps even add layers where you have to use tracking gear to find items and upgrades that improve your tracking ability.  That way, the longer you play, the longer you build your tracking set, the more efficient and more effective it becomes, and the higher level stuff it can find.  Perhaps even have mini-quests--especially in earlier levels--that help you research and build your tracking gear to your specifications.

Now, instead of endlessly researching loot tables, and farming bosses or farming dungeons ad nauseum, building your ultimate gear set becomes an entire game-long quest in and of itself.  And it could lead you all over the map, return you to places you've been once you can track and recover better (coupled with level scaling, is a perfect way to keep all content relevant and active with players from all levels).

Perhaps then I can avoid getting Yakkington's legplates for a third time. lol  Or I can uncover the location of Dawn, instead of just being stuck with the Hunter, or simply farming X gold so I can buy it rather than earn it (granted this could be in danger of taking the wind out of the sails of the Trading Post).  Now building gear becomes a QUEST, rather than a luck drop or gold farm (depending on your level of patience).

You know, this ideas has me all excited................................now I just have to wait for ANet to hire me if I ever have a prayer of seeing it come to life. lol

Have a day!

[Featherman]

RNG is the means for the Skinner box design as it causes rewards to occur at random frequencies. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be abused with poor design choices.

Fractals is an example of one big skinner box on even levels after 10. It's popular, effective and fun because ANet did the design right because the RNG is reasonable with dailies and reward chests, with the most desirable rewards of the same tier being incomparables (i.e. they're not necessarily better than each other so they're all somewhat worth collecting). This RNG aspect adds to the overall longevity of the dungeon, and that can also be considered a good thing.

An example of poor RNG design would be the previous methods of farming via Orr DE. The worthwhile rewards were too infrequent and unreasonable, so players were conditioned to never expect them. And not to mention the entire thing was a loathsomely boring ordeal.

Mr_Original, on 04 December 2012 - 04:16 AM, said:

Mystic forge recipes where you can combine 4 sets of 100 different dungeon tokens and you get a random exotic armor piece or weapon or 4 sets of 60 different tokens to get a random rare armor piece or weapon. This gives people an incentive to do different dungeons. The resultants would be soulbound on acquire. Or they could make magic find actually worth it...

I actually like this idea. They need to redesign some dungeons though, because no amount of incentives will make certain ones less unenjoyable.

Edited by Featherman, 04 December 2012 - 04:47 AM.

[Linfang]

RNG is a mechanic introduced to replace grinding in certain aspects of the game. The skewed odds put the player on a slow burn verses chewing slowly on content to get the same result. The problem is you cannot always be proactive on earning certain items like tokens to buy a sword. RNG makes you roll loaded dice at a chance to get something. The huge problem with GW2 is that only certain items can only be obtained through RNG like pre cursors and ascended rings. I have done 10 fractal dailies and have 0 rings. I rather have both an option to get a random chance of a ring drop, or earn enough fractals and buy the ring directly from a vendor. To got a step further I think the rings should be crafted also.

Edited by Linfang, 04 December 2012 - 11:57 AM.

[Bryant Again]

The alternative to RNG is, well, getting rid of it! In its place could be interesting and challenging quest lines, bosses, and instances. Have players show their progression of skill, not time spent or dice rolled.

[Calebrus]

TGIFrisbie, on 03 December 2012 - 08:24 PM, said:

I stopped playing 2 years ago, it was 100% like I mentioned.  Things changed when it went F2P.

Not to get off track, but Prof Chaos is correct.  It was never like you said it was.
As a long time player of that game, I can confirm that what you said was factually incorrect.  It was similar in concept to what you stated, but that was where the similarities ended.
For example, there was no vendor like you said there were.  What existed was a cumulative completions counter, at the end of every twenty your reward list was specialized, comprising of a handful of items that dropped in the raid.  The more items existed in the raid, the less likely you were to get the one you wanted on the list.
One example of how this is much worse would be ToD (Tower of Despair raid).  There were specific upgradable rings that dropped, but everyone wanted the same few.  There were dozens, and everyone wanted the same ones.  If the ring that you wanted dropped, odds were that there were eight or so others that also wanted it, including the person that it dropped for, which means you had almost no chance of getting it.  I personally knew people that ran the raid literally hundreds of times and still didn't have the ring they wanted (not from chests, not from 20th lists, not from rolls) while also having gained zero actual headway as to gaining that ring.

There are/were benefits to that system, but there were also major glaring flaws and it was far from perfect.

[Noob On Steroid]

RNG is fun, until a certain point. Everyone likes being lucky, nobody complains about not getting lucky, but people will complain about getting unlucky all the time.

Putting some "bias" into RNG based on your number of "failed" attempts would be nice. That way, the chance you'll get lucky will increase every time you're not. It sort of "stops" giant unlucky streaks (nobody likes those).

[Iuris]

I'll put it this way: when I first started playing GW, the fiirst thing I liked was that there was no to-hit roll - you hit, unless you were actively blocked or evaded, or blinded, or dodged, in those early days

Luck doesn't really like me. In all of my 8000 hours of GW1, I never got a really valuable random drop. I was really hopeful when they made that claim that they'd lean away from RNG in GW2... too bad that was another of those things they... meant only in principle. For the low levels. For stuff that doesn't really matter.

[PracticalShutIn]

I went to the mists to test sigils today and was hoping to get some good comparisons down.

I found a lot of attempts that gave me wildy different numbers of criticals in my test.

In about 100 consecutive hits, I would get 45 criticals sometimes, other times 33.  I thought RNG would average out to be pretty even but my numbers were all over the place in each of these 100 hit trials.  Very hard to guess the average.  Especially when I would get 20 non crits followed by 8 in a row.

I guess I had it in my head that random meant "random but spaced pretty evenly except in freak scenarios".

[ExplosivePinata]

I don't get whats wrong with straight out sales?  Maybe Anet's cash shop queen should try this out?  Chest rubbish = No Interest.  I bought every holiday skin in GW1 but in GW2 they are town clothes (pointless) so not wasting my money.

Edited by ExplosivePinata, 05 December 2012 - 03:00 AM.

[Ualtar]

Noob On Steroid, on 04 December 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

RNG is fun, until a certain point. Everyone likes being lucky, nobody complains about not getting lucky, but people will complain about getting unlucky all the time.

Putting some "bias" into RNG based on your number of "failed" attempts would be nice. That way, the chance you'll get lucky will increase every time you're not. It sort of "stops" giant unlucky streaks (nobody likes those).

Not a bad idea.  It is not fun to do something 30 times and be "unlucky", then you see some guy come in and get what you wanted on his first try.  I have found the pure RNG system can hold up groups and guilds.  1 unlucky person not having the correct armor or weapon can make an entire group have to keep running the same stuff over and over.  Not fun at all.

[Obscure One]

One problem with RNG is the relative reward "floor" as opposed to the reward "ceiling" making the rewards disproportional to any given number of players who all put in the same time and effort as each other. This creates a system of rewarding arbitrary luck rather than rewarding a player for skill, therefore a player who has mastered the meta and plays at peak may never get good drops due to poor luck, whilst a friend of his who plays casually and is at best mediocre may get vastly better drops than him. As extreme of a circumstance as that may be ( since we all win the loot lottery from time to time =P ) the notion that it COULD happen forms the basis of RNG hate; player A gets an exotic drop used in making a legendary worth 100+ gold whilst player B gets a "Black Lion Chest"...

RNG simply varies to significantly, and I personally would replace it with a blanket reward system, I.E. in Skyrim when I kill a wolf I expect to AT LEAST get a wolf pelt 95% of the time...then about 30% of the time find out that the poor mut ate someone's coins and I probably did the right thing in putting the suffering little guy down... The point is I'm not personally encouraged to try to get some item that I can only get based off of some random number generator by doing the same content OVER and OVER because that's boring, mostly, but it also doesn't encourage me to get any better at the game...

"I'd rather be lucky than good."

-Vernon "Lefty" Gomez