Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

The RNG

    • 510 posts
    October 11, 2017 9:25 AM PDT

     

    RNG/Ticket system

    (note:  this is not so much directed at Pantheon but an issue I have noticed with almost all MMOs)

    The RNG system is pretty much a design tool used with every MMO out there.  For those that do not know what it is, here is a short break-down:  A loot table is a table of loot that drops from a specific mob or event.  The table consists of the loot and the percentage of the drop rate for a specific item.  For the purpose of this discussion, let’s make a mob to help with virtual illustration of the table.  Let’s say our target mob is Bob, the Banker Orc.  He is not a raid mob.  He is a typical sub-boss named mob you might find in a dungeon.  The loot he drops is not amazing.  It is normal gear you would find at his level etc.  However, let’s say Bob’s gear is visually appealing.  In fact, Bob is pretty fly for an orc guy.  He has 8 lootable items that all make him appear as he does.  He also has a secondary loot table that would include things like, Orc parts (think EQ2 L&L items), crafting components (think, quest items used to increase crafting skills etc.), and City items (think items dropped by members of this particular orc town for quests etc.).  Typically, when a group kills Bob, the loot table is used to generate a Random Number and the item is selected from the primary table, a number is generated for each of the 2 sub-loot tables.  The sub loot tables are pretty straight forward and fairly distribute their items at a rate high enough that all interested in those specific items get what they want within a few short cycles.  This means that those looking for those crafting components get what they want, those needing the parts and city items get what they want etc.  But each cycle drops a single Primary item.

     Now let’s say you want the full set of Bob’s clothes.  You gather your group and head on over to start camping Bob.  For a full set we know that it will take at LEAST 8 cycles of killing Bob to get a full set of what you desire.  That is assuming that no one else wants any of Bob’s classy clothes.  For each member that does want a set of Bob’s stuff, you need to add 8 more cycles.  So let’s say for this discussion a group has five members.  Everyone wants Bob’s stuff so we are now talking 40 cycles to get everyone what they want.  The issue here is that 40 cycles of a camp is going to really get stale.  Not to mention the fact that after 40 cycles, you will most likely have completely out-leveled all of Bob’s gear anyways.  Add in the fact that sticking around for this long is now going to start a small competition with anyone else that wants Bob’s stuff.  Now we can also make it even worse by adding in the fact that due to RNGs there will be a few times when it generates multiple copies of some items and never generate a single other item.  Say we get 14 sets of gloves and never see Bob’s glasses.  This pushes the need for the camp even higher.

     I would suggest that there can be an alternative to this system.  Let’s say each time Bob dies every member of the group gets a ticket item.  This is a meta phrase.  You can call it what you want.  Say Bob’s Dry Cleaning stub.  After only 8 cycles each member of the group heads on over to the dry cleaners and turns in the stubs to collect an entire set.  This would limit the number of times groups need to compete over a specific camp.  A group could camp just long enough to make the gear useful as opposed to spending so much time there that the gear is no longer useful.

     An Alternative is to allow a trade-in vendor.  Say you manage to get 3 sets of gloves but no glasses.  Head on over to Bob’s Tailor and find that he is willing to trade you 2 pairs of gloves for 1 pair of glasses.  This would also give you the chance of selling the gloves to another player and hopefully getting what you need from yet another player.

     The point here is that there really should be something more than just the RNG.  Please do not misunderstand me – there should most definitely be a RNG – but can’t we come up with something that would help prevent week-long camps?  I held Lower Guk for 3 straight days once back in early EQ.  It was brutal.  And the whole time I was there, it meant that other people could NOT be there.  I would love to find a decent meaningful way to avoid things like that.


    This post was edited by Nephretiti at October 11, 2017 9:27 AM PDT
    • 793 posts
    October 11, 2017 9:32 AM PDT

     

    Part of what makes certain items rare is that they they don't come up as often or the RNG just seems to bypass certain items more often from the tables.

    So unless I am misunderstanding your premise and example here, all you have to do is kill Bob 8 times to get 8 tickets to turn in for the 8 items, then nothing is all that rare, and is rather easy to obtain.  This concept would go against one of the main concepts most people want in Pantheon.

     

    Part of the thrill of the kill is wondering what loot dropped.


    This post was edited by Fulton at October 11, 2017 9:34 AM PDT
    • 510 posts
    October 11, 2017 9:45 AM PDT

    That was just one alternative - there are many ways this can be done while still making one (or more) of the items much harder to get.  In one case, make an item NOT ticketable at all - rely purely on the RNG.  In another case, increase the ticvket count for item by whatever number we desire.  But making it so much harder to get still places the problem of excessivly liong camps to get.

    As a design feature, we should really avoid creating a camp that will have everyone going and trying to get the one mob to get the one item everyone weants - this creates an insane bottleneck and can lead to extremely disruptive behavior.  Tell the truth, have you ever been intentionally trained by a monk so that your group whiped and then his group ran up and got the kill while your group recovered?

    • 2752 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:03 AM PDT

    I'm of the opinion that having no loot guarantees (tickets/tokens) is a good thing. As said above it removes the rarity of many items and the excitement/thrill of both the initial opening of the loot window and of finally getting what you are after. I spent weeks trying to get my first FBSS in EQ and when I finally won the roll on one I was over the moon, but if I could have just killed the named a handful of times then turned something in for the item it wouldn't have felt special at all. It would have become much more like just a task to check off "Okay, now for my belt slot I just need to go kill this mob 3 times." 

     

    There would still be a bottleneck for the camps, possibly an even larger one since people could much more easily farm a great many items instead of having those who don't want to spend the time on a mob for a 10% drop chance on a 2 hour spawn that would rather just buy the item from someone else. 

     

    I feel it's a good thing to leave players drooling for many drops as most will find a way to obtain it one way or another. In EQ it wasn't the worst thing not being able to get into camp X because you could go to any number of other camps to try and win drops to sell in order to outright purchase what you are after. If VR follows through with their promise of having many alternatives/items very similar across the world then I think we should be fine. 

    • 65 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:09 AM PDT

    Nephretiti said:

     Now let’s say you want the full set of Bob’s clothes.   Say we get 14 sets of gloves and never see Bob’s glasses.  This pushes the need for the camp even higher.

     

    Trading other players will acomplish your goal of getting the entire set with the communities help.  


    This post was edited by Demostorm at October 11, 2017 10:09 AM PDT
    • 1860 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:29 AM PDT

    After running out of content, over and over, in multiple games I am opposed to what you are suggesting.  I want those long camps.  I want time sinks and grinds.  We need to extend the life of content, not shorten it.  I need incentive to play for an extended period of time (years).  

    It is clear that VR understands this because of the implimentation of systems like progeny.  It will extend the life of content.

     


    This post was edited by philo at October 11, 2017 10:32 AM PDT
    • 159 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:38 AM PDT

    Tickets/tokens are kind of a hacky way to go about this. I would much prefer to see sane drop rates, as well as the ability to trade drops. In fact I would very much like to see bound items kept to an absolute minimum, if present at all.

    On top of that, one RNG system isn't the same as another. Typically MMOs seem to use the base drop rate for every encounter, so if the first time your chance to drop a given item was 1%, the next time it will be the same 1%. What this means is that even if you do an encounter over 100x, it's possible you won't get the item because it's a 1% chance each and every time. It would be nice to see some fiddling with this model, such as slightly increasing the drop chance for each successive encounter (resetting this increase after a drop) and/or instituting a hard cap for the number of encounters after which you are guaranteed to get the item.

    • 399 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:42 AM PDT

    I too am of the opinion that the feeling of achievement after a long camp would be lost if the item could just be had after turning in some tickets.  

    On the other hand, it could be possible to have multiple camps drop items with different names and/or looks but with the same stats on different continents perhaps.  The only disadvantage of the latter is that it potentially would stop people from going to other continents to get said item.

     

     

    • 2130 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:42 AM PDT

    Not the first time this thread has appeared. I am in favor of a ticket system, but only if tickets are low enough in quantity that you can only guarantee yourself one item at best while the content is relevant.

    This avoids the issue of reducing item rarity that people seem to dislike about the system. Being at the mercy of a dice roll isn't fun.

    As an addendum, you're naive if you think you can successfully have a loot model where everything is tradeable. This game will be an RMT paradise if that's the case.


    This post was edited by Liav at October 11, 2017 10:44 AM PDT
    • 1303 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:44 AM PDT

    I agree with others here. When you impliment a system that gaurantees an outcome you remove the mystery, the drive, the luck involved. In your system the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Everyone knows with absolute certainty that they will get the reward they seek, and must only participate in an encounter X times for it to come to pass. 

    While it's frustrating as hell to kill Bob 150 times and see that damn ring everyone just vendors every time, it's exponentially more exhilarating on the 151st time when that robe you've always dreamed of getting drops. That value of emotion can't be undersold. 

    • 633 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:44 AM PDT

    This is what EQ did with the Lost Dungeons of Norath, and many games have done since.  Every time you completed a dungeon you got X number of tokens.  You could then go to a merchant and buy gear specific to that dungeon with the tokens you got.  The problem was, these games rely on having rare items.  The only way to create rarity in items this way is to make the "rare" items cost so many tokens, that as a player you'd have to do the dungeon so many times just to get a single item.

    Plus, if the item is sellable, you have to make it even more rare than if it was just normally dropped.  Because if it wasn't, then people would do it just to buy the rare item every time and sell it.  This would actually reduce the rarity of the item (compared to the common items).  In order to counter this, the developers would have to increase the cost of the rare items just to make it less likely this would happen.  So now it actually becomes harder to get said items, because now you have to camp it more than you would likely have had to camp it before.

    Also, there is no chance that you could go in to camp the rare you wanted, and just happen to get it in a couple of tries.  You are now forced to get enough tickets/tokens in order to purchase the rare item you want, which is probably way more times than you would have had to do it if it were just on the loot table in the first place.

    In some games this works, but in the style of game they're going for in Pantheon, I don't believe this system would work well at all.  There may be a few exceptions here and there for it (maybe for getting keyed for dungeons or regions), but in general I don't think it would be beneficial to the game.

    • 3237 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:50 AM PDT

    I just don't want to relive the experience I had in EQ2 where there was a random item that dropped from trash mobs that was literally a barrier to entry for the third tier of the zone.  The trash didn't respawn and the zone had a 1 week lockout.  Shimmering Ring of the Djinn or whatever it was called in T6.  It made the wearer immune to the djinn death touch.  Without it, it was impossible to get past Jura'Nata (which meant 4 bosses you were missing out on every week)  --  My guild went over 2.5 months before we finally got the ring to drop.  The progression of our ENTIRE GUILD was thwarted because of a dumb RNG mechanic.  As soon as we got the ring we beat the entire zone, all bosses, on the first pull.  We were more than geared enough to handle the content but we got screwed by RNG.  I personally don't mind RNG but there should never be an item that is so powerful that it can single handedly prevent a guild from progressing added to an RNG table.  That's how this specific item worked in EQ2 and stuff like that should not exist in an MMO.

    I know Pantheon won't have instances like EQ2 did, but if an item like that ring gets added to a mob with some sort of lockout mechanic, that would suck really bad.


    This post was edited by oneADseven at October 11, 2017 10:54 AM PDT
    • 633 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:54 AM PDT

    oneADseven said:

    I just don't want to relive the experience I had in EQ2 where there was a random item that dropped from trash mobs that was literally a barrier to entry for the third tier of the zone.  The trash didn't respawn and the zone had a 1 week lockout.  Shimmering Ring of the Djinn or whatever it was called in T6.  It made the wearer immune to the djinn death touch.  Without it, it was impossible to get past Jura'Nata (which meant 4 bosses you were missing out on every week)  --  My guild went over 2.5 months before we finally got the ring to drop.  The progression of our ENTIRE GUILD was thwarted because of a dumb RNG mechanic.  As soon as we got the ring we beat the entire zone, all bosses, on the first pull.  We were more than geared enough to handle the content but we got screwed by RNG.  I personally don't mind RNG but there should never be an item that is so powerful that it can single handedly prevent a guild from progressing added to an RNG table.  That's how this specific item worked in EQ2 and stuff like that should not exist in an MMO.

    I can totally agree with this, which is why I put that disclaimer in my post regarding dungeon keys.  While the guild I was in didn't have a problem as a whole with Vex Thall, it took me almost a month to get the key finished because two of the drops I needed just never came.

    • 3237 posts
    October 11, 2017 10:59 AM PDT

    Thanks Kelenin.  I think we were just posting at the same time.  The crazy thing about the shimmering ring in EQ2 is that it wasn't an actual key item.  It was a piece of equippable gear but it served the same purpose.  Without it, it was 100% impossible to progress.  Our guild felt shafted week after week.  I remember watching the WW progression chat channels and seeing guilds talk about beating the zone.  Some guilds got 2 rings in the first week but it was literally 10 weeks before we got one.  It was an absolutely horrible design choice to handicap a guild from content based on an RNG mechanic that was also tied into a lockout.  If it wasn't for the lockout it would have been fine.  We would have cleared the zone for a week or two straight to get the drop if that was needed.  Unfortunately that's not how it worked.  Each instance had X amount of mobs ... once they were cleared, you had to wait until next week to try and get the drop again.  It was so bad.

    • 769 posts
    October 11, 2017 11:04 AM PDT

    Yea, this is a good idea in theory, but it also just seems like another "Daily" quest, thing. Kill dude X number of times for X number of days, receive X number of tokens, turn token in to receive Y. 

    In these recent MMO's, where most of the desirable loot is No-Trade, it would make more sense. But if Pantheon is following more of an EQ model, then that creates the opportunity, for those who don't want to kill BoB 40 times, to simply collect the coin and buy it from another player instead. That would, I think, offset the frustration a bit. 


    This post was edited by Tralyan at October 11, 2017 11:24 AM PDT
    • 2130 posts
    October 11, 2017 11:22 AM PDT

    Tralyan said:

    Yea, this is a good idea in theory, but it also just seems like another "Daily" quest, thing. Kill dude X number of times for X number of days, receive X number of tokens, turn token in to receive Y. 

    In these recent MMO's, where most of the desirable loot is No-Trade, it would make more since. But if Pantheon is following more of an EQ model, then that creates the opportunity, for those who don't want to kill BoB 40 times, to simply collect the coin and buy it from another player instead. That would, I think, offset the frustration a bit. 

    If you can do the same raid boss daily, the game is broken to begin with.

    • 1584 posts
    October 11, 2017 11:27 AM PDT

    Liav said:

    Not the first time this thread has appeared. I am in favor of a ticket system, but only if tickets are low enough in quantity that you can only guarantee yourself one item at best while the content is relevant.

    This avoids the issue of reducing item rarity that people seem to dislike about the system. Being at the mercy of a dice roll isn't fun.

    As an addendum, you're naive if you think you can successfully have a loot model where everything is tradeable. This game will be an RMT paradise if that's the case.

    This doesn't prevent them from becoming rare, just harder to get to, i could simply make an alt grind up these quest get the item i want from them, delete him and start over again, constantly bring in a decent flow of income along the way especially if they sell well, so i have to disagree with the ticket system, granted there is times where i've killed the same target and not get what i was looking for (I'm looking at you ghoul arch magus for my shininh metallic robe err) but i know i would felt that since of achievement once i got it, i'm down to try something other than RNG, but this ticket system makes it seem all way to easy even if you can only select one item, becuase more than likely you're going to pick the one that beenfits you most, that just the way the cookie crumbles.  like maybe an item you can purchase with in-game money to increase your drop chance, or something to this nature, but the whole ticket idea makes me feel like if i want something im basically guaranteed it within 3 hours even if im the last one to get it.

    • 399 posts
    October 11, 2017 11:29 AM PDT

    Liav said:

    If you can do the same raid boss daily, the game is broken to begin with.

    I  guess that depends on what is a raid boss.  Is it a mob that requires a raid to kill or a mob that only spawns once a specific time period.  If the latter, then it's not daily but if it's the former, King Crush at some point could've been considered a "Raid Boss"


    This post was edited by Durp at October 11, 2017 11:30 AM PDT
    • 1785 posts
    October 11, 2017 12:40 PM PDT

    As I read the original post I couldn't help but think that an easy solution would be to insure that other named orcs were snappy dressers just like Bob.

    One of the (few) complaints I had about old EQ was that the focus of so many players in dungeons was "camp for loot" rather than "crawl for fun". This doesn't mean I am opposed to rare drops and having named mobs drop unique stuff but I think if we overvalue this sort of thing it can encourage players to try and monopolize content, and to adopt a playstyle that is maybe less about the adventure and more about the farm. I think we should avoid that.

    I think the key here is not overusing any one loot distribution method. In a dungeon there should be named mobs and bosses with random drops. But in addition, that boss should drop a "token" (like his head) that you can turn in somewhere and select a reward of similar quality to what he drops. The trick is that token is unique, you can only have one at a time. So you can't farm up a big stack of them.  want more than one of the rewards? That is multiple trips into the dungeon. Finally, there should be a quest line that sends you into the dungeon, has you do multiple things while you are in there, *and* kill the boss at the end, that rewards a really nice item, comparable to the loot. You can, however, only do that quest once.

    Doing it this way encourages people to do the content, still allows for the thrill of getting a rare drop, but mitigates the randomness of the RNG a bit and hopefully keeps that boss or named mob from being permacamped and becoming a bottleneck. Assuming that it is implemented well anyway - the devil will be in the details.

    My 2gp

    • 2130 posts
    October 11, 2017 12:53 PM PDT

    Riahuf22 said:

    This doesn't prevent them from becoming rare, just harder to get to, i could simply make an alt grind up these quest get the item i want from them, delete him and start over again, constantly bring in a decent flow of income along the way especially if they sell well, so i have to disagree with the ticket system, granted there is times where i've killed the same target and not get what i was looking for (I'm looking at you ghoul arch magus for my shininh metallic robe err) but i know i would felt that since of achievement once i got it, i'm down to try something other than RNG, but this ticket system makes it seem all way to easy even if you can only select one item, becuase more than likely you're going to pick the one that beenfits you most, that just the way the cookie crumbles.  like maybe an item you can purchase with in-game money to increase your drop chance, or something to this nature, but the whole ticket idea makes me feel like if i want something im basically guaranteed it within 3 hours even if im the last one to get it.

    You're missing the context of this system, or at least I am.

    You can't use an alt to grind tickets to buy a no-trade item. I would assume the tickets would be bound to your character as well. Not only that, but I'm not talking about items you can acquire solo just by investing time. I'm talking about raiding a mob for 9 months and not seeing the item you want drop.

    • 2752 posts
    October 11, 2017 1:27 PM PDT

    Nephele said:

    One of the (few) complaints I had about old EQ was that the focus of so many players in dungeons was "camp for loot" rather than "crawl for fun". This doesn't mean I am opposed to rare drops and having named mobs drop unique stuff but I think if we overvalue this sort of thing it can encourage players to try and monopolize content, and to adopt a playstyle that is maybe less about the adventure and more about the farm. I think we should avoid that.

    I think the key here is not overusing any one loot distribution method. In a dungeon there should be named mobs and bosses with random drops. But in addition, that boss should drop a "token" (like his head) that you can turn in somewhere and select a reward of similar quality to what he drops. The trick is that token is unique, you can only have one at a time. So you can't farm up a big stack of them.  want more than one of the rewards? That is multiple trips into the dungeon. Finally, there should be a quest line that sends you into the dungeon, has you do multiple things while you are in there, *and* kill the boss at the end, that rewards a really nice item, comparable to the loot. You can, however, only do that quest once.

    Doing it this way encourages people to do the content, still allows for the thrill of getting a rare drop, but mitigates the randomness of the RNG a bit and hopefully keeps that boss or named mob from being permacamped and becoming a bottleneck. Assuming that it is implemented well anyway - the devil will be in the details.

    My 2gp

     

    It's a nice idea on paper but making things about the adventure doesn't pan out; it will always be about the farm because after a couple goes of the "adventure" it quickly loses appeal and is just another slog. 

     

    I think a better way to handle possible monopolization of camps/items, should it arise and need warrant, would be making those sought after rare items "lore" to the character looting and having that include a character lockout from looting/buying said item again for x amount of time (weeks to months). This simulates (in a more roleplaying way) the idea that there really is only one of this item in the world (to your character anyway) and the item you found you sold off to Harry over in Brokertown. Some weeks/months later its feasible that it has made its way somewhere else for you to find, or the original owner tracked it down and took it back. 

     

    People aren't likely to be changing gear nearly frequently enough to warrant such ease of access to loot as a token system. 


    This post was edited by Iksar at October 11, 2017 1:30 PM PDT
    • 21 posts
    October 11, 2017 2:21 PM PDT

    Im totally against this. I want rare drops that you just can't seem to get. I'm tired of the easy mode loot from all other mmo. Ffxiv just farm the same zone over and over get currency and buy all the same gear everyone else is grinding for. This is basically in a round about way the same thing you are saying. Your basically getting currency to buy the gear you want. If you want full sets of armor that aren't drops it should be quested for. The last thing I want to see is a loot token system. Quest or drops IMO

    • 510 posts
    October 11, 2017 2:27 PM PDT

    One of the reasons I posted this was to get the community chatting about possible alternatives.  Please don't think that the one or two examples are my specific points.  I am more interested in the chatter here regarding this than either of those two ideas.

    I think MY idea (and by MY, I mean not mine at all) for a solution is as follows:

    The Stein of Maggok quest from EQ1.  Early on this was an amazing item to have.  It didn't look that great, but the stats were amazing.  It was a quested item that pretty much required you cross the entire game world to compile.  BUT the best thing is that it was a repeatable quest - and the item was lore.  So, you could never hold more than one.  If you completed it you could use it - or you could sell it to someone else.  There are many ways to play an MMO and I honestly believe that there is no ONE way to play.  If you love questing (I do), you should be rewarded for taking the time to complete a lengthy quest with a worthy item.  At the same time, if you HATE questing and prefer to grind (and I know there are those out there that do) you should be able to pick up the same item for grinding mobs.  My hope would be that a real effort be made to quantify time/effort so that getting the item through either method would be about the same.  For instance, say it takes 4 hours to quest the item.  In this case we should determine the mob cycle and adjust the loot table so that it would take about 4 hours to grind the item.  At the same time I would like to see estimated monetary rewards associated with the quests to match grinding for the same effort.  For instance, if you grind for 4 hours you are going to kill X number of mobs to get your stein.  During that time you would accumulate an amount of money from each of the mobs you kill.  If we do not add that amount to the quest rewards, then most folks would probably just go ahead and grind the itme.  The same goes for the estimated amount of XP.  Some folks would hate this idea.  I would suggest that instead of just risk vs reward an additional paradigm would be investigated:  effort/time.

     

    But again - my goal of the post is to get the community talking about ways to go about avoiding bottlenecks via adjusting the loot tables, using tickets/tokens, etc.

    • 2130 posts
    October 11, 2017 2:50 PM PDT

    I like how every thread comes down to two extremes. It's either "easy mode, World of Warcraft clone, go away kids" or "eternal servitude to the grind simulator".

    There is a middle ground to these types of things. Killing a mob X times and accruing enough "tickets" to purchase one item from a loot table is pretty reasonable to me. You're not going to flood the game with rare items by making sure that some people don't get screwed after literal months of grinding.


    This post was edited by Liav at October 11, 2017 2:51 PM PDT
    • 64 posts
    October 11, 2017 3:15 PM PDT

    Folks seem to be confused into thinking killing the same mob 100 times for a rare item is any different than killing 100 random mobs and buying the item with some sort of token.

    The problem with camping items like the FBSS in EQ was that only 1 mob dropped it, so most of the wait to get one was simply waiting in line for a chance to kill the mob. That is not fun, challenging, or hard core. That is a poor game mechanic.

    To prevent lines to camp mobs, no loot should be mob-specific. If the FBSS drops off a Goblin Berserker, there should be several places for players to find a Goblin Berserker. Getting that item should not require waiting in line for a group spot, then sitting in the same corner of a dungeon for hours killing the same place holder mob 100 times, and then trying to win a random roll for the item. It's 2017...game devs can do better than that without making it trivial or gimmicky.