Apologies if this has already been discussed to death, but search apparently needs more then "RNG" and I guess we use the word "Random" far too much to have it be useful...
If anyone cares to direct me to discussion on this topic I'd love to see if it has been touched on by devs
While most of the discussions here consist mainly of pros and cons of various game mechanics and concepts from a player and overall game health point of view, this one is likely already set in stone so I'd really just like to know if any information can be shared
RNG defines everything we do in MMOs, and from my experience, many of the more broken MMOs out there rely on straight RNG to protect their economy from inflation
Straight RNG is known to be very streaky, as computers rely on algorithms to simulate randomness, where various versions of progressive RNG tend to remove both good and bad streaks which sometimes produce the opposite of the intended effects of progressive RNG
**In case a reader doesn't know**
Let's say an item has a 5% drop rate...
Straight RNG: X attempts at 5% chance each with no consideration for number of attempts made previously
Progressive Example:
Attempts 1-5: 5%
Attempts 6-10: 6%
Attempts 11-15: 7%
...etc (Note this is really dumbed down just to explain the basics)
****************************
So, have VR indicated whether they're doing anything special with RNG? Not that there are many hot topics in MMO development, but this subject has generated a fair amount of discussion in a lot of games
They have said nothing as to how drop rates will work. I doubt they will give any details on this anyway. Telling us how it works would just potentially open the door to exploitation.
RPGs have always been nothing but one giant ass RNG. Just accept the fact that you have to grind for stuff and you can't always get what you want. :p
@qalyar Your alternative incentivizations are exactly what I was hoping to hear about... Systems they may be thinking about to provide rewards in a more intelligent way than algorithms
Generally speaking, I'm not a super fan of RNG loot tables at all... though hard to build an MMO around, if a goblin attacks me with a stick, when I kill him I should get his stick
If they have a plan for a realistic but economical drop methodology that has the sort of attention to detail they've demonstrated toward other facets of the game, I'd love to hear about it
Tokens are, as you said, one way to get around the problem, but boss equipment converting to currency that you can trade in for boss equipment back in town is pretty immersion breaking
Preechr said:Generally speaking, I'm not a super fan of RNG loot tables at all... though hard to build an MMO around, if a goblin attacks me with a stick, when I kill him I should get his stick
If they have a plan for a realistic but economical drop methodology that has the sort of attention to detail they've demonstrated toward other facets of the game, I'd love to hear about it
While they've not expressly addressed the behind the curtains aspects of their RNG paradigm (to my knowledge), VR have alluded to wanting to, in many cases, attempt to make drops more realistic (this was discussed in at least one of the streams, though I'm working and don't currently have the resources to find which exactly - BAZGRIM HALP!!!). For example, you're unlikely to get a sword upgrade from a mountain goat, but you may very well find some crafting components. Where this idea and pure RNG intersect, I can't say.
Broken sticks? Broken Armor?
Maybe they could be broken down or just vendor trash nobody would fill their inventory with, but then let RNG give me useable armor or a useable weapon occasionally
I mean, you just beat the guy to death... I doubt his gear is much good anymore
Preechr said:Broken sticks? Broken Armor?
Maybe they could be broken down or just vendor trash nobody would fill their inventory with, but then let RNG give me useable armor or a useable weapon occasionally
I mean, you just beat the guy to death... I doubt his gear is much good anymore
I think another thing to consider is that if they loot tables of these kinds of mobs are just variations of sticks, broken sticks and armor scraps, at some point people just won't hunt these mobs because the loot table is so unappealing that it could trivialize whole swaths of content. I think that there still has to be some RNG, even on fey creatures to some degree, which allows for the chance of relatively valuable/sought after items to drop (however rare that turns out to be) even if those items are simply crafting materials, reagents or the like. There has to be incentive to hunt, and loot (along with xp) tend to be the metrics by which we quantify the relative worth of a given encounter. Though in truth, I'm not sure this is necessarily a function of RNG and rather general loot tables /shrug. I suppose it's hard to separate the two.
I like pure RNG loot tables. Anything else feels like "everyone gets a trophy just for showing up". I'm also not a fan of token systems. To me, token systems feel very 'grindy'.
Pure RNG is streaky almost by definition, but it's amplified in MMOs because the sheer number of RNG events in games means that programmers typically have to limit the number of RNG calls. They accept that we're not seeding crypto systems, just trying to make events seem non-deterministic. Any decent modern programming language on a modern OS can generate excellent pseudorandom numbers, but there's overhead in those calls.
You can get by with fewer random calls by recycling your result and using modulus and some simple math to determine various outcomes, until the next random call. The same random call may be fed into the calculation for the resist on my next spell, the likelihood that the medding caster gets a successful combine for his research and whether the tank gets a proc off his weapon. Taken to an extreme, if I'm crafting and doing multiple quick combines, it's possible in a poorly designed system that two combines have identical outcomes because they were based on the same RNG call.
So with a good RNG system where the streakiness is the purely random nature of subsequent "rolls of the dice", I'm all for letting the bones roll and taking my loot or going home empty-handed. If I return tomorrow, maybe I'll have better luck. Such is the nature of gaming.
I don't think alternate currencies are intrinsically bad. I think they could be used to great effect in a game like this, especially if they are tied into the death penalty at max level. This is assuming that de-leveling is still off the table. I proposed an idea for an alternate currency that would be tied into the death mechanic and base value of all mobs awhile back here: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5753/spiritual-conversion
RNG is RNG, I have no doubt there will be loot tables for bosses and stuff will randomly drop.
I'm not a big fan of tokens... I would rather see decent amounts of crafting mats drop, especially from bosses so at least you will always have some amount of reward from a dungeon run and can be working towards specific gear that is player crafted.
This has been much discussed although since I am not Bazgrim I won't try to come up with links. Do not want Bazgrim coming after me with the Great Bat of do not take my role!
Having Fred the King of the Giants drop items that characters can use strikes me as more immersion breaking than most things. "Fred falls to the ground with a final groan and the halfling happily grabs his hauberk which magically shrinks to 1/10 of its former size and reworks itself to fit a female." Of course Fred may have a treasure chest like Smaug the Golden's stash with thousands of magical items suited for all races, sizes and genders but this is still a stretch. In fact pretty darn unlikely.
On the other hand, taking Fred's head back to a large city may find many people willing to pay large amounts for the trophy, or make armor, weapons or jewelry suited to the character to trade for the head.
This is what a token system approximates - personally I would skip the tokens and let players use the head to barter with but that is more complicated given the number of boss trophies that would be needed.
There is no reason everyone in the group shouldn't get something but there is only one head. Others might "roll" on loot from Fred's lair or Fred's left ((cough)) let us not get too graphic.
oneADseven said:I don't think alternate currencies are intrinsically bad. I think they could be used to great effect in a game like this, especially if they are tied into the death penalty at max level. This is assuming that de-leveling is still off the table. I proposed an idea for an alternate currency that would be tied into the death mechanic and base value of all mobs awhile back here: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5753/spiritual-conversion
Anyone remember the City Faction/currency system from Vanguard?
IMO it should be straight random. Otherwise they need some logic/algorithm and the database that tracks potentially dozens to thousands of mobs and their association with players and drop rates. That seems way excessive. If it takes you 100 kills to get something that drops at 1.5%, that sucks. But then you'll be somewhere else and get that 1/50 drop on the first try. In the end, the way loot enters the world should not deviate. If drop rates are too low, they should be increased, but not with some complex dynamic based on how many times in a row a certain mob has or hasn't dropped an item.
It's not as difficult or resource intensive as you seem to think to implement a different kind of RNG system, but the point was to ask what they had in mind, not to find out which way we may wish them to go with it
Most other major aspects of the game foundation are covered in their tenets, though this is not, and how this gets handled can affect the game a lot
VR has probably put a lot of thought into how to avoid pitfalls discovered by previous games experience with various RNG/loot/drop systems, and I'd simply like to hear what they are thinking might be the best plan
This isn't really a "Let's all take a side!" thread, though if people want to talk about failed attempts at RNG schemes in other games, that might be helpful
qalyar said:WoW's Legion legendaries are the best (worst?) example. Vanishingly rare from any individual activity, so your only hope to get them is to perform potential triggers in bulk. At the same time, they are game-changing power items, so players who fall behind in acquisition (or get the wrong ones, a separate but compounding problem) are increasingly disadvantaged. The goal of BLP here is to set a "floor" to the legendary/time metric, especially early in the acquisition cycle. It was a good addition to a bad system. A better solution might be alternative incentivizations. For example, consider WoW's now-long-discontinued Mark of Justice system. Here, this provides a floor to raid loot acquisition, by providing token currency even when items were not awarded. Given time, at least you get something... A mature implementation of that might not award the token currency if you received actual loot, but permit the actual loot to be cashed in for the "lost" currency (if you got stuck with duplicates or otherwise unwanted gear). This isn't a BLP in the same sense of weighting the die, but does serve to prevent extremely poor benefit/time, at least in principle.
Y'know, stuff like that
Preechr said:It's not as difficult or resource intensive as you seem to think to implement a different kind of RNG system, but the point was to ask what they had in mind, not to find out which way we may wish them to go with it
lol, what did you expect? We don't know, it's pre-alpha. Are we not allowed to respond with our thoughts unless we're a dev who knows the answer?
Alternate currencies would ideally be used as a factor to compensate for RNG within the risk vs reward matrix. Nobody has to get hung up on the idea of how they have been implemented in other games and assume those issues will migrate to Pantheon. Remember, VR is evolving the genre. I think we should be looking at multiple examples of what did and did not work in other games and try to formulate a plan that harnesses the pros while minimizing the cons of those systems as much as possible. An extreme example of game-breaking RNG is the Shimmering Ring of the Djinn from EQ2. It was a random drop from trash mobs, in an instance, that had a lockout. The item was extremely powerful and 100% required to progress beyond the second wing of the zone. It was so powerful that without it, no guild in the game would be unable to progress past certain bosses while intermediate guilds could progress through them with relative ease as soon as they acquired the item.
This is an example of absolutely horrible RNG. My guild didn't get a ring drop until after 15+ runs through the instance whereas there were other guilds that got multiple drops in their first few. Considering that there were multiple bosses that dropped really nice loot that was gated behind the requirement of having this ring, it was an insane gap in potential progression between guilds based entirely around RNG. Trust me when I say this, I don't have an issue with RNG as a whole ... but depending on how it's implemented, there can be catastrophic consequences for guild morale due to progression being thwarted by a mechanic that players have zero influence on. At the end of the day, I think the item in general was a bad item for the game but gating it behind RNG magnified the painpoint on an epic scale.
If you want to implement an item like that, first off, I think the power of the item needs to be toned down a bit. It should assist players in their efforts but not be so powerful that it ultimately ends up trivializing encounters. Various Djinn bosses ended up using a death touch ability and the ring granted immunity to that ability. I think it would have made more sense if the first few bosses (that didn't use the Death Touch ability) all dropped some sort of token that when X amount are acquired, players could purchase that item and continue progressing through the zone. I'm not a fan of that idea in general but it would have been much better than the RNG madness that was actually observed. I understand the argument of "Not everybody should get everything" but that's not exactly what took place. It was more of a matter of "The lucky guilds will add 10+ items to their weekly loot acquisition whereas the unlucky guilds felt helplessly impaired by RNG." Those 10 items per week ultimately played a role in a guild being able to progress through other high-end zone so there was a pretty massive penalty applied to any guild who wasn't fortunate to acquire one.
Either way, when it comes to alternate currencies, I think it's worth considering an angle where you stand to lose a portion of them upon death. Rather than gating powerful progression items (that are absolutely required to progress through content) I think it would make more sense if there was some sort of universal vendor that sells utility oriented consumables. The spirit conversion idea I shared was designed to accomplish exactly that. The items available from the merchant would be desirable, but not to the point where they single handedly influence the progression potential for players. Wolfhead wrote an amazing article on loss aversion that I think most players can relate to and I think giving players an an opportunity to earn an alternate currency, that they also stand to lose, would be a great way to introduce a base level of risk vs reward that players must always consider when it comes to situations that could be a matter of life or death.
As a rule of thumb, I think it's important to note that alternate currencies should be used sparingly. If there is a potential reason that warrants their inclusion, then maybe it's worth considering their implementation. In the example I provided, it was based 100% around the death penalty at max level. As we know, players will not be able to delevel in Pantheon. XP loss is described as being a major component of the overall death penalty. Is death supposed to sting less at max level? I don't think it should. How exactly do we ensure that it continues to sting? This is an example where I feel the implementation of an alternate currency is worthy of consideration, specifically because it solves an issue. Again, loss aversion is extremely important. I think the signifiance of loss aversion should extend beyond the leveling phase and into the post max level experience. If it doesn't, the game only reinforces the ideology that players would want to rush to max level because as soon as they get there, the "risk" for their decisions would be diminished compared to what they experienced for the first 49 levels.
Preechr said:It's not as difficult or resource intensive as you seem to think to implement a different kind of RNG system, but the point was to ask what they had in mind, not to find out which way we may wish them to go with it
Most other major aspects of the game foundation are covered in their tenets, though this is not, and how this gets handled can affect the game a lot
VR has probably put a lot of thought into how to avoid pitfalls discovered by previous games experience with various RNG/loot/drop systems, and I'd simply like to hear what they are thinking might be the best plan
This isn't really a "Let's all take a side!" thread, though if people want to talk about failed attempts at RNG schemes in other games, that might be helpful
qalyar said:WoW's Legion legendaries are the best (worst?) example. Vanishingly rare from any individual activity, so your only hope to get them is to perform potential triggers in bulk. At the same time, they are game-changing power items, so players who fall behind in acquisition (or get the wrong ones, a separate but compounding problem) are increasingly disadvantaged. The goal of BLP here is to set a "floor" to the legendary/time metric, especially early in the acquisition cycle. It was a good addition to a bad system. A better solution might be alternative incentivizations. For example, consider WoW's now-long-discontinued Mark of Justice system. Here, this provides a floor to raid loot acquisition, by providing token currency even when items were not awarded. Given time, at least you get something... A mature implementation of that might not award the token currency if you received actual loot, but permit the actual loot to be cashed in for the "lost" currency (if you got stuck with duplicates or otherwise unwanted gear). This isn't a BLP in the same sense of weighting the die, but does serve to prevent extremely poor benefit/time, at least in principle.Y'know, stuff like that
I agree that there will never be a 'one size fits all' type system when it comes to RNG. Everyone will have different opinions. Such as my opinion that wow's legendary system is by far the worst thing in the history of gaming and the entire reason I quit playing. 1% chance to get an item that makes your class viable but wait let's add 30 other trash ones but wait lets let them get the trash ones multiple times oh and let's make it so the avg time to get 1 period is around 2 weeks of steady gameplay ... yea stupidest thing ever. After getting the same trash ring 3 times in a row I uninstalled.
But anyway! RNG systems are very much needed. The question is when is too much. Personally, I like the small chances to get certain items off the general trash in an area/zone. Nothing super good but it's something you can just farm while farming other things. For rares, they almost always drop something which is good. Even if the chance of it's superior loot is only 10% on a non progressive RNG table I am completely fine with that because it's farmable.
The RNG nightmare also isn't near as bad if there aren't items in game that each class "must" have to be viable. The second you tie in any must have items and very low drop rates/high spawn time mobs things are gonna get ugly fast.
Krixus said:Preechr said:It's not as difficult or resource intensive as you seem to think to implement a different kind of RNG system, but the point was to ask what they had in mind, not to find out which way we may wish them to go with it
lol, what did you expect? We don't know, it's pre-alpha. Are we not allowed to respond with our thoughts unless we're a dev who knows the answer?
Lol no that's not what I meant... Sorry if I came off that way
I see the downsides of straight RNG, but I'm also not a huge fan of tokens. Knowing when I'll get the reward I want makes the journey less fun for me, but that's definitely a preference thing. Maybe if you didn't like the loot you got for a raid mob you could pack it wholesale into a treasure chest (e.g. "Rok'Nolgar's Treasure") and then trade the chest in for an item (more than one chest required for the rarer items). So if you got 3 items from the boss, 1 good and 2 bad, you would have to stick them all into the chest for trading or take them all as they are. This would allow guilds who just need certain items to take a hit on overall item efficiency in order to trade up for the few items they still want from that boss.
Ainadak said:I see the downsides of straight RNG, but I'm also not a huge fan of tokens. Knowing when I'll get the reward I want makes the journey less fun for me, but that's definitely a preference thing. Maybe if you didn't like the loot you got for a raid mob you could pack it wholesale into a treasure chest (e.g. "Rok'Nolgar's Treasure") and then trade the chest in for an item (more than one chest required for the rarer items). So if you got 3 items from the boss, 1 good and 2 bad, you would have to stick them all into the chest for trading or take them all as they are. This would allow guilds who just need certain items to take a hit on overall item efficiency in order to trade up for the few items they still want from that boss.
Not just you. I wouldn't likely have played EQ half as long if gearing wasn't still an adventure at max level, sometimes you could get a piece of gear you were after in a day and sometimes it took a week+ but man when you finally won the drop it was amazing. I think a better option than pity timers/tokens is doing exactly what VR has mentioned in regards to gear, so you have more chance at uptime while hunting to fill a certain item slot:
"We also want to make sure there will be plenty of great items and choices for adventuring all over the world – for example, we want to avoid there being just a single sought-after item for a specific class at a specific level. Similarly powerful and valued items will be available elsewhere in the world."
dorotea said:This has been much discussed although since I am not Bazgrim I won't try to come up with links. Do not want Bazgrim coming after me with the Great Bat of do not take my role!
Lol I am not the only one that posts links. No one should feel like they shouldn't link to other threads :P It saves me time haha.
While I am generally more of the school of "If it's not broke, don't fix it", I am also of the the school of "What if". There is a cost-benefit ration when determining systems like this. Generally the cost is time and since we all know that Time = Money, etc. I fully support the sharing of ideas here in the forums. It makes for a more vibrant community and may even result in a better product. But please do not take it personal. One way or the other. We are sharing ideas and if your idea is not a "good idea" at the moment, there is nothing to say it won't be at a later time.
The gamer in me wants to scream "We can do better here by doing...", but the business side of me screams "we know this works already and by following what we know we will be successful - new systems may have unfounded results". But right now my inner me screams "Let's Play ball!"