Had to do a google search since I’ve never heard the term, but I found this for a definition of Skinner box: “A Skinner Box is a often small chamber that is used to conduct operant conditioning research with animals. Within the chamber, there is usually a lever (for rats) or a key (for pigeons) that an individual animal can operate to obtain a food or water within the chamber as a reinforcer”. Assuming that, within this context, skinner box is referring to something that encourage or rewards repetitive behavior, aren’t all games skinner boxes? I’d say sure, some are better at hiding it though.
All aRPGs are skinner boxes, they are fundamentally just complex gambling games but at the end of the day the end result of that slot machine/card game/boss drop - you basically can only slightly influence or cant at all
PoE even has the perfect analogy - ‘This boss costs you 1 exalt to try…but you have a 2% chance of winning 50ex…want to play?’ ok…ill do 5…no drop, Ill do 8 more … no drop
Ok im 13ex down, I made 40c back. 5 more and thats it. Oh I found the Amulet on run #16, so now ive made around 20ex back. What should I do? I know ill buy more boss fragments surely ill get another in 20 more tries. No you dont back to having no currency until I ‘work’ it back in maps for a few days until I can gamble again - this is probably someones life at a casino every week but you get to experience it in PoE from the comfort of your own PC, while also having the OPTION of spending endless cash on MTX to look better while doing it
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I also did some research and it is less clear if you Google “skinner box games”. The definitions are very different and go from “contain random choice” to “conditioning for financial spending”.
The term is also often associated with shady mobile game practices or MMOs. So depending on the underlying understanding of skinner box games, I can see why Mike does not want to be put in the same “box” as those games.
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That was precisely my point and why Mike’s denial that LE is a skinner box. I mean, I don’t for one second think that they’ve done anything maliciously (they aren’t EA or Activision after all), but its a bit difficult to get away from the basics of the genre.
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Hot take: Society is a skinner box… sending people to work every day instead of letting them play last epoch like they want to…
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and, as usual, he demonstrates his detachment from the experience of “average” players. that kind of crafting takes resources that i haven’t accumulated IN TOTAL in many years of playing.
I only bring this up to provide a note of approval that crafting in LE is much more accessible and really needs to stay that way. I know that i’m preaching to the choir, but it’s good to keep that goal plainly in sight.
as for the OPs point, i actually like the FP as a mechanism, but i also agree that we need an “affix sink” as was mentioned by @TehGrief
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A lot has gone on since I checked the thread. Discussion on the skinner box seems to be taking things off track… even if there is operant conditioning going on, often times the reward mechanisms used in games only become a problem when they pose a problem for players.
Like costing them IRL money (a la lootboxes), or conditioning them to endure tasks that inhibit them (reinforcing a long grind which takes time away from their IRL commitments).
All ARPGS I’ve played have an element of RNG drops. Few of them have struck me as truly problematic… maybe PoE is a contender.
Back on the point that FP in LE seems to stand as a roadblock to reach that goal of your desired item, I feel I’ve already said in the thread my general view on having less restrictive systems. While I understand their is motive to not ‘give everything up for free’ to a player and reward genuine achievements and playtime, I think it probably drives more players away to not give them that feeling of freedom. It would be better to create content with its own unique rewards than to inhibit crafting potential on item drops. It gives players a feeling of freedom and creative control on their builds which can be a huge selling point.
Of course, this comes with all my early caveats regarding playtime, and how far I got into the campaign. But I think @JustSomeGuy does have interesting things to say if you look past the language that people seem to be upset with. Generally I agree with their sentiments here—I think they’re in alignment with all I’ve just said (if I understand them correctly).
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Are we talking about god tier items or any usable end-game item?
Because the problem with POE is that almost all items that are worth using are crafted from whites, and not only the ultra-top-tier ones.
i was referring to god-tier as that was the language used in the original post.
Although i didn’t go attempt to find the original quote by Chris Wilson, i think it’s fair to say that PoE has an extremely significant problem in that they nerf stuff because of what the 10-hours-a-day players are doing, in turn significantly impacting the average player. Generally they just seem to not be that worried about beginners or “average” players.
designing a well balanced crafting system is hard.
back to the OPs original point, i have a lot of sympathy for this point of view:
i have a bazillion affixes, like everyone else, and it seems like a design problem that we all accumulate a bazillion affixes and have nothing to do with them. i really liked the gold sink dungeon idea. not thrilled with the execution, but there are many other forum threads on that subject.
typically the way you would handle that is that some criteria of success would be probability based, i.e. you could potentially burn through crafting material to get the desired outcome. this is essentially what PoE does.
this immediately creates a system where, if RNG is not kind, you are screwed in terms of being able to do something without the game being a ridiculous time sink. it also, to a certain extent, encourages trading. if you need 2000 alts in PoE, you trade for them, you don’t farm them. you then, however, have to farm something to trade. and generally that means more time spent in the game. or less time playing and more time using it as a trading simulator.
to a certain extent that’s ok, UNLESS, it starts blocking off portions of the game from lots of people. the argument has always been, in PoE, that if you want god tier stuff, if you want to do the annoying fucking content hidden behind RNG, you’ll just have to get gud and play a lot.
that’s a valid “design decision”, but that’s also why i’m playing LE instead of PoE (well, technically, i’m playing PoE, but much, MUCH less).
So, again. as a system i think FP is ok. i disagree with the OPs assertion that it shouldn’t be constrained. it should require some amount of time/farming investment to make ridiculous OP gear. it’s just not reasonable that it should be “easy” in any sense of the word. FP creates that constraint, but i’m sympathetic to the argument that it’s a somewhat clumsy way to do it. i find it to be “abrupt”, as does the @RJCA (I think).
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To some extent, I always felt that POE is kept into a somewhat tolerable state by the existence of bots, because someone will have to farm these 2000 alts.
I know that it is arguable weather or not poe is even tolerable in the first place, but, in the interest of going not going too much off topic, lets go back to the main topic at hand.
I wholly agree that there needs to be some sort of shard sink into the game, a while ago I even made a post on it: Add a Shard Sink (Maybe as a dungeon)
Personally, my main problem with the FP system is that all failures are a complete brick, you can never recover from a almost successful craft, you have to start from a new freshly dropped exalted item every time.
The problem for me is that a lot of the failures are not really bad items, they just fall short of being an upgrade for my current character. It is a bit frustrating when getting a decent item still means that you are left with absolutely nothing of utility in your hands.
Writing this, I also realize that this could be really really bad for any future of trading.
The current system leads us to create almost perfect items at an industrial scale, if trading were to be allowed globally, this would mean that almost perfect items are going to be cheap as dirt, which would completely invalidate any early game progression.
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This is the exact point I have been making. Cheap, easy to obtain, perfect leveling items trivialize the experience and can be made for any leveling area desired based on the selected bases. At least one thing EHG got right is to limit the total number of tiers and item levels to equip it.
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Just a comment on the Skinner Box thing. Most skinner box experiments are performed on animals using a task that the animals would not do, nor want to do, otherwise. People, on the other hand, play games for fun. There is a reason to play the game anyway.
Grinding inside of the game could be argued to be a skinner box type of system, but there are a lot of people that quit the games once they start to feel like a job and are no longer fun.
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The problem with all games with RNG loot is not the ceiling or the floor, is the ceiling AND the floor, combined.
When people say that in PoE you can bring an item from white to god tier with only crafting, they don’t mention the amount of resources AND knowledge you need to actually do that, and how that translates in time spent into obtaining said resources. Taking into account the due differences, the same could be said with Last Epoch: your resources are exalted items and, to a much lesser extent, the correct types of shards for whatever your needs are.
When people complain about the shard system in LE, it’s correct to bring the potential of deterministic crafting into the conversation, but that’s not the main issue players are feeling. Of course that could become a problem, but the other problem that is also true, is that shards and crafting in general don’t feel that good because you need to farm RNG for exalted items and, since shards are all of the same quality and you can’t speed up the process, rely on RNG to get whatever mods you want.
Now, Path of Exile doesn’t gate your bases, so the raw items are abundant and the bottleneck are the resources, but the part that Path of Exile does better IMHO is providing alternatives.
If the problem that the player is assigned is bringing an item from state A (worthless) to state B (good item for their build), then POE gives the player different venues, and the player can choose, to an extent, how he want to solve that problem, while in LE you just do the equivalent of spamming chaos orbs until you get what you need (again, taking the due differences into account).
Don’t dismiss crafting grievances with people wishing for deterministic crafting.
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I would wager to guess a large portion of the community would be against deterministic crafting. You can determine which shards/stats to more than 50% of the items. That is a good balance. Because the RNG gods are not looking upon us favorably the best place to come is the forum and air those grievances. Do those pleas land on deaf ears? No, EHG does have a great group of developers that listen to these issues and make changes around the edges until it has the time/resources to do a larger lift about the issue. The iterations that I have seen the crafting system go through since 0.5.4 is staggering.
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In case it wasn’t clear, I’ll add I would also be against deterministic crafting.
But I also think that the current system is a bit bare. Legendaries are a fun addition, but they also rely on your build being able to make use of that particular unique to work.
Exalted items are more versatile, but then again, there isn’t a specific venue to target exalted items.
Again, in case it wasn’t clear, I’m not stating that crafting is in a bad spot. However, you shouldn’t consider only the axis of deterministc/randomness. If we look at how complex the system is, and so how “pushed” the items can get, I think the system could improve.
Actually, I think the current system is in a good spot if we consider Tier 24 items to be the high-chase items (3 Tier 5, 1 exalted Tier 7, 1 locked Tier 2 Suffix). What’s the bottleneck of this kind of crafting? Usually finding an exalt with a good base.
If we had more rare things to chase, like higher tier of shards, seals or glyphs, then we could possibly have also a higher ceiling on what could be achieved by crafting.
This is where I say the nodes on the monolith are underwhelming to a certain extent more so than the crafting system. I do enjoy that there is not a “magic finder” system here, you do have to grind, but there should become a certain point where the reward/goal is reached. I think that is what you are meaning. I am not 100% sure.
T24 items are considered by me as the highest end followed by 4LP Legendaries with the best possible combinations.
But this is where my frustration with LE lay… your goal/reward (after a certain easily obtained point) can never be realistically reached. Once you have you couple exalted items, and maybe a LP1/2 Leg or two, there’s really nothing more you can hope to realistically acquire. LE has purposely cock-blocked the endgame, GG/“mirror-tier” gear, from ever being obtained. Either through ridiculous rarity, or hard-coded limitations.
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What is the necessity of theoretical perfect gear? Nothing in the game even comes close to needing that. Asking for the perfect gear to be more easily attainable only alters how the game needs balanced. It ends up just being a fancy number you can look at on the screen but gets you no further.
I know, it is hard for those that are perfectionists in everything to be satisfied with a mundane T23 item, and the rest are T24. It is like that scratch you can not reach in the middle of your back and only artificial means can alleviate the irritation, but it still bothers you. I get that frustration but have no empathy for it.
The monolith nodes could be more interesting, perhaps each monolith could offer nodes with different purposes. That would certainly add to the end game longevity, since you’d have more incentive to push for the best setup for your farming.