Need a forgiveness mechanic for lp2+ slam attempts after x many attempts. Multiple slam fails feel awful

Feedback and Suggestions
21

Your method really does nothing for that, though.
Right now people have a 1LP. They get a 2LP and an exalt and fail the 2nd affix slam, despite having 1/3 odds. They feel bad because they still have to use the old item and no improvement happened.

With your method, you have a 1LP (with 1/4 to get the affix you want). Then you get a 2LP and an exalt and you now fail the slam because you have 1/4 odds of getting that second affix. They feel bad because they still have to use the old item and no improvement happened.

So your system doesn’t actually address this issue.

Why would that matter, though? With the current system, if you have a 1LP and go to a 2LP, you’ll have a guaranteed upgrade. Even if you fail the 2nd affix you want, it’s still better.

So this only matters for when you want to guarantee that your 2LP will have the 2nd affix. And your system doesn’t address this. Whether the item is the same as your or it’s worse makes no difference. You failed the slam and you didn’t get the one you wanted.

So the OP issue will still happen, except your system has much more RNG than the current one.

Why only those 2? Why isn’t the previous T6 imprinted as well? With your method, you’d end up with 8-12 or however many unless you managed to match the current exalted affixes with the previous one.
So each new imprint would actually make your odds worse.

Because not even 0.5% of the playerbase usually gets to even 500c? So they don’t even try Uby? Or even Aby?

The only way to guarantee this is a guaranteed outcome. Either by “Every X slams you get to choose another guaranteed affix” or some other similar system. Which will eventually lead to a guaranteed outcome.
Otherwise, if there is even a chance that it will fail, there will be players where it will fail lots of times and they will get frustrated.

So the only way to prevent that is to guarantee an outcome, which means removing the RNG at some point.

Would you be in favour of an opposite counter so that if you hit your slams 4-5 times in a row you’ll be guaranteed to fail the next one as well?

People only remember the bad results and disregard when they have multiple successes in a row.
Also, the game would have to know what you consider to be a success or a failure. If you can already guarantee the exalted affix, how is the game supposed to know that you want that specific T5 and not the other 2 T5s you have on the exalted?

Yes, failing 8 times in a row sucks and you feel bad about it. But you can also have many successes in a row and you don’t remember those or disregard them the minute the game doesn’t give you what you want.

Personally, I think having a 1/3 chance to get what you want is fine enough. Especially for what is potentially the BiS in the game.
Otherwise we’re also going to start getting pity counters for unique drops (my Kestrel failed to drop/RoA 10 times in a row, I should get a guaranteed one), for exalted drops (my T7 +to warpath failed to drop 50 times in a row, I should get a guaranteed one), etc for anything with any RNG.

22

It did, because while the direct upgrade failed for the expected Affixes you got an extra Affix, that’s progress.

And since the Affix you wanted is now imprinted it’ll be on it with the second one.

So you go from 1 Affix to 1 Affix + Bonus to 2 Affixes worst-case.

That’s still progress, better perceived by people. And yes, some will obviously still not realize that, but those are the people which also solely want ‘no abrasion at all’ and that leads to basically self-playing games in the long-term.

You gotta accept some abrasion, but how that is set up is really really important, especially when it comes to the perception of progression. You always wanna include something which gets kinda better, even if only helping for the next try.
The current system does nothing in that regard, so it’s a plus.

Why do you think people keep playing those awful korean style upgrade systems where you need to re-do it 100 times until the pity-system increases the percentile chance for upgrading so far that you’ll finally hit it? Because each time the number is higher, a failed craft means just a higher chance, hence next time surely!
Could just math out the overall median tries needed and set the percentile directly without any changes happened. But they intentionally do because it keeps people more engaged.

Our brains are plainly spoken kinda weird in how they perceive things.

Ok, and when you make a second 2 LP item? :slight_smile: Is that still upholding?

I specifically mentioned the transition from former item leading to a ‘fail-state’ and then the follow-up from that fail-state for a reason.

Because it was not relevant for the example, and upon reading on you would’ve seen that those are included.

Ok, then how high is the percentile of people killing uber-abby after killing abby? Just the progression from one to another.
If we have 30% of people roughly making it to monoliths… and from those around 80% make it to empowered… then shouldn’t at least… 30-40% of those leftover be able to kill Abby? If not… kinda a progression pacing problem if a sudden massive drop-off for the next major segment happens. And if only 5% for example kill uberroth after abby… that’s another massive drop-off.

Progression is supposed to be relatively even in the drop-off rate, otherwise there’s something not really good going on. In PoE there’s a reason why the long-ass Atlas progression is distinctively broken down into 16 Tiers, so you get the ‘I made clear-cut progress’ feeling 15 times along the way.

Exactly, and hence using one of the other methods repeatedly used by games and proven over time to work better :slight_smile:

The LP slamming system is solely a ancient faded out system that EHG picked up without realizing why it’s gone nowadays… because better mental tricks have been found that feel more enjoyable for the vast amount of people.

That’s a so called ‘equilibrium system’ and exists too.

So yes.

Obviously with favor towards the good outcome, which necessitates the scale of success to be handled accordingly to not be finished too swiftly.

That’s because success in a video game is the normative state.
Failure is not.

If people wouldn’t mind failure then PvP environments wouldn’t be so toxic.

Games are first and foremost supposed to provide you with fun… one way or another. Failure generally is not fun though. Exceptions apply.
Games like Dwarf Fortress inadvertantly made failure fun because while you build up something there it’s at the basis a world-simulation and telling a story, so negative outcomes are part of the history if your fort… which makes it fun.

In games like Dark Souls on the other hand failing at a boss is also fun, despite the failure. Why? Because you learn more of the movements and how to deal with them. You progress. It’s in your hand to succeed purely. There is no RNG included, there’s only memorization and reaction included, and that is fully on the responsibility of the player.

Slamming a item has no meaning for any auxiliary system like storytelling or the likes. It also does not allow you to deal with it better the next time you do it. It’s out of the players hand, you have no agency.
A lack of agency leading to a failure causes frustation.

In LE it’s a guided experience though, you get absolutely nothing from failing, outside of having to re-do the same thing again… and again… and again until you suceed. So it’s mandatory to circumvent the feeling of failure by giving the brain something it can hook on and say ‘But it has a positive side!’. Crafting a item and it just ‘bricks’ has absolutely no positives.
Increasing odds for the next time though does.
Saving affixes for the next craft does.
Increasing a meter to fill up does.

23

That also happens now with 1LP → 2LP. The issue is 2LP → 2LP with both desired affixes. So you still fail with your system.

It is, though. Because with your system you get 4 affixes imprinted. And then you try it a second time (1/4 chance), fail again and you now have 6 imprinted. You try it again, fail once more and now you have 9 imprinted.
The more times you fail, the more affixes you imprint. That seems to only make odds worse. So I think I’m missing something here.

Where did you get that number. The most likely number, as we see from other games, would be 50%-ish.

Where did you get that number? Again, the number, based on other games, should be around 50%-ish of the ones left from the previous one.

No. Around 50%-ish from the previous one will reach 300c. And around 50% of those will kill Aby. And around 50%-ish of those will reach 500c. And around 50%-ish of those will reach 700c+. And around 50%-ish of those will try Uby. And around 1% of those will manage to kill him.

We’ve had 150k people on season launch. I very much doubt we had 1k players even trying to kill Uby ( a serious attempt, not simply opening the echo without having knowledge and getting deleted in 1s).

What is the difference between that and item drops?
Like I said, we’ll just end up adding pity counters to every RNG aspect of the game until there isn’t RNG anymore.

24

I don’t think there’s a slippery slope argument to be made here involving a pity counter with drops. I think everyone can agree these game systems are nuanced and what potentially helps one system (pity counter for slams) isn’t necessary for others (drops in general). And I think an opposite-world pity counter that results in guaranteed fails is more of a contrarian argument that we can agree would never exist in a game system so I won’t really touch on that one.

As far the game knowing which affixes you’re targeting for the pity counter, that’s easy. If you’re targeting a T7/T5 combo, no pity counter exists because such a combo like 7/5/5/5 is significantly easier to farm that a 7/7/5/5 with the correct affixes. So when you pop in a 7/7/x/x or a 7/6/x/x, You just have two (or 3 for LP3) drop downs instead of the current one- one for the guaranteed T7 (assuming not T6 here), and one for the desired affix you’re also targeting. Then the game easily tracks which affix you’re targeting- it’s just a drop down selection that is logged repeatedly. Lets say for example you’re targeting an LP2 WS with a T7 void melee / T7 crit multiplier exalted. When you slam, you select guaranteed T7 melee void dmg, and then you select T7 crit multiplier every time you slam. If you fail 4-5 in a row, the game knows which targeted affix has been selected- and failed- every slam. Once the pity counter triggers, the next time you put a T7 void melee / T7 crit multiplier in that it guarantees that secondary affix. This has multiple constraints and is not easy to achieve- it means you have to farm 4-5 separate LP2 WS, and 4-5 separate T7 void melee/T7 crit multiplier exalted items. This is not easy to do, and still requires an absurdly high amount of hours of farming. But it’s fair! It leaves abrasiveness and most of rng in place (in the right ways!), but also assures you as the player that you’re still ultimately working towards a final reward if you’re completely unlucky repeatedly.

It rewards you for still playing, and doesn’t just invalidate the system- imagine trying to land mana/shred or mana/crit multiplier on an LP2 nihilis with this. It’s still an extremely difficult goal and just turns the LP system into a fair long term goal system given enough failures.

For the record, I’m not saying my exact idea is the correct one, far from it, I’m not a game developer. I posted this in the suggestion/feedback section for a reason. Just that some kind of approach that trades pure rng with slams for long-term time investment would be much appreciated, and wouldn’t invalidate the pursuit of endgame gear. On the contrary, it gives people lots of long term goals.

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25

BG3 has one such system despite being GOTY, so that premise is flawed from the start. And it wasn’t the first one to do so by a very long shot, either.

26

BG3 isn’t an ARPG and their game systems are completely different and not analogous. BG3 is a story driven game that allows you to make narrative decisions, failures factor into narrative decisions. Has nothing to do with ARPG power fantasy.

27

Showcases you have still not understood the system, so… from the top!
Affix 1 and Affix 2. Progression example.

1 LP item acquired. Item with Affix 1 acquired.
Craft fails, crap affix on it.
Keep Legendary, Affix 1 ‘saved’ in the background.

Try 2, 1 LP item acquired. Item with Affix 1 acquired.
100% guaranteed outcome. Locking in Affix 1 possible since it’s already ‘saved’. No fail chance unless you’re dum dum and don’t use the mechanic.

Upgrade time. 2 LP acquired, Item with Affix 1 and Affix 2 acquired.
Usage of 1 LP legendary guarantees Affix 1 at a 100% chance, no failure possible. Affix 2 fails… crap affix instead on it. Affix 2 is ‘saved’.
Try 2. 2 LP acquired. Item with Affix 1 anf Affix 2 acquired.
First 2 LP legendary used and hence crafts succeeds with 100% chance. Affix 1 is ‘saved’ on it already, Affix 2 is also ‘saved’ on it. No option to fail.

So the answer is a factual ‘no’.

You put in the item, it has 9 different Affixes. Those are as example:
T1 Health, T3 Health, T5 Hybrid Health, T7 Mana Strike, T4 phys res, T5 ele res, T6 Armor, T2 int, T5 Mana Strike.

Your item has for example
T7 Mana Strike, T3 Hybrid Health, T3 Health and T2 int.

Now you can choose all equivalent affixes which both are imprinted and on the base item.
Is T7 Mana Strike on it? Yes? Can be chosen, 100% guaranteed hit!
Is T3 Hybrid Health on it? No, T5 is on it. Cannot be chosen! Will be imprinted though.
Is T3 Health on it? Yes! Can be chosen, 100% hit!
Is T2 int on it? Yes! Can be chosen, 100% hit!

That’s my proclaimed system. Nothing else.

Made up for examples sake.
Same with follow ups.

Not happening though. Not even remotely.
Where do you get these numbers from? :stuck_out_tongue:

Quantity.
Item drops have the same issue, which is why item drops need to provide respective viablöe drop-variance to circumvent that.

In LE this is circumvented by favoring class-specific drops for your class as well as increasing the baseline count of Affix Tiers at higher content levels up to level 100 content. Then further on by increasing the rarity chance which has hence a higher count of exalted Affixes. Thus reducing the ‘dead drops’ accordingly and counteracting the lack of upgrades.

This system in LE is functional until around 250-300c and then falls off and is not properly functional anymore, which the complaints come from.

Equilibrium systems and pity-systems are methods to reduce the extreme outcomes for RNG to keep it inside a specific spectrum and not outside of it.

It’s to avoid 50 successes in a row as that would be damaging for progression pacing by skipping vast amounts of game content.
It’s also to avoid 50 failures in a row since that leads to progression starvation and hence to frustration on getting stuck.

Both sides of the coin are shit for different reasons. One is accepted though because something good short-term happens, ruining your experience long-term though. The other is inherently hated for obvious reasons.

It’s getting more traction since developers realized that neither steady success nor steady failure are good… but a healthy mixture of both.

They are relatively new in concept though and not properly fleshed out, leading to fringe-cases which are annoying at times.

Overall progress though.

I gotta agree with @DJSamhein there, it’s also relevant for ARPGs… just in another manner though.

28

That’s fine if I’m wrong on that, I’m not aware of such systems but I’m fine with if they do exist. Can you give me any examples of guaranteed failure mechanics? More importantly, I don’t want to get sidetracked in discussion about other systems like that because it detracts from the point of my post.

If the devs introduced such a system, and it was fair and balanced, sure. Have at it, and I’m here for it. Just as long as they do something about slams in general. That’s all my point is.

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29

Gambling games generally use them since decades. They need after all to ensure that the input amount of money never goes below the paid out amount. Usually hence values between 95-98% return are set.

A prime example for that would be ‘Entropia Universe’ which is based on a real money economy for everything, every shot of your weapon basically costs money. Every craft does.
They have a background system with a multi-wave pattern deciding on influx and outflow of value, allowing massive ‘jackpot hits’ like enemies which suddenly drop things valued 1000+ dollars.
Some people have made the game their sole income even, albeit mostly crafters as direct material value doesn’t lead to profit, instead through player-to-player trade with markup.

It’s a really interesting system usage.

BG 3 is a prime example of trying to implement that with modern games to enforce variety into outcomes, but the system basically shoves you in a direction at times, too quickly and obviously.

For a functioning game to keep people enjoyed long-term without a real-money economy you would instead put the value of influx to return at around 130-150%, meaning regular mini-jackpots in terms of returned in-game value while the input of materials would under common circumstances roughly make up 101% return as a baseline, just staying even.

Since it’s also based on perception and dopamine release of the brain short-term versus long-term those games have been a prime target for scientific reports related to engagement and reward systems overall.

30

Appreciate the detailed response and I learned something new, thanks. In such a scenario where they introduced something like that, I’d absolutely be fine with an anti-pity counter existing alongside a pity counter because the underlying assumption is that it’s built into a system designed to be fair. Perfectly acceptable!

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31

Was going to address this, but I saw you already discussed it with Kulze, so there is no point in me furthering this. :slight_smile:

Ok, this makes more sense. However, you’ll have to be always careful what you craft on. Otherwise you will end up matching 4 affixes anyway and remain in the non-guaranteed outcome.

Also, I heavily disagree with the “Cannot be chosen”, unless it cannot be chosen only because you have 3 other matches.
If instead you mean that a non-imprinted affix can’t be chosen, then the first state will always be a failure.

My only issue with either the current system and yours is that neither of them addresses the thing which, to me, seems the biggest issue:
Neither system accounts for the fact that you have a progression where the next upgrade is either as hard or harder than the previous one, except you then get to 4LP, which is supposed to be the strongest one, and you have a guaranteed result.

From steam achievements. They clearly show that in a game where difficulty keeps scaling up, only about half the players from the previous difficulty go up to the next one.

32

I meant not actively chosen, it’s hence not a fixed outcome but based on a RNG hit.

Basically the RNG this way is set up for success, a bonus, you can hit it while the supposed progression is to go via imprinting Affixes and acruing them accordingly over time by using duplicates.

Which is a problem with 4 LP inherently, not with the states before.

The solution to this problem ultimately would be to introduce a RNG layer to LP in general. Given the severe upsides of my proclaimed system in progression overall it allows more leeway to introduce new ways for potential ‘failure’.

In this case a natural progression of the system would be to allow any non-guaranteed LP hit to actually fail to traverse a Affix onto the legendary. So for example a first craft on a 1 LP item could result in it loosing the 1 LP and turning into a 0 LP item with 4 imprinted Affixes, worst case.
At that stage you haven’t lost anything, it’s still a viable thing, you got a guarantee for the next time but also no upgrade presented.
And hence for a 4 LP this can also be the case, so setting up a imprint unique beforehand would hence be a basically mandatory route to guarantee that it’ll stay at that LP level. You’ve put the effort in to secure the outcome, and 4 LP is respectively rare that it’s viable to keep it in existence with guarantee.

Yes, upholds when the progression journey is even.

Is it even in LE? I mean… we got a distinct difficulty spike from Monolith to Empowered Monolith… so that alone destroys that baseline already. Same as the time investment and repetition being different for Campaign to Monolith to Empowered-to-Abby being all extremely different time-wise and effort-wise.

So while generally ‘yes’ it’s a ‘no’ in LE.

Also if we take PoE 1 as example: 14,7% have cleared the campaign.
5,9% have killed some of the ‘medium bosses’ like Eldar or Eater of Souls.
But 20,4% have made it to the half-way point of the campaign.

If the 50% falloff rate would be true we would see those 3 showcasing it. But Part 1 to Part 2 (which is campaign finish) is a 25% falloff-rate and Mapping to first bosses is around a 60% falloff-rate.

33

The new 1 guaranteed affix makes 1LP crafting too easy and deterministic and leaves 1LP to 2LP upgrades at a similar spot as the 0Lp to 1LP upgrades previously, but a little bit less important though. The chance is 1 in 3 for one of the 3 remaining affixes and usually the first affix that you guaranteed is the most important and impactful one anyway.

I can see how people are frutrated about it, but at the same time peoples demands and expectations just keep rising. We already got insane powercreep in 1.2 and with requests like this it will continue to become something that is more and more requested.

And if you choose good exalted items to be crafted, even if the 2nd affix is not the most optimal one, it will still be an upgrade from 1LP to 2LP.
Once you start crafting multiple 2LP ones and they keep failing the desired result I can see how that is frustrating.

I don’t like a pity system at all and rather would like to see something similar to the Sacrifice Equal LP Unique to reroll an item.

Here is my suggestion:
A new Woven Echo that allows you to sacrifice a crafted legendary item and shatter it into a token. That Token contains the following informations:

  • Which Unique it was
  • How many legendary affixes it had (LP equivalent)
  • Affix Tier for each added affix

When Legendary crafting you can sacrifice these tokens to get a more demerministic outcome.

  • The Token needs to be used for the same Unique
  • The Token needs to have the same or higher LP value than the crafted Unique
  • Each Token allows you to select one of the affixes saved by it
  • You can select any amount of affixes to be guaranteed crafted onto the unique if the sacrificed tokens have the same affix on the same or higher tier, if the exalted item that you are about to craft into the Unique also has these affixes.

Not sure if my way of describing it makes it sound more convoluded than it needs to be, but essentially with this you will have two different paths you cna go: The RNG route and not use the tokens or the more deterministic route, that will take you much, much longer, because you need to craft and gather multiple high LP uniques with desired affixes in high tier and craft them all before you do the big guaranteed craft at the end.

Especially when you have your first 1LP Unique and are happy with it, once you are about to start crafting the second one, if the craft “fails”, you can still keep this crafted legendary and use it for sacrificng into one of these tokens.

Then if you start crafting your third one it gets interesting: You have to make a decision and you either try to craft regular again with a chance of failure, or you decide to select your 2nd priority affix to be guaranteed and this would give you the second unique you can sacrifice into a token. Then the next 2LP Unique you will find will be a guaranteed upgrade.

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34

I mean, not really? I would agree that there is a spike between normal and empowered, but everything else flows naturally both in terms of time and effort.
The campaign is about as long as normal monoliths and you flow from one to the other.
You then have a bump going to empowered, but for 100c to 300c is about the same time as both campaign and normal monos. And this is the point where you meet Aby.
And then getting to 500-700c is about the same time as the previous ones. Although now it does take more effort, because not all builds are alike and you need more knowledge to do it.
And then getting to 1000c is about the same time. Although now it takes a lot more effort because not all builds can even get there and you need even more knowledge to do it.
And then comes Uby, which is clearly overtuned on purpose so that only a small fraction will manage it. So only Uby will stay outside the the progression, for the most part.

That doesn’t matter. We have no stats for “halfway” except for a very few exceptions like PoE. So we can’t take any conclusions from that.
I’m willing to bet that the dropoff from finishing the first zone (before you get to the town) and finishing the second zone (getting to the caves) is even higher than that.

And medium bosses like elder or eater aren’t the next progression in PoE. After the campaign, it’s finishing red maps.

35

To be frank, your proposed system sounds preferable to what I suggested and something along those lines would probably be less of a headache to implement anyways.

Really, at the end of the day, I just don’t want to be able to fail eight 2LP WS slams in a row on a rare item that has 1:236 drop chance or higher- and that’s just the LP item, not including acquiring the correct T7 affix combination on an exalted. Luckily I have imprints and prophecies to help, but it’ll still take hours upon hours, all over again. I have to farm both the LP2+ WS and the exalted from scratch again- for the 9th time now. I’m not usually one to complain about games but that’s just outright so lame, lol. And I’m still not guaranteed success once I do so! I agree game systems can’t (and shouldn’t) cater to players completely, and in fact not doing so can often be healthy for a game, but a compromise can often achieve great success. The guaranteed selected affix is a step in the right direction. These systems can continue to ensure it’s a difficult journey that make long-term goals to acquire endgame gear feel meaningful and satisfying, without cheapening or short-cutting the endgame loop.

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36

I personally would prefer a sort of “combination” system.
-You choose a 3LP unique and an exalted and each 3LP legendary (of the same unique) you sacrifice after that will give you one affix choice.

This way, if you tried to slam your affixes 3 times and you failed, you can use the 3 failures to guarantee your success on the 4th one.
This would also make it so that you only need one failure for 1LP, 2 failures for 2LP and 3 failures for 3LP.

It still doesn’t solve the issue that 4LP is a guaranteed slam, when it should require 4 average tries, but at least it would be more random than the current system while still allowing a failsafe state.

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37

That’s backwards.

You get more 1 LP items, hence their value is respectively lower, which allows for more leeway to have mistakes. Hence the fail-rate for lower LP can be higher.

So having high LP items causing the re-tries to increase would make getting the proper outcome all the more harder comparatively and hence the perception even worse.

The harder an item is to acquire by the player the less you can simply ‘take it away’ in any way from the player, so that wouldn’t be good.

Heavy’s option is very good though at least already, and I’m sure some parts of the suggested one from you can be used as well when we turn it upside down.

38

How is that backwards? The stronger items should be harder to get. This just adds a failsafe to them.

In fact, it’s not too different from your system (as I recall, the second 1LP slam on your sytem is also a guaranteed hit), except that you don’t need to keep track of “imprinted affixes” or “shattered affixes”.

It would also give another use for those crap legendaries the Nemesis spits out.

39

Because it gets harder to guarantee the higher you get.

The LP drop-rate is already doing that, it would be double-dipping into the difficulty.

That’s why I made my suggestion in a way you can guarantee immediate success from 2 LP onward… since even a red ring can be acquired with 1 LP over time repeatedly in CoF.

40

As it should. And also as Heavy’s system would work.
Heavy’s system would require 3 tokens (so 3LP legendaries sacrificed with the same affixes) to guarantee it as well. The only difference to mine is that you don’t have to keep track of the affixes.

That would mean that you could simply upgrade the LP of an item, meaning you’ll get to 4LP red rings with little effort, when they’re not supposed to happen at all.

EDIT:
As a sidenote, in a system where no affix is selected (like we had previously), 2LP is the hardest to achieve success with. Because both 1LP and 3LP were always a 25% chance. 2LP is the one that previously had 8.3% chance and now has 33%.