One person’s “reigning in the RNG” is another person’s “moving the goalposts”.
What you want is a pity system. So if you have X high FP crafts then you have something that reduces the cost to get it closer to the desired average, though the mechanics in place will already do that, just not in a “smart” way. But they’ll still give you the average cost that the devs want over time.
Read the ‘complex solution’ again.
That is not a pity system.
A pity system works solely in one direction.
Pity itself is to feel sorry for someone not having gotten a desired outcome. If you create a system which ‘punishes’ lucky people to be more mediocre while ‘rewarding’ unlucky people to be more mediocre you just cause the maximum variance to decrease. It acts both ways.
Today you might be unlucky, tomorrow you might be lucky, your outcome overall aligns with other people better though.
A RNG system without such a mechanic can never provide this outcome since outliers won’t have a ‘similar’ experience but instead a vastly better or worse one. By magnitudes.
If you have people affected negatively by it to a degree that specific system causes them to stop engaging in the game then you have an issue.
Issues don’t all need to be solved.
If there’s a solution though which doesn’t negatively affect other people then an issue is to be solved because the outcome is objectively better.
So… this issue exists.
Solutions exist coding wise (and are actually fairly common)
Why don’t we see it?
Ah yes… mistake, understandable, nobody is perfect.
Now EHG knows the issue, EHG knows the solution. When do you think a 45 minute job like this will be done? Because that’s a 45 minute job as it is solely a construct of new classes around a pre-existing class which has no effect of game performance as it’s not called up regularly.
Why would we want that, though? This is like saying that the lottery should also have a similar system so that eventually everyone wins equally (or loses equally, depending on where you place the line).
I don’t want my luck to be fixed (which is why I don’t go to casinos). In fact, that is a terrible system as can be seen by BG3’s Karmic Die system, which works exactly like your suggestion.
Pretty much all players turn it off because not only does it take a lot of variance out of the game, it can also make it so that (usually detrimental) outcomes become much more common.
A simple example is you having such a high AC that only a nat 20 can cause an enemy to hit you. On average you’d expect it to occur once every 20 attacks, but due to this system, since you’re having so many successes, the enemies roll 20s a lot more often.
The only fun of RNG is that it’s actually random. If it’s skewed it takes some of the joy out of it. Which is why you don’t usually shout in joy when you get all affixes to T5, because that happens more often than not, due to the systems Llama already described.
In fact, it’s the opposite: you feel bad when it fails because you’re expecting that it works most of the time.
However, the pure unadulterated roll of slamming a 1LP item feels much more satisfying to me because it really is fully random.
So the current system for crafting is fine. I’d argue that it should be less forgiving.
The only problem is each player’s tolerance for said RNG. Some like a harder RNG, some like a softer RNG, some don’t even like RNG at all (in which case, what are they doing in a diablo-clone?).
Below 100c you drop a different blessing instead. For example: Bulwark of the Tundra is 12-24% increased Armor Grand Bulwark of the Tundra is 25-55% increased Armor
That’s why most people skip the non-empowered monolith and go straight for the 100c version, because a minimal roll automatically gives you more than a best roll from non-empowered
To provide a consistent game experience for mechanics which should provide a consistent experience.
To create a fluid progression system rather then one jumping left and right, having variance but not a massive one.
To give players a form of achievable goal rather then a full-scale one-armed bandit.
We’re playing a game and aren’t in a casino. If you wanna combine both then there’s ‘Entropia Universe’ available.
As said, this is a game, not a gambling table.
It isn’t ‘fixed’ with the complex system. It’s a wave. Also depending on where it’s implemented the magnitude of effect can be changed to fine-tune how outcomes are supposed to be handled.
Especially a crafting mechanic though needs to be reliable first and foremost, not screwing people over and not giving people jackpot after jackpot.
I’ll once again provide a PoE example… you have several steps there which provide a save-state, allowing creations of even the most powerful items with enough time investment should the knowledge be in the hands of the player.
This is not the case in LE though, we don’t have save-states, hence since that’s not the case the RNG needs to be handled.
You can’t have both or it’ll feel shit. Did with every single game with high complexity to date and will do in the future as well. It’s why live service games like Path of Exile are praised for their crafting systems but even with the pity systems those of ‘Black Desert Online’ for example are frowned upon. The core progression of a player isn’t allowed to be limited through gambling mechanics with gambling-like chances. That’s the task of RNG in a game.
That’s because the karmic die system in BG3 is faulty from a design standpoint. You can’t even compare it.
It affects enemies as well as allies.
Also karmic dice aren’t an equalizer but a pure pity system enforcing outcomes towards the positive.
Once more, not a proper ‘complex solution’ as I’ve presented. Equalization is a different topic. We first need to come to the same baseline before we can even start discussing it since that system in BG3? It was shit, it was badly designed, it has a fundamentally different function then the one I presented.
You can’t even start comparing it.
Also crafting has several aspects or ‘stages’ to go through, each of them costing FP, it would solely affect FP usage for example. Separately (unlike karmic dice which are a general equalizer) a separate equalizer for rarity chance of affixes, another separate one for top-tier bases with rare affixes and so on.
Hence a pure equalization with adjustable variance for each case. The crafting itself is the most important one though… but I would rather enjoy EHG re-working their whole itemization system from the ground up as I’ve already talked more then enough about affix tier variance and the 2/2 split versus 3/3 split or even a 4/4 split for affixes. Those are more fundamental then the proposed system by me but also vastly more resource extensive. It’s a redesign, a core implementation bigger then anything else they can do.
It’s only fun if you get a big hit. It’s never fun when you’re deprived of rewards.
Unless you’re extremely neuro-divergent this is a universal truth in psychology.
The more you are addicted to dopamine-peaks the more resistent you are to the reward deprivation, this leads to ‘Gambler’s Fallacy’ or the ‘Monte Carlo Fallacy’ as it’s also called. ‘Just this once more!’.
That’s generally to be avoided, it not only causes addiction which is bad enough but also causes the players not dopamine-deprived to stop engaging in the game. Hence moderate dopamine exposure is a longer-term success recipe.
It’s why people remember short games with great stories that are heavily immersive as far more impactful experiences then a long-term game provides. If those take more time investment though and don’t end it flips over and more people perceive it as a bad experience then a good one.
It’s a psychological trick on how short-term versus long-term engagement is handled.
It’s not skewed, it’s equalized. You have the same, 100% same chances then anyone else in the current system… just the extremes get cut off. The amplitudes. In your perception it changes nothing unless badly implemented.
You know what’s also bad?
Having exactly ‘0’ expectations to personally find a top-tier base with a top-tier affix which then actually succeeds in becoming a top-tier item. You need to give people an achievable goal. If they see no road to success they won’t walk the road.
How it’s done is secondary, but it needs to be done, in LE currently it’s not very very quickly.
In Path of Exile I can go, sit down for 2 days, farm up nigh any base and then gradually guarantee my success in comparison.
Which system do you think is better? LE’s or PoE’s for crafting?
If you say LE’s… good for you! If someone knows and understands both systems though then the vast majority of those will immediately point to PoE for the exact reason that it always present a achievable goal.
Mid-tier gear? Slap stuff on it until the right thing comes out.
High-tier gear? Use the mid-tier gear and use a targeted crafting method.
Top-tier gear? Use high-tier gear and use more methods beyond.
God-tier? Well… that’s the only which actually needs re-tries for the bases as long as those are available, but those are nigh perfectly rolled double-influenced items, everything below is targetable with knowledge.
Nothing of that exists in LE, not a single bit. You throw stuff in, do ~10-15 clicks commonly and it’s over, forever and ever. Done, gone, new jackpot roll needed after your first jackpot roll failed. Loosing a jackpot sucks unless you have a spare available. If that jackpot itself is useless without gambling further on it then we have a problem.
That’s LE’s crafting state currently.
No, the problem still is how the RNG is implemented. The tolerance itself is secondary and can easily be adjusted, that’s simple. It doesn’t change the underlying faults of the system though.
Since it provides fail-states a lucky drop needs by design to be usable before that state can be reached afterwards.
2 classes interacting with another singular class is a 45 minute job.
If the class itself is hard-coded into a construct separately for every different situation then the coder was shit.
I don’t know which coding language would hinder you to add on a equalization function like this and break because of it, usually you use a pre-existing function that does the job and simply output values through it. So worst-case you create a new instance of the function with this added one on top which then solely is used by the crafting options.
Albeit that would enhance the coding time to likely 5-8 hours since then you might need to check several files addressing the function in the first place… which you don’t do, you refractor it gradually.
yes, ofc im doing empowered, the blessing im looking for can roll between 25% and 50% and in 15 kills orso i have seen a 25%, 26%, 27% and i thinck i have 32% now, shit RNG …
I have 2 more attempts lined up but at 160 corruption its to much for me right now (160corrupion cause i have a prophesy for leg belt drops)
An ARPG is, pretty much by definition, a gambling game. It’s the main attraction for many players.
Again, why would I want a consistent game experience? The variance is a big part of the appeal for me.
It’s like with rogue-like games, which we were discussing in the other thread: without pure RNG, rogue-likes wouldn’t be fun and probably wouldn’t even be popular in the first place.
It’s still fixed. I know that if I play 1000h I will have the same luck as every other player that played 1000h with only minor variances which only get smaller as the sample gets bigger.
Which is why I actually like LE crafting (in addition of it being much simpler and transparent) when I hate crafting in pretty much every other game.
The fact that there is no risk and you’re guaranteed to get your result if you just dedicate enough time/currency into it makes it feel much less rewarding to me.
As I’ve said, this isn’t an issue with the current crafting system, it’s an issue on the amount of RNG each player likes.
Actually, it isn’t. If you get too many positive results, you’ll be forced fed negative results as well. Their system is a general blanket over the totality of all rolls to ensure you don’t have too many successes or failures. Which is what you want to achieve.
With your system, I would never have a chance of slamming 10 1LP items and get successful slams for all 10, whereas now I have some chance. Or I’d have a much much smaller chance to the point where it’s impossible. Likewise, I don’t have a chance to fail 10 in a row.
That, to me, detracts from the game I want to play.
What you basically want is simply to reduce the roll ranges. You don’t need all that complicated system when you can accomplish the same thing you want by reducing a 1-24 roll to a 5-20 or 10-15 one. Which is what your system will make the overall tendency become over time.
Yes, but knowing that if I play enough I’m pretty much guaranteed to have a big hit takes the joy out of it. Just like knowing that if I play long enough I’ll have the exact same big hits as someone else that played as long as I did.
A big part of the gambling mentality is that your results are unique, whether they’re good or bad.
If you implemented a system like this in slot machines, most gamblers would stop using them. What drives gamblers is the prospect of being better off than everyone else, even if that’s unrealistic.
That’s just semantics. It’s not pure RNG, so it’s skewed. The fact that it skews both ways doesn’t make it unskewed.
Again, this is just reducing roll ranges. Which is actually against not only EHG’s philosophy (Mike said on his latest stream that they actually like big roll ranges) but also against many players’ as well, since when players have been asked to design items the choice was mostly large ranges as well.
This is not a crafting issue. It’s a drop issue. When you do get the drop, you know that more likely than not you will successfully finish the craft on it.
Yes, which is why I don’t like PoE crafting. If I’m guaranteed to get the item I want, I won’t feel excited when I finally get it because I’ve always known it would happen eventually. Quite the opposite. I just get frustrated when it doesn’t happen right away. Exactly because it’s a guaranteed result.
I don’t want a guaranteed success. That takes the joy out of it for me. Which is why I prefer CoF. I like drops. I like RNG. I started playing D2 because of the heavy RNG.
And even though I don’t like D2 crafting, I still prefer it to PoE, exactly because there’s no guarantee.
It’s not. You want RNG that has a guaranteed chance of success, like exemplified by your PoE crafting example. I want RNG that has no guarantees ever. You have more fun with the first, I have more fun with the second. It’s personal, not objective.
It isn’t.
First you’d need to design the changes themselves and make sure it will produce the result you want.
Then you’d need to make the actual changes.
Then you’d need to thoroughly test all the changes to make sure nothing is broken and to ensure that you do get the results you want.
And this is even assuming they would implement your solution. The most likely scenario is spending quite a few hours (or even days) simply debating different ways to do the same thing, which would be more efficient, which would produce the results they want better, etc.
Nothing in programming takes 45 minutes to do unless you’re simply fixing a typo in text. And even then you still have to test if the new phrasing doesn’t make text behave weirdly.
I always thought it would be the gradual itemization, the advancement in power, the hack’n’slash playstyle and similar things.
If I want to go for gambling I play online roulette.
You seem to misunderstand something. I’m not saying ‘remove RNG’ but ‘equalize chances to cut off the amplitudes’.
The argument itself beyond that is not fitting.
Also for your example: ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery) had a very consistent experience but nonetheless RNG in it. You usually didn’t fall into a predicament which would’ve stopped you from beating the game, even with bad RNG. Also quite a lot more popular back in the time then ToMe was then, which has vastly more RNG and a myriad of un-avoidable fail-states.
So no… RNG is not the deciding factor, not even remotely. It’s solely a outcome of the affix-based drop-system as well as the drop-changes themselves. The way you argument about it for a crafting system though is a completely different topic. A crafting system shouldn’t be ‘big hit gambling’ when your drop already is one. You stack big hit on big hit. That’s objectively bad design to engage a player.
Welcome to the rule of big numbers? Tell me the current difference?
It doesn’t decide which item from the drop-table you get, just if you get one. And it also will still have variance, just not that one person has gotten 5 LP4 items and another has barely seen 5 LP3 in the same time.
That’s… well… that’s a fairly special and uncommon take I have to say.
Your sample-size if vastly smaller then the sample-size of people which are negatively impacted by the same mechanics while the game intends to cater to them in the same manner otherwise though.
People usually go towards a goal if that goal is a realistically possible outcome.
For crafting specifically. The issue with the system in BG3 still was that it affected enemies and hence caused them to generally cause more negative effects onto your group then they’re supposed to in a natural environment.
This led to a spike in difficulty as well as several misses in a row by them leading to up to ~400% more damage taken by your characters.
Which is a vastly different circumstance as it’s not doing the equalizing well when it just enforces a positive outcome. That means their rolls weren’t related to the 50% point but instead to the outcome.
Once more, different type of system, one which by design is faulty.
Putting the anchor-point at the 50% outcome point means it doesn’t take success or failure into account, just relation to the nominal amount.
Different system, different review needed.
Also wrong. It depends on the implementation and severty. Also why should it affect LP slamming in the first place? The outcome of LP slamming doesn’t need adjustments without UI changes, you would need to actually pick the targeted affixes to make that system even work with them. That’s a ton more then what I’m proposing.
You can’t blanket them over everything randomly, you need to use them where they’re needed, which is either success rate for rare items (exalted T6 or T7 ones) to be crafted as well as maybe the drop-mechanic for rare affixes on high bases, to adjust the already extreme variance to become more of a baseline.
You can use it for other systems too… but for many it doesn’t make sense as the variance is not an issue or actively wanted, like chase-uniques for example.
This is utterly wrong. In a system which has a high number of variables the chance to land in one extreme becomes higher and higher. Yes, you can reduce the number range… but that would directly lead to a loss in variance.
A equalization function does nothing else then preserve normative variance (rather then making those the extremes) while removing extremes from the edge-cases.
It does… nothing… else…
That’s why such functions have a use-case.
You must be pretty joyless then… because that’s already the case
Which once again… is not the case. It adjusts specific systems for specific parameters for specific fringe-cases which only a miniscule amount of people experience. It’s to be used on core acquisition and progression mechanics and not for chase related things which are existing for the exact reason you’re mentioning.
For example:
Instead of getting not a single rare-affix T7 drop after 1000 hours on a top-tier base you’re gradually getting more and more likely to get some rare affix one on a top-tier base. It’s not the one you want, it’s not the one for your build, it’s just an item of the type.
As one use-case.
The same is handled with crafting. The chance to get common versus rare affixes on gear normalizes if you play a long time. The individual craft on their own though aren’t even perceivably affected, but instead of bricking 50 in a row with utterly atrocious outcome from chaos glyphs you’ll instead start to get more and more likely to get a rare outcome you might search for. So it happens after 15… and also you’ll not get 10-20 in a row, you’ll get 3-4… and then the chance for it to happen becomes simply abysmal. You can, it’s not impossible, it’s just so unlikely that we’ll never see it after a breaking point, much like a 4 LP Red Ring. Just nothing which exists in reality.
No… that’s a different topic, has nothing to do with gambling. Gambling solely is based on the aspect that you get the lucky hit. Nothing more, nothing less.
What you’re talking about is having unique things which only you own rather then someone else, so not everyone dropping a 2 LP Wraithlord Arbor after 500 hours… which once more, is not even included in such a mechanic. That’s why we have drop-tables after all. It’s just that the drop-table itself even is triggered or not, which you don’t realize unless you specifically know the respective tables, which we don’t.
Sorry to say but that’s not even applicable there. slot machines want to have the bell-curve distribution to be there in full force because they cause the gambler’s fallacy by design. Why do you think any sort of high payout gives nice sounds and lets everyone in the whole area hear it? ‘That person got it! So I can too!’. Improves spending. Every jackpot paid out not only has been returned several folds but also causes a massive increase in retention at that moment.
We don’t have such a secondary retention system in the game… and luckily so! That would be quite the addiction-machine after all, which is a disgusting thing to do, predatory business behavior.
In comparison I can only lead you over to ‘Entropia Universe’ which has those exact equalizing wave functions built in. Not only for the individual but also based on overall usage of currency in their system which causes big payouts when people start to burn thousands or tens of thousands of dollars (since they have a real-money direct exchange and the whole game is a big gambling machine basically) and it is keeping people there because of that.
It still causes those rare special massive payouts but hides them underneath a layer of equalization to ensure that at no time in the existence of the game the money they own is used up, leading to constant and stable returns while it has exactly zero effect on the playerbase there as you can’t even abuse it since you got both individual and communal equalization functions running at the same time.
What the heck is ‘pure RNG’? That doesn’t exist. A RNG generator is based on the clock state and just so fast that a human can’t personally interfere and perceive the guaranteed results at any specific time. There is no variance in RNG, we only perceive it as such.
As long as the perception is upheld that system hence functions since it’s not built on being chaos but instead simply beyond human capabilities.
If you have a bell-curve and you remove the outsides of a bell-curve then you have a different shape then when you reduce the variance. The effect is another.
So no, factually wrong.
Where? In acquisition rates? In affix roll ranges? In affix tiers? In FP availability on items? In FP usage on items?
That’s a bit of a useless comment, it says zero, nothing. It has no meaning.
Describe the specific aspect of where a big roll range is applied for the comment and we can start, then by individual positioning we can decide if the argument holds true.
It’s not universally true.
So it can’t be used as an argument in the first place.
The variance of roll-ranges on items is an entirely different topic then the extreme variance outcomes of general luck over long-term retention of a player.
Obviously people love items like a omnis! It’s a thrill to see if it rolled nice! Use it, sparingly, rarely. Use it all the time and it becomes a shit-show.
If you’re the one in the middle of the shit-show then you’ll not have the same stance towards this issue. You want it gone when you’re in. If you’re in the nominal ranges or even better the high-end lucky ranges you obviously don’t care.
Duh!
Actually very unlikely to happen.
‘A’ craft yes. ‘The’ craft no.
You’re guaranteed to get a 4 LP red ring, eventually. You just need to play long enough and stay alive long enough.
Where exactly is the cutoff-point?
Is it that it exists at all or is it the thrill of ‘when?’ rather?
Makes a big difference.
One is an argument for absurdity, the other is a argument of variance.
Play SSF, same experience, no guarantee. You’re already playing CoF in LE so it makes exactly ‘0’ difference.
Your item in PoE is for you the same distance away as that mythical LP 4 red ring.
So I can’t follow that logic at all.
First… that’s a ‘Hello World’ level design. So if you fuck that up you should be fired, period.
The actual change is for several systems then you refractor it, which coding-wise then 10 minutes per refractory pass after the 45 minutes initial broken-finger-coder creation.
The testing is sufficient outside the environment once for basic functionality and then once for 100 crafts +/- unless the documentation is a mess. And if the documentation is a mess then you need to slap your whole dev team left and right anyway and get yourself a new one, because then they’re not fit for the job.
Yes, this is how AAA companies work.
We see the results.
There’s a reason why this garbage pile of a overhead causes mass layoffs in the sector. It’s how games like ‘Starfield’ are produced where afterwards the developers come out, whine to the players on ‘how hard programming is’ when a modder needs 24 hours to fix their UI that then isn’t fixed for months after.
If a single modder can do the job of your multi-million company in a single day what your people haven’t managed in months… then there’s no excuse.
It’s bullshitting excuses. A customer is not caring about overhead, meetings, getting clearance after 4 weeks of proposing 2 lines of change or similar bullshit. It’s organizational issues which lead to that, not practical ones.
Put a single dev onto it, say ‘implement a working code and see if it messes crap up’ and if that person is not fiddling with other stuff on the side (which he shouldn’t) then the chances for it breaking everything to hell and back are basically ‘0’. Then you don’t roll it out until you have 20 of those things done and call it ‘hotfix’. Which should appear every week roughly.
So don’t give me that. I haven’t programmed since 25 years now… but even I can still make that sort of code with how piss-easy it is. In a day, no matter the language, I can learn it far enough to make that happen from scratch… in a day.
It’s a mix between skill (making a build, killing monsters, access harder content that has a better chance for drops) and pure luck (getting the drop). It’s not too dissimilar in function to how Poker works where you use skill (odds calculation, bluffing) and pure luck (what cards you actually get).
You could argue that D3 was more popular than PoE (we don’t know the actual numbers, but D3 sold many millions) even though it barely had any RNG.
Even though D2 and PoE are clearly better games for the fans, casuals prefer less attrition. So ADOM being more popular doesn’t mean it’s better. Just that it’s better for some people.
My point, however, was that without that pure RNG where you could die in the first room due to bad luck, games like Rogue, Hack or Moria probably wouldn’t have become such a cult phenomenon that inspired a whole genre.
Because players these days don’t have the tolerance for RNG that players did back then. Mostly because there are a lot more games these days, whereas RNG increasing gameplay was a bigger thing back then.
The difference is in the variance. You’re just making sure more people are successful, therefore you’re watering the achievement and its hunt.
The rule of big numbers still allows for big outliers. Also, it doesn’t guarantee anything. The more you narrow it down, the more guaranteed it becomes.
I was only talking about how it feels for me. I have no idea what the sample size is of people that feel like I do or the sample size of people that feel like you do. Neither do you.
Other than the extremely rare stuff like a 4LP red ring, pretty much everything in LE is realistically possible. The difference lies simply in it being guaranteed or not.
But crafting already has skewed odds in your favor. Even if you discount the glyph of hope and the critical successes (and not that there are no critical failures), simply having 2 rolls and using the better one is a huge advantage. It’s why D&D calls that “advantadge”.
It’s actually simmetrical. If you have a crappy hit chance you’re guaranteed to hit a lot more than you normally would as well. It applying to enemies or not makes no difference in the balance of the outcomes.
Enforcing a positive outcome is basically just reducing RNG. You can call it by another name, but it’s still what it is. And crafting already has reduced RNG in your favour. So it’s basically back to player preference on said RNG.
Obviously to favour the exalted affix(es), which would be the next step after implementing your system. Or are you under the impression that players wouldn’t demand that next?
It just changes the extreme ranges from being 1/25 chance to 1/15 chance (or whichever values you want to adjust to) while increasing the odds for the middle values.
Unless you want to make it unsymmetrical and only affect the positive outcomes, in which case what you’re asking for is to change 1-24 to 5-24.
Sure, your system still allows for values 1-4, but they become so rare that they’re an outlier.
No, pure RNG makes it so that nothing is actually guaranteed. I can play for 1000h and have 0 uniques drop, even the common ones. It’s not very likely, but there’s a chance for that. Nothing in LE is guaranteed.
This is not true though. Everyone experiences the bad rolls and the good rolls. Some have worse luck and get more bad rolls than good, but some also have good luck and have more good rolls than bad.
Again, that’s just reducing RNG. Making so that high quality drops become guaranteed over time. I personally don’t want that. I want each drop to be a roulette, no skewing of the odds. Even if I have very bad luck for a long time.
This is actually not true. If a gambler goes to a casino and gets a jackpot on the slot machine but knows that everyone else also gets one, that takes away from the dopamine hit.
There have been multiple studies about this, where a person is offered 20$ if a random person also gets 20$, or they could get 10$ and no one else gets money, where the majority of people will take the 10$ option.
A big part of the gambling mentality is getting the lucky hit and being better off than the rest.
Since you’re consuming the RNG generator at random times and since you have no control over it, for all practical purposes it’s pure RNG. If something has a 1% chance to happen in the game, it will happen 1% of the times, on average.
What you’re asking for is that something that happens 1% of the time now happens 2% of the time instead because you’re cutting the negative outliers. Which, again, is just reducing RNG.
It was said in a general sweeping way, meaning everywhere you get roll ranges, EHG prefers to have big ranges, rather than smaller ones.
Nothing is universally true in this context. You don’t like the current RNG, I like the current RNG. Other people like it as well, other people dislike it as well. How many of each? We don’t know. Even with a large poll, we might still don’t know.
For the case I was making, I wasn’t saying everyone (nor did Mike say it), just that most want large affix rolls, which implies liking a bigger RNG.
How is it any different? You have a roll-range for how much FP you spend. You want to skew that to remove outliers. How is that any different from affix roll ranges? Isn’t that the most obvious next step to apply your method as well? A system that is in every way identical to the one you want to change?
No, that’s what you want. I don’t care that I haven’t dropped an omnis yet. It might happen in the future. It might not. That’s part of the fun for me.
You’re wrong on that. Since you get 2 rolls and use the better one (besides the glyph chance and critical successes), the odds are always in your favor. So for “The” craft, the odds are still in your favour and you’re more likely to succeed than not.
No I’m not. Why would I be guaranteed a 4LP ring? I’m not even guaranteed that an exalted item (any exalted item) will ever drop for me. Sure, it’s very unlikely it will happen, much like it’s very unlikely a 4LP ring will drop, but nothing in LE is guaranteed.
It’s that it exists at all. The fact that it’s not guaranteed is part of the fun when a rare item does drop. Because there’s always a chance it never will.
It’s funny you say this when recently you said that SSF now has access to all the currency they want when talking about how SSF is screwed over trading.
Which means that they can still guarantee the craft eventually. They just need 2h to farm for the base, and then apply currency to it until you eventually succeed.
The bottom line here is that crafting already works fine to get you geared up to play with every content. It’s piss easy to gear up for early-midgame and pretty easy for endgame (as in, 300c, dungeons, arena, Aberoth).
What you want is simply to reduce RNG for BiS gear, for pushing endgame limits.
It’s fine that you don’t like it, but there are people that do. There’s nothing objectively better about your change, just like there’s nothing objectively better about changing nothing. It just appeals to different people.
No, it isn’t. Especially when you have system that interlock as much as a game like this.
And you only have to look at the x10 bug in PV to know that it’s not that hard to fuck things up with small things.
I don’t know where you’re getting these numbers. But I really won’t discuss programming with someone that thinks it’s just copy/paste and you’re done, because that’s the only way something like that would take 10 minutes.
I recently had to implement paypal’s rest API into our software. Not only did I have to integrate it with our billing system, the simple implementation of the methods used took me over 2h, even though there’s lots of documentation on their site and on the web. And in the end it didn’t work properly and I’m waiting for a response to a ticket I opened. And when it’s finished, I’ll still have to test it throughly, including making dumb things to see if it breaks.
And we already had VISA implemented and paypal’s system is basically the same. And yet it wasn’t done “in 45 minutes”. Because almost nothing in programming is, unless you’re making a static html page and don’t much care about responsiveness.
No, this is pretty much like any company works. Especially on more intricate software. Our company is small, only about 10 programmers out of about 25 people working there and lots of time is spent deciding on how to exactly do things. Because the consequences of simply “winging it” are usually disastrous.
A single modder can do something in a single day when it’s a simple thing. Most mods actually require months or even years to complete.
And simple things aren’t usually done immediately by the company because the company has hundreds or thousands of “simple things” to do, as well as hundreds more of complicated things to do. So that “simple thing” the modder did is usually pushed back in priority.
It’s not about the 2 lines (which actually isn’t just 2 lines, it’s more, but that’s ok). It’s about changing a system that is currently working fine. It’s also about game balance that changes when you make this change. It’s also about the interactions that this system has with other systems.
And lastly, it’s making the change so that you can adapt it in the future for other things, because you know that next will be LP slamming, then unique affix rolls, etc.
I can’t help but noticing that a day isn’t 45 minutes.
25 years is a long time. Maybe you’ve been out of the loop for too long or never worked on any complex software with many linked systems.
Or never worked on a software that has a backlog of fixes and changes numbering in the hundreds, meaning you need to prioritize what you work on with your available time.
Hmm, taking the sample size of my friends who play this game and me (5 ppl). We won’t return if there’s no additional ways to upgrade gears in any of the next cycles. We have played basically almost all popular ARPGs that came out since Diablo 2 and we never had complaints about RNG, except for this game. I will add that this is a pity, as we actually quite like the game.
The problem is not gaining the gear to slam, as COF/MG already increases your chances significantly of achieving that. We all don’t have a problem with that and I won’t call that “gambling” as you can increase your odds to 100% in some cases (MG).
The problem is the casino that sanctum actually is. Your chances don’t increase the more you slam. They will remain the same. Let’s take the case of LP1 gear. It will always be 25% to get that 1 affix you really want (probably T7)
Combined with the fact that it’s basically your ONLY way to upgrade (endgame), it makes for a very unrewarding game. You can spent 100k hours or 10 mins to get that upgrade or not get it ever (like me in 100hrs of trying and 25+ LP2+ slams further).
The “casino” of Sanctum is fine. Legendaries are the most powerful items the game has to offer. They should be difficult and time consuming to get.
The problem is not that getting the right slam is too hard. The problem is that getting to a point where well slammed Legendaries are your only noticeably impactful source of gear/power advancement is too easy. And then you only have side-grades, minor upgrades, and big upgrades that are deliberately much harder than anything else to get.
You mean counting cards and math. If you know how to use the math behind it and are able to do it in your head you’re automatically in the pro ranges.
Next we have the psychological factor of bluffing.
Then comes the luck.
That’s poker.
Which is why I mentioned roulette since those aspects don’t exist there.
A diablo-clone with ‘getting the drop’ has enforced mandatory progression rates though. Make it RNG hell and not a single person will look at your game and say ‘yeah, it’s good’. If you make your progression wrong in the other direction people will say ‘great game!’ and are suddenly gone to never come back since it’s ‘done’.
The problematic arises solely by the time that the exponential curve pushed too high. The cut-off point is different for everyone.
And unlike your argument it’s never a ‘if I can get something’ but only a ‘when’. The variance produces solely tension for the brain which causes a dopamine output when it finally happens as you’re not sure when exactly.
The higher the variance the higher the dopamine rush.
Too high dopamine rush is baaaaaaaad, really… reaaaaally baaaad. Because not only causes it addiction easily - which is the last thing for games to do, they’re naturally addictive by design already, no need to expedite it further - but it also causes every following situation to feel inadequate to that one experience you had.
It’s called ‘hero syndrome’ in psychology, when a singular experience causes everything else to seem like a lesser version. That causes long-lasting severe depression. Not good at all… baaaaad design.
Yes, because the gameplay itself was decently made. Progression was constant and it was built around accessibility for shorter-term engagement then for example Path of Exile. This caused a massively higher player-count for a while before the majority of the market went in and out of it, leaving nobody to pick it up again afterwards.
This is solely a difference in short-term versus long-term retention of players. Path of Exile focuses on the same old players from 10 years ago to come back today still and play their game.
Diablo 3 was never cut out from a design-standpoint to allow that.
This makes Path of Exile a more successful product then Diablo 3.
So yes, by the same metric:
ADOM being played long-term like it happened for ToMe it effectively is a more successful product then ToMe, at least until development for ADOM stopped while ToMe didn’t stop it, by then it switched.
It was a new genre.
That genre itself is enjoyable, tactical combat, making use of limited resources. It inspired a whole slew of iterations after to improve the initial concept for that exact reason, with one of the world-wide biggest open-source gaming projects in existence (CDDA)
Yes, also nobody eagerly picks up games from the Playstation 1 era nowadays. You know why? Because they aged badly.
RNG is the same thing. It’s not done in this way anymore because people found out there’s better options available which don’t lead you to loose for factors outside of your control. People like to be in control, especially in video games since many don’t have control over their lives outside properly.
Don’t need that inside a game on top.
Often for a lack of alternatives and not as advanced game design methodology.
Once again, cutting off the extremes from a bell-curve does not increase or reduce the total amount of outcomes, it just causes those outcomes to be slightly more evenly given out.
For 99% of playthroughs it has no meaning, for those 1% of playthroughs it’s instead not being screwed over.
Yes, but the vast extremes don’t have any reason for existence by design. They’re a side-effect, not a intended thing. A math problem.
Which is why you don’t change the roll-range but cut of the edge cases instead.
Heck, if it’s about normalization in total you can even add a buffer-zone into the equation to cause it to only trigger for more extreme events from the get-go, hence making sure the intended variance range itself isn’t affected while only reigning in the absolute utmost extremes.
And your argumentation position also doesn’t come from the guy which gets screwed over but instead wanting to big buck payout of 10 lucky draws in a row. Which is understandable… but a single one does the same thing as the dopamine release from the brain stops to a vast degree anyway with repeated outcomes.
How do you know how it feels if you don’t even understand the difference between roll-range and equalization?!
Look up how a bell curve works, cut off at roughly the 3% point, done. It’s not the place you’re even in or will ever be!
Not even worth a case-study, it’s known.
Results from even the early 1900’s support that when the first major psychological tests were done with lab rats related to how dopamine, engagement and addiction works.
The common human doesn’t do anything which showcases no results.
The common human falls into addiction if they have a non-optimal social environment and too easy ways to release dopamine. (Drugs, sugar, sport, video games… no difference for our brain)
Hence from that we can derive that dopamine deprivation over longer time usually leads to a lack of interaction, which relates directly to the increasing timeframes between good item drops.
You’re simply far beyond the normative curve, you’re an outlier of an outlier there. You’re a great case study but not a great person in that regard to create a live-service game for.
I would argue the need to cause high long-term (looong is the specific there) player retention goes over the need of a 1% inside the potential long-term player inside the whole group.
Yes, then pretty much everything is just a time investment. You will get it. Just a question when. So by your argument that means you are hence deprived of the enjoyment.
Which I don’t think holds true. Somewhere there’s a logical error and the underlying situation causing the behavior is actually a little bit different. If ‘A’ and ‘B’ are mutually exclusive then there’s another reason to cause this, the question is just ‘what’.
In that case I think it’s ‘perception’ and hence as long as your perception isn’t changed it won’t affect you.
Which holds true in general though.
Where are you getting that from?
That argument would mean my chance to get a optimal outcome is above 50%, which is not true.
The system has the same success chance as the old one. All that was changes is the perception, the math was kept the same.
Hence while the old system had states which could cause the item to break or even downgrade (whoever thought that was a good idea to do? Goes against basic game design for engagement outside of gambling addiction prone people) the new one removed the roll-range.
This is the exact wrong way to handle that as I’m stating repeatedly now with the difference between changing roll ranges (changes the bell curve entirely) versus eualization.
Changing the bell-curve causes one outcome to stay the same… but if you move along the whole spectrum every single divergent outcome in total has a different chance to happen. More items are purely in the middle and less in the extremes. For a rare drop you need those ‘light’ extremes though.
A equalization only cuts off the very very extreme areas, the ‘light’ ones aren’t touched. Hence the chance for a ‘critical success craft’ has been reduced overall compared to the old system.
So the new system is factually worse then the old one but perceived as more reliable, the absolute opposite. And this is part of the current fallout of why people complain.
Hence my solution to it is to at least cause the end-point of the bell-curve to be cut off since the worst possible outcomes are shifted to a potential possible craft this way while the most successful ones are shifted to a very successful one a bit while not affecting the whole middle-range in any way.
Unlike what EHG did.
Yes, which is faulty since it doesn’t apply to the existing 50% tipping point but the overall 50% possibility range without taking into consideration the actual state.
I can only repeat… faulty system. Bad math. Bad design.
The LP system is not due to a rework for a while. It functions in relativity better compared to the acquisition+crafting aspect of exalted bases. Hence no, I don’t think people would reasonably demand this until the chances becoming skewed into the other direction.
That’s adjusting roll ranges. So no.
Exact opposite.
Once more, look up what a bell-curve is. Create your own. Change the roll-range. Then instead cut off the 5% mark from the initial one. Compare them. Then talk about it again.
It’ll solve itself this way as it’s visualized.
Yes, exactly, that’s more like it.
We currently have a bell-curve with… let’s say 1 billion points of outcome. (Because that’s the variance of different possible rolls to happen, bases + affixes + change to drop +…, the number is higher)
Now you take the most extreme 20 million from both edges and remove them.
These outcomes are hence evenly distributed between all other possible outcomes (doesn’t change shape of the curve)
That’s then the result. The 1-20million don’t exist, the 980million-1billion don’t exist.
Those are the values you personally won’t ever experience. Those are the ‘I get hit by lightning twice’ chances. That are those not affecting the lucky people because they won’t even be able to perceive it but darn well do affect the ones which are unlucky because their luck is still crap but not abysmally so.
With the chance of the universe spontaneously combusting, yes. Agreed.
Which once again leads back to the PoE example… also nothing guaranteed hence. What makes the difference?
Because… it’s not a lucky hit?
Duh?
For it to be lucky you need to be an outlier.
Hence why equalization and not roll-range.
Keeps outliers existing. Hence lucky hits existing.
Does a boatload for the lower end though.
Yes, you get your 0,005% drop still, no worries. Just the 0,004% unlucky roll or lucky roll won’t exist then. Imperceptible difference for the upper end, perceptible for the lower end.
Yeah, I really hope they don’t follow that one then unless they wanna screw up their game. Because it’s a guaranteed way to do that.
Large affix roll includes more tiers, which includes more variance, which includes more design space, which includes a smoother progression curve, which includes a perceived later drop-off for time investment compared to now.
That’s my ‘we need for tiers and we need a 3/3 affix split’ argument.
That’s ‘positive RNG’, it changes the time-investment curve to be vastly more smooth. Which is the direct result.
Which is why I’m saying can we please stay at relatable aspects and not some random stuff which has entirely different effects despite similar measures?
Once again.
Take 2 bell-curves.
For 1 change rolls.
For one cut of edges.
Lay them over each other and compare.
Here you go, that’s your answer, I can’t make it more clear if you don’t understand how a bell-curve works in math.
That’s like saying ‘since it’s on sale now I safe money!’ No… you spend money, just less.
Absolutely. If you don’t understand what ‘law of big numbers’ means then it’s a ‘no’. Otherwise it’s a ‘yes’. I really can’t argue when a extra extra extreme ‘if’ statement doesn’t get through. There is no basis to work with then.
Last Epoch and Path of Exile are different experiences.
First of all… Last Epoch deprives the player of creating the goal items. Which is an entirely different aspect of ‘it’s unrealistic to invest so much effort into a specific item’ which is a one of a kind to be never seen again.
You know, people play for 1… 2… 3… years to create a very specific item in path of Exile, owning the original as the only person and getting bloody rich from hundreds others copying it since it took 5000+ hours of pure effective farming time to even create.
In both cases you ‘can’ get any item. In one it has a factor for effort included since the possibility of a raw drop is basically non-existent, like 10 4 LP red rings dropping for a single person. The other just is a blind chase.
People expedite effort. Few enjoy blind chases.
It’s not even a question between both.
You always have a few outliers, the aimless ones are just less likely then the ones driven because there several factors can play into creating that drive.
It affects a singular variable in one moment of time, it’s doesn’t interact with other existing functions.
It doesn’t interlock, it’s an expansion of a existing state, the cases in which a outcome happens in which other areas are affected are solely there if people made atrocious spaghetti code that’s never been looked at, didn’t document right or you mess up the syntax.
Which is why I’m saying refractory pass.
You make a new function.
You implement that function in a singular space.
You test the function.
If no issues arrive after initial short testing and some short specific cases you roll it out (easily retractable after all)
If it causes no issue you change the other systems based on the old function gradually over to the new one besides other jobs.
That’s why it’s refractory.
So, your case example compared to mine…
Yours:
Let’s have this I don’t know how many thousands line long monolith of code which has to properly interact with my I don’t know how many thousands line long monolith of code and make it work.
Mine:
Let’s add 2 functions. Not an integration, not a new major implementation. No. You got your RNG generator and instead of giving the output value raw you send it over, pass it through, then give the output.
Because that’s the difference.
Not even comparable… because that’s how small the proposed change is…
And that’s the gist here. For crafting evaluation such a integration doesn’t need responsiveness. If you get a 5ms longer line of code it doesn’t matter. The cadence of usage is so small that it has no meaning.
For item drops it does, that needs to go fast, but for crafting? Why would you even consider it unless it takes up more then 100ms?
First of all, ‘winging it’ depends on the scale of the change. How many systems does it interact with? How big is the scale of the change?
Obviously I’ll work something out when making a big mechanic which has to interact with 50 other things at the same time while making sure that checks are done properly in-between.
If I need to solely put some type of code in which I know how it functions, how long it takes and it only interacts with 1 singular thing… not 2… not 3… not 100… then the approach of talking it through with the whole team before even seeing if it could work is utterly moronic. I go ahead and make it, compile it before going for lunch and afterwards show it as a finished result.
Expedites the process. And we’re not working with a real-time environment here, I hope EHG has a proper and at least basic testing environment as well as rollback function if something screws up. Like a game-dev should have.
Yep, and the company still didn’t manage it… for months.
Months.
‘Ohhh… programming is so hard, woe me!’ Yeah, programming is hard, it’s damn hard. But whining into your customers ears about such stuff has become for some reason a bit of a norm nowadays, and it baffles me.
As a customer? I don’t give a single damn.
I also don’t give a damn about the construction worker having to repair a pothole at 35C° outside. I don’t care about the fisher having to be on a boat when it storms. You pick a job and take not only the positives but also the negatives of the segment. Not talking about crap superiors or wrongly managed systems there.
If you can’t do that baseline then you better quit and search for another job. And the job of a dev-team is to sit together, see how long something will take, add a good 50% to it at least for a deadline since stuff will go wrong massively that has never been expected and by the end you deliver.
If overhead is in the way to deliver a quality product by the end of the time then it’s the overhead’s fault.
Sure, stuff exists for a reason. But more then often those overhead systems turn out to be a vast hindrance causing massive detriments and not the reliable needed upsides they’re promising to do.
Why do you think so many layoffs happen in gaming? Mismanagement to a vast degree. Big companies tend to be utterly and entirely bloated. Any team beyond 5 people begins to be. You can’t say ‘but we need all those safety measures!’ when it’s a game and not friggin CrowdStrike.
Management is supposed to cause efficient work environments, if it does the opposite then it needs to be re-evaluated, simple as that. Optimally externally, optimally from more then one external contractor to have more then a single perspective there as well.
You can’t excuse shit outcomes by saying ‘but nearly every bigger company does it’. Yeah, we know! Nearly every company also struggles nowadays since they’re not adjusting to a changed market with a changed outlook on how work should be with a overaged structure above that doesn’t even know what the people below them actually do because they learned ‘management’ and have never actually done the work… which sadly is the norm.
And then we have shitty products at the end and ‘nobody’ is responsible for it. Too tight deadline? Should’ve put it further back to ensure a working product. Animations suck? Well, either the ones giving the orders did crap or the devs themselves didn’t give a shit. It’s simply no excuse for it. Someone screwed up and that’s the one simple thing companies forgot, taking responsibility.
The balance change is non-existent. The distribution even stays the same.
It’s nonsensical to even think about.
It has no major effect.
It’s just a really… reaaaaaally miniscule thing to even do which affects a few people which have a worse experience otherwise and not being visible for anyone at all otherwise.
This is such a small thing and we already don’t know the exact way how drops are handled. Just make it a shadow-patch, don’t even mention it. Done.
Yeah, in context it becomes a lot more sensible.
Like learning a unknown coding language on the side to implement it afterwards. I would say allowing a day to get the hang of something entirely new and still providing the outcome is acceptable
This was also why I quit this cycle after not much time. Got to level 95 or somewhere along there but at this point, I want to get the RIGHT unique so it comes down to boss drops.
-I start pushing corruption, monolith stability, etc to fight the boss and get the drop. Does not happen. A few weeks go by… still working on desired item NUMBER 1. I have WAY more play time than really casual players for this sort of game but it always comes back to… I have more respect for myself and my time than to keep running on the same ole hamster wheel getting nowhere. I ditch so I can play something where my time is better rewarded.
NOTE: not even mentioning getting the right affix moved over/LP.
I love a lot of their ideas and wish them the best. I will not play something though that awards me nothing after weeks of trying. I mean… I’m never trying to get something SUPER elusive to begin with.
I read books for a living, yet I cannot get through any of his posts, I lose focus after the first 20 lines or so.
That is kinda sad, because it feels like he actually has good arguments.
Maybe someone should publish a readable weekly summary or something…
