Refining at a 3% chance of success was already a form of torture. Dealing with the RNG - even if it were working correctly (which it is not and never has) an average of 33 times to make a single R12 enchantment has always been boring, tedious, frustrating and utterly pointless. All we want to do is dump 33 preservation wards into the enchantment and get a guaranteed success. The occasional relief of getting an early success is in no way a balancing counterpoint to the mind-numbing, infuriating monotony of a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long string of failures. Just let us use the appropriate amount of preservation wards to get guaranteed successes. That, or increase the minimum success change to 10% so the long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long strings of failure won't be quite so soul-deadening.
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In terms of things I think they would actually consider....they should use the fancy new RP conversion window process...in which it shows you crits and stuff, and just say "Ok, you put 100 P wards in, click Refine once, and it will automatically keep going till you either succeed or run out of wards". This wouldn't be terrible, as you'd only have to see failures 1 time and accept how many wards you lost. This is better than seeing 40-50-60 failures and then 1 success, and deals with the problem of perception that causes this to be a painful process. I saw 86 failure messages on a 3% chance before I got the 1 success. So every single time you refine, you are getting negative responses, and the small amount of joy you get from the positive response isn't even close to making up for it.
As it stands, I don't think I will even make it to full 13s (that 86 ward loss killed me). The benefit isn't there anymore (it barely was before I guess). This from someone who has been BIS for the last 5-6 MODs.
E.g. 3% chance on your first pres-ward, 4% on the next, then 5% etc.
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And then someone will say "but we have coalescent wards for that" but at 500k per coal ward it isn't feasible and shouldn't be the only option on a 10% upgrade.
i am not going to even start with the lockboxes
End game stuff needs to be torturous experience I guess and once you are there and spent what you have spent to get there.. there is no real need for them to be accommodating is there?
They could then add blue, purple, orange, and teal wards to the list, adding larger % chance of success for each tier.
I never understood why we were stuck with either 1% (no ward) or 100% (coal) with the wards.
It would be nice if the design allowed you to pay the expectation value in preservation wards for a guaranteed success (your suggestion). If they won't make that design change, then here's a usability suggestion:
Option to automatically keep refining until either a) success, or b) out of preservation wards. Use the most-bound preservation wards first. I disagree that the RNG isn't balanced in the long run. Several years ago, I recorded a large number of success/failure on many 10% upgrade chances. Using a Student T-Test with the hypothesis "the upgrade chance is 10%," the confidence that my results agree with the hypothesis is > 95%.
Unscientifically, I believe the RNG is streaky, if fair in the long run. That's a common problem with software (pseudo-)random number generators. Here's a discussion.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
Just about anyone who has done a fair amount of refining has come up with some stupidstitious process to try to work around the terrible system. Whether they work or not, who knows.
i.e. for current 3% chance, replace that as adding 33 "p-ward" marks as the input material for upgrade.
With it being such a core aspect of the game I think they should take some time and make it more user friendly.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
I tested the RNG by a different method (normal approximation to binomial, 95% of results within 2 standard deviations, 99% within 3, and yes I had enough trials to do this) and over a goodly number of 2xRP weekends NEVER found my results within 2 SDs and rarely within 3, I was consistently taking 20-30% more attempts than I should.
That said some of the outliers were startling (71 attempts for a 20% this 2xenchs).
That said...i got a 3% in 4 wards last night. Praise rngesus I guess.
Lets assume the odd is even out in long run. i.e. 3% is indeed 3% in long run. Say, if you do upgrade 3% 10 times and put them all together is indeed 3% in average, what is the point doing that? Is there some entertainment value I do not see?
The cost will be the same, 330 p-wards.
Without RNG, 330 p-wards (as marks).
With RNG, 330 p-wards + got frustrated 980 times.
If we assume everyone has a limited daily playtime, and we spend an hour of it every day with these menial tasks (like upgrading 3% items or buying mats with GMs) - that's an extra two weeks (a year) they can put off distributing new content because it'll take us that much longer (real time) to complete what they've already distributed. Hopefully that means an extra 2 weeks vetting new content, not just putting it off.
Another, more visible purpose is that it makes us feel like we "need" to purchase things like Coalescent Wards; either with Zen (RL cash) or AD (RL time again).
And a third, less tangible result: Realistically, the kind of torture that RNGs cause is short lived compared to the "I WIN" feeling when we finally accomplish the task. That creates a RL attachment to our characters because we put so much time and effort into their creation, which makes it far less likely we'll leave the game.
There is nothing wrong with the math of pseudo random and good luck trying to find a pattern. However, it is my opinion, random should be removed from these games and you should be informed what you will get before you go on any quest. I could give examples but that would be addressing other game titles and this forum is about Neverwinter.
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I will argue that RNG is broken as implemented. Something with a 3% chance will perhaps truly be 3% over 10,000 tries, but to the individual trying to upgrade something and failing 200 times in a row it's a fail.
Why design a system that will make some players extremely unhappy and the lucky few that succeed in 10 tries very happy. It's just stupid. Keep all your players reasonably happy.