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Why is RNG suddenly bad?
scorpagor
Posts: 607 Arc User
I've seen a lot of people saying that they don't like how the rare token drops in rampages are random. But isn't that how most, if not all, rare drops in the game work?
Some folk who are way better at math than I am have stated that justice gear is only a minor upgrade to legion gear and for some builds it's even inferior. So it seems to me that justice gear is kind of like a novelty item like Therakiel's Blade (said to be the rarest drop in the game).
People happily open lockboxes left and right for a chance to get legion gear or rare costume parts (remember the sharkfin set?), but free-to-play missions with rare drops are considered unfair?
And yes, I know that justice gear also requires drifter salvage to buy, but the complaints mostly seem to come from the randomly generated token drop rates.
So why do get people angry over this now, when the RNG mechanic has always been here?
Some folk who are way better at math than I am have stated that justice gear is only a minor upgrade to legion gear and for some builds it's even inferior. So it seems to me that justice gear is kind of like a novelty item like Therakiel's Blade (said to be the rarest drop in the game).
People happily open lockboxes left and right for a chance to get legion gear or rare costume parts (remember the sharkfin set?), but free-to-play missions with rare drops are considered unfair?
And yes, I know that justice gear also requires drifter salvage to buy, but the complaints mostly seem to come from the randomly generated token drop rates.
So why do get people angry over this now, when the RNG mechanic has always been here?
Post edited by scorpagor on
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The major peeve is putting in your 100% in the alert like everyone else in the team and not getting a token while one or two lucky members in the team do, even though you've contributed as much as them to get the alert done successfully.
The requirement of drifter salvage is also unavoidably a factor here.
Costume pieces exclusively found in lairs / rampage alerts may be random, but monetary investment is not an additional requirement to get them. They are not fairly comparable to the RNG involved with Justice gear because of that.
Seems your roll modifier allowed your not-a-response post to go through at least. :biggrin:
It's all downhill from here though, thanks to that pesky DR.
OTOH, I can certainly see how that would be enraging to someone who actually wants the gear..
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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RNG for gear in other games is an important aspect of that game AND you are not required to pony up a currency that can only be acquired through spending real money. Those game also let you trade or sell really nice items to other players. +1 to socializing and / or in game economy
Justice gear is a weird combination of winning and buying instead of earning. I think it's more a huge letdown in how you acquire the gear not entirely the RNG aspect.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Agreed with all of this, especially the "letdown" part. I think RNG is terrible in general, so it's not a case of "suddenly" bad for me personally. When the process for acquiring Justice Gear was first described, it sounded like they had made it obtainable without being subject to luck, which would've been great--and only made it even more disappointing to have it hidden behind a huge luck-grind.
The in-game economy part is important here as well. As far as I can think of, every desirable item in-game (costumes, great gear, devices, auras, etc.) can be traded to other players--EXCEPT for tokens or Justice Gear. There is literally no other way to get it, which sets it apart from other RNG-subject drops.
I'm just going to point out that you can buy crates of drifter salvage (containing 10 salvage each) from the AH or other players, using G or keys.
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Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
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Most costume drops are Bind on Equip. You don't need to be lucky to get one -- just grind up enough Globals, and you can buy one from another player. So costume drops are also backstopped against losing streaks.
In real life, casinos "comp" (compensate) high rollers by providing free food, drinks, and lodging in return for their continued patronage.
The Justice Gear tokens however have no backstop at all. There is no guarantee that you will get enough tokens to buy a complete set in a reasonable amount of time, and you cannot trade with other players. Furthermore, four separate tokens means that if you get a losing streak in any one of them, you will be blocked from obtaining Justice Gear.
I do agree that there needs to be a backstop in the form of some sort of Rampage credit. I would probably set to about 20-30 Rampage credits per token. Additionally, I think that the Rampage credits should be redeemable for any of the Justice tokens since there is a high likelihood that you will be coming up short in at least one of them.
EDIT: It has also occurred to me that while losing streaks aren't backstopped for Justice tokens, winning streaks are in the form of reduced drop rates if a character gets a token during a rampage cycle. (Yes I have plenty of alts, but only a few are really good at rampages.)
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
My personality type is that I like to be able to see myself making steady progress towards a goal. Farming Q, while time consuming, is something I can live with because the progress is visibly steady. The RNG aspect leaves me cold because it's so unpredictable. I might do 10 runs in a row and play a key role in the success of a team and get only Q, but in another I might die a lot and not be as useful but end up with a token by sheer luck. Still, I think about a month's worth of Rampages will be enough for me to equip the character I care about the most with the JG. After that I'll do Rampages much more casually and to help out Rampagers needing to fill teams.
Those who have good 'luck' get items, others with bad 'luck' do exactly the same things and don't get anything.
I come into .. group 2. for F&I and Gravitar
but on the other hand,
Sh*t happens, deal with it, get over it, get on with your life.
If I get the tokens, I'll get the gear. If I don't , I won't.
I get frustrated ever day at work,so it's no different to normal for me.
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games are entertainment... wich is meant to make people feel better... but nowdays games make you feel frustrated.. that sad
You have no idea how many times game developers and large corporations and mmorpg developers forget this exact thing.
If you can't walk away from a game feeling better then when you went in, then something is wrong with that game. Might I take a potshot at some of our oldest arcades where people would gather around and watch some random guy attack levels with epic speed and precision, and even if he dies the crowd was entertained and the player walked away feeling accomplished.
I don't think many games now adays as compared to the 80 and early 90s actually care much about theyre players feeling better after playing their games.
Perhaps something like the current dailies for the custom alerts that reward silver champ rec would work, whenever the rampages swap have a mission to do said rampage that gives you one token.
They could even give it a three day cool down so you could only do it once per rampage per cycle but at the least that first win would be sure to get you a token.
Personally I kinda think they would get more money if people got the tokens faster, I for one wouldn't go out of my way to get the 10 salvage I need until after I get the tokens, so if I got tokens faster I'd be buying keys faster.
Ideally we would have content that would take way longer to complete (drastically lower runs per day) but also have much higher chance at a drop. But I'm guessing that the devs already knew that.
They just don't have the resources to pull it off and are doing the best they can with what they've got.
Edit:
Actually if you compare this to UNITY gear, when that was the highest end stuff a long time ago, the grind is far less brutal.
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My 4-character roster can manage up to 16 runs a day - roughly 4 hours of Sky Command nonstop, if needed. I've settled for a more comfortable quota of 3 of each token per rampage rotation to balance with RL though, and that's very doable with 4 runs per day per alt.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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If you think about it, it makes sense for PWE:
What runs rampages best? Freeforms with vehicles.
Who has lots of Freeforms? Gold, LTS or people who shell out lots of Z for FF slots.
What happens if you make content that favours lots of Freeforms? PROFIT!
Actually that makes no sense since Gold and LTS get free character slots. If they were banging on hoping people buying more alt slots this certainly wasn't the method and this doesn't mean increased profit. It just means their method of trying to slow people down from powering up their main totally failed... again... thanks to people just being able to skirt the system by alting. They don't make anymore or any less money than they would have if they left it as is. In fact the net margin probably remains $0 as nothing really changed, and in fact the bottom line could actually be hurt by people that don't want to make alts to 40 are annoyed and leave instead.
No, this isn't going to net profits, in fact it's done more to piss people off than actually inspire them to run around on alts. few people bother to deck their alts out to begin with, and fewer still even bother to get them to level 40.
If they want profits they know what needs to be done; costumes, emote packs, new content not more ****ing vehicles and random chance BS that still requires me to put money down even as a lifer to be able to unlock in the first place.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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You mean to say you are 100% sure no inactive players came back and/or went from Silver to Gold, or Silver to LTS, or bought new Freeform slots for the Rampage revamp?
Zone activity tends to speak louder volumes than anything else. If you think there was a jump in sales because of the rampage revamp, I think that is a complete stretch. In fact I would be more willing to bet that revenue hasn't changed because there's nothing to buy, and a few people are actually contemplating leaving all together because of the RNG.
Face it, you are trying to make this horrid system sound good because you got your main already decked out. Whoopty fricken do, you were able to skirt the rules of the system because Cryptic only cared far enough to put a limiter in but not limit it to the entire account. But what about the other people that can't or haven't had the fricken luck like you did? You can ride that gravy train of thought as long as you want, but alting isn't an answer either as there are people who have tried and still come up with bunk. I know, I went 4 days without getting a single token myself with people like yourself claiming tokens are a guaranteed drop on your first go. You aren't appeasing people who haven't had it as good as you have, you are only making yourself look bad and quite frankly annoying people that have been putting tons more effort for jack squat.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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I come in and out of this game alot, and, I gotta say at 50 bucks a pop I am in no way rushing to buy those slots. Got enough bills as is, so subbing is a no, especially since I occasionally skip entire months without playing at all. Lifetime would be great, that is if I had faith this game would be around long enough for another 10 years then sure. I mean the idea of Lifetime subscription kind of loses its weight when a Lifetime only mean X amount of years, but I digress.
What makes you so sure that a majority of the playerbase actually chat in zone to even make that assertion?
I'm not in support of the Rampage RNG but let's not resort to throwing out wild claims here, especially when we have no access to Cryptic's financial records.
It's simple, you can see total activity in the game just by clicking the swap zone feature. It tells you how many zones there are and how many people are in them. It's been a good measuring stick for quite sometime, and not a mystery. There is not a zone you can't look at through the search feature either. In fact, if the zone doesn't appear on the list, that means there are none active. Zone activity started out high with On Alert as people toed the water, but it's dropped back down to where it normally sits at, which says activity hasn't changed much.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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The number of zones do not equate to people in the zones actually participating in zone chat to give their personal opinions about the game.
As brought up many times in the past, the number of zones you see at the time is just a snapshot view. They do not account for players who aren't online during personal downtime periods and for players who are in alerts / other instances at that time. It isn't a good or even reliable measuring stick at all.
So how is not seeing total game activity, all of the sudden, not an adequate measurement of how many people are actively playing the game. And this is watching from peak time hours. These are not snap shots either as the activity numbers change constantly and they can be refreshed to instantly see how much change has occurred.
Seriously, if I were to do this same looking in the wee hours of the morning there would be 4 zones active, just like now, but most of them wouldn't even be close tot eh 50 player mark and one or even two of them might not even be in the teens.
So again, how is that not an accurate representation of the state of the games activity? In fact I can state that activity was higher the first couple of days of the new Rampage patch, but activity has fallen back down to the pre-Rampage levels. So again, how is this not a fair an accurate representation of game activity when it demonstrates fully how active the game is?
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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You cannot judge "total" game activity by what you're seeing at that specific time, considering that active game time differs from player to player. What you were seeing was current game activity at that specific time. It is unmistakeably a snapshot or as some call it, "eyeballing". It is not concrete data.
If you want total game activity then you'd have to include the total number of active players who have been recently and regularly playing and that includes players who are online in all instances at the time and also those who are offline due to RL at the time. There is no way to properly gauge that without some sort of dedicated monitoring tool that is able to track individual player activity if even one exists.
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised they ran an FF slot or 3-month sub sale once the initial rush of Rampage runs dies down, with a sales pitch along the lines of "power up to defeat the Rampagers!" or something.
I don't think it's skirting the rules of the system. Tokens are BTA; Justice Gear is BTC and that hasn't changed for 20ish days, unlike Sky Command drops and Vehicle nerfs. If they change tokens to BTC in the next PTS patch you'd have a point there (and I wouldn't mind that change either).
Also, my point is that it's not luck, but law of large numbers. I got 1 Ignimbrite and 1 Bearing the first cycle, but 5 of each the second cycle. If I were to make a guesstimate, I would say the droprate before DRs kick in should be around 10%. At 10% it's entirely possible to have terrible luck and not see a single drop per cycle. Sadly, with DRs it means you can get a drop on Day 1 but there's no chance, or less chance of a streak. It's certainly not fair to players with a single character but it's fairly trivial to get an alt to 40 and geared up.
That's what I observed too, and I also observed the price of Fire Ants in the AH went up, the price of Plasma Beam Mk2 shot up to 900g and Legion Gear has been going up in price as well.
From what I've seen of other MMOs, the endgame population is usually around 5-10% of the entire game's population, so an increase in endgame players won't really have a big impact on zone population.
However, with the F2P model, this is the kind of player PWE is targeting. If one player got their **** kicked as an AT bought an FF slot, then a bunch of keys to dump into the AH and Q exchange to get full Legion + Vigilante gear and a Fire Ant to powerlevel to 40, that's PROFIT!
I know a few people retconned their characters just for the Rampages during the initial wave too.
I personally would prefer a more sustainable, and arguably, more ethical model myself, but I've seen enough of CO to know that's not how the game rolls. You've been around for a while, so I'm sure you know their MO:
And I know they're making money because this has been going on for a while
Rampages simply create a demand for more power - and you can't deny that players will buy power if you look at how vehicles are moving from the AH since they started. It's a way to push the 1% of whales, or the wider 10% of the population that pays, to buy more.
And I'll agree that taking snapshots of Zone population counts is very imperfect at best as it's based on assumptions.
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That bolded part in your post is a really far-fetched claim.
Actually it's more to do with this.
1500Q, cheap skank wear(gave it to someone else)
1200Q, necklace(gave it to someone else)
900Q, vest (kept it)
so about 20 runs so far and not a single token from her .
on the PTS, plasma beams- stacks to 25 will do double, 26-50 single damage, nothing for all the rest.
so , no more stacks to 250.
That should lengthen some rampages a bit
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If it helps any, one theory that I heard*, is that token drops are actually determined per instance and then distributed among players in that instance. If all players are on DR, everyone has an equal chance. Otherwise, players not on DR are given priority.
I have noticed that I tend to get better luck on the last day. 2 out of 4 of my characters could get a drop on the last day, or one character can get a drop twice in a row in the same day. However, I have not tested this enough to conclusively confirm or deny.
If that's true though, if playing a single character, it may be worth it to run conservatively on day 1 and 2, then go all out on day 3 if there's still no token, since there's a higher chance that there will be players on DR on day 3 so you are higher on the priority list.
*Disclaimer: I am not liable for personal harm, rage, lost hair etc etc as a result of speculative theories
Oh for craps sake, there is no theory there is just guesses. The tokens are not determined by anything. They are determined by random chance that has a diminishing return per cycle. TrailTurtle has already told us how it works. It has a diminishing return per cycle, like people who were reading from the first onset of this system, already read and stated, the few of us.
The drop rate of this token decreases as you go on, and by the sounds o fit from how TrailTurtle answered the question, the diminishing return value starts from your first rampage all the way until that particular rampage is done and it's next reset, so it's all based on luck. There is no guaranteed drop. There is no make believe you will get a token at least once per cycle if you wish really hard enough. It's 100% luck based.
I think it is skirting the rules and here's why. They obviously intended for this token to be rare and gear not to be easily earned. After all Cryptic is well aware that alts are typically not something players actually work on as much compared to their main character. So, if the intent was to keep these items rare, why the horrendous drop rate on one character with a BoA token, or even why make the token BoA at all? Why make the gear BoP? Seriously, if people can bypass the delayed time reaction to get this stuff why even have the stop gate horrendous DR on the system itself as it stands? You want to know why? Because Cryptic doesn't want to be bothered or they can't fix the problem of alts that this system would cause and instead of making the tokens BoP like they should have, they left em BoA and the end result is people that can exploit the system (and I know people don't like that word but that's what it is) basically are done and finished and have their mains geared but the rest of the people that don't have that luxury because we think leveling dozens of alts to cap is boring as hell are basically given the finger.
Your point demonstrates why it's wrong, not how you are able to get more for less. You demonstrate whole heartedly why this is an insult to the players that hate alting, and you demonstrate why your constant crowing and nagging about your alting doesn't serve to inspire other players but insult them. Also, it is very much luck. Trying to hand wave a luck based system by throwing new characters at it that aren't effected by the DR is still luck. You can try to slice the pit any which way you want, but luck is fricken luck.
And I still contend that the net increase is $0. They are making money but they didn't have any noticeable change since this update, and because of how unfair this random system is (and don't even try to pretend it's not) I am sure they might actually have lost players, something they can't even afford to do.
Vehicles never really moved from the AH. The demand was rarely there hence why they never sat in large quantities. This rampage update moved a few new vehicles but otherwise the only people that bothered were the ones that already had them the rest just stuck to a hover disk. And players want more power for their characters. Not some arbitrary become device. Vehicles are the one thing that should be deleted because it's an obvious money sink in development time they are still trying to recoup the loss on, otherwise they still wouldn't be wasting our time with them.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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You don't have access to Cryptic's financial records and here you are making claims about their net increases being zero and that they're actually recouping from a loss from the development of vehicles, which doesn't even make sense since they have been continuing with development of new vehicles time and again. If vehicles were really such a money sink that didn't bring in profits then they would have stopped long ago and tried a different approach.
Seriously, just stop making up facts from assumptions. Also, leave my vehicles alone.
This is what Trailturtle actually said:
So it doesn't start from your first Rampage, but your first token. Very big difference there.
In other words, they designed the system that way, but if you use it that way, it's an exploit?
Ok this is just a bunch of insults so I don't really need to counter this point.
See Jenny's post.
So if vehicles were so profitable, since they are unrelated to our characters and just a glorified become device that uses completely different stats from our characters and powers, tell me are we goong to finally get an expansion to CO with all new content instead of glorified rampages that add nothing really to the game world as a whole? Are we going to get an update like STO did with their Romulan expansion something called like Dr. Destroyer's Revenge that might add new dungeon content for those of us that like those things or are we just going to see more lobby based game designs with instant queue rampages?
How about a continuation of that story line that has been left in limbo for what, two years now since the end of Whiteout? Are we going to see a return to the comic series or anything of that number? What about new zones and such that we have been begging for for years now? What about new power sets or powers in general? Has there been any real forward progress besides getting the rampage out that was suppose to have been released over a year ago?
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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And by the looks of it you just skimmed instead of actually reading, especially if you take the one point as an insult. Sorry but exploiting by definition is the sense of taking advantage of whether intended or not. And once again this is a loophole they've never closed whether by choice or by the fact they can't. See Questionite for that answer.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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You're under the assumption that making new zones and APs is still something that's within realistic expectation. It hasn't been that way for what, two years now?
Times have changed. The ship has sailed. It's no longer 2009. PWE / Cryptic have decided to focus on the cash shop and mini content updates that are alerts because that's the most they can work with considering the niche playerbase that we currently have. Investing a whole lot of resources in developing something that has the scope of an AP, or even a much larger scope of a zone can no longer be justified with the playerbase that we have compared to the much larger ones that actual triple-A MMO titles consist of.
Gold subscription fees, vehicle sales and whatever mini-transactions involved are primarily used to keep the game afloat, with periodic new products added to the cash shop to draw new sales and to development periodic bite-sized alerts and no longer the kind of huge content projects that you feel should be worked on. EDIT: ...even though it's something that we all would like to see outside of a pipe dream.
So the huge commitment to vehicles was such a successful move for the game that... we are now relying on vehicle sales to simply keep the game one level above maintenance mode?
Ringing, ripping, roaring success!
Maybe spending all those hours of dev time on zones, Foundry, lair improvements, more powersets, bug eradication, etc., would've kept a larger player base who could provide more funds and allow for bigger goals? We'll never know, but it's weird that so many people dismiss the possibility offhand.
If they want to create a draw and get people enthused about spending money then they do what they know they have to do; create content. New zones, new costumes, new power sets, new emote packs and working with the auras to. Continuing this lobby based game isn't going to do anything other than bleed loyalty from their player base. What's left of this player base anyways.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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No matter how greal looking and powerful a new character (or his/her ride) will be, you can run queued battles and old zones only for some time. Eventually, it will get old.
That's not a coincidence that STO got new zones for players and ships, and NW new zones in general. We have more tools for building power, but not too much to do with them.
And it applies to both vehicles and characters. A new zone with some encounters tailored more for characters, and some more for vehicles, would be nice. Or just new zone with encounters not tailored for anything in particular. Yes, it is true that players will play through it in no time. As it is in every MMO. Still, things like new zones are made in games.
So, let's say someone was successful and now has toons clad in Justice gear.
Congratulations. Now he/she can feel better street sweeping the same old faces and punching the same old legendaries... As before.
But! Icons in gear slots are different! Aaand... Numbers on the character sheet are good looking. It's a huge improvement, overall. Right?
The whole new quality of play, I'd say.
Yeah sure I'm dismissing the possibility alright, which was why after a few months after launch and for the longest time I've been making posts highlighting that the amount of content being offered was too little and that introducing new content updates regularly was crucial in player retention. You're not telling me anything new here.
I've never said that vehicles were a roaring success, but they come off as profitable and do contribute in keeping the game afloat.
So what, being able to use them as an alternative means of travel suddenly doesn't qualify?
There's a difference between what we feel they need to do and what they actually can do with the resources they have. Also the masses who have been buying vehicles to give them incentive in making new ones have already given the sign that vehicles are in demand and are profitable. Who are we, the vocal forum minority, to go against that demand, and additionally in your case, what gives you the right to decide that they shouldn't have it by suggesting that they get deleted?
An alternative means to travel.... where? Where are you going to alternatively travel to that matters? You can cross the largest zone in this game in about a minute without a power that is basically a flight become with a different texture, and people want real content. trying to claim that vehicles are real content is like trying to claim dirt is real food. It's not.
And what right do I have? Seriously you are going to try and make that bold claim? The fact that development of Champions has ground to a halt while they continue to try and fix a gaping wound with a band aid by trying to continue forcing this gimmick down on people that isn't even supported in their own game past two pieces of content out of the vast majority of content that already exists. Who am I to make these demands other than the fact I want to see Champions grow beyond gimmicky attempts to just be a cash grab, unlike you, and doesn't get instantly appeased because I got a new become device that invalidates my character I built and worked on all for the fact you want a different way to travel across a zone to begin with? Who am I to want real content over something that has done nothing but break game mechanics and waste developer resources for real content that this game has been starved for since Whiteout ended? Really?
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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If I want my flight become to have the texture of a vehicle and enjoy it being a faster means of travel compared to TPs, and that the game allows for it, then you already have your answer.
Yeah, just because I have vehicles of my own and have pointed out that others see value in the vehicles for them to be worthwhile purchases and additions to the game means that I'm against wanting to see the game grow and progress. It justifies your right to demand that vehicles be denied from the game entirely. Oh get over yourself.
Know what? Leave me out of the equation. Go convince the masses out there to stop buying vehicles outright and in doing so, will magically start getting Cryptic to begin working on new massive content like zones and APs. Have fun with that.