Spoon's thoughts - on Rare Loot Drops and RNG

* Disclaimer *
If you argue against me then it is possible that I will tear into you like a pack of wild uhm well uhm wild SotA wolves, ie kinda annoying but persistent with little to show for it. Fun fun fun. (Think chihuahua ie not dangerous at all)

Also please note that I don't grind bosses, nor do I craft high end gear. However I know a lot about game design (mostly board games) and a lot about human psyche (well mostly from a european culture PoV) and this is just Spoon giving his thougts, it is not like it is something as simple as rocket science after all. So opinions will be diverse and strong, that is the expectation.
* Disclaimer*

So since I was tagged in a loot drop topic I thought I would add some random (pun) thoughts.

I do this as a two parter, the first post is about the experience and the issues we currently have with some of that.
While the second post will be more about how other companies has solved/mitigated some of this within the entertainment/gaming/gambling industry.



First objectively a pure raw RNG (or rather PRNG but the diff is academic) is fair and results in enough lure for players to keep hitting the skinner box. But subjectively from the player perspective a pure raw RNG is a horrible experience if you have a bad RNG streak.
Where the basic issue with pure raw RNG is that if you keep playing you will have good streaks and you will have bad streaks.
Ask any semi-professional poker player how that pure raw RNG feels and then talk to them about how many semi-professional poker players end up with drinking problems and how it correlate with the streaks. Its a b*tch but at least they can subjectively tell themselves that there is skill in bluffing with an unsuited 2-7 while that objectively isn't a good strategy.



But let's talk SotA instead.

Premise 1 here - for the rest of the dialog below - assume that the RNG is not broken. I know it doesn't feel that way. But objectively the SotA RNG (or rather PRNG, again academic diff) is working as designed and within specs. The given chances results in predictably the projected result. Chris has looked into this repeatedly and all players who have done mass scale statistics say the same.
So just not to pollute the dialog - if you want to discuss a broken RNG please feel free, but please not in this topic.
(Funfact the systems using the RNG have had bugs, like the one where the comma decimal conversion made some fail 200% instead of 20%. But such bugs doesn't actually show that the RNG itself is broken, just that the systems using it sometimes are).


For the example in the topic from wich I was tagged there was a rare drop of 3.23% (I think it was hoods or something).

So I created this chart on the fly wich kinda clearly outlines the basic issue with perception vs reality.


Please note that the story is the same with crafting, but there it is in reverse with a small % failure curve from the opposite end going down.


Now in that example and with that low chance then for a fifty-fifty chance to get the rare loot drop you need to grind the boss about 21 times.

Now if you are among the lucky ones in the 1-10 percentile then odds are that if you keep going then you will likely have 2-5 rare drops before the other end on the 91-100 percentile get their first one.

That is objectively fair since you both had the same chance with the dice roll. But consider now subjectively how do you think that the gaming experience will differ between that top 15 percentile and the bottom 15 percentile.

This perception is depending on the percentile distribution in the tail end of the bad streaks where the experience is subjctively much much worse than the objective results.

Now how many players having a bad gaming weekend do you think is acceptable?

Say that you think making 10% of your player base really angry after a gaming weekend is totally OK and you feed upon their tears then look at the 90th percentile. They would have had to grind the boss 70 times for their first drop.
5% really really angry? About 91 times for their first drop.
But for that last percentile. Which means one player in every hundred. About 140 times.

Now one player in a hundred having a bad weekend doesn't sound like much. But multiply it by the amount of players and the amount weekends. Then that small 1 percentile becomes kinda large.

I know I would have been pretty miffed if after 140 times I hadn't got what everyone else got on average after 20ish times.
This is how it works when you have a raw plain RNG with no modifiers.

Now is that an OK feature?
I mean it is objectively fair, but subjectively that means ragequit inducing bad weekends coming up regularly for a large portion of the player base.




Where when we look around the entertainment and gaming/gambling industry then most entertainment based on chance (RNG) then they "fudge the dice", this since the objective experience differ from the subjective experience.

Where in games a bad enough subjective experience means you stop playing.

Now in most such games in the industry they "fudge the dice" so that the subjective and objective experience have a much greater overlap in the venn diagram.

So next post will be more about solutions, for a preview most of them have been hashed out before in these forums, as a reference here is Spoon's thoughts on gaming RNG from way back
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-application-results.97443/page-2#post-861823
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...s/rng-are-working-properly.97513/#post-859868
there you can also see some of my reasoning about why subjective eats objective for breakfast.

 

more to come
will add it in this post during the weekend sometime



Oups, forgot about this topic due to other other postings so didn't finish during the weekend. Apologies. Lets do a quick one today instead.

Here is earlier post saying some of the same things:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/crafting-failures.141426/#post-1149387



My suggestions here are four fold.

1)

Make boss drops much much rarer.
But WTF I hear you say, didn't you say they are too rare. Yes, they are too rare for something which we expect to get - but that is just it - if they were so rare that we don't expect to get them then they become Hope instead of Frustration.

Looking at other successful skinner box entertainment systems we can see this setup. We can see that the top ones has tiered successes - Win and Jackpot. With wins being rare with adrenaline rush etc, and Jackpots being much much much rarer.

Thus I propose:

Pay table - Dud - Success - Win - Jackpot​

Spoiler: Industry examples A) Slot Machines B) CCG Foils

A) Slot Machines.
So this is a fairly standard pay table.

You have a pretty good chance of getting a smaller success, typically 2-5 x ante which regularly rewards you and which keeps you playing a little bit more.
Then you have a small chance at a "Win", which is typically 50 x ante, which gives an adrenaline rush and triggers the reward centers. Especially on physical machines with coin rush.
You also have a minuscule chance of getter a much much larger "Jackpot" which is what keeps you there but you will most likely never get.
However by the way it is designed you can see those jackpot symbols roll by, and see how close you were to that big jackpot. Where even if you actually lost it gives you the feeling of having been close to winning big.

Same thing with bingo or lottery etc but the odds are different the setup is similar.

B) CCG Foils
In collectible card games you typically have cards that are common, uncommon, rare and premium. Where most cards are simply not desirable, ie 'duds'.
But on top of that you have sometimes Foil cards which are shiny glittry and much much rarer.
Combined with the above and depending on the CCG you could get a common Foil, or a premium foil, plus it could be a 'good' card or a 'dud'.

This is the same thing as the Slot Machine setup.
You open your booster, and slowly check the corners. If lucky you can now see that you got lucky and got a foil. Your heart starts racing and you hope it is something good. Now regardless of dud or good it is still foil - so you still feel like a Win, but only if it is a rare/premium, good AND foil do you start yelling like a madman, ie a Jackpot.

Shiny pokemon would be the same thing.

Spoiler: why it works

For a skinner box to maximize wetware payoff you need three things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_(brain)
Random distribution
SemiRegular payoffs
Desired payoff

However for gambling you need the ante to be low enough not to trigger your loss aversion.
Where the smaller the ante is vs the Desired payoff the lower the loss aversion is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

Where in entertainment games the loss aversion is "well, this waste a waste of time". You don't want to trigger that since that means it is less likely the player want to play again.

Spoiler: Implementation text with examples etc

So in SotA we could implement this as:

Example - Loot
So in SotA currently we have the duds (dirty boot), we have the Success (sell-able gear), but then we don't really have a Win/Jackpot division. The "wins" that we do have is the loot bags (gray, yellow, blue).
But the loot bag doesn't feel like a win, since it is common that even those are 'duds'.
While instead of jackpots we have the rare loot drop rate is about as high for you to think that you should get it if you grind enough, but actually low enough that you are not likely to get it within the expected time frame.

Where we instead want that foil feeling.

So what if there was an artifact loot bag. You know you have a "success" of a guaranteed artifact, but you don't know which one it is. Opening it could be a big "win" if it is the right one.
This gives that woot feeling, I got an artifact, but also the suspense of - oh I wonder which artifact.

Then what if we instead had for each boss drop; at least two versions?
One less powerful but slightly more common (win) which wouldn't upset balance if they came in greater numbers than now. AND at least one more powerful but super duper special (jackpot).

So going from the current rate of about 1 in 30-50 for boss drops. We instead go for 1 drop in 10. (It gives a better curve compared to time).
But that loot is a boss drop bag - we know we have a guaranteed "win" of the lesser version but opening the bag we have a 1 in 50 to hit the "jackpot" of the greater version. That means that the greater version is only dropping 1 in 500 and is truly a rare jackpot. So you wouldn't ever expect a jackpot, but you would definitely hope for it.


Example - crafting

in crafting the exceptional of any given item is typically 10-30%. That means that they are common enough that you expect them but not common enough to be wow moments. That is just a "success" really in these terms and doesn't keep us entertained. Rather over time we will be annoyed when we get a streak of not getting an exceptional because the rest are 'duds'.
While if we had an additional 1 in 500 of super exceptional. Then that would trigger that.

Suggestion: mimic the slot machine and CCG foil behavior of 'dud' > Success > Win > Jackpot system

• Create an "artifact loot bag" which gives a guaranteed artifact, but which artifact drops is random.
• For boss loot drops, make drops more common (10%) but gives instead a "boss drop bag" which gives a guaranteed lesser version of the boss drop, but which rarely (1-2%, total 0.1-02%) drops a 'jackpot' greater one.
• For crafting. On top of the existing exceptional result, we need something similar but which is 1 in 500-1000 type of event.

Over to the next suggestion

2)

When you have a random roll, sometimes you simply want to pay the 'full' price for a guaranteed win. Regardless if that is slightly more costly.

Thus I propose:

Allow Odds Hedging​

Spoiler: Industry examples A) plushy carnival wheel, B) finance

Ok so this one is less prevalent in computer games. So the examples are a bit off. But I think this is because we don't have that many double-up games out there. Where the odds are so stacked against you.

But lets look at a plushy carnival fair wheel.

You pay for X amount of slots, they spin and the winning number wins.

But the odds hedging is when you start betting on more and more slots so that you increase your odds of winning versus the number of times you could win.
For instance when the rich dude steps up, talks to the operator and for one round simply buys all the slots. So the rich dude is guaranteed a plushy, the only question is how big.

Seen many desperate parents do this for their spoiled crying child.

While in finance this is commonplace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_(finance)

You basically bet on several odds at the same time so if one fails some of the other could compensate.

Spoiler: Implementation text with examples etc

So the implementation in SotA could be.

Example for crafting.
It's frustrating having no control over the end result. But what if you can hedge the bet by paying in full to skip the RNG roll? Where the UI would tell you the exact result.
Say at your skill level you have a chance of 20% for exceptional, 10% fail and materials to make 10 swords. Due to the RNG streaks it's kinda rare to get the expected 2 exceptional out of 10 result. Instead 0-4 is kinda common.
But what if you could pre-load the material and press the [Average Result] button? So that given material for ten swords you'd ALWAYS get 2 exceptional, 7 normal and 1 fail. No roll.
Where the average result would always round down to the player's disadvantage. So with a 20% exceptional and 10% fail if you load it with material for only four swords the result would be 0 exceptional, 3 normal and 1 fail. But since you'd know that from the UI you could either load it up to 5, or simply take your chances normally.
So the net result is the same (or little less due to rounding) it takes the same amount of time, it removes the same number of resources (or slightly more due to rounding) but it becomes up to the player to take a chance or play it safe.


Example for rare drops.
How when rolling for boss drop then each 'fumble' roll would give a karma token, where fumble would be the opposite of what you needed. So if you need to roll 5% or lower, then if you rolled 96% or higher that would be a fumble. Then if you had enough karma tokens you could go to a quest giver and trade in X karma tokens for that drop BUT it was a one-time-only quest and the item you'd receive was a non-trade version.
That means that you could at least get a specific drop eventually

Or if one went with the Boss Drop Bag from the suggestion above, then what if one could trade in X number of boss bags to get a guaranteed roll.

Same thing with the blue/yellow/gray bags. Say you have a 5% chance of a bag dropping an artifact. What if we could trade in 20 such 5% bags, for a guaranteed artifact bag?

Then you could hedge against the end of the percentile tail.

Suggestion: mimic the hedge betting of plushy carnival wheels

• Allow crafting to pay in full up front for a set statistical outcome (frontload all ingredients for X crafts with a given statistical outcome instead of X rolls of RNG)
• Allow looting to trade in X number of loot bags for a guaranteed (but random) artifact
  
  • Let boss drop fumbles give non-trade karma tokens, where X tokens can be traded with a quest giver for a once-per-account and non-trade version of the boss drop

3)

If everything is stacked against you and the frustration rises or just the tension rises. Then if you could have earned or saved some 'positive' karma from some other better time, then it feels great to boost an RNG attempt, before you roll it.


Thus I propose:

Karma for Free re-Roll​

Spoiler: Industry examples A) candy crush B) RPGs C) slot machines

Some systems where you have played X time without a 'win' you get help so that you might get one next time.

In Candy Crush that would be represented by the super powers which you can trigger. You have tried the level several times and you have failed and faile over and over. So you trigger your super power and you now have it a little easier due to its effect.

In RPGs several systems have Fate or Karma points, which you can either add to rolls or which you can re-roll a failed roll.

In slot machines, instead of letting you win some coins back - they instead give you something which feels even better: Free Spins. It simply gives you the ante back and force you to bet it on another spin. But by adding the bling bling sounds and lights, plus by calling it "free" they get the player to feel that they have actually gotten something for free which they wouldn't have got otherwise.
Some machines even reward a higher rate of free spins when you are in a loosing rut so as to make you feel less bad about it.

Spoiler: Implementation text with examples etc

Say that crafters could earn "saves". We do that either through stealing a good streak. (ie when you had three crits in a row then next crit we reroll and give the player a "save". Or we simply reward them after X cumulative fumbles.
Then when down on their luck they get a chance for a reroll. So say three fumbles in a row and then if you fail it might trigger one of your "saves", which first shows the player the failure - BUT then pop-ups a "Save Confirm" button, which when pressed makes a reroll.


Similar thing could be done with loot bags or boss drops. But there it would feel better for the user if they could earn Karma. Either through stealing a good streak like above, or through earning it from having a long fumble streak. Karma can be used to trigger a one-time buff that on next high tier loot roll they get some extra 'luck' on the roll.
For instance I have the Karma, I trigger the buff, fight&kill boss, then when looting I get two loot windows one with a roll in each and I get to chose which side I pick, the left or the right one. While if I don't manage to get a kill etc, the buff runs out.

Suggestion: mimic the free spins of slot machines and fate systems from rpgs

• For crafting, let them earn "Saves" through crafting. Let them then get a chance dependent on bad streaks, to use such "Saves" at a failure - to make a reroll.
• For looting, let them earn "Karma". When used gives a buff that once, for next boss loot, gives two loot rolls, and the player select which of the two to take.

4)

One of the reasons we can't have nice things is that if you create a system people will always try to abuse it. So to be able to give stuff, the devs need to limit their usefulness for RMT/farming/grinding.
To mitigate that most MMOs give out some guaranteed consolation loot as non-trade.

Thus I propose:

No-trade consolation prices​

Suggestion: mimic the no-trade consolation prices that other MMOs have.

• For crafting, during really bad streaks of failures. Let them sometimes upon a failure, get the option between the salvage of the failed item - or get an "ugly" item, which works as usual but which is "no-trade" "no-value". (The "ugly" trait is inherited if the object gets further refined).
• For looting, let them once per quarter get a quest to go kill Y boss, with a guaranteed drop but it has the "ugly" trait of no-trade, no-value.

some vids on the topic for reference

Spoiler: reference videos

.
Here are some of the vids I use to add weight to my argument.

They are all interesting in their own right so I recommend them regardless as diversion, but they also pinpoint what is the root cause of the frustrations of a pure RNG type system. It kinda goes against our human wetware.

 

thats the median, not the average. average is a little over 30 at 3.23%.

also: who the **** cares? don't grind. it's not fun. hence the name grind. but seriously, adjusting your prefered playstyle to whatever grind reward mechanics a game has imho always leads to having less fun.

 

I have presented a few times about this. there is a need for a UOP style of Rare drops where after a certain amount of time / effort your % goes up. The problem is there ALSO needs to be a mechanics that after a player get his that after like 5 - - - that the % actually goes down to the lowest level and stays there. Preventing farming needs to be workable. Some items need to be "Account Bound" when obtained.

All these restrictions are where the sticking points come from and those players that work the game to profit (I mean more than just to support their play style) that issues come in.

RMT can make or break a game but they need to be controlled by the Game and NOT the players.

Once out of hand , well it is here so take a look it is easy to see.

Tier 6 Lich Totems????????

 

So, being into music and being the sound guy for my wife's local rock band, I really wanted the cowbell when it was put in the game. Since communications, even back in those days was mediocre at best, and there were rumors of it being a short term or seasonal drop, I wanted it as soon as possible to not miss out.

Well, I killed over 450 reapers and spent more than 100 hours before I finally got one.

That was the beginning of the end for me. As more "loot improvements" have been made and fishing was added e.t.c all I see is 100's of hours of frustration, to which I say no thanks.

I told Starr this and many other frustrations in person last August. I was actually hard enough on him that i apologized later in the evening. Since then I have seen not a single improvement to the game that addresses any of the concerns that myself and others expressed to Starr.

I still read each update, and watch the livestreams, hopefully waiting for some sign that they are listening. However I can't bring myself to log on to a game that literally forces me to watch TV while I play because I am so bored.

Maybe someday....

Ranco

 

A change to the "rng" would require Chris to give a sh*t about it.
Hasn't happened in all these years.
Some people just can't see the forest cause the trees keep gettin' in the way.

 

Making sense never helped anyone!!

Nice write up and 100% agreed

 

Some rare loot drops have been improved over time, like the various artifacts and supply bundles, the supply bundles reward after you get them is still almost always nothing but chris mentioned a plan to split them into multiple bundles that yield certain item types (like an artifact bundle and a raw resource bundle etc)

But drop rates on artifacts, supply bundles, patterns, gold, and valubale vendorables has indeed been drastically improved over the past year and a half. Enough so that most artifacts are now considered worthless “trash” loot by beancounters

 

There's a conceptually easy way of solving this: every "rare" mob will drop a token amount of essences/pieces (in addition to their low chance of dropping the actual item) that you can then combine/craft to a (possible selection) of desired item. So, for instance, if you want that cowbell, have every reaper drop, say, 1 Mostly Digested Piece of Cowbell item. Then have a recipe that combines X number of those pieces into an actual cowbell. Now an extremely lucky player can still get that cowbell after killing 1 reaper, but the unlucky person is still guaranteed a cowbell after X kills.

 

partly digested made me laugh.

 

and how do you stop a player from getting 1000s of pieces? Sorry not an option, have to prevent farming.

Tha actual problem is that when items are introduced they are not rare at all and they are gotten in seconds and in quantitys in hours. The drop rates are then adjusted down and those that "farm" them still get too many, more adjustments are made, . . . . . It is all bass ackwards. ah well

 

This is one of very many suggestions that myself and others have personally delivered to Starr and Chris and have been told "That is not within our scope of design". Take that for what it's worth.

Ranco

 

You don't stop someone from getting a lot of pieces -- just like you don't stop someone from farming whatever item today.

IF this is an issue, redemption of pieces can be scaled where subsequent redemptions cost more and more, eventually becoming too cost prohibitive to do. And/or we can limit redemptions based on time (i.e. once a month/quarter).

There's plenty of tweaking that can be done with this system to make sure casual players can realistically get an item.

 

That might work,

 

Forgot to add, the essences/pieces can also be made "No Trade" and "Bound To Account/Character".

Then in case someone doesn't need them, can put in a recipe to salvage them for some metal/gold/silver scrap or something.

 

Where is this happening?

I occasionally get a grey supply bundle from tier 7 humanoids....

 

I come back with multiple grey bundles all the time these days and quite a few yellow ones of top tier kobolds and tier 6 skeletons

 

You are correct that on average when the proverbial average are talking about 'an average' or 'the average' then the proverbial average do mean the median so that you have to mention which average they mean or if it is a mean they mean by 'average', however when the proverbial average in average use 'on average' then by average it is the colloquial meaning of 'on average' they mean which has a tendency to mean the central tendency, so you need to average them out if you get what I mean without me meaning to be mean.

So what you are refering to is really inadequencies of the english language and not mathematics.

Ah semantics, for besserwissers like me it is like rare loot drops.

This isn't about those who don't care, it is about all those that do care who due to caring don't care for this anymore.

With that said, thanks for the PoV check, I added some disclaimers to the OP to point out that I don't grind bosses. So this isn't necessarily about me personally but rather about game design in theory and practice.

 

I agree with point of the OP and also I don't think there is any harm in weighting the RNG results to make them feel more fair.

But I also think @dayero 's point was fair in the sense that if you look at what the devs have said there might be some point of agreement there. I think their position on this might be along the lines that if you're frustrated by the fact that you're not getting a rare loot drop, just buy it from another player who did get it. That's what the player economy is for. And after all, the devs have also been periodically mulling the idea of limiting boss spawns so that they're not the subject of repeated attempts to farm them at all. Chris at one point mentioned how they think a dragon shouldn't be an object to farm, but be something more important to that. They did originally start out the development process by saying they didn't want the game to be about grinding and farming enemies, if sometimes it doesn't feel that way.

I'd personally have no problem with this approach, although I'd argue it would then be even more frustrating if players were victim to bad RNG results. The issue is really getting results from farming, but that players want to feel some point to killing an enemy, rather than feel let down over and over. No matter how fun combat may be (and its not always fun) players are just going to expect to get something big from a big victory, or feel let down. And feeling let down over and over is just going to be a magnified problem if spawns were limited.

And, more generally speaking, if the devs don't want the players to feel the game is about grinding and farming, they have to create gameplay that centers around something other than grinding and farming. Right now, the game feels like its about grinding and farming, and maybe that needs to change. But until then, players are going to grind and farm and feel frustrated by it.

So, I think the point of the OP is relevant no matter how you feel about farming mobs personally.

 

Mr. @Spoon i just wanna say i found your post very interesting because you explain with humor and with scientific approach.

I was drinking water and it came out my nose after reading this part. i don't remember laughing out loud so hard in a long time. touché!

So for your initial post, my opinion is: Yes, PRNG is statistically fair, but if you are very unlucky to be in bottom percentile it will definitely seem unfair and broken and ragequit! even ragesledgehammer



Personally, i'm not in the loot drop farming business and i am indifferent about it if the item is not required or gating anything for me.

i await your next lecture!

Edit: aww, gif no worky here >_<
P.S. very confident poker players will say playing with unsuited 2-7 is objective!