Risk, Reward, Probability and Difficulty

[Abriael]

That idea makes up one of my longer post/thread on the forums.. lol

There are actually quite a few people who are happy with RNG systems. They drive me bonkers XD

"I know this system is just to make me grind.. just make my attempts useful to that grind dammit.. >.>"

People don't really like the RNG, unless they're patologically masochistic. They defend it only because it's implemented by their favorite developer (in this case SE), and everyone knows that their favorite developer can do no wrong.

[HiirNoivl]

RNG is just a poor substitute for difficulty. If something is supposed to be difficult, if it's a genuine effort, RNG goes away. A Relic Reborn is a good example of this. No one gets relics by RNG, they get it by acing all the content in the game. ARR has a better server structure, a better everything. I expect RNG to be replaced by better rewards for greater effort.

[Chardrizard]

Nobody is defending RNG.

People aare bothered tthe one complaining is the one that has only beaten ifrit or moogle, where on the other content SE has completely remove a complete RNG system (darnus) and give out token system (garuda) they even confirmed token system for dungeons, so this is basically a beating the dead horse thread. Stupid.

[Abriael]

Nobody is defending RNG.

People aare bothered tthe one complaining is the one that has only beaten ifrit or moogle, where on the other content SE has completely remove a complete RNG system (darnus) and give out token system (garuda) they even confirmed token system for dungeons, so this is basically a beating the dead horse thread. Stupid.

Unfortunately it isn't, because what you get with tokens is just a consolation prize.

[Kirito]

I think your debuff [option 1] idea could work for a particular dungeon or something that has fitting with debuffs/diseases and such, but I think players might get annoyed at trying to do any dungeon content and then unable to successful do content in general afterwards because of it. Thus secluding it to a singular event should probably work for a way of increasing drop rates at greater risk (as well as really making the dungeon unique if it was fitting like I said "diseases" or something).

The second option is like a difficulty slider, thats always been an effective tool . I just hope that the devs will consider AI patterns and not just do flat rate buffs like hp + X %.

One of my suggestions:

RNG over a large data set = amount of attempts SE would like a player to take before getting the reward.

I.E. 50% drop, expect players to try twice (its a bit generalized math but close enough).

Instead of using RNG for certain drops it can easily be turned into a token system, something SE has already had planned [100% token drop rate on failure to loot rare item]. Unfortunately the awesome drops are not turned into a token system, you can only buy lesser drops with the tokens.

I think one of the reasons they didnt do a token system for the harder drops is because often when the rates are converted to a fixed number you will find they had planned for some people to do it many hundreds of times (and you just got lucky). So they dont want you to realize how "big" the grind actually is. That and there is a psychological effect to chances that some people find addicting.

Its why I like promoting the progressive percentage system. Pick a general % you want. Now pick lower then that and start players on it, as they fail the run increase the % at a growing rate until they succeed, restart %. Never will your run be useless even if you didn't get anything, you will always be more likely to win than the last time.

You can make the reward a token that can be switched out for a particular item. So rather then 100 tokens = item, re-denominate for the fact tokens are now rare. (You can just use 100% tokens on rare items and ignore a chance system but like I said players might be disheartened to see some gear costs 500 runs - to hide that you can use the progressive %'s I suggested which rewards effort but is still a bit on chance as well).

I have an idea to solve the problem that is a bit similar but with no tokens... My idea is that bosses (in extreme mode at least) only drop very rare items, there are no common drops that you may encounter on the normal or hard mode of the boss fight.

On a hard run you have a low chance or running into very rare items, a higher chance of running into rare and a drastically higher chance of running into common drop.

For normal difficulty run you have near impossible chance of running into very rare item, a low chance of running into a rare item and a high chance of running into a common item.


Now for the extreme run, if there is 1/10 chance of getting a very rare item and you get no items from the boss in the run, the possibility of getting an item from that category in the next run is 1/9, and so on for the continuing runs until you get an item... also if you lose the dungeon and you won the previous run without getting any items you probability of getting the item won't reset...This would make extreme version fights the place where parties would hunt the very rare items... it would also promote retries if you don't get the item in one run...

Now for normal or hard modes of dungeons...
In extreme dunegeons you can only get items from very rare category, so if you're unlucky for a run you won't get any items from the boss...

But for normal and hard dungeons you will also have to chance to get rare and common drops... Since the common and rare drops provide you a higher probabity of getting an item than the rare drop it would be almost impossible for you get any very rare drop on those runs...

Also because of this system (the one I'm explaining), it would seem like you could only get one item per boss, which would be annoying for players looking for numerous items in order to sell or just have. So in order to compensate for them, depending on how well you did in the normal and hard runs you can get as much as five item slots, each slot running the same 1/2 or 1/5 probability for the common or rare items...
what do you think?

[Quatre]

This issue isn't about how RNG certain drops are, it's the fact that getting ANY reward is RNG. In most modern day MMO's bosses are guaranteed to drop a certain amount of loot, what that loot is, is RNG. This is common practice and usually appeases people.

[Sakasa]

Well the thing about rng is the statistic isn't static because as we have already seen new jobs are coming down the pipe. So you statistical chance of getting what you want is declining so a token system works the best around this for specific items. And, don't consider rng a time sync, it isn't even though it acts as one to some there are many better time syncs that they could easily throw in as road blocks. Rng is based on the original table top idea that rarity is given to an item by limiting its appearance. The best way to do that where its "fair" so all players can access it is statistical drop rates that are base on a random number generator. Which is much more socially acceptable then only one Excalibur on the server so if you don't get it you have to search for a next best thing. Which to be honest is even more fair in the real world scheme of things but can you imagine the complaints that this person is better and you can not reach that plateau because it literally no longer exists. Similar to how eve where new players will always be a disadvantage because leveling is time invested.

[Felis]

SE plan the Skirmish way + token system.
100% drop from boss monsters, only RNG would be what drop and who get the drop (if more than 1 roll for it).

[Nuinn]

People don't really like the RNG, unless they're patologically masochistic. They defend it only because it's implemented by their favorite developer (in this case SE), and everyone knows that their favorite developer can do no wrong.

.... or have already had good luck on drops (or wasted hours on end) and they don't want the hard work of sitting in front of the PC annulled by giving the others an easier way to get the same items.

"Yes, RNG is fabulous. I'd much rather spend a week doing the same thing over and over again since all other content isn't really that interesting"

Anyhow, someone mentioned 100% drop each time with RNG = /random on who gets the item. It's fine, but what could be the problem is the length of FFXIV dungeons. They can be stormed through, and with a 100% drop rate each time (no abnormal re-entry timers) you could deck out a full pt in a day.

Difficulty/length/timers/exclusivity of the items dropped . . . . not an easy job to put them all into balance.

[Felis]

Anyhow, someone mentioned 100% drop each time with RNG = /random on who gets the item. It's fine, but what could be the problem is the length of FFXIV dungeons. They can be stormed through, and with a 100% drop rate each time (no abnormal re-entry timers) you could deck out a full pt in a day.

Not if you can roll only 3 times the week each dungeon.