The token outrage: RNG vs Effort

[ixidron92]

The truth: It was never about the tokens. It was all about what you had to do to get them and how you had to get them.

I know full well this thread is a waste of my time, since devs don't really bother with anything outside the first couple of pages of their dedicated threads, and my time would be better spent in Twitter or Reddit if I ever wanted them to read this, but here it goes anyway.

Debt bonds worked and blended really nice with the Fortuna progression system. There ware no complains there. Then, why a system that mimics debt bonds and even gives us a way to stack standing, failed so hard?

Back to the first sentence of the thread: The tokens themselves are fine, they way to get them is flawed, extremely so. 

Think about debt bonds again. Different tier bounties reward different debt bonds, and then you could exchange various resources for more debt bonds. So, all you had to do was play normally, and you'd get them fair and square.

What's the difference with Entrati Tokens? That you don't get most Entrati tokens fair and square by playing normally.

Mother tokens, you get from bounties, that is fair, and not a single soul ever complained about the amount of tokens you get from Mother.

Father tokens, you exchange for various resources, which, again, you get from normal gameplay. Just playing normally would be more than enough to get all his tokens all the time. The only complain was that, sometimes, Father would ask for Scintillant, and in vast amounts. That, being an extremely rare and hard to obtain resource, meant people consider the trade unfair. So, it was removed, and now everyone thinks it's perfectly fair. 

Daughter and Otak tokens, you can also exchange various resources for them. Yes, Daughter leans toward fishing resources and Otak toward mining, but all of the resources, while they can be farmed effectively by playing the mining and fishing minigames, they also drop from enemies, and from Isolation vaults.

Which brings us to: Son tokens. This was the main reason of the outcry. Not only is Conservation a near-universally despised, total failure of a system the devs even needed cheats to showcase and spent about an hour to capture a single animal. Not only it's buggy as #*!%, animals are hard to spot, they are also random, and after you've captured your randomly spawning animals, with randomly spawning rarity, you'll have to contempt with another 4 layers of RNG to exchange tags for tokens. You had 2 randomly selected animals, of randomly selected rarity, of randomly selected quantity, for a randomly selected amount of token. 

You put 6 layers of RNG to get tokens. Which means, a lucky guy could easily get them in a couple of runs, or an unlucky fella could spend hours and hours and end up with nothing. 

This brings me to the main point of this thread:

RNG vs Effort

Players value effort and time invested; it gives meaning to a reward. Syndicates require a massive amount of time invested. Focus, requires even more time investment. MR, also an incredible amount of time, effort and resources. The Helminth system also requires time and resources and there are no complains there other than strangely high amount of resources asked for some uncommon resources, compared to the low amount of resources asked for common ones.

RNG is why people cried. RNG is why there was a lot of complaining when it came to Railjack and Old Blood. RNG, by itself, is not necessarily bad. When it takes you little effort to do something, when what you want is not the primary reward, or when the gameplay is fun, RNG is acceptable. However, mix effort, time invested and RNG, and that's a recipe for disaster. 

That is why people complained about Son Tokens and Scintillant for that matter. You took a system many consider the opposite of fun and that's a side-task unrelated to normal gameplay and that takes a lot of time and effort and you slapped 6 layers of RNG on it and then made the system mandatory for progression. That is one the stupidest decisions I've ever witnessed.

People would have never complained about tokens if the tasks had alternatives and if the token exchange system was fair, even if the tokens required to rank up was way higher. You know what pisses people off? Unequal pay for equal work. Heck, we've been fighting against that in society for years, and the worst part is that a random number generator decides how much your effort counts, how much value your time invested has. Person A did one run and got lucky, gets to the next level in 15 minutes. Person B has terrible luck and gets to spend hours hitting his head against the wall, repeating a task he doesn't like in the first place.

Had the Tokens had a fixed exchange rate: Say, 1 fish or 10 fish parts of any kind (even mixed) for 1 Daughter token, 10 minerals or 5 gems of any kind (even mixed) for 1 Otak token, 1 animal tag for 1 (+1-3 bad/good/perfect capture bonus) Son tokens, 20 mixed resources for 1 Father token, there would have been 0 complaints, even if the rank up asks for 100 tokens each. Why? Because it's fair for everyone. Everyone invests the same amount of time and effort. The rewards are fixed, and you get what you need by playing normally. 

People value effort over RNG. If you ask people to perform a task and give them a choice between 0-5 RNG points reward, or 2 points guaranteed, and ask to reach 100 points, people will chose the fixed amount 99% of the time. That's why people view incredibly time and effort consuming system such as the focus system as fair, over RNG systems such as the token system, and the funny thing is, that even with RNG, the token system would take a tiny fraction of what it'd take you to grind the focus system, yet people would gladly choose the focus system because people hate unequal rewards for equal effort and time invested. 

Now, I'll go watch a movie or something, knowing full well no one will read this, let alone someone that matters, that this won't change anything, and that this thread will be buried by others in a matter of hours. 

 

[Ethorin]

TBH, I looked at son tokens and went "wait, why do I need specific species for tokens?"

[Skaleek]

Should just be able to convert tags to tokens. I have over 1000 vizier tokens with no way to liquidate them.

[JackHargreav]

And then they change how much tokens you need and how many tags you need for a token so what's the problem?

[Skaleek]

1 minute ago, JackHargreav said:

And then they change how much tokens you need and how many tags you need for a token so what's the problem?

 

3 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

I have over 1000 vizier tokens with no way to liquidate them.

 

[Galuf]

Grandmother tokens: you need 20 of those(60 total but atm) for actually best weapons and the rates are overall 2 son or 10 of the others for 1 grandmother token, often mixed together but the rates are the same. Also grandmother tokens give bonus standing, meaning that if you are chasing standing, converting tokens to grandmother tokens nets you a 50% increase.

After ricing it since its release I see however few patterns.

- As ore distribution is a bit flawed, there are some Otak tokens that end up barely free, meaning that if you mined a bit you get 3-4 free tokens each reset, except thaumetica(or something), you are imho free to salvage everything with him. Conclusion: Otak is fine and on the generous side

- Daughter tokens can be earned at a decent pace, especially if you do vaults/bounties and break caches without fishing. Daughter is fine even if you don't fish if you go check on her regularily

- Sons token: these have an overwhelming initial feel BUT with an investment on lures and when you know where vespoids are, you can at least 8 tokens in like 5-10mn for a rotation(you can pick your poison), wich translate to the equivalent of 40 tokens of the others. It is the most knowledge intensive one(know what to do and where to go) but it is also the most rewarding atm. Son is VERY fine as long as you invest a bit of standing on bait or know the map real well

- Father tokens: as DE removed scintillants from it, I believe you will be able to buy anything anytime if you did enough bounty/vaults and you won't be out of mats before reaching 60 grandmother tokens. Father is guaranteed coins as long as you play the game

- Mother tokens: Hardest bounties gives tremendous amount of coins. You can farm thousands of tokens in a reasonnable amount of time

So long story short it is VERY manageable. The big blunder things was the vaults and scintillants and imho it gets fixed properly last update. We will manage proper routes over time but the tokens are imho very fair in terms of what it costs and what it provides. The 3 high rank weapons are the biggest coin dump in the game atm ^^. Maybe you'll need one of those glass stuff for ranking up to 5 or 6 too xd.

[JackHargreav]

13 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

 

 

So? What?

[ShogunGunshow]

Conservation was annoying but I had the tokens I needed in a few hours.

Then the token requirement for leveling was reduced to a laughable 1, sooooo yeah. I'm good forever now. Probably overnerfed.

[Skaleek]

Just now, JackHargreav said:

So? What?

You're kinda missing the point. I'm doing conservation but not being rewarded for it because i cant turn it into son tokens, because theres a layer of RNG preventing me from actually benefiting from my hard work?

[Yakhul]

28 minutes ago, ixidron92 said:

Conservation a near-universally despised, total failure of a system

After reading through it all, I find this a bit of a grey area.

Conservation still remains THE BEST way to earn standing with Solaris and the ostrons. 

Takes literally 5 mins, to find and perfect capture 3 to 4 kubrodon incardine to max out Solaris standing.

If you go at night to the plains, takes about the same time if you know where to look, to hunt and capture kavats without the need of a lure.

Conservation in the new infested world is no different in my own experience. 

I think is the first time I see this community that is so obsessed with effectiveness and time saving, hating on literally a system that does exactly those 2 mentioned. 

[JackHargreav]

Just now, Skaleek said:

You're kinda missing the point. I'm doing conservation but not being rewarded for it because i cant turn it into son tokens, because theres a layer of RNG preventing me from actually benefiting from my hard work?

That's how a free to play game works.

You can't seriously expect DE to just implement a system where you can only win.

Of course rng is annoying. It can be a real C*** but in warframe it's kinda necessary.

An "effort" based system would need other artificial stops like the daily standing cap. Because players would just rush through the update even faster.

[Lion]

I'm probably not coming back to deimos for awhile after I unlock Helminth. DE has released two open worlds by now, in spite of the tried and true methods the other two followed, they went and made one of the most tedious and buggy gameplay mechanics mandatory to progressing in the story of Deimos.

[Deadoon]

The only son tokens I am even getting anymore are the ones from making and leveling pets to get 10 tokens at a time. His normal route is way to convuluted.

[Skaleek]

10 minutes ago, JackHargreav said:

That's how a free to play game works.

You can't seriously expect DE to just implement a system where you can only win.

Of course rng is annoying. It can be a real C*** but in warframe it's kinda necessary.

An "effort" based system would need other artificial stops like the daily standing cap. Because players would just rush through the update even faster.

Its not necessary, and its not how free to play works. Its actually how free to play doesnt work. If you create a vacuum in which players feel their time is being downright wasted, you start to hemmorhage players. This is why they've revamped countless other open world systems in the past. This very reason. They do this every patch, they release an oppresive grind, no one enjoys it, no one engages in it, and they they buff the S#&$ out of it and punish early adopters. Where have you been? This is how warframe works (or doesnt work).

Tell me more how oppressive grinds are necessary. If they were then DE would keep them, but they never do. They backpedal and change it after the early adopters burn out. Please tell me this isn't how it is, that way i can move on and leave you as the standard ignorant warframe forums troll.

[Oreades]

9 minutes ago, JackHargreav said:

That's how a free to play game works.

By demoralizing their playerbase to the point that they stop playing their game and move onto other less abusive games? 

I mean I guess that is one strategy~

[JackHargreav]

1 minute ago, Oreades said:

By demoralizing their playerbase to the point that they stop playing their game and move onto other less abusive games? 

I mean I guess that is one strategy~

Oh please. Like you know how many players leave the game.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

52 minutes ago, ixidron92 said:

this thread is a waste of my time, since devs don't really bother with anything outside the first couple of pages of their dedicated threads

Maybe if you post it in feedback they would read it.

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

The only aspectIm finding grindy is the minning and the Sceillent(butchered spelling) farming. That and the requirement for Grandmother tokens. 

For the most part I'm finding HoD to have the least amount of grind for standing. And the issues that Ingave listed for the most part were fixed with a hotfix yesterday. This update from what I've gathered talking to other players and my friends: The love this update. I'm not saying it's not without its flaws but I'm generally hearing very positive things about it 

 

[Hastrer]

8 minutes ago, JackHargreav said:

And then they change how much tokens you need and how many tags you need for a token so what's the problem?

Simply because ONE perfect capture on the other two Open worlds will give you 500~1K standing, some times it can even be 3K.

While  in Deimos, you need average of 3~4 captures (doesn't matter if is bad or perfect) and one of them being a rare animal, THEN go back to the base, then talk to son to get ONE single token that gives you 500 standing.

You literally have to put 4 times the effort in son's token than any other conservation in the game. How can you still not see the problem?

[Lichformed]

I think the tokens are a good idea because you can stash them quite nicely for other days.

Pretty sure the system would be fixed if the conservation targets gave tags based on their capture score, 3 for perfect and you could easily get them by randomly tranqing animals here and there.

Also removing the need for specific targets for rank ups, like 20 son tokens with the "capture multiplier" would be on par with how easy the other tokens are to get.

[Oreades]

15 minutes ago, JackHargreav said:

Oh please. Like you know how many players leave the game.

Hmm almost like I never claimed I did >.> 

 

[0_The_F00l]

There really should be a fixed tag to token conversion at slightly Lower efficiency.

Let me explain:

Have fixed conversion for 1 viziers into 100 rep,

1 pharaoh in 200 rep,

1 medjay into 400 rep.

similarly for others (numbers only for representation)

But Leave the current RNG based token exchange system stay if Son has a high priority request for 3 purple pods and a fox for some reason and want to make an exchange let him ,

This way i can get higher value tokens for tags that have a limited time and get rep for excess tags as well.

 

[JackHargreav]

18 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

Its not necessary, and its not how free to play works. Its actually how free to play doesnt work. If you create a vacuum in which players feel their time is being downright wasted, you start to hemmorhage players. This is why they've revamped countless other open world systems in the past. This very reason. They do this every patch, they release an oppresive grind, no one enjoys it, no one engages in it, and they they buff the S#&$ out of it and punish early adopters. Where have you been? This is how warframe works (or doesnt work).

Tell me more how oppressive grinds are necessary. If they were then DE would keep them, but they never do. They backpedal and change it after the early adopters burn out. Please tell me this isn't how it is, that way i can move on and leave you as the standard ignorant warframe forums troll.

What oppressive grind?

Just because there were some things that where harder to achive it's not oppressive.

If you spent time to hunt by now you probably have everything to level up.

[Skaleek]

9 minutes ago, JackHargreav said:

What oppressive grind?

Just because there were some things that where harder to achive it's not oppressive.

If you spent time to hunt by now you probably have everything to level up.

Picks one small snippet to try and fight over, instead of the entire argument as a whole? Yes.

Doesnt keep sight of the bigger picture? Yes.

Has no valid answer for many of the questions asked in the post? Yes.

Forum troll? Yes.

Spending my time conservating with no way to turn it into any meaningful reward is an issue, RE: original post.

In the wild they made Vizier spawn 90% of the time, and yet the RNG system they've put in place to reward you for your efforts in the form of tokens only expect a ~5% spawn contribution of Vizier.

[Tonin4ABonin]

laughs in 100 son tokens