RNG vs Effort. Your grind preference?

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

6 minutes ago, taiiat said:

filling up a Bar makes whatever it is automatically a chore. filling Bars is outdated crap that should stay in the 80's and 90's when games couldn't be more interesting due to Processing speed and Memory limitations.

now we're without those limitations and so there's no excuse to intentionally turn stuff into Bar filling. make Game Mechanics, not homework.

 

plain Randomization isn't my favorite thing, but you're not making stuff more interesting by making it filling Bars.
Randomization can even be good for systems, but it depends on how you interface/access that Randomization. it all comes back to Game Mechanics - making __ interesting to do.

you have some feeling of control (and actually do to some extent), but each of those systems is still driven by Chances. so it is Randomization, with or without the ability to influence it.

I acknoledge what you're saying but at some point in time we're going to have to point out that everything, including our continued existence on this planet also involves Chances. If my element of control is such that it affects the determination of the outcome the vast majority of the time, then I'm going to refer to that as Skill. If no such element exists, and I can't reliably sway the outcome, then it's Chance.

Honestly I try to pick relays or instances that are odd numbers, or odd and when the numerals of the value are added until there's a single digit it's odd. (e.g. 5, 19, 25 etc.) I do this because I think it's lucky, but I recognise that the results are unpredictable and ultimately it has no effect on the outcome. That's chance. 

If I go to the plains, go to a marine hotspot, and toss out murkray bait, pick a lanzo spear, and place my cursor so that when the spear is thrown it should hit the middle of the murkray's hitbox, I catch a murkray the vast majority of the time. That's not what I'd call chance.

[taiiat]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

If I go to the plains, go to a marine hotspot, and toss out murkray bait, pick a lanzo spear, and place my cursor so that when the spear is thrown it should hit the middle of the murkray's hitbox, I catch a murkray the vast majority of the time. That's not what I'd call chance.

what Fish Spawn and how often Fish Spawn will still be random - you were able to influence it but it was still random.

that doesn't mean you didn't have influence on it. it just means it's random. it can be both...................

[(PSN)palebluelight]

I would rather have a clear path to what I want with out progression blockers like how they’ve done syndicates. I genuinely hate how de handles rewards. I think de’s philosophy of its a free to play game so we don’t care is really frustrating. I honestly would’ve rather paid my 60$ and 20 every major expansion than have the game they way it is. Rng and tile sets are trash to me because there’s no exploration and the aggro is so crazy in open worlds that you can’t explore at your leisure except as ivara. I’ve been playing less and less because of how Deimos was handled I wanted better not the convoluted mess. No games have so many layers of xp, rng and bs. The biggest problem is obfuscation they never explain anything clearly and have tutorials for new mechanics. Updates and new things shouldn’t require community uproar to be made understandable. De really is a trash dev not because they aren’t capable but because they have zero sense of respect for their community and zero integrity when it comes to putting out something feature complete and capable of success because they put the time into it. Progression is everything and de is not capable of making something enjoyable every step of the way. Example I did steel path not because I wanted to but because I knew no one would be playing if I waited for the rewards to be made fair. The rewards were terrible node to node I got nothing for my time and then I had to continue it if I wanted the crania ephemera. I used to put money into this game because I hoped it would get better but Deimos was garbage. I won’t support de because clearly they don’t care why should I. 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

1 minute ago, taiiat said:

what Fish Spawn and how often Fish Spawn will still be random - you were able to influence it but it was still random.

that doesn't mean you didn't have influence on it. it just means it's random. it can be both...................

Yes, but like I said, I can fish in the hotspots, and use an abundance of bait. Both of those heavily skew what and how often they'll spawn to the point that I can practically guarantee that I'll get my chosen fish to spawn. I accept that there's an RNG element, but as I said, that's actually true of everything at the most fundamental level I believe that the level of control that we can exert to determine the probability of the outcome is what differentiates a skill for the purposes of our discussion.

[ixidron92]

hace 3 horas, (PS4)guzmantt1977 dijo:

Wait. How is mining fishing and conservation included in RNG?

If I'm fishing and do it right, I get the fish I was aiming at. I can infuence the spawn rate of the fish in two ways, first by fishing at a hotspot, and second by fishing with bait. None of that is primarily RNG.

With mining, again I mine nodes and get a type of mineral. Yes theres some RNG involved as some ores are rarer than others, but with the fancy cutters we have, I can again infuence what happens by mining in a specific way affecting quantity and rareness. If I want gems, I can also mine at gem nodes, and ores at ore nodes. Is there RNG yes, but a pretty acceptable level, I figure.

Conservation... just like fishing, if I see species X and want species X.... I shoot it. I get species X. I can force spawns if I bother to track them and do the call. If I want a rare version of species X, I can use the pherhormone. Yes it's still a bit random, but again, my actions clearly influence the outcome. 

I don't think that you can classify these as anywhere similar to the RNG involved in getting weapon/parts drops, because for most items, no matter what we do, that's not something that we con influence.

All of that is randomized. Hotspots are randomized, the amount of fish that spawn are randomized, the species that spawn are randomized. The fish quality is randomized. Even if you can influence it, it's still randomized. I remember spending 2 baits and getting only 1 of the fishes the bait was supposed to attract. 

Mining is completely randomized. Node spawn is random, whether they are gem or mineral are random. The gem or mineral you get is random. Their mining difficulty and thus their overall rewards are random. The reward amount is random. The bonus loot is random and so is the chance for the bonus square to appear. Heck, mining is the most random of all I mentioned. Just recently, I spent 45 minutes in PoE mining for auron. I ended up with 60 of each of the very rare gems and 0 auron.

Animal spawns on the wild are completely random and so is the rarity, and amount. You can force spawn of all except velocipod, but then again, the rarity is random, even if you can influence it with pheromones, but should you want the common variant you'd have to pray to the RNGod.

You can also influence the chances to get this or that part when cracking relics, using more or less traces, just as you can influence the odds of mining, fishing and conservation, but in the end, it's all still up to chance. 

I'd prefer a system in which I can see beforehand which nodes give what mineral or gemstone so I can target those specifically rather than spend an ungodly amount of frustrating time mining nodes and hoping the dice roll in my favor. 

But that's just me because I'm the king of unluck. I had 9 khora systems and an untold amount of relics, but I did not get the bp, despite it having the same chance to drop. I completed 8 rounds of ES, over a hundred times. I have to thank the twitch drop for the bp or I'd still not have Khora. I once cracked 12 radiant relics in a row and got 12 common drops in a row (0.002% chance of that happening). I'm the guy who spend 1 hour mining  to finish the nightwave task that simply asked you to mine 10 rare gems (back before they allowed rare minerals too). I nearly filled a bug report once because all the nodes I kept encountering in Vallis were gem nodes and all gave me goblite, 15 straight until I finally encountered a mineral node.

Do you see now why I prefer consistency over RNG? Do you see why I prefer affinity, focus or syndicate grinding over dice-rolling for stuff? Why I prefer to buy what I need for platinum rather than crack relics until I despair because I'm not getting that #*!%ing common drop for the n^th time in a row?

[OniDax]

Effort, for sure, because it actually rewards the time you put into the game. RNG wastes your time. Pure, RNG-less grind rewards your time 100%.

3 hours ago, lukasystem said:

I'd prefer effort based anytime, provided the challenge is a reasonable one, and not asking for a lick in the elbow.

Destiny 2 is a fair example of bad "effort based" grind in some specific quests and missions, not to mention absurd designs like getting "10 kills with rocket launchers in Crucible", which are not impossible, but have high probabilities you gonna punch the screen in a matter of seconds.

That's why grind shouldn't be challenge-based. It shouldn't be based on doing absurd, niche tasks. Pure grind simply means kill these enemies, or these types of enemies, X number of times to get the reward. Those enemies, or types of enemies, shouldn't rarely spawn, either. They should be guaranteed to spawn when playing certain types of content.

In general, development studios need to stop trying to frustrate their players. That's what RNG does: it frustrates players and wastes their time. RNG only makes the gameplay experience less enjoyable. It might stretch out the time players spend trying to get the items they want, but it makes it a frustrating experience and increases the likelihood that players will feel burnt out with the game.

[Loza03]

There's an element of context and each has their place, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't lean more towards the side of effort. Especially towards base-level or prestige items.

 

I'm not against randomness - by all means, spice up my day, maybe throw some unexpected twists my way, perhaps make it hard to find what I seek out no matter how often I look, but at the end of the day, RNG has a much more significant chance to turn sour. Especially for 'prestige' items - items which are intended to show off your capabilities as a player for ascending the heights of the game - RNG can entirely ruin it. At the end of the day, the Tenebrous Ephemera wasn't an indicator of being some bad-ass Sentient hunter - it was pure, honest luck. Now, I won't lie and say that the current system for it gives that idea either, but that's not really the point - RNG doesn't communicate skill, just luck and/or patience.

 

In terms of pure reward structure, RNG is probably best suited to the middle ground stuff. Things that bring your builds to the greatest heights, but that you don't need - but also not stuff that's meant to convey other meaning, or be something special to distinguish you.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

10 hours ago, ixidron92 said:

All of that is randomized. Hotspots are randomized, the amount of fish that spawn are randomized, the species that spawn are randomized. The fish quality is randomized. Even if you can influence it, it's still randomized. I remember spending 2 baits and getting only 1 of the fishes the bait was supposed to attract. 

Next time drop a dye first. There is/was a glitch where the hotspot visual effect wasn't actually real. If you see several fish, then pop the bait out. I use multiples because I have the blueprints so I don't have to worry about the cost. 

 

10 hours ago, ixidron92 said:

Mining is completely randomized. Node spawn is random, whether they are gem or mineral are random. The gem or mineral you get is random. Their mining difficulty and thus their overall rewards are random. The reward amount is random. The bonus loot is random and so is the chance for the bonus square to appear. Heck, mining is the most random of all I mentioned. Just recently, I spent 45 minutes in PoE mining for auron. I ended up with 60 of each of the very rare gems and 0 auron.

Are you sure that you were mining the red nodes and not the blue ones? 

10 hours ago, ixidron92 said:

Animal spawns on the wild are completely random and so is the rarity, and amount. You can force spawn of all except velocipod, but then again, the rarity is random, even if you can influence it with pheromones, but should you want the common variant you'd have to pray to the RNGod.

If I can force the spawn by doing the track call tranq, method then I can guarantee that type of creature will spawn, that's not random. I've never tranqued a kubrodon only to discover that I got a pobber tag. Yes, there is still an element of RNG in what type I'll end up with but it is always a kubrodon. 

10 hours ago, ixidron92 said:

You can also influence the chances to get this or that part when cracking relics, using more or less traces, just as you can influence the odds of mining, fishing and conservation, but in the end, it's all still up to chance. 

Yes but not to a similar extent, and that doesn't apply to trying to get the drops from stuff like boss fights. 

[HonorGuard2074]

Personally a defined goal I can see,so effort

 

Now if rng worked in a way you could "Focus" a item and it will show you a bar of when it WILL appear if RNG hates ya,but you could get lucky and get it earlier

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

Both have a place for WF.  The problem I run into is that past a certain point you eventually stop gaining meaningful progression when you grind.  And thus it feels incredibly terrible.  Me grinding for resources in order to progress is on a thin line.  Me trying to grind out mods be it through rivens or regular mods in order to make my weapons better being gated behind RNG feels awful.

I wish WF had more linear progression methods in the latter portion of the game.  If the helminth system was just a bit different I could count that as what i'm looking for.  but the costs for some things are a bit much.  And the preferences system is a bit finnicky.

[CaptainMinty]

On one hand, an Effort based system would allow players to reliably get the item they are looking for. On the other hand, it basically puts a timer on how quickly one can obtain the object.

RNG takes away the timer, and leaves inconsistency in its wake. Some might get it first try, others may not get it until their hundredth try. This creates a disconnect between players.

On one hand, I like RNG. Sometimes I end up getting something I didn't know I needed or didn't have. But sometimes I get the same thing over and over again.
On the other hand, effort based grinding means I get to pick and choose what I want. But that definitely will take a lot of time.
I honestly would like a mix of both. Progression in a syndicate should not be RNG. Honestly, I love syndicates like the Arbiters and Suda because of how passive the grind can be for them. I can actively target it, or just set it to accumulate in the background while I get other things. I love how they offer something that never ceases to be useful. Relic packs are amazing as an item that can be gathered. Please DE do this for all syndicates. And for the love of god put Void fissures in literally everything. Deimos, Plains, Vallis, Railjack.

But I digress. I believe an effort based system is probably better, but there still needs some RNG elements. If everything is effort based, then I feel like they'd have to substantially increase the effort needed in some aspects. I heartily enjoy the token system of Deimos. Just wish the tokens were used for something other than just standing. They are so close to making it perfect. SO CLOSE. Just a little more and it would be perfect.