How To Fix Rng Without Removing Rarity

[notionphil]

Different long-term solutions have to be released for respective "RNG" areas.

 

RNG has been a point of contention with WF forever, and has recently risen again to the forefront of visibility with Detron farming issues being locked behind multiple waves of RNG. DE recognizes we need long-term solutions.

 

OK then. Here are long-term solutions.

 

First...What is RNG and Why DE Can't Remove it

 

RNG is a tool that extends content by getting players to replay it multiple times, and serves to increase the rarity of the rewards it holds.  Those are fair goals...MMO games with RPG elements need content extended and benefit from rare rewards. However, random chance should never be the only way to achieve a reward. RNG always needs a 'safety valve'.

Why? Because RNG makes players feel helpless, we can do nothing other than repeat an action and cross our fingers. Some players will achieve a reward in few attempts, trivializing the content it was locked behind (Lepahntis in 3 runs anyone?). They don't feel as they've achieved, they simply feel lucky. Others will come up empty handed after running that content for weeks and give up (or quit out of frustration).

Here's how to extend content and keep rewards rare, but keep players in control

Make sure that every major RNG system has a NON-RNG counterpart, which can offer the same rewards. The non-RNG counterpart should either be based on challenge or progressive grinding - neither of which should be easy. In some cases, they should take longer "for the average player" than the RNG solution, but have the guarantee of sustained progress.

 

Examples:

 

• Void Rewards: The Tenno have uncovered the Archiva - an Orokin device that breaks Prime components down into Orokin Components, which can be used to build other prime components. Only a small amount of Orokin Components can be extracted from each prime part. Rare parts of course offer more Components than common ones.

  A common void reward would produce 1 Orokin Component when salvaged. A prime part with a 10% drop chance would cost 20 Orokin Components to produce ("avg number of runs to drop" x 2). That would take no more than 20 runs to produce. Pure RNG should take 10 runs, on average.

  So, RNG should theoretically be faster, but if you had a run of bad luck, you'd be able to gain the reward via grind-based-progression. And either way, you'll have made progress, by gaining valuable Orokin Components which you can use at any time.

  If DE really wants to maintain the rarity of new primes, the Archiva might require more Orokin Components to replicate a part when a prime is new, and as people build it, the self-learning machine figures out how to build that part more cheaply. By week 4 it would be normal 'price'.

   

• Stalker: Stalker/Harvester has a small % of chance to show on any marked Tenno. Why can't we increase that chance via skill based challenge?

  If you kill a boss in nightmare mode without using any revivies on the mission, the chance for stalker/harvester to appear is greatly increased. This stacks, until he appears and one of you dies. Higher level nightmare modes provide greater bonuses, up to double at lv 30.

   

• Mods: Giving us drop tables via codex was a good start, but there's still no way to hunt a specific enemy which nullifies the point of knowing who drops the mod. Great, the mod I want drops from Heavy Gunners. Well, they are on nearly every Grineer mission so....I guess this narrows me down to farming just less than half of the game's content? Frustrating and not fun. Solutions?

  Increased Targeted Enemy Spawn Events

  On any planet in the game, a warning can appear with a chance to spawn addl enemies of a specific type in a higher volume, replacing other spawns. This Enemy Activity warning can range from Increased activity (15% of spawns in mission replaced by this enemy) to Heavy activity (25%). Thus, if I want to find a Heavy Gunner, I can look for a Heavy Gunner activity alert, and a full 25% of the enemies in the mission will be Heavy Gunners.

   

   

  

   

  Lotus Rewards

   

  Every Rare/Uncommon mod in normal drop tables (not nightmare etc) should be made a ONE-TIME reward for completing a specific mission within set parameters - essentially a mission based achievement. The difficulty of the challenge should relate to the rarity of the mod, and how 'necessary' it is.

   

  EX:

  Split Chamber - Complete wave 40 on Xini.

  Quick Thinking - Last 20m on Nuovo solo without killing any enemies.

  Rage - Defeat Lephantis without taking any damage.

  Charged Chamber - Kill Hyena in 1 shot.

   

   

  Etc..Thus, each rare mod becomes a challenge to the player, increasing the game's "content" and acting as a safety valve for the RNG. Are these challenges easy? Of course not. They are designed to be intense (at the level where the mod is rare to you).

   

 

I can come up with many more RNG 'safety valves' but you get the idea. Feedback welcome.

Edited January 7, 2014 by notionphil

[Kibbols123]

Those examples :|

[Davoodoo]

How about darvo like missions to lure harvester/stalker out. Giving us a reliable chance to meet them, ofc these would be available only by keys, crafted from components acquired by killing bosses or running invasions or whatever atm triggers them to spawn.

 

 

 

Lephantis without any dmg. Barely possible. Survival without killing any enemies. Impossible. 40 wave on xini. Too easy. 1 shot hyena. Forcing players into specific loadouts isnt a good idea.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Davoodoo

[VoidPunch]

I like it, makes a lot of sense.

 

The enemy outbreaks, perfect idea for farming specific mods AND it gets people to play stuff other then survival/defense/exterminate.

 

I like the rest of it too, good stuff. I'm sure if DE has a look at this they might see some stuff worth looking into

[notionphil]

Lephantis without any dmg. Barely possible. Survival without killing any enemies. Impossible. 40 wave on xini. Too easy. 1 shot hyena. Forcing players into specific loadouts isnt a good idea.

 

It's not supposed to be easy or fair at all times. It corresponds to the rarity of the mod. It also gives you things to do.

 

 

Every 'veteran' needs split chamber, which is why the challenge is easy for vets and hard for newbies - wave 40 on xini is not easy when you're rank 2 without a potato.

 

"Lephantis without any dmg. Barely possible"

 

Exactly, it needs to be almost impossible to 'earn' one of the rarest mods in game. Can it be done? I'm sure. Can I do it? Maybe with a full day of playing a challenge...which is what DE wants us to do. Explore content. Except now I'm exploring it via my skill, not pure random chance.

 

Anyway, I'm not saying that is a fair example, it may have to be 'without getting hit more than X times'. The point is some challenges would be 'nearly impossible'.

 

Forcing players into specific loadouts? Specific missions? Specific Frame? Odd playstyles? Totally legit in my opinion. It gives more context to the existing content. And besides, you'll never have to do these. They are optional challenges to attain mods which can be had in other ways.

 

 

 

Agree with everything except this:

 

This will make some things that are rare being common, plus the traders will have a safe way to farm mods to sell... For now that's the only negative part I see but it's an big issue.

 

Good point. Each reward should only be given once. Editing the OP.

Edited January 6, 2014 by notionphil

[NeroUmbra]

Overall I like the ideas.  

 

Some of the individual challenges?  Ouch! 

 

Still gonna +1 this though.

[taiiat]

• Void Rewards: The Tenno have uncovered the Archiva - an Orokin device that breaks Prime components down into Orokin Components, which can be used to build other prime components. Only a small amount of Orokin Components can be extracted from each prime part. Rare parts of course offer more Components than common ones.

  If DE really wants to increase the rarity of new primes, the Archiva might require more Orokin Components to replicate a part when a prime is new, and as people build it, the self-learning machine figures out how to build that part more cheaply.

   

• If you kill a boss of appropriate level, in nightmare mode without using any revivies on the mission, the chance for stalker/harvester to appear is doubled. This stacks, until he appears and one of you dies.

   

• Increased Targeted Enemy Spawn Events

  On any planet in the game, a warning can appear with a chance to spawn addl enemies of a specific type in a higher volume, replacing other spawns. This Enemy Activity warning can range from Increased activity (15% of spawns in mission replaced by this enemy) to Heavy activity (25%). Thus, if I want to find a Heavy Gunner, I can look for a Heavy Gunner activity alert, and a full 25% of the enemies in the mission will be Heavy Gunners.

   

  Lotus Rewards

   

  Every Rare/Uncommon mod in normal drop tables (not nightmare etc) should be made a ONE-TIME reward for completing a specific mission within set parameters - essentially a mission based achievement. The difficulty of the challenge should relate to the rarity of the mod, and how 'necessary' it is.

- i think i would rather, say, if you scuttled a Latron part into such a device, it would give you 'Latron Technology'.

etc. so you'd need to be scuttling parts for the thing you want in order to get it. that way, you cannot simply accumulate several hundred generic parts and 'buy' the Prime item the day it is released. as that's pretty content breaking.

 

and it sounds better than increasing costs early on and decreasing later. people will complain that costs were 'buffed' or 'nerfed' even though those two slang terms apply to very few situations in Video Games.

 

- i like that for Stalker & Harvester. that is relatively fair. however. lower level Nightmare Missions, should increase by a good bit less than higher level ones. to incentivise more longterm players to aim for those more difficult missions in order to speed up the process. (rather than everyone playing Nightmare Missions on Venus because they're all identical).

 

- hm, increased enemy spawning. if we can come up with a Plausible reason that fits into Lore (i'm not looking for a perfect fit, just something that can explain why it is happening), then i'll go with it. i'm fine with them being random like Alerts, but they shouldn't actually be alerts. they'd replace some of the other Alerts we'd have instead then. they should just change the icon for the Sector on the Solar Map, there to be discovered by players who have the Solar Map explored like they are supposed to. further incentivising players doing the right thing. because 'LF Taxi' is not the right thing.

 

- i like the idea for those challenges. a lot, actually. a one time 'achievement' that rewards a Mod, sounds good to me.

and i approve of those Challenges being relatively 'difficult' for players that would be looking for the Mod - as for the actual reasonable difficulty of each of those examples, is debatable, but whatever. the idea is what matters.

 

 

 

at any rate, congratulations, you suggested the 'token' system for the Void in a way nobody else has been able to. and therefore, in a way i can actually agree with, as it won't defeat all of the content that Digital Extremes is creating and leaving players with even more of a 'i have nothing to do' feeling.

[notionphil]

- i think i would rather, say, if you scuttled a Latron part into such a device, it would give you 'Latron Technology'.

etc. so you'd need to be scuttling parts for the thing you want in order to get it. that way, you cannot simply accumulate several hundred generic parts and 'buy' the Prime item the day it is released. as that's pretty content breaking.

 

and it sounds better than increasing costs early on and decreasing later. people will complain that costs were 'buffed' or 'nerfed' even though those two slang terms apply to very few situations in Video Games.

 

I was initially thinking of a system more like your suggestion, but instead of requiring Latron Technology to build a Latron, for example, Latron Parts would simply add many more 'points' to the Latron part you're trying to fabricate than parts from other weapons.

 

However, the issue with that system (or your proposal) is that players have very little control over which item's parts they receive. Thus, you may be hunting a Sicarus Prime and instead get only Glaive Prime parts. That is still RNG's decision. My goal is to implement a system where you cannot be deterred by RNG.

 

The ideal system would incorporate both methods; such as non-latron parts only give 1 point towards a latron, and latron parts give 20 points; 100 are needed to make a BP for example. Thus, you could theoretically build any prime from random farming but it would be a horribly inefficient way to do so. And yet, each void run still brings you ever so slightly closer to your final destination.

 

This however is far more complex to both build and balance...as such I still vote for the initial suggestion, as it's harder to muck up.

 

- i like that for Stalker & Harvester. that is relatively fair. however. lower level Nightmare Missions, should increase by a good bit less than higher level ones. to incentivise more longterm players to aim for those more difficult missions in order to speed up the process. (rather than everyone playing Nightmare Missions on Venus because they're all identical).

 

 

Agree, that was my intent in the OP. "Boss of appropriate level" meant one that your frame+gear avg level is near. So if your gear is all rank 5, that might be hyena or whatever. However, if you are in rank 30 gear, it would be lephantis.

 

Having said that, one could argue that its easier just to slap higher increases on higher levels, seeing as people under 30 probably shouldn't be farming stalker. I think I'll add your idea to OP.

 

 

- hm, increased enemy spawning. if we can come up with a Plausible reason that fits into Lore (i'm not looking for a perfect fit, just something that can explain why it is happening), then i'll go with it. i'm fine with them being random like Alerts, but they shouldn't actually be alerts. they'd replace some of the other Alerts we'd have instead then. they should just change the icon for the Sector on the Solar Map, there to be discovered by players who have the Solar Map explored like they are supposed to. further incentivising players doing the right thing. because 'LF Taxi' is not the right thing.

 

 

Definitely, they are not alerts and should not replace them. They are more of 'events'. (I have other ideas for Events too, as you might imagine.) Just a little buzzing on the map icon would work.

 

Lore basis is as simple as "We've discovered a Grinner Scorpion trarning facility" or "Corpus MOAs are being produced on this planet". Easy enough.

 

 

 

- i like the idea for those challenges. a lot, actually. a one time 'achievement' that rewards a Mod, sounds good to me.

and i approve of those Challenges being relatively 'difficult' for players that would be looking for the Mod - as for the actual reasonable difficulty of each of those examples, is debatable, but whatever. the idea is what matters.

 

 

 

at any rate, congratulations, you suggested the 'token' system for the Void in a way nobody else has been able to. and therefore, in a way i can actually agree with, as it won't defeat all of the content that Digital Extremes is creating and leaving players with even more of a 'i have nothing to do' feeling.

 

 

Thanks! Great ideas and feedback. It will certainly help me clarify the OP.

[gell]

I love challenge, so I'm for challenge-based along with grind based ways to obtain things. They don't need to do exactly what you proposed, but they are just examples.

 

Before trading, I would have said skill-based things are unfair for terrible players (or handicapped, or whatever), but now, there's always trading too.

 

Although I still think the Detron/Harvester thing is being taken the wrong way by most folks here. I don't see it as farming and RNG within an RNG. I just think it's a reward that will come eventually after facing the Harvester a lot. People need to stop seeing it as DE making people grind, and look at it as simply DE giving players something, eventually, for having foughta fun random boss. More crazy random bosses would make WF so much better. The rewards are extra, not a goal.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Wow... I love everything.

 

I also love the more complex idea wherein different parts have different efficiencies for construction.

Edited January 7, 2014 by Volt_Cruelerz

[Phatose]

Those are all at least fairly good ideas.  The increased enemy spawning is certainly a nice touch and I'm all for it, though we could probably get a faster start simply by giving us more granular information on actual enemy spawns within any particular mission.  The codex is pretty bad about that - Grineer commanders spawn in Saturn, but they're certainly not in every mission, and simply giving details on where they actually appear on a per-mission basis would at least be a start.

 

I'm sure I've seen this suggested before though, especially in regard to alerts, since a high enemy density of a specific enemy type could be used to make credit alerts more useful.

 

 

The per mission achievement type is interesting, though I wonder if skilled based one time rewards can really work as is, simply because so often you have other players to carry you.  I have to wonder if they'd end up being less about player skill at the game, and more about player skill in convincing others to carry.

[notionphil]

Those are all at least fairly good ideas.  The increased enemy spawning is certainly a nice touch and I'm all for it, though we could probably get a faster start simply by giving us more granular information on actual enemy spawns within any particular mission.  The codex is pretty bad about that - Grineer commanders spawn in Saturn, but they're certainly not in every mission, and simply giving details on where they actually appear on a per-mission basis would at least be a start.

 

I'm sure I've seen this suggested before though, especially in regard to alerts, since a high enemy density of a specific enemy type could be used to make credit alerts more useful.

 

 

The per mission achievement type is interesting, though I wonder if skilled based one time rewards can really work as is, simply because so often you have other players to carry you.  I have to wonder if they'd end up being less about player skill at the game, and more about player skill in convincing others to carry.

 

I've suggested the Increased Enemy Spawn previously, haven't seen it other than that. Agreed that more spawn info would be helpful as well.

 

RE: per-mission achievements, the most difficult would need to be challenging for an entire team, so no getting carried. Also as my examples noted, some could be solo, or personal achievement (ex: kill hyena in one shot).

[notionphil]

I love challenge, so I'm for challenge-based along with grind based ways to obtain things. They don't need to do exactly what you proposed, but they are just examples.

 

Before trading, I would have said skill-based things are unfair for terrible players (or handicapped, or whatever), but now, there's always trading too.

 

Although I still think the Detron/Harvester thing is being taken the wrong way by most folks here. I don't see it as farming and RNG within an RNG. I just think it's a reward that will come eventually after facing the Harvester a lot. People need to stop seeing it as DE making people grind, and look at it as simply DE giving players something, eventually, for having foughta fun random boss. More crazy random bosses would make WF so much better. The rewards are extra, not a goal.

 

The issue is that there isn't enough non RNG based content in the game to accomplish, and many of the biggest challenges in the game are hidden behind RNG.

 

Most of the vocal players already have 'everything they want'. For one reason, that's because DE hands some items out like candy, and others are locked behind 10 layers of RNG. It should be much harder to attain good things, but hard != pure RNG.

 

The fact that the difficulty of obtaining an item has nothing to do with its quality is also a problem. I wouldn't be surprised if Detron isn't even an "endgame quality" weapon, despite being arguably the rarest in the game.

[notionphil]

This post seems strangely relevant still. That's unfortunate.

 

EDIT - Ok, I guess it wasn't too old. :D

Edited April 4, 2014 by notionphil

[Yezzik]

Make sure that every major RNG system has a NON-RNG counterpart, which can offer the same rewards. The non-RNG counterpart should either be based on challenge or progressive grinding - neither of which should be easy. In some cases, they should take longer "for the average player" than the RNG solution, but have the guarantee of sustained progress.

 

This ALONE would fix almost everything.

If I knew that running, say, ten thousand anti-Grineer Invasion missions would guarantee me the Brakk even if circumstances continue to conspire to deny me the Barrel component time after time after time, I would run those missions.

 

I have no idea how long it'd take me to perform such a feat, but at least I'd always be making visible progress. Every minute spent in those missions would be one minute closer to that weapon, and would be tangible progress, instead of the current "sorry you didn't luck hard enough this time, try again lol" of the current system.

 

RNG in general is a horrible design decision, and hurts both players and developers alike. The players who get their gear quickly have no further need of whatever content the devs spent countless hours and a hell of a lot of money creating, which means that content is wasted on them from that moment on.

 

Meanwhile, those of us who can't ever get what we're after because RNG keeps messing with us only end up driven away from a game we'd like to play. We end up driven further and further toward games that don't keep yanking the carrot out of reach.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Yezzik