[Suggestion] To Make Rng More Reliable And Fun

[tmtke]

This is a repost (and extension) from a recent comment of mine, feel free to contribute.

TL;DR: Current drop table is static, and therefore easily dilutable. Make it more dynamic, rewarding players instead of just randomly give them unnecessary stuff.

What if RNG can be reworked, or I'd rather say it can be more biased?

Currently enemy drop table has basically two dimensions - one for enemy type, one for rarity. There is a chance what rarity drops, that is the so called RNG in it. Another added complexity is where to find the actual enemies, but that is not RNG, maybe only the spawn rate of them. Other drop rewards (5 wave, 5 minutes, etc.) are just count as an "enemy type", so it's not that different.

Now, what if:

* game creates a session specific drop table at the start of the game session

* at first, the game would sort out the LEAST needed drops based on player data (no more raining Reach, etc. - if all players have a lot of them)

* enemy type would only add specific mods to this drop table

* game type modifiers, like in defense the team would get a the specific drop based on the drop table, only instead of enemy type the filter would be the faction which the team is playing against

Enemy type modifiers:

* killing an enemy would add a modifier to the RNG calculation (biased towards the rarer drops) based on enemy level and type (lvl 60 bombard is harder to kill)

* any special kill would also add some biasing to the RNG, like stealth kills, targeted shots, melee combos (skill involvement)

Game type modifiers:

* finishing 5 wave or 5 minutes (or another game type) with 0 revives

* team kills would bias towards rarer mods (helping out each other and not spawncamping)

* in defense the cryopod damage would lower the bias, but each 5 wave or minute moves the drop table towards the rarer items

Additional idea: Session drop tables can even be player specific, and can be constructed totally on client side. The drop probability is session specific (well, mod cores looks the same, aren't they), so if something drops from an enemy, all players can pick it up, but the resulting mod could be different for every one of them.

Drop table example:

Player joins a mission, and the client is generating the drop table.

1. Add in all the mods and stuff, which are common (every enemy has a chance to drop them, or which are not enemy based)

2. Add in enemy type special drops, like boss/miniboss/leader/etc. specific ones (other kind of rewards can be a different drop table, like boss rewards, but calculated the same way).

3. Player already has a lot of duplicates, so the basic formula is to lower their drop rates based on rarity and the number of them (fused ones counts as if they were one, to make sure you can max them), but let certain types drop anyway, like fusion cores.

4. During the game, the drop table could be rebalanced, like if you get the same mod x times, it will be deleted from the table.

This is just a quick idea, there can be a lot of modifiers the devs can think up, like incorporating ability usage and so on.

Edited April 16, 2014 by tmtke

[Cemges]

No no no no client side mods. We had them before... barely got them changed. That also makes it ridiculously painful to acquire rare mods you dont already own a copy of.

[LouarnRuz]

Indeed, it took me 6 months to get a Flow mod, the first time, and some mods i only found once someone had traded me one, so rather recently :(

[SoulDust]

.... 6 months, to get flow..?

[tmtke]

No no no no client side mods. We had them before... barely got them changed. That also makes it ridiculously painful to acquire rare mods you dont already own a copy of.

 

No, we didn't, we had only a simple drop table without any specific biasing.