Rng - Random Number Generator And Its Main Problem (Player Feedback Wanted, Dev Feedback Would Be Greatly Appreciated)

[OniDax]

This is an expansion of a post I recently made. I was encouraged to make a topic from this by another forum member.

 

    First off, I love this game. It's cool. It's got some awesome stuff, a cool setting, cool weapons and gear. You get to look cool as well. It's also got a lot of potential. It's got potential because it, like every other game, isn't perfect. I think it can be closer to perfect. I'm not exactly sure everything the game needs to change to be so, however. Unlike those who like collecting everything in the game, or getting to the highest level, or experiencing every bit of content in the game, and then end up burnt out or bored with the game, I play the game because I like using a cool character and cool weapons and items to kill some virtual Grineer and Corpus. That's why I play. I'm not the highest mastery rank, not the top of the leaderboards, I don't have every single weapon or frame in the game.

 

    One problem I have with the game, though, is the grind. Others have said this. Seriously, the grind is a bit much. Now, it's not grind that's really the issue. What is grind but doing the same thing over and over again to achieve a certain outcome? Grind: to reduce (something) to small particles or powder by crushing it. In the context of gaming, it's pretty much to do the same thing, playing the same mission, killing enemies, over and over again to reduce the distance between you and your desired outcome or reward. In several MMOs, that's killing hordes of enemies, doing the same repetitive thing, until you level up and get that new weapon, or new armor, that new power, whatever. Honestly, there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion. That way, you know what you're getting, and your reward is based on how much time you spend playing the game.

 

    For me it's the RNG that I have a problem with. Random (really, pseudo-random, but you get the point) Number Generator. For Warframe, it's the randomly-generated drops. It's the fact that I'm wasting my time "grinding" for stuff when I'm never going to get an item I want based on the amount of grind I do. If I had to do 1000 runs of a certain node/mission to get a certain item, well crap, but at least after doing 1000 run I'd know I'm being rewarded for that amount of time. That's grind. That's farming. With RNG, there is no skill, no effort, no amount of playing, nothing of your own that you can do to get an item. It's not even fishing, where at least you've got bait, and whether or not some fish bites your bait is up to the quality of your bait. It is purely by random chance. That's not farming. That's not grinding. That's not fishing. It's not skill. It's not effort. It's gambling. It's a lottery system, the same system that runs Transmutation.

 

    That's what's frustrating to me about RNG. You're not being rewarded for playing the game. You're not being rewarded for how much of the game you experience. It doesn't "force you to play the game", as someone here told me yesterday, as if RNG rewards me for the amount of time I play. Those who get what they want are just lucky. Those who don't, aren't. The people who just opt to buy rare items from other players with plat are considered "lazy" because they didn't get this item through the RNG lottery system. They are labeled those who get these items "without skill or effort" or they are called people who didn't bust their butts "trying to earn [the items]". Some have said that the RNG isn't as bad as it is in X game or Y game, so therefore it isn't bad. The problem is that there is no way you can earn these items. There's no way your skill or effort gets you these items. It doesn't matter how much worse the drop tables are in some other game. You're still not being rewarded for what you do in the game. So when a dev says to another dev, "Just get Malicious Raptor", as if it's a simple matter of going on a mission and picking the mod from a Malicious Raptor tree, that to me is a problem.

 

    It's a problem because it says to me that DE is completely out of touch with this issue. I'm not going to pretend to know how much time the devs spend playing the game with their non-dev accounts. But it's easy for the devs to have screwed up Void drop tables and ridiculous RNG if they don't play the game the way their customers play the game. It's easy for them to ignore this if they don't grind gamble their way to getting items the way players do. It's easy for devs to just bypass the entire system and drop "six of them" into their accounts. Playing the game the way the playerbase plays the game would allow the devs to come to the same conclusions that many of us come to. It'd allow them to begin to address the community's issues with the game. Maybe we wouldn't have a large backlash against the Void drop table because for once, the devs would actually experience the same thing we experience when we play these missions. Maybe people wouldn't be leaving Warframe because the devs would know the things that kind of push players to leave in the first place.

 

    Some people have offered up some suggestions for improvements. The notable one is a Token system. Whatever alternatives there are, all I say is this: Any alternative needs to be a system that actually rewards the player for playing the game. Sure, that may involve grind. But grind is fine when the amount of grind you do guarantees the reward you seek. That may involve something like getting Serration when you've gotten so many kills with a rifle weapon. It may involve getting Gleaming Talon after you've ranked up your glaive to level 30, or after maxing it one or two or three times after polarizing it. Maybe you get a Marathon mod after sprinting a total of x amount of distance in the game (kind of like COD's achievement with the perk of the same name).

 

    Again, I'm not in a position to say what is feasible for the devs to implement. All I know is that there are enough players, including myself, who are tired of RNG, tired of not being able to "earn" the items we want in the game and instead having to gamble with our time, to get them. There are plenty of suggestions that have been made, including the one here. It'd be great if people could post their thoughts on this, their suggestions, solutions, etc. And of course, it'd be great to get some dev input. Thanks for your time, and I hope the paragraphs made this easier to read.

[Capt0bv10u5]

While I don't disagree, per se, that RNG sucks, I will point out that it's the same in every game of this style.  Yes we're playing an FPS, but is an MMO with a quest system and a little background - more lore down the road to be added.  So we're effectively playing an MMOFPSRPG.  This means that you have to deal with the RNG factor.  I would like to see certain things be implimented into the quest system to come down the road; to whit, static rewards for the player at the end of a quest or quest chain. 

 

I think removing RNG is just not a plausible option.  All baddies need a loot table and all loot tables need to be big enough that I can not always receive the same thing from them.  Things like credits are always going to drop (in varying quantities) and things like ammo will probably always drop (in varying styles), but we won't always see a mod and we won't always see the same mod.  How aweful would it be to always get the same exact mod from the same exact mob on the same exact mission?  That would completely discourage repeat gameplay after a certain point.  Once I had enough of the same mod(s) that drop from a given planet to make it so I had one maxed and one or two base-level or slightly increased for leveling purposes, I would be done with that place and never hace to go back.

 

I don't think your request is exactly unreasonable at its core, I just think it's misguided.  A revisiting of the loot tables would be more likely than the removal of RNG completely.

[Balduron04]

Quest for Devs: Eat our dog-food by gaining any rare stance mod and leveling that stance mod up only with copies of that stance mod. Quest begins once you've gotten ONE rare stance mod, and you have to play that same mission over and over again until your stance mod is fully leveled.

 

If this quest seems painful, over the top, or cruel and unreasonable, then maybe the dev's should look into why it seems that way.

[Capt0bv10u5]

Quest for Devs: Eat our dog-food by gaining any rare stance mod and leveling that stance mod up only with copies of that stance mod. Quest begins once you've gotten ONE rare stance mod, and you have to play that same mission over and over again until your stance mod is fully leveled.

 

If this quest seems painful, over the top, or cruel and unreasonable, then maybe the dev's should look into why it seems that way.

 

I'm having trouble decerning whom you're trying to troll here, OP, me or the Devs, lol.  Either way, I like the point I think you're making!

[insert sarcasm font/punctuation]

Edited June 27, 2014 by Capt0bv10u5

[OniDax]

Quest for Devs: Eat our dog-food by gaining any rare stance mod and leveling that stance mod up only with copies of that stance mod. Quest begins once you've gotten ONE rare stance mod, and you have to play that same mission over and over again until your stance mod is fully leveled.

 

If this quest seems painful, over the top, or cruel and unreasonable, then maybe the dev's should look into why it seems that way.

 

No, not any rare stance mod. You must be specific. Not all rare stance mods are that rare (like Iron Phoenix, not that rare). But yes, I like your quest for the devs.

Edited June 27, 2014 by AntoineFlemming

[Davoodoo]

The problem with rng is simple and devs must have made it that way knowing how problematic it will be.

 

Instead of putting even chances on everything so its actually random, they instead made some things rare, some things ultra rare and some things nigh impossible.

Drop chances within rare mods vary from 5% to 0.0000001% from my experience, but then there are also rare mobs and chance to even drop rare mod seems to be between 0.25-0.33%, 3-4 rare mods for every 1000 killed.

 

Knowing that few things could imo get an improvement

-even chances for every rare drop

-even chances for every prime piece

-allowing every enemy to drop every mod, with specific ones having higher chance for set specific one(drop1.0 was better system)

-raising chance for rare drop from enemy.

Edited June 27, 2014 by Davoodoo

[Capt0bv10u5]

. . .

Knowing that few things could imo get an improvement

-[1]even chances for every rare drop

-[2]even chances for every prime piece

-[3]allowing every enemy to drop every mod, with specific ones having higher chance for set specific one(drop1.0 was better system)

-[4]raising chance for rare drop from enemy.

 

I took the liberty of numbering the above points to ease replying to them.

 

[1] Even chances for evey rare drop won't happen.  the reason for this is that even among the rares, not all rares are equal.  Serration is more important than so many other mods on your rifle, as it does a base damage buff.  This means that you should see it less often from your average enemies.

 

[2] I honestly don't have a good reason why prime sets shouldn't have an equal drop chance, other than just because DE see's fit to make some harder to obtain.  I do know that the harder something is to get, the more someone will play that area to get it.  I'm reminded of World of Warcraft and the Barron's mount, making the old run in under 45minutes (before they screwed it up) was hard enough.  But to do it over and over again trying to get a hourse that had a 0.00001% drop rate was insane!  But it was fun, I remember that.

 

[3] Allowing all mods to drop across the board is silly.  Rarer mods and more useful items should only drop further down the road and from more difficult bad guys.  Under your suggestion I could sit on Mecury and just do a survival or a defense until everything I wanted dropped.  Then I'd be set and pissed that I have nothing to look forward to through the rest of the game.

 

[4] I don't have an issue with raising the chance of SOME rare drops from CERTAIN enemies.  The baddies' loot tables might need to be addressed, as I stated above, but there's no point in raising it across the board, for the same reason I stated in point three [3].

[OniDax]

I don't think everything should be left up to random chance. I think that's part of the problem. Again, I just think that there should be some way that players are rewarded for what they do in the game, not based on whether or not random chance happens to smile in their favor.

[Phatose]

What exactly would you propose would be worthy of a reward in the game?

[OniDax]

What exactly would you propose would be worthy of a reward in the game?

 

Actually playing the game. Accomplishing certain things in the game. Reward me for certain things I do in the game, how many enemies of a certain type I kill, how many times I use a certain weapon, or certain type of weapon, for using only melee weapons, or something like that. While there's the RNG system where certain items drop from certain enemies, you can still find other ways to reward players for their playing the game. RNG doesn't do that. Constantly people make the counter-argument that people who buy something with plat shouldn't because they didn't "earn" that item or they didn't put any "effort" into getting that item. RNG doesn't reward your effort. You don't get that rare stance because you ran a mission 10 times, or 100 times, or 1000 times. You get it because of pure chance. You could get the glaive stance after maxing out all three throwing weapons, or after polarizing (forma-ing) a weapon X amount of times, or after getting X amount of kills while the weapon is equipped. There are things you can do to reward players for playing the game. Sure, that's not a way for the item to drop from enemies, but it's not like mods and equipment dropping from enemies makes sense anyway. At the very least, they could do this with stance mods.

[Zerrien]

RNG is an important element of any game that has drops. A player isn't entitled to anything, except what they earn.

 

The problem, with many, is that, the rarity is... confusing. You have to run a Tier 1 Mission to get a certain item, you need to run a Tier 2 for a different item, (but still has a chance of getting specific Tier 1 items...) Etc, etc. You're not able to farm a specific part by plopping yourself down in Enchanted Meadow and farming Loki Prime. You need to farm mods, gather keys, find a party, beat the mission, and hope you get the specific part you wanted.

 

I have no problem with a Rhino Prime part being 0.1% per mission. It's not required, and it's not THAT overpowered. While it's nice to have, it's no where near necessary. If DE would come out and say 'Primes are rare. Deal with it.' It'd be less offensive than leading us on. Also, drops should be broken into categories. "Prime" "Rare" "Uncommon" and "Common" with no differences in rarity between items in a tier. Some people argue that some Prime parts are rarer than others, which doesn't fly. Players thrive on consistency and they shouldn't receive 5 Systems when they wanted a Chassis instead.

[Capt0bv10u5]

I have no problem with a Rhino Prime part being 0.1% per mission. It's not required, and it's not THAT overpowered. While it's nice to have, it's no where near necessary. If DE would come out and say 'Primes are rare. Deal with it.' It'd be less offensive than leading us on. Also, drops should be broken into categories. "Prime" "Rare" "Uncommon" and "Common" with no differences in rarity between items in a tier. Some people argue that some Prime parts are rarer than others, which doesn't fly. Players thrive on consistency and they shouldn't receive 5 Systems when they wanted a Chassis instead.

 

I love that you get RNG is important, although I deleted that section of my reply.  Thank you for that, first of all.

 

Now on to the matter at hand, I don't think anyone at DE believes Primes are necessary.  They've kind of said in a Dev Stream or two that they're basically aesthetic versions of the regulars with a few stat changes.  Primes are something they use to help push the funding from Prime Access, they don't want to leave anyone out, so they incorporate them into the drop tables of the high-tier missions that equate to something like end-game (at least for now).  I can swing the end blueprint being rarer than the three components, but beyond that I'm with you that Prime is Prime.  The newer the Prime item is, the rarer it should be, but within that item the components should all share a rarity.

 

However, mods needs levels within levels.  As I explained above, not all rare mods are equal.  There are rares I see that I end up just using fusion to throw into another mod because it's more important I get it maced than anything I would have done with the mod that dropped.  So for them all to be equal would make it appear that DE doesn't realize or appreciate those minute differences between this rare mod or that one.

[OniDax]

Zerrien, you say that a player isn't entitled to anything, except what they "earn". What exactly do players "earn" in this game and how do they earn it?

[Zerrien]

Zerrien, you say that a player isn't entitled to anything, except what they "earn". What exactly do players "earn" in this game and how do they earn it?

 

I'm just saying that each player doesn't actually DESERVE a Rhino Prime, they should have to grind for it, to earn it. It's supposed to be a challenge, yes? The challenge is the grind. I have no opposition to that.

 

Just, we don't know if the drops are fair and balanced. Percentages vary wildly in each individual 'set' across a multitude of key tiers.

 

Likewise with time-locked exclusives, like event mods. While they will come back later, the players who earned them at the time, accomplished the objective.

[arisaka]

I'm just saying that each player doesn't actually DESERVE a Rhino Prime, they should have to grind for it, to earn it. It's supposed to be a challenge, yes? The challenge is the grind. I have no opposition to that.

 

Just, we don't know if the drops are fair and balanced. Percentages vary wildly in each individual 'set' across a multitude of key tiers.

 

Likewise with time-locked exclusives, like event mods. While they will come back later, the players who earned them at the time, accomplished the objective.

The point of the thread is that the RNG doesn't make this game a grind. A grind implies that there is progress made every time you do something. But when the drops are random then it's not a grind, it's a lottery. No progress is made when you fail to get what you want.

[DirkDeadeye]

It's not even RNG...

 

It's Weighted RNG. And the tables are encrypted. And it may be server side so they may as well be adjusting drop rates with the ebbs and flows of consumption..Which is even worse.

[Zeful]

The main problem isn't RNG, not really. It's that there are no ways to narrow down what your potential rewards are, thus you are stuck in a lot of instances of getting just junk. There's actually a chinese MMO that has just as much RNG as Warframe, but has so many different pools you can grind in, as well as systems dedicated to improving your drops that you will get what you want, though luck still plays a role.

[OniDax]

The point of the thread is that the RNG doesn't make this game a grind. A grind implies that there is progress made every time you do something. But when the drops are random then it's not a grind, it's a lottery. No progress is made when you fail to get what you want.

 

Yes. This is the point. It actually makes grind pointless as your grind gets you nothing. Your repeating the same mission 50 times as opposed to 5 times gets you nothing.

 

@Zerrien, the problem with RNG is that some people will get Rhino Prime easily because it's a lottery system at its core. Or rather lottery is RNG. But that's what the analogy is here. We're all playing the Warframe lottery, and whether or not you get something is based upon if you're lucky. It's not based on your grind, your playing, your efforts, or your skill. You cannot earn things in this game just like you can't earn a lottery winning.

[Capt0bv10u5]

The grind gets you the XP to gain the next MR or to forma that weapon you love for the second or third time.  The grind isn't about the drops, it hasn't been in any MMO ever.  I played WoW from opening to the end of Pandaria, and there was never a single "grind" that got me a weapon or any armor.  Those are byproducts of your grinding the XP.  RNG is in the game to keep you from seeing the same thing every single time, but also to keep you from only having to run a given area two or three times to get all the pieces you need of a blueprint then bugging out and never coming back.

 

RNG guarantees replay-ability, it promises rewards (yes sometimes duplicates), and makes the game take a little longer, meaning you'll stay around and spend more money.  That's what it does in every MMO in the market.  If you want something right now, you'll spent the platinum to get it.  This means you need to hang out and level it.  If you want to "grind" (as you call it) the item out, then you'll play even longer.  I don't think we have a firm grasp of the purpose of the Random Number Generation for the purpose of statistically enhancing the gameplay value of an intellectual property.

[SiaraArc]

The grind gets you the XP to gain the next MR or to forma that weapon you love for the second or third time.  The grind isn't about the drops, it hasn't been in any MMO ever.

Here's where I have to disagree. Early in the game, yes, grinding is for exp, starting to build your power up. When you have your ranks and levels up, the focus switches to mods so you can fully optimize your power, so the grind does become about drops, and that's the frustration that a lot of players are feeling.

[Otakuwolf]

All i just say (and keep saying) is that i'm so tired of RNG and pointless void missions that i'm not even using my keys anymore, for how many times i tryed and how long i play all i get are just stupid cores and the same prime parts over and over again, the worst example of all being the T3 ext keys which to me are next to impossible to find (i have about 56 T2 survival instead) and always give me the same Mag prime chassis/blueprint OR a forma (which i have 12 to craft still) when all i want is the damn glaive prime BP, i don't even care about Rhino prime since is not my kind of frame anyway but i would like to be AT LEAST able to get the glaive BP, but i'm not and i never am, so i'm done with voids.

 

Indeed as OP sayd, i'm tired of this, and because of that i'm done playing Void missions or anything with drops, i'm not even going to try to get the claws stance because i already had enough of that when i farmed the (first) Nikana stance on Earth and i don't feel like repeating the same experience again.

 

And about suggestions, indeed, eighter a Token system or a "serious" RNG that if an item has say 1% of chance to drop, it WILL drop if you do the thing you're supposed to 100 times and not just reset.

[Capt0bv10u5]

Here's where I have to disagree. Early in the game, yes, grinding is for exp, starting to build your power up. When you have your ranks and levels up, the focus switches to mods so you can fully optimize your power, so the grind does become about drops, and that's the frustration that a lot of players are feeling.

 

My contention isn't that player focus shifts, it's the calling it a grind that I'm arguing. We should have the basis for the RNG - not the RNG itself - evaluated. That is to say, the drop tables and their percentages. Ridding the game of RNG is foolish and will cause a loss of player-base once we've attained everything. In order to keep the players, DE would have to churn out new content and new items faster than is possible.  The correct response is to evaluate the way in which players attain items, and the rate at which we are capable of doing so.  Grinding is not the same as farming in the MMO world, RNG ensures that we will play an area repeatedly.  This isn't your average FPS shhot 'em up game like Call of Duty or Counter Strike where you are points or credits or dollars in order to purchase and/or research new things directly.  It's a combination of that system alongside the regular drop mechanics of your MMORPG worlds.  I'm just as frustrated that I don't have an infected mod for my pistol, but I have to farm it out like everyone else.

 

All i just say (and keep saying) is that i'm so tired of RNG and pointless void missions that i'm not even using my keys anymore, for how many times i tryed and how long i play all i get are just stupid cores and the same prime parts over and over again, the worst example of all being the T3 ext keys which to me are next to impossible to find (i have about 56 T2 survival instead) and always give me the same Mag prime chassis/blueprint OR a forma (which i have 12 to craft still) when all i want is the damn glaive prime BP, i don't even care about Rhino prime since is not my kind of frame anyway but i would like to be AT LEAST able to get the glaive BP, but i'm not and i never am, so i'm done with voids.

 

Indeed as OP sayd, i'm tired of this, and because of that i'm done playing Void missions or anything with drops, i'm not even going to try to get the claws stance because i already had enough of that when i farmed the (first) Nikana stance on Earth and i don't feel like repeating the same experience again.

 

And about suggestions, indeed, eighter a Token system or a "serious" RNG that if an item has say 1% of chance to drop, it WILL drop if you do the thing you're supposed to 100 times and not just reset.

 

As to all of this, I understand the struggle.  Not even counting prime parts, I had eight copies of the Rhino Systems before I got the Helmet so I could actually make my normal Rhino frame.  However, quitting voids altogether isn't the answer . . . and I know the frustration, but that's the nature of the game and the nature of RNG.  As to the stance mod(s), I got the Nikana stance mod my first run attempt, but haven't seen the claws yet (granted it's only been out for a short amount of time).  But as I stated above, I'm STILL trying to get the pistol poison status mods to drop, to no avail.

 

Now, not to nit-pick (or maybe I am), but RNG is working as intended.  What you're describing would require less statistical calculation and is not a random number generation style drop table.  What you are wanting is something that has a set number of tries before you see it.  This would require tallying of said information somewhere - either server-side or client-side - and ultimately would be more annoying.  Let's something currently has a 0.5% drop rate.  That means you have to run something 200 times to see it, whereas I could run across it within my first five tries.  If, instead, you're looking at a chance to see it drop, but if you don't after the given number of times out one (1/100, 1/200, etc.) then you're asking for a dual-tallied drop table that would require massive amounts of rework and mean your game will run slower as you approach those higher numbers. 

 

 

Keep in mind, I'm not saying that any of you are wrongly aggrivated and I'm not saying the current system in place is perfect.  What I am saying is that we don't need to lose RNG, and we don't need a set number of times to see an item.  What I would like to see is the primary BPs for frames and weapons become quest rewards as they bring the quest system into fruition, and the component parts still drop (system, helmet, blade, barrel, etc.).  This would work in favor of everyone, I think, and it would lesson the pool of dropped items making it easier to channel into specific items.  Perhaps there can even be mini-bosses that drop component BPs throughout the planet so we can at least not get the same one over and over.  Leaving the final boss to have a chance at the last component and the quest reward for him/her/it be the total BP. 

 

A revamp of the system is not a bad idea, but dropping the current parts of the system would be foolish and cause DE to lose out on players and money.

[R3DBelmont456]

This is an expansion of a post I recently made. I was encouraged to make a topic from this by another forum member.

 

    First off, I love this game. It's cool. It's got some awesome stuff, a cool setting, cool weapons and gear. You get to look cool as well. It's also got a lot of potential. It's got potential because it, like every other game, isn't perfect. I think it can be closer to perfect. I'm not exactly sure everything the game needs to change to be so, however. Unlike those who like collecting everything in the game, or getting to the highest level, or experiencing every bit of content in the game, and then end up burnt out or bored with the game, I play the game because I like using a cool character and cool weapons and items to kill some virtual Grineer and Corpus. That's why I play. I'm not the highest mastery rank, not the top of the leaderboards, I don't have every single weapon or frame in the game.

 

    One problem I have with the game, though, is the grind. Others have said this. Seriously, the grind is a bit much. Now, it's not grind that's really the issue. What is grind but doing the same thing over and over again to achieve a certain outcome? Grind: to reduce (something) to small particles or powder by crushing it. In the context of gaming, it's pretty much to do the same thing, playing the same mission, killing enemies, over and over again to reduce the distance between you and your desired outcome or reward. In several MMOs, that's killing hordes of enemies, doing the same repetitive thing, until you level up and get that new weapon, or new armor, that new power, whatever. Honestly, there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion. That way, you know what you're getting, and your reward is based on how much time you spend playing the game.

 

    For me it's the RNG that I have a problem with. Random (really, pseudo-random, but you get the point) Number Generator. For Warframe, it's the randomly-generated drops. It's the fact that I'm wasting my time "grinding" for stuff when I'm never going to get an item I want based on the amount of grind I do. If I had to do 1000 runs of a certain node/mission to get a certain item, well crap, but at least after doing 1000 run I'd know I'm being rewarded for that amount of time. That's grind. That's farming. With RNG, there is no skill, no effort, no amount of playing, nothing of your own that you can do to get an item. It's not even fishing, where at least you've got bait, and whether or not some fish bites your bait is up to the quality of your bait. It is purely by random chance. That's not farming. That's not grinding. That's not fishing. It's not skill. It's not effort. It's gambling. It's a lottery system, the same system that runs Transmutation.

 

    That's what's frustrating to me about RNG. You're not being rewarded for playing the game. You're not being rewarded for how much of the game you experience. It doesn't "force you to play the game", as someone here told me yesterday, as if RNG rewards me for the amount of time I play. Those who get what they want are just lucky. Those who don't, aren't. The people who just opt to buy rare items from other players with plat are considered "lazy" because they didn't get this item through the RNG lottery system. They are labeled those who get these items "without skill or effort" or they are called people who didn't bust their butts "trying to earn [the items]". Some have said that the RNG isn't as bad as it is in X game or Y game, so therefore it isn't bad. The problem is that there is no way you can earn these items. There's no way your skill or effort gets you these items. It doesn't matter how much worse the drop tables are in some other game. You're still not being rewarded for what you do in the game. So when a dev says to another dev, "Just get Malicious Raptor", as if it's a simple matter of going on a mission and picking the mod from a Malicious Raptor tree, that to me is a problem.

 

    It's a problem because it says to me that DE is completely out of touch with this issue. I'm not going to pretend to know how much time the devs spend playing the game with their non-dev accounts. But it's easy for the devs to have screwed up Void drop tables and ridiculous RNG if they don't play the game the way their customers play the game. It's easy for them to ignore this if they don't grind gamble their way to getting items the way players do. It's easy for devs to just bypass the entire system and drop "six of them" into their accounts. Playing the game the way the playerbase plays the game would allow the devs to come to the same conclusions that many of us come to. It'd allow them to begin to address the community's issues with the game. Maybe we wouldn't have a large backlash against the Void drop table because for once, the devs would actually experience the same thing we experience when we play these missions. Maybe people wouldn't be leaving Warframe because the devs would know the things that kind of push players to leave in the first place.

 

    Some people have offered up some suggestions for improvements. The notable one is a Token system. Whatever alternatives there are, all I say is this: Any alternative needs to be a system that actually rewards the player for playing the game. Sure, that may involve grind. But grind is fine when the amount of grind you do guarantees the reward you seek. That may involve something like getting Serration when you've gotten so many kills with a rifle weapon. It may involve getting Gleaming Talon after you've ranked up your glaive to level 30, or after maxing it one or two or three times after polarizing it. Maybe you get a Marathon mod after sprinting a total of x amount of distance in the game (kind of like COD's achievement with the perk of the same name).

 

    Again, I'm not in a position to say what is feasible for the devs to implement. All I know is that there are enough players, including myself, who are tired of RNG, tired of not being able to "earn" the items we want in the game and instead having to gamble with our time, to get them. There are plenty of suggestions that have been made, including the one here. It'd be great if people could post their thoughts on this, their suggestions, solutions, etc. And of course, it'd be great to get some dev input. Thanks for your time, and I hope the paragraphs made this easier to read.

I agree 100% with all of this, I've never really liked RNG and sure in Statistics it's reffered to as "fair" due to giving everyone am equal chance at obtaining whatever it is you're grinding for. But whenever someone has been grinding for 1000s of runs with no luck and then someone just happens to get everything they need in 3, I beg to differ... RNG manipulated drop tables for any item not only artificially prolongs the game, but also tends to make a lot of us eventually get bored, frustrated, feel major remorse for waste of time which inevitably = Rage Quit... I feel that they need to make the drop tables a bit more fair for a lot of stuff so as to reduce the boredom and frustration that comes with "Gambling" for your stuff rather than earning them with hardwork, at least if you earn stuff you feel achieved and proud of your accomplishment rather than mentally exhausted when what you've been grinding for hours, days, weeks even months for...

[Phatose]

Unfortunately, as you no doubt realize, taking that away has a cost.  You prevent people from quitting due to RNG frustration, but accelerate people quitting because they've run out of things to do.

[Capt0bv10u5]

The issue with tokens is that you can quickly over-saturate the game with different currencies.  The thing about RNG is that it's the most fair system available to level the playing field across the board.  It may be annoying and it may keep you from getting something quickly, but you can still obtain it whether you're a "hardcore play all the time" kind of gamer or a "hang out and play every now and then" gamer.  

 

Phatose gets the idea of replay value added by RNG, and to stop the people that rage-quit from RNG frustration DE might need to revisit the values of the drop tables.  Not that I haven't said that last bit in every post I've made, it's just that it's the most viable option.

 

Give DE time to get the quest system in place and we might see drop tables change due to currently dropped items becoming rewards.