Dear De. The Simple Statistical Reason As To Why Im Never Going To Buy Void Keys

[Ryanshow]

This is ME3 multiplayer all over again. Maybe worse.

 

I farm kliken for a chance to have a key.

 

Then farm orokin zone for a chance to get something I want.

 

Even if I pay I'm still only paying for a chance to get something I want.

 

At least ME3 had the decency to give me something as a consolation prize every time.

 

p2p is even screwed. THAT is messed up.

[Taranis49]

Latron Prime - 

 

BP - 2 

Barrel - 1

Stock - 2 

Receiver - 1

 

Reaper - 

 

Blade - 1

Handle -0

BP - 1

 

Frost Prime

 

BP - 1

Helm - 1

Chasis - 0

System - 0

 

10 runs. 

 

Its RNG. Its all RNG.

 

Problem being the "R", the drops aren't actually random, if they were, you'd have just as many guys griping about getting too many receivers and no BPs, right alongside the guys with the legion of Latron Prime BPs threatening to conquer the rest of their inventory; simple law of averages. People drowning in receivers with no BPs? You have a better chance of finding leprechauns and unicorns.

 

Even in your own runs, the Latron BP apparently dropped more often than any other item save the stock (and you don't say what Tier those missions were).

 

By definition, "random" requires equal chances. Literally, it's in the dictionary and everything:

 

"2.) Statistics. of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen." - dictionary.com

 

A lucky one-off? Yeah, it happens. It's how I got my receiver, but if you and everyone you know were to play craps and ended up getting snake eyes on nine out of ten rolls, how long until you start to suspect the dice are fixed?

Edited May 30, 2013 by Taranis49

[Boomstick720]

This is ME3 multiplayer all over again. Maybe worse.

 

I farm kliken for a chance to have a key.

 

Then farm orokin zone for a chance to get something I want.

 

Even if I pay I'm still only paying for a chance to get something I want.

 

At least ME3 had the decency to give me something as a consolation prize every time.

 

p2p is even screwed. THAT is messed up.

I mean... the things you get are a consolation prize.  You get items that are sellable, with the possible exception to weapon parts (I don't know if you can sell them or not, and if you can't you should be able to).  Just because the consolation prize you get isn't the prize you want doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Edited May 30, 2013 by Boomstick720

[kaizoku222]

I wouldn't go insofar as to say it's a scam as it could just be a development error of some sort. My clan mates and myself just got the receiver by an Elimination III Void mission. It's only a scam if you choose to spend money over it to find that the item does not exist. Since the item does exist, it's not a scam, it's just a case of the game not tipping in your favor.

 

You're completely wrong. Manipulating drop rates to create artificial scarcity to frustrate the player base into spending more money is most certainly a scam. It's not a developer error, do you know how hard it would be to so consistently "mess up" the drop rate on one part of each BP, "accidentally" making it much lower than all the others? It's just a number, it's not a complicated and fragile line of code, it's a number someone typed in with the full intent to make something scarce. 

 

DE are intentionally keeping one part scarce to push people into buying, rather than farming, keys. It's a really shady business practice, it's crappy game design, and they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt that they just "messed up" the drop numbers so conveniently and consistently.

 

What they do deserve is to be called out by the player base on bad game design and sacrificing design for money more and more as the updates go on. This started a couple updates ago and has gotten worse, and will continue to get worse as updates go on if they are not held accountable.

[Boomstick720]

You're completely wrong. Manipulating drop rates to create artificial scarcity to frustrate the player base into spending more money is most certainly a scam. It's not a developer error, do you know how hard it would be to so consistently "mess up" the drop rate on one part of each BP, "accidentally" making it much lower than all the others? It's just a number, it's not a complicated and fragile line of code, it's a number someone typed in with the full intent to make something scarce. 

 

DE are intentionally keeping one part scarce to push people into buying, rather than farming, keys. It's a really shady business practice, it's crappy game design, and they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt that they just "messed up" the drop numbers so conveniently and consistently.

 

What they do deserve is to be called out by the player base on bad game design and sacrificing design for money more and more as the updates go on. This started a couple updates ago and has gotten worse, and will continue to get worse as updates go on if they are not held accountable.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you- the reason that gamers still have a bad reputation among most circles.

[Taranis49]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you- the reason that gamers still have a bad reputation among most circles.

While I don't agree that it's intentionally malicious on their part (never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence, after all), he's not really wrong either.

 

It's a case where simply claiming "RNG" isn't enough either (since "random" by its very definition requires equal probabilities); the drops are weighted differently, DE themselves make no qualms about this. Roll dice, you have even chances of getting a one through six; if you tape a weight to one side of the dice so they regularly end up snake eyes, then the roll kinda stops being random. It'd be wrong if a casino did it and I see no reason that the same shouldn't be true here.

 

Is the current system rigged? The statistics say "yes". It's not wrong to call a spade a spade.

[Meltina]

The fact they weighted loot drops is not an inheretly bad thing. Sure you can roll 1-6 but 1-4 get you a rock and 5-6 gives you a diamond. It still was a random roll to determine your loot. Having loot drops balanced this way is pretty standard. It is usauly how you determine if the drop is rare common or uncommon. The rarites would mean nothing if they all were even chance. The game could even be rolling on the common table first 95% chance of a common then 5% chance to reroll on the uncommon table. Then the uncommon table has its item and a chance to reroll on the rare table instead.

 

Now how much they set the probilites is the problem. Yes some objects were too rare. It was pretty unacceptable that every t3 key till the hotfix was wasted due to blades and recivers not even being on the t3 drop table. The problem was the loot table not the rng it worked mostly as they designed it. Many sweepstakes have tons of a common item you have to match to the rare item to win the game and they were using this for warframe. The thing is we all imagined it would be fair. They might have gotten away with it for quite a while too if it wasnt for the void exploit. Then the only evidence of bad drop tables would be the few who bought 100s of keys and that could be explained by a streak of bad luck. 1-2 people complaining isnt evidence but when this much data was gathered people realized they were getting duped.

 

This is more like the slot machine than loaded dice. It randomy spins the wheels but the number of spaces that are winning matches are rare compared to the non winners. Slot machines have very heavy regulations on the odds of winning. DE does not have to follow those.

 

Lets take the wheel for a spin.

 

-Cherry-    -Cherry-      -Reaper handle-

ARRGH

Edited May 31, 2013 by Meltina

[kaizoku222]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you- the reason that gamers still have a bad reputation among most circles.

 

Give a counter-argument or you're not being useful to the conversation. You probably aren't even a "gamer" by your own definition, and such a label is arbitrary at this point anyway as it has no bearing on my argument. I've beta'd for about a hundred games, I've played every significant MMO in the past decade, and I know when devs are trying to sneak in P2W under the radar hoping people don't notice. The only way to stop it is to call them on it and to *not* presume they're just incompetent or ignorant of the problem, as they will take that and keep running in the wrong direction.

 

DE has knowingly been shifting the game more towards a multi-layered RNG P2W game the past 3 patches. When you can pay money for a *chance* at progress towards a goal, then the devs are knowingly creating a frustrating situation for the player that encourages them to keep paying until they get their goal, instead of having an in-game way to make consistent progress. 

 

DE did an amazing job with the content of this update, no matter how I dislike their design and business practices I would never say otherwise; however,  they locked all that content away behind several RNG barriers. In order to get a full weapon without paying for keys you have to get a key first (1 rng), the quality of the key is random (2 rng), and the reward you get is random (3 rng), on top of that it's been statistically proven that one part of each thing from the void is intentionally rare. DE knows what the numbers are, they know what they're doing, and pretending otherwise is giving them the green light to keep monetizing in a way that is parasitic to both the game's design and the player-base.

[Taranis49]

The fact they weighted loot drops is not an inheretly bad thing. Sure you can roll 1-6 but 1-4 get you a rock and 5-6 gives you a diamond. It still was a random roll to determine your loot. Having loot drops balanced this way is pretty standard. It is usauly how you determine if the drop is rare common or uncommon. The rarites would mean nothing if they all were even chance. The game could even be rolling on the common table first 95% chance of a common then 5% chance to reroll on the uncommon table. Then the uncommon table has its item and a chance to reroll on the rare table instead.

 

Now how much they set the probilites is the problem. Yes some objects were too rare. It was pretty unacceptable that every t3 key till the hotfix was wasted due to blades and recivers not even being on the t3 drop table. The problem was the loot table not the rng it worked mostly as they designed it. Many sweepstakes have tons of a common item you have to match to the rare item to win the game and they were using this for warframe. The thing is we all imagined it would be fair. They might have gotten away with it for quite a while too if it wasnt for the void exploit. Then the only evidence of bad drop tables would be the few who bought 100s of keys and that could be explained by a streak of bad luck. 1-2 people complaining isnt evidence but when this much data was gathered people realized they were getting duped.

 

This is more like the slot machine than loaded dice. It randomy spins the wheels but the number of spaces that are winning matches are rare compared to the non winners. Slot machines have very heavy regulations on the odds of winning. DE does not have to follow those.

 

Lets take the wheel for a spin.

 

-Cherry-    -Cherry-      -Reaper handle-

ARRGH

 

I didn't say weighted drops were necessarily bad (it depends on extent), the simple fact is that if it's weighted, it's not random and can never be considered such; by definition. Literally. To reiterate from dictionary.com's entry of the word:

 

"Statistics. Of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen"

 

There's a reason the saying with casinos is "the house always wins", not "the house is always random" because the probability is that you're going to lose. It's no different here based on the results we have, even post-fix with blades/receivers supposedly being in the common table of T3 missions (which are themselves are functionally non-existent outside of pack purchases) stuff like Latron Prime BPs still drop more frequently than the other two items in question combined, even within T3's.

 

Even within the same supposed rarity, items are evidently weighted higher. In an actual random system? There'd be a roughly equal number of people griping about drowning in receivers and having no BPs due to the law of averages. This has been a known issue for a while outside the void too, both Hellfire and Cryo Rounds are pegged as "uncommon", run defense missions for a few hours and I'll be able to accurately guess which of the two was the more frequent wave reward.

 

Considering that even sweepstakes (which are totally free) disclose what the /exact/ odds of winning are, it doesn't inspire trust when the same isn't done for content that people ended up paying for to get a chance at spinning the roulette wheel.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Taranis49

[Boomstick720]

Give a counter-argument or you're not being useful to the conversation. You probably aren't even a "gamer" by your own definition, and such a label is arbitrary at this point anyway as it has no bearing on my argument. I've beta'd for about a hundred games, I've played every significant MMO in the past decade, and I know when devs are trying to sneak in P2W under the radar hoping people don't notice. The only way to stop it is to call them on it and to *not* presume they're just incompetent or ignorant of the problem, as they will take that and keep running in the wrong direction.

 

DE has knowingly been shifting the game more towards a multi-layered RNG P2W game the past 3 patches. When you can pay money for a *chance* at progress towards a goal, then the devs are knowingly creating a frustrating situation for the player that encourages them to keep paying until they get their goal, instead of having an in-game way to make consistent progress. 

 

DE did an amazing job with the content of this update, no matter how I dislike their design and business practices I would never say otherwise; however,  they locked all that content away behind several RNG barriers. In order to get a full weapon without paying for keys you have to get a key first (1 rng), the quality of the key is random (2 rng), and the reward you get is random (3 rng), on top of that it's been statistically proven that one part of each thing from the void is intentionally rare. DE knows what the numbers are, they know what they're doing, and pretending otherwise is giving them the green light to keep monetizing in a way that is parasitic to both the game's design and the player-base.

Its a matter of what you said earlier, which just screams "I HATE YOU IF YOU DO THINGS HOW I DON'T LIKE THEM YOU'RE WRONG/ EVIL/ TRYING TO SABOTAGE ME".

 

Thats why I said you give "gamers" a bad reputation.  You come across as though you think that putting money into a product means you deserve to chose the direction in which that product goes.

 

You do not.  

 

Can you think of the sheer insanity of someone who got a free Android, and started demanding that Google design it to how they want it exactly or they're pure evil?  Then why would you do it for a game?  Encouraging someone to fund your livelihood does not give reason to believe that its based out of pure malicious intent.  I genuinely don't mind criticism of the game, and in fact encourage it.  In fact if I were to rate this game right now, I'd give it an 8 at best.  However, just because I think there is a fair amount wrong with the game doesn't mean that I think the devs are pure evil or even stupid.  And it pisses me off whenever I see S#&$ posting like this where someone is apparently so infuriated at a game that they literally cannot refrain from making ad hominem attacks and wild accusations about how DE is somehow worse than Stalin and Mao put together and are clearly @(*()$ up a product that someone, usually the person S#&$ posting, "clearly" knows how to fix.  

 

You have a problem?  Good.  Relay it in a calm and civilized manner, rather than screaming about it like a 6 year old.

 

"But they took my money!" is the horrific cry.  Tough S#&$.  You gave it to them.  

 

"False Advertisement" cries another whiney voice.  No, you just got your hopes up for something that could never be achieved, and are throwing a *@##$ fit when your unrealistic expectations aren't met.

 

"I'm not asking much of anything" someone may reply.  Well in this person's mind maybe not, but its usually a F*** load harder to program stuff to work perfectly even 95% of the time, so if you're not asking much of anything, then do it yourself.

 

And finally, my personal favorite, "This game is going down the S#&$ter because of DE's greed/ stupidity/ etc.".  Not everyone is happy with the direction a game goes.  Hell, I'd have preferred to still have a functional Rhino warframe rather than what I have now, and I may *@##$ about my warframe being garbage, but I'm not gonna act like DE, who really considering most competitors is far more generous, is the butthole brigade cause I don't like what they do with their game.

 

I think RNG can be bullS#&$ too, but seriously, its kind of psychotic to assume that imperfect systems, or hell even badly designed ones are made with the intention to scam its consumers..  You want to know why gamers are thought of as entitled pricks?  Its cause there is way too many that @(*()$ act like them, cause they assume everyone other than them doesn't know jack S#&$, or is just evil.

 

/rant

[fishworshipper]

It might just be my insane luck, but the first T3 run I did after the hotfix gave me a (much needed) Reaper Prime Blueprint.

The next gave me a Latron Prime Receiver, allowing me to build Latron Prime.

Yea, I'd say it's fixed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a completely unrelated note, Iron Skin is awesome as it is right now, if you know how to tank.

I've saved my teammate's asses numerous times in T3 Void runs with over 4 Heavy Gunners by using Iron Skin to draw their aggro, and rolling like I'm fat Sonic to make it so it doesn't break instantly, while having it safeguard my shields and health.

Iron Skin is great as-is.

[kaizoku222]

snip

 

It's great that you don't like how my feedback was framed, but you've done nothing to converse with the actual topic or to disprove in any way that DE isn't knowingly attempting to monitize their game in a shady way that hurts game design. I really don't care what you think of the emotional framing of my post, I didn't say a damn thing about "omg DE u so evil yu took my money for no rasin", I made a very specific claim with statistics to back it up with a very likely motive from DE with a long history of precedent in the genre. Argue against that and participate in the conversation instead of "/rant"ing about how "people like me" make people who claim to be "gamers" look.

[battlelamb]

When they said "there will be an other way to get the new mission areas" i thought it would be like that you have to kill a insanly hard boss with lots of minions or mastery rank related or even both or other staff and i was so excited, never thouhgh of this.

Lets have a look 4 bucks for 5 runs, i do at least 15 runs a day which will be cost 12 bucks a day, if i do every day it would be like 360 bucks a month. Okey maybe they thought everyone in your clan buy a key and invite you yeah but you can invite only 3 ppl so even i do all the runs with my small team of 4 every day it is gonna cost 90 bucks soo i think its a bit unfair. I played wow and i played a lot its monthly cost was high but i paid it it was 17 bucks i guess and you have a access to huge content. I gladly pay you 10-15 bucks a month.

 

They keep saying they are small and they need money yeah everyone needs money. But trying to make the money by cutting corners have always the consequences.

[GraalOhOtonami]

My buddies and i did some tower 3s (which, I may add bought about 15 packs for 6-7 tower 3). Guess what we got? 70k, alls fine and well, but we got. Lets see. Latron prime blueprint x3, reaper handle x1, latron stock/barrel x1, and 1 frost prime helmet. Thanks DE. Thanks alot. I DAMN well hope you have an apology in the next livestream, because the drop rates are obviously rigged. and we notice you haven't replied to a single one of our forums/support tickets about this problem

We got a bunch of Frost Prime parts and a Forma, it's still RNG, you just got the raw end of the stick.

[BPoole]

My luck has been pretty good with the good missions. I have both my Latron and Frost Primes completed. The only thing I have left to get is the Reaper Blade. I bought 3 packs from the marketplace, 1 key from login reward, and two T2 keys from Io on Jupiter. I still have 3 keys left, so I'm hoping I can get all the rare items for a mere 225 plat

[zagibu]

To the dude trying to excuse latron prime receivers and reaper blades being less common than the other parts:

 

I agree that it's good practice to have weighted chances on different items, but these are not different items. Each of these parts is useless, if you don't have them all, and there is no indication whatsoever that one of the parts is rarer than the others, which is the root of the frustration. People getting barrels and stocks quickly thought they were almost done with the weapon, when in fact, they weren't, because the last part is much harder to get. I even think there wouldn't have been that big an outrage if all parts had the same low chance to appear as the rarest one of them, because then, at least, you'd wouldn't have been expecting getting the completed thing anytime soon.

[Nickamortis]

I got a clan member that used $100 USD on keys. He didn't get one Reaper prime blade. Or a latron prime receiver. I ran with him. It says it drops materials we didn't get them.

Why, dear god WHY would you spend $100 on keys!? Wouldn't you notice from even HALF of that that you weren't getting the desired reward/outcome!?