For Everyone Complaining About The Rng In Warframe...

[Wooben]

For starters, I'm not trying to defend what DE is doing here. It's more just a heads up to everyone complaining about the randomness of warframe and suggesting substitutes (such as the void tokens mentioned in the stream which you could trade in for rewards of your choice rather than keeping on doing void runs hoping for whatever blueprint you needed to drop).

If you have a guinea pig in a cage with a button and train it so that whenever it presses the button a piece of food will fall then whenever the guinea pig is hungry it will simply press the button. Because it knows that food will always be there at a button press so it may as well just press it when the need arises.

If you change it so that at every press there is instead a 15% chance to drop a piece of food, the guinea pig will just not stop pressing it. Because sometimes it won't get the food it needs, so it just has to keep on pressing it, over and over; keep on coming back so it doesn't go hungry.

This is essentially what is happening in Warframe. It's a cheap tactic, but certainly nothing new in the videogame industry, especially in the free to play market. Randomizing everything so you keep coming back, because you don't know for sure if you'll get that item on your next run, so you just keep on doing it. It is good for DE because it keeps people playing their games, and also gives them further incentive to buy platinum, because not only does it take longer to grind for items, but you might not ever get the item you are looking for.

Steve said in the stream that he prefers the RNG because it gives casual players a chance at getting something quickly rather than having to grind for hours, and while I'm not saying he is lying it is not the whole story. He also said that people in the company have told him that taking out the randomness would put them in a bad place... this is definitely true. The randomness keeps people buying platinum, and keeps DE in business, so to everyone complaining about it, it sucks, but you are just going to have to get used to it. This is the business model that DE are using, and I can guarantee you that they are not going to change it any time soon.

[DellSalami]

Makes sense.

[neKroMancer]

While I appreciated your effort in explaining Skinner box, I still think the RNG should be tweaked.

Problem with the current form of RNG is - while it's fair, it's not fun. Assuming that item A has normal distribution (bell-shaped curve), there will always be two end of the spectrum. 5% who get item A for sure with every loot run they do, another 5% won't get item A even when they do the same amout of loot run.

DE will lose both 5%. The top 5% will burn through the content at an alarming rate and left for other games, they may come back for the next patch/update but DE still lost the chance to generate income from them. The unlucky 5% will likely quitting the game out of frustration, DE lost profit and generate a bad reputation in the same time.

This is where 'globally' equal RNG creates the problem. Skinner box relies on inconsistent win in order to create behavior. When there is too much win or no win, the mouse stop hitting the button. The current RNG needs a secondary fail-safe system that detect lose streak and generate win when there is enough lose accumulated.

Edit: damn iPhone.

Edited May 31, 2013 by neKroMancer

[kskg]

In my opinion Warframe is not a pay2win but a play2win, you can get almost everything playing. Its a matter of time that you get what you are looking for. There are ppl that dont whant to wait to have a new warframe/equipment/stuff so they pay for it and they are less worried about RNG.

 

In the other hand we have ppl that dont have so much plat and we have to live with RNG rules. I think that most ppl keep playing warframe simply cause is good, not because they will get an item in the next run. If I play for one item I will probably feel frustrated fast (or not it depends on RNG).

 

I have bad luck with RNG, Im playing since closed beta and Im still looking for banshee helmet (and a latron receiver ofc).. but never complained. Im just waiting for the good luck, if someone doesnt want to wait they can do one thing: pay.

 

sry for my english and greetings from Spain

[theangelbelow88]

I completely agree with this.

[Guest]

guinea pig keeps pressing button = person stays up all night just in case alert pops up

[theangelbelow88]

guinea pig keeps pressing button = person stays up all night just in case alert pops up

There are app that stay up for you and also wake you up if you set the volume high enough on your phone...

[CharginTarge]

While I appreciated your effort in explaining Skinner box, I still think the RNG should be tweaked.

Problem with the current form of RNG is - while it's fair, it's not fun. Assuming that item A has normal distribution (bell-shaped curve), there will always be two end of the spectrum. 5% who get item A for sure with every loot run they do, another 5% won't get item A even when they do the same amout of loot run.

DE will lose both 5%. The top 5% will burn through the content at an alarming rate and left for other games, they may come back for the next patch/update but DE still lost the chance to generate income from them. The unlucky 5% will likely quitting the game out of frustration, DE lost profit and generate a bad reputation in the same time.

This is where 'globally' equal RNG creates the problem. Skinner box relies on inconsistent win in order to create behavior. When there is too much win or no win, the mouse stop hitting the button. The current RNG needs a secondary fail-safe system that detect lose streak and generate win when there is enough lose accumulated.

Edit: damn iPhone.

 

I agree with this so very much.

 

Just plain old randomness is in my opinion terrible and lazy design. You want to ensure that every player has an equal amount of fun, however a plain RNG system creates anything but that. Not only should you set an implicit goal for the amount of runs that someone needs to get a certain item, but also something to enforce this if a player's effort exceeds this target.

 

Take any rare item, let's say Rhino Helmet BP. Assume that is has a droprate of 10%. At first this droprate doesn't sound so bad does it? It probably won't drop on the first run, but you feel that after a couple of runs you'll get it. Also, the probability of not getting this item after 100 runs is 0.9^100=0.00002656. That's a tiny number, so you'll probably get it after a day's work...probably.

 

However if you consider the playerbase, which is about 2 million people afaik, then that means that 53 people won't get this blueprint even after 100 runs. Also this is the same for the Rhino Chassis, Rhino Systems and any other rare item out there. While a plain random system does work most of the time, it predictably, consistently and continuously does screw over a small fraction of the userbase, which grows every time another rare drop is introduced.

 

It's not a system that guarantees the same amount of fun for every player. While a Blizzard developer might now give the age old quote of "Working as intended", I would proclaim that their intentions are bollocks and should be reconsidered.

[Aggh]

rng is fine, but rng on top of rng (like we have in the void system) or rng that isn't even reliant on playing the game (the alert system) is an entirely different story.

[Countess_Hapmuhr]

guinea pig keeps pressing button = person stays up all night just in case alert pops up

 

Seriously, I know I'm hardcore and S#&$, but not even I would put my nights sleep over a simple game. If anyone is losing sleep over alerts, you seriously need to take a step back NOW before you wreck your life. Staying up late only for a game is a very strong warning signal that you've got your priorities skewed in a very bad way.

[Lordician]

While I appreciated your effort in explaining Skinner box, I still think the RNG should be tweaked.

Problem with the current form of RNG is - while it's fair, it's not fun. Assuming that item A has normal distribution (bell-shaped curve), there will always be two end of the spectrum. 5% who get item A for sure with every loot run they do, another 5% won't get item A even when they do the same amout of loot run.

DE will lose both 5%. The top 5% will burn through the content at an alarming rate and left for other games, they may come back for the next patch/update but DE still lost the chance to generate income from them. The unlucky 5% will likely quitting the game out of frustration, DE lost profit and generate a bad reputation in the same time.

This is where 'globally' equal RNG creates the problem. Skinner box relies on inconsistent win in order to create behavior. When there is too much win or no win, the mouse stop hitting the button. The current RNG needs a secondary fail-safe system that detect lose streak and generate win when there is enough lose accumulated.

Edit: damn iPhone.

The loss streak thing is a good idea.

They could combine it with a behind-the-scenes token system (would not give you tokens, but the game would calculate and keep track of your gained 'tokens' in the background to calculate your reward)

[Guest]

There are app that stay up for you and also wake you up if you set the volume high enough on your phone...

I don't have access to any kind of smart phone, or smart phone app like that (because well... I don't own a smart phone)

I use the warframe alarm clock which I can blast my computer's speakers up for it to wake me

 

The thing is, I need to keep my computer turned on for it

 

This poses a problem for the electric bill

Edited May 31, 2013 by Guest

[Wooben]

The loss streak thing is a good idea.

They could combine it with a behind-the-scenes token system (would not give you tokens, but the game would calculate and keep track of your gained 'tokens' in the background to calculate your reward)

An invisible failsafe is a really good idea. It would keep the player base from getting too frustrated whilst still driving their business model. So long as noone knew that they would get it after x runs or something, people would just think they had finally gotten lucky. 

That is, unless DE wants the unlucky people to remain unlucky to convince them to buy platinum...

Here we are just going to hit a brick wall. DE have made their game seemingly that the more frustrated players get, the more money they will make... so long as they don't give up and quit.

[Bennyworld]

This is true - they do need to addsometing other than grinding to get resources to the game.

[Keetsune]

In my opinion Warframe is not a pay2win but a play2win, you can get almost everything playing.

Content of U8 is obtainable only if you:

 

1) Investing a lot of money in game.

2) Have a friends who invest money in game.

3) Have a clan with peoples who invest money in game.

4) Have a clan with 10+ hardcore grinders who play 24/7.

5) Have a huge clan of active casual players.

 

In my case i have a clan(7 peoples) of my friends only and most of them casual players who play 2 hour a day max and not spending money more than increase inventory slots or buy catalysts and cosmetics. And i dont wanna be forced to join other clan in opportunity to see full content of U8. With total play time of my clan we will build fully functional dodjo in about year without spending money, this is absurd. Also with that drop rate of keys i'll get frost prime in about 2 months(includ keys of my friends). This could be ok if not the monotonous gameplay and the fact that they will release new content faster than i get full gear from void missions ... It's not a grind it's absurd. Girnd before U8 was nice, i liked it even with fact that i still dont have 2 mods with hundreds hours played. Alert system is not part of the grind and honestly this system suck, for peoples who dont want waste 300 plat on warfrem its almost imposible to get Vauban, player shoud be rewarded for ingame progress and not for refreshing Browser all the day.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Keetsune

[neKroMancer]

The loss streak thing is a good idea.

They could combine it with a behind-the-scenes token system (would not give you tokens, but the game would calculate and keep track of your gained 'tokens' in the background to calculate your reward)

I made a topic a few days ago about it. We don't actually need the actual token to balance RNG. All we need is something behind the scene that create some win once in a while.

 

Drop rate discrepancy reduction, A proposal

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/54606-drop-rate-discrepancy-reduction-a-proposal/#entry564674

[Xylia]

Again, why can't we do RNG _and_ tokens at the same time?

 

Get a *few* amount of tokens out of something AND RNG that something you want might drop.

 

Make it so that every 20-30 runs you can buy something with tokens. Maybe even 50 runs.

 

That way, a player doesn't have to sigh in despair as they do 100+ runs and still don't see their item. They have no hope that the item WILL drop; they know that by pure RNG that it will just not drop.

 

IRL, I used to play a Powerball ticket a few times a month, I did so for quite a period of time.

 

But then one day I had sat down and added up my spending vs winnings and the numbers shocked me and.... well let's just say I don't play the Powerball anymore. It is literally a ridiculous waste of money. A person can spend tens of thousands of dollars in their lifetime and get pretty much nothing in return for it. Yes there's that lucky winner here and there, but most likely you are not going to be that winner.

 

Similar thing happens in Warframe. You want (insert mod here)? You're not likely going to ever see that anyday soon because the mod pool is so ridiculously large (and they want to make it BIGGER), the RNG is just pulling things out of it at... well.... random. The chances YOU will get THE mod you want is ridiculously small, even on higher-level worlds.

 

And then there's things like Rare Crafting Mats (Neurodes, Control Modules, etc). Some people can run dry for 30+ runs.

 

Should it take 30+ runs to get 1 Control Module? No! That's just $&*&*#(%&.

 

My Token System proposal would allow us to keep RNG, but yet allow us to be guaranteed some type of reward for our efforts every 20th, 30th, 50th mission. That way we KNOW we WILL eventually get it, RNG be damned. Call them, I don't know, Tenno Medals of Valor or something. Medals awarded for Mission Completes. Maybe make missions award a different number of them based upon the planet you did to acquire it. Mercury gives 1, maybe Pluto gives 3-4 per mission. Maybe Rare Mods could be purchased for, say, 150-200 Medals. Rare Crafting Materials, 50 Medals. Potato/Forma Blueprints, maybe 400-500 Medals. Artifacts/Warframe BPs, 1000 Medals.

 

That way... even if you have HORRIBLE luck with the RNG... you still have light at the end of the tunnel. It will just take you quite awhile to get there. But it isn't hopeless which is the whole point. Meanwhile, the Casuals can still have a chance to get it in <5 runs with the current RNG.

[Quetzhal]

For starters, I'm not trying to defend what DE is doing here. It's more just a heads up to everyone complaining about the randomness of warframe and suggesting substitutes (such as the void tokens mentioned in the stream which you could trade in for rewards of your choice rather than keeping on doing void runs hoping for whatever blueprint you needed to drop).

As the person who wrote that topic - which can be found here - the full idea was actually somewhat... misrepresented. Not that I'm blaming Rebecca or anything, of course; I thought it was really cool and awesome that she brought up my topic at all, and it would've been impossible to go through everything in the stream. Thank you, Rebecca! :D

But yes, what I posted was a hybrid system meant to alleviate the frustration that many other players felt with the Void repeatedly giving them the same rewards without taking away from the many players that enjoy it when they strike it lucky and get something cool. To do a quick summary, tokens would have been awarded within a set range, allowing for satisfaction when they get the higher end of the range. In addition to this, cosmetic rewards would have occasionally been awarded at the whim of the RNG.

This accomplishes three things. One, progression is always solid and linear, without the frustration several players would feel if they farmed many Void keys only to be met with the same reward (these runs do not feel rewarding and result in burning out once you hit a certain limit, though that limit can be quite high for some - the thing is, in the short term, tons of profit from folks who buy keys. In the long term, folks burn out after not progressing for a while and stop playing. It applies to the other end of the spectrum too - neKroMancer described this quite well).

Two, awesome cosmetic rewards would be something people would want to strive for in the same 'repeated lottery' form you mentioned - but these don't affect progression, so you avoid alienating the crowd that would feel like their effort is devalued or that progression can't be properly controlled.

Three, creating a proper token sink in the form of good, endgame-type utility (that is, consumable) items can extend the life of the Void and give it additional replayability over the current system, wherein there's little motivation to keep playing it once you acquire all the gear. This is extremely important, as (some) people are burning through content extremely quickly, so ideally you want something that keeps people playing.

This has the additional effect of lessening the "damn it!" when you don't get the cosmetic you want, because you did still get rewarded to some degree, and you can still use that reward for something. But it doesn't really lessen the fact that you'll want to keep doing runs to get that cosmetic.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Quetzhal

[BloodRiot]

i like the fail safe idea, however I have a question...

 

How does the game know what constitutes a lose streak for me?

How does it know that getting a Rhino Helmet BP might be lose for me but a win for another?

 

I am stock full on Streamline, however I can't get a Focus to save my own life. For that matter I have tons of Blunderbuss and no Hornet Strike.

The guy playing next door may have it the other way around.

 

For this to work it would kinda have to look and record everything I got the last week and remove those that reach a certain threshold from my personal loot list.

 

Not bashing the idea, I was just wondering how It could be implemented.

 

Another problem in my view is not that we get little chance to get that mod we want in a predictable way. To me it's that I seem to be mostly getting the exact same mods all the time. Forget common/uncommon/rare... I'm getting some rares like streamline alot more frequently than many common ones.

 

It kinda SEEMS that the RNG may be acting up.... either that or it really wants me to set stuff on fire.

[NotaCobra]

OP is doing a bad job at describing a skinner box;

 

Rat presses a button

Gets food

Next time it presses the button twice

Gets food

Three times

Food

4 times

food

and so on

 

 

Until the rat spends literally 100% of it's time doing nothing but pressing a button in order to survive.

 

When applied to video games, the game must draw you into doing the same thing over and over and over again just for the chance to get the next step up before you get ready to push a button some more.

 

Think about most MMOs;

Early game, lots of good gear, lots of levels, lots of learning things and visiting new places

Then it slows down

Until the last few levels take days, and the last few bits of gear can take weeks of doing the same things over and over again.

[neKroMancer]

i like the fail safe idea, however I have a question...

How does the game know what constitutes a lose streak for me?

How does it know that getting a Rhino Helmet BP might be lose for me but a win for another?

I am stock full on Streamline, however I can't get a Focus to save my own life. For that matter I have tons of Blunderbuss and no Hornet Strike.

The guy playing next door may have it the other way around.

For this to work it would kinda have to look and record everything I got the last week and remove those that reach a certain threshold from my personal loot list.

Not bashing the idea, I was just wondering how It could be implemented.

Another problem in my view is not that we get little chance to get that mod we want in a predictable way. To me it's that I seem to be mostly getting the exact same mods all the time. Forget common/uncommon/rare... I'm getting some rares like streamline alot more frequently than many common ones.

It kinda SEEMS that the RNG may be acting up.... either that or it really wants me to set stuff on fire.

I'm not sure, let's see...umm rough idea. Failsafe mechanic isn't about getting exactly what player wants. It's about creating an illusion of infrequent win when global RNG fails to deliver a win situation. You may, or you may not get what you want. However, if you see a rare drop dropped in an irregular interval, without a drought, then you will feel that getting rare drop isn't hard and continue playing.

Personally, I think failsafe mechanic involves:

1. Loot strictly based on faction/area.

2. Probably consist of multiple bar which checking progression for each type of loot/mission.

3. Inventory sorted by date/amount.

4. In case of BP and mod, 'win' situation involve getting BP/mod which you don't have or have in minimal amount.

5. In case of defense mission, 'win' situation is different. I think it should be based on performance more than randomly give you something from pool of 25 items. Performance score based on AI's lv, time taken, and damage on pod/reactor, etc. Different set of reward based on performance score.

Mod Failsafe

Mod failsafe concept:

- Fail-safe mechanic designated the value of each mod by rarity. IE, common mod has value of 1. uncommon mod has value of 2. Rare mod has 'reset' property.

- The mechanic creates/bring existing progression bar every time a player log into the game. The bar start at 0 when player plays the game for the first time.

- Progression bar has a varied value based on RNG to create inconsistency.

- Each area has designated modifier based on difficulty.

Each time a player get a mod, the progression bar is roughly filled by mod value*difficulty modifier. When the bar is full, it produces a 'win' situation and reset itself, producing the new empty bar with value based on RNG. If there is a rare drop receive when the bar isn't full then the bar will be reset and new bar will be produced based on RNG.

Win situation consist of two categories.

1. Mod with lowest amount in the arsenal or mod with lowest amount if you have all mods, based on area currently playing.

2. New mod which you don't have from the area currently playing.

Example:

RNG generates a bar with 1000 value.

- Player A plays Mercury (difficulty modifier 0.5, common mod=1, uncommon=2, rare=reset) which means player A has to get 1000-2000 common/uncommon mods before one 'win' will be forced to drop. However, if rare mod drop from global RNG before the bar is full then the bar is reset.

- Player B plays Pluto (difficulty modifier 3, common mod=1, uncommon=2, rare=reset) which means player B has to get 167-330 common/uncommon mods before one 'win' will be forced to drop. However, if rare mod drop from global RNG before the bar is full then the bar is reset.

Good thing is that player doesn't know which is which. Players will feel that playing in higher areas definitely increases the chance of getting rare drop but they don't know that the 'win' they got is a result of global RNG or failsafe mechanic.

BP Failsafe

BP failsafe probably works in a similar fashion. Each player will receive a randomized maximum number of run based on RNG. If player reaches the maximum number of run without completing an entire set of BP then the part which the player doesn't have will be dropped. If two players reache the number of maximum run in the same game but have different missing part of BP then one player will be chosen and recieve the part first, another player will get it in the next run.

Example; Player A wants Ash BP. RNG randomize 35 as maximum runs required for Ash when he enters Titania for the first time.

- Situation1 : He has all parts before 35 runs. Failsafe is now nullify itself and global RNG continues to work.

- Situation2 : He has all three parts before 35 runs but he sells one part and now missing it. New maximum run number is generated.

- Situation3: He crafted the item already and he's using/keeping it in foundry/arsenal. Global RNG continues to work along with failsafe of other players.

I hope this will clarify things up. Failsafe is a supporting mechanic which creates 'win' when global RNG fails to create one after a period of time. It's not a system which allows player to get exactly what he wants. It tries to produce 'win' based on existing item in the player's inventory.

Edited May 31, 2013 by neKroMancer

[Wooben]

OP is doing a bad job at describing a skinner box;

 

Rat presses a button

Gets food

Next time it presses the button twice

Gets food

Three times

Food

4 times

food

and so on

 

 

Until the rat spends literally 100% of it's time doing nothing but pressing a button in order to survive.

 

When applied to video games, the game must draw you into doing the same thing over and over and over again just for the chance to get the next step up before you get ready to push a button some more.

 

Think about most MMOs;

Early game, lots of good gear, lots of levels, lots of learning things and visiting new places

Then it slows down

Until the last few levels take days, and the last few bits of gear can take weeks of doing the same things over and over again.

No, I think you are misunderstanding the concept here.

Skinner's box itself is merely an experimental setup to test various behavioral responses. In the particular experiment I as referring to (which I cannot find the source for right now, I read about it on a book on game design a few years back... if you have a reliable source of your own, feel free to link to it), when food dropped  at a 100% chance, the animal only hit the button when it was hungry. Why would a rat spend 100% of its time hitting a button that gave food every time? Rats don't spend every waking hour eating.

I really don't see how your analogy of how MMOs function applies to your original statement... especially since there is a ton of random chance involved in MMO drops that you simply decided not to talk about. Perhaps you should re-read the OP so as to make sure you did not misinterpret it.

[Callback]

How many people actually waste a void key when hunting for a specific drop if they don't get it?  Most people would abort the mission and try it again.

[SerosTau]

For me, my issue with RNG *in computers* is that it's not really random.  Whenever you have a variable that calls for RNG, the computer generates a table of numbers-which I guarantee you, some of which it will 'favor' over others.  In fact, if you have over a gig of MP3's and iTunes, I can prove this.  Set iTunes to 'random' sometime.  You will notice that it 'randoms' about a grand total of 30-45 songs and then starts repeating.  I've had it loop on as few as 18.

 

The rnd function hasn't changed a lot over the years, and I would put forward it is a SIGNIFICANT issue in Warframe (re: I farmed Frost in around 36 runs, Volt I got everything for in 4).  What I would propose to fix it is, just for example, a +1 every time you run the mission.  So, you have a scale of 1-10 (as an example).  You run it, at the end, you roll a 3/10.  The award for 1-6 are the same (common), 7-9 (uncommon), and 10 (rare).  The next time you run it, there's a flag that states that you ran this-doesn't care what you got.  Because this flag is there, you get your roll at the end of the mission (say 6) +1.  Because of that +1, it pushes you over the threshold to get an uncommon drop.  IMO, to make a fix like this work, you have to terminate and reset the bonus at a certain point.  In our example here, I'd use +5.  So you run the mission six times, and the flag resets to giving you a +0.

 

I think that would be reasonable without guaranteeing anything.  It's essentially stacking the deck slightly in the player's favor.  Now, I'd like a system where everytime you get a SPECIFIC drop, it gives you a different value (say red, green, or blue) and if you have too many of green, it locks green out and forces red or blue, but computer logic doesn't quite work like that.  And while I'm sure there's logic you can setup to equate to such a concept, my programming isn't that sharp.

[rksk16it]

If you have a guinea pig in a cage with a button and train it so that whenever it presses the button a piece of food will fall then whenever the guinea pig is hungry it will simply press the button. Because it knows that food will always be there at a button press so it may as well just press it when the need arises.

If you change it so that at every press there is instead a 15% chance to drop a piece of food, the guinea pig will just not stop pressing it. Because sometimes it won't get the food it needs, so it just has to keep on pressing it, over and over; keep on coming back so it doesn't go hungry.

 

 

Now somehow that guinea pig comes out of that particular cage and can move freely around. There are multiple other cages (games) to choose from, some of which drops food everytime.

 

Now how does that theory works ?