Why do people complain about RNG when you're playing an ARPG?

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Thegzagenius wrote:

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johnKeys wrote:

come on man, I'm not going to wall-of-text here.
it's a troll thread.

if you want a real explanation why I think RNG in Path Of Exile is too much, check out my previous posts, or just ask me in PM.

[Removed by Support]

RNG is everywhere, its in real life. Its in league of legends, its in WoW, its in Diablo... You have to use what you find in order to buy other things you don't find, that's an attractive aspect of PoE, the bartering system.

People who complain about RNG are the exact same people who play softcore and think going 500k dps builds works and when they hit a brickwall because they've died over 20 times they complain about it to GGG...

Do i have to be more straight forward?

RNG in league of legends? YOU WHAT? Take B12 Complex vitamins mate.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

Personally, I complain about RNG because I have watched around 550 exalts worth of loot drop for the ONE other person I play with, while I have gotten about 15 exalts worth. It's like, how many times can a quarter come up fucking heads?? lol

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Thegzagenius wrote:

You guys need to simply pray to rngesus and stop being agnostic.

Agreed, but if you don't include Kuduku, Destroyer Of Good Rolls as well, you are making a grave mistake, my friend.

I'll attempt to answer the OP's question by way of a few observations.

First, I find it amusing when people basically say "RNG is fine--you can trade." That's akin to saying "Those piranha-infested waters are fine--you can build a bridge." Saying that RNG is fine because it can be circumvented isn't any sort of coherent argument in favor of RNG, but instead an implicit admission that RNG in PoE isn't fine, to the extent that one needs to avoid interfacing with it as much as possible.

That said, in the broader context of the aRPG genre, RNG is a good thing. The thrill of finding a great, rare item only exists insofar as there are also bad, common items. Even if you haven't yet found such an item, the hope of finding one at some point adds excitement and a sense of anticipation. But that hope needs to be rewarded once in a while so it can be realistic as opposed to the kind of vain fantasy people indulge in when they buy lottery tickets. And right now, in PoE there are galaxies of space in between the current reward structure and the strawman caricature of self-found players who supposedly want 6L's and T1's and mirrors to rain from the sky. What self-found players actually want is a reasonable rate of progression for time played.

As a self-found player who's played since closed beta and logged somewhere between 1000 and 1500 hours, (and even found a mirror! "I AM LUCKY THEREFORE GAME IS FINE LOLOL") what I find frustrating is that the reward structure and the rate of progression it dictates actually works well to a point. But then there's this basically insurmountable brick wall where the game devolves into mindlessly grinding for hours while waiting for something, anything good to drop. It's interesting that in this latest patch GGG apparently relented in regards to their broken map system when so much of the rest of the game functions in the same way. Just like people get pissed off when they keep finding level 68 maps while running a 76, I don't enjoy finding the same shitty t4 unique for the 30th time when I've never found literally the majority of uniques in the game. Similarly, 5-linking an item is completely reasonable, but 6-linking an item (something I've never done) is hopeless. Would it honestly be so bad if a T1 unique dropped, say, every 250-400 hours of gameplay on average, instead of never? Or if 6L odds were 1:500 instead of somewhere between 1:1000-1500? Or if an Exalted Orb dropped every 20-30 hours of gameplay instead of my estimate of every 80-100?

A properly rewarding level of RNG is about more than time played, though. I don't merely want to find better gear that enables me to do harder content; I also want harder content to come with the appeal of generally finding better gear, and this is, in my opinion, where PoE totally fails. There's a pretty easy argument to be made that running Tropical Island is more rewarding than running Core. Sure, there's a point where Tropical Island essentially stops giving XP, and items in Core can roll T1 affixes, but most of those advantages are negated by the amount of currency investment required to even find a Core map, and even if you had infinite of both maps, there are obvious differences in clearspeed and safety. Worse, if it's uniques you're after, you're probably best off never mapping at all and just facerolling Voll or Dominus ad nauseum. Atziri actually makes a lot of sense with her exclusive loot table and guaranteed unique, but oops, map fragment RNG: enjoy running utterly worthless zones for hours trying to find even a single Midnight.

All of which is to say, RNG done properly is the carrot on a stick that makes aRPG's compellingly fun. But GGG apparently thinks having an in-game economy is more important than having rewarding gameplay, so they throw away the carrot and use RNG as the stick itself, to beat players into demoralized submission to get them to trade to win, which is antithetical to the paradigm of the genre.

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It's interesting that in this latest patch GGG apparently relented in regards to their broken map system when so much of the rest of the game functions in the same way.

That's because the attitude most of the player base (me included) have developed towards the game: you don't expect anything good to drop, ever. OFC we have dropped any illusion of "self-foundness" too, so we just play for XP progression and currency farming (for rolling specific gear -this league I'm alching mostly diamond rings and jade amulets for example), maps or trading).

So when people feels 'robbed' of progression (cannot get higher maps) they outrage.

Not arguing about map drop rates, item drop rates or rng in general, just stating how most people expectations when playing the game and the derived behaviour.


Personally I MOSTLY find that this works fine for me (and that's why you may find this attitude in the forum, we are at peace with the game), but ofc this is RNG dependant (if you end up in the 'low side' of the Gauss curve you are going to outrage, hence the argument for some sort of hidden entropic system, btw I believe this system already exists to a point from my casual observation when spending certain currency), however I would still want to see some things change. Like making 6 links a bit more fast paced, I'm lvl 92 in WB, would be 93+ if not for being reckless, and I believe progression wise I should have a 6 link already at this levels although I'm not close to it (but arguably that would be on my end-game weapon so...).

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RNG in league of legends? YOU WHAT? Take B12 Complex vitamins mate.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

Someone has never played Critplank :3

My problem whit the rng in this game that in a lot of instances its not rng.
Look at arcanist boxes if it was truly rng it should drop mirrors(cause the r currency right?)or at least exalted as much as transmutes.
This ofc doesnt happen cause ggg "rigges" the rng and while i can understand there would be balance issues if everyting was true rng i still think its bs to say everyting is rng cause its not.
My point is if you think everyting in this game should be rng then fine let it all be rng.

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jackof8lades wrote:

My problem whit the rng in this game that in a lot of instances its not rng.
Look at arcanist boxes if it was truly rng it should drop mirrors(cause the r currency right?)or at least exalted as much as transmutes.
This ofc doesnt happen cause ggg "rigges" the rng and while i can understand there would be balance issues if everyting was true rng i still think its bs to say everyting is rng cause its not.
My point is if you think everyting in this game should be rng then fine let it all be rng.

I got two ex from arcanist boxes so far.

Sure the currency has no equal distribution, you just get a couple more currency drops from these boxes, but their distribution stays the same as with normal loot from monsters.

This would be broken as hell if it had equal drop rates for every currency.

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jackof8lades wrote:

My problem whit the rng in this game that in a lot of instances its not rng.
Look at arcanist boxes if it was truly rng it should drop mirrors(cause the r currency right?)or at least exalted as much as transmutes.
This ofc doesnt happen cause ggg "rigges" the rng and while i can understand there would be balance issues if everyting was true rng i still think its bs to say everyting is rng cause its not.
My point is if you think everyting in this game should be rng then fine let it all be rng.

RNG also works with differently weighted elements, these elements don't make it any less random. This fallacy made johnKeys call RNG "PRNG" for a while but gladly he stopped :P