[Feedback] RNG should leave (29.04.2016 UPDATE)

This is why Activision-Blizzard is a $15+ billion monstrosity and GGG will remain small potatoes.

You can't rely so much on RNG. It kills lifetime customer value. The big gaming companies that have been around for decades layer in deterministic reward paradigms. They add safety nets to limit RNG outcomes within a desired standard deviation. And they have the analytical data to prove such practices are optimal in the long run, when it comes to retention, future purchases, satisfaction.

I'm not sure how GGG missed something so fundamental. You need to focus on the individual player experience, not just the statistical aggregate expected outcome.

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Vhlad wrote:

The big gaming companies that have been around for decades layer in deterministic reward paradigms. They add safety nets to limit RNG outcomes within a desired standard deviation...

I'm not sure how GGG missed something so fundamental.

They didn't. Trading is the safety net. A lot of otherwise odd choices (lack of offline mode, maprolling, etc) make a lot more sense when you see trading not as an optional social function, but as a very necessary RNG smoothing mechanism.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Trading is the safety net.

No, it's not. And you know it isn't.

You'd have to eliminate so many branching gameplay experiences and put the game on narrow rails for trade to be a panacea for out of control RNG.

You may want to claim that trade enables a player to skip the RNG involved with using currency to manipulate items and simply buy the outcome they desire at a price highly correlated with the aggregate RNG expected investment. Except that's a dependent event. Someone needs to use currency at some point to manipulate items in order for them to be available for purchase. There's no safety net for the sellers who battle the RNG to make the items available for trade.

When you use trade to talk about currency use, enchanting, map rolling, unique drop frequency, unique drop rarity, rare item affix quality, currency drop quality/quantity, you're focusing on outcomes. The gameplay experience to reach that outcome matters. Trade is a wholly different experience than finding a unique by killing monsters (which Blizzard sets a RNG safety net for, forcing unique drops if conditions are met without drops). The same goes with crafting: enabling players to gamble, but setting a reward floor (or entropy) so ultimately time/grind is eventually rewarded. GGG fails in these areas completely.

One could easily argue that trade in fact creates outcomes that diverge tremendously from the RNG expected investment, creating anomalies far beyond the standard deviation limits desired by established companies in the game industry (a certain someone with 30+ legacy uniques of every type in every item category, 200+ eternals, 50+ mirrors, and most of the top mirror bases comes to mind, for example).

Even if you're only looking at macro level (aggregate) outcomes, there are many RNG systems that trade cannot "smooth" in the PoE design space, like combat or item balance. Affix quality differences between mirror weapons and typical weapons (or full BIS ES gear, 500+ helms/shields, 300+ gloves, etc. vs. typical gear) is so vast that game balance is a complete joke. GGG cannot balance content to challenge players in top gear while keeping the game accessible for new players, new leagues.

There needs to be much less RNG, all around. Chop the long tails off.

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Vhlad wrote:

This is why Activision-Blizzard is a $15+ billion monstrosity and GGG will remain small potatoes.

You can't rely so much on RNG. It kills lifetime customer value. The big gaming companies that have been around for decades layer in deterministic reward paradigms. They add safety nets to limit RNG outcomes within a desired standard deviation. And they have the analytical data to prove such practices are optimal in the long run, when it comes to retention, future purchases, satisfaction.

I'm not sure how GGG missed something so fundamental. You need to focus on the individual player experience, not just the statistical aggregate expected outcome.

Probably because they dont want to become some shitty generic company.

Theres a difference between living comfortably and producing great content at a smaller rate, and being a greedy fuck who never attempts to scale the wall of mediocrity, being the ass end of the human centipede (Aka Blizzard, Activision, EA, etc).

Its precisely why we see no innovations and its especially why we dont see any good video games now of days.

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Vhlad wrote:

This is why Activision-Blizzard is a $15+ billion monstrosity and GGG will remain small potatoes.

no, that's entirely false

activision blizzard been for most part of last 10 years living off their name and parasitizing/re-hashing their own old IPs

instead of creating new interesting ideas like they've done in the past, they work on polishing old re-hashed ideas to the point they glisten; they also polish the customer's dick a lot.

d3 sold a bazillion of copies having 'worse' drops and worse rng than poe's ever had. the only reason why it sold this many copies is due to the diablo trademark/name.

activision/blizzard would likely fail today without taking much risks, if they didnt have starcraft/diablo/warcraft ips. their most original IP up to last year was a dumbed down MTG for christs sake lol.

on topic, as usual, people want to play RNG and not 'lose'. whats the point of RNG if you always win ? you need to lose to understand 'winning' in comparison. if you never 'lose', then you wins are routine

thats quite a simple concept. chris wilson talked hundreds of times how something that is rare should be exciting to a player. getting a lucky craft, beating large odds, dropping t15 map when you dont buy maps, etc- thats exciting by comparison of 'usually' 'losing'

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Vhlad wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Trading is the safety net.

No, it's not. And you know it isn't.

Yes, it is. As someone earlier in this thread said:

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Mythabril wrote:

With enough rolls, randomness becomes certainty. So the only thing you need to remove RNG is more dice.

That's the short answer as to how trading smooths over RNG: you use other people's dice, too (albeit indirectly). You might experience the occasional RNG streak; the community, as a whole, doesn't. It's just a matter of being part of The Collective; the more connected you are, the less randomness effects you.

Note that it's the games policy to make every randomized drop tradeable. All of them.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Vhlad wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Trading is the safety net.

No, it's not. And you know it isn't.

Yes, it is. As someone earlier in this thread said:

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Mythabril wrote:

With enough rolls, randomness becomes certainty. So the only thing you need to remove RNG is more dice.

That's the short answer as to how trading smooths over RNG: you use other people's dice, too (albeit indirectly). You might experience the occasional RNG streak; the community, as a whole, doesn't. It's just a matter of being part of The Collective; the more connected you are, the less randomness effects you.

Note that it's the games policy to make every randomized drop tradeable. All of them.

Either you didn't read my post in its entirety or you chose to ignore the parts that were inconvenient to your assertions.

Either way, you're completely wrong and I'm pretty sure you know you're wrong. It's hard to ignore all of the RNG systems that trade cannot "smooth" in the PoE design space, like combat or item balance. Or the lack of safety net for the sellers who battle the RNG to make the items available for trade in the first place. Or the gameplay experience differences between trade vs finding uniques vs crafting/gambling. Or the outcomes that diverge highly from RNG expected investment that directly result from trade (the opposite of RNG smoothing).

This post covers all of it. It's really disingenuous of you to take the first line of my post and form a rebuttal of essentially nothing. I expect better.

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Vhlad wrote:

Trade is a wholly different experience than finding a unique by killing monsters (which Blizzard sets a RNG safety net for, forcing unique drops if conditions are met without drops). The same goes with crafting: enabling players to gamble, but setting a reward floor (or entropy) so ultimately time/grind is eventually rewarded.

AKA 'even if you lose RNG roll you still win' because...well... just because a player needs to win, right ?

modern gamers hate to lose the RNG roll for some reason. 'but I did everything right, I HAZ to win'. 'game, get down on the knees and make me win DIZ SECOND'.

*Greust spits*

PS: also, this 'safety net' was established well after D3 sold like 90% of its copies. is this really an argument of why blizzard is a giant company ?

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Dr1MaR wrote:

There is only one challenging aspect left of this game and it's RNG. Take it out and I m done with this game for real

Rolling a dice is in no way a "challenging aspect" yanno.

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I hate RNG. I absolutely loathe it. It's the single most retarded thing that rips the roots out of skill based gaming. I could go on and on, ranting about how RNG sucks.

But PoE is built around RNG. And the things that are built on it make the game enjoyable in a casual sense. If RNG was removed and replaced by something more deterministic, the game would no longer be PoE. It'd be PoE2.