Why all the hate towards RNG?

Currently people find the map system flawed due to its reliance on IIQ/IIR in order to be able to afford orbs and chisels to create the good maps that are more than likely to give a map a level higher. Others feel the farming needed on lunaris 3 to get a decent number of maps to start with isn't fun and they'd rather be experiencing the map system but have no choice. Not everyone wants to trade on a regular basis just to fight monsters above 63. Plus said farming relies on IIQ/IIR in order to afford said maps, if trading for them.

People find socket colour/link chances flawed as there's no eventual certainty of any kind so it's most efficient to just trade. It is nice to get what you wanted after a lot of attempts, but it's the lack of interactivity that annoys most people I think. You can't do anything to increase your chances, you can only sell more stuff to get more poker chips. People have suggested "higher tier" orbs that would drop less but provide some level of certainty to make it less likely to end up with an item worse than what you started with, which I think would be really good to make sure people don't give up on the game cause of a string of bad dice rolls.

Basically the games systems are great but it sucks to be the one guy who got nothing but bad luck and was moved further back than where they started. They need to exist, but they don't need to bite the same bullet every day.

Not all ARPGs are casino-style. Full RNG is not a specific part of the genre. The orbs of doom I first encountered in PoE for example.

Also, in all the ARPGs that I played (none were online-only...), players always circumvented the RNG the best they could by all kinds of tricks-->they didn't quite appreciate it. It's rather transparent that the sole purpose of RNG is to compensate for lack of enough content.

PoE has a casino part, and a monster killing part. There are reasons for the casino part to be restrained in a way or another.

It's all that these RNG "hate" threads are suggesting.

Oh, but then again, in such conditions levelling to 100 might not take 4-5 months, but 3, and players might actually have some decent gear on them, which of course, should never happen :\

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Josephoenix wrote:

Lately there's been a lot of hate towards RNG and how somehow it's a problem in PoE.

I have a simple question:

what's wrong with it?

When you buy a lottery ticket you don't get mad that you didn't win (most ppl).

When a single cloud blocks out the sun on mostly clear day: you might get a little annoyed for a few seconds but you move on and keep enjoying the sun (in this example PoE is the sun, RNG is the cloud).

It's random, that's what it's supposed to be. How can ppl get upset by something that "literally" they're not supposed to be able to control, or improve the odds of etc?

If it were true random and all possible outcomes had an equal chance of occurring I don't think there would be nearly as much rage. But as it stands now most, if not all of these 'random' numbers are weighted in one direction or another and no one really knows how weighted they are, despite several community attempts to discern some approximations.

For example if the wording were changed on Orbs of Fusing from,

"Reforges the links between sockets on an item. Right click this item then left click a socketed item to apply it."

to,

"Reforges the links between sockets on an item. Right click this item then left click a socketed item to apply it. There is a 1 in 1300 chance of getting 6 sockets linked and only on Armor and 2-Handed weapons."

People would be less frustrated.

"

Josephoenix wrote:

Lately there's been a lot of hate towards RNG and how somehow it's a problem in PoE.

I have a simple question:

what's wrong with it?

When you buy a lottery ticket you don't get mad that you didn't win (most ppl).

When a single cloud blocks out the sun on mostly clear day: you might get a little annoyed for a few seconds but you move on and keep enjoying the sun (in this example PoE is the sun, RNG is the cloud).

It's random, that's what it's supposed to be. How can ppl get upset by something that "literally" they're not supposed to be able to control, or improve the odds of etc?

RNG works fine in and of itself, but the problem is: the system has way too many layers.

Take this as an example:

I was leveling my character and I crafted an awesome bow. Great. Has the mods I wanted. I had to Alch/Scour it to get what I wanted. Didn't take many, but still, took enough.

Then, I need to add the sockets I want. I can get 6 in total, but after 40 orbs, I give up and settle for 4.

Now, I finally need to link these sockets. It's not so bad, but again, takes like 30 fusings to get just a 4 link.

The real problem is: too many layers. It's not bad enough I have to make/find the item, then I need the sockets or I lose a lot of potential DPS, then I need to link them or it's just as bad as not having the sockets in the first place.

Now, that's just 1 example, and I'd say it's on the extreme side, but it's the reality that most people face. The solution to some is to just trade for the item in the first place, or trade for the reagents needed to make it better. A lot of us don't want to trade, period. We like to do everything ourselves. Sure it takes more time, and I'm accepting of that. The bottome line however, is that LAYERED RNG is bad for the game. It's just tedious.

The map system functions much in the same way. You need them to drop (bad, bad, bad). You should be able to buy regular maps. Blue/Gold should drop in maps. See, it might be RNG there, but you can still do something at your level. Even if blue/gold gave much better drops/stats/xp. You can still make progress.

As the system functions currently, you might have to farm in an area to farm in another, to then farm some more to make the maps even worth running.

WAY TOO MUCH BS FARMING.

"

Wooser69 wrote:

1. Currently people find the map system flawed due to its reliance on IIQ/IIR in order to be able to afford orbs and chisels to create the good maps that are more than likely to give a map a level higher. 2. Others feel the farming needed on lunaris 3 to get a decent number of maps to start with isn't fun and they'd rather be experiencing the map system but have no choice.

I don't find it flawed for those reasons at all. The way I look at it, the endgame should be highly varied; therefore the game needs to compel people to run rare maps, as opposed to white ones (blue being somewhere in between); therefore people should run out of maps if they're not running rare maps (point 1). Because RNG is a fickle mistress, this means that it's not advisable to try to start the chain until you have some redundancy set up (point 2).

The only thing I think is flawed -- and heavily so -- is that rare maps are supposed to, and clearly could be, heavily varied, but in fact they're not, all the good mods don't make the maps harder, there's not nearly enough map affix variety nor is their map affix balance. This makes the whole system feel like a let-down. I don't think the solution is to make map drops easier, I think the solution is to deliver on the promise of a varied endgame experience and actually have a map affix system that kicks some ass.

"

Wooser69 wrote:

People find socket colour/link chances flawed as there's no eventual certainty of any kind so it's most efficient to just trade. It is nice to get what you wanted after a lot of attempts, but it's the lack of interactivity that annoys most people I think. You can't do anything to increase your chances, you can only sell more stuff to get more poker chips. People have suggested "higher tier" orbs that would drop less but provide some level of certainty to make it less likely to end up with an item worse than what you started with, which I think would be really good to make sure people don't give up on the game cause of a string of bad dice rolls.

No, it's sense of entitlement. Everyone feels they "deserve" 6L nearly automatically because it's such an "essential" part of their build. Well, who cares if it is? In Diablo 2, uniques like Widowmaker and runewords like Enigma were "essential" parts of builds -- but they were uniques and runewords, got the proper respect as a result, and people didn't get it all twisted. Players need to properly appreciate 6L for both its power and its rarity. Even your mild version of it is too much entitlement mentality -- imagine someone asking for a method to get a guaranteed chance of getting runes because they can't find an Ist for their Call to Arms, claiming that their search for it "lacks interactivity."

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

No, it's sense of entitlement. Everyone feels they "deserve" 6L nearly automatically because it's such an "essential" part of their build. Well, who cares if it is? In Diablo 2, uniques like Widowmaker and runewords like Enigma were "essential" parts of builds -- but they were uniques and runewords, got the proper respect as a result, and people didn't get it all twisted. Players need to properly appreciate 6L for both its power and its rarity. Even your mild version of it is too much entitlement mentality -- imagine someone asking for a method to get a guaranteed chance of getting runes because they can't find an Ist for their Call to Arms, claiming that their search for it "lacks interactivity."

This attitude, needs to go. It's actually the most unhelpful and destructive of ideals in the gaming genre to date, and while folks will try and scare you into believing the slippery slope fallacy of "world of warcraft pre mists patch" levels of "no idiot left behind" failure due to a lack of the above policies. This mentality will in fact just stop games from removing the most archaic and anti-fun aspects of games, for no other reason other than it affects their trading mini game and lowers the disparity of the top and bottom players. AKA that it hurts their epeens, and being good might actually no longer be a matter of who has the most free time to grind and farm or scalp other players.

DON'T LISTEN TO IT. READ BETWEEN THE LINES.

There's RNG and then there is RETARDATION 1000 fusings and no 6L is fucking retarded.

"

ShaeG wrote:

There's RNG and then there is RETARDATION 1000 fusings and no 6L is fucking retarded.

Aren't 6-links suppose to be very rare?

"

2ofSpades wrote:

"

ShaeG wrote:

There's RNG and then there is RETARDATION 1000 fusings and no 6L is fucking retarded.

Aren't 6-links suppose to be very rare?

depends on what you quantify "very rare" as.

"

Hellkaiser wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

No, it's sense of entitlement. Everyone feels they "deserve" 6L nearly automatically because it's such an "essential" part of their build. Well, who cares if it is? In Diablo 2, uniques like Widowmaker and runewords like Enigma were "essential" parts of builds -- but they were uniques and runewords, got the proper respect as a result, and people didn't get it all twisted. Players need to properly appreciate 6L for both its power and its rarity. Even your mild version of it is too much entitlement mentality -- imagine someone asking for a method to get a guaranteed chance of getting runes because they can't find an Ist for their Call to Arms, claiming that their search for it "lacks interactivity."

This attitude, needs to go. It's actually the most unhelpful and destructive of ideals in the gaming genre to date, and while folks will try and scare you into believing the slippery slope fallacy of "world of warcraft pre mists patch" levels of "no idiot left behind" failure due to a lack of the above policies. This mentality will in fact just stop games from removing the most archaic and anti-fun aspects of games, for no other reason other than it affects their trading mini game and lowers the disparity of the top and bottom players. AKA that it hurts their epeens, and being good might actually no longer be a matter of who has the most free time to grind and farm or scalp other players.

Actually, what needs to be stopped is the new school attitude that starts by complaining "It shouldn't be so tedious to earn the best the game has to offer!" and ends by complaining "There's nothing to do in the endgame!" It's not that there's nothing to do in the endgame, it's that you have no motivation to do it anymore because we let you eat your desert before your dinner...

Diablo 2 had it right in this regard. Working towards an awesome new runeword that gave your character entirely new abilities -- including abilities that you may have built your entire character around -- gave you a powerful objective to work towards, making the grind for high runes worthwhile. Strangely, having your build be functionally incomplete without the hard-to-find gear made the search for said gear all the more enjoyable.

If PoE is failing in this regard, it's not by setting a high standard, but in how it sets it. Diablo 2 required you to find a small quantity of very rare items; PoE requires you to find a large quantity of fairly common items. That could be a pretty important difference from a gamer psychology perspective. Perhaps it would be best if each Chromatic/Jewelers/Fusing had a higher chance of a good result -- but was also less common to find and harder to get from vendors.