The most overused strawman on these forums: "RNG is RNG"

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Pizzarugi wrote:

PoE is centered almost entirely around fake difficulty, RNG. And its fine. Besides, you don't NEED top gear to beat the game anyway. I can already run 70-72 maps, and my gear was mostly found around the lunaris temple.

I love the sense of making my character better. Unfortunately in POE they've designed it so you basically never level past about 85. And you don't get any satisfying drops or crafting. SO I never get that sense that I crave and love in ARPGs: having my character grow stronger - more powerful over the time I play it.

I think this is one of the worst arguments in this discussion - that I should simply accept being stagnant... because hey - I can beat all the content on my level 65 gear... right?

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Isbox1 wrote:

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Pizzarugi wrote:

PoE is centered almost entirely around fake difficulty, RNG. And its fine. Besides, you don't NEED top gear to beat the game anyway. I can already run 70-72 maps, and my gear was mostly found around the lunaris temple.

I love the sense of making my character better. Unfortunately in POE they've designed it so you basically never level past about 85. And you don't get any satisfying drops or crafting. SO I never get that sense that I crave and love in ARPGs: having my character grow stronger - more powerful over the time I play it.

I think this is one of the worst arguments in this discussion - that I should simply accept being stagnant... because hey - I can beat all the content on my level 65 gear... right?

Or you can get the best gear available, steamroll through the game, and eventually bore yourself to quitting due to a lack of challenge.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

Or you can get the best gear available, steamroll through the game, and eventually bore yourself to quitting due to a lack of challenge.

Or... I could happily play the game for over 10 years like I did in D2 in full BIS gear - just collecting fun items and runes... killing ubers.

I don't agree with gating everyone from top end uniques and 6Ls. I think you lose more players gating them from that content than you keep.

There will always be rares that are extremely difficult to acquire. Those 1-3 uniques you want/need for your build should not take 2-5 months of farming to get.

The overuse of this statement demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding about how random variables work.


People act as though the existence of roll on loot/crafting/ect... means every outcome(taken over hundred or thousands of rolls) is equally likely and which one you get is completely random. This is not the case- there is always a normal(or perhaps a skewed normal) distribution- meaning the most players hit somewhere near the average and the extremes are infrequent ouliers.


In examples consider rolling a 6L with fusings: people act as though you're just as likely to roll a 6L after 800 fusings as you are to roll it after 3 fusings or never roll it. This is not the case- This is a simple series of random trials each with 2 possible outcomes: it WILL have a normal distribution and the chances of rolling the 6L close to the average number fusing required is substantially more likely then the odds of failing to roll it after 3000 fusings. Part of the problem is the guy who fails after 3000 fusings is a VERY vocal minority and people assume the swings and luck are larger then they are.


This problem is the most visible when people ask completely legitimate questions like "how many fusings should I expect to use to 5L an item" and people just respond with "it's random" or "There's no way of knowing"- People already know it's random when they ask this question- they don't want an exact number or guarantee- they want a rough average based on the experience of players who have done it before. They want to size up their odds by how many fusings they have relative to the average.





And this same principal holds for loot acquisition(though that is a much more complicated calculation as even a unique item is essentially a roll between many different un iques with wildly different values). That said, If the game did have full transparency it would be possible for a dedicated statistician to calculate the odds of valuable items dropping and the average value of item dropped per hour played. That value would have a standard deviation which most players fall into(especially over large number of hours played as the more the play the closer you approach said average). The long and short of it is if you play long enough the amount of total wealth acquired will reliably approach the average for most players(the outliers primarily being those who luck out and get a kaoms/high link shavronnes to drop). Drops are far less random then players think.

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Finkenstein wrote:

Hi

RNG is second to Dsync Strawman
Personally I find the RNG fine, I get uniques everyday and I barely have any MF.

cheers

This message basicaly says "Hi,I am very lucky,and I don't want any skill involved in game,because why even bother with game's developement if I can get freebies and I won't play the game long anyway,so I don't care".Please don't post if you are going to say half-assed things like that.Also,let me guess,those "uniques you find every day" are items like Crown of Thorns or Veil of Night?Do you feel happy because item you dropped has bronze coloured name,even tho it is worse than pretty much everything else in the game?My assumption seems very accurate considering stupidity you just displayed with your comment.

About topic,games with set drops are good and fun,but they have one flaw-you can get every item in game by looking at games wiki,unless getting item requires REAL skill.I am pretty sure GGG is afraid of this happening to their game,as it is not some single player game with campaign you finish and go to another game,they need you to keep playing,to be able to maintain their game.In my opinion drops and crafting are really BAD because of lack of everything you need,but it can be fixed quite easily.

Instead of releasing 100 more trash uniques that suck d and only are in game to make you angry,create more uniques,that would serve as opportunity to further develope your character without spending god knows how many exalts on items that never drop.What I mean-more items like BoR.People may say that BoR is overused,but there is a reason for it,it costs 7ex in domination,what is quite some price,but possible to achieve in some not ridiculous time frame,unlike 40 or more ex.It can serve as cheap substitute of 6link items,but with a price,as you can't wear chest armour with it.

That is good example of balance,and people know it,so they use it,until they can buy their 6l.It enables players who were not lucky with some awesome drop to do higher level maps,and opens possiblity to gain currency.Create more awesome items like that,and people will stop complaining about how they can't play the game,because after they reached end of act3 merciless,they would have to buy gear worth 20 exalts to continue,as they will be able to pay less,for medium tier item,and climb their way up the Path of Exile.

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Sinnesteuer wrote:

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After 730 hours I am entitled to something for my time, and it's GGG's responsibility to provide a game that has proper reward scaling.

Players that pose this argument, and fail to see just how subjective the language and thinking is, are not, I repeat, NOT, the target audience for the game. No matter how badly you might want your supporter title to entitle you to tell GGG how to build their game, it just isn't going to happen. Please, define for me, as another subjective player, what "proper reward scaling" is in a game where the progression curve is intended, by current design, to flatten out at the upper end.

How is it not on the player when they approach the game with expectations that, based on the current state of development, design, and mechanics, simply cannot be met? How is that GGG's responsibility?

Proper reward scaling means that I don't come home at night after a 9-hour workday, spend my four free hours of time farming for fusings with a currency drop rate that's as lousy as when I was leveling, and then blow them all to be back at 0 links, with absolutely no higher chance to roll a 6-link than the previous day. And then doing this again, and again, and again, with no guarantee I'll ever get a result.

It means not being unable to roll maps properly because I'm broke after trying to link a piece of gear, and then running out of maps, which are what I need in order to level and perhaps see good drops.

It means running 120% quality maps with the chisels that took an hour to get and not getting jack shit in return.

It means not being locked out from item crafting because I'm flat-ass broke because of RNG, unless I start doing RMT.

As you level in a game, options are supposed to open up to a degree. But in PoE, everything is as closed off to you at level 10 as it is at 80, unless you're running 8 hours of Piety or Dominus every night. That's my issue.

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Sinnesteuer wrote:

And, again, what the ever living fuck are you "entitled" to for your time? YOU HAVE BEEN PLAYING A GAME, ONE THAT WAS GIVEN TO YOU, FOR FREE. You made the decision to approach mindless entertainment with the expectation of something more than being mindlessly entertained, and somehow that is GGG's problem, and they owe you something for it?

Players like this aren't entitled, they are spoiled, rotten.

Whether a game is free or not is irrelevant, because the devs aren't letting people play out of the kindness of their hearts. They put out microtransactions and have items like stash tabs without which you cannot play properly at endgame. And the point of all this is that with the money they make, they make a living. It's a job, and in a job you provide a service to someone.

Once you begin playing a game, even F2P, you're a customer, and you're entitled to have an opinion on it. And in the case of a game like this, which is in current development, where the devs interact with the community, and where there's forums called things such as SUGGESTIONS and FEEDBACK, every player has a right to put forth their ideas to improve things.

Videogames exist to entertain, to let people have a release. A game like PoE isn't meant to be a cakewalk, but at the same time it shouldn't be something that's designed in such a way that it elicits feelings of bitterness in players once they realize--especially after they've spent a lot of money, as in my case--how unattainable the real rewards are.

RNG is RNG isnt a strawman, its basic understanding of chance/probability which you should of learned in like middle school.

Today in a couple of threads i think 5-6 ppl told me it isn't a strawman, all of them claimed by name it was something else and not a single of the things they claimed were the same.

It's hilarious.

PS: We really need someone with certain ninja skills to peak serverside, yameen.