Months of fun with no loot drops, yay!
SSG: Please confirm if there will be Rare Loot Mechanic for "The Chill of Ravenloft"
- Thread starter Kitty2Meow
- Start date
Celestrata Bloodsong
Member
Just wanted to drop by here to say you'll be hearing more from folks around the rare drops in the coming days. We don't want the response to be limited to forums only and a few folks want to offer perspectives and thoughts to y'all.
Also, this is a bit off-topic, but I noticed this while reading the thread...
The long and the short of it is AI misses a lot of important research, notes, and findings around these topics and they have a bad tendency to reduce conclusions down to something that's too simple. This is one of those "that's too simple, so it glosses over seriously important details." 50% as a starting number is handy, but it's not a benchmark.
It also can't tell you what it doesn't know, and AIs aren't usually trained to know "XCOM is a great game to visit if you want to consider failure and probability's role in design." That universe is a wonderful example of augmenting probability to match play, but an AI isn't going to easily associate XCOM with probability/failure. It will happily associate XCOM with aliens though, because that's what it knows of XCOM. It's restricted to primacy of information and a static snapshot so it can attempt to construct "the best possible answer."
Another quick example of why AIs sometimes fail at this stuff is because they rely on one type of decision-making model when these days there are several different models that experts are working with. Not all models are ready for tech use and each design has a different perspective that leads to sometimes similar and sometimes wildly different outcomes.
And I say that from a professional and personal perspective. <Points at the degree in psychology with a focus in decision-making & choice on her wall.> If you drop by PAX, I can sometimes be found hanging out at the Geek Therapeutics or Take This! booths if I'm not with Standing Stone. :3 Always happy to talk this stuff.
Also, this is a bit off-topic, but I noticed this while reading the thread...
I am always thrilled to see people asking questions about how failure, choice, and decision-making show up in games. But, I should provide a word of caution about asking these types of questions to an AI: It's a bit like asking a mirror to tell you how it reflects. The mirror can't answer that and neither can the AI. The AI is a walking construction of choice psychology, and choice / decision-making psychology is not perfect, under-researched, and sometimes under appreciated, imho.
The long and the short of it is AI misses a lot of important research, notes, and findings around these topics and they have a bad tendency to reduce conclusions down to something that's too simple. This is one of those "that's too simple, so it glosses over seriously important details." 50% as a starting number is handy, but it's not a benchmark.
It also can't tell you what it doesn't know, and AIs aren't usually trained to know "XCOM is a great game to visit if you want to consider failure and probability's role in design." That universe is a wonderful example of augmenting probability to match play, but an AI isn't going to easily associate XCOM with probability/failure. It will happily associate XCOM with aliens though, because that's what it knows of XCOM. It's restricted to primacy of information and a static snapshot so it can attempt to construct "the best possible answer."
Another quick example of why AIs sometimes fail at this stuff is because they rely on one type of decision-making model when these days there are several different models that experts are working with. Not all models are ready for tech use and each design has a different perspective that leads to sometimes similar and sometimes wildly different outcomes.
And I say that from a professional and personal perspective. <Points at the degree in psychology with a focus in decision-making & choice on her wall.> If you drop by PAX, I can sometimes be found hanging out at the Geek Therapeutics or Take This! booths if I'm not with Standing Stone. :3 Always happy to talk this stuff.
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seph1roth5
Well-known member
If the answer were no, we would've been told no lol. So the answer is definitely yes, with a possible "but."
I think feywild did rares in an interesting and non-frustrating way with feytwisted chests. Being something that could happen in ANY chest (normal quest chest anyway) in the saga, rather than from specific quests, was 1000x better. But I guess with quest ransack pots being a thing now, I doubt they'll do it that way.
It's not the idea of rare drops that people hate (not the main thing anyway) but the way that it's tied to quests I think. That coupled with the sheer NUMBER of rares make the whole thing a gigantic pain in the ass.
Adding sun/moon rares to saga rewards helped a little, but I think it's still only a 33% chance one might show up? It's just an incredibly blatant and obvious attempt to make players do the content more, which is ridiculous. People ALREADY farm quests for mythic/reaper, we don't need this additional layer.
Unfortunately it's way too late in the process to redo whatever they did decide to go with. Another guess is that the rare system will be horrible and universally hated, and they'll just scale back a little bit like they did with MD augments, months later.
I think feywild did rares in an interesting and non-frustrating way with feytwisted chests. Being something that could happen in ANY chest (normal quest chest anyway) in the saga, rather than from specific quests, was 1000x better. But I guess with quest ransack pots being a thing now, I doubt they'll do it that way.
It's not the idea of rare drops that people hate (not the main thing anyway) but the way that it's tied to quests I think. That coupled with the sheer NUMBER of rares make the whole thing a gigantic pain in the ass.
Adding sun/moon rares to saga rewards helped a little, but I think it's still only a 33% chance one might show up? It's just an incredibly blatant and obvious attempt to make players do the content more, which is ridiculous. People ALREADY farm quests for mythic/reaper, we don't need this additional layer.
Unfortunately it's way too late in the process to redo whatever they did decide to go with. Another guess is that the rare system will be horrible and universally hated, and they'll just scale back a little bit like they did with MD augments, months later.
Rusty_helmet
Teh_troll’s Fluffer
So the answer is yes, we will continue to rake you over the coals until at least our sales numbers dip again, then we'll make small adjustments and fool you again.
For the first time ever, I am not pre-purchasing this expansion. Feel free to look up my account ssg. I spend over $1000 a year on this game. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Fizban
Founder, Feb. 2006
Dark Sun was always a very small nitch in D&D. The players I played with tried it for 2-3 campaigns but found Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance much better for our preferences.Holy **** I want a Dark Sun MMO so bad…
So so so so so so badly….
Oliphant
Well-known member
To the extent there are rare items, I hope its not like MD where there is all this focused farming on particular chests. That process is burn out inducing. The casino model of jackpot items rarely available in every chest seems more fun. Also a sanity release valve currency would provide some... sanity.
Terpilar
Well-known member
Ha, well played, now we're in expectation.
Rusty_helmet
Teh_troll’s Fluffer
SSG:
Preorder our product. We promise we'll talk about how we are going to exploit your money further later.
ME:
No. Be transparent BEFORE we are asked to purchase. You have ZERO credibility and trust built up. Establish some.
Preorder our product. We promise we'll talk about how we are going to exploit your money further later.
ME:
No. Be transparent BEFORE we are asked to purchase. You have ZERO credibility and trust built up. Establish some.
Varr
Well-known member
While an exaggeration, it seems like every post and thread is about rare loot. When you look it is about the same 20 or so posters complaining the rare loot is both to hard to get and not good enough to be rare, but still game breaking for them to not be able to obtain. Looks like about 5-6 other fomites joined me on the pro rare side of the fence, or at least stop crying about it side of the fence.
Will be great to hear the rare loot is here again forever, but you all have made some minor tweaks. This will be the eventual answer and they have the feed back they crave to fall into a whole new wave of how dare the game take a for profit stance and the 20 or so posters with about 0 real data know better how to monetize the game.
As I said before though, please make the loot easier to get for them to at least save the forums form this most recent and most annoying waive of doomsayers. The 2025 end of days problem.
The game is better now than it has ever been and every time there is an issue like this that a couple dozen posters get angry about and rant insistently about, when the few of them with backbone really do stop playing and posting, it gets better again.
Rusty_helmet
Teh_troll’s Fluffer
Being excited to have rare loot in the game is peak stockholm syndrome.
I have posted about the loot, and my posts had NOTHING to do with making loot easier. It was about asking SSG to be transparent before I spend my money. I don't care if its 40% or .01%, what i care about is knowing the they are not going to change the loot tables after I spend my $$ to get the points. Ive done that before, I won't do it again.
As far as the "wave of doomsayers" go, i would rather 20% of the server base get on the forums every day and rant about stupid stuff, then quit the game because they feel like they are being cheated.
Solarpower
Well-known member
Alas, this is what has always been, is and, it seems, will be. DDO's Forum even the old one was always a place for the same group of around 10 people chatting with each other.
Most of the time they whine and complain, complain and whine. And wonder why nobody listen to their demands.
But if you tell them they are free to leave the game they hate so much and nowbody would even notice the absence of 10 people, they'll begin to tell you they are PAYING CUSTOMERS(TM), make fun of your playstyle, call themselves the "majority of the community"(TM) and brag about how much $$$ they've spent so everybody must fall on their knees and praise them.
And then start whining again.
It's just a pity for newbies who might visit the forum, fall into this swamp of eternal whining and self-praise, and run away in horror not only from the forum but also from the game.
On the other hand, the developers seem to be okay with it, as they've never done anything to stop it. And now they've gone to Discord, leaving the forum to be torn apart by whiners.
Rusty_helmet
Teh_troll’s Fluffer
The entire game is kept afloat by that small cadre of people who actually care.
5 Other People
all the voices in my head are my own
Thanks for your insightful words! I'm pretty sure I'm developing a platonic crush on you. I'll plan to think of a fun question to ask you at PAX.
My dominant personality is a software/big data guy with a background in sociology who is reluctantly using LLMs in a focused field. for me AI is the most accurate parrot (good at repeating & even correlating, but not so good at creative construction)...if you wrote more on the topic I'd 100% read it.
If expansions keep coming with rare loot & rare augments that are required to complete sets. Or even "just" bloated loot tables, like 6 items and 4 augments on the same roll, I'm just going to ignore the loot and keep using IoD & Vecna forever and lower the difficulty accordingly.
No way I'd farm till my eyes bleed, let alone spend shards with those low odds.
Of course that invalidates a big part of the expansions, so I'll likely only get them later for points. Really sad because you used to be excited about new loot.
No way I'd farm till my eyes bleed, let alone spend shards with those low odds.
Of course that invalidates a big part of the expansions, so I'll likely only get them later for points. Really sad because you used to be excited about new loot.
Teh_Troll
Master of Baiting
Or he's a bot. I'm betting a bot.
Teh_Troll
Master of Baiting
Great . . . ANOTHER dex race . . .Leave it to rabid beaver!
