Dev Discussion #41 - RNG

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Augmenting your chances does not affect the general perspective of anyone I know towards OverEnchanting odds. RNG is RNG.

My 112 FS in BDO obtained entirely trying to upgrade from TRI to TET starting at 60 is my counterpoint to this.

Azherae wrote: »

Augmenting your chances does not affect the general perspective of anyone I know towards OverEnchanting odds. RNG is RNG.

My 112 FS in BDO obtained entirely trying to upgrade from TRI to TET starting at 60 is my counterpoint to this.

Do you, by any chance, have any data on how people might react to a system where there's some item that removes the rng from OE entirely, but to get that item you have to pay more money-time than you would have if you'd just risk the failure of OE?

Cause I understand that people are afraid of and dislike RNG for multitude of reasons, but what if risking that rng was less pricy than having a sure way to OE smth.

And as a flipside of that, what if the default system of OE was "go do this super difficult time-consuming task and you can OE your stuff", but there'd be some shifty way of doing that but at a lower cost and with a risk to fail.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Augmenting your chances does not affect the general perspective of anyone I know towards OverEnchanting odds. RNG is RNG.

My 112 FS in BDO obtained entirely trying to upgrade from TRI to TET starting at 60 is my counterpoint to this.

Do you, by any chance, have any data on how people might react to a system where there's some item that removes the rng from OE entirely, but to get that item you have to pay more money-time than you would have if you'd just risk the failure of OE?

Cause I understand that people are afraid of and dislike RNG for multitude of reasons, but what if risking that rng was less pricy than having a sure way to OE smth.

And as a flipside of that, what if the default system of OE was "go do this super difficult time-consuming task and you can OE your stuff", but there'd be some shifty way of doing that but at a lower cost and with a risk to fail.

I have some data from BDO itself and their current flows of development.

They have consistently had to introduce more and more 'guaranteed enhancement' options for players, to the point where I now believe that for at least one character per account, you could achieve BIS PEN gear in at least four slots without ever interacting with the RNG.

Reason 'overwhelming demand' apparently. All such items are not-sellable, character bound. I don't see anyone actually attempt higher level enhancement at all anymore. This was also the case on their EU servers for accessories to the point where high level accessories did not even exist and they had to consider methods to solve it because the higher level grind areas are not POSSIBLE without at least a few high level enhanced accessories, but so few were willing to do it that the supply dried up for a few months.

I don't have sufficient specifics because they don't like to share them, obviously. Just know that it has been repeatedly affecting and changing their design. Could be that the game is too old and they have to 'give people a chance', but they could just 'do that by handing out more items to help with the enhancement'.

They tried that for a while. A LONG while. It doesn't work very well because if they hand out 1000 Cron Stones (use between 56 and 150 for one free enhancement where your gear doesn't risk downranking), then even with the standard odds, some people will burn through all of those and still have no upgrade done.

To those people, you gave them nothing at all. (I'm not complaining here, I don't even use that system because like I said, Enhancing is for people who want to lose money, and gamblers)

Azherae wrote: »

Reason 'overwhelming demand' apparently. All such items are not-sellable, character bound. I don't see anyone actually attempt higher level enhancement at all anymore. This was also the case on their EU servers for accessories to the point where high level accessories did not even exist and they had to consider methods to solve it because the higher level grind areas are not POSSIBLE without at least a few high level enhanced accessories, but so few were willing to do it that the supply dried up for a few months.

Yeah, this is the biggest thing I hate about mmo pve design (at least in most cases I've seen so far). It's usually all based on "unless you get this OP gear - ya ain't clearing shit". I think FF14 might be a bit different in this, though I'm not completely sure cause I haven't looked into its ultimate fights too much.

And I understand that there's a limit on how many mechanics you can put into one boss to make it super difficult w/o just pumping a shitton of hp/atk into it, but damn do some companies not even try. I really hope the genre shifts away from that type of difficulty increase before we get to VRMMOs, cause I cannot be bothered to flop my hands around for hours just because some devs couldn't come up with a way to make a boss hard w/o trillions of hp. I already experienced that in SAO vr demo that came out a few months ago. My hands were dead after just a few hours of boss runs.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Reason 'overwhelming demand' apparently. All such items are not-sellable, character bound. I don't see anyone actually attempt higher level enhancement at all anymore. This was also the case on their EU servers for accessories to the point where high level accessories did not even exist and they had to consider methods to solve it because the higher level grind areas are not POSSIBLE without at least a few high level enhanced accessories, but so few were willing to do it that the supply dried up for a few months.

Yeah, this is the biggest thing I hate about mmo pve design (at least in most cases I've seen so far). It's usually all based on "unless you get this OP gear - ya ain't clearing shit". I think FF14 might be a bit different in this, though I'm not completely sure cause I haven't looked into its ultimate fights too much.

And I understand that there's a limit on how many mechanics you can put into one boss to make it super difficult w/o just pumping a shitton of hp/atk into it, but damn do some companies not even try. I really hope the genre shifts away from that type of difficulty increase before we get to VRMMOs, cause I cannot be bothered to flop my hands around for hours just because some devs couldn't come up with a way to make a boss hard w/o trillions of hp. I already experienced that in SAO vr demo that came out a few months ago. My hands were dead after just a few hours of boss runs.

Unfortunately that's not even the case.

Once again I will remind that I can and will rag on BDO all day every day, no problem , but this is not a point where the game falls short. There is content for people who cannot get higher. It is often MORE fun than some of the higher grind content.

What is missing is the sense of progression. The 'worry about being ganked by a powerful foe' means little because BDO TTK is like 5 seconds if ganked in the open world by even a semiserious player, and the arenas tend to balance things more.

The solo-PvE enemies downscale in strength if you leave them alone long enough (they are instanced per player) but still give the same rewards.

They made it entirely possible that you basically never NEED to actually get gear particularly high in order to do anything much. But if you aren't progressing gear, you aren't progressing much, so people still complain... or stop playing.

For example, I realized I made a contradiction. I gave an example of 'trying to upgrade gear' and then said I don't interact with the system. Because it's for losing money. Sometimes I just lose the money (since I use BDO as case study, and because I don't need high gear for anything of importance).

So I do the standard 'roulette'. 'All my gear is TRI, I don't think I'll be fighting anything too strong for a while and this month's event is boring, I'll try to upgrade every slot.'

That 112 FS came with 'All my gear downgrading to DUO. All three weapons, four armor pieces, complete loss of 2x TRI accessories. I just 'calculated where I could let my power drop to and still do what I do' and stopped there.

PvE in BDO is laughable, but that's a story for another time.

Azherae wrote: »

PvE in BDO is laughable, but that's a story for another time.

Yeah, and that's my problem with overall mmo pve. It's either super easy but obviously not rewarding enough because of that, or it's super hard but relies on you having the peak gear just to even come close to clearing it even w/o you showing some high level of mechanical skill. I wish games went for a mechanical skillcheck and had gear progress meaningful somewhere else. For me that "somewhere" would be pvp, because I like gear difference in pvp rather than gear equalization, but I know that a lot of people get really butthurt over that so maybe something else would be better.

In other words, "devs, make games harder w/o relying on boss hp/atk stats".

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

PvE in BDO is laughable, but that's a story for another time.

Yeah, and that's my problem with overall mmo pve. It's either super easy but obviously not rewarding enough because of that, or it's super hard but relies on you having the peak gear just to even come close to clearing it even w/o you showing some high level of mechanical skill. I wish games went for a mechanical skillcheck and had gear progress meaningful somewhere else. For me that "somewhere" would be pvp, because I like gear difference in pvp rather than gear equalization, but I know that a lot of people get really butthurt over that so maybe something else would be better.

In other words, "devs, make games harder w/o relying on boss hp/atk stats".

Unfortunately, again, the problem is the 'weird opposite' in BDO.

BDO damage from PvE is almost ENTIRELY a mechanical skillcheck. This means that whether or not a boss or enemy group can kill you relies on three things.

1. Does it have at least one attack that functionally can't be evaded at all.
2. Do you have insufficient defensive gear and/or too low evasion to luck out of not dying to this move
3. How long can you persistently keep up the mechanical skill to dodge everything else, if you happen to have low attack and will take a long time to kill it.

Lots of people quite enjoy BDO PVE when they are learning the game. But because many things are 'within the range that a regular person can see, react to, and avoid damage', skilled players literally just dance around the enemy entirely because it's such a high mobility game. Classes that can block just have to block in the right direction and attack in the enemy recovery frames.

BDO PvE fails due to the lack of status effects involved and actually lack of importance of gear stats other than the 'DPS check' and the 'do you get oneshot/combo'd to death off one touch' check. They could do considerably better, but it's one of their core promises that players 'won't need to have friends or a group in order to enjoy the game's content'.

There are no 'builds' in BDO relative to gear. There were about 2 or 3 as the gear available in the game went through different stages, but they gave up on that a long time ago. That's why their RNG upgrades are so 'important to those who want to make progression', and at the same time so utterly pointless.

Azherae wrote: »

BDO PvE fails due to the lack of status effects involved and actually lack of importance of gear stats other than the 'DPS check' and the 'do you get oneshot/combo'd to death off one touch' check. They could do considerably better, but it's one of their core promises that players 'won't need to have friends or a group in order to enjoy the game's content'.

There are no 'builds' in BDO relative to gear. There were about 2 or 3 as the gear available in the game went through different stages, but they gave up on that a long time ago. That's why their RNG upgrades are so 'important to those who want to make progression', and at the same time so utterly pointless.

But you said that some areas are impossible to farm w/o OEd gear pieces. Or did you mean that it's only possible to those who can perfectly dodge literally every hit from the mob, which is such a miniscule number of people that it's unimportant? Though imo having oneshots as the main "skillcheck" is also kinda meh when it comes to features.

Also, it's more of a personal gripe with the current action combat design, but I find the "dodge or block" skill checking so damn dull

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

BDO PvE fails due to the lack of status effects involved and actually lack of importance of gear stats other than the 'DPS check' and the 'do you get oneshot/combo'd to death off one touch' check. They could do considerably better, but it's one of their core promises that players 'won't need to have friends or a group in order to enjoy the game's content'.

There are no 'builds' in BDO relative to gear. There were about 2 or 3 as the gear available in the game went through different stages, but they gave up on that a long time ago. That's why their RNG upgrades are so 'important to those who want to make progression', and at the same time so utterly pointless.

But you said that some areas are impossible to farm w/o OEd gear pieces. Or did you mean that it's only possible to those who can perfectly dodge literally every hit from the mob, which is such a miniscule number of people that it's unimportant? Though imo having oneshots as the main "skillcheck" is also kinda meh when it comes to features.

Also, it's more of a personal gripe with the current action combat design, but I find the "dodge or block" skill checking so damn dull

I know it's hard to visualize because most people never think a game can be designed quite as poorly as BDO is in specific ways, but yes, that's what I'm saying.

I took my mid-geared character to fight some enemies in a new area that I don't have the 'recommended Attack Power' to kill, fought one group for around 10 minutes (I have just enough evasion to not die to them if I don't get combo'd), beat them (this is terribly inefficient, but kind of fun).

Then I took a step further into the area, got stunned by some totem or something while engaging the next group and died within 1.5s before I could take another action.

In order to do sufficient damage to these enemies I would need to OE four accessories, and change my current TET Evasion Belt so that I no longer HAVE the giant evasion boost, which means I would kill them faster instead of having to worry about 'did my RNG evasion roll work against this thing'.

The game is based around 'can you kill this enemy group in 2x skills and then efficiently move to the next group to do the same thing?' There are places where this isn't true (which are in turn more fun), but those grindspots are inefficient in terms of earning power, so you 'have to' OE your gear.

Or do what I do, ignore the entire thing. As noted, BDO doesn't require it to play, it requires it to 'progress'. It's honestly pretty casual friendly if what you want is to turn off your brain, or if you literally don't care about 90% of its systems. That just happens to include the enhancing process. If Ashes is designed such that 50% of content is unavailable without OE gear but the other 50% is the fun stuff, then that's fine with me too, but in Ashes I'd NEVER Roulette, whereas in BDO it's 'a way to pass the time in an otherwise flat game'.