Risk Vs Reward as it relates to a Very Specific type of RNG

Entirely a community question now, I'll try to keep it short and hopefully not end up failing and writing essayworths of explanations.

I think a specific form of RNG isn't actually Risk vs Reward and I think I finally have the example. If your response is 'just don't do it that way', great, lmk what you'd do instead in the same example .

Scenario:
In BDO you can 'awaken' a fully trained, Tier 8, level 30 Horse, into a more powerful version, by giving this horse special food, and then appealing to the RNG. Base chance of success is around 1%, chance goes up by around 0.4% every time you fail. The additional chance gained only applies to this activity. (insert long set of specifics about why this isn't easy to do or dependent on money, demand for these items is so much higher than supply as to be ridiculous, etc).

I personally think that 'when your only risk is not getting your reward', and when your reward is (in a roundabout way, depending on goal) 'having the thing you are working towards and not losing any more resources', you, the PLAYER, are not experiencing the same 'feeling' of Risk vs Reward that I think this game might be intending to foster. It's on YOU, you made the decision 'to even try', but your experience is still affected this way. I believe this because it feels like 'the way to minimize risk here is to avoid engaging with the system'.

Recently while hanging around in that game, a specific player mentioned in Global chat that they were on their 144th attempt.

Average number of attempts is, I think... 37.

This player has no reward. The system has no 'consolation prize'. You just lose the items and try again. They are 144 tries in.

In my mind, the 'risk' you are at when you are 144 tries in, is 'not being able to keep trying (financially or emotionally or whatever), stopping, and accepting the loss of 144x the average cost of one attempt, for nothing'. The 'reward' would be 'not having to try any more'. Again, subjectively.

I see this as different from 'spending your time being able to influence your chances or by choosing your activity based on your preferred role', but that's a long story about how bad BDO is.

Would you want this to be done any differently in any way? Whether you consider it a valid 'risk vs reward' or not.

I'm personally not against these kinds of systems purely because I see them as powerful sinks of whatever resources/money is required. But I can definitely see how I'd be in a super minority when it comes to this pov.

I'd probably just increase the "pity" % increase and maybe add another difficult to get item that increases the chance by a fair bit of %. Ideally that item would have several ways of acquiring it (i.e. boss drop, high artisanry, pvp reward, the likes), but all at the same perceived difficulty, so that different people could get it, but the value itself was still fairly high.

To me, mmos are all about grinding for that one additional percent of whatever power I need, so I see this work as justified. I know this is kind of a boomer outlook on the genre, so maybe Intrepid would want to get away from that.

NiKr wrote: »

I'm personally not against these kinds of systems purely because I see them as powerful sinks of whatever resources/money is required. But I can definitely see how I'd be in a super minority when it comes to this pov.

I'd probably just increase the "pity" % increase and maybe add another difficult to get item that increases the chance by a fair bit of %. Ideally that item would have several ways of acquiring it (i.e. boss drop, high artisanry, pvp reward, the likes), but all at the same perceived difficulty, so that different people could get it, but the value itself was still fairly high.

To me, mmos are all about grinding for that one additional percent of whatever power I need, so I see this work as justified. I know this is kind of a boomer outlook on the genre, so maybe Intrepid would want to get away from that.

Explanation #1 then:

The items in question have no other purpose.

Half of them can't even be bought and must be obtained by doing other specific activities (depending on which horse you want).

The thing it is 'sinking' is often only the player's time. The result is that the player in question has probably spent around 500 hours/equivalent on just this activity, when the 'average' is 70.

In Ashes, I would expect and hope that the player could just buy what they need from others consistently whilst focusing on something else they enjoy.

In a weird and COMPLETELY personal and probably illogical outlook, I view this sort of thing as... making it less MMO, actually? That might be BDO specific, but I think Ashes has the potential to feel the same sometimes (because if you were relying on friends, they might 'give up on your quest' after the 100th attempt, y'know?)

Azherae wrote: »

The thing it is 'sinking' is often only the player's time. The result is that the player in question has probably spent around 500 hours/equivalent on just this activity, when the 'average' is 70.

In Ashes, I would expect and hope that the player could just buy what they need from others consistently whilst focusing on something else they enjoy.

Yeah, if there's no way to trade the needed item it definitely makes the whole situation hurt that much more. But if Ashes had this kind of system and had tradable catalysts for powerups - I'd be fine with it. To me that'd be the same as L2's overenchantment system. Except with OE you even lost your items, while here you're just spending time/money to upgrade smth.

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Unless you make the spawn for the needed item completely random (i.e. it can spawn anywhere in the world), you risk it being farmed by some group of people that then gauge the price so high that it would've been cheaper to play the rng with a higher spawn rate.

Though even if you make it truly random, you'd have to have a network of friends in all places of the world that would track the markets daily for the off chance that the item pops up and they'd be able to buy it before the same group from the first example gets it and resells it for insane amount of money.

Rng is an equalizer in a way. Yes, there's always someone who's gonna be lucky and someone who's gonna be unlucky. And yes, those who have more resources by default will have "more luck". But a lucky poor person could suddenly become as powerful as an unlucky rich one, which would put them at equal lvl. A non-rng system favors the rich, unless you just give out the items to everyone equally.

In BDO specifically, I can see the point, but that's also part of my visceral reaction.

People get rich by being lucky. So I understand 'not rewarding the rich more'.

But I see the two things as going together. If your game 'can make someone richer by luck', decent chance that many of the 'rich people you want to equalize against'... just got there the same way. Remove it all?

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You can be "rich" in multiple ways. A dude with no friends and no time to make friends in the game would not have the ability to have enough money to buy the item, because w/o friends that dude won't have the ability to track the item before the sharks get it and spike the prices. And the dude can't afford spiked prices because the sharks have a monopoly on the item and have priced it so damn high that one person literally cannot farm that much in a reasonable amount of time.

Azherae wrote: »

People get rich by being lucky. So I understand 'not rewarding the rich more'.

But I see the two things as going together. If your game 'can make someone richer by luck', decent chance that many of the 'rich people you want to equalize against'... just got there the same way. Remove it all?

Yeah, the only way to do that would be to remove any kind of rng and then give every player an equal opportunity to get any item. You could have that opportunity be on a skill lvl scale, so that more skilled people get it faster because they "deserve to get it faster".

Which kinda brings us to the current mmo design of instances everywhere with participation rewards. There's no competition, there's no need for trading, there's no difficulty in acquiring the base lvl of items.

Now I'm not saying that's the wrong way to design your game (wow/ff14 have obviously shown that it's the right one), but to me that's shitty design, just as for you a game with shitty pve and shitty pvp balance would be uninteresting.

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from Sathrago to share the quoted post.

You can be "rich" in multiple ways. A dude with no friends and no time to make friends in the game would not have the ability to have enough money to buy the item, because w/o friends that dude won't have the ability to track the item before the sharks get it and spike the prices. And the dude can't afford spiked prices because the sharks have a monopoly on the item and have priced it so damn high that one person literally cannot farm that much in a reasonable amount of time.

Azherae wrote: »

People get rich by being lucky. So I understand 'not rewarding the rich more'.

But I see the two things as going together. If your game 'can make someone richer by luck', decent chance that many of the 'rich people you want to equalize against'... just got there the same way. Remove it all?

Yeah, the only way to do that would be to remove any kind of rng and then give every player an equal opportunity to get any item. You could have that opportunity be on a skill lvl scale, so that more skilled people get it faster because they "deserve to get it faster".

Which kinda brings us to the current mmo design of instances everywhere with participation rewards. There's no competition, there's no need for trading, there's no difficulty in acquiring the base lvl of items.

Now I'm not saying that's the wrong way to design your game (wow/ff14 have obviously shown that it's the right one), but to me that's shitty design, just as for you a game with shitty pve and shitty pvp balance would be uninteresting.

Note that I'm in no way arguing against the RNG aspect in this case. I'm specifically against the result of 'your failures mean nothing whatsoever'.

You can't pivot, you can't gain anything, you're just flushing time down for nothing EXCEPT the 'feeling that you might as well keep going until you succeed. I'm familiar with your opinions on RNG, obviously, and in this case, I'm not arguing against RNG in general, just this particular one feels like it wouldn't even be a positive for the risk vs reward goal.

It's like saying 'the risk is committing to doing this at all'. To 'believe that you have a decent chance' and therefore even try, is a risk.

@SirChancelot For clarity here's the numbers, I was wrong on both counts, hadn't checked it in a while

https://grumpygreen.cricket/dream-horse-failstack/

It's 0.2% per failure, and honestly, 'most people would have it by the 37th' attempt was entirely shoddy imprecision on my part, what does 'most' even mean there, right?

So let's use the value from there, that math, I can confirm easily.

50% of players have it at or before the 21st attempt.

I'm bringing this up because I KNOW that a lot of this is my bias and I'm asking others to help me examine it. I don't have a strong reasoning for this other than 'it feels unfair and ALSO like a negative for the game experience of non-gamblers'. But it can't be THAT pure of a negative, or games wouldn't continue to get away with doing it.

Azherae wrote: »

I'm bringing this up because I KNOW that a lot of this is my bias and I'm asking others to help me examine it. I don't have a strong reasoning for this other than 'it feels unfair and ALSO like a negative for the game experience of non-gamblers'. But it can't be THAT pure of a negative, or games wouldn't continue to get away with doing it.

I think it's just about the rush you get when you finally succeed. The brain chemistry just yells at you "you've spent insane amount of effort on this thing, so here's all the chemical reward you can get". It doesn't know that the "effort" was pretty much meaningless and the overall process quite negative, but the feeling of success is just that much brighter when you finally achieve the thing you were aiming for.

In other words, everyone's a gambler at least to some extent. And all the non-gamblers wouldn't even participate in such games so there's relatively fewer people complaining about these practices. And even less people vote with their wallets on this issue, so the companies see no losses when they participate in such practices, which just leads to their increased prevalence.

We have not received permission from CROW3 to share the quoted post.

Interesting, the fact that the latter seems like a reasonable idea to me highlights a flaw in my thinking, I can feel it, but not quite there yet.

"Time" is the 'currency' for the other critical task... and in a game where time spent (to gain currency) has no guaranteed rewards until someone ELSE has the item (everything else is RNG too, basically) I should feel the same, but I don't. Probably.

Your answer is to make the risk higher and more destructive, is this to make the feeling worse, to make players more averse, or simply to equalize the number of people 'having the option to succeed' in some way?

We have not received permission from CROW3 to share the quoted post.

Not following just yet.

Whales would still have advantage because they could just buy a new mount to try with, right? (again, some of this is inextricably linked to BDO and that's unhelpful, I know, but a whole new mount that you can try with costs about as much as maybe... 3 attempts)

Also the mount is unusable while you're trying this anyway. Did I mention how bad this game is?

I definitely see how it is creating a serverwide Mount sink. But I view that as moreso 'bad' here? Eventually the costs of this go up to the point where only the most economically powerful can even afford to buy the mount itself, and we're back to the start, aren't we?

Is it meant to affect the individual player experience in a way I don't understand yet?

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A fully leveled mount can be bought, so I hope that answers the first question.

It's a onetime upgrade that is on the level of converting 'This horse is very fast' to 'This horse is now a double-jumping gliding mount'.

Which is why it's so hard to do, but that's why it's weird to me. I get the idea that some things are supposed to be exclusive, rare, hard work... I just don't see the point of connecting them DIRECTLY to zero-reward-on-fail RNG.

That's a bunch of statistics, in my mind, though, and I don't think the odds and stats are relevant to your answer, let me know if they are.

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Yes, that would definitely alter the primary 'problem' here, in a way that I personally wouldn't complain about. I would say 'that's already how it works' but, as noted, I think you can't actually sell the higher tier ones at all, their only purpose is to upgrade.

On the other hand, I don't think you actually receive those from anywhere you don't intend to (there's always another option to choose instead of those materials in those spaces, I think), other than 'the giant pile of login rewards and special events they use to keep people playing their game'.

I guess there's less Risk when the developers reward you for showing up.

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I think I would also like to focus on this potential solution.

For me, I'll just crunch the numbers and hope for the best all the time, so here, I'd do the math, but that's because I don't have the experience of the same feelings as others (so I'm told) because I do that math most of the time (sometimes subconsciously).

The important thing I want to focus on therefore is, does this make people FEEL better?

I'll clarify why this is 'important using some of that math in a different sorta-obvious way, I think.

Start with 100 people who all want this upgrade. 1% chance, and it goes up 1% every time you fail to be even easier. Let's be fairly literal, not how probability works but whatever.

Try 1: 99 people are a little unhappy, 1 person is immediately happy
Try 2: Probably 97 people are a little unhappy, 3 people are happy total
Try 3: Probably 94 people are a little unhappy, 6 people are happy total
Try 4: Probably 90 people are a little unhappy, 10 people are happy total
Try 5: Probably 85 people are sort of unhappy, 15 people are happy in total
Try 6: Probably 80 people are sort of unhappy, 20 people are happy in total
Try 7: Probably 74 people are sort of unhappy, 26 people are happy in total
Try 8: Probably 68 people are sort of unhappy, 32 people are happy in total
Try 9: Probably 62 people are slightly frustrated, 38 people are happy in total
Try 10: Probably 56 people are slightly frustrated, 44 people are happy in total
Try 11: Probably 50 people are slightly frustrated, 50 people are happy in total
Try 12: Probably 44 people are slightly frustrated, 56 people are happy in total
Try 13: Probably 38 people are a bit exhausted, 62 people are happy in total
Try 14: Probably 33 people are a bit exhausted, 67 people are happy in total
Try 15: Probably 28 people are a bit exhausted, 72 people are happy in total
Try 16: Probably 24 people are a bit exhausted, 76 people are happy in total
Try 17: Probably 20 people are annoyed, 80 people are happy in total
Try 18: Probably 16 people are annoyed, 84 people are happy in total
Try 19: Probably 13 people are annoyed, 87 people are happy in total
Try 20: Probably 9 people are annoyed, 91 people are happy in total
Try 21: Probably 7 people are frustrated, 93 people are happy in total
Try 22: Probably 5 people are frustrated, 95 people are happy in total
Try 23: Probably 4 people are frustrated, 96 people are happy in total
Try 24: Probably 3 people are frustrated, 97 people are happy in total
Try 25: Probably 2 people are frustrated, 98 people are happy in total

I ask about this partially because I want to understand other people's perspectives on frustration or negativity toward outcomes. Some of us are very Zen about these things, some of us get mad as soon as we are not the average.

I went all the way to Try 25 because if you 'multiply the numbers by something' .e.g. at 17, multiply by 10, and then 'subtract the number at that point from every following result' (so basically subtract 800 from every number after that) you can quickly check nearly any value from 1% to 25% chance.

To cut this short and get to the point then... I put in a bunch of 'happy' and random slowly increasing negative feelings, but where are yours? There's a point where I stop being 'happy' even when I get the thing and just feel 'relief'. Interestingly, it's also at exactly try 17. Any point beyond that where I succeed I don't get the 'dopamine hit'. No more 'wow I got it finally!' just 'glad that's over'.

Pretty sure it's connected to all the time I have to spend watching the other 80% of people having the thing.

But it's not the same for other people, right? Some of you get the 'hit' all the way down to 25 or higher, and I think most people don't start to feel anything negative until around the point I start to 'not feel anything positive', right?

This 'Attempt Exhaustion' kicks in differently for long chains, and I think for me it activates differently when I only have to do the entire thing once, it's just a 'roadblock' to either content, a tool for me to enjoy that content, or something for my build/playstyle. So I want to understand, even for those who also don't like this sort of system... if we stick to the 'you get nothing on failure', where do you fit in the above long thing? When do you stop feeling 'yes! I got it!' happily and start feeling 'Finally, damn...' (if at all).

Sorry for the long post as always.

Azherae wrote: »

But it's not the same for other people, right? Some of you get the 'hit' all the way down to 25 or higher, and I think most people don't start to feel anything negative until around the point I start to 'not feel anything positive', right?

This 'Attempt Exhaustion' kicks in differently for long chains, and I think for me it activates differently when I only have to do the entire thing once, it's just a 'roadblock' to either content, a tool for me to enjoy that content, or something for my build/playstyle. So I want to understand, even for those who also don't like this sort of system... if we stick to the 'you get nothing on failure', where do you fit in the above long thing? When do you stop feeling 'yes! I got it!' happily and start feeling 'Finally, damn...' (if at all).

To me this depends on the number of people who has the thing I'm going for relative to the overall number of players on my server. If 1% of players are going for the thing and on average get it on their 10th attempt, I'd be completely fine getting that thing on my 50th attempt, just because I'd still be in the 1% of people with that thing.

This has always been my justification for burning dozens of weapons through OE in L2. I spent weeks refarming mats and enchant scrolls just to get a +1 over the majority of people around me. And if I later see that the majority is starting to catch up to me, I'll try going further in OE.

So in the case of those BDO horses, if only some small % of players even try going for them - I'd be fine with 144 attempts. At least if I've done all the other boosting I could, cause I could definitely see this kind of investment beginning to feel real bad if I could've boosted my character much more through other means. In other words, I'd just do this thing as the "last push for greatness".