RNG Crafting Critical.

[Shanaeri]

Now beta is still a few days away, so we don't know exactly how it'll work but there is an excerpt from the news letter I personally find a little disconcerting

" Engineers trade is more of a black art than a science, so results can vary with each attempt. There is a small chance that the engineer pulls something special out of the bag and is able to add a special effect, which can add specific abilities to the upgrade, like the special weapon effects we’ve shown in recent newsletters.

Assuming that you’re happy with the result this upgrade will be fitted, or you can choose for the engineer to abandon the upgrade and try again, as long as you have the required resources."

From the above it sounds like there will be a RNG chance of getting a "critical" when you craft a module, and that each attempt at getting the crit will cost you materials.

Now personally, I believe this is a very bad mechanic. It's not really worked or been popular in MMO's with it I've played and indeed most modern games have dispensed with it altogether.

RNG should play no part in crafting.

Just to temper my concern we've not seen what beta holds yet, but thought i'd put it out there...

 

[Mamif]

How easy materials are to get could make or break it. If through normal play I can raft one or two a day I have no problem with it. If If I have to grind repetitive content for hours on end to craft one on top of rng.... Yea.

 

[evoelise]

Sound like it'll be as much fun as grinding endless USSs to complete a mission.

Frontier seems to be stuck in the 1990s when it comes to game play sometimes...

 

[Mephane]

Even without the rare modifications and criticals, just the regular range of the stats presented in the newsletter presents one end of the scale where all stats go into the blue - i.e. unmitigated upgrades with no downsides whatsoever.

A+ gear, blessed by RNGesus and the Holy Grind.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I can understand if we are doing the crafting but we are not. From what I see I have no problems with it. personally. I can only think that the min/max crowd will be the ones not happy.

 

[JeffRyan]

I thought it looked awesome... but I guess I'm stuck in the nineties too... It was wonderful, Friends, Oasis, Babylon 5, Frontier and FFE oh and Live and their album Throwing Coppers. 'It's easier not to be great... we measure these things by our eyes... I sank into Eden with you...'

 

[shadragon]

Sound like it'll be as much fun as grinding endless USSs to complete a mission.

Frontier seems to be stuck in the 1990s when it comes to game play sometimes...

As opposed to providing you with an "I win" button to push? Of course, then we'll hear complaints that they can't be bothered to push it.

Want something, work for it. It's a simple saying that many people have forgotten in this instant satisfaction world of ours.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I would feel much better if FD handed the player sliders with error bars and an overall budget, e.g.

• Increase damage per shot by 25-35%, but that increase is paid elsewhere, e.g. incresed heat generation.
• Or, better ROF and Damage, but very high capacitor drain and crap accuracy

The overall message being :

• Let the players choose and respect player's time, only use RNG over error bars arround the chosen values.
• If the item get a special effect, let the player pick it (or at least give two choices)
• Using an overall budget (neutral or slightly positive) avoid the Diablo III item farming style for the A+++ item (again : respect player's time)

Seriously, stop wasting our time with stupid grind game mechanics.

 

[DaggerSnake]

Right now we have a galaxy full of the same ships with the same hardware. Doesn't matter who's flying or what mode, everyone buys from the same pool. If all crafting was an expanded list of the same upgrades, the pool just gets bigger, but still the same. In my opinion, that is dull.

Ever wanted to be able to say, "I've worked long and hard and let me tell you, this is the fastest ship In the Galaxy." ?

Random stats tweaking is the way to make this possible. It may not be easy or fast, but you may see an upgrade that will never repeat. That's awesome.

 

[Steve50]

I disagree TC, I quite like the idea of a RNG to crafting, we'll get more unique items than simple the usual 'cookie cutter' ones.

 

[Gedemon]

Want something, work for it.

No problem with that. work 1 hour to get x. okay, fine.

The problem starts when it's: work [random number between 1 to 100, no skill involved] hours to get x.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I disagree TC, I quite like the idea of a RNG to crafting, we'll get more unique items than simple the usual 'cookie cutter' ones.

Nope, everyone will get the same all blue item after a unholy amount of grind. And then where is the variation ?

 

[Varrag]

As opposed to providing you with an "I win" button to push? Of course, then we'll hear complaints that they can't be bothered to push it.

Want something, work for it. It's a simple saying that many people have forgotten in this instant satisfaction world of ours.

I don't think that anyone wants 'I win' button. And there's nothing wrong with work, assuming that materials are not easy to find and the blueprint is hard to get from an engineer. But once you manage to fulfill all prerequisites, results should be 100% predictable. These guys are supposed to be... you know, engineers; not rookie wizards with spikey hats working with bat's wings and owl's talons who cannot tell what's going to jump out from their cauldron at the end.

 

[Bacalao]

I would feel much better if FD handed the player sliders with error bars and an overall budget, e.g.

• Increase damage per shot by 25-35%, but that increase is paid elsewhere, e.g. incresed heat generation.
• Or, better ROF and Damage, but very high capacitor drain and crap accuracy

The overall message being :

• Let the players choose and respect player's time, only use RNG over error bars arround the chosen values.
• If the item get a special effect, let the player pick it (or at least give two choices)
• Using an overall budget (neutral or slightly positive) avoid the Diablo III item farming style for the A+++ item (again : respect player's time)

Seriously, stop wasting our time with stupid grind game mechanics.

The impression I got from the newsletter is that the parts of your post I bolded are exactly what is going to be going on. There will be some trade offs, with some amount of variability, you get to choose the degree to which that happens (there are 5 levels each engineer can perform at). The only significant RNG is from the special effects. Now I know players will scream their heads of because they had to try 4 (or more) times to get the special effect they wanted, which is childish and immature. In the end, this is an issue of entitlement, so many things are.
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My hope is that the special effects are extremely rare (less than 5%) and getting key materials is also a slow process, so that getting one really makes a weapon unique and over time you gradually collect a few that you enjoy. The only hope I can see of that working though is that they make the chance to get it impossible to grind (so low the grind is totally discouraged in 99.9% of individuals, no accounting for the crazies), if they make it a 1/4 or 1/5 chance then people are just going to be mad that it took them 6 tries and they'll grind for 6 tries.
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No one that plays WoW has a problem with world drop rate for purples and mounts and such, because they are so low that unless it's your job to farm them, as a normal player you don't, you just get 1 every year or so and think "COOL!", on the other hand, kids in Destiny were outraged at the grind because the droprate was so high that you could grind them and try for the one you wanted, then in Division they are so common as to have no value, the only grind being to modify it exactly as you want. While I have a lot of problems with the way Blizzard handles their game, they got this part of it right (and screwed it all up with LFR and faceroll heroics but that's a post for another forum).
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Just my 2 cents.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

2/10, terrible idea.

FD needs to abandon this one.

 

[Brimstone]

Why don't we wait until the livestream, and then the beta to find out how exactly it will work? We only just got this newsletter.

 

[evoelise]

Want something, work for it. It's a simple saying that many people have forgotten in this instant satisfaction world of ours.

Absolutely if I want something I should have to work for it. If I want something really cool I should expect to put in a lot of work for it.

But if it is random then maybe I put in a little work to get something great OR maybe I do a lot of work to get something pretty poor.

I'd prefer to enjoy the game than have a random number generator that is out of my control waste my time.

Surely it is better to allow the customisation to be decided by the users and _balance_ this to increase the diversity in the game.

 

[Muetdhiver]

The impression I got from the newsletter is that the parts of your post I bolded are exactly what is going to be going on. There will be some trade offs, with some amount of variability, you get to choose the degree to which that happens (there are 5 levels each engineer can perform at). The only significant RNG is from the special effects. Now I know players will scream their heads of because they had to try 4 (or more) times to get the special effect they wanted, which is childish and immature. In the end, this is an issue of entitlement, so many things are.

Re-reading the newsletter, it seems to be the way.

In fact there are a "pin" recipe and "preview outcome" buttons.

I guess I just off the rails ^^

 

[Kayweg]

As opposed to providing you with an "I win" button to push? Of course, then we'll hear complaints that they can't be bothered to push it.

Want something, work for it. It's a simple saying that many people have forgotten in this instant satisfaction world of ours.

Agree. Work for it, put in the effort.
But once that's done you also expect to receive the reward you worked towards, and rightly so, not some maybe/maybe not result.

And my word, can we drop that "instant satisfaction" rubbish one of these days, it's getting really stale.

 

[Andragon]

For me it all depends on what to grind before you can try. Lets say you have to get a rare material, you have to get lucky to get it and therefore you already got a random part in. One will find such material in the first try others might need 100 tries to find one. When now the 1 try guy gets lucky once more and the 100 try guy is unlucky once more the system goes beyond ridiculous.
I have no problem to get even a huge variety in stats early on when common material is involved but later on this might kill my motivation if I work 100 hours to get a bad result because some random number generator decided so.

Unfortunately my experience in games points to annoyance rather than fun but maybe we get a surprise this time ....