Not sure it does, TBH. The entire post seems to have been designed to throw insults at and mock people that don't share the same opinion he does. Pretty much invalidated anything he might have actually achieved without the sarcasm, insults and testosterone being hosed all over the deck.
The real problem with RNG (and a solution!)
- Thread starter Spyro Jance
- Start date
Not sure it does, TBH. The entire post seems to have been designed to throw insults at and mock people that don't share the same opinion he does. Pretty much invalidated anything he might have actually achieved without the sarcasm, insults and testosterone being hosed all over the deck.
I can spin tales about what brings sense to RNG all day and still not find it fun. That's not the point. A lot of things make sense. And a lot of them aren't fun either.
You don't think immersion is fun? That's what I enjoy about ED, the immersive aspects.
SWhy isn't it fun? You have modules that perform better than standard modules. You only need a handful of rolls to get decent numbers. If it's the PvP aspect. Hate to tell you but life isn't fair. If people want it more they will get better ships.
You don't think immersion is fun? That's what I enjoy about ED, the immersive aspects.
Elite is not about fun. it's about IMMERSION !!!
The modules are a means to create a sense of reward. I'm talking about the gameplay. And packing the ship full of OP stuff is a pretty short-sighted idea of generating fun also.
It's not OP if you are not obsessed about God Rolls. It would be OP if an engineered ship guaranteed wins or take away opportunities for non-engineered ships.
As per usual, people are conflating "remove all" with "temper use". This is, in essence, what is being asked for. It's really all most anyone has asked for. Temper. Use.
Frontier have no concept of moderation. Only extremes. In every sense; bombastic game design. Not 5% here, 10% there. Giant swings. When you bolt RNG on top of RNG on top of procedural generation, it's no longer rng. It's chance. It's gambling, and the house always wins, in the end.
RNG is typically used for stats to create some dynamic values across a range; but that's not what we have. There's chance (acquisition) followed by RNG (roll) followed by more chance (secondary) followed by potentially more chance (special). I've come across many games that randomise stats; use RNG to 'fudge' values so there's some variability to keep things interesting. But this isn't what frontier has done. They are walking the (imho) foolish line towards gambling. I mean we even have a wheel of chance, for the love of god could you be more obvious?
Frontier didn't build engineering to be fun. They built it as a hook. And like any dealer, they aren't going to just stop the supply. Look I have no issue working for value return. Engineering isn't value return, it's designed to drive demand for optimal outcomes. That's no accident. It's intentional. Frontier wants you to spend most of your time feeding the engineering machine; because maybe then you won't notice what's missing. And before people say "but you don't need to have good rolls" ignores that nobody actually does that or even believes it in practice. Seldom ever will people accept the first ok roll and then leave. No. It's instinctive to improve the outcome. Always. So more materials, more waste, more rolls of the dice.
I am very fond of the developer, and believe firmly the game could and should have a great future. But i'm no fool. I know a simple chance model, when I see one. And that's all this is. And like anything, the more you risk, the higher the potential win. That frontier ultimately don't really care how broken the outcomes can be, until there is an utter crush of people screaming at them to moderate or fix, speaks volumes.
I don't know what the fix is, arguably people are addicted to the entire thing now so will defend it forever. But I believe much could be improved by creating more ways to gain materials in a more consistent fashion. Be it engineer-specific missions (yo, lacky, go shoot this bad guy, or take this 'box of tissues' [yes, tissues, that's it] to my m8) or via other in-game elements. We have that now, to a degree, but it's still terrible that people have to reverse-engineer the entire process and use third party sites to track it enough to draw patterns. Something.
But I still believe the concept is fundamentally flawed and way too circumstantial to accept it as a sensible game mechanic. It needs work. Arguing against that, seems illogical.
Frontier have no concept of moderation. Only extremes. In every sense; bombastic game design. Not 5% here, 10% there. Giant swings. When you bolt RNG on top of RNG on top of procedural generation, it's no longer rng. It's chance. It's gambling, and the house always wins, in the end.
RNG is typically used for stats to create some dynamic values across a range; but that's not what we have. There's chance (acquisition) followed by RNG (roll) followed by more chance (secondary) followed by potentially more chance (special). I've come across many games that randomise stats; use RNG to 'fudge' values so there's some variability to keep things interesting. But this isn't what frontier has done. They are walking the (imho) foolish line towards gambling. I mean we even have a wheel of chance, for the love of god could you be more obvious?
Frontier didn't build engineering to be fun. They built it as a hook. And like any dealer, they aren't going to just stop the supply. Look I have no issue working for value return. Engineering isn't value return, it's designed to drive demand for optimal outcomes. That's no accident. It's intentional. Frontier wants you to spend most of your time feeding the engineering machine; because maybe then you won't notice what's missing. And before people say "but you don't need to have good rolls" ignores that nobody actually does that or even believes it in practice. Seldom ever will people accept the first ok roll and then leave. No. It's instinctive to improve the outcome. Always. So more materials, more waste, more rolls of the dice.
I am very fond of the developer, and believe firmly the game could and should have a great future. But i'm no fool. I know a simple chance model, when I see one. And that's all this is. And like anything, the more you risk, the higher the potential win. That frontier ultimately don't really care how broken the outcomes can be, until there is an utter crush of people screaming at them to moderate or fix, speaks volumes.
I don't know what the fix is, arguably people are addicted to the entire thing now so will defend it forever. But I believe much could be improved by creating more ways to gain materials in a more consistent fashion. Be it engineer-specific missions (yo, lacky, go shoot this bad guy, or take this 'box of tissues' [yes, tissues, that's it] to my m8) or via other in-game elements. We have that now, to a degree, but it's still terrible that people have to reverse-engineer the entire process and use third party sites to track it enough to draw patterns. Something.
But I still believe the concept is fundamentally flawed and way too circumstantial to accept it as a sensible game mechanic. It needs work. Arguing against that, seems illogical.
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I don't mind having some RNG at collecting materials, but RNG in engineering needs to be replaced with better system. Let people decide what kind of mods they want with sliders. Sliders could be as they are now, just movable by players. And remove secondary rolls altogether and change them into materials/data that player has to collect to boost that mod. Some examples:
- Player wants to build racer and needs better lubricant for engine -> he flies into deep canyon in remote planet and collects plants for that lubricant.
- For better mirrored surface composite armour -> mine certain amount of low temperature diamons for coating armour with them
- For better laser weapons -> Again, mine low temperature diamonds for better optics
- For extra light weight material -> Collect rare minerals from planet close to sun. To survive this you'd need good thermal resistances, cold running ship and working fast.
- For some parts you'd have to search for old wrecks as it turns out that old equipment, thought to be obsolete line of engineering, would work with new innovations.
- For better engine plans you'd have to raid data from some maximum security installation.
And so on.. Different tasks for different parts. You could engineer without these commodities up to grade 5, with normal materials and basic sliders, but if you want to go for perfection, then you'd need to work for it.
Also commodity storages at the engineers would be needed to keep pirates harassing players all the time because they'd have to haul these commodities around and allow them to change into ships without cargo rooms. Or just keep them all as materials without going back to commodities.
- Player wants to build racer and needs better lubricant for engine -> he flies into deep canyon in remote planet and collects plants for that lubricant.
- For better mirrored surface composite armour -> mine certain amount of low temperature diamons for coating armour with them
- For better laser weapons -> Again, mine low temperature diamonds for better optics
- For extra light weight material -> Collect rare minerals from planet close to sun. To survive this you'd need good thermal resistances, cold running ship and working fast.
- For some parts you'd have to search for old wrecks as it turns out that old equipment, thought to be obsolete line of engineering, would work with new innovations.
- For better engine plans you'd have to raid data from some maximum security installation.
And so on.. Different tasks for different parts. You could engineer without these commodities up to grade 5, with normal materials and basic sliders, but if you want to go for perfection, then you'd need to work for it.
Also commodity storages at the engineers would be needed to keep pirates harassing players all the time because they'd have to haul these commodities around and allow them to change into ships without cargo rooms. Or just keep them all as materials without going back to commodities.
A lack of self control is not the fault of Fdev. I personally have only done a few rolls on my modules. I don't have a supper ship that can do PvP but my Python is amazing with the engineered modules. The only exception is FSD rolls because FSD jump ranges are ridiculously short and transitions take too long. I really don't see the issues here. If your expectation are really high then whose fault is that. Not Fdev and not the game. Is engineering a time sink. Uhm yes, but so what. There are other things to do in Elite and if you run out of things then you should take a break. Am I happy with content. Absolutely not. Multicrew was humongous waste of time and resources. Fdev nerfed the Guardian mission after they fixed a bug stopping people from completing. Powerplay is broken. Engineering is one of the few areas of content that I actively enjoyed. If it wasn't for engineers I would never tried mining, travel thousands of ly from the bubble or reach the combat rank of Dangerous or become Elite in exploration.
The issues isn't RNG, the issue is people sense of entitlement (there I said it)
But the whole point of RNG is to create "winners" and "losers" because the universe isn't fair (you know IMMERSION). People say they want crafting but a crafting system that guaranties results or has limited outcomes is unrealistic. The current RNG system give each ship a unique set characteristics both good and bad.
E is not a 'typical MMO'. It was never designed with an MMO mindset, but was desinged as Elite but for modern tech and wiith modern audience.As such, certain methods and conventional ideas for mechanics are secondary to the core gameplay when they should form it or be at least equal in status.There's no XP / levelling up in Elite. Ships and Mods can be bought for Cr.Cr represent coin/gold, but sadly the Mission system and risk-reward is and has been repeatedly falwed, imbalanced and disproportionate that for the most part, either you have gamed the system appropriately and have sufficent gold to afford everything forever - or you are haplessly running missions to scrape a few mil together.Materials are wholly dependant on RNG but are in infinite supplyThere is no paid subscription.Progress therefore is SOLELY 'throttled' by two factors:TIMERNGThe RNG guarantees success provided you are willing to devote the time to it. Therefore progress is throttled solely by a single fator: TIMENot uncomon and in fact arguably all MMO are subject to the reality that more playtime = greater opportunity. Sadly, those who have less hours to devote will be less advatanged - but this is neither the fault of developers nor any conscious effort - it's just a fact of life and applies to everything. It's unreasonabl to expect equivalent success from less time invested.Balance and mechanics for MMO (particularly one such as E with mroe freeform playstructure) are not easy to determine, since there are huge varieties in playstyles and abilities.There are the high end who have lots of time, are keen to min/max and investigate everry potential to achieve the best resutls which they can then hope to farm most efficiently. This group are not large, but ssignificant due to their influence. WOrd of the techniques spreads and at least partly will filter through to raise the efforts of other tiers.A more average group, the vast majority will seek ambition, but invest less efforts in fidelity.The smaller group are the very casual that adopt fewest of the opportunities presented and tend not to strive too dedicatedly for end-game objectives.Obviously there are huge numbers of gradations between these. The important point to note, though, is that balancing efforts will affect the top and centre tiers most and hardly affect the lowest denominator at all. The group that most responds to balancing is the top tier, and therefore, balancing and mechanics provision will always tend to focus on a level above average and/or upwards. Thiis does not mean that high-tier players get preferential treatment, but that this level of player is, since they get their noses into every detail, most likely to respond and identify the changes - the result overall, is that inevitably, the determination of what consttitutes an "average player" in whatever statistical category is decided - the bar is always raised above what may truly be an average. In short, ther graph is skewed to the high end.___What's this got to do with RNG?As mentioned, RNG is a dressing for a Time Sink. Since the mechanics clearly identify with those with time, patience and will to investigate and re-roll and re-roll for the ultimate godrolls, this leaves the aaverage player with something that is little more than a pay(in mats) to gamble lottery - the risk/reward involved is poorly distributed in terms of how the materials may be acquired.One would expect that high gtier mats should be harder to acquire or involve greater risk. They do not.Then they should spawn less frwquently - this is only partially accurate.This is where the fault lies. FDev seem to have no concpet whatsoever of how to gauge risk in any element of the game - so instead, rely fully on the RNG which SHOULD one would hope/expect ensure that the rarirty of spawn reflect the importance.This is further compounded in that common mats are used far more frequently, which could indicate a greater importance.The limitation of mats storage prevents simply hoarding, so one must either strive specifically for a particular mat, or otherwise, generally has to ignore drops/ensure to use mats as soon as possible to free space for more sought after ones.This specific chasing behaviour IDEALLY OUGHT TO BE MORE SUITED TO ENDGAME play - not regular progression. Already mats spawn 100% - the factor is limited by time alone. There is no limit to the number of mats in the universe or the number that may spawn for a particular player. There is no cost for mats and no skill requirement.As such, the reward level (which must be tied directly to the erlevance of the particular material spawn) MUST BE PROPORTIONAL TO THE TIME INVESTMENT.Taht is all that needs be done.
is not a 'typical MMO'. It was never designed with an MMO mindset, but was desinged as Elite but for modern tech and wiith modern audience.As such, certain methods and conventional ideas for mechanics are secondary to the core gameplay when they should form it or be at least equal in status.There's no XP / levelling up in Elite. Ships and Mods can be bought for Cr.Cr represent coin/gold, but sadly the Mission system and risk-reward is and has been repeatedly falwed, imbalanced and disproportionate that for the most part, either you have gamed the system appropriately and have sufficent gold to afford everything forever - or you are haplessly running missions to scrape a few mil together.Materials are wholly dependant on RNG but are in infinite supplyThere is no paid subscription.Progress therefore is SOLELY 'throttled' by two factors:TIMERNGThe RNG guarantees success provided you are willing to devote the time to it. Therefore progress is throttled solely by a single fator: TIMENot uncomon and in fact arguably all MMO are subject to the reality that more playtime = greater opportunity. Sadly, those who have less hours to devote will be less advatanged - but this is neither the fault of developers nor any conscious effort - it's just a fact of life and applies to everything. It's unreasonabl to expect equivalent success from less time invested.Balance and mechanics for MMO (particularly one such as E with mroe freeform playstructure) are not easy to determine, since there are huge varieties in playstyles and abilities.There are the high end who have lots of time, are keen to min/max and investigate everry potential to achieve the best resutls which they can then hope to farm most efficiently. This group are not large, but ssignificant due to their influence. WOrd of the techniques spreads and at least partly will filter through to raise the efforts of other tiers.A more average group, the vast majority will seek ambition, but invest less efforts in fidelity.The smaller group are the very casual that adopt fewest of the opportunities presented and tend not to strive too dedicatedly for end-game objectives.Obviously there are huge numbers of gradations between these. The important point to note, though, is that balancing efforts will affect the top and centre tiers most and hardly affect the lowest denominator at all. The group that most responds to balancing is the top tier, and therefore, balancing and mechanics provision will always tend to focus on a level above average and/or upwards. Thiis does not mean that high-tier players get preferential treatment, but that this level of player is, since they get their noses into every detail, most likely to respond and identify the changes - the result overall, is that inevitably, the determination of what consttitutes an "average player" in whatever statistical category is decided - the bar is always raised above what may truly be an average. In short, ther graph is skewed to the high end.___What's this got to do with RNG?As mentioned, RNG is a dressing for a Time Sink. Since the mechanics clearly identify with those with time, patience and will to investigate and re-roll and re-roll for the ultimate godrolls, this leaves the aaverage player with something that is little more than a pay(in mats) to gamble lottery - the risk/reward involved is poorly distributed in terms of how the materials may be acquired.One would expect that high gtier mats should be harder to acquire or involve greater risk. They do not.Then they should spawn less frwquently - this is only partially accurate.This is where the fault lies. FDev seem to have no concpet whatsoever of how to gauge risk in any element of the game - so instead, rely fully on the RNG which SHOULD one would hope/expect ensure that the rarirty of spawn reflect the importance.This is further compounded in that common mats are used far more frequently, which could indicate a greater importance.The limitation of mats storage prevents simply hoarding, so one must either strive specifically for a particular mat, or otherwise, generally has to ignore drops/ensure to use mats as soon as possible to free space for more sought after ones.This specific chasing behaviour IDEALLY OUGHT TO BE MORE SUITED TO ENDGAME play - not regular progression. Already mats spawn 100% - the factor is limited by time alone. There is no limit to the number of mats in the universe or the number that may spawn for a particular player. There is no cost for mats and no skill requirement.As such, the reward level (which must be tied directly to the erlevance of the particular material spawn) MUST BE PROPORTIONAL TO THE TIME INVESTMENT.Taht is all that needs be done.[where is it]
As I've mentioned before, I'd like the engineers to work more like rolling a new D&D player. Do all the rolls up front, then let the player assign a roll to each attribute, so the player can put the highest to the lowest rolls where they feel is best.
I wouldn't mind if you could use extra materials up front, to generate 1-3 extra rolls. Then the player could take the best of N rolls and toss out the lowest rolls.
I wouldn't mind if you could use extra materials up front, to generate 1-3 extra rolls. Then the player could take the best of N rolls and toss out the lowest rolls.
This is ignorant of a system that has 5 tiers of engineering, with a designed improvement that escalates as the grade increases that rewards repetition. It has nothing to do with self control. It's the execution of it, as a mechanic, as it always seems to be. Engineering is designed to emulate a one-arm bandit. Frontier did this willingly.
I'm sorry, I didn't buy elite to play the pokies. I can do that elsewhere.
I have 3 accounts; sometimes I bank a decent roll, and move on, because it's sufficient. However the system can throw out an 11/10 module on roll 1, or roll 101. It's entirely chance. There's no pattern.
Suggesting people walk away is an incredibly weak excuse for giving the developer a free pass on game mechanics. In the context of 2.4 being a raft of mechanics fixes, it's an illogical statement. You don't adapt and improve a thing by telling people to just leave.
I never said the issue is RNG; I said the execution and manner it exists in, has issues. It's multiple layers, that supposedly mean we all have to work for every single module, but the reality is, at any time, a god roll can appear. Including roll number one.
If there was a genuine effort vs return, sure, I'd have no problem. But it's less the RNG, but more the truly arbitrary outcomes. Backed by endless layers of RNG and arbitrary drop rates. As I said, I do not see this as something that needs to be ripped out. It just needs work to rebalance the random vs the consistent, so there's a better balance between the two.
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Without knowing more about how this is all generated and the maths behind it, as a player I can only assume that these such things are broken when results are not seen on my screen. I try to see the Alien land at the barnacles for hours, nothing, my view its broken. If I cannot find a mat where it is apparently present, after an hour of driving around, my view is its broken. It is on Frontier to improve the design and prove to me things are fixed. Like many I am done wasting my time hunting for content.
I can try to take the positive view and say to myself, well its all random so you know there is a chance xxx will not show, but without seeing a positive result every now and then I can only assume this whole random generation thing is in place to waste our time. Certainly not a fun experience as a player.
Ultimately, what this leaves me with is a bunch of things I no longer even try in the game. There are a bunch of missions I never accept or try again after constant fails, I don't both randomly looking for mats, I rather look up the best 'famous' location and just go there, engineers I give up after a handful of rolls since the results remain practically the same for all the running around you do to re-roll again and again. Why bother checking a mission board. You know whats gonna be there by the system status etc and then only have a chance of actually getting enough missions to generate for you. Its all predictably bad - as a fan of the game I have grown to accept these 'quirks' of the game but if I am being honest they are generally the main point for frustation in this game.
If the randomness of all this was designed well, we would not even notice this RNG in the background, but it has become clear to me that the core functionality behind all this is either too basic or needs a lot of attention to resolve. Same goes for planet surfaces and other elements in the game that seem to be part of this procedural generation. Its just not where it should be 3+ yrs on.
I can try to take the positive view and say to myself, well its all random so you know there is a chance xxx will not show, but without seeing a positive result every now and then I can only assume this whole random generation thing is in place to waste our time. Certainly not a fun experience as a player.
Ultimately, what this leaves me with is a bunch of things I no longer even try in the game. There are a bunch of missions I never accept or try again after constant fails, I don't both randomly looking for mats, I rather look up the best 'famous' location and just go there, engineers I give up after a handful of rolls since the results remain practically the same for all the running around you do to re-roll again and again. Why bother checking a mission board. You know whats gonna be there by the system status etc and then only have a chance of actually getting enough missions to generate for you. Its all predictably bad - as a fan of the game I have grown to accept these 'quirks' of the game but if I am being honest they are generally the main point for frustation in this game.
If the randomness of all this was designed well, we would not even notice this RNG in the background, but it has become clear to me that the core functionality behind all this is either too basic or needs a lot of attention to resolve. Same goes for planet surfaces and other elements in the game that seem to be part of this procedural generation. Its just not where it should be 3+ yrs on.
I don't always agree with you, Kof, but this is right on the money. I don't have huge issues with the mechanics of the actual Engineer roll. The Wheel Of Fortune is a bit odd but the reputation exchange works around that to some degree. But obtaining the actual materials in the first place needs to be much less random. I should be able to put out a request for Bizarre Quadratic Sphincters or whatever I'm looking for and factions should be offering me specific missions, based on my previous interactions with them, with those things as a reward. Trawling random bulletin boards (having consulted Inara to determine which systems are more likely to "spawn", of course) hoping to stumble upon a mission offering the thing I need is crazy.
That's interesting, in that it's exactly opposite to the way I'd like to see it tweaked. Perhaps this is part of the problem; FD have created a system so layered with RNG that the community as a whole can't even agree on which bits are best removed.
As for the addictive nature of the rolls themselves, in my experience it's as much about the specific requirements as the psychology. When I was modifying a Vulture for combat I made multiple repeat trips before I was happy with the weapon efficiency and power distributor tweaks. Now that I'm engineering an Anaconda for exploration, only the FSD range mod encouraged me to make multiple attempts until I got a satisfactory roll, and even then it only took three goes. For the other stuff on the list -- sensor range, various lightweight mods -- I'll make as many rolls as I currently have materials for (in some cases just one) and move on regardless of the quality of the outcome.
But then maybe exploration is simply more addictive to me than the Feature Casino. On the other hand I can fully understand why min-maxers, especially PVP-focused players, end up trapped in the endless cycle of rolls. To some degree it even explains the popularity of the G1/G5 exploit. To those already caught up in that need for "the best stuff", the temptation must have been immense.
Congrats, you're well on your way to developing an addictive personality.
Addiction isn't a lack of self control (well, it is on a higher level), it's a constant battle between the two states, so if you don't suffer from an addictive personality you'll never see the problem, but yes, feeding that addiction is something fdev choose to do.
Speaking as someone with an addictive personality - the very worst thing about modern gaming is how it's feeding the gambling high to children (whose brains are still developing), never mind adults with the issue. http://cdn.boldomatic.com/content/p...-don-t-affect-kids-i-mean-if-pac-man?size=800
But back on topic... The bad thing about RNGineers is the data / material allowance, a thousand material, 500 data, but there'll be no way of easily keeping tabs on what you actually need. Found a planet rich in arsenic, better write that planets position down somewhere because you can't stock up on it, not without maybe not getting that material for this upgrade which might need to be rolled 5 or 20 or 50 times to get something good - the most egregious being alien data - doesn't seem useful, can't sell it, might as well delete it - oh right few months later fdev introduce a way to hand it in for credits, with 500 data slots we can't leave data dumps in storage for months at a time, especially when we never know what might be useful down the line.
RNG might suck but the paltry storage allowance is what broke me.
Usually it's done to increase tedium and advertise the microbucks for users to spend. Only - there is no microbucks to spend to circumvent the randomness and beeline for the desired result.
So why is it there? A hook, really? I guess people are different. I'm just turned off. Just like these one-armed bandit slot machines.
I tried them once. Bucks away in no time without any gameplay. I did it for 20 minutes - then I returned to the roulette table, where the cash burn was slower, I could sip my drink leisurely and flirt with the ladies. Way better gameplay in my eyes.
There it is again: Slot machines, roulette. I complained about the casino-like interface for modding during the original beta test of The Engineers, because it takes the attention away from the overall effect of the engineering and focusses it all on the random aspect of it. Granted, there could be more ways to gather materials, including a local market perhaps, as well as ways to stockpile materials outside the ship inventory (station storage for players, for example). But I bet you (sic) that had Engineering had a different interface, there would be less whinging about the RNG aspect of it.
S