Dungeon Feedback

I understand their sentiment towards the situation, but agree that this justification is weak. There are other aspects of the game that suffer from the same problem, although not all to the same degree. The one that stands out to me is World Event scoring. Anyone not coming to the forum to view the news post, or views the player created guides is at a severe disadvantage. This also shouldn’t be news to them, since we’ve suggested adding the scoring to the game several times since World Events were released.

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I fully sympathize with her reaction, the whole situation was handled the worst way possible. From what she wrote I had the impression she was shooting at a higher up target than the messenger.

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7 days in a row zero perfect runs!

45 days in-a-row with zero perfect runs - even using the tool before nerf.

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Don’t fix it next year. Do it now. We know you can.

A great solution has been suggested in this thread.

I don’t understand why you would release something with the distinct idea that it’s not great and needs to be improved. Would you accept that if you bought a car for example?

“Oh, we deliberately didn’t put in the back seats, windows, trunk, wipers, mirrors… We want to have room for improvement. But keep paying monthly for the car and maybe you’ll get lucky and we’ll add some of that just for you. You could have a full working car in just a few weeks. Good luck.”

Or how about your paycheck? Would you accept working for a 10% chance of getting 80+ of 500 bucks and with those 500 bucks once you’ve got them you’d have to gamble on your full paycheck? What will it be this time? A copy of the check you already cashed in so it’s worthless, or an actual paycheck? Good luck!

Yes, I know, it’s just a game… We don’t depend on it.

But I feel we have to give you real life and exaggerated examples to get our point across.

Please, fix it now and show your player base some love. You’ll be surprised how good it feels to do it and to receive love back in return. :wink:

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Oh wow, long post time!

Technically speaking, where was this? As far as I know this was just a default assumption on our part (because “every outcome is equally likely” is the literal definition of “fair RNG”), and the original announcement only said that the Dungeon (as a whole) would contain 3 bosses, 2 traps and 1 bonus.

EDIT - as originally stated here:

So technically speaking, this never specified what kind of RNG was being performed (other than an assumed fair RNG).

But here’s a simple idea that would be easy to implement – the “Minesweeper rule”: The first door opened should be required to NOT be a trap. Because for every player hunting Dragonite specifically, if they open a trap on door 1 they will quit playing for the day because of the immediate confirmation that the desired outcome has been excluded. And the LAST thing you want the player to do is quit playing, right?

Analysis of how it works

1 - The first door opened is limited to 4 outcomes (3 bosses and 1 bonus).
2 - After that, the remaining 5 doors get shuffled by a fair RNG.

Of the 60 possible combinations of runs (6 of which are Perfect Runs), 20 of them (trap on first door) are removed outright, boosting the overall rate of a “perfect run” by 1.5x (15%, from 10%). This may sound like a significant boost to the Dragonite economy over time but (1) it’s STILL a very long grind to acquire a full set of Dragons, and (2) you can always just adjust the base Dragonite payout to compensate for the higher “win rate” (e.g. 50+ instead of 80+).

This was one of my reactions once the patterns were discovered too, we had some players unknowingly picking “winning” or “losing” combinations and boasting/complaining accordingly based on what we DIDN’T know about the process.

So this was legitimately a bug all along? I can see that. 0-based vs. 1-based indexing (or in this case, probably n-based mod n) is a frighteningly easy thing to get wrong.

As long as you are shuffling the entire batch at once. Considering we have bug reports of duplicate stairs behind multiple doors, this implies that doors were being determined on a just-in-time basis based on the client telling the server which door you’re opening and which options have been previously revealed, a more complicated design which multiplies the opportunities for bugs.

But now that it was discovered, I actually would kinda like to see it return on purpose, as a feature. The catch is that the “source index” list (Boss 1, Boss 2, Dragon, Trap 1, Trap 2, Bonus) needs to itself be shuffled by fair RNG on a weekly basis. Then large guilds CAN work together collecting data to figure out which doors have the best odds, BUT it only works for a few days and they have to start over every Monday with the weekly reset. And likewise, someone who isn’t collecting their data, just picking fixed doors every time may have “good” weeks and “bad” weeks, but over time it will average out to a fair RNG.

Or to quote one of the single most HATED developer/publisher posts of all time, “The goal is to give players a sense of pride and accomplishment.”.

However, it is impossible to feel any sense of accomplishment from RNG, because by definition the outcome is essentially predetermined, nothing you do can influence it.

Last week I found two in a single day … without crafting a GAP. Again, that’s the fundamental nature with RNG: it likes to cluster, so there will be “runs” of a specific outcome AND (more often) “droughts” of it, and there’s no way to verify whether the next “winning pull” went to you or somebody else.

For a quick example, just compare the RNG piece selection of retro (original) Tetris vs. modern Tetris:

  • Retro Tetris used a fair RNG (“dice roll”) for each piece independently. Depending on the quality of the RNG used, you could get “runs” of certain pieces, or go very long times without getting a specific shape.
  • Modern Tetris uses a “deck of cards” RNG, giving you all 7 shapes shuffled in a random order. You will only rarely see 2 of the same shape in a row, never see 3 or more in a row, and will rarely go more than 9 pieces between instances of a specific shape. Combined with other modern features (particularly the Hold Piece) this makes modern Tetris feel completely different from retro Tetris despite the same underlying game design.

This psychology from the player perspective cannot be emphasized enough. For example, if you log in 28 days out of a given month you will get a free Orb of Chaos at the end of it, something which is otherwise given out mostly as event rewards only. So for early- and mid- level players who are still collecting and filling out their Troop roster this is a very anticipated item, and this particular means of getting one is (while only 1 a month) absolutely guaranteed.

Let’s make the other obvious comparison: A literal slot machine at an actual casino will, on average, pay out a specific percentage of small wins over time, sometimes a larger win, and very rarely that massive jackpot.

These recurring small wins are effectively REQUIRED because they motivate the user to keep playing. A long streak of losses encourages the player to walk away sooner with whatever they have left. Heck, even “Scratch-it” style lottery tickets (with predetermined outcomes decided at the factory) tend to have an overall 1/5 “win rate”, regardless of whether the win is more or less than the original ticket price.

In contrast, our current “Dragonite lottery” is functionally jackpot or nothing, with none of the small wins that actually motivate continued play.

Another simple idea: Break down the Dragonite rewards into smaller, compartmentalized payouts:

  • Upon defeating the Gem Dragon boss: award (1 x Level) Dragonite
    (Note this is guaranteed regardless of traps, very important because it incentivizes actually playing the mode, AND using the stairs to increase the Dungeon level)
  • After defeating all three bosses:
    Award (1 x Level) Dragonite (again, this is guaranteed)
    Open all remaining doors automatically
    Reward +20 bonus Dragonite for first Trap not triggered
    Reward +40 bonus Dragonite for second Trap not triggered

The overall economy over time is therefore:

  • Perfect run (10%) = +60 Dragonite (average +6 /day)
  • Single trap (30%) = +20 Dragonite (average +6 /day)
  • Total: Average +12 per day (plus 2 x Level)

Hate to play “that guy” but your data for that claim is …?

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Fold capability with the forums sucks and it won’t let me quote your post.

I have been a GM for 5 guilds for 5 years now. So my pulse is always on player retention. But if my word doesn’t suffice then you are welcome to research data such as steam or Android and I am sure their numbers will support my opinion.

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Some news are better than no news.

While other people are upset in variable degrees about the tool being made obsolete, in my opinion, this reaction clouds the bigger problem - broken doors shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Assuming it as an honest bug (although - I can’t truly blame people for suspecting foul play instead…just shows how much of community trust credit you have successfully squandered away) - where was your in-house testing team? They should have caught this 100%, so how come they didn’t?

Biggest elephant in the rooms, however, is what @Fourdottwoone says in their post above.

I was about to go along similar lines, but no access to keyboard until now.
It leaves few options - either you haven’t understood the main point of the feedback or you have chosen to ignore it. Feel free to pick the option that paints the team in more favorable light.

One more funny point - thought of thinning players’ gem savings with dragonite purchases might’ve crossed your mind…
In broad strokes we could draw three categories:

  • players who’d buy dragonite no matter what
  • players who would not buy dragonite no matter what
  • swing state players sitting on the fence and plucking petals off a flower - maybe I buy, maybe I don’t, maybe I buy…

First two are simple, the third is the one that causes trouble.
I haven’t bought any dragonite yet…but I would, though, if I was not made to feel suckered when doing so.
Supplement to base dragonite income in order to speed things up? - Sure, take my gems, please. Only source of dragonite? - No, I’d better keep those gems for myself. (Yes, once-in-a-blue-moon perfect runs can’t be legitimately counted as dragonite source. Plus, duplicates, triplicates, quadruplicates and so on don’t work as good spending incentive either.)

You have to do so little to get more people to spend gems, but for some reason you hesitate.

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Thanks for the explanation @Kafka. The explanation helps, but I still think it falls short of what we, the audience, are looking for.

The original message was light on details. I can kind of understand that. It was also accompanied by the message that nothing would be done to “fix” Dragonite/Dungeon for 4 months. Given how quickly the bug was fixed, having another message to tell us that nothing could be improved was painful.

The root problem is that Dungeon just isn’t fun in its present form. A game that you lose 90% of the time isn’t fun to play. A game that you lose 90% of the time and is not based in skill is even more frustrating. Locking critical resources behind the game makes everyone feel compelled to play, and makes the losses sting that much more as we all try to complete our troop collections again. We, the community, tried desperately to turn it into a game, so that we could apply some skill to it and do better. This was changed very quickly, and even though I understand the reason we’re still left with a mode that is way more frustrating than fun.

The community has a lot of end-game players who are trying to get whatever new content is released. Putting new content behind several layers of RNG that do not involve player skill isn’t enjoyable, and that’s why there’s just as much (if not more) criticism about the Dragon Egg randomness die as there is about Dungeon itself. You can only max your troop collection by being lucky, not good.

Hoard Mimic is another culprit here with the troop locked behind 3 layers of RNG. I can marginally get better by running Explore 12 faster but it’s on average 6000 battles to get it (I think, maybe more since the drop rate isn’t public knowledge, with some people getting it very quickly, and others taking far far longer). It’s not fun chasing it and makes spending resources or even $$ on the game to keep up with the latest less desirable if some content will remain out of my grasp unless I am lucky.

There’s a lot of ways this could be improved, and I’m not partial to any particular solution. Just no more slot machines.

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This statement really needs to be seen.

Because it’s effectively invisible on a per-user-day basis, without massive data aggregation over time? This also implies that dungeon arrangements weren’t necessarily logged on the serverside, because that’s the first source of aggregate data the devs should have been monitoring.

(Ideally, they already were, noticed the patterns before we did, someone pointed out “this pattern wasn’t intentional” and began scouring/testing the actual code to figure out what went wrong where. Thus, the very short timeline between the user tool and the fix could legitimately be just coincidence.)

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@Kafka I appreciate the added insight. Sounds like a mistake was made (normal, no reason for concern) that wasn’t caught before going to production (major cause for concern). I hope a lesson was learned and more resources are put into testing in the future.

I just wanted to reiterate something that someone else put perfectly:

^ THAT :pray:

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Just saying, that we realized the pattern the first time after nearly 200-250 posts. This is such a low database and only shows how much they test their stuff.

Not

at

all

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Please explain, how you can say this in ONE context but week after week after week, since the beginning of the World Events you do not put the score mechanics INGAME. For that “the overwhelming majority of the players (tens of thousands of Adventures)” has to go outside the game for that information…

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Is it sad given my luck so far that I’d be happy with 10% perfect runs. What a shitshow!!!

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5 guilds for 5 years, you should have gotten acknowledged by the President. I am just drowning of the thoughts about managing one guild. :joy: :sweat_smile: :rofl:

I think the expression you want is “regression toward the mean”.

Here’s a quick idea: Currently the “Gem Dragon Egg” is 500 Dragonite and an (assumed) fair RNG to which Dragon you get.

But how about this instead:

  • Because each Gem Dragon appears only one day a week, crafting a Gem Dragon Egg on that day gives you a better probability of getting that specific Dragon? (e.g. if it’s Monday, then you get say a 25% chance of Sapphirax vs. a 15% chance for each of the other five)
  • On Sundays (which are “colorless”) the Gem Dragon Egg is completely random but the crafting price is also reduced (say, 400 Dragonite instead of 500).

In the meantime, I’ve previously stated that I’m not a Dragonite hunter, and will never opt in at all for the top-tier Dungeon offers (Cursed Runes and Dragonite), except maybe if Cedric dropped that 300 Gem prize from a Gnome Vault run. (Last time it happened I spent it on a few Event Shop tiers, but I couldn’t say which event it was.) The 50-Gem offer of more colored Jewels pretty much monopolizes my weekly Gem budget already…

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First I know you are just one person on a team so this isn’t directed at you. Thank you for posting but it does nothing to fix an already broken system that gets worse and worse.

I think we’ve heard this before - Lets say The Apocalypse team or the Guardians or GOSH Mythics in general.

I think your company is misguided if you think that the majority of the active players are not gathering and discussing. There are private Discord channels that have 100s to 1000s of GoW players on that discuss all kinds of stuff. To get to them you have to know someone who invites you.

More so - there are Google docs, private FB Groups, email lists - some of them have died off but there are so many places that players discuss strategies, organization, ideas.

Reason I stopped posting to this Forum for almost two years was because it was unfriendly and not helpful.

The last few months I noticed a group of folks who want to make the game fun again, and actually not have to join an over zealous guild to get nagging questions answered.

I still think ‘fixing’ this ‘bug’ was a bad move on the company’s part. I also don’t see organizing solutions as cheating. We organize our Tower runs, GWs, and Delves.

May I remind you all there is no ECONOMY in this game. Unlike card games and other online RPGs/WWPGs/Guild player systems - you can not sell, trade or give anything you own in this game to another player in this system.

Therefore THERE is no economy, other than someone’s inflated marketing ideas of what someone may pay real money for to get ahead only to find out that - it isn’t going to get you ahead, because there is no real end game here since the goal posts keep being moved with new kingdoms, events, and worthless cosmetic pets.

I feel very sorry for anyone who starts now. Between 8 years of mythics alone and I think 4+ years of pets that are no longer showing up to get… it is not something that makes sense now.

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I don’t know what that statement is meant to do for people who have not been so lucky - but as someone who just got the 3rd copy of the same dragon it just frustrates me.

I don’t feel a great wish to try again or that I made a step towards a goal. I’m just disappointed and have closed the game for now.

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