Unlike drawing from a deck of cards. I find it interesting how, between cards and dice, it covers both fundamental classes of RNG (independent vs. non-independent).
I’ve generally been opening doors 4 and 6 first, just because. And if the RNG is fair then ultimately it makes no difference, right?
the key word is IF
Hi folks,
Thanks for your patience this week waiting for a follow up from the team here.
We want to provide you with more details about the Dungeon RNG fix.
We actually thought the tool that was created to predict the doors was awesome and speaks volumes about how passionate and inventive our community creators are. It was disappointing to us that this fix was going to affect that tool. I believe it was @sls who worked hard on the tool itself with all the data the community provided - seriously kudos to sls and everyone else who contributed and I’m sorry this change has been so discouraging to so many who were involved in that project and used it.
It was necessary that we fix the broken RNG in the Dungeon though, because we told everyone the doors had equal chances for everything, and the overwhelming majority of our players (tens of thousands of Adventurers) don’t use any external tools or even read the forums, community discord servers or even our help center despite links in game. So they didn’t have access to the same information and this feature wasn’t working as intended or announced to everyone.
A very common strategy when it comes to random chance selection is to choose the same doors every time because eventually your chosen combination will be successful. So if you were one of the players who would choose a combination of Doors that was affected by this bug, your chances of getting a perfect run were significantly reduced - and that’s just not fair.
This fix wasn’t about punishing you folks, you’re some of our most passionate community members.
It was about making sure people who love playing the game but who don’t participate in the community wouldn’t be punished for not participating outside of the game.
The RNG for the Dungeon Doors is referred to as the ‘Door shuffle code’.
We have a list of 6 possible outcomes when opening the Doors:
The intent of the Door shuffle code is to take this list and shuffle it into a new list in a random order each day for each user.
There was a bug in the Door shuffle code that caused it to skip the source at the index of the target slot, so when it was working out target slot index 0 (Door 1) it ignored source index 0 (Low Boss battle) etc.
In other words, Low Boss battle would never be seen behind Door 1
Mid Boss battle wouldn’t be seen behind Door 2 etc.
I wanted to touch on the feedback about wanting pity Dragonite for not getting perfect runs a little as well.
When we design a feature we include “space” for our designers to work into later. ie. so you have room to improve on or add to a new feature based on user feedback, game data and cool new ideas we might have. This is a hugely important factor and we adopt this for every new feature we introduce. For example, remember when we introduced our first Treasure Gnome and didn’t give it all the resources or huge amounts? Because we later released all the other Gnomes we currently have in game and Gnome-a-palooza 
We have already planned more ways to get Dragonite in future - as we shared a Dragonite Gnome is planned and we have already planned to give you a way to target which Dragons you are crafting. These 2 plans both increase the Dragonite you can earn and could also reduce the amount of Dragonite you’re spending to get all the Dungeon Dragons. We have to factor that into the Dungeon rewards to keep the economy balanced.
Also, Dragons are mid to end game collectibles, they’re designed to give players a long term goal. Some of you already have 6 Dragons after only 5 weeks - you are speed racers! This is why the economy balancing in this instance is also important, if we give too much Dragonite it will cause the Dragons to become early and common collectables and we really wanted them to be more special than that.
So I didn’t realize you could get duplicate dragons before you got all 6. I just did my 5th combine and got a duplicate. And I’m not exaggerating when I say it makes me want to quit the game entirely. This may be a knee jerk reaction but it was defeating and I’m at least taking a break and seeing how I feel later. With no real way to gather dragonite and do perfect run dungeons is low % chance. Its beyond frustrating.
There is a thin line between “trying to get 6 dragons because are very special and very rare” and “keep getting multiple copies (sometimes more than 4 copies for each Dragon)”
Anyway i appreciate the communication 
Don’t want to be “that guy”, but you touched on a Dragonite Gnome and targeted crafting, but not the actual pity Dragonite part of things, despite saying it here.
A more definitive statement would be nice. Something that could bridge the gap between explaining why 0 Dragonite daily for many people that can’t afford to buy Dragonite with gems and “Some of you already have 6 Dragons after only 5 weeks - you are speed racers!” is a fair balance to the economy.
I’m sure we named a few more of those over the past few years continuously. Shall we suspect all other stuff that doesn’t get fixed since a long time
is (!)
working as intended™
then?
This doesn’t capture the feedback about Dragonite AT ALL.
Players aren’t asking for more Dragonite, players are asking for less frustration. They are perfectly okay with receiving the same amount of Dragonite over time, as long as it can be gained and spent in a predictable way.
Perfect Runs
Consider these two scenarios:
A complete run hands out 0 Dragonite, a perfect run hands out 100 Dragonite, at 10% chance. That’s an average of 100 Dragonite over 10 days. Players are unhappy, because most days they receive nothing.
A complete run hands out 10 Dragonite, a perfect run hands out 0 Dragonite, at 100% chance. That’s an average of 100 Dragonite over 10 days. Players are happy, because they are making steady progress towards their goal, crafting the next dragon.
When Dungeon was released several years back we had the very same situation with Diamonds. They were initially handed out randomly like in scenario 1, then changed to scenario 2 within a few days due to the overwhelmingly negative feedback. The payout over time didn’t change, players were happy. It’s baffling that the same awful design pattern is forced on us again, that IP2 doesn’t understand why this is a huge source of unnecessary frustration and that it apparently can’t be fixed this time before hell freezes over.
Gem Dragon Eggs
Consider these two scenarios:
Gems Dragon Eggs costs 500 Dragonite, containing 1 of 6 dragons at random. Players need to craft an average of 14 Gem Dragon Eggs to obtain all dragons, for a total cost of 7000 Dragonite. Players are unhappy, because most pulls will be duplicates, after already going through all the frustration of obtaining the Dragonite needed for crafting.
Gem Dragon Eggs cost 1200 Dragonite, allowing players to pick 1 of 6 dragons (the same could be achieved by offering the dragons directly for crafting). Players need to craft an average of 6 Gem Dragon Eggs to obtain all dragons, for a total cost of 7200 Dragonite. Players are happy, because they are making steady progress towards their goal, obtaining all dragons.
Scenario 2 doesn’t change anything about “economy balancing”, or dragons being a “mid to end game collectible” and “long term goal”, the average amount of resources and time it takes to obtain them all stays the same. It turns the frustrating experience of crafting a Gem Dragon Egg every two month and getting nothing in return most of the time into a fun experience of crafting a missing dragon every five months.
Recommendation
Add each dragon directly to the forge for crafting, at least until those vague future plans actually become reality. This is a server side change that shouldn’t take more than a few days. Personally, I’d put the cost at 1000 Dragonite, it doesn’t change too much and flows better.
Hand out 10% of the Dragonite currently gained from a perfect run as part of clearing the whole dungeon. Don’t hand anything out for a perfect run (or 10% of the current amount if you want to make it feel more special), not having to deal with the trap debuffs is already reward enough. This might require a client update, it should be an easy to implement change though.
These two easy changes will make almost all complaints about the Dungeon rework go away. There isn’t any cost attached on your side. You are not handing out more or making dragons faster to get, you are just changing it from a frustrating randomfest into a fair experience that allows long term planning.
Another question:
Why is this space loose enough to allow for 5+ dragons of the same color to be “randomly” crafted from a Dragon Egg? Do players really need to shout that 5+ dragons of the same color is a miserable experience that needs to be improved? (At most, only 4 can be used in 1 team. What’s the 5th going to do?)
At this point, its not theoretical. Its already happened to people.
Based on the OP and recent changes, I assumed ‘imaginary feedback’ was the theme of this thread?
The most patronizing thing you have ever said on these forums.
You and your team wouldn’t have immediately made it useless if you thought it was “awesome.”
The lying is endless.
Shuffling 6 unique numbers is so trivial, it is for all intents and purposes impossible to mess up.
But for some reason, you decided to write your own shuffle code that adds an extra (useless for shuffling purposes) axis (the door #)?
… and then promptly decided to not test your new code because … good enough, probably?
Why not generate 100,000 dungeons with a minimal test implementation and dump the output into a spreadsheet?
How long would it have then taken to find out that the low boss can’t be behind door #1 for example?
Are Gnome additions usually liked or disliked though? Just asking to make sure you guys actually read feedback 
As has been stated by Fourdottwoone and others:
A carrot on a stick only works if the donkey can still see the carrot in front of it.
If the carrot is too far away, the donkey stops running.
If the donkey instantly grabs the carrot, it’ll stop running.
More consistency, and more predictability in Dragonite income and crafting outcomes.
More small and achievable (within a reasonable timeframe) goals.
The vast majority of people would not work a job paying in access to lottery tickets (which have you have to buy with your own funds, lol) with 0 predictable income.
Long term goals are things like owning a home or a boat.
Not winning the lottery.
The RNG on top of RNG is just horrible design that is unprecedented in GoW.
Your player base has dropped significantly since the implementation. So regardless of how folks in the office may enjoy torturing your players. This… Can’t… Be… profitable.
Stop us from getting useless kingdom offers from that kingdom.
It’s taken 2+ years to fix that bug that hurts players. And it took them 2 hours to fix their own rigged system. You don’t release something that predictable without knowing it’s rigged prior. Trying to spin the narrative now is an insult and they set Kafka up to fail.
well, sorry @Kafka but i don’t trust your company since some years, because of lying, false promises, incompetence and communication in general.
if i remember right, 505 gave you all a job guarantee since take over for two years, but paying will be according to how much money the game will make (coincidence with the last patches?).
so my advice to the whole playerbase is to not spend money anymore - no one!
please, vote with your pockets!
Great analysis!
I would add that, if one of the devs’ goals is to encourage consistent daily play, it is much easier to rationalize missing a day when you expect to get nothing than it is to miss a day when you know you will get something.
Also, I’m not sure players are as keen on gambling for no reason as people think. It seems more like a cheap way to try to inject false excitement instead of doing something that is actually interesting. As any lottery corp could tell you, people don’t buy a $1 because they hope to win $10. The only way to make it at all palatable is to have Powerball type rewards. But as any lottery corp could also tell you, most people don’t buy lottery tickets very often, if at all, and very few buy them every day. Feedback in the forum should make it clear: losing more often than winning is extremely demoralizing for most people – especially when there isn’t enough time between the losses (months rather than hours) for the sting of losing to fade.
Ergo: Using RNG to control resources when it could be just as easily done in a more straightforward way is not a desirable design choice for players.
Finally, if the first iteration of the new dungeon was actually supposed to be random, but turned out not to be, how can we trust that the “fixed” dungeon isn’t also bugged?
more like “how we know if there are multiple corners of gow gameplay have some similarities” ?
That’s one of my issues with the statement. If dragons are supposed to be for endgamers and take a long time to get them then why offer Dragonite for 300 gems each day shortening the time to craft an egg dramatically for anyone willing to spend rl money?
When talking about potentially having Dragonite gnomes that gives me serious PTSD. You know, I don’t even remember the last time I saw a Cursed gnome. It has to be a couple of months now. My Forge is nowhere near level 20 all these months later. At this rate it will legitimately be another year before I get to craft things others have had for months already.
While we all would appreciate a new way to get Dragonite, in my mind I won’t ever see one anyway for it to matter. It’s one of the many reasons I get so despondent logging in anymore. But that is for another topic
Cannot encourage the team enough to continue and increase communication like this. Posts like this help give us insight into what’s going on and reasoning behind decisions. Even if not everyone is happy with the reasoning/decisions, it is really helpful for informing the community and demonstrating that feedback is being received.
There are certainly still valid concerns about the direction Dragonite is going, but I and others really appreciate you taking the time to post stuff like this.