First off, calling BS on the first part. Everyone had access to it. Not being an entrenched enough player to think to look for online resources is not a lack of access. Get out of here with that nonsense. Everyone had access to the same information if they wanted it even a little bit.
Second, nobody was punished. Tell me how anybody is punished by me being more successful in a mode that doesn’t impact them. These troops and weapon aren’t exactly going to be top tier Guild Wars troops or anything. My success doesn’t impact them at all.
You should have just told us it was meant to be random, you screwed up, and now that screw up was fixed. Instead you’re throwing your casual playerbase under the bus and telling us they’re the reason you made this mode way worse, as if it isn’t 100% on you.
It would actually seem to be demonstrating quite the opposite, based on this thread and their recent actions… unless we mean ‘received and used against the playerbase’?
Also, lest we forget their SOP:
The conversation focus continues to be unsurprisingly shifted away from the fact that it was the mods who ran to the Devs with the forum community findings, even though there was no real harm to the ‘economy’.
They kind of have to, it’s their job. They couldn’t really know in advance how this would play out, that’s decided by someone further up in the decision chain. As unpopular as that decision was, it doesn’t feel quite fair to blame it on the mods.
Is it? When so many things we know take countless threads and time to get picked up by the mods to be sent up the chain (if at all), once again something that benefits the playerbase (again, without denting the economy) gets prioritized by these mods as ‘doing their job’?
The enabling claim of “it’s not the mods’ fault” every time a new iteration of these situations caused by mod actions/inactions is partially what continues to have the playerbase stuck in these loops.
E.g. do you think if someone like Hawx was our mod, she’d have acted similarly because it was ‘her job’? Or she’d maybe have looked for alternatives to ensure there’s at least some middle ground?
We have years of documented actions/inactions demonstrating the soft skills of the mods through the selectiveness of what are ‘their job’ priorities.
First of all, thank you @Kafka for communicating this news with us, even though it’s not what many of us (myself included) wanted to hear.
To be clear, we’re NOT asking for you guys to flood the game economy with Dragonite. We’re asking for less RNG. I’d be totally okay with nerfing perfect run Dragonite in exchange for getting some Dragonite guaranteed every day. And being able to target specific Dragons absolutely should be a thing too, even if it’s considerably more expensive than crafting eggs for random Dragons.
This posted solution is the most fair solution for the problem that most people have with dungeons. Kudos to @Fourdottwoone for this well thought out post.
As an alternative solution for the dragon eggs, why can’t they work like guardians and stop dropping once you hit 4 duplicates at least? Clearly, this change would not harm your desire to have the dragons be a long term goal.
There was a serious issue with Dungeon, it presented itself as a fair game, while having some secret bias. It couldn’t stay this way. It doesn’t matter that everybody could have used the community tool. A huge majority of players just play the game, without ever looking at any outside resources, giving them a different type of game than Dungeon presented itself would have been horribly unfair.
There were really two ways to go on. Either make Dungeon present itself as a rigged game, keep the secret bias and explain how it works as part of the game instructions. Or remove the secret bias, making it a fair game.
There’s one thing I think Hawx would have handled differently. When told from further up to inform the community that all the benefits would be removed and all the frustrating parts kept as is, I suspect that Hawx would have replied with Words. Or possibly barged into an office room and tried to slap some sense into some decision maker. Because there was no way such an announcement could fly, no matter how well you wrap it up, even by promising some improvements in some far future.
Who knows, maybe Kafka now has a sore hand. It’s hard to tell from an outside view.
I know the moderation team is probably thinking “we already said we are working on this, not sure why everyone keeps bringing up the same thing over and over.”
It is more an effort to direct the game back towards user friendly, and away from what it is becoming.
It started with the Horde mythic. I still don’t have this troop. There are people with over 4 copies. It does not matter if I have averaged over 3000 trophies (I know it is not a lot but it still is an effort) a week since it came out on exp 12 trying to get it, I am no closer than the first day to getting this troop. Also, unlike every other aspect in this game I am not building toward the troop. You created a system of 3 layers of RNG that has no backup.
When a person first starts playing the game, one of the goals is to get ZUU. Now that person can spend money, or play normally and maybe get that troop in a year or so. They also can throw a huge amount of effort into Gnoma and get the troop in 3 months, but they are ALWAYS building toward that troop in some way.
Horde mythic nope.
People on the forum said “Well it is a bad troop anyway, why do you care?”
Then you introduce 7 new dragon troops and 3 weapons. Again, it is a process of RNG on top of RNG. You even post saying “Some already have 6 troops…you go!!!” and you don’t see how that feels for those of use with 5 dupes already?
Now you did say you are giving us a way to target the troop next year. So, yes this is going to be fixed (maybe) unlike the horde troop.
The anger, and continued frustration is more with the direction your development team is going. We have to start screaming because if not this is going to continue to happen. For those that said, “Don’t worry the horde troop sucks, and its not big deal!” Well the pattern is starting.
IF you bring in a new resource and troops/weapons, please build a system in place to allow EVERYONE to eventually get it if they put the time, effort or money into it. Putting game items behind multiple layers of RNG is just beyond frustrating.
My expectations is far off again. How naive can one be, not much more than me. I was hoping for some changes. I never learn, never. Throw me off the mountain.
I don’t think you understand what I’m saying, because the gambler’s fallacy work both ways. For instance, if I get two perfect runs in a row, it wouldn’t make sense to believe that I was on some kind of luck streak and the next day I would have a perfect run too. When the chances for a perfect run are incredibly low, it’s more likely that you’re going to encounter a trap than a boss in the first three rooms. That’s just statistically how it is, because 2 of the 6 rooms have traps.
Now, are you more likely to get a good or bad room on the first room? A good room. But as you open good rooms, the possibility of bad rooms increases.
It would be incredibly naive to say “Well, my chances of a perfect run today aren’t affected by my chances yesterday.” Of course they aren’t, but statistically, you’re only going to have so many perfect runs in a given time period. In fact, you may have none! So it’s perfectly logical to assume that if you just had a perfect run, your next run probably won’t be perfect.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 …?
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.
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.
