Gamer Talk: Random Drops and Luck based gaming

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Since the late 80s, RPG games and later varies other genres of games have had random drops and events based on some form of luck.


Obviously hardware limitations was part of the reason we had to deal with things like Random Encounters. But now that we have more advance consoles and gaming devices. Are Random Drops and Random Encounters still welcome? Or should these things die out in favor of garanteed drops and visble enemies?


What are your thoughts on Random Drops, Random Encounters, and other gameplay mechanics based on luck?

[Toast]

A certain amount of randomness is a good thing, I think. Different people have different tastes, too, so there should be some wiggle room or differences for different segments of the gamer population.

Speaking for my own personal tastes, I think random encounters/events enhance replayability. There's a fine line of balance between random drops and guaranteed progression. I lean more on the side of guaranteed progression, and preferably of short duration. I feel I should be playing the game to have fun, with a high amount of customization, rather than some kind of gear, or even more recently, appearance treadmill.

There are certain games that I like for their gameplay, but really dislike for their completely random loot generation. Borderlands 1 and 2, and torchlight 1 and 2 are fun, but I would rather have had some sort of gear customization/upgrade system rather than the completely random loot that they have. Consequently, I generally only play through them once and don't participate in the after game or hardcore modes or whatever they're called.

Guild Wars 1 and 2 also have random loot, but I enjoy them much more for a couple of reasons. GW1 because gear isn't as big a deal as it is in most games, and you can get max level gear almost as soon as you reach max level, which for the most part takes just a couple hours. GW2 because even though the loot is more important, and more random, it's still not that difficult to get max level gear through even casual play. The grind here comes through the acquisition of certain skins, but luckily this is fairly optional. In my particular case I found the look I wanted for my guardian relatively early (around lvl 40) and have kept that look ever since.

With one exception. I love the runic blade skin and I think it is the coolest 1h sword skin in the game. Unfortunately it is only available as an exotic weapon built through the mystic forge, and is only slightly less expensive than the legendary weapons. I flatly refuse to grind that much. By the time I would have gathered the money/materials for the skin, I would have long since burnt myself out on the game.

That was a bit of a tangent. Anyway. The Bethesda games (Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim) have elements of randomness that work well for them. There are random events and the worlds are open enough that you can take multiple routes so that each time you play is different. Similarly, character customization is also robust enough that you can do a lot of different things and still be successful.

Another thing comes to mind. The last time I played Icewind Dale, I did not find any magic weapons except for some +1 daggers and staves. And then I ran into a boss that required +3 weapons to hit. So, random loot is definitely a bad thing when the game doesn't adequately prepare you for set challenges.

[mauve]

I don't mind randomized drops, if they're done correctly and if your success isn't dependent on having a certain type of weapon or item in your inventory. If memory serves me, the majority of the weapon drops in Borderlands and Borderlands 2 are entirely randomly generated. And really, I think that's kind of the fun. Sure, you're guaranteed to get certain weapons in boss fights, but the majority of the eighty bazillion guns and shields in that game are completely unpredictable. It actually makes you WANT to look at every single weapon and item that falls off an enemy because you never know if it'll be another low-damage SMG or if it'll be some kind of super-awesome 4x Electric Damage, Enhanced Zoom, Extra Ammo SMG of doom that just so happens to have the same paint job as the basic one.

That's not to say all games should have randomized items. In some games it is nice to have a set idea of what sort of rewards I should be getting for my actions, and have those rewards actually be... rewarding. The main problem with the Borderlands system was that most of the "reward" guns I got for defeating X number of enemies or finding X number of quest items were actually worse than the ones I found by driving my dune buggy over a spiderant colony a few times.

As for random encounters, I can see how they're necessary in some games, but I'm not really a fan of them for the most part. I personally found it irritating to have to constantly wonder if THIS PARTICULAR FOOTSTEP will trigger a fight with monsters, particularly when I wasn't trying to level-farm and was just trying to get to the next area of the map. Yeah, they're necessary to leveling up and I'm sure they're a big save on memory space since they don't have to be animated into the larger maps, but for the most part, when I'm running towards a goal on my screen I find it really irritating to be forcibly stopped and pushed into a fight I neither wanted nor saw coming.

[Ramary]

Random chance can be a huge boon to reputability, it is actually one of the reasons I play so many rogue like games is that random chance of opening one door to be greeted with super sword, and opening another to be eaten by a grue is half the fun.

Random chance can also just be a means to force the player to play the same content over and over to he can be build complete in a game.

The word of the day is...Execution. World of Warcraft made popular badges with random drops for example. Like if you kill this boss you may not get the item you wanted, but hey you got a shiny badge you can save up to just buy the item you need. Granted in WoW the best stuff was still random drop but the badges help soften the pain of not getting your drop (or worst, losing the roll in the item handout phase) a bit and I think a similar system should be in all loot-based games.

Random Encounters in the JRPG sense of SUDDENLY MONSTERS is pretty bad, for that look to Persona, Chrono Trigger, the Paper Marios for good encounter design, in which you can see the monster (or a creature representing an encounter) and you can have them try to avoid it or get the first strike. I feel as though just plain ol random encounters should die out in general, save for games that want to be throwbacks to old JRPGs, cause that what people would want in them anyway.


Now there is also other pretty cool luck based ideas in game design right now, like randomly meeting people in Red Dead Redemption who need help or just a cougar wishing to kill you, that kind of design spices up long horse rides place to place. XCOM's combat is partly luck based, and it makes it so when you just NAIL that 20% chance shot you feel FANNNNNNTASTIC, but then you curse the screen when that 95% shot miss and then you are shot down by a random sectoid.

I think luck is still needed in game design but again, execution is everything. Hope this helped.

[Locke cole]

I dunno. Random encounters can lend a sense of tension in moving through a dungeon, because you don't know where the next save point is, or if you're able to ration your magic and healing items by the time you reach the end of it.

Execution is the word, again, because making the encounter rate too high can just ruin a game.

[Doc ock rokc]

Entropy is the reason I enjoy video games more then structured board games. I enjoy having no clue what is gonna happen or what will happen next. Random drops and luck are a nice way to do this.

although complete chaos is not always what you want. You really need that happy medium. Many old rpg's hand drops scale with he levels of you character so you may get a level ten sword from a level 5 monster when you are level 6 but yo won't get a level 10 sword from the level 98 monster you just barely scraped though.

Personally i find that a little imbalance here and there is good for a game. tipping the scales every once and a while is a necessary evil to keeping a game fresh. For instance a moral choice game like Infamous is fun...but only fun twice. A game that has some random moments blended in is a game you can play over and over and over again.

I think that is why muliplayer is so popular these days. No one can really predict a human who can and will make mistakes, play with luck or just be plain random in their gameplay.

[Locke cole]

What about games that are randomly generated when you start a new game, like Minecraft or Don't Starve?

Granted, the issue with that is that, in order to accomodate the random generation, htere's little in the form of structure.

[Doc ock rokc]

Originally Posted by Locke cole

What about games that are randomly generated when you start a new game, like Minecraft or Don't Starve?

Granted, the issue with that is that, in order to accomodate the random generation, htere's little in the form of structure.

Well minecraft is awesome. The randomly generated infinitely expanding world of adventure and experimentation. People don't call it Minecrack for nothing. You literally can spend hours in that game with no loss of enjoyment. doing anything and everything under the sun...or under the glowstone.

[Ryong]

Let me just get this out of the way:



This shit is annoying as fuck.

As one who's played a fuckton of grindy MMOs with stupid drop rates - 0.5% card drop rate on ragnarok online, for example - and monster hunter - you need 5 items that have a 10% chance to drop and it takes you 40 minutes for each attempt - and dota, where people do permastuns on 25% chance and shit, well, basically, these need to have some really good execution.

For item drops - on things that can be killed fast - and chances of effects happening I like the pseudorandom RNG where say, your 25% chance effect is actually 7% and then goes higher until like 90% the more time it goes without triggering and then it goes back down afterwards. Diminishing returns would be a good thing to avoid abuse - for example, in dota 2 some heroes can stun you for 2 seconds and they make nearly 4 attacks in that time, but their chance to stun after 3 missed stuns can be high enough for an unending stun.

On stronger things and drop rates, I'd say nothing should have less than 30% drop rate, ever. Gathering everyone for a raid on a MMO or monster hunter hunt shouldn't require so many attempts as they usually take.

Random encounters can serve a lot as padding, which can be really annoying sometimes, specially if running away isn't easy. Running away should always be easy.

[Loyal]

Originally Posted by Ryong

As one who's played a fuckton of grindy MMOs with stupid drop rates - 0.5% card drop rate on ragnarok online, for example

.01% actually. Good thing nobody gives a shit about private servers!