Do you enjoy RNG events?

(n-x) #1

I am not talking about event specific things like the trinket, that turtle and dockyard got released, the story behind it or that you can influence how proxy is going to look like.

I am talking purely about the fact that you have to grind and then roll the dice. The mechanic of how to get the SE card.

I have 31 SE cards (Logitech, Alienware, Humble Bundle, Ranked S2 & 3 and from all events except CW) and 3 Obsidians. If I substract cards that are plain rubbish, cards for mercs I dont play at all, and cards which are inferiour now due to gen 2, I have a total of ONE card I really use. And thats the ranked Aura card you can get for ranked points.

(Melinder) #2

When they are reasonable. It’s not that I love rng, it’s that I dislike the alternatives.

I’d rather they gave players varied levels of time vs reward, for example 250 Hexads (which would be received at a different rate than they are now) for a standard event case, 500 Hexads for a Medic/Engineer/Recon etc. event case, 1000 Hexads for a merc-specific event case, and finally $3.99, $5.99 $7.99 etc. for a guaranteed card with the above progression. The Hexad cases would obviously not be 1%, more like 25%.

Real-money purchases should always result in a guaranteed SE drop, not an increased chance.

(Press E) #3

idk, I wish there was an in between option that wasn’t just “whatever”. RNG isn’t bad, it’s the way it’s implemented that determines whether or not it’s good. And just as not all RNG is bad, not all alternatives are good either. Just look at paywall items or the obsidian cards that didn’t allow us to choose.

I guess in general, yes, I’m against purely RNG events. I don’t enjoy grinding for hours just to get a bad card for a merc that I don’t like. If I had the option to reroll it or limit it to a certain merc somehow, sure, maybe.
Random loadouts are one thing though, a random chance to get a loadout is something I absolutely hate. As long as it doesn’t take as ridiculously long as the average ranked card at least. Sure some people might get a card their first try with 1% chance, but some people will also take 1000 cases to do the same.

(henki000) #4

I have all the gen 2 bronze cards, so what does it really matter. I dont use trinkets anyway, it might jam the weapon. Melinder had nice point, what are the alternatives?

(n-x) #5

@henki000 You could change the events.

Atm you play the events and you basically have no clue when you get your reward and what your reward will be, or worst case scenario you dont get a reward at all while others get one who put less time into it than you.

This could easily be changed to: Play x amount of time and you can pick one SE card of your liking. This would give people a clear goal, a clear progression towards that goal and a feeling of accomplishment. I dont know how much time I spent on the last event, but I got 4 shell shock cards out of it, which are worthless to me. If I had the choice between this or maybe playing twice the amount of time to get a SE card of my likings. I would take the second option. Even if that means getting no SE card at all, if I am not able to put the hours into it.

What good are all those SE cards when 90% of them will never be used because people dont have/play the merc they are used for, or dislike the loadout.

(Chilled Sanity) #6

How is this even a question.

(henki000) #7

@n-x

True. It could also be easily changed to: pay x amount of cash and pick a card. No free cards to beggars. I dont think there are bad or good loadouts, there is just computer, internet and pheriphelar devices. One good player can beat bunch of bad players without any augments. Advantage with “good” loadouts is very nominal. I’d like to think that there is slight advantage in some maps and combat conditions with all the cards. Thats why I have all the bronze cars, to test all the variables.

(MarsRover) #8

Right there with you OP. I have 55 special cards from RNG. I use 7 of those, some often and some very rarely. Maybe 3 more have OKish loadouts so I maybe use them from time to time just to mix things up. So that’s 10 out of 55. The rest is either crap, obsoleted by gen 2, or just mercs/weapons I do not enjoy using.

Looking just at the latest special series:
Shell Shock: 0/5 cards, none of them is particularly good - two Bushwhackers without Lock On, a Rhino without N2O, etc. This may be more of an indicator that some perks are just mandatory IMO.
Ranked S2: 2/4
Ranked S1: 1/6
ReV: 2/9 if I’m generous

I would really prefer to have 4x less cards but actually be able to at least choose a merc or something.

(ThunderZsolt) #9

I know this is sightly off topic, I will create my own thread about RNG in gaming in general (not just in DB) - how it effects the personalities of the kids playing, like developing gambling addiction, or addiction in general, learned helplessness and other stuff.

And getting used to not being able to influence the outcome makes the children incapable of living. They say “when a man does the same thing over and over, and expects a different result, that man is stupid”.
In real life you need to analyze your mistakes, or if you didn’t make any, the possibility of improving. This doesn’t apply to opening cases, where your only decisions are to open another one, or not.

These examples were exaggerating, but considering how much time the kids spend playing, we shouldn’t underestimate how much they are influenced. I’m not saying that I would rather allow kids to play brutal games like mortal kombat or some 3D anime porn stuff, but those don’t make them gamblers at least.

I wouldn’t completely delete all RNG aspects from gaming, for example the random missions you get each 3 hours are refreshing.

But random spread on weapons (why not just have damage fall off at range?) are debate-able, and random rewards are just artificially increasing the grind. If any developer would show how much you have to play for a 90% chance to get the “best” reward, nobody would bother trying to get it, but “hey, you have 1% chance to get one after each game!”, and everybody buys tons of cases/keys to get it, and paying hundreds of dollars for TF2 hats or CS:GO and Payday2 weapon skins.

(BloodySin) #10

While I can’t speak for Splash Damage’s intentions (they could just be “going with the flow” of something other games do), heavily unfavorable RNG events/items/boxes aren’t usually made with the general player mass in mind. Companies using this method aim at the minority that will spend a lot, not the majority who won’t spend anything at all. If you want a comedy picture of it, watch South Park’s episode on freemium games. While that is about the “pay-to-win” mechanics on those games, the general mentality behind low-reward RNGs is pretty similar.

I wouldn’t care about RNG events if either the odds weren’t so absurdly stacked against the players and everyone got out of an event with their fair share of event cards just from participating (and people who went further and paid for boxes got that many more to their collections) or if along with the RNG people had an affordable way to get cards, in a much, much more specific way than a box with a 1 in 10 chance of 1 card out of 9 loadouts out of 19 mercs (someone do the math for what are the odds of you getting a specific card?).

(Eox) #11

There’s always that sword of damoclès that is getting no event cards at all, especially when you don’t play that often. I almost ended up in that situation : I finally managed to get lucky and get a loadout that is actually fairly good (too bad it’s for a character I don’t usually use). In all honesty I would have liked if there was a way to earn an event card without counting on RNG, even if it’s just for a single event card.

There’s also that case where one gets a lot of cards, but not a single good one, which is equally frustrating.

I don’t hate those events. I mean it’s free stuff. But they could sure be better.

(ThePigVomit) #12

Feeds my gambling fix.

(Meerkats) #13

RNG was invented by Satan to drive humanity to the brink of madness, ever farther from Light, and thereby to Sin.

Also, http://forums.dirtybomb.com/discussion/37132/stop-with-your-rng-events/p1

(Pumpkiller) #14

Wanna hear a funny story?

I grinded up to 31 boosters since the event started, and got nothing, then, on the very last day of the event, i got my first special edition through a 1% crate, the first one i ever bought on the event.

I don’t intend to be that millionth sob story, but grinding for essentially nothing is a major cockblock in addition to just be a chore. You don’t make a grind event based around pure luck, it’s counter-productive to what it should be: REWARDING.

I’m not asking for free shit, i’m asking to not leave empty-handed after a month long grind.

(bgyoshi) #15

It would be much nicer if instead of the RNG like it is, they just dropped normal equipment cases that have a 1% chance for an SE card, but every normal case drop has like a 25% chance to be a 100% guaranteed SE card case. Then the cards you buy in the store are a “pick your own” card where you select the merc you want and choose from one of any of the current gen cards. So if you wanted a Bushy card you would see all Gen 2 cards and choose one. But you can only do this by buying it with cash (not credits) in the store.

Just make it so you can expect to get a couple SE cards a day if you play for 3 or 4 hours, and make it so you can grind them up at like a gold rate so you can turn the RNG you hate into craftable cobalts later. When the event ends, all SE cards you haven’t ground up become permanent like they are now.

The pick your own cards you buy in the store would always be ungrindable though.

(OwynTyler) #16

I hate RNG

(Reddeadcap) #17

I don’t mind RNG but it’s pretty extreme and difficult to get an event skin, the fact that the event itself is going for a limited time should be intensive enough for the skins to be rare, making them 0.1% chance of dropping isn’t necessary, I do have a thread going on that shows my suggestions for a more reasonable experience for players.

(binderr) #18

yeah, 0.1 chance is pretty lame. I bought the Turtle obsidian and the hex trinket but still couldn’t get a single event card even after playing so many hours, f**k!!!

(Nail) #19

I love DB’s RNG, it supplies me with hours of entertainment
B)

(frostyvampire) #20

I like it because it creates variety.

If everyone got the same card (like with the Phoenix obsidian), it will be boring because everyone will use the same loadout.

If you got to pick your own card, people will still pick the same cards so it’s almost the same as giving everyone the same card.

They honestly just need to separate skins from loadouts. Replace all special edition and obsidian loadouts with skin packs and make it so you need to combine the skin with a loadout card in order to use it.

Obsidian cards will have to be combined with a cobalt in order to become an obsidian loadout card, event skins will have to be combined with gold loadout cards to become event loadouts, and other skins (such as Alienware and the ranked skins) will have to be combined with a silver card. If you don’t own a silver+ card you should still be able to use the skin but you will be forced to use the default loadout