One of the complaints about some games is heavily reliant on RNG. This can lead to a lot of wasted time trying to get a drop or structure. Maybe this can be solved to some degree through weighted RNG. This is done in slot machines in Vegas. The machine has to pay out over so much interaction. It doesn't have to act this way exclusively. If we look at biology the RNG for offspring is weighted by fitness. If anything is malformed it usually dies.

So time weighting, iteration weighting, some kind of fitness weighting (prevent shit drops). What are some other kinds of weighting we could use?

I played something called cubeworld and it was really cool

they had an inverse leveling / experience system (and it was exponential)

this actually felt FAR more natural

so basically when you're level 1 and don't know shit you just wander around and figure things out. this goes on for a long time as you get situated. as you get more into the game you slowly level, and can experience getting slowly more powerful and less scared of everything

then as you level, you level faster and faster. interestingly, all the awe you built for everything at level 1 still stays with you, and you just focus on your progression and skills. you understand the game content and aren't overwhelmed by it, and now the game is about character building, maximizing your strategies, and finding any nooks and crannies in terms of content, as fast as possible, yet you still keep the original awe. it was perfect

@jestdotty that is a cool idea. It actually makes more sense as you climb the knowledge hill that you accelerate your understanding.

I liked kenshi which didn't even have RNG, other than this guy spawned here I guess

if you killed a dude you just got his stuff

I fondly remember games that do that from the 90s and such. like that was an era where people thought like that. like Morrowind and oblivion. you just found things and others used them the same as you. this makes the world feel more real to me

there was a game called ROSE ONLINE and I think they did a drop system like you're describing. I hosted a reverse engineered private server for it once, and there were columns in the database about if a drop hasn't happened in a long time then increase its likelihood to happen. but I thought all that was pretty lame. still I guess it kind of created a cool meta in the game -- so people actively wanted to go to areas nobody has farmed for a while, because they knew the drops would be better there. this required people to be socially aware, which is why that boring-ass game was fun, because people actually socialized

@jestdotty that is interesting because gamblers will farm/work machines as well. Their socialization is "Stay the fuck away from my machines!"

@Demolishun WELL I don't think it was like that persay

but people coordinated the times they would hit areas if they were friends. so if I knew a guy was looking for a specific drop and typically woke up at one time to play I would try to be as far away from his time as possible, and being open about the time you're gonna play was a form of friendship I guess

and if a new player joined the server everyone was pushing them around to see if they would cooperate or not. if you didn't like somebody you would try to find out info on them and make their life miserable I guess

pretty interesting game theory actually, in retrospect

this may be simply worked because those servers were typically like 10-50 people on at once and there were 70 in game areas, though only about 5 of them had high level gear specific classes wanted (and it being a private server all the xp rates were always higher so everyone runs for the end gear as quickly as possible which is why that number of areas people want to farm is so low)

the game was actually really stupid

but the game theory kind of amazing

this server i played on (before it shut down and I did mine), once a week, the admin of the server would hold a tournament where everybody dueled. if you win 3-1 place you got gear only he could spawn that existed as event gear in the game data but would never drop

so in effect

if in your rush for gear you piss everyone off they wouldn't let you win in the tournament even if you got all the mob drops, because they have better gear (I think there was still some strategy to it but they're gonna hit you 30% harder so you gotta be more than 30% better, might be pretty slim odds)

but if you cooperated with the players maybe they wouldn't step in during the tournament to further themselves, so then you could get the best gear in the game because you didn't piss people off

the tournaments didn't offer all the things you'd need, even if you won all the tournaments you still needed the mob drops to upgrade the gear

Eliminate RNG altogether and place rewards by hand.

No, just kidding. Build on who the player is. Rather than constantly picking up junk in hopes of finding something good, they *just* sporadically run into stuff that has some use, value, purpose, or what have you.

To do this effectively, you have to ask the player what he wants. Why not? Communicate with the fucker. No need to do it overtly, just give him some ability to express himself, and take note of how he uses it. Then base your list of possible gifts on that expression.

You can also twist this around: build uppon the OPPOSITE of desires. That is one way to present a __personal__ challenge.

Standard randomness will do fine in that context, no need to fuck too much with it. Structure it a little bit maybe. Like at certain stages of the narrative certain things won't happen. Then it feels more like a story, which is more ~ I M M E R S I V E ~

Or just copy casino logic, fuck do I know.

@Liebranca i started thinking about this because I find it funny that human race is somewhat (less now) dependent upon RNG. Got me thinking about different types because it is interesting.

world generation RNG is fun

everything is meaningful, it's just a gamble of which set you get this time

*roguelikes*

I mean also there can be bad picks. some item can excite one player or make another groan. that's also very fun! I think people having to work with tools they hate is character building and a moral good on the world. it teaches perspective and empathy and makes them not snivelling little immature shits. but that's my selfish opinion

> everything is meaningful, it's just a gamble of which set you get this time

blizzard takes this to an extreme with spreadsheet balances though. holy fuck I hate those games. heartstone's math is so fucking obvious I don't fucking know how anyone can stand to play that game. I need novelty not a fucking perfect prison cage where everything is the same just with a different skin. fucking no imagination

@jestdotty I met a guy who did A-B testing to find gambling sweet spot. Then made his games purposely miss the sweet spot. He didn't want to create addicts.

ok epiphany

RNG is the white noise to throw the player off about how your game world really works

I think that is the perfect definition and all other uses of rng diminish the game instead of improving it

in the case of ROSE ONLINE people knew how it worked due to the devs stating it, so it wasn't actual rng any more. it was more like a gatekeeping mechanic that created a social game on top of the actual game, and people didn't really know what the social game was, and you got to see if they would pick up on it or not, how quickly, how gracefully, etc

@Demolishun lol weirdo guy

*proceeds to put self through gambling addiction, for science*

Funny that you mention slot machines... The problem is that those are not locked for one player only. So you can go there and play 10 times, not winning the jackpot so you leave. The next person comes in and boom instant jackpot.

I think in games it is the same. Imagine that there is a 1% guaranty for a rare drop. Well every single player that is online has a chance to get the item. As soon as one player gets the item, the weighted RNG reset and start over.

Combine RNG with fishing or another instantaneous loot generator mechanic - and you'll have the two things I hate in games. It's nothing but a cheap trick to me.

Oh yes, why not create a bunch of items out of thin air without any story or real skill whatsoever? We can't have nice things in our game - let's just make player mash stupid buttons and win stupid prizes.

@jestdotty actually thats similar to the structure of idle games.

interesting reward mechanism there.

You'll find Game AI Pro incredibly useful:

http://www.gameaipro.com/

They don't just cover AI, the name is misleading. A LOT of articles actually topics that amount to emulation over simulation (and how to achieve that), styles of RNG, and algorithms.

It's also where I learned about MM1 Queues.

It's a truly fantastic site.

On that note, another one that goes into depth on algorithms is redblob games, which I'd forgotten about up until I saw your post.

https://www.redblobgames.com/