The RNG in Perspective

The game released on 8 Mar, less than 12 weeks ago. I have about 450 hours… That’s more than the number of hours someone puts in at a full-time job over an equivalent period and that doesn’t even include the time spent on forum. Because of the RNG, I still don’t have a single character geared the way I want them. Other people have over a thousand hours and are even worse off than I am. This is not acceptable.

RNG should only ever be used for superfluous bonus rewards. Making it the end-all-be-all reward system for an entire game, especially when the RNG is this bad and the pool of possible drops is this big, is terrible design no matter how you look at it. It screws over players and, in turn, it screws over FS because it removes your ability to quality control the player experience. When you put an RNG reward system in your game, you are guaranteeing that a large swath of the playerbase is going to be perpetually disgruntled because of bad luck.

No one likes RNG. People are either extremely lucky and don’t feel its burn or they tolerate it until they either get lucky or they get so fed up that they quit and curse your name. If I wanted to be constantly reminded of how unlucky I am while blowing tens of thousands of dollars (the equivalent value of my time investment into VT2 so far) I’d go to a friggin casino. RNG breaks the cardinal rule of game design: don’t waste your players’ time. Instead of a fun, well crafted endgame experience with thoughtful progression and well implemented rewards, you’ve created a skinner box whale trap where instead of giving you money we give you our time, the value of which is far greater than money.

The feedback discussion regarding RNG so far has been kinda like this:

Players: We don’t like RNG in either the crafting or the loot drops. We want VT1’s crafting system and its Deeds and Contracts system so we can make and earn stuff without luck being the sole deciding factor.

FS: Ok we’ve improved the RNG odds a bit and we’ll eventually fix the green dust situation.

Players: No, we do not like RNG. Please give us systems like VT1’s to remove some of the RNG elements from the equation.

FS: Ok, We’ve further increased the RNG odds a bit and giving you more chests so you get more rolls. Here’s your green dust.

Players: Thank you for the green dust but WE DO NOT LIKE RNG! Please stop!

FS: Working as intended.

Any game I’ve ever quit due to dissatisfaction has been a direct result of having a sense that the game/devs were intentionally trying to waste my time or artificially pad the length of their game. When your response to people asking for less RNG is to add more RNG rolls and challenges that takes thousands upon thousands of hours to complete, it’s impossible to not have that feeling. You need to implement a better loot system.

Warhammer is a franchise where some of the most alluring gameplay elements in both the tabletop and most other games is the wide ability to customize the appearance and potential of your units. In VT2, we have virtually zero actual control over either of these elements.

Here’s what you should do to address this and improve not only the player experience but your capacity to better quality control that experience:

  • No more duplicate reds
  • No more pure-RNG crafting. Add VT1’s crafting system because the current system is straight up uninspired and unfun.
  • Get the Quest system more in line with VT1’s. We need to be able to see what we’re getting. No one cares about having another RNG roll when RNG is the exact thing we’ve been complaining about since the game launched. Even if we did, an Emp Chest is kinda a trash-tier reward considering a large number of people exclusively play Legend.
  • Better ways of getting cosmetics. The drop rate is still abysmal and it could still take over a thousand hours for someone to get something they’re after.

If you add character/class-specific challenges for getting all of the red/cosmetic items, you could leave the RNG system as is because then it would simply augment a better loot system. This is what basically every other game does, ie. RNG is a bonus, not the meat of your End Game.

Please do not continue turning a blind eye to this stuff. It’s going to cost you existing and future customers.

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While I don’t share the sentiment that RNG should be reserved for “superfluous bonus rewards” only, I think that is still has too much grip in this game. Randomness has its place, and majority of games have it in some form, be it a RNG for encounters and rewards in a computer game, dice on tabletop or card draws in poker. But a problem of RNG is that its results generally follow a bell curve. That means that most results will, on the long term, end up average. The further from that average we look, the less results we find, but they’re still there. VT2 is a game with several thousand people online usually. That would suggest twice or thrice that amount active players a day. On those amounts, the extremes of RNG will show. While the people on the high end of the curve likely don’t mind, the ones on the low end certainly do (and both will get a false image of what the actual odds are). At least the low end, and possibly the high one too, should be cut off by the system.

VT1, in the end, used a system for the DLC weapons that helped people to get one if they hadn’t already got one, even if it was only a slight help. While red weapons were far more unique there, they also had protection from having duplicates, even though we could have two attribute sets on each. And of course, both Quests and Contracts and the crafting system, although still based on RNG, offered safety nets to save us from the worst effects of randomness.

Now we have a far wider variety of red items, but still people usually have only one or two of each that they want to use. And they get a lot of duplicates. We have far more jewellery than weapons, even though the same pieces are shared by all careers and again, people are only likely to use a few combinations. We have luck required in finding dice in the run, in avoiding the worst boss locations, (unless both dice are found and a Lord map is played) in Ranald’s Gift, in drawing the items we want and of the quality we want (and though we can Salvage stuff, three of five resources they yield get useless after a while). And while the crafting is likely meant to help with bad item rolls, and allow one to get what we want, it is also steeped in RNG: Item quality, Property combination, Property rolls, Traits… While, in theory, stacking RNGs can alleviate some of the worst rolls, in reality its bad results also stack.

So, in the end, what we need is some protection from the worst results of RNG, be it luck protection in getting items, a trusty crafting system, or known rewards on Quests. Preferably, at least two of those.

Yes, I too am baffled why the wonderful crafting system in VT1 was completely trashed.

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I agree that it’s present in most games but, as you said, it’s usually of a nature where the unluckiest person isn’t too hard done by. In VT2, RNG is the foundational element of the entire gaming, affecting pretty much everything. The sheer number of potential outcomes combines with the (still) extremely low rates on loot makes for a frustrating situation.

Protections would definitely help tame the beast here. Crafting needs to let ppl reliable make red-tier exotics w/o it being an eye-rollingly annoying and painful RNG experience and there should be dupe + bad luck protection for all reds.

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Drop rates are fine in my opinion. It’s dupes that need to be addressed. I play a lot of classes, but BH is usually my go to. And I have 5 red falchions, 5 rapiers, 2 2H, 4 volley, 3 axe, 2 flails and zero crossbow. All I want is the stupid crossbow.

I’m not even counting my jewelry dupes either. Yikes.

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May I quote my new favourite FS-punchline? It’s not the end of the world.

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Very true, and I would much prefer a buff to alot of melee weapons before fixing RNG. But hey, might as well voice all opinions to make this game better. The recent patch definitely helped.

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lol yeah, classic reply that. Just might be the end of a franchise though.

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Yes good point. Any number of things could improve the situation. I hope they don’t just put another bandaid on it though.

The cosmetic drop rate is still pretty abysmal though.

I honestly don’t mind the cosmetic drop rates, it’s cool they are rare. I’ve opened well over 100 comm chests since the patch, not a single cosmetic. Still using the BH hat I got the first week of release. Amazing how I got a hat back then with how rare they were, and can’t find one after the patch :frowning:

On the topic of RNG, I would like to state that my friends and I have a fun time with the RNG behind Ranald’s Gift at the end of missions.
Such as 3 of us will get boosted to an emperor’s chest and 1 gets stopped like, a tick away and the rest of us rib him for it.

It’s just another inadvertent little thing that brings a few laughs. It’s been the topic of complaint, but I’d consider it a loss if it was changed.

Another option would be to introduce trading or a marketplace.

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Hi guys, firstly you have to understand how RNG works, because it seems that some of you quite didn’t get the point of Random Number Generator. :grinning:
If the specific item has like 30% chance to drop, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to drop 30 times from 100 attempts. I think that vermintide RNG system works on the same principle as real life RNG used in slots for example:
1- RNG generates a random number.
2. The game’s mathematical module takes the random number and calculates where the reels should stop.
3. The game stops the reels at the determined positions and calculates the outcome of the spin.
4. The outcome of the spin is then displayed to the player who initiated the spin.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation / https://casino.guru/how-slot-machines-work-math )
And if you understand the principle of the random number generator and read that articles, you will find out that you CAN’T win in long-term, bcz the drops are totally random and if you want specific item, you can’t assume that if you try 100 times it has to drop just bcz drop rate is 30%.
Idk if you get the point or if I’m totally right in this particular case, but if not correct me, please :slight_smile:

Hi.
What your reply changing? If someoone don’t know “how rng works” that no mean that rng is good like rewarding system.
This is just bad designed system in general and devs don’t care much. They want port their early access game on consoles.

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Yes but that misses the point of the thread, though, in that even if the rng was working as intended, it’s still a garbage-tier game mechanic when used at this magnitude. FS uses RNG like a crutch. Also, running the odds of getting the exact same weapon dupe 4-5 times in a row then looking at the number of people on the forums who have had it happen over and over and over again, there’s more to the broken system than raw rng thanks to whatever jankiness is going on with the backend.

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How would you change the rewarding system? I wanted to show you, that RNG is the most fair system, bcz it depends purely on luck. Yeah, drop rates may be different… But still it’s not unfair :slight_smile:

Are you just troll, lol? I don’t belive that people can ask questions like this when in first post all was described. Fair, if you put efforts and get what you want, nor rng roll. If you don’t want to put efforts, you don’t get what you want. That’s fair. RNG can’t be fair in any cases.

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RNG is RNG. As a whole, it is neither fair nor unfair. That’s why it’s lazy and horrible, because there simply is no baseline and no quality control. One player spends a lifetime grinding for what another player gets in an instant. It’s a Skinner box mechanic that creates an unfair disparity between players who experience completely different effort:reward ratios.

One can look at virtually any similar game ever made, including VT1, to see a vastly superior system from which FS should have drawn inspiration. RNG should never be relied upon to the extent it is here, the offs of “winning” rooms should be higher, and there should be non-rng rewards. As it stands, every element of this game is rng-dependent.

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Fatshark will never change this. They want people to keep playing and keep having a reason to play. Thats how grind games work. Which this game ultimately is, grind packaged in an enjoyable wrap (well, if you ignore all the wonky things that make playing this game frustrating). They might bring back old bounty board for some degree of target farming, but dont hold your breath. The more hours you spend playing a game, the more likely you are to buy the DLC’s. While there are cases where thats not true, the broad audience (thats not usually known to go on forums, btw) works exactly like that. The nicer the grind is packaged, the more likely it is to generate more money.

Unless the game is unplayable because content you absolutely need to even be able to play all the difficulties is locked behind RNG, they wont see a reason to change a thing.

But in fact most of my friends and me almost stopped playing because current “RNG everywhere” is just frustraring. You have random rarity box (thx to Ranald and loot dies), in which we have 3 random items, then you start rerolling random properties to get what you want, and craft randon rarity/itemlevel items from scrap you’ve got by dismantling trash from random boxes…

It’s questionable assertion, at the best. If you had a lot of bad expirience in the game, no matter how many hrs did you spent playing you’ll very unlikely buy any DLC.

No, it’s not unplayable, just unrewarding and stupidly frustraiting, “but it’s not the end of the world™”