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.