Transmutation rolling for Gear must change

[Golliathe]

This previous week with no durability loss gave us all an interesting look at this game with a "limitless" progression mechanic. I took full advantage of that and made some armor sets exactly as I desired. This included a fully enchanted max set (did not quite get the second pair of boots made). I would humbly request that we do something to change this progression aspect of the game. Having only 4 rolls per week coupled with a beyond annoying rolling rng pattern could easily kill the game for "less intense" people. Let me also point out that I spent half the week raising my skill to cap from 50 so I could make the armor.

Let me be nice first as I really do this game, its spirit and most of the mechanics in it (/cough praetermitto : critical hits). But hard capping players on the rolls for their gear in a game were something like 85% of your power is directly related to the mods on your gear is not a good idea. With that in mind I will offer some suggestions that would in my opinion be more fair than roll 4 times and come back next week. I hope by the way that is not a limiting mechanic to make people want to play something else for a while (seriously doubt it but I must mention it).

Let's do some math.

1. Phlog sells for 60 and you buy it for 120. With that in mind let's pretend that its value is somewhere in the middle around 90 c. Note that I consider this value a joke as you might blow up a piece of gear worth over 1000c and only get 12x nice phlog. Anyway let's stick with 90?

2. Each roll for a piece of gear will cost you 35 Phlog (because who is gonna waste it on gear that is : mainskill/endurance). In short this means every time you roll it costs you 3000c.

3. I forgot to mention you need to fight level 60-70 monsters to even get an opportunity to blow up items in the first place. And you also need to be lucky enough to have that juicy yellow to roll on anyway.

4. The rolling pattern in this game is completely insane. I often get the pattern where it will go : a,b,a,b,a,b,c,a,b,a,d,a,b,a,b,a. Bear in mind this is a month's worth of rolls and 16x 3000= 48,000 councils.

5. As a point of comparison a friend of mine spent over 5200 phlog to fix 2 pieces of yellow gear that were at least 1/3 correct. That comes out to around 500,000 councils. And it only would have taken about 19 weeks to get that result. Excuse me? (and let me note here one of these pieces was a ring so it had one less stat he needed to roll on!). I know one of my items took 2000 phlog and another took less than 300 phlog (btw think that was a one time deal as it rolled almost perfect anyway).

The TLDNR version is that this is complete bullshit. With that in mind I would like to suggest alternatives to make things feel less Herculean. Generally speaking I kinda feel like you should be able to get at least one piece of armor fixed per month (hopefully faster- maybe a week?).


I. You could make each roll for each power modifier slot be sequential with no random a-b-a-b bs pattern but leave it as it stands now with 4 rolls per week via durability. You could still make things interesting in that each piece of gear for any slot had a scrambled order it would roll... so you dont know if the power you want is 1 roll away or 7 rolls away (pattern might change to a-d-f-c-h-b-e-i-g).

I like this option as it gives people a sequential and gradual guarantee at armor. One of the classes I play has 76 potential treasure effects on gear. Note that 6 pieces of the treasure have 9 effects to choose from. Someone with more time on their hands can make some nice combination math for us but I don't think it is necessary.

This would take a long time to fix some armor but you could make very real progress each week. In this example assume 6 pieces pieces of gear with 9 rolls (assume everything were wrong) on yellow gear that had 3 treasure effects. You would fix each slot by the 6th roll no matter what. So within 18 rolls you would have half of this armor fixed. That means just over a month in time to fix half of 1 item and 54,000 councils spent. If we considered using augmentation to block undesired rolls then we would be looking at fixing each slot within 5 rolls.

I would be "ok" with this option as it gives someone the guarantee of steady chipping. If you log in and do your rolls each week you can possibly fix half your boots in a months time (along with your coat, ring, etc if you can afford it).

II. We could change the durability repair recipes into something else. What if we changed the recipes so that you had an infinite rolling option with a time gated cooldown (replaces small prism repair recipe - cooldown 24 hrs: makes level 0-50 item have infinite rerolls for 24 hrs). Every item still gets 4 "free" rolls per week. The medium repair recipe would be changed to - cooldown 72 hrs : make level 50-60 item have infinite rerolls for 3 days). Likewise the high end option would become - cooldown 168 hours : make lvl 60-90 item have infinite rerolls for 7 days.

I like this option as it lets you do a focused "I will fix these damn boots NOW" sort of thing. It still requires you to eat prisms and as we discussed before is still going to cost you 3,000 councils per roll. Almost makes sports betting look appealing right?

III. Why not both?

Once per week players could infinitely roll on one end game item or 2 lvl 50 items (or 1 50/ 1 60 item). Essentially this means players could make one max gear item per week. You could limit the transfusion repair recipes so that only you can infuse infinite rolling on your gear.

IV. Maybe there is a combat trial thing we could implement?

What if you had a varied combat arena that included scaling encounters: tanky boss, horde of weak enemies, group of strong enemies, few annoying mobs - like ice root elementals with ranged blaster mob support, boss+ minions for later waves, etc.

Long story short you scale the encounter and the reward is some degree of "infinite rolling for a time" ; the idea being that someone who had a full build set could get more free reroll time. Why? Because it lets them actually play with treasure effects rather than feel under the gun to replace items that became legacy.

V. Maybe one of the rotating weekend events (extra health, more industry turn in, run faster) could be infinite durability rerolling.

Closing thoughts

-What do you expect the time/cost for items to be (as a player or GM)? The current limitations have been compared to black desert (this is not a good thing).

- I would love to see one of the Admins create 50,000 nice phlog and complete a perfectly pre-planned armor set via infinite rolling (jsw1rz4n from : http://www.gorgonexplorer.com/build-planner) . How long does it take you (in other words how many rolls? What is the total phlog cost. Citan, I'm asking you or Jack to go into the game and just roll until it happens. On this note I will start working on a 3rd armor set and keep a complete track of time/phlog. And yes before you ask... that armor loadout is AMAZING! It will be the new....coldness.

-It's somewhat unfair that I got to make armor during the infinite roll period. But it gave me a look into how the game should be in my opinion - where it doesn't take weeks or months to make an end gear item.

-Thank you for making a great game! I take the time for this post because I want it to be a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

-The tagline for "let's try some new treasure effects" kinda felt like a slap in the face considering all the stops necessary to make an item you wanted. I got beyond lucky in that I need only purple gloves with max enchanted and made 2 pairs. I made one a travel run set and another be a "what if" combat set. Note I already had a nice pair of gloves too. As much as I would love to play with the new mods you really just can't easily do that.

But what if you made a testing zone where players could "rent" gear that only lasts for an hour? For that matter have the zone be a Gazluk Keep clone with a vendor at the start to make whatever treasure items you wanted to test.

Only allow people in for strategic testing purposes. Call in some big names and have them show you their gear and then they say... well I want to try - blah blah blah.

[Niph]

A few thoughts:

1. Since you roll only 4 times a week, on a limited number of items, the cost doesn't matter if you can accumulate enough phlogistons every week. Being able to get them in one day, and just playing for fun the rest of the week seems very possible to me. Working on all pieces of a set is an exception, you're likely to work only on a couple items a week, as you loot better stuff.

2. If you think the RNG is cheating on you, record every reroll and make some stats. So far it doesn't seem bugged to me, and bad sequence are always likely to happen. The fact you remember them is completely psychological and is a super-common bias.

3. The true measure of difficulty is how long it takes, starting from a set with random mods, to obtain a perfect set. Making a perfect set of purple gear is much, much faster than a perfect set of max-enchanted yellow gear. I believe the game is balanced around you using the former.

Every additional mod to transmute is a multiplier to the time it takes: it's exponential. Underestimating exponential progression is another super-common bias. I'm a recurrent victim of it at work.

4. If the game doesn't "force" you to grind a bit, you consume all the content too fast. :)

[Yaffy]

I feel like the time gating on transmutation is there to encourage you to go and find other gear. If you fail at transmuting one item, then instead of waiting a week you can try to find another similar item. Then if you fail at transmuting that then you can either get another, or now if you wait a week you can transmute twice as much the next week.

As for the unfair pattern of mods you get, you definitely don't have an equal chance to get all mods on items, which explains why you might see certain mods much more than others. I have no idea about the values or anything but the devs have stated that base damage mods are significantly more likely to appear on gear on the patch notes, which proves that mod frequency is weighted.

As quoted from one of the patch notes:
"As a side-effect of cleaning up some old treasure system mechanics, the drop-chances of some treasure effects have changed. Most notably, effects that boost base-damage (e.g. "Sword Base Damage +X%") used to drop at a rate 15x higher than regular mods; they now drop 5x as often. "

So what this means is that depending on what mods you're going for, you might have to spend significantly more phlog in order to get it. Especially if you're trying to roll against something like base damage boosts. This is going to affect how much money/phlog you'll be using greatly. The problem is that as far as I'm aware, there's no way to tell what frequency certain mods appear, or even if transmutation is affected in the same way. Maybe if you use the write to book function you might be able to estimate after a large period of time.

If transmutation is affected by weighted mod rolls then a lot of frustration could be removed just from knowing what the chances are of getting certain mods. At least that way you can plan ahead and try and manipulate mods in order to get what you want more easily, and so you know you might need to dump a ton of phlog into something rather than blindly spending all of it first and then realizing it's not a common mod.

[poulter]

As someone who has crafted c. 30 sets of max-crafted & augmented gear at level 70, I can confirm that it is both time consuming and difficult - by design. :)

It is a deliberate mechanism to minimise economic inflation and provide end-game players with something to aspire to (many of whom can easily earn 250k + councils within 2 days once /week).

A 'perfect' modded max-crafted set of gold gear is a huge advantage in game and represents the best available gear.

It is unbalanced in game-terms, but obtainable by anyone who can commit to the time required. Being obtainable by anyone (whether by crafting it yourself, or buying from another player) requires extensive playing time (which appears to be a fundamental principle in the design of PG i.e. the more time you play, the more rewards you have access to.

For the game to remain challenging, it should not be 'quick & easy' to obtain. Plus if everyone had max-crafted gold gear, then the mobs would need their specifications and abilities raised - leading to an increasing cycle of 'monster' inflation.

[Deldaron]

One thing to consider is using augmentation in this equation. It doesn't speak to your points, which I do understand, but it can speed things up.

For instance you have a max enchanted yellow item with two skills, say sword/shield. You've theory crafted and you want to have 4 sword skills and 3 shield in the end. The first thing I would do is use augmentation to apply a shield skill I do not want to the item then begin re-rolling shield mods. Because you can't roll into an existing mod this removes that mod from the re-roll equation. Then when all 3 shield skills are set, apply a rarer (i.e. not +X% dmg) desirable sword mod before you begin re-rolling the sword skills.

I do think a week CD after 4 rolls can be tolling, but I like that it's a week long so that it doesn't give an advantage to players who are on every day. I would be interested in greater durability, per slot durability (which in essence gives you higher odds the less aligned the item is with your end goal and then flattens down to its current state (or less) when you have just 1 mod left), or an option not mentioned here: NPCs that will sell you re-rolls for additional chances (but maybe also on a CD/limit).

I like Yaffy 's point about knowing what the weights are - this would be done with a tooltip that shows up when you mouseover a mod/item with similar color patterns where yellow was rarest and green was common. Then you could use the above augmentation approach more effectively.

But another thing to consider is that you're talking about maximizing gear to its absolute fullest, but this is not necessary to enjoy the game and get together a decent GK run/do endgame. I have had a fine time with multiple sets where each item had unused mod slots. In a game like project gorgon maximization should be a slow and long process. Keep crafting until you have gear that has all of your big hitters/mods central to your build and then you can do it passively. The returns on those last mods will be rather small and you'll already have a set that can survive most content.

[ErDrick]

All I can say is I tried to reroll for a specific mod, I used 1600 nice phlogston, didn't get the mod. 1600 phlog worth of gear is a lot of money I didn't have to spend on skills.

Did not particularly feel like farming another 1600 to fail again, but when I did decide to the event ended anyways ( but I cant blame anyone for that).

I like the idea of it being sequential even if it takes 8-9 rolls vs random could work 1st try, could fail 9,752,124 times.

If the reroll had worked, I would have then tried to reroll complimentary mods on 3 other pieces btw.

[DamageIncorp]

Is it possible to shamanically infuse gear in addition to modding it out?

[Deldaron]

Is it possible to shamanically infuse gear in addition to modding it out?

You can do transmutation and shamanic infusion, but you have to do the transmutation first. Gear with shamanic infusion will throw and error - you can "undo augment" if you have the appropriate augmentation skill to remove the SI to then start re-rolling the item again. You cannot add a mod through augmentation and also use shamanic infusion as they both require 100 enhancement points.

[Citan]

Actually, I just made some tweaks to Transmutation costs for the next game update. I was also JUST NOW taking a walk and thinking about a way to show transmutation possibilities in-game. And then came home to read this thread. Weird. Anyway, I definitely want the game to be more communicative about Transmutation. Not sure what the time table there is -- could be next update, if my crazy implementation idea works -- will have to see.

[INXS]

I think the way the system is it's actually fine, the chances per week the repair cool down gives a gradual achievement of a full set which shouldn't be done in a few days. My biggest problem with it is the rng, the rng it's so not rng, rolling 4 times and getting same treasure twice is bullshit, 3 times on 8 rolls give me back my nice phlog. The reason it will take 19 weeks is because the system needs desperately to be addressed and fixed I would definitely prefer a rotating system of the left over available and a randomness that negates the same treasure to reappear in 4 tries.

As for an Admin to play the game and such, both of our Admin have played the game for years and have rolled plenty of treasures for their gear

[Golliathe]

A few thoughts:

1. Since you roll only 4 times a week, on a limited number of items, the cost doesn't matter if you can accumulate enough phlogistons every week. Being able to get them in one day, and just playing for fun the rest of the week seems very possible to me. Working on all pieces of a set is an exception, you're likely to work only on a couple items a week, as you loot better stuff.

2. If you think the RNG is cheating on you, record every reroll and make some stats. So far it doesn't seem bugged to me, and bad sequence are always likely to happen. The fact you remember them is completely psychological and is a super-common bias.

3. The true measure of difficulty is how long it takes, starting from a set with random mods, to obtain a perfect set. Making a perfect set of purple gear is much, much faster than a perfect set of max-enchanted yellow gear. I believe the game is balanced around you using the former.


1. WRONG! Rolling always costs phlog therefore it always costs you money (you could have sold those items or sold the phlog).

2. Im aware of the bias you think might be influencing me. But I just rolled on numerous items in the past few days and so did a friend. These weren't made up numbers.

3. Purple-yellow is irrelevant to the discussion. Making yellows is fine and Im not bothered by the difficulty there. But rolling A-B-A-B over and over again makes me and others just want to not bother.

4. It should not take an estimated ~18 weeks to get your gear rolled correctly.

[Jarlaxle]

Transmutation is fine as is. If you want to min max the best possible gear, then it should be extremely expensive and hard.

[Golliathe]

Transmutation is fine as is. If you want to min max the best possible gear, then it should be extremely expensive and hard.

I'm so glad Citan disagrees with you.

Now I will say that getting gear overnight is silly.... but so is the 19 week aspect.


On that note thank you as a developer for posting. Could you share any insights as to what might change?

[Citan]

One of the Transmutation changes in the next update is a way to see what you're rolling for. I suspect one of the problems people run into is that they're trying to roll something that simply isn't available on that item, for one reason or another -- be it bugs or just misunderstandings of what can show up where. So this will help expose problems. And beyond that, seeing what's going on will let people plan better.

Here's a prototype of what I'm working on. Basically it just pops up a custom "book" screen that lists each possible outcome, and the odds. Eventually we'll wire it into a nicer-looking UI, but for now I just want to make sure the info is available.

https://i.imgur.com/EtOlxoV.png


There are other changes as well that are still in development.

[ErDrick]

One of the Transmutation changes in the next update is a way to see what you're rolling for. I suspect one of the problems people run into is that they're trying to roll something that simply isn't available on that item, for one reason or another -- be it bugs or just misunderstandings of what can show up where. So this will help expose problems. And beyond that, seeing what's going on will let people plan better.

Here's a prototype of what I'm working on. Basically it just pops up a custom "book" screen that lists each possible outcome, and the odds. Eventually we'll wire it into a nicer-looking UI, but for now I just want to make sure the info is available.

https://i.imgur.com/EtOlxoV.png


There are other changes as well that are still in development.

I like that, it's a nice quality of life improvement.

The issue I mostly find though, as someone else stated is that it tends to go A,B,A,B,A,B,C,A,B,A,B when you are looking for D or E. Could it be bad luck or coincidence?, Sure. ( It happens a lot though, like 50 tries in a row a lot during free repair week.. Literally 50 tries btw, this is not an exaggeration, 1600 phlogs is about 56 tries, and i noticed the A-B-A-B pattern hardcore). I should note that it eventually DID( about 400 more phlogs) transmute into what I wanted, so it wasn't an issue of thinking the wrong mod existed.

I am torn on transmutation, because it does allow us access to better gear FAR faster then the old, old system of farming for perfect mods( but I also feel like better quality drops were more common back then, so it almost evened out). On the other hand, the current system is pretty frustrating when you actually try to use it. Also that 4 tries per week under this system is abysmally low unless the mods are sequenced.. this would have been about 12 weeks otherwise for ONE modifier? 12 weeks seems reasonable for a complete item, but not for one single modifier.

By the way, are you aware of the BUG with transmutation where the first time you try to transmute a modifier and you get the wrong one, and click "try again" that instead of rolling the mod you just transmuted again it switches to another mod on it's own?

EXAMPLE: As In, lets say I'm trying to transmute a useless archery effect( like restorative arrow healing) into something I want to use ( like fire arrow does xxx), the first try the restorative turns into something( doesn't matter what, lets say multishot xxx...which I wasn't looking for) so I click "try again". Instead of re-rolling multishot does xxx as it should have, the mod I'm working with automatically changes into another modifier on the item, usually something I wanted to keep ( like mangling shot does xxx...which is a mod I never wanted to try and change). if you are not paying 100% attention you end up re-rolling a modifier that you never intended to re-roll.

I want to say I probably bug reported that in the past, but this might be a better place for a more detailed explanation of the problem.

[Citan]

I don't consider this to be just a "quality of life" feature because it provides probability info that isn't available any other way right now.

The system doesn't remember old mods that used to be on the item -- that info isn't stored on the item at all, and there's no way for there to be a bug where it accidentally reverts. It's just a weighted random roll. But it's weighted! It uses the same probabilities that the random-loot system uses, so if a mod is common in loot, it will be a common transmutation result too.

So if you're seeing A-B-A-B, it means "A" and "B" have very high probabilities of showing up. The exact weights for some mods may be bugged or incorrect (and this display will help us find them). But they can be intentional too. Some mods are very common (such as base-damage mods, which are weighted 5x higher than average). A small number of mods are intentionally rare. And there are some weird cases where we use REALLY high or low weights to get different effects. For instance, if you're re-rolling a generic mod on a crossbow, the odds are like 90% that you're going to get one of the three crossbow mods. (Since crossbow isn't a "real" combat skill, the only way to make sure that crossbows have good chances for crossbow mods is to make those mods' probabilities very high.)

The devil is in the details -- and that's where the bugs hide too -- so this update will make more of those details visible so we can see what's up.

RE: transmute table bug, no I wasn't aware of it, but I'll look into it, thanks. (In general, if a nasty bug is long-running, please re-submit it as a bug. It probably means we lost track of it, or think it's fixed when it isn't, etc.)

[ErDrick]

I don't consider this to be just a "quality of life" feature because it provides probability info that isn't available any other way right now.


Fair enough, I love it when you go into detail like this on things. I wish you had the time to do it more often but it's understandable why you don't, you'd be on the forums 24/7. I also noticed in your screenshot it says "item durability -20" rather then 25, and that is also a step in the right direction, hopefully that makes the cut.

[Golliathe]

I don't consider this to be just a "quality of life" feature because it provides probability info that isn't available any other way right now.

RE: transmute table bug, no I wasn't aware of it, but I'll look into it, thanks. (In general, if a nasty bug is long-running, please re-submit it as a bug. It probably means we lost track of it, or think it's fixed when it isn't, etc.)

It would be nice to not need to go to the wiki and look at treasure effects for both classes on an item you are rollling. This will be a very nice tool for people who don't put in "extra effort".

I really kinda felt like there was a bug with the system and rolling! During item sweeps week I often had an item and I would roll a-b-a-b seemingly forever. When an item did this I stopped rolling after a few tries because I discovered it would often keep doing this on the order of 17-40 tries sometimes before getting to that D or E you wanted (several thousand phlog later; again note these numbers are not made up but references to multiple actual rerolls on an item).

On the other hand if you waited 15-60 minutes it could often be out of that pattern completely with just one more roll. That told me that you either weighted a & b to be about 70 % of the table or something was wrong.

[INXS]

This is even harder to achieve but basically what you needed to do it if finding/crafting own gear can't settle on the first yellow you get, you literally got to wait until you get a yellow that has almost all the treasures you need otherwise you going to suffer for months.

[xerandus]

Having the probabilities is real nice, though I always know what I am trying to roll for as I use Niph's Json Parser (or Gorgon Explorer if Niph hasn't had a chance to update his app yet after an update) to prebuild what my ideal gear mods for a piece are to be. I realize not everyone uses these tools, so having something in game that shows what is available would be good for the playerbase as a whole.

As far as the bug for 'try again', it looks like the intent is to have the most recently changed mod moved to the end of the list and the try again used on the last mod in the list. If I stop the process instead of telling it to try again, then put the item back on the table, the most recently rerolled mod is indeed the last in the list and at that point 'try again' does reroll the mod I have been working on. I suspect then that the rerolled mod is not placed in the last position, if it wasn't there already, until the item is taken off the table, so to speak.

[DamageIncorp]

The ABABAB is purely psychological unless the weights are indeed higher for those mods.
It is the same reason they show you the last 10 or so spins on a roulette wheel. If black came up ten times in a row, the next roll MUST be red right?
Every mod roll is independent of previous.
It should take a decently long time to get a max armor set for a 2 skill load out, nevermind multiple loadouts of different skills in my opinion.

[Golliathe]

The ABABAB is purely psychological unless the weights are indeed higher for those mods.


My empirical data from rolling in the last 2 weeks says otherwise. I know people keep saying that it is all in my mind... and if so where did thousands of extra phlog go from my inventory as well as from my friends?

When there are 9-10 options for mods it is nearly impossible odds for the item to keep going A-B-A-B for 8-10 rolls in a row (with a single break to c or d) and then resuming another 15-20 A-B-A-B rolls. And then there is the fact that this was not just happening to me but several people I know. I think it's all in YOUR mind and you have no data.

I agree that top gear should not be overnight but do you think 19 weeks is appropriate?

I know many people who have gotten multiple versions of a suitable armor piece and just wait for a better version to drop... because in a week of playing you can easily get an armor set. Maybe that should take longer to get the good yellows?

Increase time to get yellows via drop and reduce a great deal of the rolling agony?

[DamageIncorp]

Let's not get adversarial.
I have rolled ALOT of gear myself over the past year and a half so i have plenty of data and quite a large sample size.
Like i said before, unless the percentages happen to be weighted more heavily toward certain mods (which may very well be the case) it is just mathematics.
Have you ever flipped a coin and got 20 heads in a row?
Is the coin broken....no. however improbable it might be, it is still possible.
I guess we wait and see what the new changes reveal about the weighting.

[Jarlaxle]

I'm so glad Citan disagrees with you.

Now I will say that getting gear overnight is silly.... but so is the 19 week aspect.


On that note thank you as a developer for posting. Could you share any insights as to what might change?

Looks like he's more disagreeing with you than me tbh. Showing probability doesn't mean it'll now make having your desired mod easier to get than before. It just shows you what you're getting yourself into. Sometimes, you just might want to "settle" with a decent mod rather than the super mod in this current system. And do we really need to make an already easy game even easier?

[INXS]

the a-b-a-b-a-c-a-b-a-b-a-b is a true fact i've been rolling gear too for almost 2 years and the system is BROKEN, no matter what you say, unless we got a system were an ability won't reappear in the next 3 or 4 rolls, it's always going to be broken, why are some abilities having a higher probability of appearing? If that's the case then there is no pure randomness, a good example i have a Hammer/Mentalism gear my treasures for the hammer skill are all non electrical, i want to roll and get an electrical treasure, all that piece of gear is going to do is rehash 2-3 treasures which includes the one i'm changing with other non electrical treasure available for that gear, that is wrong and that's how it's broken, maybe Citan not aware of that or he is. Also is it possible to get rid of a BC golem treasure on a piece of gear, nope no matter how many times you roll it it's going to rehash all the golem treasures, what if i don't want a golem treasure on the gear i'm screwed, why because it's not random the system but pre-determined on only a few choices. So this is what actually happens when you roll treasure changing A you get high percentage of either B or C with a very very low for D, E, F, not equal percentage of either B, C, D, E, F, so now let's say you got C you roll again and available are high B or A, that's the way it runs, it's not random and meant to fuck you up royally every time.

[Golliathe]

Also is it possible to get rid of a BC golem treasure on a piece of gear, nope no matter how many times you roll it it's going to rehash all the golem treasures, what if i don't want a golem treasure on the gear i'm screwed, why because it's not random the system but pre-determined on only a few choices. So this is what actually happens when you roll treasure changing A you get high percentage of either B or C with a very very low for D, E, F, not equal percentage of either B, C, D, E, F, so now let's say you got C you roll again and available are high B or A, that's the way it runs, it's not random and meant to fuck you up royally every time.


I feel like some of the rolling patterns are not at all random in that sometimes you get a piece of gear and it rolls on the track of awesome traits (those D, F and G rolls). I got two pieces of yellow gear after the reroll frenzy ended that I fixed in 5-7 rolls. This happened a few times during the free roll week as well. Whenever a piece was not on the A-B-A-B cycle you could probably fix it in about 8-10 rolls.

I have no idea how the game determines the rng. Maybe it's a variation on the game time clock linked to an available number string based on the minute/hour/second . I say this because I have found that if you get an item with the A-B-A-B pattern you stop rolling and come back in ~15-60 minutes and the item won't be on that pattern anymore. This would also make sense in that I have had 3 yellow max enchanted items roll within a very short time period. I'm not saying that's how the game is for sure but given the circumstances I have observed it is a plausible explanation. It is also a simple way to approximate RNG and other games have used the same method.

That being said we should probably not know the details of the rng and how things are decided. I will briefly make a mention of everquest in that people basically found a way to cheat and use packet sniffers to get information they should not have had. Otherwise people will just start waiting for 11:59 on tuesday night to make guaranteed yellow boots.

But it is beyond stupid when you roll an item and get 4x a-b-a-b and then you repair the item only to get more a-b-a-b. All that's really going to do is drive people away from the game. Come back next week for more rolling insanity?



Like i said before, unless the percentages happen to be weighted more heavily toward certain mods (which may very well be the case) it is just mathematics.
Have you ever flipped a coin and got 20 heads in a row?
Is the coin broken....no. however improbable it might be, it is still possible.


As for the comment about flipping a coin the same side multiple times.... I've done it about 10 times in a row via cheating (takes some very skilled hands but you can learn to control the flip of a coin). And no by the way... no bet was made on it someone just wanted to see the trick.

Let's say you've flipped a coin and gotten it to flip the same side 20 times once in your life. How often are you going to have it happen again? This is a much more simple math problem than the one I presented; 2^20 = 1 in 2,097,152. By the way that is the result of 20 flips so multiply those odds by 20 to get the expected outcome where you expect it to happen once (maybe).

But let's talk about our findings. I had at least two pieces of gear with 9 or 10 options go through an A-B-A-B track with only one or two minor variations off that A-B-A-B track for near 30 rolls. This has happened multiple times before I just gave up and learned the lesson of patience and cheaper rerolling.

This same pattern happened to my friend multiple times.

This same rolling pattern has probably happened to IXNS given his comments.

Considering in my case I am using a 10 sided coin and a 9 sided coin (die if you prefer - not that it really matters). These odds work out that it should happen probably once ever in all the items I ever roll in the game. I'm aware it could happen but the odds are near zero that you get only about 4 unique variables to appear in the rolling scheme out of 10 when you are on an A-B-A-B pattern.

The odds drop to almost certainly drop to zero when it happens to me, and my friend and other people multiple times.


Therefore I'm betting on a trick coin somewhere in the mix. In this case I'm betting on an error with the number string for the RNG.

[Celler]

I don't really mind the current system, although I normally just alter a few things here and there normally, I switch skill sets too often.

My only concern is that as game gets nearer completion the whole system will be relatively pointless until near endgame.

Is anyone going to either farm or craft a full set of lvl 70 or 80 gear and then mod it when they are still gaining lvls and will be at lvl 90 in less than a week, I'm unsure.

For us now spending months on end at 50,60 and then 70 it's fine, just unsure if it's the ideal model going forward.

[Ranperre]

I don't really mind the current system, although I normally just alter a few things here and there normally, I switch skill sets too often.

My only concern is that as game gets nearer completion the whole system will be relatively pointless until near endgame.

Is anyone going to either farm or craft a full set of lvl 70 or 80 gear and then mod it when they are still gaining lvls and will be at lvl 90 in less than a week, I'm unsure.

For us now spending months on end at 50,60 and then 70 it's fine, just unsure if it's the ideal model going forward.

Celler makes a valid point. I love the current system. In fact, if I'm leveling two new skills, I'll make one set of gear at 40 and upgrade at 50 or 60. However, this can cost an insane amount of money and I only do it because I enjoy the gambling experience.

I know that Citan's SS showed a lower durability loss and that's great, but it would be nice if lower level gear required less phlog too. Something like 15-20 phlog per roll and a 12.5% durability loss at 40, with a gradual increase in phlog required and durability loss until the current max level is at whatever Citan wants it to be. If I'm going to sink 100-200k* into a good set of level 40 armor, it really should come out damn near perfect.

*15-25 max enchanted plus extra normal crafts for augment hunting. Probably closer to 200k

[Golliathe]

I don't really mind the current system, although I normally just alter a few things here and there normally, I switch skill sets too often.

My only concern is that as game gets nearer completion the whole system will be relatively pointless until near endgame.

Is anyone going to either farm or craft a full set of lvl 70 or 80 gear and then mod it when they are still gaining lvls and will be at lvl 90 in less than a week, I'm unsure.

For us now spending months on end at 50,60 and then 70 it's fine, just unsure if it's the ideal model going forward.

This is the missing unspoken piece that I was thinking but did not vocalize. Thank you.

Is there a timetable for how much xp or time is expected for us to get from 70-80, 80-90, 90-100?

Wearing lvl 70 gear I spent a few hours with buffs and went from 32 in a secondary skill to 46. But when I did it the first time around it took me closer to a week.


Let's pretend for a moment that the previously discussed timetable of 19 weeks to get perfect lvl 70 gear has no flaws from a rng component. That would maybe make sense if getting from 70-80 took 19 weeks. If however you can get from 70-80 in one week then the gear rolling system is a complete joke and is almost completely pointless.

[Golliathe]

I'm still waiting on a math guy to show up. Where are you?

I want to very briefly jump back to our A-B-A-B scenario. Joe Noob rolls his nice lvl 70 gear item that has 2 mods on job A and 3 mods on job B. Lucky for him the job B mods are perfect... so he rolls on the Job A which are both wrong.

He's rolling on 10 possible max powers ( note that some other slots have at least 12 options). The item holds 2 powers at any given time so in essence he's only rolling on 9 powers.

Joe rolls and gets A-B-A-B. Then he repairs the item. Then he gets A-B-A-B.

What are the odds of that happening?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong here but unless I'm mistaken that means each roll is going to be 1/9 to be "correct" with flat odds (which citan indicated is not exactly correct but just for a statistics standpoint let's consider flat odds).

That means the odds of this happening are 1: 4,782,969

I have had this happen at least 5 times in the last two weeks which is statistically impossible given the low number of total rolling events.


Ok now let's consider something a little more difficult (again correct me if I am wrong here). Instead of A-B-A-B-A-B-A-B we are going to throw in one other mod. It doesn't matter which mod, except that it isn't mod "G" the one that Joe wants.

So we're going to have 7 rolls be the same : 1/9. One of the other rolls (order doesn't matter) can be anything but G (leaving 8 possible viable options) so that roll should be 7/9.

That would leave us with odds that look like - 1 : 683,281

[Niph]

I'm still waiting on a math guy to show up. Where are you?

It will be a lot easier to find bugs in the system when the percentages are known. I'm waiting until we have them. And btw, to be convincing you must tell us all rolls, not only those sequences that look buggy.

Edit: it would be very surprising to me if the server code uses a custom RNG. It's more likely using a standard one, tested extensively.

[INXS]

I,m fitting for 2 new skills and wasted some nice phlog rolling trasures, what fun that was. 3 Hammer treasure, Way of Hammer, Thunderstrike, +35% Hammer skill.
1st roll: Thunderstrike > Hurl lightning, 2nd roll +35% Hammer > Thunderstrike, 3rd roll Thunderstrike > + 35% Hammer.

This pretty much sums it up for me how fucked up this system is. NO randomness but pre determined path for every roll, pure manipulative. If i get rid of a treasure why are you giving it back to me? It should be removed or placed on a super low % of reappearing.

[Golliathe]

Let me take a moment to say this game has a way better system about gear/making it/improving it than practically any other game I am familiar with.

The trans/aug system you have come up with is super cool but just needs a little bit of perfecting here and there to make it uniformly balanced.



it would be very surprising to me if the server code uses a custom RNG. It's more likely using a standard one, tested extensively.

My hypothesis is that something is very wrong with the RNG on the rolling and I think I pretty effectively stated why.


If i get rid of a treasure why are you giving it back to me? It should be removed or placed on a super low % of reappearing.

I think we all know you are angry and upset. But after a certain point it just sounds like you are yelling and that doesn't help all that much.

As I said before : I would love to see this game have a randomized but sequential rolling system.

Looking back at the most recent problem I propsed with Joe Noob......

Needing to fix 2 slots on an item with 10 possible powers with 2 currently incorrect it would take a minimum of 2 rolls to fix and a maximum of 16 rolls. That means it would be fixed by a month. Now that might sound too short but remember we also pretended that the other 3 rolls on the item were 100% correct. It may very well take another month or two to fix the other 3 items. That sounds more reasonable to me that a player can fix any one item in about 2 months.


Maybe it can be an option to have sequential rolling at a higher phlog cost? Perhaps it is only taught to the player once they reach 80+ transmutation? This could be the best of both worlds as it gives you room for the future level cap and keeps gear currently harder to fix but makes room for end game gear to be easier (but more expensive) to perfect.


One more thought on transmutation as a whole... could we have a more uniform list of possible mods? Some skills have a median of about 8-9 while others have a median of 10-11. That makes the latter way harder to roll appropriate gear with (ignoring the A-B-A-B monster for a moment).

[Tagamogi]

Looking back at the most recent problem I propsed with Joe Noob......

Needing to fix 2 slots on an item with 10 possible powers with 2 currently incorrect it would take a minimum of 2 rolls to fix and a maximum of 16 rolls.

I think one thing to keep in mind is that if Joe Noob is an actual noob, he might be quite happy with just getting a different mod instead of the most optimal mod possible. When I transmute casually, I'll transmute mods for abilities that I definitely don't want to use and keep the new mod if it does anything for me at all. I can still go from totally useless mod to totally useless mod four times but it doesn't happen all that often. And if it happens, from a casual perspective, it's not all that bad to keep a piece of old gear with better mods for a while until I can repair or, far more likely, find a new upgrade.

Fuzzily, I would like it if I knew what my odds of rolling a particular mod are. Or if there was some way to increase those odds - say use double the phlogiston to improve the odds of rolling a particular mod or even not rolling a mod... It doesn't really feel to me like transmutation is a problem at noob levels, though.

[Loggy]

Getting great gear to have and should never be easy.. Look at EQ took a year or more to get epics. It should be hard but also not impossible. Players who go through 1000 plho for one right mod may be too much , but it is the same as going 0/115 trying to get a yellow armor piece made. It is odds and RNG. I think they shoudl be a better suystem but not so easy as well.

[Golliathe]

I think one thing to keep in mind is that if Joe Noob is an actual noob, he might be quite happy with just getting a different mod instead of the most optimal mod possible. When I transmute casually, I'll transmute mods for abilities that I definitely don't want to use and keep the new mod if it does anything for me at all. I can still go from totally useless mod to totally useless mod four times but it doesn't happen all that often. And if it happens, from a casual perspective, it's not all that bad to keep a piece of old gear with better mods for a while until I can repair or, far more likely, find a new upgrade.

say use double the phlogiston to improve the odds of rolling a particular mod or even not rolling a mod...

That's nice and all but remember that certain mods on items will hurt you. Running an all fire build? Oops! The wrong mod will make Calefaction reduce your damage by 20% (in terms of lost dmg from the usual buff). By the time I was 50 when I didn't have trans/aug gear had to have at least 2 mods that I needed or it got trashed. Certain pieces were 3 mods or gtfo.

If you care remotely about not having crappy powers I think that's probably what most people gravitate towards.

[gchristopher]

One of the Transmutation changes in the next update is a way to see what you're rolling for. I suspect one of the problems people run into is that they're trying to roll something that simply isn't available on that item, for one reason or another -- be it bugs or just misunderstandings of what can show up where. So this will help expose problems. And beyond that, seeing what's going on will let people plan better.

Here's a prototype of what I'm working on. Basically it just pops up a custom "book" screen that lists each possible outcome, and the odds. Eventually we'll wire it into a nicer-looking UI, but for now I just want to make sure the info is available.

https://i.imgur.com/EtOlxoV.png


There are other changes as well that are still in development.

This looks wonderful! I dumped a little over 1K nice phlogistion into one piece during the no-damage event rerolling a single slot unsuccessfully. Having some indication of the expected % chance would be great to know whether or not to complain or file a big report.

[Loggy]

This looks wonderful! I dumped a little over 1K nice phlogistion into one piece during the no-damage event rerolling a single slot unsuccessfully. Having some indication of the expected % chance would be great to know whether or not to complain or file a big report.

Now this I can work with , I like the a hell of alot betetr than the system now :)

[Jarlaxle]

The people who are wanting to make a piece with perfect mods after 1 repair (8 rolls) really aren't understanding what the implications would be making it this easy to attain a perfect piece. I mean I can already get about half my gear to 80-90% of what I want within 8 tries (no wait) with the current system.

[Golliathe]

The people who are wanting to make a piece with perfect mods after 1 repair (8 rolls) really aren't understanding what the implications would be making it this easy to attain a perfect piece.

Who asked for that? As far as I'm aware... nobody did.

According to the picture about 3 posts up we see that everything in that list is on an equal chance. That's not what we have right now.


I dumped a little over 1K nice phlogistion into one piece during the no-damage event rerolling a single slot unsuccessfully. Having some indication of the expected % chance would be great to know whether or not to complain or file a big report.

And here's another person who obviously did not have rng on their side. Over 1k phlog is something like 29 rolls. Please don't tell me you think it is acceptable to spend 29 rolls to get ONE skill you want on a piece of armor (remember he failed to get the skill he wanted).

Lets say he got what he wanted on the 30th roll. That's 7 weeks to fix one stat on the item. Should it take 35-42 weeks to fix an item you want? I think the answer is a resounding no.

[Loggy]

We can all agree the current system does not work well and the fix above we see is a much better option.

[Jarlaxle]

Who asked for that? As far as I'm aware... nobody did.

According to the picture about 3 posts up we see that everything in that list is on an equal chance. That's not what we have right now.



And here's another person who obviously did not have rng on their side. Over 1k phlog is something like 29 rolls. Please don't tell me you think it is acceptable to spend 29 rolls to get ONE skill you want on a piece of armor (remember he failed to get the skill he wanted).

Lets say he got what he wanted on the 30th roll. That's 7 weeks to fix one stat on the item. Should it take 35-42 weeks to fix an item you want? I think the answer is a resounding no.
As far as I'm aware, the chances of rolling each mod will be shown in the next update. Just because the above item has equal chance at each mod does not mean that every mod will be equal chance in the next update. It has already been stated that certain mods have a lower chance than other mods and there is nothing to indicate that the probabilities are being changed (only shown).

[Citan]

This thread is going in weird places...

My screenshot shows mods having an equal chance of being rolled. That's true most of the time, but not always. My point was that you don't know when it's true or not, so the next update will show you. That's what's changing! Not the actual percentages, just the ability to see those percentages.

I want some mods to be super common, and I want a few mods to be hard to get (and I know that upsets some people, but too bad). What isn't acceptable is for some mods to be "secretly" hard to get. I think it should be obvious when you're rolling for something that's rare -- that just seems fair. So the next update will make that clearer.

If you don't think this small change will resolve your problem, you're definitely right! Because I'm hearing symptoms that I simply can't explain right now, so more info is needed. I expect the extra info from the next update will make it a lot easier to figure out what's happening. Then we can discuss things further.