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  1. #21
    sandpants's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by War Viper 1337 Go to original post
    This makes absolutely no sense. What is 100S and 800F? 100 successful rolls and 800 failure rolls? This is not what this law is trying to quantify. The exact reason for this law is too allow closer scrutiny of their design
    And what would be the point of those numbers without the information of how they work in the background?
    That will just open the system up to falsify both proof and accusations. Neither is a healthy form of scrutiny and it will ultimately help no one.

    If you dont understand the implications of the short example I made up then that's exactly the point I am trying to bring up. If the developers publish that the chance for something is 20% and you instead get 80 consecutive failures wouldn't you be inclined to complain? Except you'd have little credibility because you don't really know what this 20% reflects...
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  2. #22
    Force58's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by M0J033 Go to original post
    Each and every one of us already have the ability to hold them accountable, by not opening our wallets in the first place.

    The "sheep" are the one's who continue to reward greedy behaviour by giving their money away on pointless pre-orders, Season Passes, and lacklustre DLCs. Sure, we complain on the forums, but are then more than willing to believe the very next sales pitch.

    But no, nobody wants to take personal responsibility for these things anymore.

    Apparently, it's easier to remain a sheep and continue to spend money irresponsibly, while hoping/expecting/demanding that some overseeing body will enact legislation to protect us from ourselves.
    What're you talking about? It's individuals personal choice to pre-order games that they enjoy. Why do you call them "sheep". I've certainly gotten my money's worth out of The Division based on the hours I've played vs the $90 I spent on it. Calling people sheep for buying season passes, DLC's, or games in general makes no sense. Sure, game companies are greedy now-a-days that we have the internet for them to use to push those items to us, but that's just the way it is in the 21st century, sorry to break that to you. I've got plenty of retirement funds on hand and I pre-order certain game to ensure I have them at my disposal on the day they come out. Am I a sheep for that??? My buying a game, DLC or season pass isn't irresponsible. If I buy a dud game that's on me, nobody else. I'm not blaming the game company or anybody else. What I've learned to do is review a game before its bought, unless, I've played games from the dev before or its a follow-on.

    Stop and think about it for a minute. How many games have you bought where you regret buying them, or to say that you didn't get your money's worth??? And don't come on here and rattle off a ton of games that you actually played and then say they sucked. I can honestly only name 1 or 2 games that totally blew after I played them, maybe only one. And that one was one I knew about ahead of time and I only bought it to get the 1,000 XP for it within 2 minutes of playing it (we all know what that game is, hahahaha).
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  3. #23
    This is terrible news if it's real. Drop rates in general is fine, but percentages of every possible outcome is just a bunch of "busy work" that developers will have to spend time and effort on (and would also harm the future of RNG rolled loot in future game titles). "Busy work" cuts into actual meaningful development time. If they allow generalization, it'd be a lot more viable (ie "and a 5% chance of 500-1000 of stat 'A') is generalized, while actual all possible outcomes would have to list that 5% chance of stat 'A' 500 different times for each possible outcome of 500-1000. We'd end up getting so much useless junk data...talking millions of lines of reports. Lots of busy work, indeed...enough to persuade future developments to never include RNG at all and instead only do pre-determined items (which takes time and effort, so far less actual items in the game).
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  4. #24
    Cons72's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by M0J033 Go to original post
    lol

    It's a video game. None of the loot in it has any real value whatsoever other what we, as individuals, assign to it.

    The only measure of whether or not a game is actually "worth your time" should be if you enjoy the experience of playing it, or you don't.
    Irrelevant in regards to the law. Even the virtual items in the game have an intrinsic value, otherwise there would be no charge to obtain them. Doesn't matter if you are paying for a lottery ticket, putting money in a slot machine, or buying a raffle ticket to win a dinner with Bugs Bunny, if you are paying at a chance to obtain something, then gambling regulations generally come into effect.

    If current laws do not cover gambling on virtual rewards, it is only because the technical language does not cover it, as this form of gambling was not anticipated. Language will soon catch up with behavior. That is the way government works.
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  5. #25
    Originally Posted by sandpants Go to original post
    And what would be the point of those numbers without the information of how they work in the background?
    That will just open the system up to falsify both proof and accusations. Neither is a healthy form of scrutiny and it will ultimately help no one.

    If you dont understand the implications of the short example I made up then that's exactly the point I am trying to bring up. If the developers publish that the chance for something is 20% and you instead get 80 consecutive failures wouldn't you be inclined to complain? Except you'd have little credibility because you don't really know what this 20% reflects...
    doesn't matter what the numbers are in the background as long we get their final results. You can then go back and calculate your own math about how it all works behind the scenes but that is kind of pointless if you have what the expected end result is going to be. The success and failure example is a bad analogy because what is a good roll for one person is bad for someone else. What is more interesting here is seeing how developers are tuning their games to get you hooked on pulling that virtual slot machine lever over and over again. Many people are hooked on that high of getting that god roll item and it has become a widespread problem in the industry because it not a healthy way to run a game. I'm not saying all games should be easy and we get all the items we want right away but there is some deceptive stuff going on behind the scenes that we are not always aware of.
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  6. #26
    Cons72's Avatar Senior Member
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  7. #27
    I play games to have fun and I certainly didn't buy TD because I wanted to shoot a cad in a virtual world, and to call gaming gambling is just laughable. This law is plain stupid just like most laws, I couldn't care less if they told me I have 0.4% chance to get a certain gun in TD2 I'll buy it because I enjoy the game and the loot is the least of my priorities.
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  8. #28
    sandpants's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by War Viper 1337 Go to original post
    snip
    This is naive.

    The example represents drop rates, not rolls.

    You don't have to look far to find evidence of what I am describing - this forum alone had 10s of threads about people describing their experience with drop distribution, most notably the enormous swings in drop success and failure. Some people get 3 copies of Skulls MC gloves, other fail to retrieve a Barrets chest piece over 100s of Lexington runs.

    This alone demonstrates that what people really pay attention to in practice is not the statistical chance of the occurrence, but the practical occurrence rate, typically over a very small sample size. And whilst you could, as you said, do the math backwards and follow a certain level of confidence to "scale" the occurrence rates, they are only estimates, and really poor ones at that.

    It baffles me that you neglect the importance of this. You cannot trivialize it as a simple matter of "getting the appropriate final results", because publishing the statistical occurrence of drops will not prevent people from posting threads on the forums claiming "I ran X 10 times and didn't get 2 items WTF".

    Ever sat through an MMO forum where they had skill success rates and people have widely differing opinions on whether a skills success rate is either too high or too low? This is the problem and this law doesn't fix the problem, only opens up an opportunity to seriously **** everything up.
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  9. #29
    Originally Posted by War Viper 1337 Go to original post
    This makes absolutely no sense. What is 100S and 800F? 100 successful rolls and 800 failure rolls? This is not what this law is trying to quantify. The exact reason for this law is too allow closer scrutiny of their design because it is in essence a form of gambling we are dealing with here and that not something we should take lightly. Like I have said game developers are finding more and more ways to get us to open our wallets and that is the only thing they care about. Fun is a purely a secondary factor and it only has to be high enough to keep enough people that are willing to open their wallets.
    If they've implemented these laws under gambling statutes, it would only apply to purchased additional items. It would never apply to items within the game that you've already purchased as you've given monetary consideration in return for a good, the game you're playing. It'll never be upheld in court for pure drop rates over time.
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  10. #30
    Originally Posted by VigoDerKarpate Go to original post
    Well, thank god some countries are smart enough to realize the world doesn't circle around you only.
    Thank God I don't live in these stupid countries.
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