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Post by mrsarfa on Oct 21, 2014 19:34:56 GMT -5
This probably is just the "luck of the dice", as it were, but I've noticed that items tend to come in bunches.
My first time through Ep. 1, I kept getting stealth armor drops in the Torrent Watershed, all of which were worse than the armor that Tam was wearing at the time. I think I got to Riven Field with five stealth armors to sell.
Now I'm in Torrent Watershed again with a new group and I keep getting Oxenbone Bows. The first one was great, since it's marginally better than the Troll quest reward bow that Selen was using, but I'm now the proud owner of two more. More gold once I get to Riven Field, I guess.
Call me crazy, but I feel like there's something fishy with the drop rates -- certain games tend to get bunches of the same item.
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Post by slayernz on Oct 21, 2014 19:54:53 GMT -5
It's one of those things where randomness doesn't really seem so random. I agree with you, mrsarfa in that you tend to get lots and lots of the same items. I think it would really become visible if you had automatic sorting of items because you'd suddenly see clumps of "Sages Bands" and "cloaks of the boar", etc. That's what I seemed to have picked up in the latest run for E1 |
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Post by Cory Trese on Oct 22, 2014 9:08:13 GMT -5
I've moved this out of Bug Reports -- there isn't a bug here.
When we first built the pre-alpha release of HoS, we intended to do static drops -- each chest and monster would provide a designer-elected item, and a percentage possibility for a "rare" drop.
After several hundred pre-alpha games in Cellet void we realized this was boring -- every group finished with the same (or nearly the same) gear and it required a lot of design work (attaching items to chests and monsters) to get right.
We then set about to research RPG drop systems across the genre, and find one that would provide variation and authoring that wasn't so time-intensive. We knew we needed a solution, one that would work with the Heroes of Steel budget (about 10% of an average budget for the scope we wanted to build.)
The current drop system in Heroes of Steel borrows heavily from several popular titles and the design from several well known RPG series. Items are organized into drop groups, and each drop group has bands for common, rare and very rare.
When you activate a drop in Heroes of Steel, the game looks up which drop group you should be in. It then rolls dice to select the band (common, rare, very rare) and within that band, it then rolls more dice to determine which specific item.
In the drop group containing "Oxenbone Bow (Bow at Level 14)" contains 33 items, 16 of which are common, 10 are rare and 7 are very rare.
Luckily for me, this particular system is very easy to evaluate. There exists a developer test that can open several hundred chests a minute and output a results matrix comparing drops to group weights.
As a result of the HEAVY testing this system has taken, at almost every step of the process, I'm very confident that their isn't a bug.
Could the system have been better? Sure, it certainly could have been designed to use punch lists, a cached list of previous drops or even the original design (with an author who just did drop management.) I'm not arguing that it's perfect -- it's a random drop generator and at times, it will appear to just that -- random.
If you've ever seen Andrew play craps you'll agree, even 2 random dice can produce an 11 five times in a row =)
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Post by fallen on Oct 22, 2014 9:37:15 GMT -5
Agreed. You can haz mind power over dice. As slayernz said, this is of randomness producing something that looks non-random. Our brains are pattern finding machines. |
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Post by tenbsmith on Oct 22, 2014 10:06:12 GMT -5
I'd noticed getting a bunch of the same item in row too. I think this is the result of the Drop Groups--which limit the list of items you might receive--and the more frequent drops in Episode 1 that were instituted a month or so ago.
This definitely leads to more items to sell back in town.
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Post by mrsarfa on Oct 22, 2014 11:15:54 GMT -5
Thanks for the detailed explanation, Cory Trese. It's nice to take a peek behind the curtain occasionally.  Since I posted yesterday, I've picked up two more oxenbone bows in the Torrent Watershed.  At least I know why now. I also got a Recurved bow, which I decided to use in place of the Oxenbone, trading damage for accuracy. I realized after thinking about it more last night that the stream of stealth armor I got was in Red Hill Keep (I think) and not Torrent Watershed. Anyway, thanks again! |
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Post by vdx on Oct 27, 2014 14:37:19 GMT -5
I used to get disappointed with the 11th* or 12th repeat item. Now, I just view the found item is terms of gold. I didn't get a 15th flat bow, I got a few hundred gold. It does wonders with how one feels about surplus items. (*hyperbole)
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Post by mrsarfa on Oct 27, 2014 15:39:12 GMT -5
I used to get disappointed with the 11th* or 12th repeat item. Now, I just view the found item is terms of gold. I didn't get a 15th flat bow, I got a few hundred gold. It does wonders with how one feels about surplus items. (*hyperbole) That's a good way of thinking about it. I must say, after killing the Baron, all of the Stealth Sheathes and Fox's Overcoats (?) that I had picked up did net me a pretty penny. After selling all my stuff, I think I had 17k gold, about 7k of which I spent on SP pots. |
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At least I know why now.