Seriously. This is stupid.
Fix the RNG on minerals
Thu, 05/12/2011 - 12:52
Thu, 05/12/2011 - 14:35
#2
I think that size and
I think that size and frequency are bigger factors over favorite color of crystal. With a spread like that, it's hard to suggest that this is anything other than the actual distribution of crystals. The ratios of each stratum are pretty much identical!
Whether this is because the way stratum generate crystals is heavily skewed, or the playerbase behavior is skewed (towards everyone doing endless Jelly King runs) only the Devs would know.
Thu, 05/12/2011 - 16:35
#3
SirNiko is correct
The RNG seems to be way off. Even if we assume people pick minerals based on their "favorite color," there is no way that it accounts for a 20% statistic spread. It looks to me that ZD's assumption on the RNG would be a better assumption toward the problem than "favorite color."
By the way, I completely stopped selling minerals about a week or two ago, so I'm stocked up, and I'm betting if I look at my inventory, the minerals will have the same statistic spread problem (and I do choose the biggest mineral). The only time I will ever choose 1 over the other (in the same size) is I refuse purple over the other colors.
Thu, 05/12/2011 - 22:59
#4
"People choose minerals based
"People choose minerals based on what colors they like. The vast majority of players do not know, and will never care to know, what different minerals do."
If that's true, than going by what people tend to choose as their player color, we should be seeing blues and reds by an overwhelming margin. Purple is not often a pick for somebody's favorite color, and yet it's number 2 here.
What people are actually doing is that they're grabbing the largest crystals they can, because this gives them more crowns, and then they're autoselling those minerals. Anytime I group with people, they're more likely to brag about the size of the mineral they're carrying over what color the mineral happens to be.
Study the numbers between those top two gates for a moment. Go to any other gate being constructed right now. It all seems to be the same. Blue > Purple > Red > Yellow > Green. And the ratios are pretty much identical. We're getting shock gate after shock gate. Shock every day and every night. The problem has to be in whatever seed that Three Rings is using right now. Their RNG is being rolled soooo often that the bias in the seed is pretty apparent. They either need to pick a better seed or set it so that the seed is randomized every day or so.
Fri, 05/13/2011 - 02:52
#5
This has nothing to do with RNG.
This has nothing to do with RNG.
What minerals you find in a level, depends on what minerals were used to generate that level. The random in this is very small, it's mostly just predetermined. Thus if all/most levels are the same, we end up in a vicious circle. If all levels are different, in the long run we'd probably end up with what most people play.
It used to work pretty well in the preview, because we had a smaller playerbase (more influence on the gates, per player) and most people were pretty involved so communication about gate construction was going well, despite the fact that we had far less insight in the process than we do now.
Right now there's just no way to fight the hoard. My favourite colours to pick up are Red, Yellow, Blue, in that order. But if Green and Purple are bigger, I pick those up. Hey, crowns are crowns. I can dump them in a stratum that I'm not going to run, saving the interesting colours for interesting strata. But if lots of people just auto sell, there's no way you can influence what a stratum becomes.
Yes, there is the boost feature, but it's overpriced. You pay an amount of crowns equal to the remaining number of minerals to be deposited. As if all minerals from that moment on will be of the colour you boosted. Well they won't. Otherwise boosting the last 10k minerals or so would be worth it. But it's not.
Since we're on the Suggestions forum (although this thread looks more like a rant than a suggestion of any kind): I suggest allowing us to boost minerals with limited amounts of crowns. So I should be able to put 10k on lowering the payout for Green (Valestone) and 10k on lowering the payout for Purple (Dark Matter). Those are the anti colours for my favourite themes. 20k Crowns is quite a reasonable investment and if my knowledge of gate creation is any good, I think this would have the effect I intend. It would lower the payout on the next 10k Green and 10k Purple that get deposited in that stratum. Auto Sell would then hopefully spread those Green and Purple over the next stratum as well (since it gives equal price), giving me influence for my invested crowns.
Vicious circle broken. Problem solved?
Fri, 05/13/2011 - 03:07
#6
Actually, I mentioned this
Actually, I mentioned this before and that picture is effin ridiculous, I'M SICK OF SHOCK.
Ahem, players will always pick the BIGGEST mineral, no matter what. Color isn't a factor here it's size, and it's because that little dweeboid tells you to go for the big ones.
Also another thing I noticed with auto sell is that say I'm on the lowest stratum floors 25-w/e or w/e and I hit auto sell, it doesn't go to the one I highlighted ooooh no it goes to the stratum that has the most crown output. So even if players are selecting different floors and autosellling, it will still go to the one with the + w/e in crowns that's higher then all the other ones.
^Severe problem.
Fri, 05/13/2011 - 07:31
#7
How about this? The two
How about this? The two colors that were the highest in making a certain stratum should be less common in that stratum and its anti color should be more prevalent. At the very least, this would prevent constant shock gates.
Fri, 05/13/2011 - 07:46
#8
I've been seeing so many
I've been seeing so many large Moonstone's lately, probably has something to do with it.
Fri, 05/13/2011 - 08:01
#9
@grinningCat
It would, as long as people are running the shock strata. In general, it would encourage whatever combination is opposed to the current popular strata. I expect we'd initially get a lot of Fiend gates, due to the massive popularity of the Jelly Palace. Jelly strata runs would produce higher amounts of Fiend-boosting red and low amounts of anti-Fiend yellow, and no other theme would get a double boost from the shift. Of course, it would change once the Fiend gates rotated in, but as long as Jelly Palace is constant and popular it would drive the themes.
A related idea would be to have the distribution dynamically change to shift away from the current active strata. This would tend to create duplicate strata in upcoming tiers, however — just as we're seeing now, so maybe they're already doing this. It would certainly explain the issue.
Another alternative would be to base it on minerals invested in upcoming gates. This actually directly works against repetition: A filled Shock stratum would reduce how often blue and purple show up and increase the green in the world. This is the best I can come up with at the moment, but it does tend to create patterns; Shock would be followed by Beast, for instance.
Fri, 05/13/2011 - 08:08
#10
Fiend themes are a small
Fiend themes are a small price to pay. Besides, we can always avoid Devilish Drudgeries by waiting for them to switch out. Unless it's a row filled completely with Devilish Drudgery. That would suck.
For one thing, I tend to forget to sell my minerals so most of the time they get up to the high fifties in my inventory before I sell them all off.
Fri, 05/13/2011 - 08:18
#11
Avoiding wouldn't help.
The point is that in order to avoid the Fiend theme, people would have to run them. If everyone just avoided all the Fiend gates, then they'd keep coming until they were unavoidable. As long as certain themes are more popular, those themes would influence what is common.
Fri, 05/13/2011 - 09:25
#12
power to the people
Any automated solution is going to have a predictable outcome. That means: gates are always going to come in a certain pattern as long as the system has the biggest influence over gate creation.
This is why I keep suggesting that they fix the real issue: players should be able to influence gate creation more directly. Make it possible to invest relatively small amounts of crowns with good returns, as opposed to the monstrous amounts of crowns needed right now without any indications of whether it will pay off at all.
Fri, 05/13/2011 - 09:45
#13
Check out my suggestion here
Check out my suggestion here for another way to increase influence: count only the deliberately-invested minerals. It would also work well with whatever boosting system they decide to use. My suggestion was just the best automated weighting system I could think of; flat distribution works fine as long as the players have enough influence to keep it from being effectively random.
People choose minerals based on what colors they like. The vast majority of players do not know, and will never care to know, what different minerals do.