Don't have friends? (Locked, new topic made.)

[Matt]

Re: Don't have friends?

How do you manage 200*99? Once you hit a max stack of an item, you can't deposit anymore into that bank. This means a bank can hold a maximum of 594 grinders.

I feel that not stacking materials/grinders isn't going to change those things you're against, just makes it more inconvenient for people to store the items. I always capped out my chars as soon as I made them (and upgraded weapons too), it just made buying the materials more inconvenient and required me to constantly transfer grinders from a specific bank account...

It's up to you what you do, but that's just my thoughts.

 

[Sodaboy]

Re: Don't have friends?

Oh oops! You're right. I'm smoking crack. Then I might make that change... I totally forgot you can't have multiple stacks of an item in the bank.

Sometimes, I don't think straight. I'll even admit that.

 

[Ryan]

Re: Don't have friends?

Unfortunately, it also has the side effect of giving a team of people who play together 4x the chance to find a particular rare from a monster. (If they're hunting to support each other.) Trying to figure out how that could be balanced.

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but how does it give them 4x the chance? Unless you mean from one particular monster... in that case, couldn't you just have it roll for the rare drop and then roll to see who it goes to?

 

[Sodaboy]

Re: Don't have friends?

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but how does it give them 4x the chance? Unless you mean from one particular monster... in that case, couldn't you just have it roll for the rare drop and then roll to see who it goes to?

I guess that's something we could do.

The way I have it coded now, everybody has a chance for the roll. Meaning it has the potential to drop 4 times. But I guess if any particular person landed on the roll for the rare, we could stop rolling for it.

 

[Ryan]

Re: Don't have friends?

That still has the effect of making the rate 1/4 what it was for any given person, though, which is one heck of a no go in my opinion. :C I guess you have more knowledge about how to do this than I do, though, so I'll let you figure out how to balance it if you implement it!

 

[EvilMag]

Re: Don't have friends?

PSO2 just stopped trading rare items completely, but we can't have that here.

Well they mostly stopped that just to get people to buy premium and use passes.

 

[Aleron Ives]

Re: Don't have friends?

Regarding materials, it's also important to remember that you can totally break a new character by transferring a Mag and a weapon or two, so adding material stacks to the mix doesn't really change anything. If people want to break Normal mode with weapons from Very Hard, they've always had that option. Using materials on top of a level 200 Mag won't make that much difference. You'll 1HKO Boomas either way.

As for the multi-chance problem, there are a few ways you could handle it, I suppose.

1. Divide the rare rate by the number of players. If you're alone, you still get 1x, but you get 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 the chance when you have 2-4 players. This prevents you from getting an advantage, but it also is a severe penalty: if you play with normal drops, you have the regular 1/1 chance to get the item, but this system means you have up to 4x worse odds, as you're paying for the ability to have items drop per-client. The other weakness of this system is that it doesn't influence regular items at all. Having multiple players means you can get up to 4x more materials, grinders, and Techniques per run, which is also pretty cheap.
2. Divide the DAR by the number of players. This prevents you from getting a boost to non-rare drops but gives them the same penalty as rares as a result.
3. Generate rares using the regular rate, but do a random roll to see which client it drops on. This is basically just a simpler implementation that gives you the same penalty as option 1.

Honestly, I don't think it is possible to have this system be balanced while using the original rates. Getting per-client drops just makes the game substantially easier, so you'd have to modify all of the Episode I and II rates from Sega's original values in order to make it more fair. By that point, you might as well just forget about calling Ephinea even sort of a Sega-esque experience.

IMO it would be better to not do this at all, and instead implement a /call system of some kind. When you join a game, you'd get the option to /call one or two rare items, and if that item dropped, you would be the only person who was allowed to pick it up. (If someone else tried to grab the box, the server would send them a message saying that player x has called this item, so you can't take it.) You can safely hunt in teams without worrying about other people ninjaing the stuff you want, but the rates don't get inflated, and placing a limit on the number of drops you can call prevents any one player from hoarding all the drops. (Besides, it's not practical to hunt more than one or two thing in a specific area or quest, so most people aren't going to want to call more than one or two things, anyway.)

@ Soda

I was going to put this in spoiler tags, but I guess you don't have them.

And to Ives who just posted before I hit submit, yes, BB has the 0x60 0xBE packet which is used to add to another client's inventory invisibly. That's how clients know when other clients take things out of the bank, or get quest rewards, and so on.

The implementation we did is to only show the drop on the client side, when he picks it up, the 0x60 0xBE packet is sent to all the other clients so that they know he's had a new item added to his inventory.

Thank you for the explanation. Am I correct in thinking that BB does not require the leader's permission to pick up items off the ground? If so, then doing this type of thing on previous versions would indeed be very difficult. It might be possible to do something like this on previous versions, as they also have packets for withdrawing items from the bank, but you still can't pick up an item from the floor without the leader's permission, and when that's the case, you can't lie to his client and tell him that you took an item out of the bank, since you won't be able to take the item at all without his permission (and he can't give you permission to take an item that doesn't exist on his client).

 

[Matt]

Re: Don't have friends?

/call is a bad idea, people would just make rooms, /call the best items in the area before people join and nobody would play with anyone again if they want those good items. Everyone wants the rare that drops, and while it's proper etiquette to give it the person that called it, if someone desperately wants something they'll just go back to solo hunting, which brings us back to square one.

When it comes to the 4x thing though, I don't think it's a huge thing to worry about, as even without this, people could just split into 4 solos (SIDs depending, though) and sort of make the rate 4x, although now you'll just be able to team up and it would make it a bit easier to drop one specific item together. I don't think it would impact things as much as double even, but I'm probably wrong lol.

 

[Sodaboy]

Re: Don't have friends?

Thank you for the explanation. Am I correct in thinking that BB does not require the leader's permission to pick up items off the ground?

It does not, it only requires a confirmation from the server. Once the server sends the confirmation, the item enters the user's inventory.

Also, I thought of a good way to do the rare drops in a PSO2 style situation.

When a monster dies, there will be a PARTY ROLL for the drop anything rate + the RARE rate.

If the PARTY ROLL succeeds for the DAR, then a party roll occurs for the rare.

If that roll is successful, then every client in the group will get another roll done for it.

Whoever has the highest roll will have the rare item dropped for them.

Anyone who didn't get the item, they roll an individual DAR for random items from the monster. (Rare not included.)

Also, if the party roll for DAR and RARE both fail, everyone rolls for random items from the monster. (Rare not included.)

 

[Aleron Ives]

Re: Don't have friends?

@ Matt

You could restrict /call to only be used on Pioneer 2 and only if you haven't left Pioneer 2 yet, thus forcing you to only call one thing before you go anywhere or do anything (including loading a quest), and considering the number of good items in the game, preventing anyone who joins from grabbing one item doesn't seem to horrible, IMO. The goal of this, AFAIK, is to prevent people from ninjaing that one item you're trying to get, so you can afford to play with other people while you hunt something. If that's the only goal, then it seems to me that such a system accomplishes it without creating nearly as much of a burden as generating drops on a per-client basis. The leader could also have the ability to disable calls altogether, and you could have an extra page of information in the lobby to display each player's call, so if you were hunting x and somebody had already called it, you'd know not to join that team.

 

[Sodaboy]

Re: Don't have friends?

OK, here is my proposed implementation (again). For every monster killed:

1. Everyone's name is put into a hat.
2. The hat is shaken vigorously.
3. Names are drawn from a hat randomly.
4. In the order of names drawn (again, this order is random for every monster killed), they roll for the DAR.
5. The first person who succeeds the DAR roll is the ONLY person who can roll for the rare item.
6. If that person fails the rare roll, they get a common item.
7. If there are any names remaining in the hat, those names will still do a DAR roll, but they can only get common items for succeeding.

A "common" item is anything that isn't the monster's unique drop.

IMHO, this system is fair. Episode 1 & 2 rates won't need to be changed using this and people can still have unique drops in the game.

Of course, you're still going to get people who always want to be the one who rolls on the rare, so they'll still solo, but that's why the party boost stuff will draw more people to play together along with unique drops.

 

[falkenjeff]

Re: Don't have friends?

It does not, it only requires a confirmation from the server. Once the server sends the confirmation, the item enters the user's inventory.

Also, I thought of a good way to do the rare drops in a PSO2 style situation.

When a monster dies, there will be a PARTY ROLL for the drop anything rate + the RARE rate.

If the PARTY ROLL succeeds for the DAR, then a party roll occurs for the rare.

If that roll is successful, then every client in the group will get another roll done for it.

Whoever has the highest roll will have the rare item dropped for them.

Anyone who didn't get the item, they roll an individual DAR for random items from the monster. (Rare not included.)

Also, if the party roll for DAR and RARE both fail, everyone rolls for random items from the monster. (Rare not included.)

Does this mean that in a 4-player game, grinders/materials/PDs/etc will be dropping at 4x the rate (100% rate per client), and rares will be dropping at 1/4th the rate (25% per client)?

I'm personally against this idea, and think you should either keep it vanilla (no special drop system) or just let the rates get inflated (everyone gets their own items/rares at 100% the rate, like you had it initially). Or even just use the call system instead of doing special drops (one call per person). Now if I deviate from my party and solo-clear a room they ignored, my chance for a rare gets cut to 25% (eg: my team ignores the lilies in TTF, but I want the lily drop, so I stay and kill them). And if it drops for them and not me, they will never see it to be able to pick it up. And if some dumbass isn't paying attention, even if no one deviates from the team, he might just walk right past that Psycho Wand that dropped for him, never picking it up.

I'll probably quit or just keep locking myself in solo rooms even more with this change. Even in my climb to ultimate, there was one TTF run in one of the lower difficulties where I grabbed an angry fist and brave knuckle off the floor in the room right before the boss. I had deviated from my team (probably to kill the shark to unlock the boss), and they had killed the monsters and rushed through the boss door, without even looking at the drops. I walked through the room, grabbed the 2 red boxes that they had completely ignored, and then walked to the boss teleporter where they were waiting for me.

Your new system will punish me for playing with stupid people (they might not even pick it up so I can trade them for it if I want it), and for not 100% sticking together 100% of the time. If you NEED to put in a special system so rates don't get inflated, use the call system. At least then, if a red box drops and someone ignores it, I can be like "bro come pick up your psycho wand, it just dropped from these lilies you ignored". And all the random rares no ones cares enough to call will be able to be picked up by the people who actually pay attention.

League of Legends exists. There's no reason for me to play here if you fuck up the PSO experience. Parties don't always stick together for every single monster kill, and even when they're together some people are too lazy to rotate their camera and check drops. I'm not going to play in a party with 3 dumbasses if my rare rate gets cut to a quarter. Just wait till that Red Ring drops, but the guy who it dropped for does "/lobby" or disconnects before he can pick it up (or OR OR OR! It drops for the fucking DEAD person and they return to pioneer 2 instead of waiting for a revive)

 

[Sodaboy]

Re: Don't have friends?

Well, I can have a toggle to use the old system, so don't q_q so hard. If you're the leader, you'll have the option to use the old system using a command.

 

[falkenjeff]

Re: Don't have friends?

Well, I can have a toggle to use the old system, so don't q_q so hard. If you're the leader, you'll have the option to use the old system using a command.

Why not just use a /call system?

Why mess with the way things drop in the game?

I'm not always going to be the leader. Well, unless I never join anyone else's game ever, of course. Which looks like it might be the case.

EDIT: I over-reacted. I'm not going to quit. I removed my um, over-reaction.

 

[Ryan]

Re: Don't have friends?

Why not just use a /call system?

Because, as mentioned previously, having someone /call one or two god tier items would completely break it. Who wants to hunt items with a party if all the good things to hunt are already called?

I haven't cared at all about the changes made to the drop rates and whatnot, but I think both of these ideas (drops per player and a /call system) are completely unnecessary. Why not just keep things the way they are? If you're worried about people stealing your drops, play with your friends or people who you trust not to steal them.

edit for clarity:
Things I think are good changes despite being non vanilla: slight increases to drop rates with more players in the game (encourages cooperation in general), lucky days (encourages cooperation between specific players, i.e. the "lucky" players of the day)
Things I think could maybe be good, but I'm not sold on yet: adjustments to quest drop rates. I get that people spamming a certain quest to get a certain enemy to get a certain drop is lame and boring, but we have monster finding guides for a reason. Picking a quest to get a drop has been a part of PSO for me since GC, and I don't think that should be changed.
Things I think are bad and will never, ever be good: Any kind of alterations to what drops an individual player can get in a party. This completely changes (and, in my opinion, ruins) the entire multiplayer experience.

EDIT x2 COMBO: I'm COMPLETELY okay with the per-player drop system being an option, but I don't think it should be the default for the room. If you make it into a toggle, the original system should absolutely be the default.

 

[Mylandra]

Re: Don't have friends?

I can already see this feature inflating the server with afk players just to boost drop rate.
This makes the server show a higher player count, awesome.

 

[falkenjeff]

Re: Don't have friends?

Why not just use a /call system?

Because, as mentioned previously, having someone /call one or two god tier items would completely break it. Who wants to hunt items with a party if all the good things to hunt are already called?

I haven't cared at all about the changes made to the drop rates and whatnot, but I think both of these ideas (drops per player and a /call system) are completely unnecessary. Why not just keep things the way they are? If you're worried about people stealing your drops, play with your friends or people who you trust not to steal them.

People will usually only call the items they care about (especially if you limit it to ONE per person).

If someone is hunting the same item as you, don't play with them? If they called it just to call it because they're not hunting anything, but don't actually care, then ask them to call something else?

It has worked fine in other versions of the game (where it was a call/honor system, with no server code to support it)

EDIT: the only reason I'm suggesting a call system is because I'm 99% sure Soda isn't going to leave it vanilla. He's going to do SOMETHING. Might as well be something that makes sense, and at least had SOME sort of presence in the previous versions of the game.

 

[Ryan]

Re: Don't have friends?

It has worked fine in other versions of the game (where it was a call/honor system, with no server code to support it)

That's completely different and it already works fine. Why change the game when you already have people who divvy up items among themselves on an honor system anyway?

 

[falkenjeff]

Re: Don't have friends?

It has worked fine in other versions of the game (where it was a call/honor system, with no server code to support it)

That's completely different and it already works fine. Why change the game when you already have people who divvy up items among themselves on an honor system anyway?

I edited: because Soda IS going to change it. So it might as well be something that makes sense, and not a stupid 25% drop system where everyone gets their own drops.

If he wasn't going to change it, we wouldn't be in this situation right now at all, would we?

 

[Ryan]

Re: Don't have friends?

I edited: because Soda IS going to change it. So it might as well be something that makes sense, and not a stupid 25% drop system where everyone gets their own drops.

If he wasn't going to change it, we wouldn't be in this situation right now at all, would we?

IIRC Soda's gone back on things before because they were sudden and unwelcome changes, so I wouldn't be surprised if he did it again... I'm against the 25% drop system, but I don't care if other people are able to use it if they so choose. I just think that it should be an opt-in sort of deal, where they have to turn it on when they create a game as opposed to anyone who wants to play normally having to turn it off when they create a game.