How to fix Toram (And solve all MMORPG's biggest grind problem)

I agree. Just because you say something, does not mean it is sound. That is why in my initial response to you, I pointed out several unsound things you said and explained why they are not sound. Similarly, just saying something, "is not sound," or "can't be compared," doesn't make it so.

You can say, "you can't compare apples to oranges," all day. I will still say, they are fruit, grow on trees, have curved surfaces, and are edible. In terms of RNG and a Paycheck: there is time and effort expended, at the end of which you recieve a payout. It doesn't matter what you say, the comparison will be there regardless.

No one here is trying to make the case that a fantasy mmorpg should replicate reality. What about an example of a battle against an enraged Minotaur replicates reality?

 

While I agree that rare drops like Xtals and Weapons (which should be made relevant again, instead of player crafted weapons) are regarded as treasures, and are expected to fetch a lot of money, should remain rare drops.

However, the problem lies with 'farming' items. If you're farming something, in my opinion, you should get at least one guaranteed drop mechanic.
Unlike Albion Online, which features collecting items from trees/rocks/cotton, etc; farming in Toram online is based entirely around drops, all of which are RNG.

MOST of the drops are useless, and not even worth processing because they provide little Material points. While certain furniture uses those drops, it's relatively useless because it offers no combat value other than mostly decoration. Whereas useful drops like Hematite, Mithril ore, Mana points, Orichalcum, etc, are the RARE drops in the loot table of their respective drops.

Once they may have been relevant because you could craft all the different weapons/ Armour, but with the rise of player crafted weapons, weaker weapons rarely get crafted, other than for proficiency. This leads to a major part of the item database unused, just as Kaisyl mentioned.

I can mention the important items:

• Hematite
• Mithril Ore
• Summer shells
• Anti Degradation (and it's requirement Mino skin, but because of Titeres, we don't require latter for the moment)
• Orichalcum Ore
• High Purity Orichalcum
• Parasite/Nightmare crystals (Not anymore with new level cap tho)
• The optimal beast mat
• The optimal Medicine mat
• The optimal Metal mat
• The optimal Cloth mat
• Flower Nectar
• Energy bottles
• The specific materials mentioned in proficiency leveling guides.

I don't think I would collect anything else as a means of earning spina. There are hundreds of items, but we use very little of them, the rare ones, and those themselves have low rates to spend 20 mins on for 2-3 stacks. You can't even automate farming, so it feels dull to stare at the same few frames (Storm - MP charge - maximizer) for an hour.

And with more and more new players, the price of items keeps falling and the wasted time feels even more wasted.

I would love PET farming - now that pets give you random items, I would love if there was a feature to get loads of the same monster in your land and they would 'shed their skin' to give you items periodically when you visit your land. That would ease stuff a bit.

 

Actually your Idea about guaranteed drop is so bad, its like killing the fun of hunting itself, but some of your ideas are also good at the same time like the new mechanics but instead of guaranteed drop, why not an increased drop instead. Since the only ranking is breaker, attacker, tank and support, why not add more so other player class weapon setup works too, breaking parts is one of the mechanic of making already good, but unfortunately, xtals have super low droprate, but then there are gems w/c is one of the way of asobimo of getting profit. . Also its a bit biased because not all of us hates grinding, other players tend to like grindings too. Grinding is part of the game, if we get rid of it, then what will player do? , hunt monsters they already had drops since is sure guaranteed, its like getting rid of grinding kills the fun, current item mechanics is already good, they just need to add more flavors to itso it wont be repetitive and boring

 

Well that would be a good compromise, at least if the drop rate is greatly boosted when those requirements are met.

I believe in guaranteeing the drop once a requirement is met because high damage is a guarantee once you have your equipment setup. At late game, you have everyone repeatedly spamming a single boss for hours to get a single item in which the only factor under your total control is the clear time.

My suggestion was something like this:
> Mochelo has fur in its drop table.
> Having mochelo's fur in a boss fight against say... Tyrant Machina whilst under the effect of brave aura and the consumable item [supplement], you are guaranteed to obtain tyrant mask.

Stuff like xtals would require a rank 1 position in team followed by highest difficulty setting and many consumable type requirements.

At least change it so that players have more control over things like that.

 

I think a nice change would be if event equipment was achievement based. „Kill the event boss 100 times“, „Kill the event boss in under 2 minutes“, „Deplete his 2nd life bar in less than 10 seconds“ and stuff like that. And the really good equipment would be locked behind kill times that actually require a really good team/strategy.

 

Once they do that the prices will be more depleted tbh. Ppl will start farming that single boss again and again for xtal if its requirement type then sell it cheaper and cheaper. Like what happened in mino skin. It got over run by bots.

RNG is part of mmorpg for a very long time now and its the first time i see someone complain about it. Only the p2w games use the 'daily open box" daily money spend etc..

If u dont like rng maybe your playing the wrong genre.
Every mmorpgs strong suit is the grind system.

Others only use auto battle system which sux
Others just use pure p2w to have s certain item.

I understand why toram looks so grindy cuz it has no auto battle system like every other games out there.

 

Actually there are much more things in toram than just a matter of getting items. Playing with your friends (in real life, not some strangers you meet in the game) will make you more enjoying the game. You don't always have to grind with them, you can just simply chat with them, build your land together, explore fashion/cosplay, or anything. And also, in MMO type game, if anyone can easily get what they want, some of the players will quit since maybe they feel what they do, anyone else can do it too so what is the point then? If you find the game is not really rewarding anymore, play other type of games or maybe do another activities. You can also try to play single player RPG games that focus on story and exploration with some to no grinding at all.

 

Spoiler: Friends

 

FYI I'm not comparing how I use my time into everyone else. I'm well aware that other people had different reasons of why they play games. That's why I only use I & my in every sentence of my comment, so u don't need to teach me about that sort of thing . I'm just sharing my own opinion, on why I can't imagine comparing a game into a real life job like u do.

 

Well, yes. The age old condition of mmorpgs are the grind system but that was when tab targeting was also the only method of gameplay along with the days of standing there and taking attacks or even the condition of everyone having enough HP to tank through non-tank damage unlike here where you can survive with 2k hp at lv200. Provided you have good timing.

What I'm saying is that with all this innovation, it means nothing if it still falls back to an archaic system like rng drops. What good intentions were brought on by:
- Removing the MP bar in favour of a combo bar for different style mp management
- Implementing manual guard and evasion for reducing reliance on HP gear and VIT for alternative methods of survival
- Implementing basic behavioural patterns (ex: Gravicep) so that alternative playstyles are viable
- Extremely customizable gameplay (full freedom of stats, skills and equipment design)

...all boils down to simply removing archaic weights on player's dps limits. That's all that really happened when you look back at toram's history.

Regarding the problem with bots... You are right and also wrong. Keep in mind what my initial suggestion is that you need to meet requirements. Some of these are team required, others are consumable required. What this does is basically 'riptide' the economy of the game creating a market for items which were otherwise not needed before, creating team roles which were otherwise not needed before in favour of more dps. A bot won't be able to reliably meet those requirements and even if they do, the way bosses are designed in this game, bots would be extremely hard pressed to even survive against for item drop requirements that have 4 persons as a team requirement with 1 aura user, one person needing to be a normal attacker, one person needing to be capable of exceeding a certain amount of damage and the last being a rapid enough clear time. It doesn't eliminate bot use but NO ONE can reliable program a bot for that in this game. What they need instead is a self learning AI.

With the new market for items becoming available to meet requirements, you basically do two things as prominent factors
1) Create a stable market. The prices of items will never fall below a certain value because it will always have a demand for it at end game. You need boss colon helm app for kuzto mask to drop later in the game for eg. An example of this already being implemented is the weakness talisman which when implemented resulted in a population surge at boss colon which brings me to...
2) All bosses will have some kind of popularity and not just the later game or more recently added ones.

 

Thats too much computing power and wont be easily implemented,as i said even without bots sure drop = market price will also go down.
Theres alot of players in toram.

The thing with that teamplay system is macro. Computer with macro and good sync will do it's trick lmao a simple cast of a skill is easy in boss like mino and boss colon as u said. 4 emulator with macros are easily obtainable tbh.

Even if theres an equip requirement the sure drop system is still a flaw when it come to market.

Simple law of supply and demand
If demand = supply= normal price
If demand>supply = high price
If demand<supply =low price

If theres always a surplus of items even if it has high demand price will always be low(best example ss)

Also devs doesnt have any contribution on the market prices. The players are the one whose giving the prices. You wont get the equilibrium of prices if you dont know how much does it really worth

 

Well, no it's not too much computing power to create an item drop matrix system, it simply requires some ingenuity. The code for it is extremely simple to the point where it's mostly just a bunch of 'if', 'switch' or 'do while, if' statements and loop checks.

RNG systems can actually use more computational power but again, this all falls on the ingenuity of the programmers and how the core of the game is designed with reference to drops. I can say for sure with would take QUITE a while given how large toram's item database currently is so it definitely wont be happening soon even if they begin the project unless they roll it out in phases.

Item requirements prevent the use of simple macros to farm bosses in long term which is what bots are mainly used for.
Currently, minoskin drops guarenteed when you kill minotaur on ultimate difficulty and with finale mage, you can easily program a bot to automate the skin farming process.
What item requirements can do is:
- Needing a specific item in inventory for you to guarantee getting the skin, you get three 'mino flayers' from accepting lefina's quest or you can farm them from a miniboss in game.
- Needing to not exceed a certain amount of damage, automatically removes finale 1hko for minoskin
- Needing to not receive damage during battle. This kills bots, not players.

Keep in mind that mino skin is a quest item and should need some kind of challenge to obtain.

The economic flaw in sure drop is observed only when you look at the item itself.
Eg: Looking at Roga Xtal
When players meet the requirements for the xtal to drop, they can farm it almost endlessly causing a price drop on that item specifically, lowering the demand for it over time.

That's for that item alone.

Say you have the item matrix, with a surplus of roga xtals, it can be an equipment requirement for a next boss, eg: iconos to obtain it's xtal upgrade along with its specific set of alternative requirements which are consumeable or otherwise. The alternative requirements can then also be appended to other bosses or even minibosses so that they can guarantee a certain drop item. This is what I mean by matrix and what it does is reallocate the economic demand to balance it for all levels of gameplay (beginner, intermediate or late/end game).

 

I didn't say you were. But I appreciate the opinions and thoughts. Hope you can appreciate mine without getting too hung up on a specific analogy. Personally, I find it difficult to understand how a person can't recognize and compare principle concepts. But I do understand it.

"Abstract thinking is the ability to consider concepts beyond what we observe physically. Recognizing patterns, analyzing ideas, synthesizing information, solving problems, and creating things all involve abstract thinking"

 

No if every item has surr drop feature the market will crash. Look at how gopherga xtals. At first it was at 4m when theres alot of ppl looking for it. But now even without event price dropped tremendously because theres a lot of gopherga xtal running around the market.

Still doesnt fix the surplus of supply even if u said that it would be a requirement for another drop ppl would still crash into the boss for farm.

U said rng has more computing power needed its a simple dice roll also known as randomizer.

While in your idea it would need to check every single requirement needed after the boss fight there would be a lot of checking will happen and would need more computing power lol.

 

Either way, since the drop calculation is handled at the end of the battle, where there are no player actions to process, that point, computation power is not even worth discussing. The 'power' required is extremely small. Why I said RNG can POTENTIALLY have greater impact on the computational power is if they made the drop system work within an update sequence. In that, yes RNG would take far more resources VS conditionally processed functions. That would also be the dumbest piece of code ever written.

During x-mas event, there tend to be a lot of baphomela xtals as well, even for other well farmed bosses like Venena, there is an extreme surplus of xtals. Point is, the surplus problem remains when the drop matrix system is an obvious way to deal with it. Nothing would stop them from making a repthon xtal a requirement for kuzto xtal or any other prior boss. If they choose to make xtals consumables for this then that's on them and in my opinion, it would be a great solution.

Nothing is stopping them from making holy gems (which aren't really used very often) as item drop requirements.

The matrix system passively adjusts the supply and demand of the game economy so once implemented, it is little work on the development team to listen to their player base (lol) and rework item drop requirements and keep the players happy.

 

I agree poorly implemented RNG breeds unfairness, as randomness is, well, randomness; there’s a chance you will receive an item in your first or thousandth run. It’s up to the game designers to fix this issue. And there are clever ways of doing so; there isn’t only one way of doing RNG.

What makes a game an enjoyable experience is having a degree of uncertainty. The issue with unvaried mechanics is its inherent predictability. This results in the formation of a meta, as players have discovered the most optimal way of doing something. Thus, the fun has evaporated and player choice is limited. Even after receiving the rare item from the mind-numbing grind, it isn’t rewarding. That’s why I proposed that the boss battles should be more challenging and unpredictable; the fact you can memorize boss patterns is a testament to how easy this game can be. Predictable games aren’t really games.

However, regarding loot, RNG works wonderfully when its constrained within limits; it gives the player agency rather than taking it away.

Output randomness common in MMORPGs can become more controllable when an alternate system is available. This could be in the form of pity timers, level scaling, or a clever system WoW (WOTLK expansion) had implemented: a token system.

In WoW (it’s been a while since I’ve played, ergo my memory could be faulty), rare items are affected by RNG, however you have the option to grind a special currency called tokens which can be used in a shop to purchase rare drops. These shops’ item catalogs alternate each week and there’s only a certain amount of tokens you can grind at once. The drop rate of tokens are guaranteed, and rewards larger quantities at harder bosses. I believe this would especially be convenient for event items. I despise event-locked items; don’t you?

All in all, that patience and dedication pays off. I very much adore this system. Of course, it can be circumvented if you’re lucky, but having options when you aren’t is nice. Furthermore, in GW2, the item you receive is dependent on the weapon you’re wielding. If you’re wielding a sword, you will receive a sword. It’s quite infuriating to be grinding for a particular item, but receive another. So, no, you can't use a bow character to grind for a staff.

I wish to cover more, but I’ll save it for another day.

The idiom ‘apples can’t be compared to oranges’ has to do with false analogies. Put simply, you’re saying that apples = oranges. That doesn’t make sense. An apple cannot be an orange nor can an orange be an apple. Yes, they are fruit, but they are not equivalent to each other. It’s similar to saying 1 = 2. Yes, they are numbers, but, once again, they are not equivalent to each other. Of course, this’ll depend on context, however applying the aforementioned idiom weakens the argument you’re posing. As such, comparing a video game to real life is invalid. They can’t be practically compared and are fundamentally different. So, yes, that’s apples to oranges.

That’s what Bryan, Cazun, and I have been saying. I pray to RNGesus you’ll understand.

 

Someone already explained what I would've perfectly (second post here)

TL;DR-
RNG is gay but just giving items is dumb. Make gameplay more interactive, more people would be willing to play. Personally, I would add a skip boss cutscenes thing (as personally I'm used to using bosses like minibosses, keep killing back to back), but RNG is a useful system

 

Remaking an item drop will require then to rework and redesign everything lol. They would rather put all their effort to other new game than reworking an existing system that works just fine lol

Yea i guess 1 randomization is far more complex than inputting different data and computing and checking em 1 by 1 if they had achieve the requirement lol.

The randomization is so easy to code and much easier to process than your proposed idea.

The matrix system looks like its from Ragnarok's consignment board system lol.

Even if they do that on consignment board ppl could still lower their price on sofya and hora for faster sells that will be useless and waste of effort.


If u only want some fairness to new player then it would be better to give an xtal emblem every time u finish a chapter that would give u a choice to pick an xtal on that so called chapter and make it untradable.
So the tradable market wont collapse

[/QUOTE]

 

The goal isnt exactly the market, it's playstyle diversity. Economic manipulation comes as a side benefit along with promotion of multiple playstyles which toram should have tried to realize.

The excuse of "too much work" is ridiculous. They more than likely underestimated the work load needed to make a system like class free work and then now are trying to re-implement archaic restrictions and useless power creeps which only expand the gap.

When I say that it is easy to implement, I really mean that if you use if statements , it won't be longer than a few lines of code per item and the code itself isn't complex/mathematical given that item drops are given directly to players rather than taken from an instanced pool, all they need to do is add the drop management function at the end of the battle which records if players have met certain conditions in a variable and run a check to see if its true.

With RNG, the effort is given to calculate how rare you want each item drop to be, how to satisfy the rate vs effort, how to implement shadow management systems. It can be potentially more complex.

You say it works fine but given that a massive number of stats (min-max prevalence), skills (most skills are completely useless.), Items (some items are simply unknown due to their lack of necessity.) Not being used at all. One can argue that 90% of the database goes unused. They make the matrix system and have items be cross-reliant, they basically create more features, skill builds, viable stat allocations for the game indirectly, all without hard coding in new skills and animations and working with what is already there.

The effort to add some conditional statements VS making a whole new game is like comparing the earth to the sun. The difference is just too big.

 

Haha I clearly understand the point of ur comparison. My thought is why would I compare the time I invest in game into the time I invest in my real life job. And, of course the answer is my first comment. My answer was more of a personal reason. It's not like that I can't recognize and compare principle concepts. It was an exclusive thought on these specific comparison.