The X-45 Heartbreaker: a rant about randomness

I actually disagree, because BLP would likely not even trigger for most people that get the items, it only triggers when someone has been grinding the items for so long that it is unlikely that they wouldn’t have already gotten it.

On another note, is it really worth preserving an “OMG moment” when players it’s causing players to lose interest, suffer through the grind, or even escalate their efforts, when they could have been spending their time doing something else? Especially when this applies to content that isn’t even part of the current expansion.

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When its for a cosmetic, absolutely.

Things already become easier to farm in later expansions because they can be solo’ed.
It’s the same reason the mythic only mounts go from 100% drop to 1% after the expansion.
Getting a drop on your 5th try when its a 1% drop chance is really exciting. Getting a drop on your 19th try when your 20th is 100% guaranteed isn’t nearly as exciting.

But that’s a bad example, because that wouldn’t be the case. Using your math from the post above:

After 100 attempts, there’s still 36% chance to not loot it - which I wouldn’t even think of as the threshold for bad luck. I would say that when bad luck would probably kick in when there’s a 10%, of even 5% chance of when you haven’t been able to loot it. According to a chance calculator I looked up, it would take roughly 230~ runs in order to get to 10%, or 300 to get to 5%. If we use the latter as an example, you would have 299 chances to get an OMG moment before the game decides that you’ve suffered enough. Heck, they might even decide to put it at 1000 attempts for a 1% item - but it should exist somewhere.

The point of BLP isn’t to remove OMG moments, a hard deterministic means of doing so would do that, but BLP doesn’t, because you’ll probably get it before even reaching the threshold. BLP caters only to players who never received their OMG moment, because by the time they actually get it, almost everyone else that put in the same effort already has it. Their OMG moment is less an exciting moment of looting an item, and more a shot of relief that their journey is finally over.

Sure, it’s a little less exciting when you know that if you just put it the hours, you can get it - but you will have to put in the hours to actually get it.

My rant about randomness isn’t really about rarity, it’s about time/work. There’s a threshold when the amount of effort you put into a game becomes harmful, even if it is for a trivial reward. Defined end goals are a good way of psychologically countering this problem; it’s the same problem that we had in Legion and BFA with the infinite AP grinds, but in a different avenue of the game.

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I find that these short seasonal events should have most of, if not all of their special items as part of the seasonal vendor listing. In example, the X-45 Heartbreaker could be part of the vendor list priced with an amount of love tokens that may not be able to collect a single year, but perhaps something you could accumulate over a few years, abided the tokens would then stay in your inventory and not disappear after the event ends.

I am personally doing thousand of attempts for the mount every year, and it’s getting quite disheartening, not only to spend several hours every day, but also keeping up with leveling alts every year due to the restrictions to get the box itself.

There are more fun things to be done in the love event besides visiting Shadowfang Keep.

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Just want to paint that post from Chimes in the color blue, to make sure no one misses it:

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I like to farm mounts and i know how it feels to don’t get what you want after many hundreds or in this case thousands of attempts. I feel like any kind of bad luck protection is a good solution to prevent people from having lot of bad luck on some mounts and getting totally mad about it.

I hope you’ll find a good solution for the rocket without overacting.
Maybe it’s a possibility to put this Mount in the BMAH like other low drop rate mounts from MoP and WoD worldbosses.

I’m really glad Chimes came in and responded, and that this is under evaluation! And I think it is perfectly understandable that a solution wouldn’t be implemented this year, especially now that we’re halfway through this year’s holiday already.

I hope the discussion goes beyond just holidays, and touches on a couple of other sources of extreme randomness as well, at the very least the kind that isn’t current content (looking at you, Pandaria world bosses).

This made my day, and I might just take the rest of Love is in the Air off to not have to contend with the Crown Chemical Co.'s evil schemes :>

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Personally, this is one of the few suggestions I’d be okay with.
I love super rare items. I’ve talked about them in other threads on this very forum.

The biggest problem with the X-45 Heartbreaker isn’t the drop rate. It’s the fact that it’s only farmable for a couple weeks out of the entire year.

It leaves mount collectors needing to have as many characters as possible ready and spam the instance all day every day to put in several hundred attempts each year. That part feels bad. I’m of the opinion that needing alts to be the most efficient at farming rare drops isn’t a great system and I’d be very open to legacy content not giving a lockout to make them more farmable by 1 character. This would also apply to old world bosses and holiday events like the Crown Chemical Co.

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One thing I appreciate about the response here so far, is the willingness to wait to come up with a quality solution rather than an uncalibrated response. In a game of 800+ available mounts, this is seen by many as one of the rarest mounts because of its drop rate and low availability. One could make a case that much of the desire for this mount comes directly from its scarcity. Therefore, lowering the drop rate would directly lower its value.

One thing I have really enjoyed about this conversation, is the discussion of ‘bad-luck protection’. I think it is an important topic of discussion and worth looking into at both a skill-based and time-based difficulty levels. However, I do not believe we should start with the “Holy Grail” of RNG as our pilot test run.

Instead, I think it important to look at what many of the complaints center around – limited time and specific level requirements. I can think of a few scenarios where there may be a potential solution:

  1. Remove the level limiter. Currently, you can only attempt to loot this mount on a character that is at least level 50. The idea behind this level limiter removal would allow players more opportunities without feeling the need to level up characters to prepare for the holiday event. The weakness in this would come where players make new characters, level them to 10 or 15, run the dungeon, delete, and repeat. This may or may not be a problem depending on how you look at it.
  1. Remove the daily limiter. Currently, you can only attempt to get this mount once per day per character. If the daily limiter was removed, then there may be less of a need to feel compelled to level up a character for the event to maximize one’s own chances for the mount to drop. This may result in high amounts of burn-out due to excessive running on one character, but this tends to be the nature of time-based difficulty content.
  1. Remove the daily limiter and level limiter. In this scenario, players could run the dungeon as much as they want on any character they wish. With the instance rewarding roughly 10% of level’s worth of XP per clear, this may or may not need to be adjusted. However, it would give players a secondary reason to run the instance. So, if a player doesn’t get the mount to drop after several runs for that day, the player can think, “Yeah… I didn’t get the mount to drop, but I was able get my warrior up 2 levels today.” This helps steer the player from the idea that all the time they just played was for absolutely nothing.
  1. Add Bonus Rolls. For the sake of this example, let’s call bonus roll coins ‘Lovely Coins’. Over the course of a holiday, if a daily quest rewards 10 Love Tokens, then a player could spend 10 Love Tokens to purchase 1 Lovely Coin. They would then use the Lovely Coin as a bonus roll for the mount to drop (either after opening the container or killing the boss – doesn’t really matter here). So, in short, a character has twice as many chances with the Lovely Coins. Just to be clear, this currency would be a permanent currency on the character tab, and these ‘Lovely Coins’ would have no cap and would not disappear after the holiday ended. If a player wanted to, then they could farm up 1000 of these.
  1. Add Unlimited Bonus Rolls. So, take everything from the previous example, and apply here. Then add on the potential of bonus rolling the mount with each additional run. For example, let’s say a player runs the first dungeon of the day, they would have two chances – once with the normal drop and another with the bonus roll. However, if they have additional bonus rolls, then they could also run the dungeon again and use the bonus roll for another chance at the mount. One of the benefits with the bonus rolls would be to drive the players to do the in-game content surrounding the holiday to improve their chances at the mount.
  1. Remove all limiters and add unlimited bonus rolls. This is culmination all of the previous suggestions… So, in this scenario, any player at any level could run the instance as much as they wanted. Furthermore, if they decided to collect enough Love Tokens to earn the ‘Lovely Coins’, they would essentially have two rolls for the mount every time they ran the instance. This could increase outdoor content surrounding the holiday season as players increase chances at the mount by doing dailies and joining charm farming groups. A potential vulnerability here, would come from so weird scaling phenomenon, where a player would maximize ‘charm farming’ or ‘coin farming’ at anything other than max level. So, development would have to ensure that is wasn’t significantly more beneficial to farm at a lower level.

So, the important thing to note here is that none of these changes involves the tampering of the drop rate of the mount. They instead focus increasing a player’s likelihood of success through in-game gameplay! Now, of course, these potential solutions are not a fix for everyone. We haven’t really talk about bad luck protection nor the concept of undermining previous player’s effort of getting something in-game. However, those subjects may require their own thread of conversation.

Something that may be worth considering would be a test of sorts for potential changes in the future. For example, we have Noble Garden starting on April 18th – about 2 months from now. Perhaps, we could introduce a Rabbit mount with a drop rate of 1 in 3,300 that drops from a giant Yeti in an instantized version of Old Hillsbrad. For each unsuccessful attempt, players would be awarded an Account-bound currency (we can call it Yeti Essence for now). So, each kill gets you a Yeti Essence, and with 4,500 Yeti Essences, you can simply buy the Rabbit. This would give developers a means of testing player behavior when it comes to this type of bad luck protection system, and it would give players a chance to have something new to chase after.

In fact, there could be a tiered system of it:

Permanent Holiday Transmogs at various odds and various costs
Pets and Toys at various odds and various costs
Brown Rabbit (1:500 odds) costs 800 Yeti Essences
White Rabbit (1:1,500 odds) costs 2500 Yeti Essences
White Rabbit with red mount and paws (like DMF Rabbit) (1:3,300 odds) costs 4,500 Yeti Essences

Perhaps duplicate transmogs, pets, toys, and mounts could be rewarded for Yeti Essences to allow for the purchase of something they do not have

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I think this is a pretty great and insightful response, but I would like to reiterate that a big problem with the entire farm is toxic gameplay behaviour that is neither particularly fun nor friendly to players. As Chimes wrote in the bluepost, doing this every single day with with 50 alts is mathematically correct, but not a great experience. The core of the issue is, and has always been, the experience of earning this is just not going well.

As you point out, the weakness comes from players making new characters, run the dungeon, and delete. It does technically give you “infinite” attempts per day, but adds a lot of work past attempt #50. Not a great solution to anyone by itself.

This would at the very least eliminate the need to have 50 alts, and that would be a great step in the right direction - that’s 49 fewer characters you need at the level requirement. It would still be a terribly boring and unending grind. It might even make players do more than 50 attempts per day, making it an even more unhealthy way of playing, because now it will be mathematically correct to skip out on sleep in order to get those 10 instances per hour capped. Slightly extreme example, I really hope no one would do that. The point is, now that there’s a limit of 50 attempts per day, they will still have time to do other things in the meantime.

The problems I’ve raised in the former point still stands, but at least you can do it on any character you want to play now.

This one, by itself, is a pretty tough thing to swallow - at least the exact way it is described. With this system, you will not only have to do the 50 runs per day, you will also need to farm as many tokens as humanly possible in order to maximise your chances. To make matters worse, you will need to do this on all 50 alts, because the most efficient means of earning tokens to purchase bonus rolls from would be to do daily quests on each of them. This is so much extra work for what is technically twice as many chances to get it. The bonus rolls would have to be rather trivial to earn if you want them to solve any of the issues.

This seems like the second point, but with extra steps.

See points 1-5.

Okay, so I might seem a little harsh here, I have highlighted the downside of each of the points because these ideas in many ways also have flaws - but by no means do I think it’s all bad and not worth considering. I think with some tweaks, much of these points can create a much healthier way to approach everything.

Edit: These criticisms are all assuming that you will still only be able to farm the mount during the 14 day Love is in the Air holiday period. If the mount was available year round, I think the discussion would have been very different.

I’ll have to criticise myself a little bit here, too, because only adding bad luck protection isn’t going to solve any problems either. It won’t make players not feel the need to maximise their chances, thus not making them play on 50 alts all day every day, the only change bad luck protection in of itself will change is the total amount of time they will need to put into the game (i.e. having an end post) - which might actually encourage them to put even more effort in, because the end of the journey seems much more tangible.

There’s no easy solution here, something will have to give. I hope the devs can figure out which approach is the best.

On the other system that’s been proposed, the “Yeti Essence” system: I think it would be interesting to test this system, but I also think a lot of players would get really upset if they tossed this in with a brand new mount, a brand new farm that might take 4,500 attempts to get. That sort of test would take years to conduct properly, the majority of players will not make even half of the attempts required even if they were given a year.

However, I think it is a fairly good system - it’s bad luck protection with a couple of extra steps, and extra rewards.

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Not at all! In fact, I appreciate the response, because at the end of the day, we are all here to trying to make the game better in one way or another! So, if we can tear apart a suggestion or imperfect solution, and from that create something better, then I am all on board! That being said, I will push back on a few things with equal force.

So, this statement highlighted in bold is the only thing I have an issue with. For example, if someone had 3 characters that were between levels 20 – 30, 4 characters between levels 30-40, 3 characters between 40-50, and 2 level 60 characters. Their potential attempts could increase from 2 per day to 12 per day simply by removing the level requirement (or adjusting it). For those who may simply not enjoy leveling at all, this could be a potential game changer for them.

Now, if someone has 50 characters, and they have leveled them to 50, then yes, you would be correct in stating that this would not benefit them. However, this change would likely impact many, many other players by removing a level requirement for a 2-week holiday.

The terminology ‘mathematically correct’ has very little merit in and of itself. For example, it is mathematically correct for someone with a fulltime job to quit and dedicate themselves to getting mythic raiding world first, mythic 30+, and gladiator in the same season. It is mathematically correct for a player to focus all their time trying to get the incredibly rare Pattern: High Society Top Hat and Design: rhinestone Sunglasses recipes from Cataclysm. It is mathematically correct to level 50 warriors to run SoO for the Tusks of Mannoroth. However, we do not do what is mathematically correct, because it is a simple, 1-dimensional approach that factors in nothing else that impacts our lives and gameplay. I would not associate what is mathematically correct with anything practical or rational. Playing to the tune of what is mathematically correct is a fantastic way to acquire a really rare item in a game one has come to hate.

You are probably correct in that some may begroan doing dailies to improve their odds at the mount. However, we could always adjust the numbers. In the example listed originally, I had equated 1 daily to giving 1 extra bonus roll. Maybe in another version, perhaps 1 daily could reward enough to purchase 5 extra bonus rolls. Or 10. The important concept here, is that it would encourage in-game holiday game play, where players may have a little more incentive to do other content. This would include potentially joining up for the ‘charm farms’.

Perhaps, something to consider, what if you were able to purchase extra loot coins from Time Walking Badges that you pick-up over the course of the year? It may take away some of the pressure to get everything done in that 2-week window.

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You’re right, I didn’t really consider that! It would certainly come to benefit those who haven’t got an army of alts, but the downside for those who have the time and effort to go past attempt #50 remains. Overall, I think removing the daily cap on your attempts would ultimately prove better than removing the level requirements; perhaps instead of making a daily cap per character, it can be a cap on attempts per account?

This is absolutely correct, and I fully agree that playing something because it is ‘mathematically correct’ is usually just bad, particularly in situations like this.

However, that isn’t necessarily the issue. The saying “players will optimise the fun out of a game” rings very true here; the reason many players are already using an army of 50 characters is because it is the optimal way to do this. If the rules were changed and a new way of doing it optimally arises, there will be some attempts at leaning into it. My example was way too extreme, so how about a slightly more reasonable one. If you can run as many times as possible (limited to 10 instances per hour of course), you would now be able to run up to 50 times per day - the maximum attempts with no daily cap is 240. It is unrealistic to hit all 240, but something like 100 runs doesn’t seem too unrealistic. Uncapping the daily limit opens up the door for people to spend even more time to just trying to squeeze as many chances in as possible.

Ultimately, this is technically not so much a systemic issue, but a player issue. But I do not think systems should enable players to engage in behaviour that can be harmful to them.

This would alleviate the issue of having to work extra hard during the holiday, and at least it would give you 50 weeks of the year to prepare and for the event. The pressure remains fairly high during the event, but with bonus rolls you are at least doubling your attempts (assuming you are playing perfectly optimally). It’s another step in the right direction, but it isn’t by itself going to solve the issue. I personally really like this idea, and I think it’s the kind of thing they could implement even if they were to add bad luck protection.

Some other ideas I’ve heard beyond this thread have been to add items or challenges that manipulates the odds of looting it - but that would of course be changing the drop percentage, which is beyond this particular line of discussion at the moment. But I promised I’d mention it either way.

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I think that everyone is going to have their own perspective on how fair the odds are on this mount. The expectation of being able to obtain any item in the game is frankly subjective. In general, I hate excessive RNG and the X45 has the lowest odds combined with a restricted time period to even make your attempts. I think that while such a ‘white whale’ can exist in the game, it is not something that should be replicated often.
In my opinion, small random chance should be limited to small cosmetic differences. Other games do this well such as a chance at a variant colours. You have a relatively decent chance at the item but a smaller chance at a variant of that item. Consider shiney versions of pokemon.
This is the similar to the mythic versions of raid sets that have the extra flair but instead the mount would have a unique colouration or a different particle effect. The important part would to not have these count as two separate mounts in the collection tab much like raid sets do not unless you are looking at the aesthetics for transmog.

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Right now I am thinking what about boe mounts. There are allready some in the game. I got so many mounts twice or more often after i looted them the first time. And all you can do is throw them away while others woulld maybe kill for that specific mount. It would at least give players the choice to spend gold instead of endless time on some mounts.

BoE ability would help IMO. I have a few Headless Horseman’s reigns and Brewfest Rams & Kodos on my alts. REALLY would rather be able to give them to a friend or just throw them on the Auction House.

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Unlikely BoE options would help much for the X-45 specifically, but it’d be a great idea in general! It would be a great way to help other players get the mounts they might otherwise want to farm. It’d also alleviate much of the need for bad luck protection, since that’s not really something you’d want on tradeable items. It would definitely make a lot of those mounts a whole lot less rare, though.

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I think a flat % increase in the drop rate would probably be the best solution.
Lowering the level requirement /bonus rolls/grinding currency just sound like the same grind with extra steps, which is a grind more and more people are becoming disillusioned with, due to the unforgiving RNG/time limits involved.
Make it rare, but not insanely ridiculously rare, and start fleshing out rewards for other events.

A new Giant Tastyfish/Shark mount for the Stranglethorn Fising Extravaganza, randomly fishable from Tasytyfish Schools? Or a two-seater themed vehicle mount for Children’s Week rewarded from a quest chain involving bringing an Orphan to several landmark legacy raid encounters?
Perhaps an ice or fire elemental themed mount from Ahune, similar in style to the Glacial Tidestorm.
Or an enchanted flying Keg mount for Brewfest? (Or better yet, a rideable Alemental)
All with a reasonable drop-rate of course.

I’d also love to see more variety, like silly cosmetic weapons/armor, or flavor spells like tomes of polymorph/hex.

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They could go insane on mounts for alot of things but I think it would just lead to insane bloat. I remember when celestial steed came out and EVERYONE had it, I think blizzard looks at that and pushes most great mount ideas to store bought and everything just kind of just gets left to die.

For sure, it definitely wouldn’t help the X-45 problem unless that mount had a significant drop rate increase. I am going to hit 2,700 attempts before the event ends and I don’t have even an inkling of hope that the mount is going to drop. This is such a disheartening grind.

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