Loot Crate System

[Kaasovic]

I want to point out that you suggest that the system should stray from true randomness, right after saying it's currently not true random anyway. 
Anyway the good thing about randomness based drops is the lack of anticipation, imo it's important to keep anticipation low.

With that statement, it's clear you don't understand the situation.

Computer random number generators are usually only pseudorandom. If you feed the same seed into them, you get the same sequence every single time. The only way to eliminate that is to use different seed values (which hopefully the devs are already doing) or to have the underlying software pull from a random pool of data. NI runs on Linux servers, I believe, so this is usually done via a pool in /dev/random. However, if the amount of random data in that pool runs out, the random data call will still give you a value, but it's now longer random. They have found in the last few years that this pool was depleting far more than thought on normal systems, and it's even worse in shared server situations (because more processes are running pulling from the pool) and then even worse in VM'ed OSes (which is how most servers run these days; because the actual things that generate the raw data aren't part of a VM so entropy of the pool is much lower already). And I'd be willing to bet that Warband makes heavy use of the random number system in general, due to the way aiming works plus all the bot AI, all of which can deplete the pool.

What is supposed to happen is that if you look at the distribution of random numbers coming out, NI would limit that pool to the number of players, so there are say 16 bins. Over time, those bins should be filled equality with number of times they were picked. However, the generator in NI could be starting with either the same seed (probably not), with a diminished pool of entropy (probably, but I don't know the server code or the OS/language versions or the server setup), or with restarting the generator each round. This means that the distribution won't necessarily trend towards even, especially in the short term.

While it can be that some players just don't get much, no player should be going rounds and rounds of playing and not get anything while others are getting a lot. I know I've played for hours at a time with full servers and not gotten any drops, while other players on the same server have gotten many. I know I'm not alone in that experience.

My solution is to keep the randomness in the type of drop given, but remove the randomness in the distribution. NI is a team game, so all alive players should be sharing in the drops gained, not relaying on the server pseudorandom number generator to give that distribution.

With that statement, it's clear you didn't put much thought in the non-ideal cases. Round robin implementations of distributed handlers usually have holes (e.g. sending/queueing jobs to worker machines). First, the results will heavily depend on the scope of the distributed handler. Even if the scope is the simplest scenario of a single game where nobody dies/leaves and rejoins/crashes/whatever, the best case is the number of items (I) dropping modulo number of players (P) is 0 (M), then everyone gets the same amount. In the case where the modulo is not zero, then P - M players get 1 fewer item than M players.

The simplest scenario in which the result isn't ideal is if a player is dead when the distributed handler points to them, then they get skipped in the revolution. Maybe you meant that you use that player's index as a pivot position where while they get no drops, everyone else positions in the queue in front of them, so the dead player is next when alive. But in this case, if a full revolution is made by the distributed handler then the skipped players will get more than one fewer item.

This also leaves multiple huge ways to exploit the system. If the distributed handler does not reset on player crash/suicide, then just join on the early 3n + 1 waves, spawn and suicide before you get any loot. At this point, everyone else is getting items,  and then spawn and play wave 10 or 13 and onward to guarantee multiple consecutive items from the distributor when the drops are better.

P.S. Then The Night King took out a spear and threw it at Viserion, killing it.

It doesn't keep count of who got what. It would distribute based on who's alive. That's what it current does anyway. Only those alive can get drops and it's "random" between those who do. Dead people don't earn things. Keeping an ordered list wouldn't change that fact. It just rolls through the people alive at the time, it's not a forced distribution to keep everyone equal in total. Clearly you didn't understand it.

1-2-3-4-5-6-7
A-D-S-A-D-A-A
-----------^-----

Pointer is sitting at player 5 who is dead. Next drop goes to 6 since 5 is dead, then 7, then 1, then 4 since 2 is dead and 3 is spectator. If someone state is changed, then that affects how they are handled when their "turn" is up next. If there is only two players alive, then they would split all the remaining drops till next spawn, just like it is now, except it would be an enforced split, instead of potentially one person getting all or most of it. It's a team game, it should team rewards.



PS If you're a troll who likes to spoil things for people they enjoy, then you need to find more fulfilling hobbies that don't rely on taking away from others.

So if only one player is alive he would get all the drops, 100% of the time? That doesn't sound very team based and kinda induces people to let the team wipe then kite for the loot.

[Malong]

It doesn't keep count of who got what. It would distribute based on who's alive. That's what it current does anyway. Only those alive can get drops and it's "random" between those who do. Dead people don't earn things. Keeping an ordered list wouldn't change that fact. It just rolls through the people alive at the time, it's not a forced distribution to keep everyone equal in total. Clearly you didn't understand it.

1-2-3-4-5-6-7
A-D-S-A-D-A-A
-----------^-----

Pointer is sitting at player 5 who is dead. Next drop goes to 6 since 5 is dead, then 7, then 1, then 4 since 2 is dead and 3 is spectator. If someone state is changed, then that affects how they are handled when their "turn" is up next. If there is only two players alive, then they would split all the remaining drops till next spawn, just like it is now, except it would be an enforced split, instead of potentially one person getting all or most of it. It's a team game, it should team rewards.



PS If you're a troll who likes to spoil things for people they enjoy, then you need to find more fulfilling hobbies that don't rely on taking away from others.

To reiterate: it doesn't solve the issue of unequal distribution, and still leaves exploits of timing when to be alive for loot. Why swap one imperfect system for a naive implementation of a queueing system that doesn't completely address the issue?

P.S. I'm content with my hobbies, it even leaves me time to find flaws in CS-rejects' algorithm designs.

[Sir Baron]

How long does it take of no posts for a thread to be dead?

[Green_Dragon]

As a matter of fact, there is a problem with the current system of loot distribution. Wishing for a
thread to die or just waiting that a problem goes away doesn't make it go away in 99% of the
cases. Therefore it is good that a discussion concerning an issue that is of high interest for most
of the community will be further discussed until changes to the better finally take place.

[Sir Baron]

I'm sorry I thought that a thread that went quite for 2 weeks was most of the time dead

Also I'm not just waiting for it to go away
I'm waiting for Bannerlord when the devs can make a loot system that they like
I really don't think that the devs are going to go though and redo one of the hardest parts of the game for a game that is Over 7 years old

[Winter]

I'm sorry I thought that a thread that went quite for 2 weeks was most of the time dead

Also I'm not just waiting for it to go away
I'm waiting for Bannerlord when the devs can make a loot system that they like
I really don't think that the devs are going to go though and redo one of the hardest parts of the game for a game that is Over 7 years old

I think they should figure out a proper loot system as soon as possible instead of relying on Bannerlord as a fix-all.  We have an indefinite amount of waiting ahead of us...  I'm glad the developers didn't decide to stop trying to fix things and make the game fresh a year ago because of the impending Bannerlord release.  How will they know what the best loot system is just because Bannerlord comes out anyways?

I think Galen has a right to respond to PCK's criticisms of his ideas, even if it is two weeks later. Not everyone wants to spend their time immediately responding to forum posts.

[Sir Baron]

My first post was more about this being the third thread in as many days to come back after I thought it was dead

Let me just say first off
I am NOT saying don't change the game at all just wait for Bannerlord
I am just thinking if this won't work for Bannerlord it might not be worth all the time and work it would take to make a new drop system and then make another one when Bnnerlord comes out

If they can get a drop system that would work for this and NI2 when it comes out GREAT
If not I'm not sure it's worth it to try

[TerrorBite]

My first post was more about this being the third thread in as many days to come back after I thought it was dead

Let me just say first off
I am NOT saying don't change the game at all just wait for Bannerlord
I am just thinking if this won't work for Bannerlord it might not be worth all the time and work it would take to make a new drop system and then make another one when Bnnerlord comes out

If they can get a drop system that would work for this and NI2 when it comes out GREAT
If not I'm not sure it's worth it to try

Sadly I don't think many of us will live past 100. Relying on NI2 is pointless unless you just want a great game for your great grandchildren

[Winter]

Let me just say first off
I am NOT saying don't change the game at all just wait for Bannerlord
I am just thinking if this won't work for Bannerlord it might not be worth all the time and work it would take to make a new drop system and then make another one when Bnnerlord comes out

If they can get a drop system that would work for this and NI2 when it comes out GREAT
If not I'm not sure it's worth it to try

The drop system does not use Warband code, it is part of the website.

[DR.]

For a better idea of a better loot system well... 

To suggest a better idea we need to know what its versing. Well... That's not going to happen anytime soon... So we just keep suggesting idea's we think would be better when in fact they could just be the exact system ni uses or not as good.



I could guess how the Ni one works but I'm sure I'm not going to get 100% of it right let alone 75%. 
If the Dev's could be so nice to lay out some point the new system need to tic.

• Need's to easy-ish to put in
  
• etc..
  

Stuff like this point  "Drop rate should be the same for each player." Is one point I want to guess that would be in the list, however, this is one of the problems.

If we can get some ground rules so we can come up with a better solution to this problem would save us and the dev's time if you ever want to fix this before Ni2.