Why randomly dropping "superior" brains is an inferior idea.

It drives me crazy when developers use random drop rates for... well just about anything. Why? I'm glad you asked.

Currently, killing a monster with the brain extractor drops a brain 80% of the time. Of the brains dropped, 7% of them are "superior" and the rest are "inferior." This means the rate at which superior brains drop is 5.6%. As a player, that might not seem so bad.

I mean, if you understand the geometric distribution, you'd say something like: there's a 50% chance to collect a superior brain after killing fewer than 12 monsters. If you were pessimistic, you might also think, "there's a 1% chance I'll have to kill more than 78 monsters before I get the brain I want." But as a game developer, you have to think about it in a different way...

Over the course of 1,000,000 players trying to each get 1 superior brain, you would expect that:
-- 236,755 players had to kill more than 25 monsters to get 1 brain.
-- 56,053 players had to kill more than 50 monsters to get 1 brain.
-- 3,141 players had to kill more than 100 monsters to get 1 brain.
-- 9 unlucky players had to kill more than 200 monsters to get 1 brain.
-- 1 extremely unlucky player had to kill more than 240 monsters to get his first superior brain.

Knowing this... why the heck do developers still think random drops are a good idea?

Also consider this: When one of those unlucky players comes to the forums to complain, the vast majority of other forum-goers will think or say "it was easy for me to find one; stop whining."

 

I've done it on about 4 characters and didn't take much time every time. You can just 1 shot monsters on a threat level 1 planet for easy farming.

Though on the subject of dropping a superior brain I think it shouldn't be dropped by monsters. Monsters are dumb, aggressive and unciviliced. Superior brains should be dropped by humanoids, so NPCs. (Maybe not Floran hahaha.)

 

Having 4 characters perform "the experiment," you'd expect that you needed between 5 and 25 brains for each attempt. It would have been very surprising if you'd been one of those who needed 100 or more monsters. And that's the heart of the problem.

From the perspective of a single player, it is slightly more likely that you'll be struck by lighting (1 in a million) than that you'll actually need to collect 240 monsters before getting a superior brain.

But from the perspective of a single developer, it is more likely that he will be struck by lightning than that none of the players will need to collect more than 190 monsters.

In other words, while the "average" experience seems perfectly fine, the "fringe experience" is really, really bad - and it's actually happening to people. And that's why drop rate mechanics like this are so insidious.

PS - I also agree that dropping superior brains randomly from creatures doesn't make much sense - but this post was more about the math of random drops with a large player pool.

Gnilbert

 

Superior brain 100% drop rate from miniboss please? Maybe? Anyone?

 

Sure I had to farm a little for the brain, but I found getting the superior brain to be easy enough. Nerfing this is unnecessary...

 

It's a form of operant conditioning used to artificially create addictive behaviours. You might also ask: why do developers of non-MMOs think random drops are a good idea?

 

I agree, even when the average experience is fine, the fringe experiences still matter. I support having mechanics that cap the worse case. In this case, the brain extractor could automatically drop a superior brain after 50 unsuccessful drops. Or, it could have an escalating drop rate.

You are missing the point entirely.

 

Considering you only need one for any reason right now, there's no reason to change the drop rate. Just go to a low level planet and go around it a few times zapping everything.

 

Gnilbert has presenting a very logical argument against this system, and I for one agree with them in regards to this. I'd just like to say that because a lot of people have not had an issue with it doesn't mean it won't present a problem in the future (And I happen to be the luck ones, receiving my brains in under 5 kills), and in fact already has.

The real issue here is that this item is a required item for game progression, and nothing is more frustrating to a player when their chance for progression is purely based on luck. Currently every player will have to be forced to go through this as it stands, and some people really just get the short end of the stick. Is it many? Maybe no, but its enough that is a problem, enough that it takes away from the fun of Starbound from these individuals and lets face it, it isn't exactly fair to them because the RNG gods decide to throw mud in their faces.

Gnilbert, I suggest you take a peak at this thread which represents the outlier you mentioned: http://community.playstarbound.com/...or-design-choice-and-how-to-improve-it.47217/

 

I think they should have superior brains drop from bipedal monsters and NPCs, and have all the rest drop inferior brains, maybe give them a trivial function such ingredient for a floran recipe.

 

I only needed 8 monsters for 2 superior brains, lucky me.

 

Just let us craft the superior brains with a number of inferior ones. That way sometimes you get lucky and other times if the RNG is being particularly unfair you can just craft them with the inferior ones you've been collecting.

 

On a few characters the brain dropped before I had to kill more than a dozen. Today I got a superior brain on my 44th kill with that brain extractor... hard work.

 

Sorry but this is actually not true. If you are playing with friends and you would each like to make your own robotic workstation then you will indeed need multiple superior brains. Granted you only need one per person, a group of people could still technically suffer the same bad luck as an individual, you would simply be counting through the monsters somewhat faster. This would also apply to individuals that want multiple robotic workstations.

I feel that if they do not address the issue with how superior brains drop then they should make it so that what drops is the blueprint for the robotic workstation instead of a material to make it. This way a group of friends(or an individual who wants to build many of that furniture item) really only needs one. Multiple would only be necessary if those friends feel the need to be able to craft the table themselves.

 

Like I said, you only *need* one. If you want to make multiple benches, that's up to you.

 

Out of curiosity, OP, where are you getting your drop-rate stats from? Can we be sure that there isn't a stop-gap trigger that forces a 100% drop after collecting X brains? Has anyone heard from the one-in-a-million player?

 

I guess I was one of those extremely unlucky players than. xD
Took me forever to get that damn brain.

 

I pulled the drop rates from the treasure pool configuration files. I'm at work and don't have access to it right now, but I think it was something like brains.treasurepool?

As for certainty about the drop rate... you're right, we're definitely not certain that they don't have some sort of "streak breaker" logic. But given some of the self-reported numbers required by other players (over 90 in some cases), it seems unlikely they'd have implemented a streak breaker and then set the bar so high.

The appeal of random drop rates for developers is that they're "memoryless." In other words, you have the same probability of getting the item on each attempt, and they have reasonable "expected" behavior. That means they don't have to keep track of state for each drop attempt. And since Starbound is set up to be modular/extensible, they'd need to implement systems that could track your rolling success rate or failure count since the last success across each type of (bounded) roll. It's not impossible - or even particularly tricky, if you've done it a few times - but it's enough of a hassle that most teams don't do it up front.

Gnilbert

 

Yeah--I'm not disagreeing. Just seems like, since it's core progression, the thought might have occurred to them.

 

You don't "farm" it. You don't specifically chase something that depends on "RNG".

You just play normally, integrate using the extractor into your normal playstyle, and in no time you have the brain. It's not nearly as bad as you make it sound to be. Even for that "extremely unlucky" player. Killing 200+ monsters is something you can probably do over the course of what, 30 minutes to 1 hour?

RNG is a good thing. It makes the journey unpredictable, and the defining factors of it unexpected. And it's something developers haven't been using a lot, or properly, in recent years. It's all about holding the player's hands all the time for every quest in the game.c