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

A superior brain increase in chance is not necessary at all. Both times I needed one, I got it very quickly. Just equip the item as a temporary weapon while doing something else.

 

You are missing the point. Yes, MOST people will get it quickly. This is about the rest.

 

every single time i used the gun i got the superior brain in 2 shots 0_o

 

Not I...both times I went to look for one it took me circumnavigating the world i was one entirely before I found one. That's why RNG is flawed. I'd rather see the RNG AND a way that is difficult and challenging but legit to guarantee a superior brain. Mix it up and give those with no luck a chance.

 

Completely off topic, but I have to ask.

Is that a Goltanna (Nanten, or for those playing at home, Order of the Southern Sky) injured knight I spy in your avatar? Trying to remember the color scheme between the warring factions.

Either way, mad respect.

 

Yes, but I re-colored it, so that's why it looks weird. I think he was originally blond with a white cloak... It's been a long time.

 

This is why probability is tricky. People like to use anecdotal evidence, and as the OP stated a very, very small number of players will end up getting royally screwed by the RNG. This is potentially a problem because the vast majority of players never even noticed it, so they can just dismiss other people's experiences. Chances are still that someone is going to lose the RNG game, but until it's you personally you won't care.

Also @ Reon, I wasn't meaning to say in my previous post (asking why randomness is the proper way to implement difficulty) that complete determinism is the alternative, just that it makes sense to ask whether complete randomness is really a fun way to implement difficulty. IMO padding time to a potentially huge amount based on unconstrained RNG is guaranteed to diminish the fun of the game for some people, all while not guaranteeing any specific level of difficulty for anyone.

Definitely not the biggest issue, but I've played enough MMOs that fetch quests for single digit % drop chance items are prospects that just make me cringe.

 

Just wanna add here that those having issues with the brain extractor may be using it "the wrong way". If you can't get it to hit your target, equip it with a shield and let the mob hit you just before you fire it. It's impossible to know whether a particular shield is any good until they add the descriptions, but taking the time to find a decent shield is extremely helpful if you're one of those players who never bothered to try one (as I was until trying to get a brain).

Also, the first Superior Brain I found went to waste because the stupid robot killed me as I killed it, which meant it was no longer there, and then the dropped Processor timed out, so I then had to find another brain. Luckily for me it only took ~20 kills per brain, but it does highlight another potential situation where simple random drops can be painful.
As for the possibility of implementing a more reliable random drop system, take it from somebody who has written games, enumerating drops is just asking for trouble. The running luck total idea could work quite well, and it wouldn't need to be too heavy on resources either IF you use the simple card counting method. Via this method you just add or subtract 1 from a single number (per player) whenever a rare drop (droprate below 10%, for example) occurs or doesn't. Then, since that number should be floating around between, say, -30 and 30 at all times, you just use it to adjust droprates up or down as you play. This number never gets large due to it being self correcting, plus it remains small enough that it only requires one signed byte of memory per player, and it only has to be adjusted on rare drops which reduces CPU usage. It also can't really be manipulated willfully by a player and it doesn't affect how random things feel because you are still dealing with RNG.

 

I thought brain extractor was 2-handed? (IDK why it would be, but I don't recall being able to use it with a shield.) In any case, the trick is to hit monsters with (the center of?) the zappy thing that shoots out of the gun. If they're too close they won't be hit by the projectile.

 

Sorry, I should have been more clear, yes the extractor is 2-handed. I used it by having a shield in one hotbar slot and the extractor in the one next to it. Then hold up the shield, when the monster hits it swap to the extractor and fire it. There's just enough time after an attack where the monster will just sit there and wait to be zapped.

 

I can testify that this can be very irritating since my second character was in that third bracket of people

 

I believe the borderlands series would like to oppose this. While it can be fun RNG can make a game a living nightmare when you get into the probability of something you need just refusing to happen.

 

It's one thing to have to kill a bunch of mobs as part of getting a drop that helps you progress, but is not absolutely necessary. It's another thing to make your access to the entire next tier of content contingent on a single RNG item.

It's also not intuitive. As a new player I killed 8 monsters and when none of them dropped a good brain I figured I had kill NPCs. When they didn't drop any I thought I had to kill wheelchair monkeys. When they didn't drop any I was stuck and couldn't proceed until I looked it up. Kind of ridiculous when my only question was essentially "how do I get this freakin item the game is dangling in front of me so I can fight this boss?"

 

Same, Phyvo.

Now, this is REALLY frustrating for me because of the recent ship-wipe (I didn't check the patch notes before updating, my bad) but BECAUSE the advanced crafting table requires you to kill the robot boss to build it, if you EVER lose that item, guess what? You have to farm it again.

This is my third time farming for this brain on just one character (the first time I died and the boss despawned before I got back, hurray) and every time it has taken me over 20 inferior brains each to get it. Add in the fact that one out of five mobs don't drop ANYTHING for me when I kill them with the zappyzapper brainsuckysucker... it's frustrating. It's not fun. I have great gear, I just haven't hit the end game unlocks (on aegisalt gear unlocked) and I have to go back. Mine iron and coal. Farm RNG stuff. Just to build ONE TABLE. I can't even imagine trying to build multiples-- I just hope I can scan it with the 3d printer so I don't have to ever farm it again.

 

Thankyou for your brilliant and very important post! Every Dev of every game the world over should be forced to read it till they grok it as a condition of employment.

My subjective experience was getting a superior brain on the first ever try, but my subjective experience is worse than worthless in analysing the game mechanism, it's deceptive. Trouble is many people are not taught about the problem of subjectivity.

 

I'd like to agree. I'm the kind of gamer who DOESN'T normally like to go and read wikis, and forums. I like to figure things out for myself. Here is my experience of this so far:


1) I made the brain extractor as I figure I'll need to get a brain at some point - I might as well get it first.
2) I used the brain extractor, and got an inferior brain. No new schematic... I wonder how I get a superior brain?
3) After 10 inferior brains I started looking for humanoid targets, like the avian pirates or my glitch NPCs. I **ASSUMED** that because after 10 inferior brains, all I would get from that kind of target would be inferior brains. There is nothing to suggest that the superior brain is just a rare drop.
4) Avians and Glitch drop no brains (at least I never got one). Now I went looking for minibosses. I got outrageously frustrated trying to actually KILL a miniboss with this shitty weapon - because obviously it's not designed to be a viable weapon, it's supposed to be a miniquest.
5) NO BRAINS from minibosses. Obviously the description says that I get brains from common enemies, so I wasn't surprised, but I had to try *something* to get a superior brain. Now I check the forum, and discover that there is a 7% chance of getting a superior brain.
6) I run around killing things to get brains. This is horrendously boring, because the weapon is crappy and the monsters that I come across while I'm dungeoneering are way too threatening to deal with, using that weapon. So I go BACK to my level 1 world, which is boring and redundant, to try and get a superior brain.
7) I am now 51 brains in, and I still haven't gotten my superior. I don't know how long it will take to get it, and this whole process is a waste of my time.



TL;DR - this quest is not *difficult*, it requires no skill, it's not a challenge. It just takes wastes time and takes energy. This is why random drops are frustrating.
To everyone else who got your drop in the first 10 kills - congratulations! But please try and imagine what it is like to be a player like me. This kind of process just ruins the flow of the game.

 

Because Xom finds those fringe cases hilarious.

 

I'm going to take a moment to completely and emphatically disagree with people suggesting that the fix to this should be having the brains drop from humanoid opponents.

The problem with this fix is that this is tied to progression AND a good number of players (I dare say many many more than ten in one million) immerse themselves through light-roleplay. What I mean by this, is they play as a character. It may not be completely strict, and it may not be all the time, but for a not-insignificant portion of your player base being forced to rip the brain out of another sapient being--regardless of whether said being was aggressive in the first place--is going to completely destroy their immersion in that character. And this wouldn't necessarily be a problem if it weren't something tied to progression (see wife sacrifice in Fable--totally fine), but it is so it's something everyone is going to have to do.

The much much better fix is to either put in a hard cap or increase the chance of superior brain drop per kill, until at around 50-60 kills it's at 100% OR remove the brain extractor and robot crafting entirely and replace it with a quest line. Maybe you get a distress call from some apex laboratory and go to the coordinates given to check it out--and there's a horrible robot rampaging about after having murdered most of the science staff, or something.

I prefer the latter, to be honest. As others have pointed out it doesn't really make a lot of sense for me to build a robot that's going to try to murder me. Not only that, but if I'm only building it to get a processor so I can build a robotic crafting table. . . why can't I just build the processor?

Also the brain extractor is an awful weapon and an incredible pain to use.

 

I like where your going with this, what I feel people would use to work against this is that a 100% drop rate would take away From the exploration of starbound, so why don't the devs do some thing like this?
I looked at the lore of the different Races, and the Apex traded physical evolution for superior intellect. Since there are too little Apex structures anyway, what should be done is More Apex, droping superior brains.
What do u guys think about this idea???

 

That wouldn't do a thing to solve the problem though. It would still be down to random chance as to whether you run into an Apex and random chance as to whether it drops the Superior Brain.