So in the previous post, I lay out my argument as to why pure random tables can be bad. It really depends on the situation. If this is something the player either must get, or will really want to get, then you need to be careful. You should always have in mind “It should take at least X time to do this, and no more than Y time.” Let’s pick on crafting some more. Let’s say to get a really good weapon crafted, you need high quality ore. Normal ore happens most of the time when you harvest, and the HQ ore happens only rarely. I feel as a designer, I should know roughly how long it will take a player to get something. Here’s what I know about my game:
- The time cost for harvesting is 30 seconds (this includes harvest time, inventory management, travel between nodes)
- Average player can harvest for 50 times before inventory is full
- Town travel time cost is 2 minutes from this zone
OK, now to play with the numbers. Let’s choose pure random first. If I say there’s 1 in 100 chance of getting a rare ore, how long is it before I’m reasonably sure the player will get a rare ore? Well if the player does the activity 250 times, then there is (statistically) a 92% chance the player will get the rare ore. That’s pretty darn good, so we’ll leave it at that. That means 125 minutes of harvesting and 10 minutes of traveling, so 135 minutes to get that rare ore. That’…a long time. Is that sword worth over two hours of playing? In two hours of questing/killing, could a combat oriented character get something better? Of course 8% of your player base still doesn’t have it, and if your game sold like Skyrim did (3.5 million in two days) that means 280k players have no rare ore to show for the effort.
So let’s look at the problem a little differently. I want this sword to take no less than 20 minutes, and no more than 30 minutes to complete. Punching in some numbers, if I have the rare ore drop 1/200 times, in 40 harvests or 20 minutes, 81% of my players will not have gotten the ore. That sounds reasonable. Now if I boost the chance of the ore dropping by 10 every harvest after the 40th, by the 60th harvest I have a 100% chance of the ore dropping. Of course every time the ore is dropped, the drop rate and the harvest counter needs to be reset.
Now why do I feel this is a better way of handling things? After all it is more complex, and complexity can lead to errors. For me it comes down to control. As a designer, I should have a strong grip on how long certain actions should take the player. If I don’t, it becomes harder to design good play experiences. Not impossible of course, just harder. If I have a solid understanding of how long it will take a crafter to get a good weapon, I can use that to balance how long it will take a combat oriented character to earn a similar weapon, ensuring that both paths feel equally valid.
Hmm, a little abrupt on the ending, but I really want to end this here. So I will.
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