## flexible drop rate

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otacke
Peon
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### flexible drop rate

Just a thought which just came to my mind while hunting spiky mushrooms in order to get a hard spike: A flexible drop rate might be interesting.

Players with high experience could get a lower probability for receiving frequently dropped items than players with low experience get. Thus stronger players would either have to kill more monsters to receive certain items for quests (takes more time) or they could trade with others - weaker players preferably.

This way new "collecting" quests would keep stronger players busy for a longer period of time and weaker players had a chance to earn some extra money.
Turmfalke
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### Re: flexible drop rate

wouldn't that make stronger player weaker than weaker players? and why should a player who hunted spiky mushrooms for ages suddenly forgot how a hard spike looks? Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me.
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Joined: 27 Sep 2007, 23:21

### Re: flexible drop rate

A level 80 character kills a JackO. With what probability should the soul drop under your system (it's currently 100%)? Should it be any different for level 90?

Now that same character beats a sea slime to near death, but doesn't finish it off. A level 1 comes in and makes the finishing blow. With what probability should it drop pearls or concentration potions (currently 1% each)?
otacke
Peon
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Joined: 18 Mar 2008, 15:02
Location: Germany

### Re: flexible drop rate

Well, players with more experience would still be stronger - they could kill monsters faster than players with low experience. It would just be a little harder to get common items.
I also cannot find an explanation for that "behavior" at the moment, well, but TMW isn't a model of the real world anyway. I have neither seen flowers drop money bags nor wounds recover by eating food. It's just an idea that came to my mind which might lead to a "we sentiment" because weaker and stronger players depend on each other.

Implementation might work via a not too complicated equation.

Let i be the index for the item and N be the number of players involved.

$probability = basicProbability_{i} \cdot ( 1 - {{\sum_{n=1}^{N}{experienceLevel_{n}}}\over{N}} \cdot {{commonness_{i}}\over{decreaseLevel}}\cdot reduction)$

Phew, hope I got that right...

Commonness may range from 0 (very rare) to 1 (very common). decreaseLevel is the level when the probability should be reduced by reduction.

Now let's assume that reduction is set to 0.5 and the decreaseLevel to 50. Three players (experience of 25, 35 and 15) attack a beast and a very common item with commonness of 1 might be dropped with a basicProbability of 0.5 (50%). The probability that the item is dropped would now be...

probability = 0.5 * ( 1 - (25+35+15)/3 * 1/50*0.5) = 0.5 * (1 - 25 * 0.02 * 0.5) = 0.5 * (1 - 0.25) = 0.375

So the item would be dropped with a probability of 37,5% instead (hope I calculated right) of 50% if the group had an average experience level of 25.

Just an idea and suitable values for decreaseLevel and reduction (or the quotient directly) would have to be found...
Novice
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### Re: flexible drop rate

Why are you creating needless complexity by defining drops in terms of two different values (commonness, and basicProbability) when only one is needed and the second appears wholly redundant for that matter?
otacke
Peon
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Location: Germany

### Re: flexible drop rate

radiant wrote:Why are you creating needless complexity by defining drops in terms of two different values (commonness, and basicProbability) when only one is needed and the second appears wholly redundant for that matter?
That's just because I was brainstorming and presenting my ideas not thinking of it in detail. You're right. These to variables cover the same aspect and could/should be merged. The only "way out" could be calling commonness "affectionToDecrease" or something in order to exclude items from the effect completely. But there may also be a smarter method for that.
yasha
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### Re: flexible drop rate

Then, would people ever get infantry helmet or leather gloves? It's very low drop rate already now, and weak players cant even hit spider or mountain snake. so drop rate would come from 0.20% to 0.10% which means i have to kill 1000 spiders or mountain snakes to get drop or if bigger level maybe 0.01%. That would make that items more rare than eye patch or any other very rare item.

Maybe idea would pass if drop rate "flexibility" would be very small, and wouldn't be that level 1 has 100% than level 40 has 100%, level 1 110% and level 99 90% of normal drop rate.
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otacke
Peon
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Joined: 18 Mar 2008, 15:02
Location: Germany

### Re: flexible drop rate

yasha wrote:Then, would people ever get infantry helmet or leather gloves? It's very low drop rate already now, and weak players cant even hit spider or mountain snake. so drop rate would come from 0.20% to 0.10% which means i have to kill 1000 spiders or mountain snakes to get drop or if bigger level maybe 0.01%. That would make that items more rare than eye patch or any other very rare item.
True, that's why I was talking about common/frequently dropped items and also presented a way to totally exclude particular items from the effect.
JoshLangley
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### Re: flexible drop rate

Then the high levels will just create alts of lower level so don't suffer the penalisation.
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otacke
Peon
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Location: Germany

### Re: flexible drop rate

JoshLangley wrote:Then the high levels will just create alts of lower level so don't suffer the penalisation.
But that's prohibited anyway, isn't it? I mean, using alts of lower levels to get stuff (rewards from unique quests for example) and then giving then to the high level character...
Crush
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### Re: flexible drop rate

There is no rule which prohibits this and I see no reason why a rule for this should be created.
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otacke
Peon
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Joined: 18 Mar 2008, 15:02
Location: Germany

### Re: flexible drop rate

Crush wrote:There is no rule which prohibits this and I see no reason why a rule for this should be created.
Well, ain't it unfair this way? You could gather items from "unique" quests over and over again unsing multiple accounts and give them to the high level char who in turn can sell this popular stuff.

Anyway, my idea doesn't seem to be liked too much, so just dump it
5t3v3
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### Re: flexible drop rate

otacke wrote:
Crush wrote:There is no rule which prohibits this and I see no reason why a rule for this should be created.
Well, ain't it unfair this way? You could gather items from "unique" quests over and over again unsing multiple accounts and give them to the high level char who in turn can sell this popular stuff.

Anyway, my idea doesn't seem to be liked too much, so just dump it
Actually, these second characters isn't really a problem to the economy; the early quests take to much time to make it profitable to do over and over again (you can get money a lot faster in the mines). Quest items that are easy to get aren't in high demand either. As for the higher quests, like setzer for example, it takes so much exp and time, that even though one could still make a profit on it, it's hardly problematic for the economy. First off all, no new money is generated by this, it only shift from one player to another, and secondly it takes so much time that I think few people are willing to do this. In fact I haven't seen anyone offering to sell a setzer so far.
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