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The year is 2030. It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon. You’ve just finished mining 30 obsidian ore playing Crypto Crush Saga, a match-3 mobile game.
You open up The Elder Chains Online and feel a rush of excitement. Your buddy from school has spent the last 2 years becoming a Master Blacksmith, and he has agreed to turn 10 obsidian ore into an Obsidian Battlestaff, a HUGE upgrade over the Mithril Mace you’ve been wielding for the last weeks.
It’ll take him an hour or so. In the meantime, you hop into Clash of Guilds, and use the remaining obsidian to upgrade your town hall to the next level. That should keep your village safe for now.
You wish you could fast forward time to tonight. Your Guild has plans to go for a deep run into the wilderness in Old School Rune Chains, and your prospects of a successful run (and great loot) have never been better.
All members have been spending the past 2 weeks grinding for better weapons, and you’ve agreed (through a vote) to use the Guild treasury to buy everyone a new full set of Red Dragonhide Armor.
Tonight’s objective is to kill the level 128 Frost Giant hiding in the Cave of Sorrow. He has a 5% chance of dropping an Immaculate Orb of Brilliance, of which there are currently only 4 in existence.
The Orb can be used as a power source in an upcoming space exploration game, and should give your guild a great advantage in reaching distant galaxies first. A 5% drop rate is low, but you’re feeling optimistic.
In the distance, you hear a faint ‘BloCkChAIn doEsNT bRiNg AnYtHiNg nEW tO gAmES’. You shrug, and join your friends in the Discord voice channel.
Life is good.
#blockchaingaming
You’ll be shocked to learn that this guy is now in the AI space.
Surely a winning strategy to make an item in your game that no one will ever get to use. Time well spent for everyone involved, both player and dev. No one will get tired of it.
yeah but it gives you crypto and if you don’t have crypto you don’t get to eat
Still would make more sense to sell the item then to have it randomly drop at a super low chance…
Oh wait! That is how these games actually work!
thats how games like path of exile work though. its not to the extreme extent i was talking about but there are some items that you may never see even if you are a regular player for many years.
Isn’t that because items are essentially infinitely varied because of random modifiers though? So having that 100% best item is next to impossible but having an 80-90% item is very possible. That is how I remember looter games like that working.
Plus, there is no scenario in which PoE would be like “Well, that was the 4th drop of this item, remove it from the loot table”. So no, it is not the same.
No what i mean is there are items like mirror of kalandra that are extremely rare and very valuable. But yes you’re right that there’s the other element which is getting 6 of the right T1 mods is up there with picking a given grain of sand on a beach in terms of odds.
that’s not mentioned in this hypothetical either though?
You are right the thing says currently only 4 in existence, implying that more can drop, but also implying that this boss has only been fought like 100 times since the drop rate is 5%
I also looked up the mirror thing and one guy said he had 22 drop over the course of killing 9.400.000 mobs. So yes, rare, but not to the point where the people who REALLY play those games will never see one.