A better version of double ship req (Sabacc draw)

[Verain]

As you all know, double ship+fleet req just ended. This was an utterly sweet bonus, encouraging everyone to play more to get a temporary boost to credits and requisition.

 

The credit boost is particularly huge to anyone who plays a lot at max level, like on a main, while the req boost went a long way towards closing the gap between dedicated players who started a bit later.

 

The net effect was: the game had a lot of queues popping, all the time!

 

 

 

So I was giving this a little bit of thought. It's no secret that I think that requisition gain should be increased, and/or the top tier costs reduced (and refunded), as so much of a 150k mastered cost is in those 10k and 15k components.

 

 

 

Here's my premise: there may not be room in the intended rewards per unit time for the devs to permanently double our rewards, but I bet there is room to increase it permanently by a lesser amount.

 

 

So here's my suggestion:

 

After a game, you get a Sabacc card drawn. This would require some UI work, but you get a Sabacc card drawn, cmon!

 

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sabacc

 

 

Minor bonuses:

If the drawn card is a Coin, you get one hundred times that amount as bonus credits (100 - 1500 bonus credits)

If the drawn card is a Flask, you a small amount of extra XP (the ace giving fifteen times the one).

If the drawn card is a Sabre, you gain that amount of ship req on every ship (+1 up to +15 to every ship in hangar)

If the drawn card is a Stave, you gain double that amount of ship req on the ship you ended the game with (+2 to +30 ship req)

 

No bonuses:

If the Idiot or Moderation is drawn, there's no bonus.

 

Major bonuses:

If the drawn card is a face card (besides the Idiot or Moderation), you get double ship req and double fleet req (like the stuff that just ended).

If it is Endurance, or Balance, these values become triple instead of double.

If it is Demise or the Queen, then your reward credits are doubled (like the stuff that just ended) in addition to the double req.

If it is The Evil One, then your rewarded fleet req is quadrupled instead of doubled.

If it is the Star, then your rewarded ship and fleet req are tripled instead of doubled.

 

 

The odds of drawing any of the non-Idiot, non-Moderation face cards are about 16%, so you'd only be getting a real bonus 1/6 times. This would be drawn on win or lose, so everyone could get into what they drew if they wanted!

[Kuciwalker]

Or they could just multiply req gains by like 1.2 or 1.5.

[Verain]

Or they could just multiply req gains by like 1.2 or 1.5.

 

If you are willing to reward people X, it's better for X to be an average case and there to be a sense of "gambling". People love the chance to win big. If the devs were willing to ramp up by 50%, then forget that- just make those payoffs for the face cards bigger so the average case is 50% bonus.

 

 

Random is more funz!

[tunewalker]

If you are willing to reward people X, it's better for X to be an average case and there to be a sense of "gambling". People love the chance to win big. If the devs were willing to ramp up by 50%, then forget that- just make those payoffs for the face cards bigger so the average case is 50% bonus.

 

 

Random is more funz!

 

For me Random is just more frustrating.

 

wasnt that the reason they got rid of the battlemaster bags and such at the start of the game, people thought random was BS lol

[Verain]

No, they got rid of those because they were a terrible idea by fresh designers who didn't understand the ramifications. It took them only a brief amount of time to fix it, too.

 

 

Example: with this model, like 20% of your winnings would be random, and could be used on anything. That would be fun. There's some evidence that if your 401k earned you a lottery ticket for every 100 dollars saved (reducing the company matched amount by a dollar, of course- no free lunch here), you'd be more likely to save and follow those results of those little tickets, because that's much more exciting. You'd be much more likely to save that 100 bucks if it became 100 plus, say, 19 matched dollars plus the lottery ticket than if it was 100 plus 20 matched dollars. Just how our brain works.

 

With that launch pvp model, 100% were random, and the odds of getting the piece you needed went down with every piece you acquired. This was meant to inject the same stickiness raiding has into pvp, but the problem became very simple: you had no other way of really earning gear, so you would sit there over and over again waiting for say, a weapon, and if you didn't get it you were just screwed.

 

The equivalent of the battlemaster bag would be: instead of earning X ship req and 10% X fleet req each game, you have a really easy time earning the first 20k on each ship, and then it goes down. You lose control over which component you buy- you'll randomly earn req towards your engine component (which you already mastered two of), but because you didn't get any primary weapon req for awhile it's still sitting there with two points in it and every game is awful.

 

 

It wasn't that "random is bad". It's that "high variability with the requirement of drawing into a straight flush" is a bad model for pvp gear. This isn't that. This is just, sometimes you get a cool bonus. But the baseline req gain is unchanged.

Edited July 1, 2014 by Verain

[Nemarus]

Would add a little extra moment of tension and delight to doing dailies.

[dancezwithnubz]

eh, why not?

 

Intermittent Reward is a well known psychological tool.

[Kuciwalker]

If you are willing to reward people X, it's better for X to be an average case and there to be a sense of "gambling". People love the chance to win big. If the devs were willing to ramp up by 50%, then forget that- just make those payoffs for the face cards bigger so the average case is 50% bonus.

 

 

Random is more funz!

 

no I demand boring