Risk Vs Reward as it relates to a Very Specific type of RNG

Azherae

Entirely a community question now, I'll try to keep it short and hopefully not end up failing and writing essayworths of explanations.

I think a specific form of RNG isn't actually Risk vs Reward and I think I finally have the example. If your response is 'just don't do it that way', great, lmk what you'd do instead in the same example.

Scenario:
In BDO you can 'awaken' a fully trained, Tier 8, level 30 Horse, into a more powerful version, by giving this horse special food, and then appealing to the RNG. Base chance of success is around 1%, chance goes up by around 0.4% every time you fail. The additional chance gained only applies to this activity. (insert long set of specifics about why this isn't easy to do or dependent on money, demand for these items is so much higher than supply as to be ridiculous, etc).

I personally think that 'when your only risk is not getting your reward', and when your reward is (in a roundabout way, depending on goal) 'having the thing you are working towards and not losing any more resources', you, the PLAYER, are not experiencing the same 'feeling' of Risk vs Reward that I think this game might be intending to foster. It's on YOU, you made the decision 'to even try', but your experience is still affected this way. I believe this because it feels like 'the way to minimize risk here is to avoid engaging with the system'.

Recently while hanging around in that game, a specific player mentioned in Global chat that they were on their 144th attempt.

Average number of attempts is, I think... 37.

This player has no reward. The system has no 'consolation prize'. You just lose the items and try again. They are 144 tries in.

In my mind, the 'risk' you are at when you are 144 tries in, is 'not being able to keep trying (financially or emotionally or whatever), stopping, and accepting the loss of 144x the average cost of one attempt, for nothing'. The 'reward' would be 'not having to try any more'. Again, subjectively.

I see this as different from 'spending your time being able to influence your chances or by choosing your activity based on your preferred role', but that's a long story about how bad BDO is.

Would you want this to be done any differently in any way? Whether you consider it a valid 'risk vs reward' or not.

Ludullu

I'm personally not against these kinds of systems purely because I see them as powerful sinks of whatever resources/money is required. But I can definitely see how I'd be in a super minority when it comes to this pov.

I'd probably just increase the "pity" % increase and maybe add another difficult to get item that increases the chance by a fair bit of %. Ideally that item would have several ways of acquiring it (i.e. boss drop, high artisanry, pvp reward, the likes), but all at the same perceived difficulty, so that different people could get it, but the value itself was still fairly high.

To me, mmos are all about grinding for that one additional percent of whatever power I need, so I see this work as justified. I know this is kind of a boomer outlook on the genre, so maybe Intrepid would want to get away from that.