Reverse Engineer 20% Broken

It's a good system, but works best when you're only tractking a few factors. I'm guessing WoW did that on quest drops (tracking the number killed in the quest, dropping the data on quest completion), rather than other drops (so you'd have to track many different items, for very long periods).

Using it here might be troublesome and complex. If you do counted every item RE seperately, that'd be 1000's of extra numbers to track against each character. If you just counted number of RE's since last success, you'd have emergent strategies where the optimal strategy becomes RE something cheap and low level til you have failed X times, then try the expensive high level one. Personally I don't want to have to muck around like that to be optimal!

Personally I'd make the 10% rates 20%, and see what results. I think personally that 10% chance to make a random one of five purples is harsh, especially trying to go from purple to purple, where it can take hours to get the materials (needing two crit successes on missions that take an hour to get enough for one attempt). 10% chance if there was only one option would be fine. Maybe even offer legacy character perks for an additional small % chance of RE success.

You wouldn't need much, just one counter variable ... which they already implement in situations such as quests where you have to loot a certain number of items from dead mobs. Here is how an increasing chance for RE success based on past failures could work:

RE chance for success = 20% x (RE fail counter +1)

• If the counter starts at 0 for "no fails yet", you need to add 1 so that you are not multiplying by zero and making the first RE an automatic fail. For the "no fails yet" situation, you wind up multiplying by 1 so the base RE chance for success is not affected.
• For your first and subsequent fails, you are multiplying by a number larger than 1 so the modified RE chance for success increases.
• Under this model, after 4 successive REs, you have a 100% chance for success.
• As soon as you succeed, the counter resets to zero. No need for counters for different types of items.

Two further modifications I would suggest are:

• Introduce a "scaling factor". If a guaranteed success in five tries is too fast, then the modifier can be multiplied by a factor of, say, 0.5 (to cut the improvement rate in half) or even have some non-linear function applied to it so that it approaches some theoretical cap. That may sound complex, but the game already does this sort of thing with our Secondary Stats like Critical Chance.
• This system introduces a possible abuse (like what you suggest). Say you want to RE a blue level 50 scattergun to a purple. What will stop you from "priming" your chance by crafting a few low-level green items first? One more variable -- the item/schematic last crafted. If the item you try to RE is different from the item you last crafted, then your fail counter is reset to zero. If you're unhappy that your counter gets reset: tough. That's what you get for gaming the system and, besides, the system is still increasing your chances to succeed compared to what currently is.

The math for this is simple. It only requires, at most, two more variables to track. Even throwing in a complex scaling factor is something that is a fixed function and something that they are already doing in the game. This sort of thing is easily achievable, and it would improve the business of REing items immensely.

I've got other suggestions for improving RE, but what's above addresses the points you raise specifically.

To put the other side to that though, every MMORPG I've ever played has either had a broken or riggable RNG at some point or one they had to make a lot more random (or both).

Randomisation needs indeed a big sample to be proven right or wrong but one user's experience doesn't make it wrong, and the amount of time an item has been re- doesn't matter.

If I throw a Six face dice six times, my numbers will be far from once out of 6 times for each face. However that number will be closer and closer the more I throw the dice, till it more or less evens out after 600 throws.

1 person RE and writing each result can easily track how accurate it is, as 500 RE should clearly show a success result between 25 and 15%.

One person can't have 1% and the other one 40% after 500 tries, that's simply not possible .

There's a simple way to avoid "gaming" the sytem... just make it check and make sure you're REing the same item. If you switch to a different item the "Counter" resets back to 0.

RE'ing is fine. The problem is the community. Way too many people only care about instant gratification. Anything that takes any prolonged amount of time and effort they feel it is a broken system.

Is it annoying making a bunch of some item, RE'ing it, and not learning anything new? Sure it is. There has been many times where I'm sitting here thinking damn this kind sucks. But I just go to something else and try again later.

The crafting system in this game is pretty terrible, it sounds cool on paper, but in practice it just fails. If everyone got whatever schematic they were going after by RE'ing one item then there would be that much more competition for people trying to sell the same item further driving down prices.

I like the general idea behind RE'ing something, but if definitely needs to be tweaked or totally reworked. I understand this isn't a sandbox MMO so we can't and won't see a crafting system similar to what SWG offered, but is one many people including myself consider one of if not the best crafting system of any MMO to date.

While I like the current system a lot more then what is offered in WoW, I just wish it was more then what it is in it's current state.

I am enjoying playing Star Wars, but it is just missing the exploration factor that you find in some other MMOs. Again I understand this is a theme park style MMO, not a sandbox, but I really wish everything didn't feel so linear. A MMO is supposed to be MASSIVE, but with each planet I go to it's all the same thing. You are unable to explore a large part of the planet, areas are closed off, often times the only way to enter somewhere is from only one entrance.

Kind of went off on a tangent so I'll stop myself lol. The game is still pretty new so there is a lot of room for change as long as Bioware is willing to listen to what it's playerbase is asking for, but honestly I don't feel that happening. The general vibe I get from this game and the community is that Bioware simply doesn't understand how to run an MMO and make it work.

I love Bioware as a company and I really hope they can get things back on track with this game before it just becomes another failed MMO and turns into a crappy F2P game with pretty graphics.

The issue is that no player can prove that the rng RE system is not broken. I have seen any number of responses claiming that players need to understand the math and that streaks can happen, but none that actually provides any proof that this system (you noted that there were games with broken rng systems) provides the stated results.

Comments from the devs addressing the issue would help. They could verify that they are closely monitoring the system and actually provide some numbers and / or analysis of results over the entire player base. They can say that they are aware of he issue of long fail steaks and actually are aware of the impact on players and the credibility of the crafting system. They can say that they are actually alive and do exist and are aware that the game has a crafting component that is important to some players and that they actually care about it. They can say sometihing - anything would help.

Prove it, or is just that your unsubstantiated opinion based on your own limited experience?

Sorry, I do not intend that comment as hostile. The positiona and assertion that the system is working is no more valid and has no more proff than the claim that it is broken.

I've had runs on my Armstech and Armormech where I would RE 20 or 25 of the same item and not get jack squat. Then I've had other runs where I RE new schems 4 or 5 times in a row. It does appear to be working correctly. Just a feast or famine type of luck in my case. lol

I can see in any given populated server with many players and thousands of RE process a streak of 60 fails.... but all those happening to the exact same player ? hmmmm