Part Two: Randomness in Diablo 2Students enter game design programs with many prejudices about game design which need to be amended. One of the most common prejudices I have encountered among students is the notion that all randomness in game design is more or less the same.

How to make Boss xy drop item abc and where does that rare mob come from? 14,212,526 members. Loot-Tables, Random Maps and Monsters - Part I. Mike Barthold, Rate this. (like the allmighty MagicFind in Diablo), the drop probability for each item can be multiplied dynamically at runtime with the MagicFind Bonus of the character.

This idea springs from a lack of critical examination. Often, I’ve asked students about these small fireballs which periodically fly through the screen in Super Mario World.Students tend to say that these fireballs come at random.

I then ask, “So they can come at any time or not come at all?” All students quickly figure out that this isn’t the case. Even brief observation reveals that the fireballs come at a regular rate. I then ask more questions about fireball speed, fireball quantity, etc. Eventually, the students figure out that certain things are true of the fireball and the randomness to which it is subject. The truth is that only fireball position is variable.

The quantity, frequency, speed and size of the fireballs are not random at all. Indeed, even their position is restricted to about half the screen. With a little bit of critical examination, young designers learn that randomness in game design is actually much more nuanced than a cursory glance might tell them. This statement is especially true of Diablo 2. Not only is the use of randomness nuanced and complex, there are also many different kinds of randomness built into the systems which make up the game. This part of the book examines the different kinds of randomness built into the systems of Diablo 2.

Types of RandomnessDiablo 2 makes for a great lesson in the various kinds of randomness that exist in game design because it employs so many of them. Indeed, not only does Diablo 2 exhibit many kinds of randomness, but it also causes many of these random systems to interact with one another in complex ways. By studying Diablo 2, we can learn a lot, generally, about randomness in game design. The first step in this study, naturally, is to identify all of the kinds of randomness that exist in the game and explain how they work. One proviso I want to offer before I begin, however, is that I am only going to offer game-specific definitions of the various kinds of randomness.

I am certain that there are mathematics-specific or science-specific definitions of the things I am about to describe. I don’t know them and I don’t need to because I’m not really trying to define widely-applicable statistical concepts. For the purposes of this book, I’m only interested in creating some simple frameworks for understanding randomness in game design. Many readers who have statistical training might object to my characterizations of randomness as being too simple. Moreover, many of the things I describe are just different ways of looking at the same basic concept. All of those objections are totally true! But many of the descriptions that follow are still useful for thinking about videogame design, and hopefully do not distort or dissemble about the deeper concepts they represent.

Randomness within a RangeThe most obvious and most traditional type of randomness in Diablo 2 is what I call randomness within a range, or “RR” for short. Randomness within a range is what most people have in mind when they think about randomness. For example, if you ask someone to think of a random number, they’ll probably think of an integer between one and ten, or maybe one and 100. That’s an assumption English speakers tend to share. A truly random number could be anything from seven to pi squared to 41,286,317.91—or literally anything else! Like most people, however, Diablo uses randomness within a certain range to control the number of possibilities.Diablo 2 uses RR copiously: the damage done by almost every attack made by a player character or enemy exists in RR format in more than one way. This has a profound effect on the way that Diablo 2 operates because of the difference between how people perceive randomness and how the game displays it.

For an RPG, Diablo 2 is very fast and very intense, and players and enemies can easily use thousands of attacks per hour. Thus, the player’s perception of the power of an attack depends on the average damage of that attack (or set of attacks). When adopting a new attack or weapon, players will notice if the average damage is significantly higher very quickly as they chew through hundreds of enemies at a faster rate. But large increases (or decreases) in damage are not the problem—the problem lies in marginal increases and the way that the game’s UI displays RR-format damage.The character screen displays damage in RR format rather than in average format.

Diablo 2 Boss Drop Tables For Sale

It’s not hard to calculate the average of two numbers, but Diablo 2 isn’t the kind of game where players are meant to keep a scratchpad or calculator handy. Some RPGs are like that. In 5th Edition D&D, each round of combat takes six in-game seconds, but probably takes 90 seconds to five minutes to actually play out in real time, depending on how many players there are. There’s plenty of time during those rounds to do a little math and sort out which weapon or skill to use. If Diablo 2 were played that way, players would never make it out of the first dungeon—there are just too many enemies to fight and too many weapons and attacks to choose from.How big of a problem does the lack of an average figure present to players who aren’t slowing down the game to do the basic math when presented with alternatives? Let’s say a Diablo 2 player is presented with two magic swords to pick from. The swords have the exact same base stats, but they have different magical modifiers.

The first sword has a magical modifier that gives it +10 to maximum damage. The second sword has a magical modifier that gives it +10 to minimum damage. Which one is better? Over a long enough sample, neither one is better, although minimum damage increases are significantly rarer as affixes.

The only tactical advantage for higher minimum damage is when hunting a very specific sort of monster. If the player knows the average HP of an enemy he or she is hunting, and can get the minimum damage of the character’s weapon or attack above it, minimum damage is a little more valuable. Overkilling enemies doesn’t help. That said, there’s no long-term reason why there should be separate benefits to maximum and minimum damage at all. Weapon affixes that augment minimum and maximum damage aren’t a huge part of the game; most of the high-end equipment offers a percentage-based increase. But the principle is still important, because when players select between different skill-based attacks, they get information (and decisions to make based on it) that is just not that useful to them, most of the time.RR VARIATION AND BATTLEFIELD DYNAMICSThe slightly murky nature of randomness within a range is not without its merits, however, even when it’s at its murkiest.

Monster HP also exists within a random range of values, and this range creates some interesting action effects. The Fallen has an average of 209 HP on nightmare difficulty,33 but it can have anywhere from 131 to 288 HP as well. Because each member of a pack can have different HP, these random variations can have some interesting results when a player uses a multi-target attack. Below I have visualized a group of Fallen before and after a multi-target attack like Glacial Spike.What’s happened here is that, as the sorceress casts her spells, the monsters begin to close in on her. Some of the monsters with lower HP die, but their HP is random, meaning that the remaining pack of higher-HP monsters takes on an irregular shape. This shape then gives the player a tactical new choice of where to run in order to launch the next few spells. This is one of the better examples of how randomness in RPG systems can lead to action-game consequences.

The player isn’t aware of this (because the random damage and random enemy HP are not displayed numerically), but it nevertheless succeeds at forcing the player to make tactical choices in real time.BUT THIS ONE GOES UP TO 11True to roguelike orthodoxy, but often quite frustrating to mainstream audiences, Diablo 2’s best weapons and armor all exhibit RR variation in the affixes they acquire. The best one-handed sword in the game (Azurewrath), for example, can have an increased damage affix of anywhere from 230% to 270%. This can give fits to master-level players who spend hundreds of hours trying to find any version of the item, but who all want the perfect version. Anyone doing the math on the variation will notice, however, that the RR variation can only change Azurewrath’s DPS by about 30 damage, or less than two percent.

Not all items are like this. Another sword called The Grandfather, for example, experiences a 100 percentage-point RR variation, and accordingly it can see its DPS change by about 23% based on the stats it drops with.34 The damage modifiers on most weapons vary less than 50 percentage points, however, and even that level is uncommon except on elite, unique two-handed weapons.The bigger problem is in the smaller ranges. Items like the unique helm Valkyrie Wing offer affixes like +1-2 to amazon skills.

At the highest levels, it’s easy for the player to make up for the loss of 30 DPS, but +skill affixes are as valuable at level 5 as they are at level 85. (Some top-end melee builds do not need such affixes at all, but most classes benefit from them greatly.) Ondal’s Wisdom, a late game staff, is always one of the most valuable caster weapons in the game.

Diablo 2 Boss Drop Tables

It offers 45% faster cast rate, 40-50 energy, and 5% bonus experience; it’s a tremendous item. But it also offers +2-4 to all skills.35 The high end of that range is worth a lot more than the low end, and players will rightly be frustrated if they get a two rather than a three or a four.

We’ll see in part three of this book how those affixes change the overall value of an item, but it suffices to say for now that small RR variation in very important stats is far more important than large-range variation in DPS. This doesn’t mean that players will throw away unique items that don’t have perfect stats. Unique items are rare enough that players can’t throw high-level items away crassly. Unique items also tend to be powerful in several different ways, and some of those ways are bound to be useful to the player. We’ll see a lot more about this aspect of unique items in part three.RR AND MAP GENERATIONAlthough its implementation is not nearly as obvious as elsewhere, Diablo 2 also employs RR variation in map construction. The procedural generation of maps is one place where the otherwise thorough documentation of Diablo 2 falls short.

(This is probably because the most advanced players of Diablo 2 employ map-hacks, which reveal the entire map and thereby obviate the need for a comprehensive understanding of map generation.) Moreover, the Diablo creators I interviewed were not able to recall every step of their methods perfectly. They did provide me with quite a bit of info on the general process, however. This process will come up again in the “deck of cards” randomness section, but I mention it here because there is a bit of RR variation in it too. The overall process is as follows:. The overall size of the map is determined. The orientation of the map is determined.

The zone created is wrapped in a containing wall, which has its own generation algorithm. The major feature of the zone is placed. Rooms and/or doodad objects like trees or houses are added to fill the space (deck of cards randomness, which we’ll examine later). Enemies are added based on density limits (also deck of cards randomness)363738It’s not immediately clear how some of these steps are governed by RR, but they are. Map size, for example, is always calculated within a pre-set range. The X and Y axes of a map have minimums and maximums, and the total area of each zone also has a cap. The specifics of each zone aren’t terribly relevant, but some zones are meant to be bigger than others.

Acts one and two have large, rectangular outdoor zones punctuated by dungeons which are narrow and more corridor-like. Act three, by contrast, has long, snaking outdoor zones which tend to follow the path of an impossibly meandering river. There’s not a predetermined length, but rather an RR guideline which determines the map length.In the fourth step of the map generation process, the algorithm places a zone’s main feature. Usually this feature is the entrance to a dungeon, like the Cairn Stones in Stony Field, or a portal into a demonic realm in the Act five maps. Sometimes the object is simply a quest objective too, like the Tree of Inifus in the Dark Wood. But regardless, the designers made some guidelines to prevent key map objects from colliding with other objects that would prevent access.In most cases, this object cannot be placed next to the edge of the zone.

Legendaries might be more common in than in World of Warcraft, but the endgame goal is basically the same between the two games: get more, better loot. WoW starts to differ with “get prettier loot” while Diablo 3 just laughs and says, “You wish you had my transmog system.” But while WoW tends to funnel players into the One True Progression Path to get the best loot, Diablo 3 keeps it open with a handful of ways to get your legendary groove on.Players are going to figure out the “better” solution for anything. There are two major methods that Diablo 3 players will use to chase a specific legendary item, and now we’re going to dive into the math behind which way is better, depending on what you’re looking for.Diablo’s theorycrafting spreadsheets explainedSpreadsheets come with the theorycrafting territory, especially when it comes to gear decisions. Even though Diablo 3 defies traditional databasing like Wowhead because all the gear has random stat rolls, you can still depend on spreadsheets to help you understand math like drop rates and probability chances.Browsing Diablo‘s class subreddits means you’ll see linked a lot though I’ve found is a little more helpful because it compares not just drop rates or Blood Shard costs, but also approximate Death’s Breath costs.

Diablo 2 Boss Drop Tables 2016

As it was built using the first spreadsheet, it also fixes some of the new item choices. For example, the Thorns of the Invoker set was a multi-class set previously, but in patch 2.3 it became Crusader-only.

The latter spreadsheet fixes this tiny patch difference among others, which in turn slightly affects the rate numbers.The easiest value to understand is the legendary’s regular drop rate, which is the chance that an item will be this particular legendary should the game roll the item as a legendary. We get this chance by dividing the specific legendary item weight by the sum of all legendary item weights of that type. Item types can be large categories of items that many classes can use, like shoulders, or they can contain class-specific item types, like voodoo masks (Witch Doctors only). The weight of an item is essentially its rarity: lower weights mean a rarer item.

Diablo 2 Boss Drop Tables 1

You’ll notice that you’ll see more Gidbinns and Last Rebirths as ceremonial knives, for example, than that one Starmetal Kukri you’ve seen all season. If you look in the “Raw Data” tab, you’ll see that the Gidbinn has a weight of 100, while the Starmetal Kukri is the rarest ceremonial knife out there with a weight of only 25.So, let’s take a ceremonial knife, for example.

I want a Dagger of Darts (DoD) to complement my Carnevil build, so if a legendary ceremonial knife is going to drop, what’s the chance it’ll be a DoD? That’s a weight of 50 divided by a total ceremonial knife weight of 575, which equals 0.0869 or a 8.69% chance.Now, Kadala’s wares take the same formula, but she has a bigger selection to choose from. A ceremonial knife also fits into the 1H weapon category, so when we gamble with Kadala we have to take into account all the other one-handed weapons that Witch Doctors can use. The total weight becomes 3325:. 575 = ceremonial knives. 550 = 1H axes.

350 = daggers. 650 = 1H maces. 200 = spears. 1000 = 1H swordsSo the chance of getting a Dagger of Darts (weight = 50) from a selection of all the 1H weapons a Witch Doctor can use is 50/3325 or 1.50%.For more exercise, let’s say I’m looking for a Carnevil voodoo mask.

Since voodoo masks are a class-specific item like ceremonial knives, the regular drop rate is similar — 50/550 or 9.09%. But voodoo masks are a type of helm, which is an item type category that’s way slimmer than our 1H weapon example. The chance of getting a legendary item that’s a Carnevil via Kadala is about 3.70%.Calculating item costsNow that we’ve got chance basics down, we can figure out our average cost.