Allow me to make a constructive post regarding RNG and what we know as “time walls” that exist so commonly in most MMORPGs.
The primary objective of any game is to fetch as many players (thus profit as much) as they can, correct?
In most games, this comes in the form of advertisement, popularity, pricing, and general promoting of your game.
However, MMORPG games have an inherent problem that most normal offline games don’t: They require players online to draw more players to the game. Not just that, but their revenue revolves around having players online and buying cash. This is very different when compared to offline games that don’t care wether or not you actually play the game, they only care if you buy it or not.
Therefore, the general assumption of a mmorpg is to try to keep their players in the game. A good offline game makes success and they release a new version of the game, while MMORPGs have no intent to segregate playerbase between ToS 1 and ToS 2, for example.
Now, keeping players entertained (and online) on your game while you develop it is much more complicated than it sounds. It is physically impossible to develop new content faster than your players can play it.
The answer developers find to solve that problem is to add “time walls”. Basically, past a certain point, you need to exponentially waste more time to get stronger.
Time walls can come in the form of RNG (your example of how hard it is to refine a wep to +27), excessive grinding (i.e. how long it took to get a 2 practo wep before), or even actual real time limitations (i.e. can’t hunt infinite amounts of blessed shards per day simply because game won’t let you). Some games even add things such as infinite reborns or infinite level cap to give players the false sense they are always “progressing”.
I know I am taking many turns with my talk here, but what I’m trying to explain to you is that changing the refinement system from RNG based to something like grinding based will not solve the essence of the problem. The time wall will still be there, and getting higher refinements would still require insane amounts of grinding times.
If they make the grinding too short, players leave because they got bored (can no further progress). If they make the grinding too long, and don’t add an objective to it, players get upset and leave because they require too much effort to keep getting stronger. The keyword here is balance.
Farming 1 year for +27 trans 10 wep? No fun. I mean, there is no content that requires such absurdly strong weapon. For what purpose are you even doing that grind?
Farming 2 weeks for +10 trans 3 wep, unlocking new content to do, farming another 2 weeks for +15 trans 6, unlocking even more challenging content, farming now 4 weeks for +20 trans 8, being able to kill stuff that you weren’t even able to kill before, and so on… Guess what? Super fun!
Finally farming a whole year for your +27 trans 10, now being able to solo the hardest world boss and being able to solo the hardest raid dungeon in game, is it worth it? Yes, because the grinding was fun along the way.
Will there be a huge power disparity between players? Yes. But this is a mmorpg game. Putting effort into the game should always be rewarded. This is very different to fps or moba games where player skill prevails and you make the game with the principle that “everyone should have equal chance to win”.
