Dev Interview: DPK

<Item developers P&Y>

As soon as I entered their office, the sounds of voices in heated discussion mixed with the keyboard clicks of overzealous typers filled my ears. A lively workspace with numbers and formulas flashing from screen to screen and empty energy drinks littered from desk to desk.

Amongst this chaos, I could find today’s interviewees, P & Y, aka. the Doppel Glasses. Recent developments -- including the Combat System Changes -- seem to have put an extra toil (and an extra spotlight) on them. Despite all this, after offering me a seat, I had their undivided attention and my interview began. 
 

Yuri: Item Farming. The core of RPGs. It’s quite addictive, don't you think? Sometimes item farming, itself, becomes my own personal short-term goal outside of the normal activities in the game. But how this work exactly? To answer these questions I go to you, our item developers P and Y.

P&Y: Hey, how’s it going. :)

Yuri: Good, good! So farming for items, making my character stronger, defeating bosses are all experiences we have while playing RPGs. But today, I brought some questions about DPK. Our Saviors are looking forward to your answers.

Y: Sure, ask away.

Yuri: So let's start with the first one: what exactly is DPK? And why do we have it?

Y: Top-down would be a more precise term than drop-per-kill for our game. The reason why we chose this system, rather than DPK, is because if we simply did DPK the worst case scenario would be players hunting for a single item for as long as one or even two months. That’s the downside. To prevent this from happening, with our new system we can at least guarantee that the item will drop.

Yuri: So, this means people don't need to pray to the great RNGesus? As a gamer, I think this is a thoughtful concept, but my questions don’t end here. Our Saviors are also interested in the recent adjustments. We’ve received a lot, and I mean A LOT, of feedback that the drop rate is worse than before. Care to comment?

P: Yes, there have been some adjustments to item values. We manage the item rate by considering both the players' feedback and the real numbers in the game. In other words, we take into consideration comments from the community and compare them with the in-game logs. If item drop rates need to be changed, then we change them.

And, yes, it is true that the drop number has become higher but, when looking at the data, the actual drop rate has increased about 50%. For example, in the previous formula... let's say DPK is 500. This means you must kill 500 monsters to get an item. But with the new formula, each time you kill a monster starting from 1/500, the drop chances increase.

Also, the previous system was a little unfair, no? If Player A is trying to get an item from a monster with a 500 DPK rate and they get to 499 kills, but Player B comes along and kills the last one… Well, Player B gets the item and all of Player A's hard work is put to waste. We want to avoid this problem with the new system.

Yuri: That’s great to hear. So, what can we expect about the future of this top-down formula? Is it set in stone or will there be a few more changes?

Y: Oh, the general structure is going to stay, but we are also going to grant players new ways to acquire items. These items will become available through new content rather than just by killing monsters. This will give players easy and convenient access to certain items.

Yuri: I see. I see. Then can you tell me – when does this top-down system reset?

P: Haha! When the item drops, of course! :D

Yuri: Ah-ha! I almost forgot that this top-down system is all about counting. Well then, is it bound user-wise? Or map-wise?

Y: It’s a secret but… it's bound map-wise. For example, if there is a monster with 500 DPK on Map Z and User A kills 100 monsters on channel 1 while User B kills 100 monsters on channel 2, both players have a 1/300 chance of an item drop.

Yuri: So this would be the last thing to ask about, plans! What can you tell us about that?

P: One of the things we can tell you about is the new material shop system we're considering. You'll probably see them in future events. In this type of shop, you can purchase materials that you need for your recipe.

Yuri: So there will be a special kind of shop to do this.

P: Right; the list of items sold will be random and it will periodically resupply the products, too. But this will be bound to your account, not a character.

Yuri: And the list of items is different for each player?

P: I'm afraid not. All players will have the same list, of course. Also, the shop will not sell core items like Practonium but something like all the xxx~niums, shells which require a certain amount of farming but gives user low motivation. and that kind of stuff to cut down the effort of farming for an item.

Yuri: Since this is a shop, I think asking for the price is also important.

P: Items in these shops will be available for silver. Since this shop is for events, the price is not going to be that expensive. Also, we will coordinate our efforts with iToS staffs to decide when the shops should be reset and how much the items should cost.

Yuri: I see. When can we expect to see this in the game?

P: We're still ironing out the details. We cannot tell you the exact date at this moment, but we will see this gets updated as soon as possible.

Yuri: I understand. Can you tell us what the main reasoning is behind these improvements, so users can have an idea of the direction you're aiming for?

P: Our main goal is to relieve the stress of obtaining drop items and also improve convenience for the players.

Yuri: Alright, well I think those are all of my questions. Thank you for today's interview. Short, sweet, and to the point. I think it will give our Saviors a general ideal of our new item formula. 

P&Y: We are looking forward to show off more interesting items to the players. We would be love to talk about that in the future.