TLDR: To lessen the impact of RNG in Skywars, the diamond ore drop algorithm should be revised.
In Hive Skywars, all the ore drops are purely random, with the weights for each drop always staying consistent. This would usually be fine, except in the case of diamond armor. On Hive, there exists a mechanic that snaps damage to an integer hp(0.5 hearts = 1 hp) amount. This is great, as it adds visual consistency, and you are able to know beforehand exactly how many hearts of damage you would take from the enemy player before their next hit. But when you are wearing 3 pieces of diamond armor, with the last 1 piece being armor of a lower tier, this becomes a problem. When you face an enemy who is wearing full diamond armor, depending on their weapon, they will deal 2 hp (1 heart) of damage to you. But because they are wearing full diamond armor, the most damage you can deal to them per hit is 1 hp (0.5 hearts). That means that a difference of 1 armor piece determines whether you can take 10 hits, or 20 hits. That is a 2x ratio, which is massive. Couple that with the drop algorithm of diamond armor, and you get matches where after mining 20 diamond ores, you still only have some pairs of boots and leggings, and someone just gear-mogs you to death. Losing not because you are bad, but because you got worse items, leaves a really sour taste in your mouth. A great fix to this would be to implement an algorithm that checks what armor pieces have dropped, and tries to avoid duplicates. Another method would be to check what diamond armor pieces are in the inventory, and change the armor piece weights based on that. For example, :
[For every diamond ore you mine, the server checks what pieces are in your inventory. When an ore is mined, it first determines between 2 choices:whether to drop a duplicate, or a different piece. Lets say the duplicate drop chance is 10%, and non-duplicate chance is 90%. After that, the weights are adjusted within that choice to be equal to each other. Lets say I have a diamond sword and 2 diamond helmets. When I mine a diamond ore, I have a 90% chance of getting either a diamond chestplate, leggings, or boots, and a 10% chance of getting another diamond sword or a diamond helmet. In this case, the total probabilities would be :
0.9 * 0.33… = 30% chance to get a diamond chestplate
0.9 * 0.33… = 30% chance to get diamond leggings
0.9 * 0.33… = 30% chance to get diamond boots
0.1 * 0.5 = 5% chance to get a diamond sword
0.1 * 0.5 = 5% chance to get a diamond helmet.
]
Now, some people might say “Just go to mid,” but I’ve had cases where I looted 2 enderchests and 2 normal chests at mid and only got diamond leggings and chain chestplates. Sometimes, you get no diamond pieces at all from mid chests, and that forces you to run away from stacked players the entire match, while frantically looking for any diamond ores in sight. This change not only reduces the impact of RNG, but also makes it so less matches end in draws. (You are literally forced to draw sometimes because of how little items you get)
Below are the other parts for “Skywars Balancing”