Fix the loot distribution, please.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 09:28
I know this has come up before (and will come up again), but it's getting ridiculous. Most times I play I play in a 2 person party. About half of the time I completely get the shaft on material drops. It'd be one thing if the other half of the time I got the king's ransom of materials, but no. Things are split pretty evenly those times... But more often than not we get the distribution that I got today on a run through the entirety of tier 2 and 3:
Blighted Bone
Miracloth
VS
Spark of Life
Blaze Pepper
Blighted Bone
2 Ghost Bell
Perfect Snowball
Rocky Core
4(!) Warp Dust
So about a 15k swing. This is not an isolated incident either. *Never* have I seen the disparity swing my way. So what's the deal? Is the bias based on equipment? Materials already in inventory? Damage taken/dealt? Danger level?
Or am I just on the wrong end of some random number generator pattern consistently since I'm usually the party leader?
The threads I've seen have said time and again that it's supposed to be totally random. I disregarded the disparity in the past because I figured that it was just a bad run and it'd equal out in the long run, but it just continues on. But at this point I need to solo to get anything vaguely worthwhile. This seems counterproductive to MMO design.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 10:19
#2
1. The drop system doesn't
1. The drop system doesn't care what players value more, as far as I know. I'm pretty sure you received more than just 2 types of materials.
2. There was a thread a few days ago on how the party leaders got more items. Really, why do you people think that your experience is one shared by everyone?
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 10:48
#3
Wah.
I wouldn't mind having
Wah.
I wouldn't mind having the loot options back, but I think you just had some bad luck.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 11:39
#4
Lets give this thread some
Lets give this thread some statistics and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and believe you've NEVER had a favorable outcome for loot distribution since whenever you started keeping track.
Assumptions: approximately 12 "worthwhile" mats drop each run, distribution is random and unbiased, trials are independent.
Lucky: 9 or more go to you
Average: between 4 and 8 go to you
Unlucky: 3 or less go to you
"Lucky" or "Unlucky" occurs 7% of the time over an appropriately large distribution, leaving 86% of the time falling in the "Average" range (binomial distribution). The situation you described in the OP occurs approximately 1% of the time (2/13) so no that does not happen "more often than not" unless you ran like 3 times total and got bad luck. No way. The odds of that happening more than ONCE over even 10 runs is only 0.1%. Still possible, but the odds of it repeating something similar are one-in-a-million types of percentages.
Now, lets say you only care about the times you get Lucky to occur, ok I getcha. The odds that you WON'T see a "Lucky" run over the course of 50 runs is 2%. That's a rather non-zero number, nobody would be overly surprised of such an event occurring, I mean it happens to 2 out of 100 people every 50 runs. Your luck will turn around eventually at least once, I promise, and math has my back.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 11:53
#5
hugbees
What if everyone in the party got a copy of the drops?
EX:
Item "K" drops
party member C picks it up
party members A,B,C, and D all get one of item "K"
ofc. this will prob. cause some trouble somewhere like flooding the market with mats or something.
In which case they can increase mats required for crafting or something.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 12:17
#6
"party members A,B,C, and D
"party members A,B,C, and D all get one of item "K"
No this would most likely cause a "flood in the market" with materials, and Three Rings would most likely double, no TRIPLE the required materials for crafting, unfortunately that would mean 3 sun steels, shadow steels, flame souls, ect. (for 5 star recepies) AND THOSE ARE VERY RARE to get, making crafting more of a pain than it is already....
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 12:48
#7
Items are given randomly. You
Items are given randomly. You just got unlucky. I've had FSC runs where the best I've gotten are Blighted Bones and Blaze Peppers (which drop like candy in that area) and the other 2 people got two 5* mats each... on the other hand I've been in a party of 4 and I got all 3 of the 5* mats that dropped. It is completely random, just tell your friend congrats and go on another run.
~Gwen
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 12:55
#8
Easy.
Solo.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 14:03
#9
People often think they see
People often think they see patterns in randomness. In order to have a viable complaint, you must collect data and then show that what you have collected is far outside of what one might reasonably expect from a random drop system.
In order to do this, you have to track who gets every single drop, every single time you group. The end of the run summary isn't good enough, as it could include drops that occurred when you weren't there, unless everyone in your group joins at the same time and stays for the entire run. But this isn't practical, as you don't know that people are going to stay for the entire run. Alternatively, you could consider only the drops that occur while you are there but you have to track and record every single drop. Furthermore, you must do this for many runs, and add up all of the results, as one run is unlikely to give significant results by itself. In addition, if the size of your party ever varies, then you must track exactly how many party members were present for each drop.
If you want to be able to sometimes group without tracking loot, but still collect valid data, then you have to decide whether or not you're going to track loot for that run before the run starts. You cannot get halfway through and then decide whether loot counts for that run or not. You cannot have it vague in your mind so that you could after the fact think that you had decided either way. Someone with a sufficiently rigorous mind may be able to just think to himself, this one is going to count toward my tally. Most people can't do that, though (even most people who think they can, can't), and it would probably be better to write it down on a piece of paper, yes, this one is going to count, before the run starts, so that you can't weasel out of it later.
Furthermore, you have to catch and record every single loot drop. You could restrict to particular types of loot, such as four star and above, but only if you're absolutely flawless in knowing exactly which drops are how many stars. Being right 9 times out of 10 is not good enough; indeed, that's bad enough to make your results completely meaningless. 99 times out of 100 isn't good enough either. You have to be exactly right every single time, and most people are incapable of doing this except by tracking every single drop.
Next, you're going to have to stop frequently to write down the tally. This is a major pain. But you have to track every single thing. If you forget to write down 1 item in 10 that drops, and only get 9 out of 10, then your results are meaningless. Once you decide that you're going to track loot, you have to get every single drop for the duration of that run, even if you lag and get disconnected, get kicked from the group, or have the game or your computer crash. That means that you can't let drops accumulate for several minutes and then tally them later. You'll probably need the acquiescence of everyone else you group with to let you constantly stop and tally loot.
Most people are simply incapable of the detail necessary to track the data properly. No particular step is hard, but doing it every single time is hard to remember. Most people just don't have the personality for it. But without hard data on the drops, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that there is anything wrong with the drop system randomizing loot. It's probably just your perception.
The reason it is necessary to track it every single time is that otherwise, you'll systematically bias your results. When a run gives you favorable luck with drops, you'll think nothing of it, but when you get disfavorable luck, you'll be upset, remember your project to gather data, and record it. It's like trying to determine whether a coin is fair, tossing it a bunch of times, and recording the results 90% of the time when it comes up heads, and only 80% of the time when it comes up tails. You'll end up concluding that the coin comes up heads more often than tails, and by a statistically significant margin, but it will be because you goofed in your data collection. You would reach the same conclusion for a fair coin.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 16:50
#10
Sigh
Look folks, I'm a programmer for a living. I'm not bad at math. I know the psychological baises that make me tend to remember the terrible runs as opposed to the good ones.
I have dozens of runs, and I have a good idea how statistically improbable such 'bad luck' over such a long period of time actually is. I also know crappy the default RNG algo for Java & .NET (and C++, and...) are when naively picking from a small range. I did not come to the conclusion that things are likely not random lightly.
Sure, I can sit and collect stats on mat drops (closed party, both members the whole run makes it easy), but frankly it's nearly trivial for someone with the source for player assignment and star assignment to test the distribution so thoroughly as to make 'record a few dozen runs' laughable.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 17:09
#11
Fair enough, I'll give you
Fair enough, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt again, I wish you luck in your travels for figuring out where the weakness in their "random" is if true. I've never encountered anything like that so I can't help you.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 17:25
#12
If you know the psychological
If you know the psychological biases that cause people to find patterns where none exist, you should also know that the only way to confirm such suspicions is to collect hard evidence.
By all means, post your test results instead of your anecdotal evidence.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 17:25
#13
The simplest and most obvious
The simplest and most obvious explanation is that OOO created the drop tables to distribute loot to everyone except for accounts named "telastyn"
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 17:35
#14
It's 100% random.
You might
It's 100% random.
You might have great luck, you might have crappy luck, it's all a roll of the dice. If you're hoping to get good drops your best bet is to solo, that way you get everything for yourself.
If you're in a party you're reducing your chances of getting items by a very large amount.
Sun, 07/10/2011 - 19:59
#15
If you know the psychological
Indeed. I also know that any evidence I collect is going to get the same skeptical treatment from random dudes on the internet. And frankly, I like leaving my work at work. I don't care enough about this game to do that much to 'fix' it, and I don't care enough about parties to deal with the headache if it continues.
I played enough puzzle pirates to know that Three Rings *does* care enough about their games to look at the design if it's not completely random and maybe spend 5 minutes to revisit their unit tests if it's supposed to be.
Regardless, bitching about it makes me feel better.
The RandomNumberGenerator hates you.
But hey, your friend was really, REALLY, really lucky.