vWGT/vICP DropBug Theories and Tests

Flak

Hey there,
my name is Flak and i've noticed two possible bugs on the drops of vWGT/vICP, I ran some testruns with friends and guildies and had very clear results, although this is of course no proof and can all be a matter of (bad) luck.

Bug One: Getting the same loot again and again.
After the release of IC, I farmed vWGT for SPC and Overwhelming Setpieces. The result after about 70 runs was: 2 overhelming (I dropped on my first run), 2 SPC, 8 ShockMaster (of which 7 were Boots with Infused!), about 4 Essense Thief, about 8 Jolting and 16-20 Imperiumpieces. Esp. on ShockMaster and Imperium i would get the same pieces with the exact same trait over and over again, after 5 Vaults with only Imperiumdrop I started to open the Vaults with different chars, the results were completely different, I started dropping Overwhelming and SPC again. So I startet doing tests to find out what caused the problem with my mainchar.
What we finaly found out was that items that we deconstructedwith our mains would drop again in the next run for one of the party members.
We had about 8 runs with each of us deconstructing a single item and always one in the party dropped the exact same item with the exact same trait in the next run.Again, theres no proof, this could be completely random but I think you dont need to be Albert Einstein to know that this has a very low chance to accure by random. So I ve put all the unneeded drops on a bankchar and what can I tell you... i got the complete SPC and Overwhelming Sets within about 30-35 runs.

More detailed theory for technically interested:

Spoiler

1. On entry of dungeon the server generates an array(list) with random gear for the players to drop.
2. On each dead boss each player has a certain chance (10% prepatch afaik) to drop the first item in the list.
3. Players deconstruct setpieces
4. On the next run with the same char, the destroyed setpieces are on the first places in the list again. The player can redrop his own deconstructed pieces or deconstructed pieces from other partymembers.
5. The chance to get an actually randomized setpiece is very low and only possible after the deconstructed pieces were all dropped
On my testruns the deconstructed setpiece was always the first drop in the party

Bug Two: Drop Chance being even lower since update.
As far as i am informed the plan was to increase the dropchance from 10%/Boss to 25%/Boss in both vWGT and vICP with the Orsinium Basegame Patch.
After having insanely low drops I tested it out with a bunch of friends in vICP. We had six runs, and with six bosses in the dungeon and 25%/Boss there should have been 5 Drops in the Group/Run. After six runs we had three (!) drops in total, equal to a dropchance of 2,08%/Boss. And im even counting one drop that was on mobs, in fact we only had 2 drops on bosses. Six runs might not seem much for a test, but keep in mind that with 4 ppl we had a total of 144 dropchances. Again, the chance for this to accure by random is very low. I can only guess what causes this, but i think the most plausible Bug would be a wrong digit (0.025 instead of 0.25).

Thank you for your time, I hope i could help some of you

Personofsecrets

Interesting theory and I thank you for posting this. You aren't the only one trying to find patterns with how server loot generation atm works.

I've tried to talk to @ZOS_RichLambert about loot seeding before, but none of the devs have chimed in to help us not get stale drops due to non-resetting seeds.

Again, I want to believe it is more parsimonious and want to believe that what happens is just random. The problem is that humans notice patterns for a reason and that is because our adept pattern recognition was evolutionarily selected for. If we can notice the patterns of how molecules act, then I think we can notice when a video game is improperly biased toward giving out the same loot time and time again.

Personofsecrets

Would you like to share anything @MrBeatDown ?

Beesting

I guess i am just amazed that people actually still farm these dungeons, after reading long posts about the bugged low droprates (when the dungeons came out) and spending one Sunday in vWGT myself and getting not even one drop,

i completely gave up on the idea and spent many happy hours farming IC sewers. Fun, exciting and unpredictable. They can keep the overwhelming set for all i care...

Wingdude

Well i can "confirm" that drop changes are even lower than before patch. We did about 8 runs the last couple of days and got several runs where no drop apeared for whole group. And on the avarage there are 2 drops for the whole group.

Some sets seems to drops more often than others aswell.

Most drop chances come from random trash loot rather than from the bosses -.-

Personofsecrets

Wingdude wrote: »

Well i can "confirm" that drop changes are even lower than before patch. We did about 8 runs the last couple of days and got several runs where no drop apeared for whole group. And on the avarage there are 2 drops for the whole group.

Some sets seems to drops more often than others aswell.

Most drop chances come from random trash loot rather than from the bosses -.-

@ZOS_RichLambert , can you look at the numbers please?

TiberX

I can confirm also at least for Prison. My numbers:

6 runs in the last 3 days*6 bosses/dungeon*4 members=144 targets

loot: 2 runs 0 loot on all members, 2 runs with total of 2 items and 2 runs with 3 items so total loot 10 items

Drop chance: 144/10=6.94%


I have to add that this drop also came from mobs so on bosses is even lover, unfortunately i don't have statistic on how many dropped from mobs.

They SAID in patch notes that drop chance from bosses will be 25%.
These are nice dungeons with nice sets , please fix ASAP.

daemonios

TiberX wrote: »

I can confirm also at least for Prison. My numbers:

6 runs in the last 3 days*6 bosses/dungeon*4 members=144 targets

loot: 2 runs 0 loot on all members, 2 runs with total of 2 items and 2 runs with 3 items so total loot 10 items

Drop chance: 144/10=6.94%


I have to add that this drop also came from mobs so on bosses is even lover, unfortunately i don't have statistic on how many dropped from mobs.

They SAID in patch notes that drop chance from bosses will be 25%.
These are nice dungeons with nice sets , please fix ASAP.

I guess ZOS just can't RNG...

tangy.citrus

Ive experienced a similar sensation with the loot. The first week after patch the loot drops were great, now its rare to get one drop from 5 runs - which is worse than what it was prior.

Shader_Shibes

Yeah. No way is the increased drop rate working, and like others have said, seems to be even lower now.

isT

I can pretty much back up this theory. Since Orsinium launched I had some good drops on light armor sets, but then decided to deconstruct all those crappy medium and heavy sets to free some space in bank. After that had some 10 runs in vWGT and 2 in vICP and had 1 single drop which was Essence Thief shoulders (well-fitted), the same I had among deconstructed items.

This is just sad, game punishing you for deconstructing unneeded items, both drop rate gone way down, and I guess lots of useless items incoming in next runs. My guess is devs have no idea how this is happening cuz alternative is they hate us...

PaddingtonBear

yeap drop rates not happening, even worse than usual now.

6 runs all I get is overwhelming shoe with reinforced trait

Personofsecrets

@ZOS_RichLambert , can you please check what several people are coming out to say is a problem.

@MrBeatDown , maybe you could have some fun collaborating with OP.

Flak

Personofsecrets wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert , can you please check what several people are coming out to say is a problem.

It would definetly be nice to hear sth from devs about this topic.

PBpsy

Flak wrote: »

Hey there,


Bug Two: Drop Chance being even lower since update.
As far as i am informed the plan was to increase the dropchance from 10%/Boss to 25%/Boss in both vWGT and vICP with the Orsinium Basegame Patch.
After having insanely low drops I tested it out with a bunch of friends in vICP. We had six runs, and with six bosses in the dungeon and 25%/Boss there should have been 5 Drops in the Group/Run. After six runs we had three (!) drops in total, equal to a dropchance of 2,08%/Boss.

Actually what you have here is very consitent with 25% drop chance per boss.With a basic assumption that the RNG works as implied.
4(players)*6(bosses)=24 drop events.
25% change per event.
Binomial Distribution should be what is expected unless they skew their loot table in some way.
60% chance of 6 drops or less
42% chance of 5 drops or less
24% chance of 4 drops or less
11% chance of 3 drops or less

edit. Sorry messed up and used 23% first time instead of 25%

Flak

@PBpsy Keep in mind the 3 drops were over 6 runs... Its 144 dropevents.

PBpsy

Flak wrote: »

@PBpsy Keep in mind the 3 drops were over 6 runs... Its 144 dropevents.

I was talking about this statement mostly .

Flak wrote: »

"there should have been 5 Drops in the Group/Run.

But yes. The RNG is sniped.You are right that 3 drops per 6 runs has a 1/1000000 chance to happen with 25% drop rate per boss.

Personofsecrets

Has there been a drop rate given out or is it all speculative?

Malmai

Should be 25-30% drop rate but its 2-3% at the moment.

Personofsecrets

Malmai wrote: »

Should be 25-30% drop rate but its 2-3% at the moment.

Should it be that way because of your opinion or because of something a developer said?

Flak

Personofsecrets wrote: »

show previous quotes

Malmai wrote: »

Should be 25-30% drop rate but its 2-3% at the moment.

Should it be that way because of your opinion or because of something a developer said?

Afaik this has been announced about one month before the Orsinium Release. Don't have a link though.

jbjondeaueb17_ESO

Official Patch notes :

Dungeons & Group Content
Dungeons
General
Increased the drop rate of set items from the White-Gold Tower and Imperial City Prison dungeons by approximately 2.5 times their previous rate.

forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/227778/pc-mac-live-patch-notes-v2-2-4#latest

Flak

jbjondeaueb17_ESO wrote: »

Official Patch notes :

Dungeons & Group Content
Dungeons
General
Increased the drop rate of set items from the White-Gold Tower and Imperial City Prison dungeons by approximately 2.5 times their previous rate.

forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/227778/pc-mac-live-patch-notes-v2-2-4#latest

Thanks for linking, so it should be at about 25% droprate since original rate was at ~10%

usmcjdking

Yeah, I'm going to say something is butchered with this. I have done probably 20-25 runs of WGT/vWGT over the past week and got so much bashlord gear I can make two sets, but no imperium gear outside of the chests, and in all 3 cases I got the SAME 2 CHEST PIECES WITH THE SAME 2 TRAITS.

eliisra

Haven't even seen a single set item in like 5 runs, not even well-fitted Jolting crap (the only thing I get from vaults btw).

If they actually did buff the droprate, must have been from like 1% up to a dashing 2%.

Personofsecrets

Something seems off @ZOS_RichLambert

Flak

usmcjdking wrote: »

Yeah, I'm going to say something is butchered with this. I have done probably 20-25 runs of WGT/vWGT over the past week and got so much bashlord gear I can make two sets, but no imperium gear outside of the chests, and in all 3 cases I got the SAME 2 CHEST PIECES WITH THE SAME 2 TRAITS.

Did you deconstruct one or more of these pieces before opening another vault?

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Something seems off @ZOS_RichLambert

Indeed, I see more and more people experiencing the same issues as me, some reaction would be nice.

usmcjdking

Flak wrote: »

show previous quotes

usmcjdking wrote: »

Yeah, I'm going to say something is butchered with this. I have done probably 20-25 runs of WGT/vWGT over the past week and got so much bashlord gear I can make two sets, but no imperium gear outside of the chests, and in all 3 cases I got the SAME 2 CHEST PIECES WITH THE SAME 2 TRAITS.

Did you deconstruct one or more of these pieces before opening another vault?

show previous quotes

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Something seems off @ZOS_RichLambert

Indeed, I see more and more people experiencing the same issues as me, some reaction would be nice.

I can do some more test runs for you later.

I have a lot of bashlord gear that needs to be deconned.

PaddingtonBear

ok so I did 6 vwgt runs today, and I get 1 jolting reinforced helmet. Something really fishy is going on here, other group members prob had like 2 or so dropped pieces in total

TiberX

PaddingtonBear wrote: »

ok so I did 6 vwgt runs today, and I get 1 jolting reinforced helmet. Something really fishy is going on here, other group members prob had like 2 or so dropped pieces in total

Many confirm now these kind of numbers and no response yet Something is really fishy..

mateoz

They probably just did a typo in the patch note
Original:
Official Patch notes :

Dungeons & Group Content
Dungeons
General
Increased the drop rate of set items from the White-Gold Tower and Imperial City Prison dungeons by approximately 2.5 times their previous rate.

What we should read:
Increased the drop rate of set items from the White-Gold Tower and Imperial City Prison dungeons to approximately 2.5% rate.

Simple and it work with everyone numbers