Crafting Statistics - Master Writs

helediron

Some master writ statistics from this year. The picture has stats from three time periods from early Homestead to today.

Early weeks in Homestead dropped nicely vouchers. Then a patch that came 20.2 changed droprates, and somewhere along the road a second time. I split the first stats into two parts and have run them again this week.

How to read
Columns: The numbers have been divided into two groups: consumable writs and gear writs.

• Date: start date of the data set (in european format).
• Days: How many days in a data set.
• Consumab. : Numbers calculated from consumable writs
• Gear : Numbers calculated from gear writs

Rows: There are three time periods and from each period there are three key indicators. They are averaged out from hundreds of writs in each period:

• Drop rate%/Writ: What is the chance of getting a master writ when doing one of the writs in the group (consumable or gear). If a crafter did 1000 gear writs and got 38 master writs, the drop rate is 3.8%
• Vouchers/Writ: How many vouchers on average a crafter can expect from doing one writ and possible master writ. E.g. if a crafter did 1000 gear writs and got 3500 vouchers, then Vouchers/writ is 3.5 . Note that there are two RNGs on top of each other. First there is a chance to get the master writ at all and next is a chance of getting it legendary for big amount of vouchers.
• Legendary drop%: What percentage of all master gear writs are legendary (unreliable in last set). Rest are epic. If a crafter got 1000 master writs and 237 were legendary, the legendary drop% is 23.7 .

Interpretation
Consumable droprates have been roughly at same level, except provisioning started to drop better at some point.

At 20.2 gear voucher drop rates were reduced. At some point legendary drop rates were slightly increased (or is RNG) and later reduced.

I can summarize the master writs into one number: vouchers per writ

• first weeks: 3.5 vouchers per writ
• End of February: 1.6 vouchers per writ
• now: 1 voucher per writ

Another way to read the numbers: Today one good crafter

• Gets a blacksmith master writ every 26 days.
• Gets some gear writ every 9 days.
• Gets a legendary gear writ every second month.

Background info
All 12 crafters used in these statistics have at least 8 traits, about dozen purple motifs, all easy achievements done in crafting. They have been improved during the spring, all got several motifs from the festival and are all no more than two months away from reaching 9 traits on everything. Without ZOS changes they should have been getting more vouchers instead of less. So in reality ZOS may have reduced drop rates even more than what the numbers show.

First two sets are from over 1000 writs and the last from almost 600 writs. Numbers have the usual uncertainty of RNG. The last data set is a bit small, but i need to get the numbers out before preparing to Wardenfell. E.g. the data set is really too small to reliably measure drop rate of legendary writs.

helediron

reserved.

davey1107

Excellent work. I considered tracking my drops with a similar crew (9 master crafters) on PS4, but decided not to because they're all in various stages of trait and motif learning. Maybe I should start tracking my ultimate master...he's 100% research, 100% motif, 100% recipes.

Your figures look consistent with what I've observed. I'll also note that in the last few days I've seen a significant uptick in legendary drops...but to early to tell if rates are up, or if it's just a mathematical "winning streak".

All of this data has led me and my friend to hypothesize:

1. It's possible that the system has some form of traffic control, rather than drop rates being manually adjusted. In other words, the system only wants to give out so many legendary writs. When many more players jump in and do dailies, the drop rates for any one player go down because more are competing for a limited number. It's probably not a hard cap...just a sliding scale like the group xp mechanic or something like that. In other words, if 100 players did writs in a day and 1000 did them the next, more writs would be rewarded overall to the 1000 day, but they'd be shared amongst more players so that the 100 day would have better average rates. We see this sort of mechanic in a lot of the other game systems.

2. Based on observational data, I hypothesize that the way the system calculates the master writ reward is by first running a probability on whether the turn in generates a master writ, and then secondly it examines a toon's experience to run a second calculation for the writ quality. My inexperience mule seems to have the same odds of getting a smith writ as my ultimate master crafter...it's just that the mule always draws a 5 voucher writ, where my master has a better shot at legendary.

3. We wonder about a time of day factor. I tend to do writs over morning coffee or before bed right after the system resets at 11 pm pacific. I have noticed that my return rate seems way better at 11 pm. If my traffic control theory is plausible, then perhaps the system starts the writ day at a specific drop rate and then sometimes has to adjust upward or downward as the day progresses and it receives traffic reports.

4. We have NO idea why the provision writs are so out of whack with the alchemy writs, lol.

5. Generally I put way too much thought into daily writ rewards, but there's a lot of loading screen time when you run nine toons through them

Nestor

davey1107 wrote: »

Excellent work. I considered tracking my drops with a similar crew (9 master crafters) on PS4, but decided not to because they're all in various stages of trait and motif learning.

Or, you probably should. Reason, my "dumber" crafter (some purple motifs know, just a few items with a trait or two learned, no real crafting achievements) got more Master Writs than my "smarter" crafter who is 9/9 in everything and knows all but two motifs and has every crafting achievement but one gets master writs at a far lower rate. And, as I have had my "dumber" crafter learn traits and motifs, the master writ rate on her dropped, but that could be to the over all nerf to drop rates that I think has happened.

Bottom Line, there is too much RNG in Master Writs. I have stopped doing crafting writs as I am saving my mats for my alts who are hitting champ ranks, and not wasting them on chasing Master Writs that are hidden behind an RNG scheme.

agn231

Nestor nailed it. I really got into to crafting for a while after Homestead but the frustration with lack of MW's or ability to generate more vouchers has become...not fun.