nMA random drops do not appear to be random, here is probably why

mairwen85

kathandira wrote: »

mairwen85 wrote: »

kathandira wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

snip

I have amazing RNG.

Literally got all weapons in a matter of 2 days. Only 2 duplicates.

Which god do you sacrifice your goats to?

Pelor

Converting

furiouslog

mairwen85 wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

Bruh. They made maelstrom weapons to appease casuals like you and you're still complaining? What would you like instead. A free weapon for logging in?

I'm not a casual. I have been playing since beta (with a break), and I have 12 alts, cleared all vet trials, all vet dungeons (most of them on HM), and gotten about 29K of achievement points on my main. Not really casual. My complaint is that the number of times I need to run nMA to achieve my goal requires an unbearably boring time sink that is way too long given other stuff I could be doing with my limited game time. Is that not a legitimate complaint?

Aparently it wasn't a legitimate complaint for vma as per my previous post.

Then we do not agree, I guess. Thanks for providing your opinion on the matter.

mairwen85

furiouslog wrote: »

mairwen85 wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

Bruh. They made maelstrom weapons to appease casuals like you and you're still complaining? What would you like instead. A free weapon for logging in?

I'm not a casual. I have been playing since beta (with a break), and I have 12 alts, cleared all vet trials, all vet dungeons (most of them on HM), and gotten about 29K of achievement points on my main. Not really casual. My complaint is that the number of times I need to run nMA to achieve my goal requires an unbearably boring time sink that is way too long given other stuff I could be doing with my limited game time. Is that not a legitimate complaint?

Aparently it wasn't a legitimate complaint for vma as per my previous post.

Then we do not agree, I guess. Thanks for providing your opinion on the matter.

Then you misread me. I agree, ZOS don't... And neither did the people who agreed with the latest arena changes for vMA weapons.

furiouslog

mairwen85 wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

mairwen85 wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

Bruh. They made maelstrom weapons to appease casuals like you and you're still complaining? What would you like instead. A free weapon for logging in?

I'm not a casual. I have been playing since beta (with a break), and I have 12 alts, cleared all vet trials, all vet dungeons (most of them on HM), and gotten about 29K of achievement points on my main. Not really casual. My complaint is that the number of times I need to run nMA to achieve my goal requires an unbearably boring time sink that is way too long given other stuff I could be doing with my limited game time. Is that not a legitimate complaint?

Aparently it wasn't a legitimate complaint for vma as per my previous post.

Then we do not agree, I guess. Thanks for providing your opinion on the matter.

Then you misread me. I agree, ZOS don't... And neither did the people who agreed with the latest arena changes for vMA weapons.

Ahh, I see now. Coffee still kicking in.

Ratzkifal

Your statistics are pretty interesting. But 45min for normal MA sounds a bit long.

I'd advise you to make a Werewolf cheese build using 5 pieces of Warrior's Fury and whatever else you like running. That gets me through veteran MA in the same time, so normal should be considerably faster.

Another build would be magSorc using FGD which is pretty fast and has plenty of sustain and defense while not lacking in the offensive department if you pair it with something like Mother's Sorrow.

Stealthk80

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Your statistics are pretty interesting. But 45min for normal MA sounds a bit long.

I'd advise you to make a Werewolf cheese build using 5 pieces of Warrior's Fury and whatever else you like running. That gets me through veteran MA in the same time, so normal should be considerably faster.

Another build would be magSorc using FGD which is pretty fast and has plenty of sustain and defense while not lacking in the offensive department if you pair it with something like Mother's Sorrow.

I'm getting a lot of joy with infal and undaunted infiltrator, was used in my first ventures into trials until got siroria and fg, it's fairly quick with good sustain. I agree that probably infall and fg would be better, but I don't have the fg pieces to work with infal unfortunately, that movement bones after kills would be good

furiouslog

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Your statistics are pretty interesting. But 45min for normal MA sounds a bit long.

I'd advise you to make a Werewolf cheese build using 5 pieces of Warrior's Fury and whatever else you like running. That gets me through veteran MA in the same time, so normal should be considerably faster.

Another build would be magSorc using FGD which is pretty fast and has plenty of sustain and defense while not lacking in the offensive department if you pair it with something like Mother's Sorrow.

I'm including the time it takes to load in and log out, with transport time to MA. I have 2 minute load screens. My timers clock in at about 35 minutes. I suppose I could cut the time down by parking toons in MA, but I actually want to play other game content now and then.

nMA is not that much faster when it is run compared to an expert running vMA due to the long pauses between rounds and phases. When I run vDSA with a good team and do relatively well, it's only a little longer than nDSA, which is a total joke - but there are a lot of round resets, and standing around waiting, repair time, grabbing drops, changing gear, etc. Maybe if you run nMA yourself, you could get a fair benchmark to compare the two. I melt everything as quickly as possible in nMA, but I can't make the mobs spawn faster than they do.

SidraWillowsky

furiouslog wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Your statistics are pretty interesting. But 45min for normal MA sounds a bit long.

I'd advise you to make a Werewolf cheese build using 5 pieces of Warrior's Fury and whatever else you like running. That gets me through veteran MA in the same time, so normal should be considerably faster.

Another build would be magSorc using FGD which is pretty fast and has plenty of sustain and defense while not lacking in the offensive department if you pair it with something like Mother's Sorrow.

I'm including the time it takes to load in and log out, with transport time to MA. I have 2 minute load screens. My timers clock in at about 35 minutes. I suppose I could cut the time down by parking toons in MA, but I actually want to play other game content now and then.

nMA is not that much faster when it is run compared to an expert running vMA due to the long pauses between rounds and phases. When I run vDSA with a good team and do relatively well, it's only a little longer than nDSA, which is a total joke - but there are a lot of round resets, and standing around waiting, repair time, grabbing drops, changing gear, etc. Maybe if you run nMA yourself, you could get a fair benchmark to compare the two. I melt everything as quickly as possible in nMA, but I can't make the mobs spawn faster than they do.

I've found the same- I'm able to run through vMA fairly quickly and don't find nMA to be much faster, unfortunately.

jecks33

furiouslog wrote: »

My complaint is that the number of times I need to run nMA to achieve my goal requires an unbearably boring time sink that is way too long given other stuff I could be doing with my limited game time. Is that not a legitimate complaint?

imagine me doing 129 runs in Veteran maelstrom arena to find the first inferno staff
imagine me doing 300 runs in Veteran maelstrom arena to find the second inferno staff

now imagine me reading complaints about Normal maelstrom arena....

Stealthk80

jecks33 wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

My complaint is that the number of times I need to run nMA to achieve my goal requires an unbearably boring time sink that is way too long given other stuff I could be doing with my limited game time. Is that not a legitimate complaint?

imagine me doing 129 runs in Veteran maelstrom arena to find the first inferno staff
imagine me doing 300 runs in Veteran maelstrom arena to find the second inferno staff

now imagine me reading complaints about Normal maelstrom arena....

Imagine doing that for something you need and not fully comprehending the purpose of the post - it's been ran for data gathering, not to complain about drop rates, which you are doing.

furiouslog

So I wanted to provide an update on my drop rate calculations used to calculate the number of runs I need to do, which did not account for the factor of multiple runs under the same conditions - I calculated time spent independently for each staff, but it is not independent. Here's a chart that shows how many runs you need to achieve in order to get 1 inferno staff (under current drop rates), and 4 inferno staves (under current drop rates):

https://ibb.co/PwQJQxh

So, I won't need to run nMA as many times as I thought to get 4 staves, it starts to get above 99 percent at about 130 runs.

@jecks33 - you ran many of those under the old drop rates, which for the inferno staff had a lower drop rate. Still not getting the staff at 128 runs is about a 1 in 400 chance. Unlucky if true.

TheGreatBlackBear

You should try playing a mmo where you had to roll against other players for loot that only drops once a week. Then come back and talk about drop rates and rng in ESO.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

It's VMA not MA for me, but I have about 10 runs since the patch and already have 3 infernros, an ice, and a lighting. RNG is RNG, and 22 runs is an extremely small sample size. Now if only the new bow would drop...

furiouslog

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

You should try playing a mmo where you had to roll against other players for loot that only drops once a week. Then come back and talk about drop rates and rng in ESO.

So, if I don't like something, instead of voicing my perspective about that thing I should stay quiet because of my awareness that a different thing is worse? A fallacious argument. FWIW I played WoW back in early days, and I stopped for exactly that reason.

mairwen85

I'm disappointed that this thread has gone 2 pages without anyone ignoring the points about RNG and going "but transmutation"...

Step it up forums!

furiouslog

If I could transmute a maul into an inferno staff, there would not be anything to complain about, I assure you.

A lot of people have floated the idea of a currency system like the undaunted keys, which would let players run an appropriate amount of content while mitigating the RNG factor associated with grinding. Since ZOS has set the drop rates at what they are, I assume that they want someone to have to farm MA on the order of 50-60 times to guarantee their drop, but it punishes players with multiple alts who want to outfit those alts with the same weapons. Unless they are all stam DW toons, in which case they are golden.

ImmortalCX

furiouslog wrote: »

So, after multiple runs on different mag and stam toons (mostly mag) in nMA post-Greymoor, here's a tally of my drops:

Cruel Flurry: 11 sets (2A/3D/5M/12S)
Thunderous Volley: 3 sets
Merciless Charge: 5 sets (1BA/2GS/2M)
Crushing Wall: 2 sets (2L)
Precise Regeneration: 1 set
Rampaging Slash: 0 sets

If the RNG is set based (which would make logical sense), you should have an equal chance of getting any one of the sets. That would appear to make the most sense from a programming and player rewards standpoint, since individual weapons don't drop. In this design, there would be a nested probability that you will get a particular weapon within a set given that you received a particular set. After 22 runs, there should be a 98 percent probability that I'd get at least one of every set. The most likely outcome after 22 runs is that I'd have at least 3 of each set. NOTE: NEW DATA ARE AVAILABLE IN A LATER POST SHOWING 47 RUNS - SCROLL DOWN TO SEE.

Looking at drop probabilities, that gives us a probability table that looks like this:



with detailed drops like so:



If, however, the RNG is based on the weapon drop and if the shield drop is tied to the Rampaging Slash set while Cruel Flurry is tied to one-handers, the probability table looks like this:



with detailed drops like so:



which more closely matches the distribution of drops I'm currently experiencing. The probability that I didn't receive a single drop of Rampaging Slash in the first case is less than 2 percent, and in the second case, it's 17%.

As such, I'd bet that the RNG is tied to weapon drops (the second case), and if that is true, and further assuming that it is not biased in any way, two things to note for you mag toons: you are much more likely to get Cruel Flurry when you run the arena than anything else, and the number of times you'd need to run it to have a 99% chance of getting a single Inferno Staff is 58. I'm trying to get one for each of my 4 mag dps toons who do not currently have it, which means to come close to guaranteeing that each of of them get an inferno staff, I'll need to run nMA 232 times, at about 45 minutes per run (including loading times), or roughly 174 hours of gametime. If I have 3-4 hours to play each day, including writs, trials, etc, I'd have to forgo all other activities and just run nMA every day on multiple alts for my entire gaming time for nearly 50 days straight to achieve that goal. Or, I can do it once per day and just wait until next year to finish the outfitting process for my mag dps toons, I suppose.

Bummer.

I guess I'll continue keeping this record until I get so sick of nMA that I give up - if anyone has data they've tallied that they'd like to add, feel free to chime in.

Drop may be based on server time (day, hour in the day, time slices in hour, etc).

In which case you would have to track when certain drops occured.

My guess, if this is like other rng loot games I have played, is that there are different drop tables depending on WHEN or some other criteria.

furiouslog

ImmortalCX wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

So, after multiple runs on different mag and stam toons (mostly mag) in nMA post-Greymoor, here's a tally of my drops:

Cruel Flurry: 11 sets (2A/3D/5M/12S)
Thunderous Volley: 3 sets
Merciless Charge: 5 sets (1BA/2GS/2M)
Crushing Wall: 2 sets (2L)
Precise Regeneration: 1 set
Rampaging Slash: 0 sets

If the RNG is set based (which would make logical sense), you should have an equal chance of getting any one of the sets. That would appear to make the most sense from a programming and player rewards standpoint, since individual weapons don't drop. In this design, there would be a nested probability that you will get a particular weapon within a set given that you received a particular set. After 22 runs, there should be a 98 percent probability that I'd get at least one of every set. The most likely outcome after 22 runs is that I'd have at least 3 of each set. NOTE: NEW DATA ARE AVAILABLE IN A LATER POST SHOWING 47 RUNS - SCROLL DOWN TO SEE.

Looking at drop probabilities, that gives us a probability table that looks like this:



with detailed drops like so:



If, however, the RNG is based on the weapon drop and if the shield drop is tied to the Rampaging Slash set while Cruel Flurry is tied to one-handers, the probability table looks like this:



with detailed drops like so:



which more closely matches the distribution of drops I'm currently experiencing. The probability that I didn't receive a single drop of Rampaging Slash in the first case is less than 2 percent, and in the second case, it's 17%.

As such, I'd bet that the RNG is tied to weapon drops (the second case), and if that is true, and further assuming that it is not biased in any way, two things to note for you mag toons: you are much more likely to get Cruel Flurry when you run the arena than anything else, and the number of times you'd need to run it to have a 99% chance of getting a single Inferno Staff is 58. I'm trying to get one for each of my 4 mag dps toons who do not currently have it, which means to come close to guaranteeing that each of of them get an inferno staff, I'll need to run nMA 232 times, at about 45 minutes per run (including loading times), or roughly 174 hours of gametime. If I have 3-4 hours to play each day, including writs, trials, etc, I'd have to forgo all other activities and just run nMA every day on multiple alts for my entire gaming time for nearly 50 days straight to achieve that goal. Or, I can do it once per day and just wait until next year to finish the outfitting process for my mag dps toons, I suppose.

Bummer.

I guess I'll continue keeping this record until I get so sick of nMA that I give up - if anyone has data they've tallied that they'd like to add, feel free to chime in.

Drop may be based on server time (day, hour in the day, time slices in hour, etc).

In which case you would have to track when certain drops occured.

My guess, if this is like other rng loot games I have played, is that there are different drop tables depending on WHEN or some other criteria.

That's possible, and if true, then I'd need a crazy high sample to confirm it. But so far it seems to be working as is.

The drops I got and that @StealthK80 are very unbalanced. I mostly run nMA in the morning (EST). It seems like an unnecessary complication to program such a thing though, and what would be the reason for doing it?

huntgod_ESO

You did a lot of work but have way to small a sample size. You need 10x that number before you even get something in the ballpark of a proper sample. If you are really interested in this you should collect data from another 10-20 players and collate using that much larger sample.

Elsonso

It has been long speculated, but never confirmed, that ZOS uses a dynamic variable weighted RNG system. The values are not fixed and can change, either by someone going onto the server and changing the numbers, or the system itself changing the numbers based on a variety of possible conditions.

Reverb

That’s consistent with what we came to expect from VMA drops as well. I personally got 3 lightning staves, 3 bows, at least 5 ice staves, 10 2h and 14 s+b sets, and only one dw set. Never once a resto or inferno staff.

I once ran it for 5 consecutive days and got s+b every time.

I know someone who ran it literally hundreds of times and got the same Charged 2h sword over 100 times and never a single lightning staff. She quit the game over the lousy RNG.

furiouslog

huntgod_ESO wrote: »

You did a lot of work but have way to small a sample size. You need 10x that number before you even get something in the ballpark of a proper sample. If you are really interested in this you should collect data from another 10-20 players and collate using that much larger sample.

I've explained this multiple times, but the sample size required depends on what hypothesis you are testing. In this case, I am testing to see if the set drops are essentially a fair die (a 1 in 6 chance of getting each set). It takes about 13-14 rolls when you should expect 1 of each number to show up. Beyond that, it starts to get highly improbable that the die is fair. The calculation of the test statistic represents the confidence you have in the results given the size of the sample. In this case, I was able to confidently conclude that there was not an equal chance of each set type dropping. All of the other independent samples I got from other players also lead to this conclusion at a high level of confidence.

What it does not do is allow me to calculate the drop rates from observable data. For that, yes, I'd need thousands of samples. But in this case, we already know some information: because ZOS has stated that drop probabilities are tied to weapon type, we already know their design in general (we don't know the specifics of adjustments made to bow, shield, and healing staff). Because the distribution of drops approximates a 13 sided die, and because we have empirically proven that the distributions don;t fit other conceivable models, probabilities of drops can be calculated somewhat reliably given that knowledge. That is what I have done, but it is based on the assumption that the drop rate behaves like a 13 sided die.

Without knowing that information in order to validate that assumption, I agree with you that I'd need way more sample. But you don't need a huge sample to disprove a null hypothesis for a simple construct.

I've collected additional drop rates at the set level (again, which was my point in doing this in the first place) in order to confirm my early findings. They are thus far continuing to be confirmed (chi-square table below).



So I have a sample of 84, and my conclusion that there is not an equal chance of each set dropping continues to be statistically confirmed. If you have a statistically-driven argument to the contrary, I'd be happy to take it on board with an open mind. But just hand-waving and saying that my sample size is inadequate ignores the calculus underlying statistical testing, and is not only incorrect but unhelpful.