Loot Drop % request

athena9205

Since we now have a collections system, i propose that we use that system to change the % drop chance of an item based on what we have collected. My idea is: every item in a set that we have collected per trial/arena/dungeon/zone increases the % chance of any item set we have not collected in those same areas by 1%.

calculate arena weapons % by other arena weapons collected in that arena.
calculate other zone sets (full armor, jewelry, weapons) % by the items collected in their own collection

I propose this because i have run normal vateshran hollows about 30 times and not gotten one drop of the void bash set, statistically that is impossible if all the chances are set equally.
If the % chance of the normal void bash set is 2% which i have heard it is, then doing this proposal will increase the set's % by 12% after getting all other arena normal weapon sets.
for the AY dagger drop, which is highly sought after, the % will change for that person based on how much of AY has been completed in the set. Since there are 22 items in a normal set, having all but the dagger will increase the % chance for dagger to drop by 21%

This change will not break the loot drop % or significantly change the game.

thoughts ?

Nairinhe

athena9205 wrote: »

i have run normal vateshran hollows about 30 times and not gotten one drop of the void bash set, statistically that is impossible if all the chances are set equally.

That not how it works. Improbable, not impossible, and unless drop chance is 100%, the drop is not guaranteed no matter how many attempts. Not going to get into maths here, but if you have 6 dice and probability of rolling a 1 on one is 1/6, does that mean that you are guaranteed a 1 if you roll all 6? Nope.

Edit to add: 30 runs?

zvavi

Chances to get void bash should be around 1 to 12 13,
8.33% 7.7%, the chances of not getting void bash after 30 runs is 7.35% 9%. Not even close to being improbable, the chances of getting void bash on your first run are higher than not dropping it for 28 32 runs.

Edit: apologies I don't know how to count. 1 in 13. 7.7% to drop on first run, 9% of not dropping it after 30 runs.

Also I might add, probabilities are not affected by previous drops. Also, you made me sad, because I now realized that I am around 78 runs from completing my perfected void bash sticker book.

Edit 3:

athena9205 wrote: »

statistically that is impossible if all the chances are set equally.

Statistically improbable is around 0.00006%, you will have to run 179 runs without void bash for it to be statistically improbable.

Nestor

They make the game easier, and now you want it even more easier?

redlink1979

You can toss a coin 10 times and it's not guaranteed that you will get tails at least once...

Rng can suck, we all are aware of that.

Parasaurolophus

I support your suggestions for improving the drop. Although the weapon does seem to fall out unevenly. Think about bows and resto staff on vetMA

mikemacon

The way probability works is like this:

If you flip a coin, it has a 50% chance to land on heads.

So you flip the coin - tails.

The next time you flip the coin, it has a 50% chance to land on heads.

So you flip the coin: tails again.

The next time you flip the coin, it has a 50% chance to land on heads.

Question: What's the percentage chance that it lands on heads instead of tails?

50%.

Each time you flip that coin, it has a 50% chance to land on heads. Each flip.

Over larger sample sizes (many flips) the average will also tend to approach (but likely never be, exactly) 50%.

But even so, each and every flip still has a 50% chance to land on heads.

Now, remove "coin", "heads", and "50%" and replace those with the values "final boss chest", "the one weapon I'm looking for", and "the percentage chance on any given pull from said chest to obtain that one specific weapon."

gatekeeper13

Totally agree with op.

As for rng, there is absolutely nothing random. Not in ESO, not in any other game or machine that uses an algorithm.

This is is an example of how "random" rng is in ESO. First from MA (was farming succession), second from Moongrave (random dungeon run).

Starlock

Nestor wrote: »

They make the game easier, and now you want it even more easier?

Games with good gameplay systems respect the customer's time. It's less about making it "easy" than making gameplay systems reasonable. In many cases, RNG fundamentally disrespects the customer's time but there are ways to work around that, such as what the OP proposes.

Nairinhe

Starlock wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

They make the game easier, and now you want it even more easier?

Games with good gameplay systems respect the customer's time. It's less about making it "easy" than making gameplay systems reasonable. In many cases, RNG fundamentally disrespects the customer's time but there are ways to work around that, such as what the OP proposes.

MMO's are anything but respect to your time. It's the whole point to make you spend as much time in game as possible and let's be fair, bosses get boring, quests get done, prancing aroung the zone gets stale. Fun is temporary. Grind is eternal.

Lephrel

zvavi wrote: »

Chances to get void bash should be around 1 to 12 13,
8.33% 7.7%, the chances of not getting void bash after 30 runs is 7.35% 9%. Not even close to being improbable, the chances of getting void bash on your first run are higher than not dropping it for 28 32 runs.

Edit: apologies I don't know how to count. 1 in 13. 7.7% to drop on first run, 9% of not dropping it after 30 runs.

Also I might add, probabilities are not affected by previous drops. Also, you made me sad, because I now realized that I am around 78 runs from completing my perfected void bash sticker book.

Edit 3:

athena9205 wrote: »

statistically that is impossible if all the chances are set equally.

Statistically improbable is around 0.00006%, you will have to run 179 runs without void bash for it to be statistically improbable.

@zvavi Could you maybe explain how you got these values?

I am not sure, but if I remember correctly, only the 3 main bosses in the red, green and blue arenas and the final boss of vateshran drop weapons and jewellery (but they do not drop armour pieces afaik). So there's 4 weapon and jewellery drops per run.
Assuming we can use the discrete uniform distribution (i.e. any of the 45* possible outcomes has equal probability 1/45), and assuming looting the 4 boxes are mutually independent events, then the probability of getting at least one shield per run is equal to:

Pr[At least one shield drops]= [sum from k =1 to 4] (nCr(4,k) * (1/45)^k * (44/45)^(4-k)) = 0.08696...
(nCr(4,k) returns n choose k)

So roughly a 8.70% chance for a shield to drop on any given run. And therefore the chances of not getting a shield in 30 runs or in 120 loots are approximately 6.74% ((44/45)^(120)).

Another problem is that I don't think we can just assume the chances of any given drop are equally likely. In my experience jewellery seems to drop more often. And I'm not sure if the probability of getting 1 of 4 1handed weps is equal to the probability of getting a restoration staff (of which there are no variations).



*(We can drop 13 weapons and 2 jewellery pieces for each of the three sets, thus 45 distinct drops are possible. Since the number of traits for both weapons and jewellery is 9, this cancels out and therefore I chose not to include this in my calculation.)



I thought void bash was one of the normal sets that drop from the arena. I didn't realise it was the name of the 1hs ability altering set. -__-

Zorgon_The_Revenged

gatekeeper13 wrote: »

Totally agree with op.

As for rng, there is absolutely nothing random. Not in ESO, not in any other game or machine that uses an algorithm.

This is is an example of how "random" rng is in ESO. First from MA (was farming succession), second from Moongrave (random dungeon run).

This is also my experience. Drop rates seem weighted to "bad" items, when 1/3rd of a trial group get pretty much the same item it's more than just bad luck.

Kiralyn2000

Lephrel wrote: »

*(We can drop 12 weapons and 2 jewellery pieces for each of the three sets, thus 42 distinct drops are possible.

So maybe the issue isn't RNG, but that they put way too many drops on one boss.

I remember raids in WoW, the drops were spread across the bosses - like, one dropped Boots & Shoulders, one drop Chests & Arms, etc. Yeah, they dropped for every class set, but it still wasn't 42 items.
(of course, they had the added issue of just dropping one pile of loot for everyone, so you'd end up vying with the other three members of your Class when your boots dropped, but...)

zvavi

@Lephrel only last boss drops the arena weapons, and will drop an arena set (jewelry and weapons of other sets are excluded from arena weapon drops) then u have 13 types of weapons
4 one handed
4 staves
Bow
Shield
3 two handed
The one handed and shield get additional 1 handed as a filler. 13 weapons possible per run.

Note that the calculations are for arena weapons, and not the sets dropping there independently, those have different calculations.

Ps: it take 300~ runs to complete sticker book for 1 dungeon.

kojou

My personal opinion is that the sticker book was more about reducing the size of the overall database since we would deconstruct items once we had them instead of having a bunch of stuff in our inventory "just in case" it was useful. Sure it was a quality of life item for us, but I doubt their motives were completely altruistic.

I would like to see a system like the OP suggests where things not in the sticker book get a higher weight, but I doubt we will ever get that since it does not tie into better performance, or us spending more in the crown store.

Lephrel

zvavi wrote: »

@Lephrel only last boss drops the arena weapons, and then u have 13 types of weapons
4 one handed
4 staves
Bow
Shield
3 two handed
The one handed and shield get additional 1 handed as a filler. 13 weapons possible per run.

But I am absolutely certain, that normal set weapons drop in the previous stages (so in total you loot 4 chests that can contain a shield). Only the vateshran weapons are limited to the final boss chest. And you didn't account for jewellery drops, which are also possible in the last stage afaik.

Sorry I was thinking of the wrong set.

zvavi

Lephrel wrote: »

But I am absolutely certain, that normal set weapons drop in the previous stages (so in total you loot 4 chests that can contain a shield). Only the vateshran weapons are limited to the final boss chest. And you didn't account for jewellery drops, which are also possible in the last stage afaik.

@Lephrel
Void bash IS the vateshran weapon.

Lephrel

zvavi wrote: »

Lephrel wrote: »

But I am absolutely certain, that normal set weapons drop in the previous stages (so in total you loot 4 chests that can contain a shield). Only the vateshran weapons are limited to the final boss chest. And you didn't account for jewellery drops, which are also possible in the last stage afaik.

@Lephrel
Void bash IS the vateshran weapon.

o.O oh no I feel so silly now. I thought that was one of the normal sets dropping there. My bad.

gatekeeper13

zvavi wrote: »

@Lephrel only last boss drops the arena weapons, and will drop an arena set (jewelry and weapons of other sets are excluded from arena weapon drops) then u have 13 types of weapons
4 one handed
4 staves
Bow
Shield
3 two handed
The one handed and shield get additional 1 handed as a filler. 13 weapons possible per run.

Note that the calculations are for arena weapons, and not the sets dropping there independently, those have different calculations.

Ps: it take 300~ runs to complete sticker book for 1 dungeon.

In my 4 last vMA runs, I got 4 x Restoration Staff of Glory.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I love the idea, I have actually suggested something similar in other threads. Simply put, as you fill your sticker book, the chances to get the remaining items should increase, but duplicate drops should still be possible, just less likely. People still may want to farm double daggers for example and shouldn't be required to use the sticker book/reconstructions system.

I don't love your understanding of statistics, however. Certainly not impossible to run the arena a 100 or a 1000 times and not get what you are after, just becomes more improbable with each attempt. 30 runs is a tiny sample size in the grand scheme of things, and certainly not enough to draw any type of real conclusions.

Galarthor

30 runs solo and not a single S&B?

I can do one better:
We (4 people) did over 30 (at point we stopped counting) vDSA runs to get 1 Perfected Inferno Master Staff. That is more than 120 looted items before we got 1 Inferno Staff.

Given that there are only 3 weapons for magicka DDs, and that about 50% of DDs are magicka DDs (i know there are more magicka DDs in PvE, but let's keep it simple) and about 80% of players are DDs (nobody uses a healer anymore outside of Trials) then the drop chance should be at least 0.8*0.5*(1/3) = 13%, which is far greater than the <0.8% we have gotten. You could even argue, that since Ice Staves are basically tank weapons, there are only 2 weapons for magicka DDs: Fire and Lightning. Thus the chance should be 0.8*0.5*(1/2) = 20%

But that is not how ZOS operates. They want to keep you busy. They can't and don't want to create new content that fast (cost would be too high). If their code is stupid, they just manually assign low drop chances to the most sought after items thus keeping people busy. If their code is smart, they it tries to predict what you want, either based on your build, your class, or even what you say in chat, and then give you an individual loot table with the things you most likely are looking for having the lowest drop chance. It is a cost-effective way for them to keep you busy ... and that's all MMOs are about!

Galarthor

gatekeeper13 wrote: »

Totally agree with op.

As for rng, there is absolutely nothing random. Not in ESO, not in any other game or machine that uses an algorithm.

This is is an example of how "random" rng is in ESO. First from MA (was farming succession), second from Moongrave (random dungeon run).

We have noticed that a lot too. From large proportion of dungeon bosses (4 looted items) you get at least one item 2 times, sometimes even 3 times. And it is not always the same items from the same bosses, which would suggest that they just got insanely high drop chances. Whatever random number generator they use, it seems to have some serious issues as it doesn't seem to come close to simulating randomness.

athena9205

obviously i hit on a hot topic, since i just posted this start this morning. Ty all for responding. As for statistics i was being metaphorical. I hate wasting my time and since i have had all but the SnB set gathered for 10 runs now or so, i feel that something must be broken in the system for me not to have gotten even one hit on that set. I've been playing 3 years now and i have seen the trend that the more sought after drops are much rarer than they should be.

tomofhyrule

I know it took me 17 runs to get the sword and board from nVH, and I'm glad it was only that many. I managed to get 3 of the Hungering Void style pages by the time I finished.

I do think that they should reconfigure drops though in light of the stickerbook. As it is now, the final drops in the arenas are 4 x DW (axe, mace, sword, dagger), 3 x 2H (axe, maul, sword), 1 x Bow, 1 x Resto, 3 x Destro (fire, ice, shock), and 1 x Shield. the DW and Shield will have a second RNG to get the other weapon.

This means you have the best chance to get the full DW set, since you'll get 2 pieces of it at the end if that's what's chosen. 2H and Destro are about the same - a 3/13 chance to get one from the set, and it needs 2 more pieces to complete it when you get it, and Bows/Restos are rare drops but will complete the set when you get it so you instantly have it for 25 crystals. Meanwhile SnB is as rare as bows/restos, but you still only have 2/5 pieces of the set and can't reconstruct it cheaply. To complete that set, you need to have 3 more drops of the SnB minimum at 1/13 run to get the shield on top of a 1/4 chance to get the 1H you're missing.

barney2525

If an item has a set value to drop 2% of the time

What is your chance to get it on the first attempt ? = 2%
What is your chance to get it on the second attempt ? = 2%
What is your chance to get it on the tenth attempt ? = 2%
What is your chance to get it on the hundredth attempt ? = 2%

This is why when fishing recently one character got all 4 fish using 13 bait and another character got the same 4 fish using 431 bait.

Kiralyn2000

barney2525 wrote: »

If an item has a set value to drop 2% of the time

What is your chance to get it on the first attempt ? = 2%
What is your chance to get it on the second attempt ? = 2%
What is your chance to get it on the tenth attempt ? = 2%
What is your chance to get it on the hundredth attempt ? = 2%

Your cumulative chance to get at least 1 in 100 tries, is 86.74%.
(In 50 tries: 63.58%. In 30 tries: 45.45%)

Which also means you have 13.26% chance to fail utterly in 100 tries. Which, in a game with 100k players, means plenty of people can have that happen to them.
And the odds of those people complaining about it on the forum is close to 100%.




(how to calculate cumulative chance: take the chance of failure. Multiply it by itself X times, to get the chance you won't succeed at all in X tries. Subtract that value from 100% to get the chance you will have succeeded at least once.)


edit: been doing spreadsheets of this since early WoW, when people complained about their Alchemy Mastery obviously not working right, because their 15% chance of double elemental transmutes hadn't triggered in two weeks.)

CrashTest

kojou wrote: »

My personal opinion is that the sticker book was more about reducing the size of the overall database since we would deconstruct items once we had them instead of having a bunch of stuff in our inventory "just in case" it was useful. Sure it was a quality of life item for us, but I doubt their motives were completely altruistic.

I think that too, but joke's on ZOS bc I still hoard gear with perfect traits from sets that might be useful one day bc every few months ZOS upends everything.

Kwoung

Took me 130 runs in Arx to get a friggin Medusa staff from there. I helped a friend this week who did that many or more runs for the Sanctuary resto staff, we had 4 people in group many of those times and we finally had one drop after a week of farming... an old school out of date resto staff. Apparently my wife, who has also done that dungeon at least 300 times, still needs a Sanc resto staff as well. Of course me being a sorc who could care less about it, I got one long ago.

Its really only rng if the numbers aren't being manipulated on the fly. You want a S&B, send a sorc in, need a flame staff, send a tank, dual wield, obviously farm it as a healer! Farming anything in this game on the character that needs it, almost guarantee's it will take forever to drop.

drunkendx

Galarthor wrote: »

Whatever random number generator they use, it seems to have some serious issues as it doesn't seem to come close to simulating randomness.

You know that geode from pvp which gives "4-25" crystals?

I've yet to get more than 4 crystals from it.

Integral1900

May I recommend the following foolproof strategy. Keep running content until you have all the gear you want or until you get bored and fed up with it. When either of these occur stop doing the content and go and do something else. This is a game after all not a job.

drunkendx

Integral1900 wrote: »

May I recommend the following foolproof strategy. Keep running content until you have all the gear you want or until you get bored and fed up with it. When either of these occur stop doing the content and go and do something else. This is a game after all not a job.

*rolleyes*

There is always someone with this logic.

Sorry but ignoring flawed system in not a fix for flawed system.