What’s a “fair” drop rate for an event style page?

Fenris_Arainai

10 kills to get a drop

I wanted only 1 page from the event. It took me 22 hours to get it. That is way beyond mere "rare". After that time I wasn't even happy, just relived.

I'm not a grinder, so all this sucked out all enjoyment out of me.

Sallymen

10 kills to get a drop

It would have been better if these styles were tied to achievements instead. Something along the lines of:

"Dolmen Demolition - Destroy 10 Dark Anchors during the Jubilee Event" reward: Staff of Worms style

gariondavey

1 - Get drop on first kill

1st time imo

Or

If it doesn't drop 1st time, 10 percent more chance. If it doesn't drop 2nd time, 10 percent more chance. Keep doing this until it is garunteed to drop. Leads should function this way as well.

Necrotech_Master

Sallymen wrote: »

It would have been better if these styles were tied to achievements instead. Something along the lines of:

"Dolmen Demolition - Destroy 10 Dark Anchors during the Jubilee Event" reward: Staff of Worms style

i would have preferred achievements like this over "spend tickets on X and get achievement" that we have right now lol

XSTRONG

A new Event merchant with Endeavour like quest to complete to get these Style pages would probably have been better for the players then standing at a wb for hours on end.

Even if these quest would have required some work and effort at least players had something to work towards then an extremly low rng drop on a boss that dies in 3 sec " not fun content "

CGPsaint

Comment deleted as my views and opinions are not relevant to ZoS.

redlink1979

50

We should be able to get the item within 50 attempts.

CGPsaint

Comment deleted as my views and opinions are not relevant to ZoS.

RebornV3x

10 kills to get a drop

for this and Antiquity leads it should be no less than 80% leads that require a dungeon boss kill should be like 95% or should scale based on how many leads you already have for that particular mythic or item making it progressively easier to get said leads.

MafiaCat115

50

RebornV3x wrote: »

for this and Antiquity leads it should be no less than 80% leads that require a dungeon boss kill should be like 95% or should scale based on how many leads you already have for that particular mythic or item making it progressively easier to get said leads.

I like this thinking. I've run Lair of Maarselok 20+ times and I still haven't got the final lead from there for the mythic Sabatons. I know they're not that good, but it's the last mythic I need to complete at the moment.

ForumSavant

50

I'm pretty sure I've done around 300 dolmens and I have yet to receive the drop. I can't see how this makes any sense.

HeavyMetalHippie420

10 kills to get a drop

TheMessengerOfDeath wrote: »

The grind is the problem because there is nothing creative about doing a single thing repeatedly. That is unnecessary grind that could’ve instead been some engaging content.

People would’ve been happy with this instead

challenge 1 Kill all world bosses on morrowind
Challenge 2 complete all geysers in summer set
Challenge 3 Fish in 10 fishing holes or fish in 10 different zones.

You know do actual content and get rewards instead of this bs.

It's not only a grind but there are severe game breaking bugs right now, especially in Cyrodiil.

jle30303

Fair would be "if you have to do a repeatable thing over and over, it gets more common for each iteration of the repeatable thing until finally it gets to the point of being a certainty, then it appears, then you're done with it".

CGPsaint

Comment deleted as my views and opinions are not relevant to ZoS.

Elvenheart

10 kills to get a drop

CGPsaint wrote: »

These 5 style pages should have been rewards for completing a quest line of some sort which would have been a good way to introduce people to the lore behind each item. That would have been fun and engaging, but instead ZOS would rather have players grind the most unimaginably dull and repetitive content for countless hours. There is quite literally nothing fun about trying to "earn" these style pages and is something that ZOS should be ashamed of.

This is my favorite idea so far, quests connected to the item the style page is a replica of, written in such a way as to not mess up how they appear in the main stories does not matter if the player has already done those stories. That would’ve been so fun and made this anniversary so much more memorable in a positive way. Now, I’ll always remember it as “The Grinding of the Staves” in the vein of “The Silence of the Lambs.”

CGPsaint

Comment deleted as my views and opinions are not relevant to ZoS.

huntgod_ESO

20

I said 20, but given the BOP nature, it should have been a guaranteed drop.

Lags

100

a fair drop rate is low but with a guarentee after a certain amount of kills, like 100. This staff in summerset is unreal. I have been here for 4 days doing geysers over and over. Hundreds upon hundreds of geysers. Its unreal.

spoqster

20

Blood_again wrote: »

The only thing I have to add.
The real drop rate usually doesn't work as "50 attempts is fair to get the reward". It works as "you have 2% probability that item drops on each attempt".

It these terms there is always a probability of M successfull drops of N attempts.
For example, according to binomial formula: for 2% probability of single drop there is ~36% of 0 success after 50 attempts.
Even for 10% of single drop there is still 0.5% of 0 success after 50 attempts. That means 5 players of 1000 won't get their drop after their fair 50 kills with this rate.
That's how unfair the fair probability works.

This problem is solvable by making the item tradeable or available at Impressario.
Another way is changing the algorithm with triggering drop after some attempts whatever rate it is.
But the classical drop by rate will make some % of players unhappy anyway. Sorry.

Exactly. That's specifically why I asked for completions and not drop rates in the poll, because for someone without training in statistics it's not really intuitive to understand what a droprate actually means. I wanted to poll what players "felt" would be fair in terms of their time investment.

The points you are making about the outliers of a plain droprate for items like that illustrates perfectly why I think they are a terrible tool to be used by a game designer in this context. We've all gotten used to them - yes. But if we actually think about what the designer likely wants to accomplish, and what the droprates actually accomplish, there is a significant discrepancy.

Most of the times droprates are used because the designer wants to make players play a piece of content for a minimum amount time. They don't just want the player to do it once and never come back. Fair enough. But if you solve that problem with a simple drop rate you get many players who get the item way too early, not playing your content as much as you want to, and you get many players who don't get the item at all, becoming very frustrated. Both of these outcomes are not good.

Imho the far better design choice here would be a more catered solution, where you pick a desired number of event completions N, and then add a variance to that number and minimum and maximum cutoffs.

• Let's say you set the desired number to 35 kills. So that most players will get it around 35 kills.
• Then you add a minimum number to it, like 10. So that at 10 kills a player starts becoming eligible for the drop. This means some players will get lucky and get it after 10 or 15 kills. But they still have to do it at least 10 times.
• Then you add a maximum number to it - often dubbed a "pity timer" in game development, like 50. This means at 50 kills a player gets a guaranteed drop if they haven't gotten one yet. This removes this massive frustration for players who have gotten very unlucky and adds long-term motivation for everyone, because everyone knows its guaranteed to drop at some point.

Qagh

10 kills to get a drop

10 years ESO = 10 kills = drop

AnduinTryggva

50

What I am certain: A drop rate of 1:200 or less is NOT fair.

It is a huge smack in the face of players that have spent money and time and are part of the game success.

barney2525

I guess I absorbed all the luck for this event

got the sword while fishing Arteum between digging up antiquities. took 1 - 2 hours, but I didn't even know it was a reward. I was fishing for the 2 recipes and the Arteum master Angler crayfish.

Tonight I ran the character level 21 - 24 at Alik'r. spent maybe an hour and a half. got the staff.

*shug*

I got no answers

Lumsdenml

500

If it's not rare, it doesnt have as much value...

CGPsaint

Comment deleted as my views and opinions are not relevant to ZoS.

SaffronCitrusflower

50

Punishing players with RNG this bad is nothing to celebrate.

Blood_again

50

spoqster wrote: »

Most of the times droprates are used because the designer wants to make players play a piece of content for a minimum amount time. They don't just want the player to do it once and never come back. Fair enough. But if you solve that problem with a simple drop rate you get many players who get the item way too early, not playing your content as much as you want to, and you get many players who don't get the item at all, becoming very frustrated. Both of these outcomes are not good.

Imho the far better design choice here would be a more catered solution, where you pick a desired number of event completions N, and then add a variance to that number and minimum and maximum cutoffs.

• Let's say you set the desired number to 35 kills. So that most players will get it around 35 kills.
• Then you add a minimum number to it, like 10. So that at 10 kills a player starts becoming eligible for the drop. This means some players will get lucky and get it after 10 or 15 kills. But they still have to do it at least 10 times.
• Then you add a maximum number to it - often dubbed a "pity timer" in game development, like 50. This means at 50 kills a player gets a guaranteed drop if they haven't gotten one yet. This removes this massive frustration for players who have gotten very unlucky and adds long-term motivation for everyone, because everyone knows its guaranteed to drop at some point.

I totally agree that plain rate system makes players frustrated. It should be modified/compensated in some way.

While I love your idea of improvement, I guess that technical implementation of all these simple counters for every rare item per player would be overkill. Though it is probably doable for some small group of items, I think players would ask this system applied to more and more item types the day it is published.

As a modification of this idea:

• Kill counter have a life time after last updated. For example 2 days. That means that counter resets to zero 2 days after player stopped their tries. Counter keep raising if player makes a new kill at least once in 2 days.
• Exclude minimum number, so as not to cut the drop for players who rarely make their kill. I got why you added the minimum, but it would've been harmful for current modification.

Pros:
- it is resource efficient, I hope. No need to hold counters for players, who's left or taken a break, for zones the player doesn't run anymore, for events that ended etc.
- it helps the players who actively put their efforts in obtaining the item

Cons:
- it doesn't help the players who make kills regularly but not often enough. They'll get their plain rate only.

As I can see, the most frustrated are usually players who farms intensively. I hope it might be a good compromise.

spoqster

20

Blood_again wrote: »

I totally agree that plain rate system makes players frustrated. It should be modified/compensated in some way.

While I love your idea of improvement, I guess that technical implementation of all these simple counters for every rare item per player would be overkill. Though it is probably doable for some small group of items, I think players would ask this system applied to more and more item types the day it is published.

Could you elaborate why you think my suggestion would be challenging to implement?

I work in software development myself, now as an executive, but I have worked as a developer in the beginning of my career. I am a professional, so to speak. But as I am always eager to learn I am willing to stay open minded as it's always possible to overlook something. Maybe you have some insight that I don't have.

Strictly speaking of course it's more complex to build a system that takes player data into account when calculating the drop. But by today's data processing standards this isn't hard or expensive to do.

BlueRaven

What they should have done is that each “kill” drops one - three fragments, and when you get to “X” [20, 30?] number of fragments you can assemble the respective item.

And be able to sell the fragments as well.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

I dunno about number of kills, but I think if I dedicate the majority of a weekend towards getting a drop, I should have it by the end of that period. And that’s on the high end of the scale.

Blood_again

50

spoqster wrote: »

Could you elaborate why you think my suggestion would be challenging to implement?

I work in software development myself, now as an executive, but I have worked as a developer in the beginning of my career. I am a professional, so to speak. But as I am always eager to learn I am willing to stay open minded as it's always possible to overlook something. Maybe you have some insight that I don't have.

Strictly speaking of course it's more complex to build a system that takes player data into account when calculating the drop. But by today's data processing standards this isn't hard or expensive to do.

Not challenging to implement but expensive in data storage terms.
Player data affects the drop already. Character level and passives for gear and mats drop. Psyjic portals. Collection for curated drop.
Also mentioned kill counter would affect the drop anyway: with expiration date or without it.
Anyway that was just a guess. Real evaluation depends on architecture of ingame data storage which I know nothing about

What I had to speculate with:
- rare items the counter makes sense for are styles, leads, furnishing recipes etc. Up to a 1000-1500 and grows, I guess
- kill counter makes sense by character, there are over 20m accounts, with gross evaluation 3 chars per acc it is over 60m chars, up to 60-90 bln counters (probably words). 180Gb is not much in terms of simple storage. But really it is +180Gb in highly loaded storage, just for one ingame feature. Feature that solds nothing.
- ZOS showed a few signs about cutting the expenses for data storage and speed: released the account data archiving system; refused to implement furnishing bags due to a huge variety of furnishing. That's why I guess these counter system wouldn't taste as sugar.

As a way to optimize it I offered to hold counter data in the area with expiration time.
It won't be added to the archived account info. Counters will be expired way before the account archived.
It won't hold the kills that were made weeks/months/years before. Definitely not so important data, when player stopped playing in one zone and went to another, for example.
Without expiration the system would keep even a single dungeon boss kill for player, who visited dlc dungeon once during ESO+ trial and never returned. This deadweight of counters would've been the major amount I guess.