Jordan_Black wrote: »

Today I think was the first time that happened. Five full max level toons worth of crafting dailies and no surveys or master writs dropped. Bad RNG? Drop rate change? What you guys think?

JB

It happens. Not often, but it can happen. I cut myself off at 10 fully researched daily crafters (I refuse to get accustomed to 20 LOL!), and it's not unheard of to get skunked. Rare, but it's happened. And that''s with 1 crafter having learned every motif in the game, and the other 9 at varyious stages between 20-30 full motifs learned.

Same for me. Until yesterday I always get a survey or master writ and routinely put them up for sale right after my daily crafting.

But yesterday and today; nothing.

I have a thread on this over on the Bugs forum, but the only bit that doesn't appear to be working as it should is the one character who knows all motifs. Their Master Writ drop rate, which should be as high as it can be, has fallen off to almost zero for Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking writs. They were getting Master Writs of all types at normal rates (very high rates for the three OG gear crafts) until they filled in the last dozen or so missing chapters after Anniversary. Since I don't recall hearing anyone mention this prior to U49, I'm guessing that it's U49-related.

For the rest, surveys and Master Writs are dropping pretty much at normal rates for all the other characters. It's just the three OG gear crafts and only with the character who knows all motifs. Even the character who knows all motifs is getting surveys and Alchemy, Enchanting, Jewelry, and Provisioning writs at expected rates, within expected RNG deviations. I find it frustratingly amusing that characters who know around 10 motifs have individually picked up more gear writs over the past roughly two months than the character who knows 135 motifs.

Paraphrasing from old developer interviews many years ago, but "learning a motif will always increase your chances of getting Master Writs" is not happening in this case.

DoofusMax wrote: »

I have a thread on this over on the Bugs forum, but the only bit that doesn't appear to be working as it should is the one character who knows all motifs. Their Master Writ drop rate, which should be as high as it can be, has fallen off to almost zero for Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking writs. They were getting Master Writs of all types at normal rates (very high rates for the three OG gear crafts) until they filled in the last dozen or so missing chapters after Anniversary. Since I don't recall hearing anyone mention this prior to U49, I'm guessing that it's U49-related.

For the rest, surveys and Master Writs are dropping pretty much at normal rates for all the other characters. It's just the three OG gear crafts and only with the character who knows all motifs. Even the character who knows all motifs is getting surveys and Alchemy, Enchanting, Jewelry, and Provisioning writs at expected rates, within expected RNG deviations. I find it frustratingly amusing that characters who know around 10 motifs have individually picked up more gear writs over the past roughly two months than the character who knows 135 motifs.

Paraphrasing from old developer interviews many years ago, but "learning a motif will always increase your chances of getting Master Writs" is not happening in this case.

Learning a full motif increases the rate, but it has a limit as well as diminishing returns.

Basically, you will see the most increase in the first 10 to 20 complete full motif styles you learn. After that your returns are going to be less.

And while you have indicated a decrease in drops, I show that are leaning towards normalish to slightly higher.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Learning a full motif increases the rate, but it has a limit as well as diminishing returns.

Basically, you will see the most increase in the first 10 to 20 complete full motif styles you learn. After that your returns are going to be less.

And while you have indicated a decrease in drops, I show that are leaning towards normalish to slightly higher.

DenverRalphy wrote: »

IIRC (it's been a while), the developer comments you're referring to was in response to questions about future motifs being added to the game, and how they would affect the drop chances.Technically every motif learned will increase your chances, but after around 20 the diminishing returns are noticeable. After 30 the diminishing returns are significant enough that the motivation to learn more motifs is more to increase the ability towards completing the writs, than towards getting them to drop.

Without the forethought of diminishing returns, with all the motifs added over the years a character with 100% motif knowledge today would likely be guaranteed 3 master writs a day minimum.

Both are correct here. There is absolutely a diminishing returns to consider after a character learns roughly a dozen motifs. In my case, this was my crafter character. The sole purpose for them learning all the motifs was not having to worry about whether I would get a writ asking for a style they hadn't learned and need to go shopping before they could do writs. There is also the personal flex of "my crafter can craft in any style," but there's no title for that and it's more the warm fuzzy of achieving a goal than anything any other player would see.

There is an absolute cap on the drop chance, and I think it's right around 15% or a tad higher for the OG gear writs, and maybe closer to 20% for Jewelry writs. Consumables writs are much lower chances, even under the best conditions, but they're also the writs which can be done earlier in the game because they require less up-front investment in terms of time, known stuff (reagent effects, rune translations, recipes, etc.), and skill points.

I have no hard data to back this up, but it appears that roughly a third of the OG gear writ drop chances comes from trait research, so the remaining two-thirds is from motif knowledge. Diminishing returns kicks in after about a dozen known motifs (1-9 definitely do not count, 11-14 are iffy, I'm very unsure about 10, and "beats me" on the four Crown Store exclusives; no Master Writ asks for those four, however), so each successive learned motif contributes a smaller and smaller share of the non-trait chance and I would not be at all surprised if some dev were to chime in and say, "that 135th motif contributed 0.001% to the drop chance."

I have found that adding characters who do not do crafting makes my drop rate for master writs lower overall. I did this over several years and the rate didn’t go back up until I got the new characters doing trait research and leveling up their crafting skills. That is why I have not created my 9th character and have left that slot empty, it’s too much work to get the skill points needed for full crafting and have enough for fighting skills.

I also do not get most master writs on my main character, who knows all but a handful of motifs. They are spread across all characters, some days one character gets more than the others.

I'm not surprised. Pretty normal experience.

no different, i do 20 most days, and mostly get 18/20 surveys each day and 20 unknown writs

tmbrinks wrote: »

Daily Crafting Results

Everything from this patch I've recorded is within 2 standard deviations of the expected values, so I have no reason to suspect that there's been a change in drop rates.

Thsnk you for continuing to track your results

DoofusMax wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Everything from this patch I've recorded is within 2 standard deviations of the expected values, so I have no reason to suspect that there's been a change in drop rates.

Appreciate your dogged data collection over the years. You're a special kind of persistent and my observations run pretty close to yours with one glaring exception: a character who learned all 135 motifs. Master Writ (BS/CL/WW) drop numbers for that character were very comparable to yours when they were sitting at ~132 fully-learned motifs and the rest a bit more than half-completed. Those numbers fell off a cliff somewhere between there and finishing all 135 around the end of Anniversary and it was only for that one character. I'm certain that the 133rd, 134th, and 135th represent a negligible addition to the drop rate (small fractions of a percent), but the roughly two months of diminished drops makes me think there something went sideways when they learned those last three.

I haven't noticed the same change with my crafter that also has complete motif knowledge. Admittingly, it's only anecdotal, as I don't track character by character, but I can say for sure I got a clothier master writ today on my main since that data is still in my loot log tracker.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

@tmbrinks have you taken any data with the conditions I mentioned - one or more characters per account that did not have any motif knowledge or trait knowledge? I assume that your data is for all characters having full crafting knowledge but please correct me if I am wrong.

I got everything on my main character and did not want to go through that with subsequent characters, but by the time I added 3 more characters my drop rate for master writs on my main character had gone down to almost down to zero for a period of time that was significant, maybe 6 months to a year. I know my information is anecdotal but on console there would be no way to keep track except for writing it all down by hand in a very time consuming fashion.

I’m just curious, I see posts like this from time to time and wonder if this is the reason.

I'm sorry, I don't. All 20 characters on my main account have all 9-traits researched. And all 40 characters on my other two accounts are full 8-trait (with the exception of 1 character on each account that has 1 nirnhoned trait researched). So, I can't make any conclusions with regards to that.