The named item drop rate in this game is broken (with proof)

[Phoenicis]

So what your saying is if I manage to roll 100 times on that loot table my odds of getting either a fallen age or golden age are the same?

Nope.

Golden age are a rare drop from the weapon table, same way some named items are a rare drop from the named items table.

 

[waysider]

I think most people do not understand randomness. I have heard of professors that ask students for random sequences and they can always spot the student answers from random answers. Random is not 1-0-1-0-0-1-0-1-1. Random is 0-0-0-0-0-1-0-0-0-1. People tend to think random means that they get the average value, which is very far from the truth.

A couple percent drop rate can take 1000+ runs. A 15% drop rate can take 50+ runs.

Whether random design is good is a separate question.

This argument has been coming up on the forums for many years.

Cognitive bias and streaks of bad luck are certainly a thing. There are certainly people who don't understand randomness and probability math.

But some of the posters in this thread have been compiling pretty large data sets, and doing fairly sophisticated mathematical analysis on it.

I recall an incident from quite a long time ago in this game, back when epic scrolls were a thing.

People farmed for them at the VON tile puzzle. The drop rate was about 1% people figured, and so quests like VON5 and WizKing often dropped one or two. Because people were solo farming at the puzzle, they started noticing that they were on a dry run after 300 or 400 kills, which was improbable but could well have been a streak of bad luck. They started talking about it on the forums, and a lot of people were noticing the same thing, and a lot of people who ran epic quests but weren't counting testified that they didn't think they'd seen a scroll for a while.

After several week game officials (I don't remember if Cordovan was in that job then, but it might well have been) confirmed that there was a problem and scrolls weren't dropping and a patch would be applied to return them to the game.


So that was a long story, sorry, but two things I want to note about that time:

1) There was an official acknowledgement that something that was supposed to drop wasn't dropping (either at all, or at way less that the proper rate).

2) The forums had exactly this fight about the psychology of luck streaks and whether anyone understood stats and probability.

and 2a) some posters -- in support of their argument that people didn't understand probability and luck streaks-- claimed on the forums that they had gotten scrolls during the dead period.

It could have been that the drops weren't completely dead but were down to 0.1% instead of 1% and someone had gotten lucky, but it looked a lot like they were (charitably) misremembering when they had gotten the scrolls, or were lying for rhetorical effect.

So take an actual look at Cowzrul's math before you whack it with "most people don't understand."

 

[Fizban]

This data was created. It was created by playing the game and logging the results of what named items dropped from which quests.

If I was going to just fabricate data with no observations, why would I have only generated a few hundred samples? I could have created tens of thousands of them to satisfy the people that don't understand sampling and statistics. Why would I create a couple hundred and slowly add another hundred or so over time? I don't understand this mentality of "I don't like this conclusion, therefore the data must be fake". Other than that it's a fairly convenient way to disagree with the data without any substance in the absence of a valid critique of the analysis. I don't find it a very compelling argument.

Ok, I have at this point rarely ran to much in Lamordia and only have had one Sage completion on one of my 4 characters I play on. Thus far I have pulled approximately 13-15 named items. I am now working on the materials to upgrade. One of the items I pulled after 5 or 6 runs in Body Snatchers was the light armor I wanted.

I don't think expecting to pull everything you want after one run is reasonable. But my pull rate is pretty good thus far.

 

[pinstripedbarbarian]

SSG uses a Kobold coin so it remembers...

SSG RNG still hate you

 

[Vladimir]

Ok, I have at this point rarely ran to much in Lamordia and only have had one Sage completion on one of my 4 characters I play on. Thus far I have pulled approximately 13-15 named items. I am now working on the materials to upgrade. One of the items I pulled after 5 or 6 runs in Body Snatchers was the light armor I wanted.

I don't think expecting to pull everything you want after one run is reasonable. But my pull rate is pretty good thus far.

There is always the speculative idea that there is a "Goldilocks" period for loot drops whenever an expansion is released. This idea being very old is that in the initial period of a new release there appears, in the minds of players (anecdotal evidence), better rates of named loot dropping and then after a "period" that rate of named loot dropping is reduced. I have no evidence to support this idea, however I am open to accept that to reward players who paid for a product up front with cash that SSG has a named loot policy that increases the named loot drop rate during an initial release period (the Goldilocks period).

 

[Cowzrul]

Ok, I have at this point rarely ran to much in Lamordia and only have had one Sage completion on one of my 4 characters I play on. Thus far I have pulled approximately 13-15 named items. I am now working on the materials to upgrade. One of the items I pulled after 5 or 6 runs in Body Snatchers was the light armor I wanted.

I don't think expecting to pull everything you want after one run is reasonable. But my pull rate is pretty good thus far.

Ok, so imagine that instead of getting those 13-15 items in one saga completion, that instead it took you 4 saga completions to get that many items, and one of those 4 saga completions you got zero named items. Every quest for 13 completions in a row - nothing. No items.

Would that be a fun experience to you? Because that is what would happen to me, based on my data/prior experience, and it's why I won't be buying Lamordia and it's why I rarely play the game anymore.

 

[norriskwondo]

Fallen age and Golden age are on the same loot table, independent from the other loot.

So what, this doesn't detract from what I'm saying, because how many objects are sharing that supposed 33%, all the solar and lunar gems, and if there's any special augments I'm unaware of, they're all sharing that slot. It's not a 33% chance, it's .33 divided by the quantity of items which means you're more likely to find the Holy Grail than to get the named items you want. And since it's a computer program made by people to operate in a predetermined fashion, it's not random. Anything designed is not random. The only thing truly random is where a specific rain drop will land.

 

[Phoenicis]

So what, this doesn't detract from what I'm saying, because how many objects are sharing that supposed 33%, all the solar and lunar gems, and if there's any special augments I'm unaware of, they're all sharing that slot. It's not a 33% chance, it's .33 divided by the quantity of items which means you're more likely to find the Holy Grail than to get the named items you want. And since it's a computer program made by people to operate in a predetermined fashion, it's not random. Anything designed is not random. The only thing truly random is where a specific rain drop will land.

Again? Really?

OK, for the people who refuse to pay attention.

Open chest in MD (Chill has slightly different rare table access number):
2 rolls:
1st roll: 33+ fallen age weapon
roll for weapon type (currently I don't know if certain types drop in specific chests, but I doubt it)
IF weapon roll 95+ roll for golden age weapon type.
(possible alternate, unsure: get weapon type, then roll to see if golden age)
2nd roll: 33+ named item table
Roll for item on named item list including Solar/Lunar augments, named items, possible other items on named list
IF named item roll 95+ roll again on rare item list including shorter list of items and augments

Your statement indicating ANY chest can get the ENTIRE list of solar/lunar augments is migraine inducingly false.

 

[Longsword]

I am starting a new thread on this topic because the RNG poll includes a lot of discussion about pseudorandom number generators and particular items that are not the focus of this discussion.

I have suspected there to be an issue with named item drop rates for some time, and decided to collect data on my named item drops.

This data is collected on the four characters I regularly play, all on the same account. (Cowzrul, Cowzrule, Cowzrul-1 and Sneakycow)

All runs were completed on at least Elite, and many of them on R1 or higher. None of these runs include drop rate boosts of any kind.

I only logged drops in quests from Ravenloft, Sharn, Feywild, Isle of Dread, Vecna and Myth Drannor, which the developers have stated should have a drop rate of 33% on elite, with an additional 1% per reaper skull. I did not record specifically which runs were conducted at which difficulties, but my theoretical named item drop rate should be at least 34%, and likely somewhere in the neighborhood of 36% or higher.

I have created this Google Sheet to share the data I've been collecting recently.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRcOSqdHfGgKFIAhm4MsrMm_IA_PlbSTyGh8Sa8d3SApFg2SYun-en9O9gdXdS8pwpXS6rWFL6I6DVJ/pubhtml

As shown, the rate at which I actually receive named items is 24% across 222 chest pulls. This, in itself, is not really compelling evidence of the drop rate being broken. I expect many of you would simply say "well, you're just unlucky". The likelihood of getting this outcome is incredibly low - 0.0464%, or 1 in 2153. There's more than a few thousand players of this game, I could simply be that super unlucky guy who stumbled across that 1 in 2153 chance, right?

Well, when you examine the outcomes in a little more detail, particularly the streaks in which I received no items, it becomes pretty obvious that the theoretical drop rate simply can't be the developer's intended 33%+. The likelihood of these outcomes occurring is so rare as to be unbelievable.

During these 222 chest pulls, I had notably long streaks without a named item of 18, 16, 15, 14, 10 and 11. There were also shorter streaks with no drops, but those are not particularly noteworthy.

The equation for the expected value of quest runs before encountering a particular streak of "no drops" of named items is given by ((p^-n)-1)/(1-p), where p is the probability of not getting a named item, and n is the number of chests in a row with no named item. I used a value of 67% chance of not getting a named item, although my rate *should* be lower than that when you factor in reaper bonuses.

For a streak of 18, this is 4090 chest pulls.
For a streak of 16, this is 1834 chest pulls.
For a streak of 15, this is 1228 chest pulls.
For a streak of 14, this is 822 chest pulls.
For a streak of 11, this is 245 chest pulls.
For a streak of 10, this is 163 chest pulls.

If you add all of these together to get a number of chest pulls, on average, that one would have to pull to observe these streaks within, you get 8384 chest pulls. I experienced all of these streaks in 222 chest pulls. This is a factor of over 37x more likely than expected to experience these streaks without receiving a named item. If this was occurring at a rate of 2x, or 5x, that would be within the realm of reasonable for a very unlucky person's experience. A factor of 37x means that something is fundamentally broken in the game. It does not require many thousands of pulls to demonstrate, as I've just shown. I'm essentially experiencing something with a probability of 1 in thousands, most times that I play the game, that I should be experiencing very rarely. The entire reason that I started logging this data is because I would regularly run entire sagas of expansion content, and get zero named items that dropped to me, so the logged data here is not cherry picked or some unusual streak of bad luck, it is my normal experience playing this game.

If anyone responds to this with "The probability of getting 10 heads flipped in a row is the same probability as any other sequence of coin flips", I will cry, tell you that's stupid and irrelevant, and point you to post #20 in this thread where I explain why. https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/what-is-the-named-item-drop-rate-really.15872/

 

[abc]

If it's not level 40, is it really loot?

I honestly just dgaf because I've farmed my butt off for loot that is now utter garbage. Just like all the loot people are farming now will be utter garbage when the level cap goes up.

All Lamordia gear will just be fed into a sentient when the new slots get added eventually.

 

[Nokowi]

So that was a long story, sorry, but two things I want to note about that time:

1) There was an official acknowledgement that something that was supposed to drop wasn't dropping (either at all, or at way less that the proper rate).

2) The forums had exactly this fight about the psychology of luck streaks and whether anyone understood stats and probability.


So take an actual look at Cowzrul's math before you whack it with "most people don't understand."

I didn't mean to disparage Cowzrul's math.

Some people can understand probability but we shouldn't expect to have a discussion about probabilities with common agreement - specifically because most people do not understand randomness or probability even if they can do a statistical calculation.

 

[norriskwondo]

Again? Really?

OK, for the people who refuse to pay attention.

Open chest in MD (Chill has slightly different rare table access number):
2 rolls:
1st roll: 33+ fallen age weapon
roll for weapon type (currently I don't know if certain types drop in specific chests, but I doubt it)
IF weapon roll 95+ roll for golden age weapon type.
(possible alternate, unsure: get weapon type, then roll to see if golden age)
2nd roll: 33+ named item table
Roll for item on named item list including Solar/Lunar augments, named items, possible other items on named list
IF named item roll 95+ roll again on rare item list including shorter list of items and augments

Your statement indicating ANY chest can get the ENTIRE list of solar/lunar augments is migraine inducingly false.

I'm totally based on the information they gave us. I'm incorrect, with my level of education and experience, which you're unaware of, then you need to prove it without ridicule and subtle insult which is all you've done. Either I'm correct in regards to the information available, or their 33% is an absolute lie. The burden of proof is on you. You need to actually get all the details from SSG and show them to the entire DDO player community to disprove anything and everything that we, the player base vast majority, have valid complaints about the loot drop system.

 

[norriskwondo]

Ok, so imagine that instead of getting those 13-15 items in one saga completion, that instead it took you 4 saga completions to get that many items, and one of those 4 saga completions you got zero named items. Every quest for 13 completions in a row - nothing. No items.

Would that be a fun experience to you? Because that is what would happen to me, based on my data/prior experience, and it's why I won't be buying Lamordia and it's why I rarely play the game anymore.

Honestly, for playable content, previous packs are better, even Myth Drannor. If you're able to get the gear, the gear would maybe be better if you can get all the right gems and augments for it too. The only real redeeming quality of Chill is Drosseheart, and the univeral AP tome. So if you don't care about the gold seal hireling and the tome, it's not worth it.

 

[norriskwondo]

Your data collection seems legit to me. That's a whole lot of nothing, and the stuff you do get are repeats of the same piece you obviously don't want or you wouldn't be running the quest over again. The only detail missing is are all of those done in heroic, legendary, or both. So far my experience is that heroic seems to put forth more named gear in end chests than does Legendary.

 

[norriskwondo]

Honestly, for playable content, previous packs are better, even Myth Drannor. If you're able to get the gear, the gear would maybe be better if you can get all the right gems and augments for it too. The only real redeeming quality of Chill is Drosseheart, and the univeral AP tome. So if you don't care about the gold seal hireling and the tome, it's not worth it.

I wouldn't include dino boots as a named item, I get them all the time in rare encounter chest and can't use them because their minor artifact status. I know others would disagree with me though.

 

[Phoenicis]

I'm totally based on the information they gave us. I'm incorrect, with my level of education and experience, which you're unaware of, then you need to prove it without ridicule and subtle insult which is all you've done. Either I'm correct in regards to the information available, or their 33% is an absolute lie. The burden of proof is on you. You need to actually get all the details from SSG and show them to the entire DDO player community to disprove anything and everything that we, the player base vast majority, have valid complaints about the loot drop system.

I will provide you with the link to the DDOWiki page that lists all named items and sun/moon augments, shows what specific chest they drop from and whether on not they are rare.

https://ddowiki.com/page/Update_69_named_items

I've made no comment on your education or intelligence. I have commented that you were wrong. Three times now.

I will say that in one aspect you are correct, you do not have a 33% chance of getting a specific item. It's your repeated statement that all sun/moon augments are in every chest that I take issue with.

 

[Cowzrul]

Your data collection seems legit to me. That's a whole lot of nothing, and the stuff you do get are repeats of the same piece you obviously don't want or you wouldn't be running the quest over again. The only detail missing is are all of those done in heroic, legendary, or both. So far my experience is that heroic seems to put forth more named gear in end chests than does Legendary.

Unfortunately I didn't start recording whether it was heroic or legendary until later into the process, and as far as I know we've always been told it works the same way and should have the same percentages.

Ultimately there are just so many unknowns that it's hard to say exactly what is going on, I think the only thing I can say with confidence is that the 33%+R# probability does not hold true for my account/characters across the combined set of content Sharn and newer.

Does that formula hold up in some cases? J1NG'S data shows that it does, at least for the quests like back to basics that he's tested, for some of the characters he tested with. Some of his accounts had different probability. IIRC he also showed that some individual quests don't use that formula, like the knight who cried windmill.

I think it's entirely possible that the reason there hasn't been any SSG response to this is because the intended drop rates are nowhere near as straightforward as the simple 33%+R# formula and they don't want to admit it. It could also just not function correctly and they don't want to admit that either.

There's just way too many possibilities for me to definitively determine what's really going on, all I can do is analysis of the data I've collected and share that here.

 

[Phaaze]

Should be. Doesn't seem to be in my experience.

I had been keeping track of how much named loot drops for me and my hubby and my kids from Ravenloft U37 until just after IoD dropped U54 though I stopped tracking my daughter after Feywild. My results indicated my son got approximately 4x as many named items dropping for his characters as opposed to my characters. My hubby got about twice as many named items than I.

I regularly have long streaks of nothing dropping in my characters' name even though I am running the same quests and same difficulty as hubby and son, running with them. I have completed multiple sagas on elite with nothing dropping for me. Hubby occasionally has a streak of poor loot, son is the opposite... he will have long streaks of nearly every chest giving him something. But please keep in mind the trends I have seen are across years of playing with them and across lots of varied content. It is my opinion that there is something that makes an account lucky or unlucky. Server might also be a factor, that is if the flag is server bound perhaps an account is lucky on one server and unlucky on another.

See this post:

pretty sure there is a weight where if you dont play as often you find more than if you play a lot. I noticed that when I take a few months off the game and when I come back I can pull tons of items really easy the first few days back before it settles into a more normal rate. This has happened to me a number of times over the years.

 

[waysider]

[snip]

I think it's entirely possible that the reason there hasn't been any SSG response to this is because the intended drop rates are nowhere near as straightforward as the simple 33%+R# formula and they don't want to admit it. It could also just not function correctly and they don't want to admit that either.

There's just way too many possibilities for me to definitively determine what's really going on, all I can do is analysis of the data I've collected and share that here.

This seems likely and fits what I've witnessed. The assumption that's occasionally bandied about that RNG or drop rates are the same everywhere is simply not known for sure.

pretty sure there is a weight where if you dont play as often you find more than if you play a lot. I noticed that when I take a few months off the game and when I come back I can pull tons of items really easy the first few days back before it settles into a more normal rate. This has happened to me a number of times over the years.

I've witnessed this. In particular, I've twice gotten Jibbers on toons that hadn't played in ages and then took a shot as their first quest. Yeah the n on that is small, but I think so too.

 

[Zarrenn]

pretty sure there is a weight where if you dont play as often you find more than if you play a lot. I noticed that when I take a few months off the game and when I come back I can pull tons of items really easy the first few days back before it settles into a more normal rate. This has happened to me a number of times over the years.

If this is true I would point towards it being part of the bug and not an intentional feature.