Loot drops

[Fuscus]

Bought 50 Bandit's Nests. Almost out of them and have gotten 6 Return to the Bandit's Nest. If only I had that luck with More Secluded Experiments.

The drop % for RBN was increased from 1.5% (before Island expansion) to 5.56%.
The drop % for MSE was decreased from 1.5% to 0.5%.

[alice007]

The drop % for RBN was increased from 1.5% (before Island expansion) to 5.56%.
The drop % for MSE was decreased from 1.5% to 0.5%.

How do you say that? BB certainly does not announce it.. My recent BN runs, although less than 10, were still without RTBN..

[Leahea]

I will say this: I have had granite drop in the past three days, since I wrote and submitted a ticket, four times on four adventures. I can also say that I have had dark castles before the change drop as many as six times in a row, but since the change not once. What we are experiencing is programming. What my brother says is; something is only as good as the program behind it, and he should know because he worked on the computer programming for all of the space shuttles. I just believe that the players should be aware of it.

[BB_Endesmor]

Hello,

I will say this: I have had granite drop in the past three days, since I wrote and submitted a ticket, four times on four adventures. I can also say that I have had dark castles before the change drop as many as six times in a row, but since the change not once. What we are experiencing is programming. What my brother says is; something is only as good as the program behind it, and he should know because he worked on the computer programming for all of the space shuttles. I just believe that the players should be aware of it.

The likelihood of receiving specific adventure loot is set by our game designers and is a server wide setting: everyone is affected by it in the same manner. Some users are lucky and receive the rewards they aim for more often than other users, but because the process is random, the more someone plays, the more the average values are met.

BB_Endesmor

[Thambetochen]

RNGs are indeed evil but I can't honestly say I've ever had a run of [whatever] resource that didn't balance out with the other options in the end.

However the bold bit here is a bit of an eyebrow raiser:

I decided it must be a technical problem with my island and submitted a ticket to the tech department and they wrote back and told me that my drops were due to the amount of room on my island and luck.

'cause... what? How is that supposed to work? Can one blow stuff up or build like a fiend or clear or not clear clouds and raise or lower their chance of [whatever] resource?

(Seems seriously unlikely but hey ho.)

This seems a good deal more likely for resources as well as building and adventure drops:

The likelihood of receiving specific adventure loot is set by our game designers and is a server wide setting: everyone is affected by it in the same manner.

[alice007]

Hello,
Some users are lucky and receive the rewards they aim for more often than other users, but because the process is random, the more someone plays, the more the average values are met.
BB_Endesmor

If I understand Probability right.. This is not entirely accurate. It's a fallacy, that if the process is random, the more someone plays, the more the average values are met. The average values in this case, would probably be met from BBs point of view, but not necessarily from an individual players point of view.

For example, it is entire possible, that a player walks into the casino, plays one game, and hits a jock pot.. and another one walks in, plays plenty of games (from his perspective / and ultimately limited resources), and still win nothing... Improbable, but not impossible...

Put in still other words... While the Averages may be met from BBs perspective (the complete system), some players will notably fall below, and some will notably fall above average.. (still giving the average BB expects).

Put in still other words The distribution across various players will be a curve.. *NOT* a single average... It's about statistical distribution, not only average.

Hope BB designers understand this.. and improve the system... Because I've never ever had a Nords2 drop from Nords or MSE drop from SE etc...
Hope I am clear, and send the message across to the designers.

EDIT - Please please please send this message across the game designers.. I can't emphasize enough, how bad this fallacy can be.

[alice007]

Hello,
Some users are lucky and receive the rewards they aim for more often than other users, but because the process is random, the more someone plays, the more the average values are met.
BB_Endesmor

If I understand Probability right.. This is not entirely accurate. It's a fallacy, that if the process is random, the more someone plays, the more the average values are met. The average values in this case, would probably be met from BBs point of view, but not necessarily from an individual players point of view.

For example, it is entire possible, that a player walks into the casino, plays one game, and hits a jock pot.. and another one walks in, plays plenty of games (from his perspective / and ultimately limited resources), and still win nothing... Improbable, but not impossible...

Put in still other words... While the Averages may be met from BBs perspective (the complete system), some players will notably fall below, and some will notably fall above average.. (still giving the average BB expects).

Put in still other words The distribution across various players will be a curve.. *NOT* a single average... It's about statistical distribution, not only average.

Hope BB designers understand this.. and improve the system... Because I've never ever had a Nords2 drop from Nords or MSE drop from SE etc...
Hope I am clear, and send the message across to the designers.

EDIT - Please please please send this message across the game designers.. I can't emphasize enough, how bad this fallacy can be.

I might seem paranoid, but I think this is so important, can someone from BB acknowledge that this message has been understood and passed to designers and developers..

If the concept is still not clear, I can even write a small program to help designers and developers understand it.

Again, if I understand it right.. BB likely has a very bad assumption in it's design.. a.k.a design flaw and it affects every place they are relying on average of a random number generator.. including things like loot drops or mystery boxes etc etc

[BB_Endesmor]

The distribution of loot between looters can be seen as a curve, yes. There will be fewer unlucky/lucky looters and the majority will be around average values. Of course, nobody gets the same loot all the time.

The chance to receive a specific loot is a simple value though, the system knows that value and bases the drops on it (for instance x% drop rate for item Y). If you play an adventure only twice, you might have "bad luck" and receive bad loot. The average loot you will receive after playing a large number of adventures should be close to the expected value and will tend to become closer as more adventures are completed.

BB_Endesmor

[SweaterPuppies]

Lucky or unlucky just comes down to a person's point of view. From day to day, hour to hour that changes depending on mood. Perhaps you just got done watching a cat pop bubbles and are feeling great. The game is just lines of code, the same code for everyone. Blue Byte does not have the best track record with bugs in this game and timely fixes, are you really suggesting they took time to program a line of code saying "hey, let us rip off these players..."

Anywho, here is a little fact for you. No one is ever happy with the loot they get. I do not buy loot spot because you are giving another player your hard earned coin to be disappointed. You look at the loot tables people have published and you have dreams set aloft high in the clouds. I have no clue how many hundreds of Outlaws I have run. Would you care to guess how many times I got the double 1600 granite?

Spoiler

Zero

I have run The Black Knights many, many, many more times and once, just once I got what I thought was the ideal loot. People see that Roaring Bull has about a 2% chance to drop a Witch Tower so they figure that if they run fifty of them they will walk away with a one. That is not how statistics work. You might as well buy a million lottery tickets then complain that you did not win and it has to be rigged.

For the vast majority of us there is always going to be something holding you back in this game. When you start off it is stone, tools, pinewood, fish even. That turns into marble, hardwood, bread, and swords. Which turns into exotic wood and granite. Then you look back and wonder how you ever needed exotic wood. Saltpeter then shows up for a bit to kick you in the naughty bits while granite is still there laughing. Mahogany pops in until you run several of the 1001 Nights adventures. All culminating in a fight bouncing back between grout and granite of what you need at the time.

I guess my point in all of this is... if you are not having fun playing the game, or it makes you angry perhaps you should find a new hobby. I like red pandas, maybe I will go to the zoo today.

[alice007]

The distribution of loot between looters can be seen as a curve, yes. There will be fewer unlucky/lucky looters and the majority will be around average values. Of course, nobody gets the same loot all the time.

Thanks for your response... You agree it will be a curve.. but
Does BB know What is the standard deviation for the curve, from the real data or even any specific model you may have?
i.e. what is the "majority" in this case?
If target drop rate of nords2 is 2%, Does 75% players get a drop rate between 1.5% and 2.5%
OR Does 75% players get a drop rate between 0.1% and 3.9%

The chance to receive a specific loot is a simple value though, the system knows that value and bases the drops on it (for instance x% drop rate for item Y). If you play an adventure only twice, you might have "bad luck" and receive bad loot. The average loot you will receive after playing a large number of adventures should be close to the expected value and will tend to become closer as more adventures are completed.

Agreed.. if one plays an adventure only twice, you might have bad luck and receive bad loot, or you might have receive good luck and good loot.
As you have heard from players many times (collectible drop rates during the event).. Most of the players complaining about the loot are not the ones who play far less frequently.. They are the ones who play frequently enough.. You keep going back to the average.. I'll keep asserting, that even among players who play high number of adventures, the distribution will still be a curve, although might be smaller standard deviation..

I don't have real data or your models to prove it... but an simulations I have run, shows me that if drop rates like 2%, for many players, running high number of adventures still yields far less drop rate.. Unless the expectation really is for some players to play 365 nords to get 1 nords 2 in a whole year, even if played once daily. (yes some lucky one will get 12 out of those 365 runs)

Again, without the actual numbers / data, we players can only complain.. I don't know..
Perhaps I am here to only play rolling roulette.. I just didn't realize it so far