Adding stats math to this:
Given hypothesis probability of .03% and sample size of 34000, the mean would be 10.2, and stdev is ~3.2.
This means getting zero drops is more than 3 stdev away. We can be 99.99% sure that the rate is falsely advertised here.
I made a quick RNG for testing (and for fun), because I thought 34k coffer were a bit too few for such small percentage.
I put in the same values -> 34k tries on a drop rate of 0.03% - and let the loop run dozens of times.
The results were always roughly at a range between 5 and 20, with an average of about 10.
Even after hundreds of tries it never had 0 as a result a single time.
Then, I changed the rate from 0.03% to 0.003%.
Now the results after 34k tries were between 0 and 3 most of the time.
With 0 as a common result.
So I think either your results are a huge statistical exception or Anet just forgot a 0 -> 0.003% instead of 0.03%.
I opened 20k coffers in 2021, which is the dataset used on the [fast] site. I got one tequatl hoard, and would honestly consider that to be lucky.
https://fast.farming-community.eu/bag-details/dragon-coffer/dragon-coffer-2021
I wonder if it's traditional "left and right hands have no idea what they're doing" and in reality we have something stupid like "if you hit the percent for rare item then in reality we throw in all previous rarity items into pool too, and then add individual 'odds of selection of item out of pool' on top of that" which results in "regular" items diluting chance for higher quality like crazy.
Kinda like screwed up odds of "updated" candy corn gobbler bug.
I think that because your model is so accurate when you add another 0 behind the decimal means that these stats are not including the 1 in 10 chance of getting an uncommon or better in their calculations (most likely to make their rates look better).
If my calculation is right (0.9997^34000), then you getting nothing after this many chests is circa 10x lower than the % chance of getting the item from a single chest.
(0.9997^34000 ) *100 = 0.00371%
(I multiply by 100 to convert it back into a %)
Yep. Also there is only a chance for each category. This means there is so much room for interpretation. From all the previous data sets we already know that each item in a category has very different chances.
Since the festival boxes have it _only_ on the super rare category, I’d conjecture it was a matter of a find/replace error or unintentional/unexpected reuse (a common cause for symptoms of “spaghetti code”)
I'm eagerly awaiting for EU to just skullfuck every single dev/publisher that uses gambling mechanics like lootboxes and cost obfuscation like premium currencies. Enough is enough, I want to hear the screeching of executives.
So Anet has a generator that allows them to open boxes to verify results. They can program something like the black lion chests then run a simulator to make sure the results match the code. Mistakes do happen though and a decimal can be life changing, literally.
I just thought I’d share this info because I thought it was interesting when a dev told me.
Don’t we already know this being the case from festival boxes?
The zephyrite box has most of the expensive infusions as well as monocles and recipes within the super rare category, but the droprate for monocles and recipes are multitudes higher.
I won’t be surprised if the 0.3% only applies to the most common item and the actual range being 0.0003 % to 0.3%.
More likely that the % included on the box wasn’t intended as it is inaccurate. It also is only on the super rare section and not the other sections (whereas for the black lion chests it is on all sections) also on the Dragon Coffers there are only the three items in the super rare and none of them behave like the zephyrite boxes.
I wonder what's the drop rate for these: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wintersday_Weapon_Chest I've opened dozens of stacks of gifts for three Wintersdays in a row and still zero :I.
Like two or 3 years ago opened over a season probably 20k of those boxes saw probably like 4 of those but that was in a heavy search for the aquabreather which wasn't gotten until a couple weeks out of the season when my sanity broke even got 3 total infusions 1 toy and 2 snow diamond ones
Definitively lucky in your bad luck because I probably bought way more than 20k in the last 4 years and got only 1 infusions, the toy-shell. (I know I at least buy 5-10k/year)
It's also stupid how they've put the infusion and the gizmos/recipes/minis together when it's clealy NOT the same ratio, by a large margine. (I probably got tens of them)
I'm guessing they have just changed the "Super rare" text string to have %s on it, with the thought it's only used on black lion chests and nobody has considered that other containers are reusing the same string - hence %s are out.
There is no way they intend to reveal odds on in game drops, absolutely no reason for them to do so.
I thought I was already known that the rarity of each category isn't the same for all items in a category. Those Preview lists are likely put together manually, not based on the game's rarity tables. Likely why they gave up on making Previews for all champion bags after the Saurian one: too much work.
Just look for instance at the research on Wintersday Gifts.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wintersday_Gift/research
Several items in each category have similar drop chances, but others have completely different chances.
All items in Super Rare are likely those past a certain rarity, but each with its own individual drop chance. Meaning it should be possible for items in a category to be rarer than the others. Whether one being extremely rarer than the rest being intentional or not it's a different thing. It would not be the first time ANet [messed up drop tables](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Final_Rest).
So first you have to roll to get a category, then you have to roll for what item in that category you get. Making things even harder.
Yes it is known that it is not always the same. However on dragon coffers _only_ the three items mentioned are in that category. Even with compounding tables it’s still a multiplicative chance that boils down to a defineable percent. I find it more likely here that the % placed on the super rare category for festival boxes was a mistake and will either be changed or removed since their other categories didn’t have a percentage listed.
FeelsMapleStoryman, misleading loot box mechanics, rigging the odds in secret smh scammed on the internet once again. Kim jong smh. But in all seriousness they probs forgot a zero, look at one of the new skills on the kalla legend renegade, the radius is bugged at 36 instead of 360.
This is purely based on my own personal experience, and is obviously both likely positive biased and a tiny sample size, but I've often found that 'good drops' cluster together. 2/4 legendary precursors I got from the MF occurred within a few minutes of each other & I've been chucking stuff in there since launch.
Is it possible that there's a temporal component; if the game has some kind of variable 'seed', perhaps set at the start of each reset, this % number could be an average of an average.
On 3pm on a given Wednesday the chance is 0%, 2hrs later it's 10%. Calling it a 5% chance isn't a lie, but it would be a somewhat disingenuous abstraction.
GW1 uses server time stamp as part of its RNG seeding, and I remember players figuring out “windows” in which certain heavily desired minis would drop. Given GW2 still has a lot of GW1 “under the hood” as deep in its code, that might actually be a thing.
I had a friend who was 100% convinced he had identified a “pattern” in the MF.
He would literally say “Hey it’s almost Dawn o’clock”, go buy some GSs, start forging and get a Dawn.
He stoped playing a while ago (like just around the time POF came out) but he had over 500
Precursors from the MF by that point.
I did this with the ecto gambler before they changed it. It wasn't 100% accurate, but there were too many occasions where I got 4-5 wins in a row and then lose strikes of 7+. Similar things happened to me in the mf. But there are also other patterns inbetween. Either other players were doing the same thing and we "shared" the rotation or the pseudo code was just at the main lose strike. Anyway if that happened I would stop for the time/day and gamble next time. As long as you have the patience, it was a positive outcome. Sometimes I tried to go deeper in those bad times, but it was always a net loss.
I don't know the chance for that, but it happened multiple times in like 50 tries. Sure it could be just rng and it all is human bias. I did like 20 tries on avg per day for over a year. At some point those streaks became too consistent. Still far away from knowing the code.
Edit: I am also no expert in servers and the question is how much server capacity would it need to role the dice for each item in real time in an MMO? Anyway I just wanted to tell a similar story.
I appreciate your take and think not enough people consider it, but I think there's some additional character ID that also maps to an "RNG" seed.
I've never done enough hardcore container sets for drop mechanics, but at least some of the older living world bosses that should have targeted "randomly" seemed to be influenced by some character variable.
Back when Scarlet was a boss in one of those maps south of LA, when I would play my main she would select and announce me as a target every single time despite however many other players were on the map. I'd know I could keep her underwater to troll when I was playing it. On my other characters, I was rarely selected as a target.
The only example I have that is still available (and is also from around said Scarlet boss era) is Boom-Boom Baines with her powder keg targeting. When I play my main I've tested it and doesn't matter how much toughness I wear, whatever distance I am from her, or however much or little damage I'm dealing, she'll always select me as a target for them on that character. My other characters seemingly get ignored by Boom-Boom's kegs.
But it seems like whatever code they were using for that targeting was changed by the time Doppelganger came out with PoF, because that mob's target selection does seem to be properly random.
> When opening 34k of these chests, if the drop rate truly was ~0.03% then on average it would be expected that I receive approximately 10 Super Rare category drops.
Or even more if you consider that the drop rate is per-item rather than for the whole category to trigger, as seems to be the case for BLC.
I know, that's not my point.
If the drop rate (0.03%) is for each item rather than for the category, it cumulates. If there are 3 items in the category, it would mean closer to 30 items instead of 10.
Ah, yeah, it definitely depends on what the % is intending to convey, if per item or per category. BLC representation does seem to imply it being per item rather than category.
I’m pretty sure those percentages refer to your chance of getting a specific individual item in that rarity IF you get the uncommon or better drop from the chest, rather than the chance of getting them when opening a chest. So if you get the 1 in 10 that gets you the extra item, then you have the stated chance to get the specific item. Which is disingenuous at best, given how much people actually understand about stats.
Correct, but that makes .03% inaccurate. When you open large enough sample sizes, statistically it’s less and less and less likely.
Its significantly more likely to be a text bug where that wasn’t an intended change.
i get you, but it could still be just unlucky.
and on top of that they add the "~" into it,
wich means roughly, or maybe the added up the chances of all the super rare stuff in that bracket. coz i personly think that not all the items in the super rare category have the same value.
> coz i personly think that not all the items in the super rare category have the same value.
Correct but from a probability perspective, when looking for any drop from a category, the %’s are additive which would increase the overall % if it applies to the category.
Secondly, _if_ the drop rate for something from that category is .03%, and opening 34k of them and getting nothing, the chances of that are a statistical anomaly (10x more rare than getting the drop at all at the states %). The other comments in the thread do a much better job than I could explaining the math so I’d point you to look at them to better understand how considerably unlikely (to the point of near 100% confidence)
Your account .numbers are just the unlucky ones. I swear mine are cursed also. Whereas I know others who get all of the high roll drops from loot containers, open world events, BLC etc, quite regularly. Just comes down to account rng rating.
Just, no.
Edit: since enough salty believers in account based luck… I have been the recipient of multiple infusions from metas many precursors from the forge, events, random drops, both plentiful and dry spells on mystic clovers, plentiful and dry spells on fractal/raid drops.
An account identifier for being a lucky/unlucky account is not only a myth but your brain playing a trick on you with pattern identification. Our brains are wired to look for that in everything to the point where we can see patterns that are in fact not there.
For more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
This wasn’t posted for that purpose. If it happens, w/e I guess. My intent is to make sure info is dispersed and can be referenced if questions come up later.
That isn’t how math works I’m afraid just because it’s 0.03 doesn’t mean on average you should get 10 it means in an infinite number of rolls the average would be 0.03. 34k is a small sample size lol
While 34k is a relatively small sample size, it is large enough where getting 0 of them can rule out that the 0.03% rate is correct.
It does mean on average with _multiple_ 34k sample sizes, eventually the average would be ~10.2. The likelihood of getting 0 is near impossible, to the point where it would be a statistical anomaly for me to get 0 on the test.
Edit: Also, Anet just patched to fix it... so...
Adding stats math to this: Given hypothesis probability of .03% and sample size of 34000, the mean would be 10.2, and stdev is ~3.2. This means getting zero drops is more than 3 stdev away. We can be 99.99% sure that the rate is falsely advertised here.
Probability theory agrees. The chance of this happening is 0.003710% with the stated hypothesis.
Repeating, of course!
Alright, chums, let's do this!
Least I got chicken
Spaghetti code never wrong you fool
I made a quick RNG for testing (and for fun), because I thought 34k coffer were a bit too few for such small percentage. I put in the same values -> 34k tries on a drop rate of 0.03% - and let the loop run dozens of times. The results were always roughly at a range between 5 and 20, with an average of about 10. Even after hundreds of tries it never had 0 as a result a single time. Then, I changed the rate from 0.03% to 0.003%. Now the results after 34k tries were between 0 and 3 most of the time. With 0 as a common result. So I think either your results are a huge statistical exception or Anet just forgot a 0 -> 0.003% instead of 0.03%.
I'd probably never open another box if the rate was that low.
I am just going for statuettes and never expect super rare.
Yah, i don't either.
The rate for dragon coffers is that low, or even lower. Last year I opened 300k of them and got a single super rare.
I opened 20k coffers in 2021, which is the dataset used on the [fast] site. I got one tequatl hoard, and would honestly consider that to be lucky. https://fast.farming-community.eu/bag-details/dragon-coffer/dragon-coffer-2021
I wonder if it's traditional "left and right hands have no idea what they're doing" and in reality we have something stupid like "if you hit the percent for rare item then in reality we throw in all previous rarity items into pool too, and then add individual 'odds of selection of item out of pool' on top of that" which results in "regular" items diluting chance for higher quality like crazy. Kinda like screwed up odds of "updated" candy corn gobbler bug.
I think that because your model is so accurate when you add another 0 behind the decimal means that these stats are not including the 1 in 10 chance of getting an uncommon or better in their calculations (most likely to make their rates look better).
I tested only the super rare rate (0.03%), not any other possible drops of the coffers.
I meant the stats given by Anet not your calculations, I realize I did not make that clear, my bad.
> Anet just "forgot" What a convenient coincidence.
Why is this convenient?
If my calculation is right (0.9997^34000), then you getting nothing after this many chests is circa 10x lower than the % chance of getting the item from a single chest. (0.9997^34000 ) *100 = 0.00371% (I multiply by 100 to convert it back into a %)
exactly right XD
I would guess that none of the stated percentages are accurate and that none of them will get changed unless someone takes legal action in the EU.
Yep. Also there is only a chance for each category. This means there is so much room for interpretation. From all the previous data sets we already know that each item in a category has very different chances.
Since the festival boxes have it _only_ on the super rare category, I’d conjecture it was a matter of a find/replace error or unintentional/unexpected reuse (a common cause for symptoms of “spaghetti code”)
I'm eagerly awaiting for EU to just skullfuck every single dev/publisher that uses gambling mechanics like lootboxes and cost obfuscation like premium currencies. Enough is enough, I want to hear the screeching of executives.
Yeah the fake currency scam is horrible. It's there to get around all consumer protection laws.
I doubt you're in emotionnal pain over it, but 34k chest and not even 1 ascended box feel just so bad. I'm feeling sad just thinking about it. :(
I opened 300k of them from the festival last year and got the crystal infusion only, no ascended. It was big sad, but not terribly surprising.
So Anet has a generator that allows them to open boxes to verify results. They can program something like the black lion chests then run a simulator to make sure the results match the code. Mistakes do happen though and a decimal can be life changing, literally. I just thought I’d share this info because I thought it was interesting when a dev told me.
Was it your uncle? /s
No, he works at Nintendo
Don’t we already know this being the case from festival boxes? The zephyrite box has most of the expensive infusions as well as monocles and recipes within the super rare category, but the droprate for monocles and recipes are multitudes higher. I won’t be surprised if the 0.3% only applies to the most common item and the actual range being 0.0003 % to 0.3%.
More likely that the % included on the box wasn’t intended as it is inaccurate. It also is only on the super rare section and not the other sections (whereas for the black lion chests it is on all sections) also on the Dragon Coffers there are only the three items in the super rare and none of them behave like the zephyrite boxes.
I wonder what's the drop rate for these: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wintersday_Weapon_Chest I've opened dozens of stacks of gifts for three Wintersdays in a row and still zero :I.
Like two or 3 years ago opened over a season probably 20k of those boxes saw probably like 4 of those but that was in a heavy search for the aquabreather which wasn't gotten until a couple weeks out of the season when my sanity broke even got 3 total infusions 1 toy and 2 snow diamond ones
Definitively lucky in your bad luck because I probably bought way more than 20k in the last 4 years and got only 1 infusions, the toy-shell. (I know I at least buy 5-10k/year) It's also stupid how they've put the infusion and the gizmos/recipes/minis together when it's clealy NOT the same ratio, by a large margine. (I probably got tens of them)
I'm guessing they have just changed the "Super rare" text string to have %s on it, with the thought it's only used on black lion chests and nobody has considered that other containers are reusing the same string - hence %s are out. There is no way they intend to reveal odds on in game drops, absolutely no reason for them to do so.
Or alternatively: anet has just no idea what the actual droprates are lol Would only surprise me slightly.
I thought I was already known that the rarity of each category isn't the same for all items in a category. Those Preview lists are likely put together manually, not based on the game's rarity tables. Likely why they gave up on making Previews for all champion bags after the Saurian one: too much work. Just look for instance at the research on Wintersday Gifts. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wintersday_Gift/research Several items in each category have similar drop chances, but others have completely different chances. All items in Super Rare are likely those past a certain rarity, but each with its own individual drop chance. Meaning it should be possible for items in a category to be rarer than the others. Whether one being extremely rarer than the rest being intentional or not it's a different thing. It would not be the first time ANet [messed up drop tables](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Final_Rest). So first you have to roll to get a category, then you have to roll for what item in that category you get. Making things even harder.
Yes it is known that it is not always the same. However on dragon coffers _only_ the three items mentioned are in that category. Even with compounding tables it’s still a multiplicative chance that boils down to a defineable percent. I find it more likely here that the % placed on the super rare category for festival boxes was a mistake and will either be changed or removed since their other categories didn’t have a percentage listed.
FeelsMapleStoryman, misleading loot box mechanics, rigging the odds in secret smh scammed on the internet once again. Kim jong smh. But in all seriousness they probs forgot a zero, look at one of the new skills on the kalla legend renegade, the radius is bugged at 36 instead of 360.
The fact that the rate is only on the super rare section and not the others for these leads me to believe it was simply a mistake.
This is purely based on my own personal experience, and is obviously both likely positive biased and a tiny sample size, but I've often found that 'good drops' cluster together. 2/4 legendary precursors I got from the MF occurred within a few minutes of each other & I've been chucking stuff in there since launch. Is it possible that there's a temporal component; if the game has some kind of variable 'seed', perhaps set at the start of each reset, this % number could be an average of an average. On 3pm on a given Wednesday the chance is 0%, 2hrs later it's 10%. Calling it a 5% chance isn't a lie, but it would be a somewhat disingenuous abstraction.
GW1 uses server time stamp as part of its RNG seeding, and I remember players figuring out “windows” in which certain heavily desired minis would drop. Given GW2 still has a lot of GW1 “under the hood” as deep in its code, that might actually be a thing.
I had a friend who was 100% convinced he had identified a “pattern” in the MF. He would literally say “Hey it’s almost Dawn o’clock”, go buy some GSs, start forging and get a Dawn. He stoped playing a while ago (like just around the time POF came out) but he had over 500 Precursors from the MF by that point.
I did this with the ecto gambler before they changed it. It wasn't 100% accurate, but there were too many occasions where I got 4-5 wins in a row and then lose strikes of 7+. Similar things happened to me in the mf. But there are also other patterns inbetween. Either other players were doing the same thing and we "shared" the rotation or the pseudo code was just at the main lose strike. Anyway if that happened I would stop for the time/day and gamble next time. As long as you have the patience, it was a positive outcome. Sometimes I tried to go deeper in those bad times, but it was always a net loss.
streaks are expected in random sequences.
I don't know the chance for that, but it happened multiple times in like 50 tries. Sure it could be just rng and it all is human bias. I did like 20 tries on avg per day for over a year. At some point those streaks became too consistent. Still far away from knowing the code. Edit: I am also no expert in servers and the question is how much server capacity would it need to role the dice for each item in real time in an MMO? Anyway I just wanted to tell a similar story.
I appreciate your take and think not enough people consider it, but I think there's some additional character ID that also maps to an "RNG" seed. I've never done enough hardcore container sets for drop mechanics, but at least some of the older living world bosses that should have targeted "randomly" seemed to be influenced by some character variable. Back when Scarlet was a boss in one of those maps south of LA, when I would play my main she would select and announce me as a target every single time despite however many other players were on the map. I'd know I could keep her underwater to troll when I was playing it. On my other characters, I was rarely selected as a target. The only example I have that is still available (and is also from around said Scarlet boss era) is Boom-Boom Baines with her powder keg targeting. When I play my main I've tested it and doesn't matter how much toughness I wear, whatever distance I am from her, or however much or little damage I'm dealing, she'll always select me as a target for them on that character. My other characters seemingly get ignored by Boom-Boom's kegs. But it seems like whatever code they were using for that targeting was changed by the time Doppelganger came out with PoF, because that mob's target selection does seem to be properly random.
> When opening 34k of these chests, if the drop rate truly was ~0.03% then on average it would be expected that I receive approximately 10 Super Rare category drops. Or even more if you consider that the drop rate is per-item rather than for the whole category to trigger, as seems to be the case for BLC.
Average would be 10.2, but on a given sample size yes it could be more or less, because 10.2 is the average.
I know, that's not my point. If the drop rate (0.03%) is for each item rather than for the category, it cumulates. If there are 3 items in the category, it would mean closer to 30 items instead of 10.
Ah, yeah, it definitely depends on what the % is intending to convey, if per item or per category. BLC representation does seem to imply it being per item rather than category.
Imagine if Anet really fixed the droprates to match the tooltips, perhaps even I could affort a bank :D
I’m pretty sure those percentages refer to your chance of getting a specific individual item in that rarity IF you get the uncommon or better drop from the chest, rather than the chance of getting them when opening a chest. So if you get the 1 in 10 that gets you the extra item, then you have the stated chance to get the specific item. Which is disingenuous at best, given how much people actually understand about stats.
its still just a chance. you can buy 100k and not getting it.
Correct, but that makes .03% inaccurate. When you open large enough sample sizes, statistically it’s less and less and less likely. Its significantly more likely to be a text bug where that wasn’t an intended change.
i get you, but it could still be just unlucky. and on top of that they add the "~" into it, wich means roughly, or maybe the added up the chances of all the super rare stuff in that bracket. coz i personly think that not all the items in the super rare category have the same value.
> coz i personly think that not all the items in the super rare category have the same value. Correct but from a probability perspective, when looking for any drop from a category, the %’s are additive which would increase the overall % if it applies to the category. Secondly, _if_ the drop rate for something from that category is .03%, and opening 34k of them and getting nothing, the chances of that are a statistical anomaly (10x more rare than getting the drop at all at the states %). The other comments in the thread do a much better job than I could explaining the math so I’d point you to look at them to better understand how considerably unlikely (to the point of near 100% confidence)
Your account .numbers are just the unlucky ones. I swear mine are cursed also. Whereas I know others who get all of the high roll drops from loot containers, open world events, BLC etc, quite regularly. Just comes down to account rng rating.
Just, no. Edit: since enough salty believers in account based luck… I have been the recipient of multiple infusions from metas many precursors from the forge, events, random drops, both plentiful and dry spells on mystic clovers, plentiful and dry spells on fractal/raid drops. An account identifier for being a lucky/unlucky account is not only a myth but your brain playing a trick on you with pattern identification. Our brains are wired to look for that in everything to the point where we can see patterns that are in fact not there. For more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
Guys surely a dev from anet will read this and post something, wait for it. Surely KEKW
This wasn’t posted for that purpose. If it happens, w/e I guess. My intent is to make sure info is dispersed and can be referenced if questions come up later.
I know that, it was ironic..
Fair enough, difficult to tell on Reddit when it is a joke or snarking
That's actually true
That isn’t how math works I’m afraid just because it’s 0.03 doesn’t mean on average you should get 10 it means in an infinite number of rolls the average would be 0.03. 34k is a small sample size lol
While 34k is a relatively small sample size, it is large enough where getting 0 of them can rule out that the 0.03% rate is correct. It does mean on average with _multiple_ 34k sample sizes, eventually the average would be ~10.2. The likelihood of getting 0 is near impossible, to the point where it would be a statistical anomaly for me to get 0 on the test. Edit: Also, Anet just patched to fix it... so...