(In)Equality in loot drops

Has anyone noticed a character-dependent inequality in loot drops???

My primary character is a R/Mo and I play with two of my friends on a regular basis. For the longest time, it seemed that I was getting much less loot than my friends, so I decided to count it for a while to make sure it wasn't a bad perception. It turned out my R/Mo was getting loot at about half the rate of what the other two characters were getting, one of which was also a R/Mo.

Is there some sort of pre-determined "luck" level on each character that causes this?

I just wanted to see if anyone else had a similar experience.

On a tangent, all my yellow drops have been hammers, swords, and such for warriors. I have yet to see a yellow bow drop.

Dwig

Yes, being a monk I have had the same problem but after an hour of getting nothing I got 6 purples and a gold in about 15 min so I dunno lol.

Feels like that to me too.....so I go hunting on my own so I get ALL the drops.

Dwig,

I feel your pain. For a long time now I am convinced that I have been getting the short end of the stick with loot. It seems everyone gets twice the drops that I get. I started to think it might be because I use a lot of AoE's so my damage is spread over large groups instead of one target. I use stuff like barrage, poison (I usually poison a whole mob one at a time) traps, and my elemental AoE's.

I figured maybe it was because loot drops are loosely calculated by damage. I experimented by sticking with single targets until they are dead. It seems to have increased the amount of loot that I get, but is still far less than the other party members.

A support class thing maybe?

I've been thinking that too, but it still seems like something is broken. Even when I make the final killing blow, I usually just get money; only about 10% of the time I get an item dropped for me. As far as counting damage, I end up dealing out quite a bit with ignite arrows, dual shot, and apply poison.

What's really weird about this is that the OTHER R/Mo in the group gets much higher drop rates. It makes me think that it is not so much class/damage that affects the drops, but something character dependent. (I created a W/Mo who gets a LOT more drops.)

This even applies to opening chests. About 50% of the time I open a chest, nothing comes out. When party members open a chest, about 95% of the time something comes out. Once again, chest items only get assigned to me about 10% of the time. (My party has banned me from opening chests! They see the disparity too!)

Is my character just cursed???

Dwig

no damage has NOTHING to do with it
im a monk, rarely deal damage and get a fair share of loot
heck sometimes i sit around and do practically nothing an entire mission and will still get the most drops

It is 100% random, it just feels like you're getting singled out.

There seems to be some kind of formula based on who knows what in getting loot. We were talking about this yesterday a bit in my guild. i've done missions where almost every drop has come to me, including gold and purple drops, then I'vedone missions where I've gotten nothing but a few collector worth items, and maybe a light blue item that is precious, and a few whites and that's about it.

I don't know if its totally random, and you can just go through a bad streak, or if its pre-gen'd prior to entering a instance, or a combination of both. I have noticed though that if one of my characters is going through a dry spell in loot, all my characters are going through a dry spell in loot.

This is just a theory based on my own play experience. When I am leader, which is most of the time as I either play with henchies , alone or with my wife, I get a decent amount of drops. On the rare occasions I join someone eleses group, the drops are rare or non-existent.

I do a lot of farming. Obviously solo you get a lot more drops, but even that isn't every kill. I'm thinking it also has something to do with how challenging the fight was. I don't think I've ever gotten a gold drop from something that gives 0 exp, but I could be wrong.

It is completely random, not pre-determined, it is calculated at the same time the drop is made.

When you join a group of lets say 5 other people.. you're going to get 1/6 of the drops roughly.

But you could get less, or more.

Here's something you can do..
Take a single 6 sided dice (die) and pick one number.
lets say there are 50 drops for a mission.
Roll the die that many times, and see how many times your number came up.
Was it rediculously high? Or Low? Or about 1/6 of the time?

When dealing with drops at such relatively low numbers (50) odds don't always act as accurately as you would like. Try rolling the dice 500 times, I bet you it will be closer to 1/6 for that number.

This suggest that over time it will even out.

everything in life feels like you're getting singled out. Guild Wars is so real

This is not my experience.

With six party members I should receive 1/6 (17%) of the drops.
I am AVERAGING less than 10%

Now I haven't performed a true, scientific study of the situation, I've just done some simple counting to make sure that I wasn't fooling myself. Also, how can it be 100% random if it continues on day after day???

When I switch over to my other character, he gets loot all the time. There is a distinct difference between the two. I just get tired of my friends going home with a few yellow items and a handful of blues, while I've got maybe 1-2 blue items. Remember, my friends saw that I've been "unlucky" with chests and won't let me open them.

It could be entirely possible there is a game bug involved, don't rule out that possibility. Unless you wrote the code for the game, you wouldn't know that it is 100% random. Even then, bugs unknown to the code writer occur all the time.

Dwig

I've gotten a gold drop from stuff that gives me 0 exp. Heck I've gotten purples off of mobs that gave me 0 exp. The level of the mob has to do with how good the drop is (you won't get a 20-25 bow off of a level 8 charr) but has nothing to do whether you get a drop or not.

One other thing I have noticed, is that henchman take a more then average amount of drops. So lets say all the players get x drops, it seems that a henchman gets x*2 drops.

that's because they have account for some way to 'pay the henchemen'....they get more drops because you need them to come along.


and drops are completely 100% random...it would require EXTRA code to get the game to decide what characters got what drops and when. You've just been unlucky

my character is also a R/Mo, and I get a fair share of the loot. Sometimes I don't. It's all randomness. You're lucky sometimes and unlucky sometimes. But I usually tend to get mostly blue items and regular weapons. In a week's play, I get probably 3-4 purples or sometimes even less. I don't play much, may be 2-3 hours each time I play or none at all. I rarely get gold items. So far I think I've only gotten 3 gold items.

R-A-N-D-O-M

someone used the die example which is a good way to think of it, but then someone misinterpreted it as meaning 6 party mebers meant a strict 1/6 chance of getting loot (i.e every 6th loot would be yours, or each person could get 6 in turn).

No.

It's a 1 in 6 chance on every drop, not cumulative. The chance is unique to that drop.
So you could be unlucky and get nothing all night while your mate gets everything bar one drop which goes to the henchie you brought along or something.

Altho i do like the amazing paranoia of each character having a luck stat. Makes me smile the things people dream up.

Some guild should really do a full scale study on this. Count up a large number of drops and distinguish rares, from collectors, from super-rares, to money for each different profession, and post the results. I am not part of a large enough or active enough guild to do this.

Or, of course, AN could just post the formula.

It is so stupid to keep these things hidden. They should be in the manual.

One should know the rules to the game one is playing.

From my experience there seems to be something askew as well. If I solo, I get a much higher rate of good items. If I take along JUST ONE henchman I end up with only a quarter of what I was receiving before, if that much. Often time many many more kills with nothing rare at all.

If this is part of the calculation it is unfair, and just one more way that warriors have an edge. Casters can not solo very well. They need a tank. When I try to solo with a caster it usually involved exiting a town, killing a few things by the gate. Dying when I am mobbed by several monsters at onece, then going back to the town though mapping and exiting again and killing the same monters. Fighters are much more resiliant and don't need to do this. But that is not a justification for them getting a larger share of the look. Frankly I think warriors can hit far too hard for the amount of damage they can take. Either lower the armor class for them or lower the amount of damage they can deal.

Poppinjay

Poppinjay

Not really, its a mechanism used to keep you playing.... same as slot machines....

what would be the point in this? your results would be "The Drops are RANDOM"

Remember that 'random' in computer programming is not the same as 'random' in mathematics.

It is all luck... you just like my self are unlucky. I was doing a mission last night and everyone on my 8 man team go at least one dye, one gold and 2 purple. I got 2 blues.

Ever hear of the logical fallacy called "begging the question"?

You are assuming an answer MUST be true before you investigate it. And if AN came out and said that the drops were completely random then the point would at least be to stop arguments like this, and the feelings people have that they are not being treated fairly.

I fully agree that when things really are random, it will seem to some, many even many, people that things are not random and that they are getting a greater or lesser portion than they should. This is absolutely a fact about human psychology. But it is also a logical fact that just because people might think that they are being treated non-randomly when things are really random that doesn't mean that every time people think they are being treated non-randomly it is really random.

The fact that X can cause E doesn't exclude the fact that Y could also cause E.

Gunpowder can cause an explosion but so can gasoline and so can C4 and so can an overloaded circuit etc. A psychological flaw can cause people to think they are being treated non-randomly, but so can a non-random process.

That is why a study or the formula would be nice.

That is the point.

Poppinjay

Mathematics Random - Mathematics & Statistics. Of or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution

Random as it pertains to computer languages - Of or relating to an event in which all outcomes are equally likely....

they're alot closer than most people think they are.

regardless the drops are still random. everytime something is dropped you have a 1/# chance of getting the drop, where # is the total number of people in your party. You have this same chance for the next drop. It is entirely likely that you could spend an entire day and not get a single drop based entirely on probabilities. It more than likely won't happen...but it's possible

It just seems like you're not getting the same as everyone. Notice how no one has posted in here that they get an ungodly amount of drops compared to everyone else. Only ppl have posted that they aren't getting enough.

nothing is ever enough. everyone wants the gold armor and the gold weapons and all the runes and vigors...and if they don't get them it's the games fault for being unfair.

my guess is that it is a psuedo random number. Where they basically have a string of numbers that are created by a formula, most likely related to group size, and then listed in a table. What does make it random is that with thousands of drops occuring every second, the randomness is created as you have no clue as to what order your query is in the server for a roll, as you have no control over who is killing something, somewhere therefore you can't control the order, allowing for random assignment to a number, based on group size.

Im sure they have similar tables associated to ranges/threshold levels for picking drops. So if you had a table with 50 numbers in it, 0-49, maybe if you get a number from 0-24 you get gold, 25-32 a weapon or sheild item, 33-41 an armor item, 42-49 an appropriate combination of unidentified stats. Once again the numbers are randomly listed in the table and then due to random killing of monsters, your query is randomly pinging this table.

Why not create random numbers on the fly? Well anyone that programs knows that creation of random numbers is not a huge task, but thousands of processor requests every second will result in crazy lag. Therefore most gaming companies use psuedo random number tables to solve this problem.

it IS, they rigged it!

Your whine is not a new one by any means. Phat Lewt freaks scream about this in every game; EQ2 and WoW in particular.
There is a solution to your dilemma however, one guaranteed to make sure YOU receive ALL the PHAT LEWT you deserve!

Play solo - no NPCs, nothing, All loot will be yours.
Problem resolved.

what you are describing would cause an incredible amount of lag. The drops are determined per party. if their are 6 members in your party you have a 1/6 chance of getting the drop every time an item is dropped. It has no effect on the next drop and is not effected by the last drop. every drop you get 1/6 chance. it's really not that hard.

BChan demonstrates a thorough understanding of how programmatical randomness works.

Wow, people are still arguing over this? Maybe someone has some insight as to why ANet would want to go out of there way to rig drops instead of just giving it to Players[random(number_in_group)] which is so much easier and makes so much more sense. Drop falls, roll a die, really simple. I've gotten retarded amounts of rares on a few runs and I've also gone many runs where I was lucky to get a crappy white sword. This is the nature of random. Sometimes these runs last a while and sometimes they'll coincide with other circumstances making it seem like their might be a relation, but it's still just coincidence.

actually he doesn't....he demonstrates a solid understanding of how companies have gotten around 'programmatical randomness'...there are far more effective, far less processor intrusive, far better ways to do it. Computers can be completely random, algorithms can be completely random. RSA proved it with MD5....computer programmers are just lazy know-it-alls.

Please!!! Don't dismiss the issue outright!!!!
I started this thread to see if anyone else was experiencing the same thing, and if so, report a bug to AN.

I'm not here to whine, just to gain knowledge and act upon it. I am really enjoying playing GW and the inequality is not reducing my fun. I get online many nights during the week with my friends and do the missions together. That is what I play for. (My friends pass along some good drops to me, they feel sorry for my lack of drops.)

I have stated my observations, so I can't do better than that:
1) Item drops for my character are less than for others
2) This has been a consistent behaviour since the character was created. (not a random distribution over time)
3) Other characters on the same account do not experience this problem
4) Other R/Mo in party does not experience this problem.
5) Friends playing with me can see the inequality. (not imagined)
6) I have done a quick count of the numbers to confirm my findings.
7) This problem is evident in drops from chests/barrels as well.

A lot of the responses on this thread are telling me that I'm imagining things, the code has no bugs, and that I should shut up. This is very discouraging!

There are only a few responses in this thread that have been helpful.
I wish more people in this forum could be more helpful!

Dwig

every aspect of the game is controled at the Parent level by your Account....your characters are underneath that level at a Child level.....if it were programmed into the game in some way all of your characters would experience the same problem as it would be controlled at the Parent level and not the Child level. Unless you are implying that certain classes get better drops than other classes...which isn't true.

Hey, I resent that! (not that there isn't any truth in it, mind you )

I resent it for the same reasons

but it's true....and needed to be said. There are far too many programmers doing things the wrong way simply because everyone else does...and they don't want to take the time to figure out a better way to do it.

The watched pot never boils.
Anyone familiar with that phrase may understand whats really going on here. Its the perception vs. the real numbers. Someone is far more likely to remember and note when they get less than an equal share of drops. The only way to really know if there is a disparity is to record the drops for all your missions. If you see a large disparity over a long period of time (say weeks or months), then you can say for sure if there is a disparity. Simply going by a feeling, or logging the drops on one or two misions is not the way to go about this. In statistics you need a representative sample. In psychology you need to understand the mind has an extrordinary ability to distort facts to fit what you want to believe.

What a sad, sad thread. Is this even an issue?

Even if it wasn't random, its not gamebreaking.

Many of you guys has missed this post or ignored it. This explained the whole "random" thing. It's not 1/6 of ALL DROPS, but 1/6 of the CHANCE you'll be ASSIGNED a drop. Also, you're not always with the same party, so it's like all of a sudden you picked another number and repeat the whole process again. If you're really unlucky, you could end up getting very few drops.

And that's life.

Actually you just answered your own question. See number 3 here and your above post describing how it changes when you switch to your other char.
I'll do my best to see if I can help you but in the end, sometimes perception is reality.

Anyway first things first. I highly doubt that the coders for ANET would hardcode something like "if Class=Ranger && SubClass = Mesmer then Rand_Number=(rand()%32) else Random_Number = (rand()%6);" doesn't make sense although it's possible that through coding that an adverse affect on certain variable has thrown off the counts or drops rather. There is nothing that states that you are guaranteed 1/6th of all drops. For instance flip a coin. Let's say you get heads the first toss so 50/50 odds means that the next will be tails, right? Nope no guarantee as each toss is it's own individual event meaning that this toss has no corelation with the first toss. You could toss the same coin 10 times and get all heads or all tails. 50% or 1 in 2 simply means for that and only that toss, you have a 1 in 2 chance of getting heads or tails. What should see over a period of many tosses that the number fall in the 50% heads and 50% tails category but even that may be off until you hit large numbers like in the thousands.

It could be very well that between all of your chars you simply balancing out the approx. 1/6 (depending on where you fall as far party make up). It just appears that when you hit your Ranger, you get the short end of the stick. The only way you possibly test the true randomness would be to 1) run the same area with each character. 2) attempt solo then attempt with the same grouping of henchmem 3) Repeat it numerous times like several hundred per char.

Yes to truly be able to tell whether or not there is randomness, you have to do hundreds if not thousands of runs. Again keep in mind what random and what odds mean. Odds/Randomness doesn't mean that you are guaranteed anything, it simply means that on the drop that is occurring right then you have 1 in 6 shot (if in a party of that size) of getting loot. This could also be compounded if no drop is selected as that is an event as well. Run the above test and see.

You could be right that there is a bug that somehow keeps the particular class combo you have selected from getting the same share but I find it very unlikely. The reason why is that item generation and loot sharing is a function that has been around game programming since the inception of treasure/loot and drops, kind of like case statements or for loops and by now I am relatively certain that any issues that may have arised such as coding that causes adverse issues would have been discovered and corrected but who knows. Humans are the ones doing the coding so maybe someone did some sloppy coding.

In the end as I stated above perception is reality. There is no way to prove or disprove your theory or possible belief that the particular class you are saying is getting less drops than other classes until you run an experiment to see if in fact your belief is correct so run those tests and let us know. Who knows you may have a found some improper coding causing the anomaly.