The Coinflip analogy: why simply increasing the drop rate doesn't address the core problem with Red drops

[KrazyKruber]

I know there are a few posts whining about loot already but I wanted to make this point its own topic because it seems a lot of people, including Fatshark still don’t understand why the current RNG system is so bad.

The core problem with Red drops is that unlucky people just won’t open any, or will open very few even after hundreds of runs and hours. Simply increasing the drop rate doesn’t really address this problem. And here is why:

Consider flipping a coin. You have a “50% chance” to get heads or tails. But if you actually flip the coin a few times you won’t get heads every other flip, you won’t necessarily get heads half your flips There is actually a very small chance that you could flip a coin 100 times and land on tails every time, or heads every time.

What that “50% chance” means is that over a VERY LARGE amount flips, you have a high probability of seeing about half of those flips turn up heads and about half turn up tails, but it isn’t guaranteed to turn out that way. If you have a million people each flip a coin 100 times, it is a statistical certainty that a few will get all tails, and a few will get all heads, while the rest will get closer to 50/50.

It is important to understand here that even if the chance of getting a red from a chest was 50%, among a million players you would still have a few that never open a red, while a few others would open a red every chest.

If you want players to have a 5% chance of getting a red, then just give them a guaranteed red after every 20 legend vaults they open. This is quick and easy to implement, still rewards skill and commitment, and guarantees that there won’t be any unlucky people frustrated by never getting loot.

[Margicks]

I agree, slowly increasing the chance of acquiring one every time you do not (from a chest that can reward one ofc) would at least make it so eventually you are guaranteed a red.

[AgainPyromancer]

@KrazyKruber

Consider flipping a coin. You have a “50% chance” to get heads or tails. But if you actually flip the coin a few times you won’t get heads every other flip, you won’t necessarily get heads half your flips There is actually a very small chance that you could flip a coin 100 times and land on tails every time, or heads every time.

What that “50% chance” means is that over a VERY LARGE amount flips, you have a high probability of seeing about half of those flips turn up heads and about half turn up tails, but it isn’t guaranteed to turn out that way. If you have a million people each flip a coin 100 times, it is a statistical certainty that a few will get all tails, and a few will get all heads, while the rest will get closer to 50/50.

You like this analogy so much you made it into it’s own topic? You doing this and then suggesting that Fatshark “don’t understand RNG systems” is pretty telling, man.

Pasting from the other thread:

This is exactly why you shouldn’t be quick to spread rumours of “hidden nerfs”. Like I said, people are just innately terrible at this kind of thing. The actual odds of flipping tails 100 times in a row? One to 1.3x10^30. This wouldn’t be “guaranteed”, or even especially probable, to have happened even if all 7 billion people alive today had been flipping coins all day long since the Big Bang.

People will get screwed/blessed by RNG, yes. But almost everybody will have up and downs, not just ups or downs. That’s just how RNG works.

Lastly, VT1 had Q&C, and pity timers on DLC drops, etc. to take the edge of the RNG loot system. We can expect more of that from VT2, I’m quite sure. Fatshark are still mostly concerned with core gameplay bugs, etc. at the moment, IMHO.

[KrazyKruber]

I replied to you in the other thread but since you’re obsessed with being wrong I’ll match you by reposting part of my reply here also:

I have no idea what sort of math you are using but if you want to get technical the real odds of flipping tails 100 times in a row are 1/2^100, or 7.9e-31. I should have used a smaller number of flips or a larger number of people to justify the use of “guaranteed” but in the case of loot boxes the rng chance isn’t anywhere close to 50% either, that I can guarantee. With current drop rates of reds I certainly can guarantee there are players putting in an exorbitant amount of gametime with no reds, or no reds they actually use, to show for it, especially considering the large number of underpowered or useless weapons and the possibility of dupes.

How embarrassing it must be for you to be so wildly wrong at such simple math. I merely made a technical misuse of “guaranteed” for rhetorical purposes as a quick example; you failed at basic math.

[Rumeht]

We’re forgetting the law of large numbers.

[AgainPyromancer]

Nice try.

@KrazyKruber

when you have a million players each of them flipping a coin 100 times, SOME of them are GUARANTEED to get tails every time and some will get heads every time.

This is your glaring fail that you can’t wish or bluster away. The odds I provided were indeed wrong, but you might note though that they were wrong in that they were too generous by an order of magnitude. My point, which is that you (and me, and everyone else) are terrible at estimating drop rates and should therefore be slow to read anything into their anecdotes, still stands.

@KrazyKruber

I should have used a smaller number of flips or a large number of people to justify the use of “guaranteed”

To hammer the point home – this is exactly the problem. We all should be careful with probabilities, but we don’t tend to be. We tend to turn to our anedotes instead and take them seriously instead of treating them like quasi-jokes. What I told OP was that he had slim evidence of a “hidden nerf”. Agree or disagree?

@KrazyKruber

Doubling the drop rate from 1.5% to 3% doesn’t fix this problem.

Define “fix”. It would change the odds of people being truly unlucky (getting 0 reds) drastically. It would not make it impossible to be unlucky, no. You’ll notice that I addressed that point in my first reply to you. I’m not arguing that the current drop rate or loot system is perfect, I’m arguing that anecdotes are borderline useless for evaluating drop rates.

@KrazyKruber

VT1 already had this stuff, so why in the hell is VT2 lacking stuff VT1 already had figured out? It was either a conscious decision to not include it thinking we’d enjoy the RNG fiesta more, or they’re planning on tying future reds/Cosmetics/Pictures to a Q&C system that will require DLC purchase, or the alternative that Fatshark simply sold us a game that was nowhere near ready for release and won’t get around to implementing features that were in the first game for another few months.

If you want my honest opinion, it’s C) “Fatshark won’t get around to implementing features that were in the first game for a while, yet”. I don’t think I can agree that it was “nowhere near ready for release”, but I agree that it came out lacking a lot of the polish we’d come to enjoy in VT1.

[Flinlock]

I wholeheartedly agree with you here. RNG means that some poor unlucky souls will just get screwed.

I recall with VT1 they did something to combat the issue - There was some weapons that you could only unlock on a certain DLC map. They made it so that the more times you played the map the better your odds were of unlocking that weapon. Something like that could help.

Alternately, if they just brought back the bounty board so that we could work towards specific red items or cosmetics, that would work too.

[mookanana]

wow every single day you make a new thread about this.

reds are meant to be rare, you complain about it every single day since the patch for improved reds popped out. if fatshark listened to you, people would probably be able to craft reds by now.

give them time to work on a proper system and give it a rest.