Guild Wars 2

I’m not complaining. I have played from the very beginning.

Today I got my second Precursor….The Venom….a trident….worth about 60G

My first…..Chaos gun…..a pistol…. worth about 240g.

Don’t get me wrong, was very happy to get either one of them.

I just wonder what the odds are to get 2 of the very lesser Precursor’s as opposed to the more desirable ones.

Are the drop odd’s equal, or do the less desirable Precursor’s drop more often?

Equal, as far as I know. I’ve had two drop: Dusk and the Energizer. One worth a lot, one worth not so much (especially way back when I got it.)

All the data suggests that the drop rates for precursors are equal (and for greatsword, it’s split between dawn & dusk).

There are 20 precursors. They have an equal chance of dropping. Half are worth less than 400g. Half are worth more than. 500g. You rolled the 20 sided die twice and it landed on 2 and 6. Kinda kittenty but it is what it is.

How did you get them?

If they were drops from enemies then yes the odds are equal across all precursors and honestly you’re extremely lucky to get any two.

If they came from the Mystic Forge then it depends on what you put in. If you put in matching equipment then what you get back will always match what you put in – so for example people who specifically want Zap will only put swords into the Forge, meaning everything they get back will be a sword and if they get a precursor it will be the right one.

If you put mismatches pieces in then it could be anything – if you put in a greatsword, a pistol, a hammer and a longbow then you could get any weapon back (and if you use a Mystic Forge Stone then it counts as a random equipment piece) so then you’re back to an equal chance of getting any precursor.

That’s RNGsus for ya’. I know how it feels. My only pre drop was Howl.

I’ve been playing since headstart and I’ve never seen a precursor drop (Not that I ever tried to get one to drop though). Not complaining but just take it as a positive that you’ve gotten one at all.

Rawr.9467:

I’ve been playing since headstart and I’ve never seen a precursor drop (Not that I ever tried to get one to drop though). Not complaining but just take it as a positive that you’ve gotten one at all.

^ This.

Yeah, also been playing since head start and have never seen a single drop. My account isn’t one of the “lucky” ones.

I’m in the same boat as many others… Playing since head start I’ve never gotten one and not for lack of trying…

over 800 exotics, and 2k+ rares into the forge with nothing to show for it; Yes I have mystic toilet gambling problem.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Yeah, also been playing since head start and have never seen a single drop. My account isn’t one of the “lucky” ones.

Keep in mind that neither age of your account nor hours played have much to do with your odds of getting a precursor drop.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Keep in mind that neither age of your account nor hours played have much to do with your odds of getting a precursor drop.

^^; While true, there is a correlation to time spent playing and precursor drop amount. At least meaningful playing… standing in LA or DR increase your hours but really wouldn’t help you find a pre. While spending time playing killing things looting does in theory give you more chances.

I’m not sure what you really mean, but don’t complain too much: I’ve been playing since before launch, have 23K achievement points, and I have never received a precursor.

Miku.6297:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Keep in mind that neither age of your account nor hours played have much to do with your odds of getting a precursor drop.

^^; While true, there is a correlation to time spent playing and precursor drop amount. At least meaningful playing… standing in LA or DR increase your hours but really wouldn’t help you find a pre. While spending time playing killing things looting does in theory give you more chances.

Well time give you more chances in practice lol.

Personally I will still maintain that there are “lucky” and “unlucky” accounts – we’ve even seen proof of odd account behaviour where they get nowhere near the event participation of other accounts, they couldnt even get gold by soloing events start to finish. But it’s been brushed under the carpet and Anet would of course never admit that little “bug” ever existed.

Miku.6297:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Keep in mind that neither age of your account nor hours played have much to do with your odds of getting a precursor drop.

^^; While true, there is a correlation to time spent playing and precursor drop amount. At least meaningful playing… standing in LA or DR increase your hours but really wouldn’t help you find a pre. While spending time playing killing things looting does in theory give you more chances.

A person who spends 40 hrs/week time replaying personal stories on alts is going to see far fewer opportunities to drop precursors than someone who spends 5 hrs/week solely in target-rich killzones such as the Halloween Labyrinth. With such dismal drop rates, it’s a numbers game about increasing the number of eligible drops.

My main point is that it’s not relevant to say how old an account is or even how many hours, without also mentioning how that time was spent.

Dawdler.8521:

Miku.6297:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Keep in mind that neither age of your account nor hours played have much to do with your odds of getting a precursor drop.

^^; While true, there is a correlation to time spent playing and precursor drop amount. At least meaningful playing… standing in LA or DR increase your hours but really wouldn’t help you find a pre. While spending time playing killing things looting does in theory give you more chances.

Well time give you more chances in practice lol.

Personally I will still maintain that there are “lucky” and “unlucky” accounts – we’ve even seen proof of odd account behaviour where they get nowhere near the event participation of other accounts, they couldnt even get gold by soloing events start to finish. But it’s been brushed under the carpet and Anet would of course never admit that little “bug” ever existed.

In true RNG situations there are people who fall on the extremes. Some accounts will just luck into having great drops and others will luck into having horrible drops. Has nothing to do with their account and tomorrow their luck could change. In either direction.

As for the event credit bug, they would need to submit a report to ANet when it happened for them to have any real chance of figuring out what causes it as it’s obviously not something that happens often – which means certain rare conditions have to be met. And those conditions can’t be uncovered if the players don’t report it.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Miku.6297:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Keep in mind that neither age of your account nor hours played have much to do with your odds of getting a precursor drop.

^^; While true, there is a correlation to time spent playing and precursor drop amount. At least meaningful playing… standing in LA or DR increase your hours but really wouldn’t help you find a pre. While spending time playing killing things looting does in theory give you more chances.

A person who spends 40 hrs/week time replaying personal stories on alts is going to see far fewer opportunities to drop precursors than someone who spends 5 hrs/week solely in target-rich killzones such as the Halloween Labyrinth. With such dismal drop rates, it’s a numbers game about increasing the number of eligible drops.

My main point is that it’s not relevant to say how old an account is or even how many hours, without also mentioning how that time was spent.

That would be me. Except I don’t spend anything like 40 hours a week on it. But I’m not really surprised that I’ve never found a precursor in spite of playing since the 1st day of headstart because I spent most of my time doing things where the chance of getting one is almost zero (like replying the personal story on low level alts – story enemies don’t drop anything and the rewards are fixed so it’s only when I’m moving between maps that I could get one).

Of course it’s almost impossible to accurately track each person’s chances of getting one, but compared to someone who spends most their time in WvW or doing big meta-events and world bosses my chances are extremely small.

Seera.5916:

Dawdler.8521:

Miku.6297:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Keep in mind that neither age of your account nor hours played have much to do with your odds of getting a precursor drop.

^^; While true, there is a correlation to time spent playing and precursor drop amount. At least meaningful playing… standing in LA or DR increase your hours but really wouldn’t help you find a pre. While spending time playing killing things looting does in theory give you more chances.

Well time give you more chances in practice lol.

Personally I will still maintain that there are “lucky” and “unlucky” accounts – we’ve even seen proof of odd account behaviour where they get nowhere near the event participation of other accounts, they couldnt even get gold by soloing events start to finish. But it’s been brushed under the carpet and Anet would of course never admit that little “bug” ever existed.

In true RNG situations there are people who fall on the extremes. Some accounts will just luck into having great drops and others will luck into having horrible drops. Has nothing to do with their account and tomorrow their luck could change. In either direction.

Yup. Exactly this ^^^. I personally never expected to see a precursor in my entire playtime of gw2, so getting one exceeded expectations. I definitely don’t expect another from anything but the AH or crafting, since that’s pretty solidly good luck.

…and as a random player, I’m gonna have completely random luck, but statistically I can say that two drops for me is pretty unlikely, just like it’s unlikely for everyone.

Dawdler.8521:

Personally I will still maintain that there are “lucky” and “unlucky” accounts – we’ve even seen proof of odd account behaviour where they get nowhere near the event participation of other accounts, they couldnt even get gold by soloing events start to finish. But it’s been brushed under the carpet and Anet would of course never admit that little “bug” ever existed.

No, we haven’t seen “proof” of that. Luck doesn’t care if you got good drops after dinner last night; it doesn’t remember.

Everyone goes through streaks — we never, ever see exactly average for very long. It’s even rare that our bad streak will be immediately followed up by a matching good luck streak.

Humans are really good at seeing patterns — it’s an important survival trait. However, we’re also really good at imagining patterns, especially when it comes to luck, because we (as a group) have very little understanding of probability.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Dawdler.8521:

Personally I will still maintain that there are “lucky” and “unlucky” accounts – we’ve even seen proof of odd account behaviour where they get nowhere near the event participation of other accounts, they couldnt even get gold by soloing events start to finish. But it’s been brushed under the carpet and Anet would of course never admit that little “bug” ever existed.

No, we haven’t seen “proof” of that. Luck doesn’t care if you got good drops after dinner last night; it doesn’t remember.

Everyone goes through streaks — we never, ever see exactly average for very long. It’s even rare that our bad streak will be immediately followed up by a matching good luck streak.

Humans are really good at seeing patterns — it’s an important survival trait. However, we’re also really good at imagining patterns, especially when it comes to luck, because we (as a group) have very little understanding of probability.

To add to the survival trait, we’re really good at remembering negative feedback. Like that berry made me not feel good, I shouldn’t eat it again. Or Bob died after eating that fish, I shouldn’t eat it.

So not only do we see patterns often, we remember the negative ones more often. And if you actually noted down your drops for a month or 100 drops if you don’t play that frequently to get enough drops in 1 month, you’d probably end up with more good drops than you would have remembered otherwise.

And here i am wondering why dont hot precursors drop in the open world or the hot maps specifically.

???? you’re kidding, right?

Nope(to the op), the devs have acknowledged outlier accounts, both positive and negative. If you have a negative one, you are basically screwed. Farm gold and buy is your only option.

zealex.9410:

And here i am wondering why dont hot precursors drop in the open world or the hot maps specifically.

If this is a joke, then, ha ha.

If serious, then…HoT Precursors don’t drop; they can only be crafted.

Good luck.

Blude.6812:

Nope(to the op), the devs have acknowledged outlier accounts, both positive and negative. If you have a negative one, you are basically screwed. Farm gold and buy is your only option.

Source on that?

I’m the original OP….and after reading most of this, and mainly people never getting a Precursor, I’m starting to wonder.

Both time times when I got the Venom or Chaos Gun, I just thought they were random exotics. I all but salvaged them. I didn’t need a pistol or trident.

It was only when I checked the price on the TP that I realized they where precursors.

This is what you see…..

Note the light blue text that tells you it can be used to craft a legendary.

The light blue text is so easy to miss….maybe I and many others had no idea…..and salvaged it.

Blude.6812:

Nope(to the op), the devs have acknowledged outlier accounts, both positive and negative. If you have a negative one, you are basically screwed. Farm gold and buy is your only option.

Over a large player-base, there are absolutely, positively going to be outliers in both directions. This is an unavoidable property of the mathematics at large scale. It doesn’t work like you seem to think it works, though.

Think of it like flipping a (completely unbaised) coin: if you get ten heads in a row, you win!

So, you personally flip a coin. Do you win? Well, odds are, probably not, because it’s one in 2 to the tenth power, or 1024, attempts that win, only. It’s not a biased coin, it’s just the mathematical odds of that happening.

Now imagine you are in a room with around 4096 people. You all flip an equally fair coin ten times. On average four people are gonna come up with ten heads … but it’s not about “who” those people were, it’s just random, right? (and it could be that zero people win this time, though that would be extremely rare, or eight do, which would also be rare.)

If you keep doing that, every day, it’s possible that someone is gonna win more times than “average”, and someone less, but it’s not because of who they are. You can’t predict who it will be based on anything … but you can say, yes, there are people who observably, looking back, did win more or less than average.

If you keep going forever, though, the “lucky” and “unlucky” accounts are going to converge on the average. Every flip of that coin brings them closer to the average.

Make sense?

Haishao.6851:

Blude.6812:

Nope(to the op), the devs have acknowledged outlier accounts, both positive and negative. If you have a negative one, you are basically screwed. Farm gold and buy is your only option.

Source on that?

22 pages if you want. But Point 2 by John Smith and an idea how to deal with it but never implemented.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/RNG-as-a-concept-Discuss/first

in other threads he says things like
“Here’s the premise. RNG is evenly distributed on aggregate. On an individual level this means that while almost everyone falls into a reasonable range in the middle, there are outliers on each side of the distribution that are either highly rewarded or not rewarded at all.These individuals become sample cases and spotlights for experiences that maybe shouldn’t exist.

There are many others including reddit, Google is your friend.

Blude.6812:

Nope(to the op), the devs have acknowledged outlier accounts, both positive and negative. If you have a negative one, you are basically screwed. Farm gold and buy is your only option.

All the devs acknowledged is the normal distribution of a system using RNG.

Lets say you have a class of 30 students. Every student rolls 30 six sided dies and count the number of ones. Now overall the total number of ones for the class will be close, if the dice are balanced, will be relatively close to 150 or 5 each. However the statistical distribution of results indicates it’s likely one student would get 0 or 1 from those 30 dice and one or two students will get 9 or more. That is simply the nature of RNG. One student would think that the dice they got were weighted against him while another would think that they were weighted so ones came up more often.

And this example is with a one in six chance, not one in a thousand or five thousand or what ever the tiny chance is for a precursor drop.

And they do still drop in the open world. I was watching a streamer doing Lake Doric and she had The Legend drop from a random White Mantle. She didn’t even notice until she went to clean up her inventory hours later. Somebody went back and scrubbed the stream and found when it dropped. First precursor drop she had since launch and 4000+ hours.

Blude.6812:

Nope(to the op), the devs have acknowledged outlier accounts, both positive and negative. If you have a negative one, you are basically screwed. Farm gold and buy is your only option.

You’ve misunderstood. The devs acknowledged that people experience outlying statistical patterns — they have never said that accounts were permanently outliers.

Luck does not care what your drops were yesterday; there is no such thing as a “lucky account” and no such thing as an “unlucky” one.

Tom.6478:

I’m the original OP….and after reading most of this, and mainly people never getting a Precursor, I’m starting to wonder.

Both time times when I got the Venom or Chaos Gun, I just thought they were random exotics. I all but salvaged them. I didn’t need a pistol or trident.

It was only when I checked the price on the TP that I realized they where precursors.

This is what you see…..

Note the light blue text that tells you it can be used to craft a legendary.

The light blue text is so easy to miss….maybe I and many others had no idea…..and salvaged it.

I’m 100% sure I’ve never gotten a precursor. I always take my time going through my inventory for exactly this reason. In some ways I’m a ridiculous optimist (which is funny because most of the time I’m really cynical) so every time I get an exotic, and especially a named exotic, I want to check the TP because I think it could be worth hundreds of gold. Then I find it’s worth 1g and probably more valuable salvaged.