Guild Wars 2

People with “lucky” accounts probably just play more.

Neural.1824:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Curo.2483:

I feel like so many people have been trained to just spit out the same answers that they take as fact, and don’t consider the fact that perhaps the drop system is flawed. Why can’t you even consider that? Do you really think ANet is so incapable of making a flawed system, that you ignore the evidence in front of you?

I’m perfectly willing to consider the possibility that there’s an issue, just as soon as someone meets my impossible standards

Fixed that for you.

It’s not impossible to provide evidence; it’s just tedious. I’ve offered to help anyone interested in collecting it. If folks just want to repeatedly claim there’s an issue, I can’t stop them. If folks want to convince others, especially ANet, that there’s an issue (or potential for one), it’s going to take more than just saying “I don’t like my drop rates”.

The hardest part about proving that there’s a problem with the RNG is that you don’t just need a lot of trials. You need a boat load of trials. In order to actually reach the values of expected events (I.E. a dice roll or a coin flip), you need to run hundreds, if not thousands of trials. For something as simple as flipping a coin and rolling a dice (which we know is 50/50 and 3.5 average).

For something in the game as rare as a precursor to be determined to be fair or unfair, you’d probably need a million trials, total. Both to see what the drop rate might be, and to see whether some accounts are “luckier” than others and receive a higher frequency of drops per time invested.

As a player of below average luck myself, there’s always that part of me that is paranoid. I find that I am off-putting and usually diametrically opposed ideologically to many game developers, Anet being no exception. There’s always that lingering thought that, because I said something that bothered a higher up dev on their beliefs, that my account is purposefully flagged as “unlucky” by the devs, never to receive a super valuable drop. I can never prove it, but I do know that people are petty enough to do it.

Going back to original post, an outlier is not an aspect of an account, Outliers are a natural and expected artifact of a large sample size, its not something you ‘fix’

Astralporing.1957:

DGraves.3720:

Astralporing.1957:

You seem to have some weird assumption, that rng averages out over long time for everyone and makes outliers disappear. That assumption is wrong. Oultiers will always exist, and over time differences between high and low ones are only going to get bigger.

Actually that is true. Random number generation systems (since none are “truly” random) do tend to show a mean and do tend to average out in the middle or around specific numbers. This is seen with pennies. The odds of one side or the other are equivalent but the odds of them actually being equivalent go up, not down, with every iteration supposing a base set greater than probably 1,000 trials.

Interestingly enough this is also seen with the lottery. Some numbers do actually come up more than others. In a lottery system such as this it isn’t crazy to assume that most of your rewards will fit a distinct set. That is not to say that it explains great luck or horrible luck but instead to express that outliers over time do indeed disappear things tend to shift to the inside.

We call it a bell curve, or as you put it, Gaussian Distribution.

You’re basically agreeing with me. I haven’t said that an account that is an outlier today will be an outlier tomorrow. I said that there will always be outliers, and the more “rolls” we make, the greater the difference between low and high outliers will be.

I’m saying the opposite. The more rolls there are the lesser the difference between outliers. It’s why if you flip a penny 1 million times you’ll have greater variation in the difference (should there be one) between heads and tails than if you flip the same penny 1 billion times and so forth and so on. The greater the number of iterations the lower the difference between outliers and the smaller the window for outliers becomes.

An easy proof of this in real life would be test scores. In a class of 10 students there will be greater variation than in a school of 1,000 and a country of 1,000,000 and a planet of 1,000,000,000. So while you may look horrible at a score of 70 among your friends you end up being truly average among the whole of the population thus lessening the outlying effect.

It’s just like how someone living next door to you can strike the lottery and you can’t, not even once in your entire life and you are in your 70’s now. My dad’s friend struck the lottery 3 times. Nvm I am digressing.

My suggestion to even out the odds is for an internal tracker behind each item for each player. The tracker will detect if the item has dropped for the player. Depending on the given rarity of the item, and also up to the game master’s judgement, the tracker will increase in probability with the play time put in by the player, or it may increase in probability with the number of chests or loot obtained by the player. This way, it will ensure that everybody gets every single item the same as everyone does.

Roxanne.6140:

It’s just like how someone living next door to you can strike the lottery and you can’t, not even once in your entire life and you are in your 70’s now. My dad’s friend struck the lottery 3 times. Nvm I am digressing.

My suggestion to even out the odds is for an internal tracker behind each item for each player. The tracker will detect if the item has dropped for the player. Depending on the given rarity of the item, and also up to the game master’s judgement, the tracker will increase in probability with the play time put in by the player, or it may increase in probability with the number of chests or loot obtained by the player. This way, it will ensure that everybody gets every single item the same as everyone does.

If everyone eventually gets a precursor or two or three, then what does that do to precursor prices, to Legendary prices and how many Legendaries are in game? If everyone (and I do mean everyone) has a Legendary, or 3, doesn’t that bring rarity down to the level of everyday exotics? If everyone has a completely filled wardrobe of all the items that can drop in game, doesn’t that mean that any drop you get is not exciting and low value? If ascended chests dropped more frequently so you can equip chars with armor, what does that do to the prices of the mats used in crafting? Most of the things sold in this game are crating related. If crafting takes a hit, most people’s income takes a hit too.

This is just like the ecto salvage rate threads; a fundamental misunderstanding of randomness.

Curo.2483:

Over 4k hours and never a precursor, BUT I get an ascended box from daily fractals on average once every 3 days. I’ve heard guildies say they went 30+ days without seeing an ascended box. So at least I’ve recognized how the flawed system can be manipulated in my favour. Just random chance you say? That’s fine, I’m going to keep farming fractals every day and keep getting my ascended boxes reliably, and you can label it with whatever statistical lingo you want. The results are there in front of me.

Honestly, I don’t know what you hope to achieve by sharing anecdotes with no evidence like this. What is your point? Regardless, even if what you say is true, that does not go against the concept of randomness. Randomness precisely accounts for the fact you might get these drops while joeblow.2945 won’t get a single one from 500 chests.

I see no reason to think that certain accounts aren’t lucky, but the reason they’re lucky may not be what any of us think.

Their RNGs are created from all sorts of random stuff, I think the reason they said they keep track of how many people have died from raptors is because they use random assortments of data like that from the game to feed their RNG equation.

But instead of character name length or content, it could be that something about their playstyle seems to favor the RNG equation. It could be their particular timing when executing skills or even the way they path their character across the map.

I know some people who got a lot of great drops daily in WvW, and I asked them about their magic find and expected I would get the same amount of good drops once I caught up to their magic find but lo and behold I’m not getting ascended rings on a daily basis.

It could be anything, but there’s no reason to think some oddity about an individual account or player couldn’t, without knowing the cause, trigger RNG favorably.

It could even be the average timing of how fast they kill things. If the RNG is asked to calculate loot constantly it could be that a player repeatedly pings the RNG for loot calculation at a favorable interval.

Basically, there’s no way to know so probably best not to worry about it.

Mo Mo.1947:

I see no reason to think that certain accounts aren’t lucky, but the reason they’re lucky may not be what any of us think.

Their RNGs are created from all sorts of random stuff, I think the reason they said they keep track of how many people have died from raptors is because they use random assortments of data like that from the game to feed their RNG equation.

But instead of character name length or content, it could be that something about their playstyle seems to favor the RNG equation. It could be their particular timing when executing skills or even the way they path their character across the map.

I know some people who got a lot of great drops daily in WvW, and I asked them about their magic find and expected I would get the same amount of good drops once I caught up to their magic find but lo and behold I’m not getting ascended rings on a daily basis.

It could be anything, but there’s no reason to think some oddity about an individual account or player couldn’t, without knowing the cause, trigger RNG favorably.

They’ve specfically stated that there is no variable on an account that gives it better results over others. The one exception of course being MF. Performing certain actions to increase your drop rate is incorrect. It’s as simple as the drop rate for an item being X which is influenced slightly by MF. Just because two people have the same MF, doesn’t mean that they’re going to see the same results in the short term.

Randulf.7614:

Except no evidence exists.

To make any accurate comparisons, everyone needs to be doing roughly the same thing. Are they playing similar hours?
Are they playing similat content?
Are they playing more content which involves chests or ranking up?
Are they playing the forge more?
Are they in higher level areas more?
Is magic find equal?
Are players lying and linking chat codes? ( very very common tactic)

There are so many factors at play, it is very easy to dismiss lucky accounts. At the end of the day, it is in the best interest of the game and the devs for a system not to exist. The devs see the data, so if such a flaw exists or existed, it would have been picked up and corrected long ago

None of those factors has to be equal, just recorded. If enough data is collected WITH the knowledge of the variables, trends could be determined such as “how much does magic find influence drops”, “how specific content have different weighted drops for extremely rare loot”, “streaks and what affects them” and so on.

Problem is it’s attempting to boil down drops as much as possible so players can create a formula to obtain desired drops, which is unnecessary, IMO.

Amurond.4590:

This is just like the ecto salvage rate threads; a fundamental misunderstanding of randomness.

Curo.2483:

Over 4k hours and never a precursor, BUT I get an ascended box from daily fractals on average once every 3 days. I’ve heard guildies say they went 30+ days without seeing an ascended box. So at least I’ve recognized how the flawed system can be manipulated in my favour. Just random chance you say? That’s fine, I’m going to keep farming fractals every day and keep getting my ascended boxes reliably, and you can label it with whatever statistical lingo you want. The results are there in front of me.

Honestly, I don’t know what you hope to achieve by sharing anecdotes with no evidence like this. What is your point? Regardless, even if what you say is true, that does not go against the concept of randomness. Randomness precisely accounts for the fact you might get these drops while joeblow.2945 won’t get a single one from 500 chests.

There was one time that the ecto salvage rate was bugged. However, ANet didn’t step in when people were giving anecdotal evidence. One player took the time to do at least 100 rare or exotic salvages and wrote down the number received and posted the results. ANet then went, hmmm something may be wrong and did simulated trials and found something wrong and fixed it.

So until a group of players, some on the lucky side, some on the average side, and some on the unlucky side are willing to do hundreds of trials and note down magic find numbers during the trial, there isn’t much ANet can do, because anecdotal evidence isn’t strong enough to warrant a deeper look.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution

Please read and understand the most basic of probability distributions to understand why there are outliers. There is nothing special about being part of the bunch that’s two or three standard deviations away from the mean.

However, give it time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem
If you feel you are ridiculously unlucky read and understand the central limit theorem.

Basically, just understand basic statistics…….

Seera.5916:

Amurond.4590:

This is just like the ecto salvage rate threads; a fundamental misunderstanding of randomness.

Curo.2483:

Over 4k hours and never a precursor, BUT I get an ascended box from daily fractals on average once every 3 days. I’ve heard guildies say they went 30+ days without seeing an ascended box. So at least I’ve recognized how the flawed system can be manipulated in my favour. Just random chance you say? That’s fine, I’m going to keep farming fractals every day and keep getting my ascended boxes reliably, and you can label it with whatever statistical lingo you want. The results are there in front of me.

Honestly, I don’t know what you hope to achieve by sharing anecdotes with no evidence like this. What is your point? Regardless, even if what you say is true, that does not go against the concept of randomness. Randomness precisely accounts for the fact you might get these drops while joeblow.2945 won’t get a single one from 500 chests.

There was one time that the ecto salvage rate was bugged. However, ANet didn’t step in when people were giving anecdotal evidence. One player took the time to do at least 100 rare or exotic salvages and wrote down the number received and posted the results. ANet then went, hmmm something may be wrong and did simulated trials and found something wrong and fixed it.

So until a group of players, some on the lucky side, some on the average side, and some on the unlucky side are willing to do hundreds of trials and note down magic find numbers during the trial, there isn’t much ANet can do, because anecdotal evidence isn’t strong enough to warrant a deeper look.

Adding links that go along with your post.

This is an article about it.

http://minimaxir.com/2013/05/deep-breaths-more/

This is the forum thread about it. Dev responses start on page 3 if you wanted to track them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Changes-to-ecto-salvage-from-rares/first

Let’s also not forget about this thread as well.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ecto-Salvage-nerfed/first#post4708157

DGraves.3720:

Astralporing.1957:

DGraves.3720:

Astralporing.1957:

You seem to have some weird assumption, that rng averages out over long time for everyone and makes outliers disappear. That assumption is wrong. Oultiers will always exist, and over time differences between high and low ones are only going to get bigger.

Actually that is true. Random number generation systems (since none are “truly” random) do tend to show a mean and do tend to average out in the middle or around specific numbers. This is seen with pennies. The odds of one side or the other are equivalent but the odds of them actually being equivalent go up, not down, with every iteration supposing a base set greater than probably 1,000 trials.

Interestingly enough this is also seen with the lottery. Some numbers do actually come up more than others. In a lottery system such as this it isn’t crazy to assume that most of your rewards will fit a distinct set. That is not to say that it explains great luck or horrible luck but instead to express that outliers over time do indeed disappear things tend to shift to the inside.

We call it a bell curve, or as you put it, Gaussian Distribution.

You’re basically agreeing with me. I haven’t said that an account that is an outlier today will be an outlier tomorrow. I said that there will always be outliers, and the more “rolls” we make, the greater the difference between low and high outliers will be.

I’m saying the opposite. The more rolls there are the lesser the difference between outliers. It’s why if you flip a penny 1 million times you’ll have greater variation in the difference (should there be one) between heads and tails than if you flip the same penny 1 billion times and so forth and so on. The greater the number of iterations the lower the difference between outliers and the smaller the window for outliers becomes.

Difference between outliers, not variance within a series. If you continue to test, then the difference between series (let’s say, number of times you got tail when flipping that penny) is going to get greater when comparing low series (maximum number of heads) with high one (maximum number of tails).

And, of course, if the series are not of equal length (which is the case when we’re talking about gw2 drops) that’s going to increase the differences even more.

DGraves.3720:

An easy proof of this in real life would be test scores. In a class of 10 students there will be greater variation than in a school of 1,000 and a country of 1,000,000 and a planet of 1,000,000,000. So while you may look horrible at a score of 70 among your friends you end up being truly average among the whole of the population thus lessening the outlying effect.

…sorry, again, we’re not talking about variance, but outliers. Test scores aren’t a good example of what we’re talking about, by the way, because they use a series with a length of 1 try, but let’s try to look at it anyway.
The maximum possible difference between outliers is bounded (and theoretically you may get it with just a population of 2), but here too, the greater the population, the closer the highest and lowest score will likely be to the maximum/minimum possible, and the greater chance of someone getting one of those borderline scores (0 or 100). Given big enough population, you are certain to get to that point.
Adding new people to the group we’re checking is rather obviously not going to decrease the point difference between the lowest and highest-scorer in that group. Only removing people can do that.

Curo.2483:

So we’ve all heard the “my friend has better RNG than me stories”, and most of us know that computers cannot actually create random numbers, and there must be a ‘random seed’ based off something. And if we put 2 and 2 together, it looks like some accounts have better RNG due to some sort of innate calculation tied to their account.

So the question is this: are we just wearing tinfoil hats, and the fact that my friend with 900 hours in the game has 4 precursors and 2 unlimited bank access contracts. compared to my zero anything over 4.5k hours, is just to be chalked up to RNG? I get that. But how many people can relate to this story? Yes, we all know about biases. But how long are we going to say things like “random is random” (which we know it isn’t), and “your sample size is low” (which by this time, is not), and “you’re not factoring in other variables” (which we are)?

When are we going to actually look at “lucky” accounts (and I use quotes there because we know computers can’t generate random numbers)? Can we start talking about things like “is it right”, and “how can we level out this uneven distribution of wealth through drops?” When can we stop insulting each others’ intelligence, and address the issue at hand?

No they dont. You can put down the tinfoil hat, because JS has repeatedly said this is false. Of course, who the hell’s going to believe an anet employee anyways when they say something contrary to “popular” belief?

Oh, yea, the people who dont buy into conspiracies.

Yes, it’s a real thing. Certain accounts have better luck and how active the account is plays a role in it as well. People who play less or are returning MIA players get better drops as an incentive to get them to play more, and those who do play a lot have worse luck.
My most recent experience is; ~friend logs in for first time in probably a year+ to check out HoT and runs low lvl fractals for the first time to see what they’re like for probably 2 or so days and gets The Legend to drop. He instantly gets an ultra rare drop that I hadn’t gotten anything even 1/5th close to in 3+ years of active playing and hundreds of Fractals and etc and then he stops playing again.

Similar things have happened with other short-time returning friends getting ultra rare drops effortlessly that I’ve farmed countless hours for. I’ve seen it happen in other MMOs too and seems pretty real to me.

Tbh i know math to and all i want to say nothing proves nor disproves the lucky accounts beeing possible.
I do however always find randomness hard to believe because randomness is never something you want as a company. The fact of the matter is this could easily be solved by anet if they are willing.
As pointed out Anet will never do this (cause people would take advantage from a supposedly flat loottable) how can people abuse a rng system (cause thats what Anet claims this to be). So as the conspiracytheorist i am (btw many conspiracys have bezn provzn to be right over the course of history) i believe they wont publish the exact math cause there is stuff in there they don’t want us to know.
Won’t say I’m right but hey they could always show uw how it works if they realy wanted to get rid of our rants

Sthenith.5196:

http://neurope.eu/article/does-luck-exist-or-it-state-mind/

Basically, “luck” is a matter of perspective.

I can fully sign this.

For me, I don’t care about precursors, I got 1 in 3 years and I’m not sad about that, because I hate dungeons and fractals, so it is still on my bank and I will never finish it, unless anet decide to change these requirements, which will never happens. But I was so happy when I’ve received Celestial Dye and Abyss Dye to a time where they were the most expensive colours in the trading post and I’m still very happy when I get a colour, which I don’t have yet. Other don’t care about dyes. When I used to play a lot in wvw, I always wanted the keg of wxp, but never seen that, the 4 or 5 ascended items I got made me happy, especially after you can change the stats. I’m okay with the rest of item quality, as long as I can salvage it.

I have 4k hours on my acc and got 0 precursors by normal way.
Got 25+ precursors in Mystic toilet.

What I have experienced is that mystic toilet get buffs on Easter and Christmas time cause I get 2,3x times more exotics when I put rares in it.
In normal time I rarely get exotics in MF using rares.

So yea they are maybe manipulating drop rates. Some new accounts have more luck than veteran accounts that are made 3 years ago (like mine). 5%-10% chance more base to finding precursors is a big deal.

I get exotic maybe 1 per month in some loot bag. Guess I have unlucky acc for looting.

Ragnarox.9601:

I have 4k hours on my acc and got 0 precursors by normal way.
Got 25+ precursors in Mystic toilet.

What I have experienced is that mystic toilet get buffs on Easter and Christmas time cause I get 2,3x times more exotics when I put rares in it.
In normal time I rarely get exotics in MF using rares.

So yea they are maybe manipulating drop rates. Some new accounts have more luck than veteran accounts that are made 3 years ago (like mine). 5%-10% chance more base to finding precursors is a big deal.

I get exotic maybe 1 per month in some loot bag. Guess I have unlucky acc for looting.

Please tell us exact numbers and the sample size.

“2,3x times more exotics”
“rarely get exotics”

If you want to prove something these are not enough.

Seera.5916:

There is no such thing as unlucky or lucky accounts. There is nothing in your account that dooms you to bad RNG and nothing in your friend’s account that blesses their account with good RNG.

In so far as this goes with ANET and GW2, that is the best we do know. However it has been proven in the past that in some games, there are oops such that one’s account DID have an effect on game behavior.
If I can recall correctly, Turbine back with Asheron’s Call actually did have a flag on an account that if set did cause that account to get more agro than a tricked out agro magnet styled character.

LastShot.4762:

First off, no RNG ever made can be truly random.

Such accepted as truly random devices do exist, but for an MMO they are prohibitively expensive.

Now something that was mentioned by a guildie a few nights ago made me pause. We players have zero clue how the RNG we use is seeded. Is it the same RNG seed for everyone? Is it per player/account? Is it per character? We have no clue. We can only assume that the RNG being used is the same for each player but the seed value will change the order of outcome (for utter lack of a better term.)

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Roxanne.6140:

It’…

If everyone eventually gets a precursor or two or three, then what does that do to precursor prices, to Legendary prices and how many Legendaries are in game? If everyone (and I do mean everyone) has a Legendary, or 3, doesn’t that bring rarity down to the level of everyday exotics? If everyone has a completely filled wardrobe of all the items that can drop in game, doesn’t that mean that any drop you get is not exciting and low value? If ascended chests dropped more frequently so you can equip chars with armor, what does that do to the prices of the mats used in crafting? Most of the things sold in this game are crating related. If crafting takes a hit, most people’s income takes a hit too.

Yes well I was just trying to be helpful to the OP and offer suggestions instead of constantly putting OPs down :x

OneYenShort.3189:

Seera.5916:

There is no such thing as unlucky or lucky accounts. There is nothing in your account that dooms you to bad RNG and nothing in your friend’s account that blesses their account with good RNG.

In so far as this goes with ANET and GW2, that is the best we do know. However it has been proven in the past that in some games, there are oops such that one’s account DID have an effect on game behavior.
If I can recall correctly, Turbine back with Asheron’s Call actually did have a flag on an account that if set did cause that account to get more agro than a tricked out agro magnet styled character.

LastShot.4762:

First off, no RNG ever made can be truly random.

Such accepted as truly random devices do exist, but for an MMO they are prohibitively expensive.

Now something that was mentioned by a guildie a few nights ago made me pause. We players have zero clue how the RNG we use is seeded. Is it the same RNG seed for everyone? Is it per player/account? Is it per character? We have no clue. We can only assume that the RNG being used is the same for each player but the seed value will change the order of outcome (for utter lack of a better term.)

Until players get together to generate enoungh concrete data for people to look at while noting down all variables that may have affected their drops, there is no proof that the system has a bug in it.

My wife has been coding games for 18 years and she has the most insane RNG I’ve ever seen on every game. She swears by secret modifiers and can usually sense within the first few minutes of character creation if the account is “lucky” or not. She’s gotten several precursers in the mystic forge, using various methods that would look like superstition to any sane person, but it just keeps working. She calls the phenomenon quantum interaction and described something about attitude, and syncing up the “mood of the code.” She’s gone to elaborate lengths to accomplish some seemingly impossible tasks in games using sheer “luck,” and has it down to a pretty finite science, at least as far as her accounts are concerned. I’ve watched her get the best drops first try every time on some toons that she deemed “super lucky” and other ones where she forgot to do her luck experimenting she has literally deleted them just for their invisible unlucky factor.

So… can confirm. There is a secret luck factor. She swears it isn’t in the coding, however, and there isn’t anything you can do except delete the unlucky toons and make new ones. It’s not a seed, it’s a combination of factors that affect each character made. You try a few random activities out specifically for “luck sensing” at the beginning of the account and will eventually be able to tell which ones are lucky and which ones aren’t.

She has a really simple experiment. Use any screen shake and buff applying skill (both in one skill pref) and throw greens in the toilet. If it comes out rare, you got the luck factor.

She says it’s the simplest test.

But then she re-rolls a new character and does the same thing. It’s no different than flipping a coin once, determine the account must be jinxed if you don’t get heads, and then keep re-rolling until you do.

I’ve never had a pre drop for me in all the time playing GW2, been playing since head start, but I’ve had Ascended weapons armor and rings drop for me for what seems like fun in PvP. I’ve had a total of (so far) 8 armor boxes, 5 weapon boxes, and 9 rings.

This has been over 6-9 months. And I don’t play that much or for that long.

Hasn’t this idea of lucky and unlucky accounts been debunked by the devs on multiple occasions?
And hasn’t the math on computer based RNG and it’s correlation with loot in GW2 been done multiple times, proving that accounts are neither lucky or unlucky?

While I enjoy a good tinfoil hat theory, there are some that just get tiresome…

Kane.6549:

My wife has been coding games for 18 years and she has the most insane RNG I’ve ever seen on every game. She swears by secret modifiers and can usually sense within the first few minutes of character creation if the account is “lucky” or not. She’s gotten several precursers in the mystic forge, using various methods that would look like superstition to any sane person, but it just keeps working. She calls the phenomenon quantum interaction and described something about attitude, and syncing up the “mood of the code.” She’s gone to elaborate lengths to accomplish some seemingly impossible tasks in games using sheer “luck,” and has it down to a pretty finite science, at least as far as her accounts are concerned. I’ve watched her get the best drops first try every time on some toons that she deemed “super lucky” and other ones where she forgot to do her luck experimenting she has literally deleted them just for their invisible unlucky factor.

So… can confirm. There is a secret luck factor. She swears it isn’t in the coding, however, and there isn’t anything you can do except delete the unlucky toons and make new ones. It’s not a seed, it’s a combination of factors that affect each character made. You try a few random activities out specifically for “luck sensing” at the beginning of the account and will eventually be able to tell which ones are lucky and which ones aren’t.

Does she use Lucky White Rabbit’s Foot to get precursors? Lucky Pink Rabbit’s Foot is also good and it is cheaper.

Kane.6549:

She has a really simple experiment. Use any screen shake and buff applying skill (both in one skill pref) and throw greens in the toilet. If it comes out rare, you got the luck factor.

She says it’s the simplest test.

There’s also an alternate explanation. The Bell Curve.

Any time there’s a spread of points or luck or grades or anything, there’s going to be some on the far right hand side of the Bell Curve and some on the far left. Statistically speaking, some of these will remain on the far edges over a period of time. John Smith, the game’s economist, has said there are accounts on both far edges of the luck Bell Curve. Your wife could have an account that exists on the “lucky” side of the Bell Curve and everything she is doing is superstition. The same type of superstition where people wear “lucky” shirts or hats to increase their luck. Truthfully, I’d believe in statistics and the Bell Curve before I’d believe you can shake a skill at the Mystic Forge and affect the “mood of the code” that way.

Milkshake.4038:

Ragnarox.9601:

I have 4k hours on my acc and got 0 precursors by normal way.
Got 25+ precursors in Mystic toilet.

What I have experienced is that mystic toilet get buffs on Easter and Christmas time cause I get 2,3x times more exotics when I put rares in it.
In normal time I rarely get exotics in MF using rares.

So yea they are maybe manipulating drop rates. Some new accounts have more luck than veteran accounts that are made 3 years ago (like mine). 5%-10% chance more base to finding precursors is a big deal.

I get exotic maybe 1 per month in some loot bag. Guess I have unlucky acc for looting.

Please tell us exact numbers and the sample size.

“2,3x times more exotics”
“rarely get exotics”

If you want to prove something these are not enough.

I’ll give you todays example:

Bought rare greatswords worth 120 gold. Threw them in MF just to test out my luck after long time.
Got 12 exotics
Got Dusk

But I am not happy with exotic drops.

And this is why casinos make tons of money. People seem to think that they’re outside the reaches of probability and of course project this to other individuals (particularly when envious)

Why would anyone take the risk of pushing a rigged system and suffer the risk of being exposed when good ol’ fashion numbers will still reel people in?

The casino doesn’t need to cheat, because the games are lopsided in their favor anyways. It works on its own. The human mind can’t comprehend small edges over the long term, which is why letting them have that 55% edge seems small, but in reality it’s anything but small. They focus on the outliers and attempt to rationalize them, ultimately devolving into irrational behavior in order to have things make sense; making them easy prey and prone to impulsive moves and temptations.

Likewise, there is absolutely no point in favoring certain accounts because that would be an unnecessary risk. Gold is related with a real money value, after all. If it’s found that Anet was actually manipulating things as such, that couldn’t do them any good. Good ol’ RNG accomplishes the same result.

Ragnarox.9601:

I’ll give you todays example:

Bought rare greatswords worth 120 gold. Threw them in MF just to test out my luck after long time.
Got 12 exotics
Got Dusk

But I am not happy with exotic drops.

Gz!

120 gold is ~240 greatswords, expected number of exotics (based on the ~20% chance): 15
You got: 13 (12 + Dusk)

That is barely under the expected amount. Write down the number of attempts from today and the number of exotics you get. After a few weeks or months you will have enough data to compare your results to others.

Kane.6549:

“mood of the code.”

Heart of the cards~!

Right now I have yet to hear a disproof of unlucky people in general, let alone game accounts.

Astralporing.1957:

DGraves.3720:

Astralporing.1957:

DGraves.3720:

Astralporing.1957:

You seem to have some weird assumption, that rng averages out over long time for everyone and makes outliers disappear. That assumption is wrong. Oultiers will always exist, and over time differences between high and low ones are only going to get bigger.

Actually that is true. Random number generation systems (since none are “truly” random) do tend to show a mean and do tend to average out in the middle or around specific numbers. This is seen with pennies. The odds of one side or the other are equivalent but the odds of them actually being equivalent go up, not down, with every iteration supposing a base set greater than probably 1,000 trials.

Interestingly enough this is also seen with the lottery. Some numbers do actually come up more than others. In a lottery system such as this it isn’t crazy to assume that most of your rewards will fit a distinct set. That is not to say that it explains great luck or horrible luck but instead to express that outliers over time do indeed disappear things tend to shift to the inside.

We call it a bell curve, or as you put it, Gaussian Distribution.

You’re basically agreeing with me. I haven’t said that an account that is an outlier today will be an outlier tomorrow. I said that there will always be outliers, and the more “rolls” we make, the greater the difference between low and high outliers will be.

I’m saying the opposite. The more rolls there are the lesser the difference between outliers. It’s why if you flip a penny 1 million times you’ll have greater variation in the difference (should there be one) between heads and tails than if you flip the same penny 1 billion times and so forth and so on. The greater the number of iterations the lower the difference between outliers and the smaller the window for outliers becomes.

Difference between outliers, not variance within a series. If you continue to test, then the difference between series (let’s say, number of times you got tail when flipping that penny) is going to get greater when comparing low series (maximum number of heads) with high one (maximum number of tails).

And, of course, if the series are not of equal length (which is the case when we’re talking about gw2 drops) that’s going to increase the differences even more.

DGraves.3720:

An easy proof of this in real life would be test scores. In a class of 10 students there will be greater variation than in a school of 1,000 and a country of 1,000,000 and a planet of 1,000,000,000. So while you may look horrible at a score of 70 among your friends you end up being truly average among the whole of the population thus lessening the outlying effect.

…sorry, again, we’re not talking about variance, but outliers. Test scores aren’t a good example of what we’re talking about, by the way, because they use a series with a length of 1 try, but let’s try to look at it anyway.
The maximum possible difference between outliers is bounded (and theoretically you may get it with just a population of 2), but here too, the greater the population, the closer the highest and lowest score will likely be to the maximum/minimum possible, and the greater chance of someone getting one of those borderline scores (0 or 100). Given big enough population, you are certain to get to that point.
Adding new people to the group we’re checking is rather obviously not going to decrease the point difference between the lowest and highest-scorer in that group. Only removing people can do that.

We are viewing this differently, which explains the difference in point, you are expressing that every iteration is a separate one. I am presuming that all iterations (I.E. “one account”) are unified. I agree with you if looking at every chest and opportunity as a separate one but disagree if we look at the account as the whole continuum.

Which is often how things work. ._.

Short answer – yes. In any probability distribution, there are is a positive “far end” to the curve. So yes, by pure chance, SOME ACCOUNT will end up on the end of the curve. Just like SOMEONE will eventually win a lottery.

Who says there is any account specific info linked to what ever the seed algorithm uses. Unless this is the case then there can’t be lucky accounts.

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

John Smith.4610:

There isn’t such thing is some accounts getting stuck lucky. Yes there’s an RNG, yes it’s random and there are streaks and outliers and an even aggregate distribution.

John Smith.4610:

wwwes.1398:

John Smith.4610:

There isn’t such thing is some accounts getting stuck lucky. Yes there’s an RNG, yes it’s random and there are streaks and outliers and an even aggregate distribution.

Can you confirm whether it is an RNG that uses some sort of value from the user’s account or whether it is purely random/session based? I have a friend who swears that smack-talking an anet dev during a beta weekend pvp match doomed his account to poor rng for life.

Absolutely it does not use anything to do with a user.

John Smith.4610:

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.

Ironically, the randomness of the system is significantly contributes to these posts continually popping up.

You should say it as plainly as possible so there is no more confusion.. something along the lines of..

“Every account has the exact same chance on RNG. Some accounts may get better ‘rolls’ than others but that is because of probability and occurs because the system IS in fact, completely random.”

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Right now I have yet to hear a disproof of unlucky people in general, let alone game accounts.

The burden is on those seeking to change the status quo to prove that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. There’s been no evidence shown in this thread (or any other) that demonstrates that the results are anything other than predictable.

At any given moment, some people have had better drops and some have had worse. Everyone agrees that happens.

The question raised in this thread is whether that same ‘luckiness’ applies to the same accounts tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…and there’s zero evidence for that.

tl;dr past performance cannot be used to predict future earnings.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Anet discovered after 2 more years that this is actually a thing. They have discovered some weird stuff in matchmaking after 3 years so this might take some more time…
In the meantime I will enjoy my non-random loot, because I know I will get the same s*** I was getting since launch.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Right now I have yet to hear a disproof of unlucky people in general, let alone game accounts.

The burden is on those seeking to change the status quo to prove that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. There’s been no evidence shown in this thread (or any other) that demonstrates that the results are anything other than predictable.

At any given moment, some people have had better drops and some have had worse. Everyone agrees that happens.

The question raised in this thread is whether that same ‘luckiness’ applies to the same accounts tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…and there’s zero evidence for that.

tl;dr past performance cannot be used to predict future earnings.

The thing is, that conclusion is just pressing the prior assumption that these drops are all independent of each other. If they aren’t, well…

BTW I don’t think there are lucky or unlucky accounts. I just recognize that, without the actual code displayed for determining luck and drops, that there’s no evidence to discern between a fair system that has a random awards resembling a bell curve, or a system that is randomly unfair, and this distribution of unfairness itself resembles a bell curve.

My guildmate and another friend have both received over 4 precursors each since launch. I have been playing since beta and I’m st over 7000 now and never got one

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Right now I have yet to hear a disproof of unlucky people in general, let alone game accounts.

The burden is on those seeking to change the status quo to prove that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. There’s been no evidence shown in this thread (or any other) that demonstrates that the results are anything other than predictable.

At any given moment, some people have had better drops and some have had worse. Everyone agrees that happens.

The question raised in this thread is whether that same ‘luckiness’ applies to the same accounts tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…and there’s zero evidence for that.

tl;dr past performance cannot be used to predict future earnings.

The thing is, that conclusion is just pressing the prior assumption that these drops are all independent of each other. If they aren’t, well…

BTW I don’t think there are lucky or unlucky accounts. I just recognize that, without the actual code displayed for determining luck and drops, that there’s no evidence to discern between a fair system that has a random awards resembling a bell curve, or a system that is randomly unfair, and this distribution of unfairness itself resembles a bell curve.

Let’s assume that Anet released the actual code. Do you think most of the players would even understand it? They’d be relying on the what others say about it which is no different that relying on what Anet says about it.

Azure.8670:

My guildmate and another friend have both received over 4 precursors each since launch. I have been playing since beta and I’m st over 7000 now and never got one

John Smith.4610:

Every account has the exact same chance on RNG.

Ihales.3820:

I wouldn’t be surprised if Anet discovered after 2 more years that this is actually a thing. They have discovered some weird stuff in matchmaking after 3 years so this might take some more time…
In the meantime I will enjoy my non-random loot, because I know I will get the same s*** I was getting since launch.

John Smith.4610:

Every account has the exact same chance on RNG.

John Smith.4610:

Every account has the exact same chance on RNG.

Granted and accepted. But this doesn’t explain why you guys still stick to this kitten concept. I remember this very thread where we were called to discuss about rng as a concept, still everything is tied to RNG. Even more so when it’s possible to get some of the most valuable items (precursors) for the least challenging content (killing trash mobs in open world).
An no, I do not consider precursor crafting as a relief here. A mindless grindfest that simply doubles the cost for a legendary is no compensation for those cursed by rngsus.