Notes on new team difficulty settings
By
Abigail Frost,
Posted on: 2009-08-26 15:02 in The Market and Inventions
Yep, another name to add to the list, I've also seen a nice drop in rates too. At one point I was gettin 4 purples a week on my scrapper, now on my scrapper and troller, I've got maybe 4 recipes at most a whole 4 hours of playing. I've already stopped playing alot due to the fact that its the same old crap all the time, and with reduced drop rates as the icing, I'm even less inclined to play now. Mistakes like this are saddening more than anything, and they can't seem to find the problem, and their systems are showing the same results... oh boy.
Some more data.
Fire/Shield/Blaze scrapper on the Unai Kemen Close the Dimensional Ruptures map against Axis America Council. Mission difficulty set at +1 to level x 8 players, no bosses.
Clearing all enemies off of map then resetting:
***********************
Run 1
Enhancements
2 SOs
Recipes
2 Range
1 KB
4 End Redx
1 Heal
Salvage
32 common salvage
2 uncommon salvage
1 Prophecy - rare salvage
***********************
Run 2
Enhancements
5 SOs
Recipes
1 Kinetic Crash KB/Acc
4 Heal
1 Damage
3 End Redx
1 Def Buff
Salvage
30 common salvage
4 uncommon salvage
1 Prophecy - rare salvage
***********************
Run 3
Enhancements
7 SOs
Recipes
1 Bone Wings - Costume
1 Ethereal Shift - Temp Power
1 Run
1 Damage
1 Jump
1 Damage Resistance
1 Nightmare Acc/Rech
1 Sovereign Right Acc/Dmg
1 Adjusted Targeting Tohit/Rech
Salvage
22 common salvage
8 uncommon salvage
Considering what that map would have got me prior to i16 with 7 padders, the drop rate is underwhelming.
I've just released a new version of DropStats. (Version 0.3)
The big change is that this version always calculates drop rates. It no longer gives up when faced by unknowns or failed heuristic rank checks.
It also displays the expected range of values for a run like this:-
Code:
Finally, the heuristic rank fails much less often. (Especially for Guardians!)Type DropRate Drops Expected Mobs -------------------------------------------------------- Pool A 1.27% 2 2-10 158 minion equivalents Salvage 7.29% 10 6-18 137 minion equivalents --------------------------------------------------------
Enjoy!
Quote:
But highly consistent. Looks like Pool A drops were 10/10/7 (or 8, if temp powers are pool A; does anyone know that for sure?), and salvage was always in the 30-35 range.|
Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
Considering what that map would have got me prior to i16 with 7 padders, the drop rate is underwhelming.
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What I'm currently seeing is a great deal of within-map consistency, but not necessarily much across maps.
My Council map has an average of about 3 recipe drops per time that I clear it (344 enemies).
I have another map that has 400-500 enemies and my 4 runs on it have yielded 22/20/20/17 Pool A drops.
The thing is, different people seem to get different results with the same map, and I've sometimes gotten different results when I use the same maps with different characters, which makes it look like the RNG seed derives from both the map and the character. To my knowledge, no one else has run the Council warehouse map (it's the first mission in Abyss's "Light and Darkness" arc, if anyone with a 50 vill wants to go in and give it a run to test and see if they can get better than a 1% overall drop rate on it) to see if it's just generally bad, or if it really was specific to the character I happened to be testing with.
I'm going to try and write up my cross-map results to send to Synapse. I think that overall drop rates look fine because the thing that's gone wrong would have no effect on teams and no effect on soloists who don't bump their spawn sizes, and won't affect everyone who does bump their spawn sizes, if they're on the "right" map.
The fly in the ointment is the data from up-thread that showed diminished drop rates for someone fighting at 0/1, but I think Archie's overall data showed that solo at 1 was pretty close to expected across 5k or so observations, so it's hard to know. But I'll be trying to write it up some time very soon.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
Quote:
Downloaded it and it looks great! Thanks again for creating this. I did have one question, though, and it's not specific to the new version.|
Originally Posted by Archie Gremlin
I've just released a new version of DropStats. (Version 0.3)
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I'd been assuming that since bosses who've been downgraded to lieutenants have their inf-award set to lieutenant level, their drop status turned them into lieutenants as well (that is, downgraded bosses have a .053333% chance to drop a pool a recipe, just like any other lieutenant). If that's the case, I'm guessing that the expected ranges dropstats calculates will be off on the high end for people who are running on the "no bosses" setting, since it probably treats anything with a boss-name as having boss-level drop rates. Is that correct?
It's often not going to be a major issue, but my runs from yesterday included 350 downgraded bosses, so the expected numbers Dropstats gives me are very different from the expected numbers I calculated by hand.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
Some new numbers. 6 runs at "standard" difficulty (defined as +0 level and 1 Hero Equivalent) and 6 runs at +1 level, 2 Hero Equivalent (formerly "Tenacious"). All 6 runs were done on the same map versus Carnival of Souls. Hero Stats was used to track kills while Lieutenants and Bosses were tallied and broken out by hand. Additionally, any kills that would not have resulted in a drop (Illusionist Dark Servants, etc.) were also tallied and removed from the count. I was solo for all run throughs and no padding was done.
No dropped recipes were costumes.
FIRST 6 RUNS AT "STANDARD" DIFFICULTY --
KILLS:
487 minions
88 lieutenants
DROPS:
Salvage: 44
Recipes: 14
EXPECTED DROPS:
Salvage: (487 *.08) + (88 * .1064) = 48
Recipes: (487 * .026667) + (88 * .053333) = 18
Both drop rates were a bit low, but did not seem horridly abnormal. (A statistics guru can probably calculate the standard deviation and show these are statistically "normal.")
FIRST 6 RUNS AT "TENACIOUS" DIFFICULTY --
KILLS:
672 minions
202 lieutenants
60 bosses
DROPS:
Salvage: 100
Recipes: 8
EXPECTED DROPS:
Salvage: (672 * .08) + (202 * .1064) + (60 * .25) = 90
RECIPES: (672 * .026667) * (202 * .053333) + (60 * .08) = 33.5
I made out a bit better on the Salvage, but was either VERY VERY VERY unlucky on recipe drops over the course of 6 missions, or there is a bug.
Please also note that I have run this map on Tenacious many times in the past and averaged 5 - 6 recipes per run, which would be in line with the "Expected Drops" under Tenacious.
I will do some outdoor sweeping later today when I have some time.
Arc# 92382 -- "The S.P.I.D.E.R. and the Tyrant" -- Ninjas! Robots! Praetorians! It's totally epic! Play it now!
Arc # 316340 -- "Husk" -- Azuria loses something, a young woman harbors a dark secret, and the fate of the world is in your hands.
I've gotten less than 10 recipes on my main since 16 went live and I've been playing quite a bit.
Quote:
You're quite correct. At least, I also assume that bosses that are converted into LTs drop as LTs. I haven't tested that in any way.|
Originally Posted by EarthWyrm
I'd been assuming that since bosses who've been downgraded to lieutenants have their inf-award set to lieutenant level, their drop status turned them into lieutenants as well (that is, downgraded bosses have a .053333% chance to drop a pool a recipe, just like any other lieutenant).
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I'll try to do something about this in the next version. I'm not sure what at the moment.
Ran Nemesis map vill side solo:
6 man
lv 52s
with bosses
drops:
Recipes:
Adjusted Targeting: To Hit Buff (common)
Costume Piece: Piston Boots (common)
Crushing Impact: Acc/Dam/Rech (common)
Doctoured Wounds: End/heal/reach (common)
Essence of Curare: Acc/rech (common)
Freebird: Endurance (uncommon)
Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: To Hit Buff (common)
Lethargic Response: Acc/Rech (commmon)
Red Fortune: End/Rech (common)
Invantions:
Acc
Damage
Def Debuff
End Redux
Range x3
Rech Redux
Stun x2
To Hit
Salvage:
Common:
5x Ceramic Armor Plate
5x Hydraulic Piston
6x Kinetic Weapon
5 x Math Proof
7x Silver
5x Temporal Analyzer
Uncommon:
2x Chaos Theorem
1x Energy Weapon
1x Gold
1x Pneumatic Piston
2x Temporal Tracer
Rare:
1x Photonic Weapon
2x Platinum
As a general note, if it's possible to report the number of total mobs defeated on the map, that will help us see if the drop rate is off; Archie's dropstats will track numbers of minions, lieutenants, and bosses from your chat logs. One of the best things about it is that it doesn't have to run in the background, so eats up zero memory while you're playing the game.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
Some more numbers. Set my difficulty back to standard.
297 minions
50 lieutenants
19 bosses
Salvage: 31
Recipes: 0 (That is not a typo. ZERO.)
Expected:
Salvage: (297 * .08) + (50 * .1064) + (19 * .25) = 34
Recipes: (297 * .026667) + (50 * .053333) + (19 * .08) = 12
Arc# 92382 -- "The S.P.I.D.E.R. and the Tyrant" -- Ninjas! Robots! Praetorians! It's totally epic! Play it now!
Arc # 316340 -- "Husk" -- Azuria loses something, a young woman harbors a dark secret, and the fate of the world is in your hands.
So, today I killed 4010 (2525 minions / 1485 lieuts) enemies, and here are my results.
Expected recipes drop: 146.5
Effective recipes drop: 103 = 70.3% of expected
As always, 70%...
More details on this: enemies are Council Empire (Unai Kemen), mission is set on 0x8 (no bosses). I made 11 runs. Expected recipes/run is 13.32, and if you want the detail, here it is:
12 - 13 / 9 - 6 - 8 - 10 - 6 / 12 - 9 - 9 - 9
"/" means I made those runs at 3 different times in the day... I don't think it has anything to do with the bug, but I found it interesting that my second session is way under the others.
BTW, are Purple recipes include in Pool A? Because I think I dropped more purples than rare recipes... And seeing how purple prices are decreasing at the market, it seems that purples have no problems in dropping (whereas some uncommon are getting higher and higher...).
I didn't track salvages, but my expectation are 32.72/missions, and my inventory (70) was almost always full after 2 runs, so it's definitely ok.
Also, I didn't track my yesterday's sessions, but I had some pretty decent runs (with 14+ recipes, where I expect 13.3), that's why I decided to track them today to see if I wasn't hallucinating all this time.. but no, it's still here.
I think we're at a point where we know there's a bug, we have no idea where it comes from, and the only think we can do is hope that devs can find something out about this bug. If anyone knows how I can help more, I will try to do it, but as of now, I'll stop monitoring my runs until we have more information on this bug.
I sent Synapse my data-based observations this evening. I anticipate that all conclusions I reached are completely wrong, and that I have no idea what I'm actually talking about. I can't get a theory to hold up to repeated testing, and fiddling with parameters in the game (SG mode, # of levels I let myself auto-exemp, whether my level 50 is set to receive XP or get double Inf when exemplared) has no effect.
I had a fantastic run over 3000 or so mob kills on a specific set of maps where my drop rates were at or above expected. Tonight I went back to those same maps and, over another 1084 mob defeats, got a drop rate that's about 50% of expected.
So, yeah. No idea.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
not sure if this'll help but I had my 50th run and oro arc in the 40-44 raNge and I got lots of recipe drops. He was running 0/+0
The more people I meet, the more I'm beginning to root for the zombies.
Quote:
While anecdotal, it confirms my observations. Recipe drops are fine as long as you don't boost your difficulty.|
Originally Posted by pyrite
not sure if this'll help but I had my 50th run and oro arc in the 40-44 raNge and I got lots of recipe drops. He was running 0/+0
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I have a theory right now.
What if they added some sort of anti-padding code for recipe drops? So, if you pad a mission with 7 people, unlock the map, and then drop those 7 and clear the map, any recipe drops would need to be divided "equally" amongst 8 players. Now let's say that this very code is creeping into the difficulty setting as its ASSUMING that you have an improperly made team.
This needs to be tested. Can someone run a few missions at NORMAL difficulty (+0 levels, 1 hero equivalent) and pad the mission? I'd be curious to see the results.
Arc# 92382 -- "The S.P.I.D.E.R. and the Tyrant" -- Ninjas! Robots! Praetorians! It's totally epic! Play it now!
Arc # 316340 -- "Husk" -- Azuria loses something, a young woman harbors a dark secret, and the fate of the world is in your hands.
Another thing that might be worth checking is if drop rates have been standardized to a certain degree such that a person running +0/1 will get the same rewards as a person running +0/8 or something like that.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by pyrite
not sure if this'll help but I had my 50th run and oro arc in the 40-44 raNge and I got lots of recipe drops. He was running 0/+0
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Defenestrator
While anecdotal, it confirms my observations. Recipe drops are fine as long as you don't boost your difficulty.
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I was not set to 1/+0. I was set to 3/+2.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Quote:
This idea sounds plausible enough that I want it checked out.
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Originally Posted by Defenestrator
While anecdotal, it confirms my observations. Recipe drops are fine as long as you don't boost your difficulty.
I have a theory right now. What if they added some sort of anti-padding code for recipe drops? So, if you pad a mission with 7 people, unlock the map, and then drop those 7 and clear the map, any recipe drops would need to be divided "equally" amongst 8 players. Now let's say that this very code is creeping into the difficulty setting as its ASSUMING that you have an improperly made team. This needs to be tested. Can someone run a few missions at NORMAL difficulty (+0 levels, 1 hero equivalent) and pad the mission? I'd be curious to see the results. |
Quote:
The questions would be: how many MOBs did you defeat? How big were the maps? Would running on +0 / 1 have yielded the same number of recipes?|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
Actually, I don't think that's it. I wasn't going to post a single arc experience, but last night I ran a level 40-44 Ouro arc, and I too got what felt like a lot of drops these days - 8 recipes over 3 missions.
I was not set to 1/+0. I was set to 3/+2. |
I ran 3 small to medium missions today at +0 / 1 and got 7 recipes. And according to my math, this was about in line with what I should have received.
If you're running huge maps at 3/+2, you should have received a lot more than 8 recipes.
Arc# 92382 -- "The S.P.I.D.E.R. and the Tyrant" -- Ninjas! Robots! Praetorians! It's totally epic! Play it now!
Arc # 316340 -- "Husk" -- Azuria loses something, a young woman harbors a dark secret, and the fate of the world is in your hands.
Quote:
Odd ideas come to me when enjoying a cool evening with Sam Adams Octoberfest. |
Originally Posted by Chaos Creator
This idea sounds plausible enough that I want it checked out.
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It would also stay in line with the statement "we did nothing to change the drop rates." The RATES are the same but the way they're awarded is different. Not including this with other drops makes sense as pieces of salvage aren't going for 8-9 digits of INF like Purple recipes are.
But this is only a theory at this point. A hypothesis, if you will.
Arc# 92382 -- "The S.P.I.D.E.R. and the Tyrant" -- Ninjas! Robots! Praetorians! It's totally epic! Play it now!
Arc # 316340 -- "Husk" -- Azuria loses something, a young woman harbors a dark secret, and the fate of the world is in your hands.
Quote:
They weren't huge maps.|
Originally Posted by Defenestrator
If you're running huge maps at 3/+2, you should have received a lot more than 8 recipes.
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Code:
Defeats:
Minion Defeats: 220
LT Defeats: 68
Boss Defeats: 14
Recipes:
Minion Drops: 7, Rate: 3.182% (95% in range 1.289%-6.446%) (48.324%-241.710% of expected)
LT Drops: 2, Rate: 2.941% (95% in range 0.358%-10.224%) (6.716%-191.702% of expected)
Boss Drops: 0
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I did some more runs on my Kat/WP scrapper at 8/+0 difficulty level. I don't know how the numbers are changed due to my running with no bosses, but here are the results I got according to Archie's DropStats (Thanks for building this script, Archie, makes life so much more convenient!).
Type DropRate Drops Expected Mobs
--------------------------------------------------------
Pool A 1.77% 18 19-39 1016 minion equivalents
Salvage 7.05% 66 59-92 936 minion equivalents
--------------------------------------------------------
(Table excludes mobs of unknown rank and their drops.)
(1 in 20 runs will be outside the expected range.)
896 rewarding mobs defeated
96 bosses and elite bosses
138 lieutenants
452 minions
121 underlings (XP only)
89 rewarding mobs of unknown rank
Chief Mentalist (32) failed heuristic rank check
Guardian (57) failed heuristic rank check
39 pets and 56 greys
Salvage is certainly within the proper drop percentage, but the recipes are just a tad low, reinforcing the idea that something is a little off with the drop rates or how they're being awarded.
PS: Archie, I noticed you mentioned building DropStats to factor in fighting bosses at Lieutenant levels. I think the easiest way to do this might be to count everything not of minion rank as Lieuts and have a separate table showing the difference.
Quote:
Well, yup, that's a shame.|
Originally Posted by Raccoon_
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*snerk*
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
You can read the log files in a text editor or analyse them with a tool like DropStats whenever you feel like it.
This avoids the problem of having to remember to start HeroStats before you do a test run. The only problem is that you have to enable chat logging for each toon individually.