Notes on new team difficulty settings
By
Abigail Frost,
Posted on: 2009-08-26 15:02 in The Market and Inventions
Sweeping through 8-man spawns solo can be a time consuming task for a scrapper. Malta Zeus Titans are slow work, even when you do have semi-decent single-target damage. Anyway, here's the run info:
Code:
I am pretty close to the target for recipes, though on the low end of things.
"Future Threat" Arc (Hero Side)
Level 50 Kat/WP Scrapper
8/+0 difficulty
Bosses Enabled
Mission 1 - Malta
Gunslingers spawned as bosses rather thans lieuts (x5).
Mission 2 - Crey
Nothing Observed to be out of the ordinary
Mission 3 - Malta
Gunslingers spawned as bosses rather than lieuts (x10).
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Archie Gremlin's Drop Stats v0.3.0
http://www.glasspaw.com/dropstats/
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Type DropRate Drops Expected Mobs
--------------------------------------------------------
Pool A 1.97% 13 11-27 661 minion equivalents
Salvage 8.44% 53 38-65 628 minion equivalents
--------------------------------------------------------
(Table excludes mobs of unknown rank and their drops.)
(1 in 20 runs will be outside the expected range.)
704 rewarding mobs defeated
87 bosses and elite bosses
66 lieutenants
268 minions
283 rewarding mobs of unknown rank
Agent Oakley (1)
Captain Needa (1)
Handry (1)
Mr. Jansen (1)
Project Manager Robinson (1)
Security Chief (1)
Titan Command Unit (1)
Crey Cryo Tank (63) failed heuristic rank check
Crey Power Tank (86) failed heuristic rank check
Crey Voltaic Tank (67) failed heuristic rank check
Gunslinger (60) failed heuristic rank check
7 pets and 16 greys
Quote:
Ah, cool. I was hoping that if I made a mistake, someone would point it out quickly, and it wouldn't be fatal. I follow the math, and knew that if I was making an incorrect leap at any point it was probably in the weighting. Thank you for the correction.|
Originally Posted by Maestintaolius
Actually, 14 is not outside of the range ... kinda. The mistake made here is you cannot combine the weighted averages and then base your confidence interval off of that situation, largely because you have an unequal number of lewys and minions.
|
Quote:
| This tells me 14-19 seems pretty high (after all the average of 16.5 does fall outside of both CIs). |
So, it's not as extreme as my response to myself (ubermegageeky thing to do
) would indicate, but it's still pretty unlikely.Quote:
| Of course, these are all purely theoretical estimates and it's not impossible to end up with results that fall outside of the predicted CIs. Such is the nature of statistics. |
I very much appreciate the correction.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
We have been talking about this in the issue 16 section seemingly at the same time, I just got linked here - might be worth reading the parallel thread too:
boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=192065
boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=192065&page=2
boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=192065&page=3
And I'm done testing. After four missions at +4/x8 I decided that there was nothing left to prove:
All missions run on Pinnacle at difficulty +4/x8/yes/yes
All mission run in Peregrine Island using scanner and 100% cleared.
Average number of recipes per mission: 4
Average pieces of salvage per mission: 20.5
Mission 1: Council
5 basic - 2 uncommon - 1 rare recipes
22 common - 3 uncommon - 2 rare salvage
Mission 2: CoT
1 basic recipe
11 common - 3 uncommon - 1 rare salvage
Mission 3: Council
4 basic recipes
14 common - 7 uncommon - 2 rare salvage
Mission 4: Council
2 basic - 1 uncommon recipe
15 common - 2 uncommon salvage
Average recipes per mission on Pinnacle running scanner missions in PI regardless of my difficulty comes out to 4 recipes a mission after 14 missions.
This is how bad my drops have been since Issue 16 hit test.
Late edit:
Going off the numbers posted earlier:
Minion 2.666667%
Lieutenant/Sniper 5.333333%
Boss/Elite Boss 7.999999%
Ignoring council as they tend to spawn very few boses, (and this is purely going off memory, I wasn't watching very carefully) it seems that at x8 diff, the standard spawn is 2 bosses, 4 LTs, 8 minions. 14 entities. Does that sound right? So.. 16 + 21.33 + 21.33 = 58.64 rounding up. 58.64 / 14 = 4.19
Unless I'm way off base, at diff x8 I should have, on average, a 4.19% chance of a recipe drop for every kill.
Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but that means I should be getting one recipe, on average, for every 24 kills.
And I'm getting, on average, 4 recipes per mission. Which means, on average, each mission that I ran tonight only had 100 entities within it.
100/14 = 7 spawns per map. I don't think that's quite right for standard scanner missions.
Be well, people of CoH.
Quote:
Steps PMd. "Defeat all Clockwork at factory" from Unai Kemen, normal mish (not Flashback), solo (no padders or anyone else), difficulty +1/8/yes/no. In around 1500 minion equivalents I got 4 Pool A recipes, a drop rate of just under 1/8 the expected rate. I included the mission, difficulty, map, mobs, and every other detail I could think of. I did this on the Test server, so it should be something you can reproduce. If you can't reproduce it, you can at least datamine my results. I included the dates of the mission, so you can verify that your logs match my data for mobs defeated and rewards earned. If that's not enough, we can meet in-game, and I'll PL you. You'll be able to see the rewards for yourself.
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Originally Posted by Synapse
If anyone does in fact nail down possible repro steps for this bug, please PM me or post them in the forums.
|
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
I've moved on to Diablo 3, TopDoc-1304
Quote:
Same. On the off chance that something had changed on test, I hopped back on and used the same Abyss mission I'd given Synapse to test. He ran it 15 times and got 14-19 recipe drops each time. I've run it over 20 times on a single character and never gotten above 6. My average is three.|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
And I'm done testing.
|
In 344 kills, I again got 3 recipes.
I'm sorry he can't reproduce it. It's real and it's consistent, but not across characters/accounts in a way that we've been able to isolate the common factor.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
I appreciate all the numbers that everyone is running, but I can't help but notice that prices haven't changed much at WW in regards to top-notch recipes and there are a lot more purp recipes and enhancements on the market than there were a week ago.
I know at the outset this is because more people have stepped out of AE. I am also seeing a lot more instances of PI1 and PI2 like in the pre-AE days. Obviously, more purps and more recipes are getting out there because the number of players, not because the number of famers. Maybe, this nerf is more about the overall supply and less about the individual results.
Quote:
AFAIK it's never worked that way. It's always been one roll to see if a mob dropped something or not (with a fixed percentage chance as has been discussed here). If it did drop something, a second random number is generated to determine which team member gets it. The same happens for inspirations, enhancements, etc. I think there's a couple exceptions such as the guaranteed SO drops from AVs.|
Originally Posted by Starcloud
Synapse:
Previously, the drop logic seemed to work per player on the team. In other words, everyone got the same chance to get a recipie drop from a mob. There would be, say, eight rolls per mob dropped. Even with a lower chance, the odds are that someone would get something eventualy, at a higher rate than solo. |
In my experience, the drop rate has always been lower on large teams than when solo as a result of this. This is partly balanced by there being more enemies when on large teams. What people are seeing and testing here, however, is drop rates while solo. Either with or without a large virtual team size.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Eldagore
Just a thought, maybe excessive lag/ping/whatever is losing packets? Kind of a stretch as other drops seem ok, but just a thought.
|
Given how streaky it seems for some people, I'd like to second the idea that the random number generation on the live servers may not be reasonably random. I doubt there's any hooks to just look at the raw RNG data (though that may be an idea for a future code revision
), but there may be some other way to test. I'm thinking something along the lines of an errant process draining all the entropy from the system, or not re-seeding properly and the same PRNG sequence keeps repeating, etc. Even an identical code build on a lightly loaded internal server might not exhibit the problem.
Quote:
Were you killing the mobs sequentially, as a player would have done, or were you using [The I Win Button] to simply wipe the map and collect data that way? Perhaps there's something reminiscent of the old RNG bug, but that's only speculation from yours truly.|
Originally Posted by Synapse
Thought I would chime in here and let you know what we've done to test this. The data has been checked, the code has been checked. There has been no change to either. That said, none of us would be satisfied until we tested this for ourselves. I knew this issue would haunt my dreams until I dedicated some time to testing. So, I went and did some pretty comprehensive testing today. Both internally and on the training room.
The results are pretty consistent and drop rates appear to be correct. The way I tested this is load up the first mission given out by Abyss (as a number of players mentioned this in their tests). I then set my difficulty to 8x and +0. I then went through this mission 5 times internally and 10 times on the training room and the results were very consistent: -14 to 19 recipes per mission -5 to 8 enhancements per mission -30 to 51 salvage per mission So, for the time being I am calling this a perception issue, that said I will keep an eye on this. If there is in fact a bug at work here then there will be reproducible steps one could take to get this bug to happen to anyone. If anyone does in fact nail down possible repro steps for this bug, please PM me or post them in the forums. I know this isn't the answer many of you were hoping to hear, but I will keep an eye on the issue. Again, please contact me via PM if you have any possible reproducible steps. Lastly, I want to clear up any rumors of a "stealth nerf" or drops being different per map. Drop rates are on a per class basis. All minions, lieutenants and bosses have the same drop rates as all other minions, lieutenants and bosses regardless of what map they're on. The only difference is what items they drop (magic salvage vs. tech salvage, different origin enhancements and such) Regards, Synapse |
Unfortunately, this post serves as a sort of go-ahead for me to continue my ticket farming, because if the drop rates are as low as people have calculated them to be I'm better off simply spending my time getting tickets for gold and bronze rolls instead of running through missions where I might not get anything, let alone something good.
@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
Quote:
Please try running other things in other places Synapse. There is something definately broken about recipe drops.|
Originally Posted by Synapse
Thought I would chime in here and let you know what we've done to test this. The data has been checked, the code has been checked. There has been no change to either. That said, none of us would be satisfied until we tested this for ourselves. I knew this issue would haunt my dreams until I dedicated some time to testing. So, I went and did some pretty comprehensive testing today. Both internally and on the training room.
The results are pretty consistent and drop rates appear to be correct. The way I tested this is load up the first mission given out by Abyss (as a number of players mentioned this in their tests). I then set my difficulty to 8x and +0. I then went through this mission 5 times internally and 10 times on the training room and the results were very consistent: -14 to 19 recipes per mission -5 to 8 enhancements per mission -30 to 51 salvage per mission So, for the time being I am calling this a perception issue, that said I will keep an eye on this. If there is in fact a bug at work here then there will be reproducible steps one could take to get this bug to happen to anyone. If anyone does in fact nail down possible repro steps for this bug, please PM me or post them in the forums. I know this isn't the answer many of you were hoping to hear, but I will keep an eye on the issue. Again, please contact me via PM if you have any possible reproducible steps. Lastly, I want to clear up any rumors of a "stealth nerf" or drops being different per map. Drop rates are on a per class basis. All minions, lieutenants and bosses have the same drop rates as all other minions, lieutenants and bosses regardless of what map they're on. The only difference is what items they drop (magic salvage vs. tech salvage, different origin enhancements and such) Regards, Synapse |
I started a new Ice/Fire blapper on Protector where I have no presence. To come up with starting cash in a situation like this I typically start running through Dark Astoria to generate some working capital.
Prior to I16 I could go into DA completely empty and if I took the time to delete uncommon salvage as it dropped I could exit DA with a salvage bag that is completely full of common salvage with 1 or 2 rares, a full tray of enhancements, and a full bag of recipes.
I took this new blaster into DA at level 20 and have spent 6 levels and about 2 levels worth of debt repayment there.
I've filled the salvage bag and enhancement tray multiple times but recipes have not followed their typical pattern. I've gotton a TOTAL of 7 recipes as drops in all that time and all 7 of them were commons.
Something is wrong.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
Same results for me, very low. Spawned outdoor mission set for 8 and I get 1 recipe.
I'll re subscribe when I see that the problem is being fixed.
Well, seeing as how Syn can't seem to find our problem, no since beating a dead horse, the only thing I can think of is if someone lives in mountain view... invite him over to your house and show from your account and your toons... XD Like that's' going to happen, but for real, I've done my testing too, I don't know what to do other than running character concepts on the generator like I always do.... really no since playing my 50s. Was going to make another farmer but with the reduced drop rates not getting fixed, there's no since leveling him. He requires too many IOs and time to build up just to farming lvls, gettin there, and only gettin 4 recipes a mish, when I could just make a blaster with capped ranged def cap, and blow thur mobs with him. *shurgs*
reguards,
Nova
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Well shoot, that's a good idea, I may do that too, I'm going to update my farm, and just do it that way, koodos. thanks skull.
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Originally Posted by macskull
Were you killing the mobs sequentially, as a player would have done, or were you using [The I Win Button] to simply wipe the map and collect data that way? Perhaps there's something reminiscent of the old RNG bug, but that's only speculation from yours truly.
Unfortunately, this post serves as a sort of go-ahead for me to continue my ticket farming, because if the drop rates are as low as people have calculated them to be I'm better off simply spending my time getting tickets for gold and bronze rolls instead of running through missions where I might not get anything, let alone something good. |
I posted some data on a different thread, and felt it might be useful enough to collect here (note Data set 1 is not listed below because I didn't have an exact # of enemies but it had 400+ enemies and 1 recipe drop).
Test conditions: All data sets generated with a solo lvl 50 Elec/Shield brute, even lvl enemies, bosses included, heroes spawn as elites, spawns for 8 toons, paper missions on Freedom server.
Total enemies:
Minions: 741
Lieuts: 213
Bosses: 51
Recipe Drops: 9
Expected Recipe Drops (just assuming common, unc, and rares): 35
Specifics:
Data set #2: I farmed a council paper mission x2
Enemies:
Minions: 301
Lieuts: 76
Bosses: 4
Recipies: 4 (all commons)
Notes: I'm only getting 2 bosses per mish - 1 named boss and 1 extra that's always spawning in the same group as the mish boss. This seems odd.
Data set #3:
For this run I completed the two paper missions. Both were vs. Council kill and collect mishs.
Enemies:
Minions: 318
Lieuts: 80
Bosses: 4
Drops:
Salvage: 36
Recipies: 1 - Resist Dam
Enhances: 1 - WetWare Eng Neuralizer
Notes: For data set #3 I'm only getting 2 bosses per mish again - 1 named boss and 1 extra that's always spawning in the same group as the mish boss. Starting to track enhances too, not because I care about them but because this seems a low number of drops for those too.
Data set #4:
Test conditions: All data sets generated with a lvl 50 Elec/Shield brute, even lvl enemies, bosses included, heroes spawn as elites, spawns for 8 toons, paper missions on Freedom server.
For this run I completed the missions. One vs. CoT 1 vs. Malta
Enemies:
Minions: 122
Lieuts: 57
Bosses: 43
Drops (expected with that # of enemies is 9.7 recipes):
Salvage: 31
Recipies: 4 - Air Burst (dam/rech), Titanium coat: End, Range, and Damage
Enhances: 1 - WetWare Eng Neuralizer (yes exactly 1 and same as last test)
Notes: This time I got the bosses I expected (didn't change anything since last test except these were new mishs). Had 1 hostage escort (Malta) and 1 Boss smash. Still getting surprisingly low Enhance drops too. Ran 1 quick team mish (That big DE outdoor flier mish w DE and Longbow) with same brute today. 3-man team set for 3 heros +2 lvl, and with 59 minions 20 lieuts and 2 bosses killed, received 3 salvage and 2 recipies. Hardly a large data set, but was easy to pull out.
OK 1 more data set because that's just the kind of guy I am. After this I give up on non-AE PvE until this bug is fixed. Its so OBVIOUS something is wrong, someone please review our hard work and 1st admit there's a problem that you haven't found yet, and 2nd... fix it.
Data set #5: 1 difference in mish run - ran the PI bank mish (since I ran through the paper mishs with a drop/mission ave of under 2 
Test conditions: All data sets generated with a solo lvl 50 Elec/Shield brute, even lvl enemies, bosses included, heroes spawn as elites, spawns for 8 toons, on Freedom server.
Enemies:
Minions: 150
Lieuts: 97
Bosses: 29
Recipies: 2 (enfeebled op (Acc, Immob, Reach), and Healing)
Salvage: 37
Enhances: 6
Yeah back to Ouro after this, too much feeling like we're being told we're morons and nothing's wrong. Did 3 Borea mishes spawnd for 6, got 3 common io recipes and 7 enhancers, then did 3 spawned for just me and got 1 ONE effing enhancement. Sorry Synapse but while I may not be a programmer I do know how to count, and I also know that for that many dead rikti there shoulda been more then what I got.
The more people I meet, the more I'm beginning to root for the zombies.
Quote:
I was in the middle of testing using a Unai map from Orobros and had to leave to drop some salvage. I stopped by the boards while I waited for my portal to recharge. Upon reading Synapse's response; much like Bill and Earthwyrm, I'm done with testing. Too much time being invested just to be told "It's all in our heads". But here is what I had from my limited run.|
Originally Posted by EarthWyrm
Same. On the off chance that something had changed on test, I hopped back on and used the same Abyss mission I'd given Synapse to test. He ran it 15 times and got 14-19 recipe drops each time. I've run it over 20 times on a single character and never gotten above 6. My average is three.
In 344 kills, I again got 3 recipes. I'm sorry he can't reproduce it. It's real and it's consistent, but not across characters/accounts in a way that we've been able to isolate the common factor. |
+0/8 man spawn Bosses no AV's
/whereami: Server: Victory Zone/Mission: OUTDOOR_RUINED_02A
160 Ememies defeated
22 Insprations
14 Salvage
2 Enhancements
2 Recipes (level 50 Accuracy and Defense)
Also when Synapse said "I then went through this mission 5 times internally and 10 times on the training room". What does internally mean? Was the testing not done on the actual live servers? What kind of toon was the testing done with? I recall sometime ago seeing a dev toon in game that had every power listed. I'd like to know if the testing was done with a normal toon or a "super" toon.
Who do I have to *&^% around here to get more Targeted AoE recipes added?
Arc Name: Tsoo In Love
Arc ID: 413575
Quote:
Actually, nobody has to admit anything, because everyone knows there is a problem. I'm up for just fixing it so we can get back to having fun and slotting our builds.|
Originally Posted by Geoff_NA
OK 1 more data set because that's just the kind of guy I am. After this I give up on non-AE PvE until this bug is fixed. Its so OBVIOUS something is wrong, someone please review our hard work and 1st admit there's a problem that you haven't found yet, and 2nd... fix it.
|
this is a bummer, I was so enjoying taking a break from AE.
Ah well! See you in game! Those tickets/prestiges aren't going to generate themselves!
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
Just to add another datapoint:
Solo on Freedom/Villain, +0/x6/yes/no. I ran a series of trips on the TV nemi map, and then did some mission contacts. One Tavish Bell mission, finished the Vernon von Grun arc (maybe 6 missions?), and then ran the first Abyss mission.
I restarted the game several times, my playtime comes in small sections.
The aggregate numbers from DropStats are very bad, 48 recipes for 2975 minion equivalents is far far far outside the realm of likely outcomes. Any statistician can jump in here for details.
Code:
One detail that might assist Paragon in tracking the issue down is that I checked the drops after each mission, just to see what things were looking like. One single mission was spot on average. I started up the game, talked to Tavish Bell and ran a single mission of his. I had to log out and couldn't run more, to see if there was something about my particular session, but this single run looked just like what you would expect. If I thought I was looking at real random data, I would call this run an outlier and throw it out, but it happens to match the results we are expecting...Type DropRate Drops Expected Mobs
--------------------------------------------------------
Pool A 1.61% 48 64-98 2975 minion equivalents
Salvage 8.32% 214 180-234 2573 minion equivalents
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(Table excludes mobs of unknown rank and their drops.)
(1 in 20 runs will be outside the expected range.)
2430 rewarding mobs defeated
39 bosses and elite bosses
608 lieutenants
1642 minions
141 rewarding mobs of unknown rank
Base Commander (1)
Experiment Gone Awry (1)
Longbow Flamethrower (50) failed heuristic rank check
Longbow Minigun (41) failed heuristic rank check
Longbow Rifleman (48) failed heuristic rank check
0 pets and 7 greys
Code:
Type DropRate Drops Expected Mobs
--------------------------------------------------------
Pool A 4.15% 8 2-11 193 minion equivalents
Salvage 6.84% 11 7-20 161 minion equivalents
--------------------------------------------------------
(Table excludes mobs of unknown rank and their drops.)
(1 in 20 runs will be outside the expected range.)
146 rewarding mobs defeated
0 bosses and elite bosses
48 lieutenants
97 minions
1 rewarding mobs of unknown rank
Experiment Gone Awry (1)
Code:
Type DropRate Drops Expected Mobs
--------------------------------------------------------
Pool A 1.44% 40 59-93 2782 minion equivalents
Salvage 8.42% 203 168-220 2412 minion equivalents
--------------------------------------------------------
(Table excludes mobs of unknown rank and their drops.)
(1 in 20 runs will be outside the expected range.)
2284 rewarding mobs defeated
39 bosses and elite bosses
560 lieutenants
1545 minions
140 rewarding mobs of unknown rank
Base Commander (1)
Longbow Flamethrower (50) failed heuristic rank check
Longbow Minigun (41) failed heuristic rank check
Longbow Rifleman (48) failed heuristic rank check
0 pets and 7 greys
I'm happy to email my logs to anyone that wants to check them out. These are the numbers I'm getting, no interpretation or perception involved.
/w
I haven't been following the threads about this issue, nor have I been able to dig up any hard information about how the new difficulty settings were coded, so this may be completely wrong or already considered and dismissed, but...
Is it possible that the new difficulty settings add "virtual teammates", which are then assigned drops randomly, just like normal teammates? And since those "virtual teammates" don't actually exist, the drops are simply lost? That would explain the lower than expected and previously recorded averages for drop rates, as well as the variability from player to player.
Simple way to test would be for several people to team up at standard difficulty (+0/x0) and see what the drop rates average out to for each player on the team, then compare those results to what solo players are seeing for difficulty settings matching the team size and critter level. Example: team of 8 players facing +1 and +2 foes, then each team member tests solo with difficulty set at +1 or +2/x8.
I believe that's been tested, and didn't seem related. There's also good evidence that the bad drop rates happen on regular teams, small size, solo, full teams, with slider set to +8, with it at +0, &tc.
/w
Luminara,
My problem with that theory is that while my drop rates are low, they aren't 1/8th of what they should be.
If there were 7 virtual teammates, I would expect to be getting 1/8th expected drops.
Be well, people of CoH.
I am of the opinion it is map based. I just hate having to do work on my computer at night and track stuff to try to prove it.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Quote:
Also before I16 I was on Tenacious and now I am on 3 heroes and same level and I am getting salvage just not recipes at the same old rate.|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Luminara,
My problem with that theory is that while my drop rates are low, they aren't 1/8th of what they should be. If there were 7 virtual teammates, I would expect to be getting 1/8th expected drops. |
If things were going to pseudo teammates then salvage ought to go also not just recipes.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
The predicted number of Mob-drop recipes for that number and distribution of spawns is 11.2.
Set for 0/8 or +1/8, I have not (since I16 beta started) gotten more than 5 or 6 mob-dropped recipes for clearing that map with my brute. My average is about 3.
As others have noted, this is not true for everyone. I also don't feel like it's a perception issue. I think there's a factor other than drop rates at work; I have no doubt that the drop rates have not been changed.
This. The problem is not the drop rate - it's the drop distribution. As Starcloud said in the section I snipped, there's something wonky happening in the drop logic. Given that it's not something that replicably happens with changes to the virtual teammate slider, I don't know what else to test.
We know what the drop rates are supposed to be. I trust that they haven't been changed. We don't know how the drop distribution is supposed to work, so we can't test it, and now we've got a top-heavy set of runs from a redname whose lower-bound of 14... hey, wait a second...
15 runs on a map with 344 enemies is 5160 enemies.
The per-map weighted drop rate should be 3.26% (((268*.026667)+(76*.053333))/344).
Even if Synapse only got 14 recipes/run, his overall drop rate would be (14*15)/5160 = 4.07%.
The margin of error for an expected drop rate of 3.26% with 5160 observations is +/- .48%, so a range from 2.78 to 3.74 would be expected 95% of the time. 4.08 is outside that range. I'm pretty certain that if you computed it using 99% confidence values, these results would show up as aberrant as well.
That means that SYNAPSE'S DROP RATE IS OUTSIDE THE MARGIN OF ERROR FOR THE MAP if he only got the LOWEST number of drops out of his 15 runs each time (which he didn't). Yes, it's outside in the high direction, but that's completely consistent with people saying, "I don't see anything wrong with the drops." If there's something wrong with drop distribution, sometimes it will be off to the low end (where people will complain), and other times it will be off to the high end (where they will not).
Welcome to the high end.
Instead, what you need to do is calculate the confidence interval for the minions and lewys independently and then weight those results to get overall confidence interval. For 4020 minions you should have a 95% CI of 2.168-3.147% (99% CI of 2.011-3.322%) or a standard error of ±0.2541%. The 1140 lewys likewise yield a 95% CI of 4.029-6.638% and a 99% CI of 3.616-7.050% or a standard error of ±0.6655%.
The weighted result standard error comes from (1140*0.006655 + 4020*0.002541)/(5160) or 0.345%. This gives you an overall 95% CI of 2.580-3.932% which 14/mish is outside of, but the 99% CI is 2.366-4.416% which 14/mish does actually fall within. This also doesn't include costumes, respecs, mish complete recipies or wherever the heck purples fall into all this so a higher average number isn't really unreasonable.
I will agree that synapse's claim of 14-19 per mish seems high as the 95% CI per mish is 2-20 and a 99% CI is 0 to 23. Likewise, over 15 missions the expected average should fall between 9-13.5 (95%) or 8-14 (99%), again, not counting the non-pool A recipe drops. This tells me 14-19 seems pretty high (after all the average of 16.5 does fall outside of both CIs). Of course, who knows, maybe Synapse is the guy you hand your d20 to when you absolutely positively must make that skill check roll.
Of course, these are all purely theoretical estimates and it's not impossible to end up with results that fall outside of the predicted CIs. Such is the nature of statistics.