Shard drop rates

Since last week I have done 6 STF, 2 LRSF, and 5+ other level 50 missions, and haven't gotten a single shard. Did they lower the drop rates on the shards?

I unlocked the Cardiac Partial Radial Revamp (rare slot) and have gotten no shards since then.

After unlocking my Alpha slot, I ran 9 missions without getting a single shard (then started averaging 1 shard per mission from the 10th mission on). I thought that was a pretty bad dry spell, but I was mostly running level 50 tip missions solo, so that wasn't so unlikely. I've never heard of anyone running multiple task forces and coming away empty handed on shards.

I'm with Lothic on this one. I think there's got to be some kind of bug affecting you. I got my rare slot on friday, and got 6 shards on the ITF that I ran sunday.

The drop rate on shards isn't all that high, but I generally average 4-6 of them per TF that I run. The chances of you not getting a single one on 8 TFs and 5 other missions is ridiculously low. It's hard to believe that the RNG just hates you that much.

May be something going on, the first couple of nights after unlocking the slot I was getting about one a mission. Since then I haven’t gotten a single one.

I don't do TFs (mainly due to playing time, normally get on an hour before daily shutdown) so I didn't expected to be able to craft anything for awhile, but even so I expected to see a higher drop.

Somehow I'll have to do some TFs to get the other items that I'll need one day. I thought they said that all slots will be able to be crafted from shards, but if I read it right, that's not the case anymore. So if I want to upgrade my Alpha slot I'll have to do some TFs.

Going to be strange doing a TF after about 5 years (did many when the game first started, but not since all my friends moved on to other games).

PS: Not that I need the best Alpha Slot possible, happy with my character how it is.. but we can all dream

Now that I wrote this in the forums, I got more shard tonight! I think I'm jynxed.

Random number generator is still random.

Mmm...

I think its the so called random number generator is simply peeing in your punch.

For the past three days, I been playing my alts with 3rd tier slotted Alphas, in those 3 days I did 15 TFs, about 7 were kill alls, 5 were grind to target, but not kill all, 3 were fast versions. Amazingly I had a streak of 15 TFs in a row where I only received 1 Shard. The streak was broken on TF 16 (Kahn) which was done in a grind to target manner, and received no shards at all; at the time I was on my blaster and was AOEg like a madwoman in steroids. Thus my steak of 15 Tfs in a row with a single drop was broken, for the worst. Needless to say, I was fuming! On the next TF I did, an LGTF I received 9 shards. While that was plesantly nice, lets see what the stats tallied:

16 TFs made me 24 shards, so I averaged slightly less than 2 shards per TF, a miserable drop rate per TF loot share.

I been counting how many shards drops per TF by asking players for their tallies, and I seeing rates between 22 and 34 shards per TF, the variance has much to do with a speed versus kill all, amazingly a kill all does not yield that much more to my great surprise. It seems as a generality that a speed yields sufficient shards to award each player about 3 shards per tf, while a kill all raises that value to 4 per player. In my opinion, the problem is how the loot gets distributed where the results gets askewed. Obviously when a player gets "lucky" they are doing so at the expense of another, zero sum gain. So if the true and fair average is 3 per player and one player receives 9 shards, we can see that at least 2 players could wind up "randomly fair" not receiving a single shard for their effort. An aberration and very ugly thing to happen. Frankly theer has to be a better way to distribute loot, I have no issue with loot being randomly generated, I do have an issue with loot being solely randomly distributed. A fairer way to distribute shards is to randomly generate who receives the first shard, once that person receives a shard, they are not eligeable to receive another until all other team members have received their one. You could continue being random on who gets 2nd, 3rd, etc shards. Once all 8 have recived their goodies, you could go random again to see who of the 8 gets another first, etc.

So I don't believe its the shard drop rate, I believe its the loot distribution system that is at fault and giving you an erroneous perception.

Hugs

Stormy

I don't mind the random drops at all.

I have gone months without a purple drop, and then had 2 drop within 5 minutes in the same mission.

I have also had droughts of shard drops, and then gotten 4 in rapid succession (2 of which dropped off of one enemy)

Completely random chances to get things is about the only way they can do it to prevent anyone from gaming the system to get an unfair ratio. Because you know as well as I do that if there was any kind of trackable pattern to it, someone will figure out how to tip the scales in their favor.

I don't mind droughts of drops, because I know eventually I will get a streak of good luck with them too. In the long run it should more or less balance out.

Odd. Everytime I do a level 50 TF I get a shard early in the first mission. I haven't recorded any data, but I do believe it's been every TF. It's so regular, I was going to post to see if anyone else is seeing it. I'm starting to suspect there some type of streakbreaker code to force a drop.

Mmm...

While I agree that loot should be randomly generated, I still don't believe it should be randomly distributed, at least not entirely.

Have any of you played D&D, the paper and pencil version?

I have, and I often GM it (every Sat night we actually get together and still play, face to face, go figure a real semi social life, giggles)

When we group, ya we have our fighter, cleric, mage and thief so we have all bases covered. When loot is gained from something, and a magic wand drops, do we randomly roll to see who gets it? The answer is no, we give it to the mage who actually could use it. When a magic sword drops, do we randomly roll for it? No, we give it to the fighter, who could use it best. When we get gold, do we randomly roll for it and give it all to the winner? No, we equally distribute it. If we get an item no one can use, we sell it, and the money is equally distributed.

Get the drift?

Note: It could be argued, that the wand was more valuable than the sword, and thus the fighter got shafted and the rest of the team got nothing for their efforts. Very true, but a responsible GM ensures that there is a variety of loot so all can get something equivalent over that night's scenario. In the case of CoX that level of loot value disparity does not exist, fortunately, so this is not a greed issue.

So in City of Heroes, its ok to get loot randomly generated, but come-on, it does not have to be randomly assigned, that is simply dumb. Other games such as DAOC has options to allow for even distribution of loot to occur, so why not CoX?

CoX loot is pretty well defined, thus its easy to track and distribute. Loot can be shards, 4 types of recipes, 3 types of ingredients, etc. Each type of loot can be tracked by event and TF series. And yes who gets what first, can be random, but they get no seconds of that particular loot until all others get their share. Once we are ready for seconds, its random again to find who is the new first receiver. I can't see how this exploitable, either, if you can, please explain.

How sophisticated this distribution system, I suggest above can actually be variable, lots of considerations such as player x got a drop, say a white recipe. A second drop falls, its a yellow ingredient. The question is, do we allow player one to compete for the yellow ingredient, or do we count him out, so that all 8 players have gotten something at least, before a player can have a seond drop of anything? Of course had the second drop been another white recipe, he would have been counted out, do note that had it been a yellow recipe, he would not been counted out since it was not a white recipe thus a different class of loot, yet the consideration should that player be allwoed to receive a second drop, despite not all other team members have received a drop yet?

Hugs

Stormy

If this was a standard loot game (ala EQ, etc) then some kind of group loot mechanism like that would be great, but with how this game is, it'd be nothing more than a hassle for very little reward - if any.

I think it would cause more "BUT I NEEDED THAT" etc. There's a reason why we got them to remove the "Teammate # got a [Recipe/Salvage Name]" when they tried that (they had good intentions, but it caused to much trouble).

Just to be clear, they are not more likely on a team. They have a fixed probability to drop from each mob, based on its rank, just like inventions. However, very unlike inventions, when a mob is defeated by a team, a chance is checked for every member of the team to get a shard. Because teams are likely to roll through foes faster than a single player is, the mob defeat rate is probably higher and thus the shard drop rate per player is probably higher on a team, even though the drop probabilities are fixed. (A team may also be more likely to fight more bosses and LTs, who have higher shard drop probabilities, which would basically translate into a higher drop probability while on a team.)