Where is the Primal Ancient items?

Yes, we would, because lots of people don’t understand statistics and the concept of an Expected Value and the Law of Large Numbers.

With a drop chance this low, i.e. 0.25%, there’s going to be wild amounts of variance in the drops of an individual player but when the website in question had the data for millions of drops per day, amalgamated over multiple years, the drop rate for primals was indeed always close to 1 in 400, or 0.25%

It’s essentially the difference between tossing a coin 10 times and tossing a coin 10 billion times. Just because you got seven heads out of ten doesn’t mean the chance of a head is 70%. The more tests you do, the closer to the Expected Value (in this case 50%) you get.

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Nice to see Gambler’s Fallacy is still alive and well.

A statistic is only as good as its test conditions and sample size. Consider flipping a coin. We all know it’s 50/50, assuming all conditions are consistent across all tests. But with a small enough sample size, you can “prove” that a coin toss is 100% likely to land on heads. All it takes is a single test with two attempts. If that’s the only data you record, and they both land on heads, it looks a lot like the coin is guaranteed to land on heads. But it’s not.

Run more tests and it’ll be proven. Run enough tests and you eventually balance out around 50%. What we’re discussing is essentially the same thing: Outliers with either extremely good or extremely poor results. What I’ve seen consistent among almost all the players who complain about drop rates is that they’re either running levels too low to provide drops, or not playing frequently enough to encounter enough drops to receive a primal.

There are similar debates about the chance-to-fail when leveling legendary gems. Some players say it’s obviously not accurate to the listed success chance “because I failed 4 out of 5 times at 80% that one time.” Each attempt has its own separate chance. 5 charges is a very small sample size. We can expect it to stray from the listed percentage sometimes. I bet if we averaged all the results from every player, we’d come out to about the listed rate.

TL;DR Version: RNG is RNG. I know it’s the most hated answer there is, but that’s the answer. If I had another one to give, I would.

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Meteorblade appears to have faster fingers than I.

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Talking about probabilities/statistics on the forum is like saying the name Meteroblade 3 times in a row, and he will be invoked :smiley:

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I knew this, and yet I permitted myself to feel surprise.

It isn’t like it’s a bad thing, though. Meteorblade has good contributions to make in many discussions.

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You have to believe with all your heart to get Primals, pray to RNGesus!

I believe in exact opposite. If you can really convince the game you actually don’t want any primals, your will get lots of them really fast.

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Here we go again you wasting your time throwing this crap up every time I post on a topic. So tell me how the Statistics work on how many of these TOPICS we have had on Primal Drop Rates.

So you tell these people that do these Topics on drop rates. How great your Statistics work??? Plus the RNG in this game is really bad on anything you do!!! But for primal drop rates you Statistics is GOD!!! So you can take your Statistics and throw them out the window. Most of the time they don’t work in this game.

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Had to give BigR a like because he is spot on with the first part of the quoted statement. Meteorblade is indeed wasting his time :slight_smile: (on BigRed at least).
This old thread on Reddit also has some statistics that shows something about the drop rate. Someone put a lot of effort into documenting his finds:
https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo3/comments/69wenr/10257_legendaries_primal_drop_rate/

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The website, which won’t be named, had the details of millions of legendaries, ancients and primals, every day, for multiple years. Let’s say at least five years of results, at 10 million drops per day. That comes out to a sample pool of 5 * 365 * 10,000,000 = 18,250,000,000 items. With a sample size of 18.25 BILLION items, the drop rate of primals was always, ALWAYS, almost exactly 1 in 400 or 0.25%

It’s the right answer, whether you like the answer or not, or believe the answer or not.

And this ably demonstrates why we continue to have threads like this, i.e. people that don’t believe a drop-rate calculated from a sample size of billions of drops over multiple years, but they’re willing to use their own, personal sample size of a week’s worth of drops.

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The reddit results are consistent with what I stated earlier based on data on millions of legendary drops. On average, it is 1 primal per 400 legendaries.

Probability wise the chance of not getting a primal is

399/400

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Ever since fully unlocking the full Altar last week I haven’t had any primal drops. Not a single one. Does that invalidate statistics and actual propabilities? Of course not. On a very long term my primal drops still average at 1 in 400.

I’m just amazed that some people still refuse to accept actual recorded data of millions and billions of drops.

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In the actual practice, you can see 20-25% deviation from the expected values. You can land a Primal after 480-500 legendaries at the latest, or as early as after 360 legendaries looted. So, your one whole week experience may look legit at first glance, but it’s still a single drop in the ocean or blip on the radar compared to mass statistics.
By the averages, Primals still have 1/400 drop rate and personal experiences won’t change it. If you think it does, then I suggest you to put a four leaf clover in your pocket for a lucky charm as it may help you on your endeavors to land the next Primal.

They dont work for you they work against you or anyone for that matter. Anyway yes they drop when they drop, that is in essence what rng is, there is a general statistic wich is very true and people like meteor are correct on the 1 in 400, but on a personal level that doesnt mean much. If someone is a casual player and plays a little it is very possible they wont get an ancient besides maybe the one they get at gr 70 during the season.

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Confirmation Bias. No more needs to be said.

Well…one more thing does need to be said: Personal belief lives under the heel of proven fact. A sample size that large, over that long a period of time, shouldn’t come into question unless that question involves provable errors in the data. Notice that I said “provable,” not “I don’t agree, so therefore it’s magically false.”

I get to thinking I’m being shunned by Lady Luck as well. It’s just how the system works. Blizzard didn’t invent probability; they just poorly implemented it.

“Chance.” They don’t call it that because it’s predictable.

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People other than forum trolls have said the same odds. Some have said different odds.

Being casual is not a huge factor. I’ve played very casual and have made out like a bandit with primals and some seasons, played a ton and found very few.

Methodology is also not known for every player (and can’t be known for every player, that would take a ridiculous amount of invasive software and behavior tracking), so we cannot know what the players who have found nothing were doing all season long. It definitely matters, because some areas of the game are easier to clear for some builds than others, or have a tendency to spawn certain kinds of monsters which are far more profitable.

For example, if a player tells you "I farm only in Greater Rifts, you might think about reminding them of the roving goblin packs in normal rifts or Enmity portals. I don’t think I’ve ever been through a portal without at least as many drops as there would be from a rift, and they’re easily found almost anywhere in the world map.

How about farming speed? That same player who’s only pushing won’t get nearly as many drops per hour. 15min spent on a push rift is 15 minutes that could have gone toward 5 speedruns. One set of drops versus five. That would make a bit of difference over time.

If a player is farming in areas that don’t produce as many drops per hour, they may start to feel as though the drop rate is skewed for them.

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I’ve prob’ly found more than my fair share of primal :poop: this season but only 2 that weren’t :poop:

Switched class to do some speed GR90s and what happens in the first rift? Got primal Raiment pants and Jade gauntlets.

RNG strikes again.

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im finding you dont really need primals. nice to have? sure, but I just use them on items with crazy affix ranges because the odds of finding ancient versions with stats you want are very low. i don’t even have a crafted one on my crusader.

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