well that’s a relief. I just have to trust that it truly is personal loot and each evoker has their own roll. That way the argument of people feeling cheated if they see the drop but it didn’t go to them falls flat.
Yeah, typically if an item is to only drop one and only go to one player then it will be off a corpse or in a chest. All of the Mythic raid mounts that get converted to 1% drop function this way which is why, for example, you loot Shackled Ur’zul out of the chest following a Mythic Argus kill (only one possible mount drops) but the Antoran Charhound is awarded immediately on a Hounds kill as personal loot (and every player gets a roll, as I know I saw multiple mounts awarded back during Legion a few times).
The Gem works as the latter; immediately goes in your bag and the quest automatically pops.
So it seems the goal is to not make players feel “forced” to farm lower difficulties for this, which seems like a long-term healthy thing. However, this could have been communicated earlier and more clearly. As it stands, many evokers are going to feel frustrated to have been wasting their time for weeks and may feel “cheated” out of more opportunities to try for the legendary going forward. I’m really not sure how the math works on the 3 scenarios outlined leading to the same result. Probability is not my strong suit, but it’s just not intuitive to me given the wording of all communications around this.
Can we get any comments on the general design philosophy here?
(1) Why is the legendary low drop rate? From interviews I gather you want to make it feel special, but this method is just making a tiny portion of your player base feel special at the expense of a significantly larger portion of your player base not feeling special.
(2) Why is the legendary higher drop rate at higher difficulties? Again, from interviews I understand the general desire to reward mastery. However, master is already rewarded with increased player power, exclusive cosmetics, and achievements. The design as it is currently communicates “less good players are less deserving of feeling special”.
(3) Why continue to emote region-wide announcements? After first mythic kill in region unlocking the drop for everyone else, it’s no longer an event that has any significance to any other player. It seems to only further to deepen the issues noted above.
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The probability of getting the drop with a single 9% chance is straightforward: it’s 9%.
Calculating the combined probabilities is a bit more complicated. You can calculate the probability that you do NOT get the drop on each roll and then multiply these together.
The chance of not getting the drop on a single roll is:
- On the first roll: 100% - 1% = 99% = 0.99
- On the second roll: 100% - 3% = 97% = 0.97
- On the third roll: 100% - 5% = 95% = 0.95
The combined probability of not getting the drop on any of the three rolls is then the product of these three numbers:
0.99 * 0.97 * 0.95 = 0.912515, or 91.2515%
The probability that you get the drop on at least one of the three rolls is then 100% - 91.2515% = 8.7485%.
So, the chance of getting the drop on at least one of the three rolls (with probabilities of 1%, 3%, and 5%) is slightly less than the chance of getting the drop with a single 9% chance.
However, it is worth mentioning the psychological factor involved in this situation. The perception of having three separate opportunities to receive the drop can feel more satisfying and encouraging, even if the overall probability is slightly less. This is because our brains often place more emphasis on frequency or number of opportunities, rather than the exact probabilities. So even though you have a slightly better chance with one 9% roll, it might feel better to have three separate rolls because it feels like more opportunities to succeed.
I wonder how anyone in the game is supposed to know this if they don’t check blueposts.
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because they will hear a triumphant roar reminding them throughout time and space!
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That’s not really the scenario I took away from original post though. I thought it was along the lines of LFR has a flat 1%, Normal has a flat 3%, Heroic has a flat 5%.
So the chance of not getting the drop on any one difficulty:
- On LFR: 100% - 1% = 99% = 0.99
- On Normal: 100% - 3% = 97% = 0.97
- On Heroic: 100% - 5% = 95% = 0.95
With the combined probability of not getting the drop on any of the three difficulties
0.99 * 0.97 * 0.95 = 0.912515, or 91.2515%
The probability that you get the drop on at least one of your attempts then 100% - 91.2515% = 8.7485%.
8.7485% from trying all 3 difficulties per week is greater than 5% from trying only Heroic.
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but what about mythic?
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That’s the point. I’m not a mythic raider. Just your average gamer trying to live in Azeroth and have fun doing it.
It makes more sense not to see it as percentage chances but as die rolls.
Lfr is 1 roll
Normal is 2
Heroic is 3
Mythic is 4
You always can only get a maximum of 4 rolls, it doesn’t matter if you roll them all at once, in pairs, 3 and 1, or 1 at a time, the odds of hitting at least once when rolling 4 dice is the same.
The only way to reduce those odds is to roll less dice by not doing the higher difficulty.
Well, die rolls are percentages - just with a prettier interface (the dice in question). What I’m finding interesting is more along the lines of the perception of doing it all at once (e.g. heroic [or mythic if that’s your thing]) or individual dice rolls (doing each difficulty in ascending sequence).
If the percentages per difficulty are the same (1% for sake of argument), then doing LFR, then Normal, then Heroic would be 0.99 * 0.99 * 0.99 (or a 97.0299% you will NOT get the item). That would be individually separated only by the duration required to go from one difficulty to another (either a full clear or just a Sark kill). And, then, of course, the alternative is three dice rolls all at once in heroic - separated only by whatever internal metric is required between the rolls, but less than a second in total to be sure.
Now, in such a scenario, it is neither more advantageous to do individual runs than it is to do it just in heroic. It does, however, give the player agency and hopefully a slightly better chance at randomness (no such thing with computers, but that’s another story).
However, if each difficulty has its own increased drop rate (jury is still out on this based on conflicting responses from Blizzard), the answer doesn’t really change. For the sake of argument, I’ll use the 1% (LFR), 3% (Normal), 5% (Heroic) number people are throwing around.
The dice rolls would be 0.99 * 0.97 * 0.95, either separated by individual bosses or doing it all at once in heroic would yield a 91.2285% chance you will not receive the item. But, again, the dice rolls are either separated by different difficulties or done all at once in heroic. Statistically speaking, both scenarios are identical odds. Another poster argued above that it could just simply be a matter of superstition on which is better, but mathematically, both are identical.
Note, the odds are not suggesting one dice roll affects the other. Instead, it is simply calculating the probability of a specific combination or outcome (usually an idiotic retort by someone who reads wikipedia but doesn’t actually understand math or how that site is wrong). I’m definitely not saying you’re doing that, I’m just adding it as a caveat because I know how some forum goers typically are when confronted with math.
Anyway, it’s a semantic as I said earlier for dice vs percentages. But, you could easily say a 100 sided dice, of which you have to roll a natural 100 to get the first roll to get a drop. Statistically, 1 in 100 or 1%. You’d have to roll a 98, 99, or 100 (3 in 100 or 3%) on the second roll to get a drop. You’d have to roll a 96, 97, 98, 99, or 100 (5 in 100 or 5%) on the third roll to get a drop.
However you visualize it, the math doesn’t change. Though, I think Blizzard could write a better explanation on why it’s better to only do one heroic and have better odds than heroic plus the preceeding difficulties because math does not bear truth to their words.
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Please explain how some have reported clearing heroic and then looting it in normal.
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Agreed, I wasn’t positing that it was any different, just that using the analogy of rolling multiple dice might help some people understand the lack of difference between them.
Indeed. I remember this sort of math being covered in my eight grade math class some 30 odd years ago. I wonder if it’s even being taught now.
I can’t speak to the American education system but as a Brit I also learned this in stats relatively early on. However you forget things as time goes on, especially things you don’t use day to day.
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If it was 1%, 3%, 5%, heroic would either have 9%, or after clearing lfr, normal would then have 2%, and after clearing normal, heroic would have 2%. Or if you cleared normal but nor lfr, heroic would have 3%, so you always have even odds regardless of which way you did it.
So a few individuals have gotten the gem from normal even after having done heroic. So the explanation is incorrect.
If we learned anything from Legion legendary items it is that ANY chance is still a possibility and worth doing.
So nothing changes even with these convoluted explanations. We keep clearing all difficulties we can because the gem can still drop regardless of what the blues say. The only difference is that it is slightly better to clear LFR > Normal > Heroic.
Please stop putting these stupid items in the game.
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You know why your diablo team is getting an bonus this year? Because they let actually reward players with loot when they run the chore.
In wow you will be granted with gold so I would say wow team can get a nice 100% office bonus for this exceptional work.
That’s assuming Blizzard coded the thing correctly.
It’s also assuming there isn’t some hidden bad luck protection they aren’t telling us about, you know they love to code stuff and just not bother to tell us how stuff works, just look at them only releasing this information 6 weeks after ppl have been farming it.
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Maybe I’m being too pessimistic, but I’m not real confident about what seems to be a very complicated strategy.
What do people thing the odds are that this “system” has been properly implemented into the game without any bugs or issues that would cause it to not work “as intended?”
Anyone have a guess? Bueller? Bueller?
/moo 
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