I definitely believe Blizzard should add a cumulative pity system to all RNG drops. Those super small drop rates are super discouraging for anyone that doesn’t like gambling.
Actually, it’s worse than that. Because no matter how many times you try, it’s always going to have a 1% chance. Meaning, if you try 500 times, you have a 1% chance out of 100 all 500 times. : /
I appreciate your math and effort, but you have to break it down with probability vs chance.
With the system in WoW for a 1% chance it is that same chance each time. Which I am sure you understand completely. Killing the boss repeatedly does not change the odds or the chance at getting the drop. Every kill the chance resets. Now the other issues come into play with the other items on the loot table. Those each have their own chance to drop.
Your chance never increases above 1% each time. Now the probability that you will make that 1% chance will increase the more times you do it. But with probability, it is just that. The likelihood the event will occur. The event may never occur. But, the likelihood that it will, will gradually increase the more times you do it.
I think that a 1% drop chance is significantly less than a true 1% in WoW, due to all the other factors.
And not once does the base odds change once placed in the formula, it just states the expected odds for something to happen, or not happen over multiple rolls.
And when it comes to multiple pieces of loot. If you want to target one piece out of 3 possible, then the odds will be 1/3 for that one piece. Or written differently, you have 2/3 chance to not get what you want.
So if you were to loot that boss 5 times you would have (2/3)^5=(2/3)(2/3)(2/3)(2/3)(2/3)=13.1% chance to not obtain your desired item.
All this formula does is to let you group attempts together to get a more grounded view of how many attempts you need to do to get favourable odds. Since quite frankly just saying 1% is too ambiguous. Like your odds of winning in scratch lottery is 1 in a million. So to have a 50% chance to win at last once you would need to have 693147 tickets. Which isn’t exactly feasible.
As far as I can figure, it isn’t about improving or changing the odds the more you do it. People get items that have a very low drop chance the first time they try. I have always seen it as:
Its a very low chance
The % chance is the same on the first try, the 50th try or the 500th try.
All it means is that you keep trying because if you don’t you are 100% guaranteed to not get it.
Had to do some quick Googling to just make sure I’m not saying something too egregiously wrong. And you are correct that your odds won’t ever reach 100% assuming there is no pity-system. However, the probability isn’t the same thing, which is what you have calculated here. And considering we can rephrase because of this to this very simple statement:
If you want a luck based drop, you have a 1 in a 1000 chance to get it if you only kill it once. But if you actually want it, your probability of getting it never killing it will be 0 but if you are playing the game and enjoying it and just want to farm it to get it, you have to kill said something in order to increase your probability of getting it even if you cannot affect the odds.
Or to simplify it … do “bother” farming, if farming is something you enjoy. If you don’t enjoy farming, then why the hell are you doing it in the first place?
Yeah if the rates are around 10% and up then it’s okish to farm, even with a weekly lockout. Since the coin-toss would be around 7 attempts.
But when you are doing it for things like invincible the game now expect you to to kill it hundreds of times, with no actual guarantee that you will ever get it in your life. Pushing the game away from being a game and more like a job with a sunken cost bowtie.
If rewards are going to be restricted to dropping during holidays only, I think that you should be able to work towards getting the mount, manuscript or pet.
Add in a currency or some way to slowly work towards the thing and if you get it before then, that’s great, if not, at least you know you will get it eventually.
At least raid mounts can be farmed all year round… Same with world boss mounts.
I have the Love Rocket, the Headless Horseman’s Mount, Ashes of A’lar, a handful of legendaries, and more.
But I’m STILL trying to get that stupid invisible horse, the white Belf chicken, Garrosh’s tusk shoulders, and more. It’s pure RNG, eventually you’ll get whatever if you just keep at it. I’m tired of farming for those things but I’m not going to stop until they’re in my inventory.
Watch me. I will get them. So what’s the alternative to farming then? To not farm and guarantee you will never get the item? Nah. I’ll keep at it until I have what I want.
