Speaking of purples...

[Aeroprism]

Hello beautiful people!

 

Just a quick curiosity question: I know they're called "rares" for a reason but, are there other factors than "pure dumb luck" for purple recipe drops?  I remember some time ago, I was in a farm (levelling) with someone who kept getting 1-2 every other map (we knew because he made it a point to distribute them among the sitters/helpers).  Still, in all my time since my own farming machine got to 50, I got maybe 2-3 of those but for the last... 50 maps or so, not a one.  I consistently play at +4x8, I use a Windfall once in a while.

 

So there you go.  Just curious.   It's not a big deal since money comes from about 48 other sources and my market tank is twenty times more efficient at money making than my farm brute but still, just curious.

 

Did I mention that I was just curious?

 

Have a good one.

[Machariel]

As far as I know there’s no reason to think it’s anything other than RNG.

[Aeroprism]

Aaaaand a purple just dropped because the RNG gods love to poke fun at me.

[Snarky]

I have been playing...a few days...  There has never been even a hinted rumor that Purples are anything besides completely random drops.  

 

Of course, some of these geeks can keep a underground server hidden for years.

 

Looks around.  So, I suppose anything is possible.

[KauaiJim]

I can say for a period of time I was thinking *something* other than RNG was affecting it because it seemed to vary so wildly and it seemed like drops would be better on certain days or times leading me to theorize all kinds of crazy stuff.  Silly, I know, but the drop rate swings in this game can be so 'streaky' that I just had to wonder.

 

I have nearly 800 vet levels on my two 'farmers' and I always run the same mission at +4/x8 and I have this particular mission down to an exact science.  My personal experience was that I almost always got the occasional purple recipe every few missions.  Sometimes it would be a bit 'streaky' where I could go a day or two with no drops then I would start getting them again.  On a few occasions I would get more than 1 purple one the same mission.  I have even had one time where I got two purples from the same cluster of mobs and then one more purple on the next cluster of mobs.

 

What made me start thinking *something* else must be a factor was the first time I hit a 1-2 week period of playing daily without a single purple drop.  I was counting at one point and I don't remember the exact number now but I've had streaks where I go many dozens of missions without a purple drop.

 

What I thought might be happening for a while was that for game economy reasons maybe something else was coming into play, like maybe the game engine tracks total drops occurring on a server and has some type of hard cap to prevent people from trashing the economy with an exploit of some kind.  Or another though was the total number of players online or in instance maps could be factored in somehow.  It was pretty wild thinking but it really did look for a while like something is going on.

 

I am now of the opinion that rare drops in this game are just darn 'streaky'.  You can go for what feel like forever without one.  I can even see the streakiness in other types of drops - orange/yellow/white recipes, inspirations and even incarnate threads.  I can't rule out that there isn't something else being factored in because I can definitely say that the first few weeks/months of farming was MUCH more generous to me with purple drops than what I have been experiencing over that last few months.  However, that really could just have been me being very lucky for a few weeks and then not nearly as lucky since then.

 

Honestly I don't bring home as much on my farmers as I used to but that's ok.  I'm using them for a purpose - to generate 'extra' revenue for when I want to deck out a build and try it out.  While I can make money on this market playing the market game I still prefer farming because I also sometimes p/l at the same time.  Farming still works just fine even when I don't get many purple drops (or any at all for days/weeks).  Playing the market works good also, however lately I'm noticing the Auction House acting more 'squirrelly' than usual.  A lot of long pauses while it's trying to cycle through whatever tasks others are running it through, misleading inf amounts displayed (either from the display bug or folks manipulating prices), and wild price swings at different times of the day/week.   I still prefer farming over 'playing the market' (but it is fun too and can be as profitable).

 

Back to the topic of RNG, I have yet to meet a Random Number Generator that actually really is 'random'.  It is usually some type of algorithm designed to simulate randomness as closely as possible - or more specifically, the goal is to make the result equally as unpredictable as a random number would be.  So most RNG isn't really random, it's pseudo-random.  It is possible that in any given game engine the RNG might feel a bit less random and more streaky due to the nature of RNG algorithms and the factors they depend on.  I have heard of at least one game engine that I used to play that actually used certain character values as a factor among many other things and while that *should* have resulted in a 'random' feeling experience I was actually able to notice at times - I had one toon in that game who was consistently much more 'lucky' and one who was consistently much less lucky (this was in a big name MMO too, lol).  It really depends on the algorithm and how it was designed.

 

TL;DR - Yes, after billions of hours running the exact same farm with the same toon I can say the I have personally experienced what I felt was a nice drop rate for purples become much less frequent and much more 'streaky'.  I tend to think it's just this game engine and the way RNG is implemented.  VERY, VERY streaky sometimes.  Before every closet programmer out there jumps in to correct me on the details of RNG's and algorithms, please just don't, as that wasn't the point.  The point is, I think this game is super streaky and I think they knew it when they came up with the drop chance percentages (1 in 5000?).  I think it's working as intended.  But I do love a good conspiracy theory!  😁

Edited February 16, 2021 by KauaiJim
Forgot to mention I've tried Windfalls too - I've used about twenty of them I still cannot tell any difference in drops. I'm sure it's increasing but I think it's so marginal and streaky that it's not really noticeable for me.

[Coyotedancer]

It's just streaky as all hell.

 

I farm pretty regularly, and sometimes you'll get multiples on three maps in a row... Other times? You'll go a few weeks without seeing a single one. (I'm in one of those stretches, at the moment. 'Haven't seen a purple drop in a dog's age. <_<)

[KauaiJim]

47 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

It's just streaky as all hell.

 

I farm pretty regularly, and sometimes you'll get multiples on three maps in a row... Other times? You'll go a few weeks without seeing a single one. (I'm in one of those stretches, at the moment. 'Haven't seen a purple drop in a dog's age. <_<)

 

Oh - you just woke my inner conspiracy theorist.  I'm in one of those slumps too right now!  Coincidence?  Or maybe one of those imaginary server factors affecting the RNG?  

 

Okay - who's hoggin' all the purple drops?

 

Where the heck is Fox Mulder when you need him?  lol

[Ukase]

First - to the OP - probably an oversight, but purples are called Very Rare, not Rare. 

But, anecdotally, they're not very rare. They drop routinely. Just not all for the same person. In my specific case, I learned last year that I was allowed to have 3 accounts. When I made the third account, that seemed to be when things started to go much better. Kind of like fishing with nets. The more nets you have, the more fish you're likely to get. The more missions you run/(mobs you defeat) the more purples you'll get. 

IF you were only after purples, it would make sense to drop the difficulty to get through the mobs faster - more mobs in less time means more chances at a purple per time interval. But - many aren't just after that. Power leveling alts and/or friends can factor into that decision. 

I remember once thinking I did something wrong when I got 4 purples in 11 minutes. Even sent a petition thinking I broke something or found some kind of exploit. They told me I was just very lucky. 

Non-farm characters, anecdotally, I can tell you, they get more purples when they haven't been played in several days to a week. It's happened to me often enough where I think there's something to that, but then I log on a long neglected alt, and no purple. Weird how perception bias works. 

Windfalls, there's something about them. I don't think they work as intended, if they work at all. They certainly don't increase influence gain. But anyways, I digress. Yeah, they can be streaky. But I've gotten more than I'll likely ever use. In addition to stocking the bins in my own sg, I've stocked the bins in my own sg. I've over 700 + stashed. Dunno if I'll ever use them. I keep thinking the devs will do something about farming to negatively impact afk-farming, and when they do, I expect the price of purples to increase. I aim to be prepared. 

[Clave Dark 5]

I don't farm nor play with 50s all the time, so I've gone months without seeing any.  In fact, I don't think I've seen any drop for me since Trick or Treating at the PI motel ended.  And that one Market Crash, but that doesn't count.

[Grouchybeast]

Back on live there was a bug that affected drops, and specifically affected drops for some characters and not others.  It took a huge community effort to confirm its existence and get the devs to listen to the evidence (because Synapse was...not very good at testing) but it was eventually fixed.  So while that bug was fixed, it is certainly possible that there's another, even rarer, weirder and more obscure bug out there.  The only way to pin it down, unfortunately, would probably be large-scale data analysis again. 

 

Odds are, though, it's just the streakiness you expect from random events.

[Shred Monkey]

I've long thought that the RNG in this game was less random then other RNGs and seems very streaky.  Obviously this can be explained by how the human brain is biased toward seeing patterns, but ... well ...my brain is seeing a pattern.

[tidge]

13 hours ago, Ukase said:

Windfalls, there's something about them. I don't think they work as intended, if they work at all. They certainly don't increase influence gain. But anyways, I digress. Yeah, they can be streaky. But I've gotten more than I'll likely ever use. In addition to stocking the bins in my own sg, I've stocked the bins in my own sg. I've over 700 + stashed. Dunno if I'll ever use them. I keep thinking the devs will do something about farming to negatively impact afk-farming, and when they do, I expect the price of purples to increase. I aim to be prepared. 

I also don't trust Windfalls to improve the drop rates or rarities (of salvage, or recipes). I did some experimenting (using several I had from opening packs) with familiar x8 (non-AE) content and I noticed absolutely no difference in the recipe/salvage haul. I was paying no attention to XP or Inspiration drops.

 

I don't object to this game's RNG, but I'd certainly like to be able to disable/modify Streakbreaker. When I'm swinging at enemies with 95% ToHit, It isn't the next attack roll (which gets ignored) that I want to autohit, it's the next toHit roll of >95% (which almost always comes in fewer than 10 rolls) that I want to hit!

[Aeroprism]

17 hours ago, Ukase said:

First - to the OP - probably an oversight, but purples are called Very Rare, not Rare. 

Absolutely! My bad!

 

@KauaiJimThat post was... delicious.  I salute your dedication 🙂

[golstat2003]

21 hours ago, Ukase said:

First - to the OP - probably an oversight, but purples are called Very Rare, not Rare. 

 

Seriously but the quoted here is pretty much /thread.

 

If you're seeing purples drop regularly then I'd argue THAT would be an issue.

 

Rarity of some IO drops is one of the key reasons the AH exists in the first place. Only if you want to fully purple ONE power, the original devs did not expect that players would be getting those 5-6 purples from just playing the game.

 

 

[DoctorDitko]

Real randomness is notoriously lumpy.

It's one of the ways research fraud is detected. When people make up fake random numbers, they are never as streaky as real random ones are.

(There's even Benford's Law if you'd care to bend your brain.)

The real world is streaky, why shouldn't the game be?

 

I would like to know the game's randomness source. As KauaiJim stated above, it's probably a pseudo RNG. A lot of the old PRNGs were based on things like the last few significant digits of the number of milliseconds since January 1st, 1970. (True story!)

 

The best RNGs use real world things. Even lava lamps.

[Snarky]

In Oct-Dec I was seeing purps and PvP drop allatime.  Last two months...not so much. a couple, but I play...a lot....

[Aeroprism]

Three purples in 1.5h of play.  2 in the same small mission. 

 

Streaky you say? Wonky you say?  Indeed,

 

Edit: Make that 5 in 2 hours...

Edited February 18, 2021 by Aeroprism

[UberGuy]

10 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

I would like to know the game's randomness source.

C's rand().

 

Which has been studied to death, and as long as it's properly seeded, is more than sufficiently random for things like game combat and random drops. True sources of entropy are critically important for things like cryptography, where it's essential that it be unreasonable to determine patterns in the generation of things like encryption keys.

 

Such sources are both overkill for most gaming purposes, and also potentially impractical. Sources of entropy are easy to exhaust through constant polling for random bits - real-world entropy only produces so many bits of data per unit of time. When exhausted, calls to such sources either block the requester until enough bits of entropy are available (impractical in a game server) or they must resort back to pseudorandom data.

Edited February 18, 2021 by UberGuy

[roleki]

I can't find the thread that discussed it, but shortly after I rolled my first farmer on HC, there was a thread wherein people talked about a mechanism that cinched off reward rolls on content that was repeated.  I can't recall the terminology, but the gist was, you got more purple drops after an update or after you do a mission or two between farms.  This seems to have borne out; my parked newbs get more purples than the farmer, and if I take my farmer to PI for a couple missions, they start getting purples more regularly.

 

Since I can't find the thread, I don't rule out the possibility that I am imagining all of this, but my experience with 60-odd farmed-up characters seems to bear this out.

[golstat2003]

There is also Market Crash, which is guaranteed purple the first time you complete that tf, on a character.

 

For anyone who doesn't know. 🙂 

Edited February 18, 2021 by golstat2003

[Snarky]

I honestly have no shortage of Purples.  But it is only because the economy is so good in the city.  I take hundreds of merits and convert to about a thousand converters.  I buy cheap yellow recipes on the market.  (no rare salvage needed) and start mass crafting.  Then i start the assembly line of conversion.  This nets hundreds of millions of Inf, that i then place lowball bids on purps, pvps, winters.  and wait.  If they arent the exact ones I need when I finally pull from base storage....convert.  

 

still, when running a 50 non stop it would be nice if I could get a little less....random....lol.  Give me Purps!!!

[Aeroprism]

6 hours ago, Snarky said:

I honestly have no shortage of Purples.  But it is only because the economy is so good in the city.  I take hundreds of merits and convert to about a thousand converters.  I buy cheap yellow recipes on the market.  (no rare salvage needed) and start mass crafting.  Then i start the assembly line of conversion.  This nets hundreds of millions of Inf, that i then place lowball bids on purps, pvps, winters.  and wait.  If they arent the exact ones I need when I finally pull from base storage....convert.  

Yes, this is the best way to me as well.  I have already broken the inf ceiling on a character doing that and the repetitive action puts my ADHD brain to rest.

[Riverdusk]

On 2/16/2021 at 9:59 AM, Aeroprism said:

Hello beautiful people!

 

Just a quick curiosity question: I know they're called "rares" for a reason but, are there other factors than "pure dumb luck" for purple recipe drops?  I remember some time ago, I was in a farm (levelling) with someone who kept getting 1-2 every other map (we knew because he made it a point to distribute them among the sitters/helpers).  Still, in all my time since my own farming machine got to 50, I got maybe 2-3 of those but for the last... 50 maps or so, not a one.  I consistently play at +4x8, I use a Windfall once in a while.

 

So there you go.  Just curious.   It's not a big deal since money comes from about 48 other sources and my market tank is twenty times more efficient at money making than my farm brute but still, just curious.

 

Did I mention that I was just curious?

 

Have a good one.

Level of enemy doesn't matter, but rank does in a way.  The higher the enemy rank the more likely a recipe will drop.  If a recipe drops, it has a chance of being a purple.  So, technically if you want the best fastest chance of just purples, you'd fight -1/x8 (assuming you are level 50) with bosses turned on.  Of course that isn't necessarily the best way to actually earn inf.

 

Enemy	Rate
Minion	2.666667%
Lieutenant/Sniper	5.333333%
Boss/Elite Boss	7.999999%

 

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Recipe

[Captain_Paragon]

On 2/19/2021 at 4:41 PM, Riverdusk said:

Level of enemy doesn't matter, but rank does in a way.  The higher the enemy rank the more likely a recipe will drop.  If a recipe drops, it has a chance of being a purple.  So, technically if you want the best fastest chance of just purples, you'd fight -1/x8 (assuming you are level 50) with bosses turned on.  Of course that isn't necessarily the best way to actually earn inf.

 

Enemy	Rate
Minion	2.666667%
Lieutenant/Sniper	5.333333%
Boss/Elite Boss	7.999999%

 

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Recipe

Yes but if your lvl 50 and put it to -1/×8 that would make all enemies lvl49 or 50 and 49ers don't drop purples. Well that's what I heard anyway? Maybe HC changed that?

[Clave Dark 5]

On 2/17/2021 at 1:34 AM, Clave Dark 5 said:

I don't farm nor play with 50s all the time, so I've gone months without seeing any.  In fact, I don't think I've seen any drop for me since Trick or Treating at the PI motel ended.  And that one Market Crash, but that doesn't count.

Of course, just a couple of days later I got one.  Then again, I run on a lot of PI radio teams at 49, you'd think I'd get more.