Opening Packs and others from Lockboxs

posineg

Greetings,

Not really a question but more of a rant... Unless someone knows why the chances are weighted rather than 1 in (X) chance from the listed items?

So I have received the Nobanion's Artifact Pack 4 times and each time have pulled the same item, 3 Lesser Refining Stones. This possibility is very small. If you look at the list, One of the Following should be a 1 in 9 chance but the items must be weighted for me to pull the same lowest quality item 4 times.

Any ideas, good or bad.

dratomic1

I'm on the same RNG dieet. 710 lockboxes opened (46000 zen bought) and 1 purple admin spam to show for it; total value of items in return; roughly 4 mil. It happens to me all the time too, same stuff from the packs as the previous pack opened.

cscriv79

lesser value items have more chance of being pulled as the game allows for more of them to be in circulation.

If you do not like the risk of what comes from all the packs out of the boxes then sell them on the AH.

If it was a 1 in (X) chance then everyone would open the ammount needed to get what they are after and the economy would go to rubbish, also this would lead to less money being spent on the game and thus it would stop.

draek

:/

mordekai

The clue is kind of in the Quality names.
Common...
Uncommon...
Rare...
and so on.

At the risk of sounding patronising, the chances of finding a rare item are (and should be...) less than those for a Common item.

Rare items are more rare than common items.

mrroofer

You have a better chance of pulling a epic or legendary item if your a new player I've played for 9 months now spent some money bought thousands of lockboxes and have gotten one Epic mount and well like 20 ensorcelled sets woohoo worthless. My girlfriend made a account and the first lockbox she opened got the twisted set lol I couldn't believe it. It's like a casino the first couple times you gamble they let you win then you start thinking hey I can win alot so you raise your bet raise your bet then you can't win a thing. Same goes with these lockboxes aka legal online gambling lol

mordekai

I've not got much from lockboxes for ages, then when the deals were on last weekend I bought 1000 discounted zen, then bought a months worth of discounted VIP, and along with the change I bought a few hundred Zen with AD and bought 10 discounted keys.
I dropped 4 Nobanions and all 4 contained rare artifacts... not a refining stone in sight.

I also pulled an epic apprentice healer, and a bunch of actually useful profession drops.

I used two of the artifacts, and a couple of the profession assets and sold the rest of the stuff and with everything else I'd got I ended up with nearly half a million AD from 10 keys I bought with zen and AD I'd got free as part of the sale event.

It all balances out, but its nice when the good stuff comes in a lump. Of course the other side of that coin is buying a bunch of keys and getting the square root of sod all.

lionsarered

cscriv79 said:

lesser value items have more chance of being pulled as the game allows for more of them to be in circulation.

If you do not like the risk of what comes from all the packs out of the boxes then sell them on the AH.

If it was a 1 in (X) chance then everyone would open the amount needed to get what they are after and the economy would go to rubbish, also this would lead to less money being spent on the game and thus it would stop.

Yes I think people need to understand how economics works a little better...both in real life and in Neverwinter. I totally agree with the above comment by cscriv79.

If acquiring a legendary mount was so danm easy, then nearly everyone would have one and everyone's' stats would be roughly the same. Like the gambling metaphor, the odds always favor the House, and in this case, PWE wins. Its not criminal, or wrong, or fair. It is a reflection of real life. Player acceptance of this fact is both fatuous AND irrelevant.

yiazzy

I know these feels all too well.

If I get the Inscribed Enchantment pack, which always gives me 2 Rank 7 Enchantments, one more time...I might break. Artifact Equipment upgrading is so slow.

posineg

My point for the whole post, which I should have stated earlier, is that the wording on the pack "This pack contains one of the following:" is misleading. I have thought about that statement often and come to the same conclusion, even though you get one of the items, the weighted ratio is not implied in the statement. I would have understood the usage of weighted ratios if "Chance" or if there was the ratio next to the item but there is neither.

yiazzy

I think it's meant to be implied with the colour code for rarity. Although, the Shaundakul LB has been nice to me today. Got Valindra's Belt, Neck, and Kessell's Spheres of Annihalation.

kclowe

Forgive me but after over a year of playing i still do not know what the acronyms RNG even stands for? I have heard random number generator. If this is so, what numbers is it randomly generating here. My assumption is, and this is regardless of what RNG really means. It is taking into account how many people play the game vs how many people need a particular object. Then it generates roughly that amount of any particular object. If it were random no matter the player base then you may see piles of certain objects or a vast shortage of another which would throw the economy off. But RNG is there to insure everything stays balanced just enough so we all trade away our AD for a chance at that big score. Then when our AD is gone we spend away our money at that chance for a big score. On a side note a truely believe i get more value in return when i buy the zen with cash.

yiazzy

Rng works like this;

Each item in the box is allocated a certain amount of numerical values. When you open the box the RNG generates a number, and you get the item with that particular numerical value. Obviously, in the Runic Lockbox, the Runic Manticore has the least amount of allocated numbers, whereas it looks like the Inscribed Enchantment Pack, and the other blue rewards have the most.

Another example of seeing how it physically works is to roll a 100 sided die. 100 gets you the Manticore, anything else doesn't. Personally, I'm sure there are much, MUCH, more than 100 numbers in the Lockbox RNG, but we'll never know.

kclowe

Yiazzy, i can see that being the case with RNG. I dont disagree with this assessment. But i add, is it not apperant that thier must be a factor in the RNG algorithm that incorporates the amount of players and the need of use of any given item. Otherwise statistically there could be 1000 artifacts pulled in a day when the in games stats only show that may 1/10 of that could be used. Now this goes for any and all of the items. There must be a balancing system incorporated into the RNG system is my main point.

yiazzy

Oh, I wasn't doubting your theory, just explaining how rng works, as you said you weren't sure.

kclowe

Understood, if anything i was trying to expand the common conception of how RNG works. I was hoping for more feedback on weather it was plausible.

sundance777

RNG = Random Number Generator, it is the concept that behind every event in the game, there is a math thing that decides your fate randomly. Sort of like rolling dice but it is done by a computer. The problem is, when the chance is very low for something good and the chance is very high for something not good, we often have a difficult time understanding very small odds.

It is sort of like flipping a coin, heads = profession pack, tails = genies gift and if the coins lands on edge you get a legendary mount. There are some good explanations of modern computerized RNG programs on the interwebs, maybe try Wikipedia for an overview.

posineg

Yah, RNG do not help in any way to limit a item in play. With a RNG, you could get the same number 100 many times in a row. This is not highly probable but neither is rolling a d20 twice and getting 20 twice. I digress, the only way to limit items in the game is to use a pool. Create a pool per day, week, month... and you guarantee only so many items in play.

My point, as I have stated many times is that the packs are misleading and in no way state any ratios of chance. If I placed money down and did not know the chances (gambling) I would not place the bet. Same thing for the packs. Money is used and there is no published ratio for a game of chance... how do we even know that the packs will pay out a listed item? (ok a little crazy talk here but)

The RNG must be used in conjunction with a deeper formula/pool/ratio. I just would like to know the odds.

mordekai

In close to 35 years of reffing table top roleplaying games I cannot even begin to figure out how many times I've watched a player roll 2 10 sided dice to get a score from 1 to 100.
I can, however, count how many times I've watched a player roll 3 double zeroes in a row.
Once...
Because it quite literally is a million to one shot.
It was a crit roll in Rolemaster, which saw the enemy's head bounce off two walls before landing in a bucket in the corner.

At some point, maybe waaay in the future, there will be a Neverwinter Event and everyone will finally realise the odds of getting the top prize, and no one will post a thread about how broken the RNG is.

I'd love an Apparatus of Gond, or that damned hammer...
But I know my chances of getting one border on non existent.

dangerousjezza

Apparatus off Gond you say, hehehehe.
I got the game about 1 month ago maby a bit longer (X-BOX ONE) am lvl70 with IL 1900ish (nothing fancy but I like to role play rather than stat hoard and farm hence my Halfling Trickster Thief.
I Took part in the Wonders event (I have also only spent a total of $50 au on Zen) the rest is bought with astral profit I make buying and selling, Buy low sell high. I traded in my first Doohickey and failed at getting something good even half decent, I really thought about giving up (Selling my Doohickeys for profit) to save myself the heartbreak of further failed attempts. Almost cashed out trading what I had invested in the event for an Artifact that I could use and probably needed.
Anyhow I kept plugging away farming grommets and smashing out as much as my (8 slots helped) professions could. On my second go I set myself up right in front of the gond event stand (poked my tongue out the left side of my mouth and gently bit down) and refined myself another Doohickey then sold it for another box open him up r(right there in front of the fella) and BOOM got my mount (or choice of one of two) so I chose the Embellished Apparatus of Gond.
I agree it must and is frustrating trying over and over and failing but I think people need to sit back and have a hard look at themselves if they are investing $$$ hand over fist at trying to get things from boxes just to keep up with the other guy. Me I bought a key of two with the leftover change from my initial $50 buy and used them to open boxes. But why I spent the money was to get me some bags on sale and extra bank slots. I have not got a singe day of V.I.P. but probably will over the X-Mas break
I have probably banged on enough and gone off topic a bit here but my point (i think??) is that if your investing your own cash in the game you might as well go to the casino and play the slots (in the houses favor) cos you prob have similar odds of winning. On the other hand if your just spending AD earned in the game to get Zen well its still frustrating to not win but you don't really loose anything except a bit of invested time.

mordekai

I don't believe there is anything resembling a quota for the jackpot prizes.
And I doubt they would introduce one. And if they did, they wouldn't state the numbers.
It would be counter productive.
Every time the message "Cheesy Bob won a Mount of Super Ego" pops up, YOUR odds of getting one immediately drop, effectively riding roughshod over the main purpose of an RNG.
And if the quota were a minimum per day, by now people would have figured it out and at about 9.30am my time there would be a rush on them popping up to fulfill the quota before the clock ticks over to a new day.
And there isn't...

And if the quota were reached early... your chances become almost impossible next to those of the people who tried 12 hours earlier.
Hardly fair...

draek

Yeah...professions pack 4 days in a row...and an ensorcelled item that my character can't use. I'm getting tired of this game. I've reached a level where I'm realizing I'm going to have to spend a few hundred to get any further...or spend months grinding out refinement. Once enchantments reach level 7 you need another one of the same level to get to the next level. It's ridiculous. They say is a free game..but it really pay to play in other ways.