So trying to paraphrase the excellent statistical theory here for the laymen or an Eighth grade education (ok, or myself):
You would expect that if all drops have an equal chance, that the results would be about the same number of each console dropping +/- a few. This can be in a category of consoles (Sci, Eng, Tac) or across all 42 consoles.
The observed results on a universe of 300 items shows that it's not distributed evenly, or even close to evenly.
Therefore, you conclude something is off in the probabilities.
That seems pretty clear and compelling.
It seems very improbable that this distribution would occur on 300 runs of the mission, if all consoles have an even chance of dropping.
The suggestion of reviewing the recorded results of the Children's Toys mission drop data seems like a good place to look to dispel the "it's just bad luck of random number generators" theory.
Or maybe Cryptic could run the mission 25,000 times internally or on Tribble and see if the results show a 1/42 drop rate for each console? I'm sure the community would find that data interesting to review.
It sounds like a Beam Fire at Will coding search for the community and the devs to work together on!
Well these results, even if the sample size is small, keep me convinced I've been smart to not bother with console fabrication.
1) You need some seriously expensive doffs to get max purple % chance. (10 to 20 mill each? I haven't looked in a while)
2) 300 powered alien artifacts represents in the 390 to 410 million EC region.
The OP would need to have gotten 8 to 12 (or more) MK XII consoles of truly high end value (read: MK XII Purple Tac Consoles) just to break even.
I make consoles for ec in this game. Probably not the best choice how it often depends on luck and me not spending more than I make, and not having enough to buy more arts and particles.
I make 21 consoles a day across 7 toons. (Toons are purple critical trait, resolve, and engineer 24/51/24)
My console spread purple blue and green right now:
p=210,
b=395,
g=175,1,1,
I buy 350 particle sets (set= 1 of each of the 10 particles) and buy (350) artifacts to infuse. Sometimes it seems I get lucky and make back what I put in, and then some. Other times I barely break even, and if I spent any of the money I got from consoles I have to buy piecemeal. I really love the times that strange arts cost 400k-700k range but now its 800k and up right now. Also fyi the console market takes a nose dive when a lockbox is released people spend ec on lockbox keys and ships instead of consoles which means a negative profit on most consoles. Tetryon gens blue used to be 2 million are now less than 800k.
I've had similar distribution of consoles as the original OP, where it seems some consoles are spammed through the system. I'm just wondering if the random number generator is spread out over everyone or just for a person. Because if it was just for a person you would probably see a more even distribution of the different consoles.
Also has anyone noticed if certain critical traits gives more of a specific type? Like say cunning trait gives more engineering consoles. I'm probably going to start keeping track to see what I find out.
With the 5 purple engineering doffs (Jem Hadar ones) for the console assignment chances are 24% purple ,51% blue ,24% green. From the last 15 artefacts I got only green junk like stealth modules and bio consoles
It is LONG PAST time that crafting was expanded to include Mk XII Very Rare consoles. Those things are just absurdly overpriced on the exchange for the tiny bit of improvement over plain old Mk XI blue. If you must have some crazy-rare unobtanium class of consoles, change the duty officer project to drop Mk XII Ultra Rare.
I agree...especially with resource costs...dilithium is precious as it is...and it could bring them in more money from people buying zen to sell for dilithium.
Can't have a honest conversation because of a white knight with power
Looking at the OP and the data there it is remarkably similar to what I've been putting out as well.
The green/blue/purple % outcome is approximately correct
The distribution of consoles is heavily weighted, guessing if what is said is true and the weights are equal, there is something else hidden there forcing some consoles to be rarer than they should.
In tactical consoles; vast majority of the time you are getting generic warhead, generic beam, generic cannon, but my TCD and ambiplasma's are way higher. Actual energy consoles are quite rare, and rarer still for purples.
Eng consoles seem to spew out the injector, field emitter and plasma dist consoles like crazy. Armour seems fairly well distributed, even rcs consoles. Personally I've had fewer Neutroniums, but its not statistically telling.
Sci consoles are misleading without actually documenting, because most sci consoles are terrible. But PI, sensors, stealth, and countermeasures pop up over and over, nearly 75% for those four. Only had one field generator but a dozen of each of the above. The semi-useful bunch sits in the middle, the emitters, particle, graviton, etc.
So if the RNG is picking quality/success of the mission, what is being used to pick the specific console? The two can't be tied together.
I'm still not convinced the distribution isn't random. 300 is not a large sample size given the size of the pool. Plus, I can't help but notice the conspicuous absence of the Biofunction Monitor and the Emergency Forcefield, TRIBBLE consoles I see all the time. Either you somehow believe that Cryptic has rigged the pool AGAINST two marvelously TRIBBLE consoles that you, personally, no doubt see all the time, or the sample size just isn't big enough.
You forgot something extremely important: the human factor. As a geography teacher myself i'm not completely new to probabilities, but to understand this you often need to get your head out of the %, especially if humans are involved. Here it's not just coins you're flipping in an ideal environment.
This game has 2M players. I'm too lazy to make the math now, but with this amount of players, you'll get obviously a significant amount of unlucky people. These people will tend to come on the forums more often than the happy ones, and they will post together in such threads to complain.
I'm not saying that everything is fine and that it wouldn't require further studies, but this topic whehe 10 or 20 people complain is clearly not enough to say that there's something wrong. Because these 10 people could very well be among the most unlucky guys in the game. As a general rule, when people have the freedom of speech, they will use it to voice their concerns before saying what's fine for them, if they ever say it.
but i would suggest to take a closer look at the Random Number Generator that STO uses too.
"Random" or "Shuffle" are often just not random enough.
Take a Winamp list of 5000 Songs, always listen to that same playlist in Shuffle mode, after a few weeks/months you will notice that you hear the same few songs over and over again, even in the same order, and notice that other stuff is never played at all.
-> my money is on the RANDOMIZER to be just not *random* enough.
Probably the same reason the DOff Upgrinder spits out more Purple Bartenders, Chefs and Sci Officers (for 5000 dil a pop) than anything.
You forgot something extremely important: the human factor. As a geography teacher myself i'm not completely new to probabilities, but to understand this you often need to get your head out of the %, especially if humans are involved. Here it's not just coins you're flipping in an ideal environment.
This game has 2M players. I'm too lazy to make the math now, but with this amount of players, you'll get obviously a significant amount of unlucky people. These people will tend to come on the forums more often than the happy ones, and they will post together in such threads to complain.
I'm not saying that everything is fine and that it wouldn't require further studies, but this topic whehe 10 or 20 people complain is clearly not enough to say that there's something wrong. Because these 10 people could very well be among the most unlucky guys in the game. As a general rule, when people have the freedom of speech, they will use it to voice their concerns before saying what's fine for them, if they ever say it.
The human factor should not apply here because each event is independent of the other. One console craft = 1 roll one the loot table and my roll does not affect yours. Therefore it is just a "coin-flip". Unless the developers have constructed such a complex loot system where everyone's action affect others. Yes, you can have unlucky "streaks" but the probability of having such an unlucky streak is minuscule in some of those tests. With 300 replicates, the OP's data, if accurate, do not portray a uniform drop-rate.
I make 21 consoles a day across 7 toons. (Toons are purple critical trait, resolve, and engineer 24/51/24)
My console spread purple blue and green right now:
p=210,
b=395,
g=175,1,1,
Taking your information here (and I assume you mean you got 177 green consoles), and applying the same simple analysis as above we would expect your to get:
Purple = 782*0.24 = 187.68
Blue = 782 * 0.51 = 398.82
Green = 782*24 = 187.68
We do a quick test to get a chi-square = 3.299, df = 2, p = 0.1921.
That tells us your observed drops do not significantly differ from your expected drops. Thus, the quality of the console drops is occurring as expected or correctly.
Now if we do a post hoc power analysis (which really should only be done a priori) we find the following power (1-beta) of the test above:
Small Effect Size - Power = 0.850
Medium Effect Size - Power = 1.00
Large Effect Size - Power 1.00
So in this case, the sample size is large enough to determine even a small difference between the distributions.
The human factor isn't, I think, as critical. What are the odds that a player will track the results of every console created? That will seriously reduce the sample pool, and make it unlikely for the player to be an unlucky outlier. And if there are some "unlucky" players, where are the lucky ones? Someone pulling MKXII purple disruptor coils every other console would be crowing about it on the forums! (with STF old-style loot, there were definitely those who were unable to find that last piece, while others found all three in a few STFs)
I am curious how the loot tables are created and handled in the code. Are the consoles listed in alphabetical order? Or in chronological order? Perhaps there is a problem in how loot is generated, and things in certain positions on the list have a skewed probability of dropping; ie rounding or something is causing things later in the list to have a lower chance of dropping. Bort isn't going to share code, but perhaps he could test flipping the order in a way that should not change the results.
Another possibility is how the random number to jump into the list is generated. RNGs are hard to do well, and its possible that someone developed what they thought was a good RNG (hell, could even be a problem in the compiler), but it has some flaw in it causing a skew in the results. It would be interesting to run the same RNG algorithm in a separate environment and histogram the results. Could be that with a small sample size the RNG looks random, but as you run up more samples the RNG starts showing some peaks and valleys in the histogram.
Engineering Consoles (I had to put in an observed probability of 1x10^-8 for the consoles the OP did not obtain)
Effect Size = 1632.99
alpha = 4.36x10^-22
Sample Size = 94
df = 14
Power (1-beta) = 1.000
Tactical Consoles (I had to put in an observed probability of 1x10^-8 for the consoles the OP did not obtain)
Effect Size = 883.88
alpha = 1.69^10-9
Sample Size = 88
df = 15
Power (1-beta) = 1.000
All three tests have sufficient sample sizes to determine the observed effect sizes.
-> my money is on the RANDOMIZER to be just not *random* enough.
If (great big IF) anything is truly amiss with this process, THIS would be the culprit.
All the additional hooplah over "hidden weighting" is, quite frankly, a pile of ... stinky things. The data is, what the data is, and I've already publicly stated exactly what that data is.
So, if (again, this is a hypothetical ONLY) there is anything off-kilter about the overall distribution of rewards from these tables, the only remaining culprit is the core RNG, about which I have approximately zero knowledge or input.
I'll send out a feeler to investigate, though, just for peace of mind. Don't get your hopes up about results, though.
The numbers are what they are, but I think that at least some of the outcry being posted here is largely motivated by an emotional reaction to those figures, due to the effect they have on your in-game currencies (including Time as a more abstract currency).
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
So how the loot roll occurs may be different as well, whether there are 3 rolls - quality, category, console (equals 9 end loot tables per tier) or 2 rolls - quality, console (equals 3 end loot tables per tier). In the prior, each loot table would consist of a quality/category combination, e.g. Uncommon Science Consoles, and in the latter each loot table would consist of just each quality, e.g. all Uncommon Consoles.
For everything to be even, and following the OP's quality proportions we get the following percent chances to get a specific console on a given roll:
For three rolls which would be for the Quality (OP's values), then for the Category (1/3 for Science, Engineering, Tactical), and then for the console (1/10 for science, 1/16 for Engineering, and 1/16 for Tactical), the percent chances of getting a specific console are:
Blue Science - 51.0%*33.3%*10.0% = 1.70%
Blue Engineering - 51.0%*33.3%*6.3% = 1.06%
Blue Tactical - 51.0%*33.3%*6.3% = 1.06%
Green Science - 24.0%*33.3%*10.0% = 0.80%
Green Engineering - 24.0%*33.3%*6.3% = 0.50%
Green Tactical - 24.0%*33.3%*6.3% = 0.50%
For two rolls would be for the Quality (OP's values) and then for the Console (1/42 = 0.024), the percent chances of getting a specific console are:
Purple - 24.0%*2.4% = 0.57%
Blue - 51.0%* 2.4% = 1.21%
Green - 24.0%*2.4% = 0.57%
So out of the 314 consoles the OP obtained there should have been 314*0.005 = 1.57 or 314*0.0057 = 1.79 Very Rare Phaser Relays, SIF Generators, Sensor Probes etc?
There is something wrong with RNG, though it might be a Doff only issue (or was, as I do not have it happen now as often as it used to). If I had a dollar for the number of times I have mass failed or mass critted 4+ Doff assignments in a row (as in a straight line, not 4+ randomly out of 20 total), I might have enough to get all 3 versions of the NW account packs. In the cases of mass failures, I normally had like 1% to 4% chances of failures for each, so having 4 or more in a group of 20 is possible but 4+ in a row would not seem reasonable, especially since it was pretty much daily at one point (or several times a day when I was overdoffing).
_________________________________
Good-bye, DevSlayer title, you will be missed.
Still Waiting on: Archer and the Ultimate Ninja!
Any chance we can finally get the vibro sword laser sword skin? "CO once had devs, but they all fled to STO and NW because they feared Caliga." -matixzon
One of the changes I'd make to the game if I could, would be to split the final console-making assignment into three - one for an attempt at making tactical consoles, one for engineering consoles, and one for science.
This would increase the chance of people getting an console they'd actually use, and far fewer MK XII greens cluttering the exchange.
But what really convinces me is the fact that not only are the tactical energy type consoles low in occurence, but the 2 most popular and expensive ones (phaser relay and AP mag) are the lowest of them all. Same with the Field Gens, Neutroniums and Monotaniums. All the most popular consoles of their type, and all with the lowest occurence. I appreciate Bort taking the time to look into the drop table, but this is an undeniably rigged drop system.
If (great big IF) anything is truly amiss with this process, THIS would be the culprit.
All the additional hooplah over "hidden weighting" is, quite frankly, a pile of ... stinky things. The data is, what the data is, and I've already publicly stated exactly what that data is.
So, if (again, this is a hypothetical ONLY) there is anything off-kilter about the overall distribution of rewards from these tables, the only remaining culprit is the core RNG, about which I have approximately zero knowledge or input.
I'll send out a feeler to investigate, though, just for peace of mind. Don't get your hopes up about results, though.
The numbers are what they are, but I think that at least some of the outcry being posted here is largely motivated by an emotional reaction to those figures, due to the effect they have on your in-game currencies (including Time as a more abstract currency).
This might be crazy..
Could you just Move Mk XII Greens into the crafting system (equal requirements to Mk XI purples or blues or whatever the equivalent in power is) and remove them from the possible options save for some of the more sought after ones?
Add strange artifacts, and powered artifacts to the lockboxs. Not like a large % chance to drop them maybe like 1-2% This would make lockboxes somewhat profitable. The main reason everyone is very emotional over this is that it costs like 1.5 million ec to get a powered artifact off exchange/made and then you end up with a green console to sell for 10,000 ec.
So if there more artifacts on the exchange they would be cheaper and wouldn't be so frustrating when you spend 1.5 million ec to get 10k console. If adding arts to lockbox dropped the average to 500k then it would only be 800k-1million to infuse an artifact and then make a console.
The numbers are what they are, but I think that at least some of the outcry being posted here is largely motivated by an emotional reaction to those figures, due to the effect they have on your in-game currencies (including Time as a more abstract currency).
Given the OP's record keeping and commodoreshrvk's statistical analysis of that data in relation to what should be happening, it seems highly likely there's something beyond just a confirmation bias happening here.
Especially since the rarity numbers appear correct.
I think you guys are just getting screwed by the RNG gods. I've crafted no where near 300 consoles and I've gotten 3 purple phaser relays and 1 disruptor induction coil.
I think you guys are just getting screwed by the RNG gods. I've crafted no where near 300 consoles and I've gotten 3 purple phaser relays and 1 disruptor induction coil.
It is not a question of whether you get consoles you want. It is a question if the consoles are dropping at equal rates like they are supposed to. Which, using the OP's data, they do not.
There is something wrong with RNG, though it might be a Doff only issue (or was, as I do not have it happen now as often as it used to). If I had a dollar for the number of times I have mass failed or mass critted 4+ Doff assignments in a row (as in a straight line, not 4+ randomly out of 20 total), I might have enough to get all 3 versions of the NW account packs. In the cases of mass failures, I normally had like 1% to 4% chances of failures for each, so having 4 or more in a group of 20 is possible but 4+ in a row would not seem reasonable, especially since it was pretty much daily at one point (or several times a day when I was overdoffing).
I'm say the following with a BIG proviso - I'm assuming they are using the server's random number generator and AFAIK, they are using Windows on their game servers. There not any know bias for it. Something that people need to realize, and I really mean REALIZE, that any outcome of a random number generator is possible.
How about some examples, using Cryptic earlier game City of Heroes (COH), for examples? COH had a to hit system based upon the Accuracy of attacker and Defense of the target. The ToHit chance has a floor of 5% and a ceiling of 95%. Which means you always, regardless of anything else, had a 5% chance to hit a target and a 5% chance to miss a target.
Now onto seemingly absurd streaks. How about missing 10 (or more) times in a row? Well I've had on more then one occassion had my combat logs go:
Miss, Hit forced by streak breaker, Miss, Hit forced by streak breaker, Miss, Hit forced by streak breaker, Miss, Hit forced by streak breaker, Miss, Hit forced by streak breaker. That's 10 misses in a row. (I'll explain streak breaker for non-COH alumni later).
Ten misses in a row. The probably of that happening is 0.05 ^ 10 == .000976562 == 0.0976562% Or less than 1 tenth of a percent. And yes I've happen a few times in my years of playing COH. I've had several streaks of 8 and 9 msses in a row. And my record is 13 misses in a row. The chance for 13 misses in row is %0.0122. A hair over one hundredth of one percent.
These long streaks can and do occur. But these are among millions of calls to the random number generator. Any and all sequences of numbers from the RNG are equally probably. And the calls that your character makes to the RNG are among hundreds of calls per second from other processes on the server. Every damage outcome, every loot table drop, ever decision the game AI makes all make uses of the RNG. The number of calls to the RNG between your calls is nearly random as well.
I'm going to give the Cryptic Coders the benefit of the doubt that they haven't done anything stupid in the way implement they random outcome routines. To throw bias in random outcomes, you would have to do something really, really stupid. Calling the RNG is the simplest thing world. (I've been a coder for over 20 years myself.)
The bottom line is that the Random Number Generator is not going to the culprit here unless Cryptic coders are totally incompetent. And my vote on that is going to be NO.
RE: The Streak Breaker in COH. It was a bit of code added to the ToHit determination code. The Streak Breaker would force a Hit if you missed too many times in a row based upon your Chance to Hit. At 95% chance to hit, you were allowed only 1 miss. If you next attack was a missed, Streak Breaker would force a hit. IRRC it was like 19 or 20 misses at a 5% chance to hit.
I guess the reason for the Streak Breaker is because player's hate to miss. Especially missing too many times in a row when you have a high chance to hit. And yes I can affirm that missing 10 times or more in a row when trying to take out a peon would totally suck.
I think you guys are just getting screwed by the RNG gods. I've crafted no where near 300 consoles and I've gotten 3 purple phaser relays and 1 disruptor induction coil.
It is not a question of whether you get consoles you want. It is a question if the consoles are dropping at equal rates like they are supposed to. Which, using the OP's data, they do not.
@jam062307 getting 3 Phaser consoles and 1 Disruptor Console would tend to disprove the theory the RNG is biased. And @commodoreshrvk I would put forth the obseration, you reaction a bit Conformational Bias.. the OP's sample size as other have point out is too small to tell if the RNG is biased or now.
The system folks could very easy do tests using the game engine to prove bias one way or other. Put a huge amount of NPCs on the map, code them to use the DOFF assignment loot tables make them give lots of loot drops using said tables, and use an "I Win Button" ability which kills everything on the map at once, and then collect and analyze the drops. Once a sufficient sample size is achieved (preferably several times) any RNG bias should be obvious.
Comments
You would expect that if all drops have an equal chance, that the results would be about the same number of each console dropping +/- a few. This can be in a category of consoles (Sci, Eng, Tac) or across all 42 consoles.
The observed results on a universe of 300 items shows that it's not distributed evenly, or even close to evenly.
Therefore, you conclude something is off in the probabilities.
That seems pretty clear and compelling.
It seems very improbable that this distribution would occur on 300 runs of the mission, if all consoles have an even chance of dropping.
The suggestion of reviewing the recorded results of the Children's Toys mission drop data seems like a good place to look to dispel the "it's just bad luck of random number generators" theory.
Or maybe Cryptic could run the mission 25,000 times internally or on Tribble and see if the results show a 1/42 drop rate for each console? I'm sure the community would find that data interesting to review.
It sounds like a Beam Fire at Will coding search for the community and the devs to work together on!
I make consoles for ec in this game. Probably not the best choice how it often depends on luck and me not spending more than I make, and not having enough to buy more arts and particles.
I make 21 consoles a day across 7 toons. (Toons are purple critical trait, resolve, and engineer 24/51/24)
My console spread purple blue and green right now:
p=210,
b=395,
g=175,1,1,
I buy 350 particle sets (set= 1 of each of the 10 particles) and buy (350) artifacts to infuse. Sometimes it seems I get lucky and make back what I put in, and then some. Other times I barely break even, and if I spent any of the money I got from consoles I have to buy piecemeal. I really love the times that strange arts cost 400k-700k range but now its 800k and up right now.
I've had similar distribution of consoles as the original OP, where it seems some consoles are spammed through the system. I'm just wondering if the random number generator is spread out over everyone or just for a person. Because if it was just for a person you would probably see a more even distribution of the different consoles.
Also has anyone noticed if certain critical traits gives more of a specific type? Like say cunning trait gives more engineering consoles. I'm probably going to start keeping track to see what I find out.
I agree...especially with resource costs...dilithium is precious as it is...and it could bring them in more money from people buying zen to sell for dilithium.
The green/blue/purple % outcome is approximately correct
The distribution of consoles is heavily weighted, guessing if what is said is true and the weights are equal, there is something else hidden there forcing some consoles to be rarer than they should.
In tactical consoles; vast majority of the time you are getting generic warhead, generic beam, generic cannon, but my TCD and ambiplasma's are way higher. Actual energy consoles are quite rare, and rarer still for purples.
Eng consoles seem to spew out the injector, field emitter and plasma dist consoles like crazy. Armour seems fairly well distributed, even rcs consoles. Personally I've had fewer Neutroniums, but its not statistically telling.
Sci consoles are misleading without actually documenting, because most sci consoles are terrible. But PI, sensors, stealth, and countermeasures pop up over and over, nearly 75% for those four. Only had one field generator but a dozen of each of the above. The semi-useful bunch sits in the middle, the emitters, particle, graviton, etc.
So if the RNG is picking quality/success of the mission, what is being used to pick the specific console? The two can't be tied together.
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Out of all Engineering consoles their are what, 2, that are highly desired? Maybe 2 more that are not total junk.
Science post Embassy is pretty much the same as engineering if not worse.
Tactical though only has 4 junk consoles.
This will make it seem or feel like your getting mostly junk even with purples because most of them are just that. Junk.
Isn't it time to just remove the consoles that serve no real purpose on anyone's ship? Do we really need four +crappy power engineering consoles?
You forgot something extremely important: the human factor. As a geography teacher myself i'm not completely new to probabilities, but to understand this you often need to get your head out of the %, especially if humans are involved. Here it's not just coins you're flipping in an ideal environment.
This game has 2M players. I'm too lazy to make the math now, but with this amount of players, you'll get obviously a significant amount of unlucky people. These people will tend to come on the forums more often than the happy ones, and they will post together in such threads to complain.
I'm not saying that everything is fine and that it wouldn't require further studies, but this topic whehe 10 or 20 people complain is clearly not enough to say that there's something wrong. Because these 10 people could very well be among the most unlucky guys in the game. As a general rule, when people have the freedom of speech, they will use it to voice their concerns before saying what's fine for them, if they ever say it.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
but i would suggest to take a closer look at the Random Number Generator that STO uses too.
"Random" or "Shuffle" are often just not random enough.
Take a Winamp list of 5000 Songs, always listen to that same playlist in Shuffle mode, after a few weeks/months you will notice that you hear the same few songs over and over again, even in the same order, and notice that other stuff is never played at all.
-> my money is on the RANDOMIZER to be just not *random* enough.
Probably the same reason the DOff Upgrinder spits out more Purple Bartenders, Chefs and Sci Officers (for 5000 dil a pop) than anything.
The human factor should not apply here because each event is independent of the other. One console craft = 1 roll one the loot table and my roll does not affect yours. Therefore it is just a "coin-flip". Unless the developers have constructed such a complex loot system where everyone's action affect others. Yes, you can have unlucky "streaks" but the probability of having such an unlucky streak is minuscule in some of those tests. With 300 replicates, the OP's data, if accurate, do not portray a uniform drop-rate.
Taking your information here (and I assume you mean you got 177 green consoles), and applying the same simple analysis as above we would expect your to get:
Purple = 782*0.24 = 187.68
Blue = 782 * 0.51 = 398.82
Green = 782*24 = 187.68
We do a quick test to get a chi-square = 3.299, df = 2, p = 0.1921.
That tells us your observed drops do not significantly differ from your expected drops. Thus, the quality of the console drops is occurring as expected or correctly.
Now if we do a post hoc power analysis (which really should only be done a priori) we find the following power (1-beta) of the test above:
Small Effect Size - Power = 0.850
Medium Effect Size - Power = 1.00
Large Effect Size - Power 1.00
So in this case, the sample size is large enough to determine even a small difference between the distributions.
I am curious how the loot tables are created and handled in the code. Are the consoles listed in alphabetical order? Or in chronological order? Perhaps there is a problem in how loot is generated, and things in certain positions on the list have a skewed probability of dropping; ie rounding or something is causing things later in the list to have a lower chance of dropping. Bort isn't going to share code, but perhaps he could test flipping the order in a way that should not change the results.
Another possibility is how the random number to jump into the list is generated. RNGs are hard to do well, and its possible that someone developed what they thought was a good RNG (hell, could even be a problem in the compiler), but it has some flaw in it causing a skew in the results. It would be interesting to run the same RNG algorithm in a separate environment and histogram the results. Could be that with a small sample size the RNG looks random, but as you run up more samples the RNG starts showing some peaks and valleys in the histogram.
Science Consoles
Effect Size = 1.118
alpha = 0.000213532
Sample Size = 131
df = 9
Power (1-beta) = 1.000
Engineering Consoles (I had to put in an observed probability of 1x10^-8 for the consoles the OP did not obtain)
Effect Size = 1632.99
alpha = 4.36x10^-22
Sample Size = 94
df = 14
Power (1-beta) = 1.000
Tactical Consoles (I had to put in an observed probability of 1x10^-8 for the consoles the OP did not obtain)
Effect Size = 883.88
alpha = 1.69^10-9
Sample Size = 88
df = 15
Power (1-beta) = 1.000
All three tests have sufficient sample sizes to determine the observed effect sizes.
If (great big IF) anything is truly amiss with this process, THIS would be the culprit.
All the additional hooplah over "hidden weighting" is, quite frankly, a pile of ... stinky things. The data is, what the data is, and I've already publicly stated exactly what that data is.
So, if (again, this is a hypothetical ONLY) there is anything off-kilter about the overall distribution of rewards from these tables, the only remaining culprit is the core RNG, about which I have approximately zero knowledge or input.
I'll send out a feeler to investigate, though, just for peace of mind. Don't get your hopes up about results, though.
Before I go, I'll leave you all with one more parting thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
The numbers are what they are, but I think that at least some of the outcry being posted here is largely motivated by an emotional reaction to those figures, due to the effect they have on your in-game currencies (including Time as a more abstract currency).
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
For everything to be even, and following the OP's quality proportions we get the following percent chances to get a specific console on a given roll:
For three rolls which would be for the Quality (OP's values), then for the Category (1/3 for Science, Engineering, Tactical), and then for the console (1/10 for science, 1/16 for Engineering, and 1/16 for Tactical), the percent chances of getting a specific console are:
Purple Science - 24.0%*33.3%*10.0% = 0.80%
Purple Engineering - 24.0%*33.3%*6.3% = 0.50%
Purple Tactical - 24.0%*33.3%*6.3% = 0.50%
Blue Science - 51.0%*33.3%*10.0% = 1.70%
Blue Engineering - 51.0%*33.3%*6.3% = 1.06%
Blue Tactical - 51.0%*33.3%*6.3% = 1.06%
Green Science - 24.0%*33.3%*10.0% = 0.80%
Green Engineering - 24.0%*33.3%*6.3% = 0.50%
Green Tactical - 24.0%*33.3%*6.3% = 0.50%
For two rolls would be for the Quality (OP's values) and then for the Console (1/42 = 0.024), the percent chances of getting a specific console are:
Purple - 24.0%*2.4% = 0.57%
Blue - 51.0%* 2.4% = 1.21%
Green - 24.0%*2.4% = 0.57%
So out of the 314 consoles the OP obtained there should have been 314*0.005 = 1.57 or 314*0.0057 = 1.79 Very Rare Phaser Relays, SIF Generators, Sensor Probes etc?
Good-bye, DevSlayer title, you will be missed.
Still Waiting on: Archer and the Ultimate Ninja!
Any chance we can finally get the vibro sword laser sword skin?
"CO once had devs, but they all fled to STO and NW because they feared Caliga." -matixzon
My character Tsin'xing
This would increase the chance of people getting an console they'd actually use, and far fewer MK XII greens cluttering the exchange.
But what really convinces me is the fact that not only are the tactical energy type consoles low in occurence, but the 2 most popular and expensive ones (phaser relay and AP mag) are the lowest of them all. Same with the Field Gens, Neutroniums and Monotaniums. All the most popular consoles of their type, and all with the lowest occurence. I appreciate Bort taking the time to look into the drop table, but this is an undeniably rigged drop system.
This might be crazy..
Could you just Move Mk XII Greens into the crafting system (equal requirements to Mk XI purples or blues or whatever the equivalent in power is) and remove them from the possible options save for some of the more sought after ones?
Add strange artifacts, and powered artifacts to the lockboxs. Not like a large % chance to drop them maybe like 1-2% This would make lockboxes somewhat profitable. The main reason everyone is very emotional over this is that it costs like 1.5 million ec to get a powered artifact off exchange/made and then you end up with a green console to sell for 10,000 ec.
So if there more artifacts on the exchange they would be cheaper and wouldn't be so frustrating when you spend 1.5 million ec to get 10k console. If adding arts to lockbox dropped the average to 500k then it would only be 800k-1million to infuse an artifact and then make a console.
Please add artifacts to lockboxes!
I would put the links myself, but got enough warnings already
Especially since the rarity numbers appear correct.
It is not a question of whether you get consoles you want. It is a question if the consoles are dropping at equal rates like they are supposed to. Which, using the OP's data, they do not.
I'm say the following with a BIG proviso - I'm assuming they are using the server's random number generator and AFAIK, they are using Windows on their game servers. There not any know bias for it. Something that people need to realize, and I really mean REALIZE, that any outcome of a random number generator is possible.
How about some examples, using Cryptic earlier game City of Heroes (COH), for examples? COH had a to hit system based upon the Accuracy of attacker and Defense of the target. The ToHit chance has a floor of 5% and a ceiling of 95%. Which means you always, regardless of anything else, had a 5% chance to hit a target and a 5% chance to miss a target.
Now onto seemingly absurd streaks. How about missing 10 (or more) times in a row? Well I've had on more then one occassion had my combat logs go:
Miss, Hit forced by streak breaker, Miss, Hit forced by streak breaker, Miss, Hit forced by streak breaker, Miss, Hit forced by streak breaker, Miss, Hit forced by streak breaker. That's 10 misses in a row. (I'll explain streak breaker for non-COH alumni later).
Ten misses in a row. The probably of that happening is 0.05 ^ 10 == .000976562 == 0.0976562% Or less than 1 tenth of a percent. And yes I've happen a few times in my years of playing COH. I've had several streaks of 8 and 9 msses in a row. And my record is 13 misses in a row. The chance for 13 misses in row is %0.0122. A hair over one hundredth of one percent.
These long streaks can and do occur. But these are among millions of calls to the random number generator. Any and all sequences of numbers from the RNG are equally probably. And the calls that your character makes to the RNG are among hundreds of calls per second from other processes on the server. Every damage outcome, every loot table drop, ever decision the game AI makes all make uses of the RNG. The number of calls to the RNG between your calls is nearly random as well.
I'm going to give the Cryptic Coders the benefit of the doubt that they haven't done anything stupid in the way implement they random outcome routines. To throw bias in random outcomes, you would have to do something really, really stupid. Calling the RNG is the simplest thing world. (I've been a coder for over 20 years myself.)
The bottom line is that the Random Number Generator is not going to the culprit here unless Cryptic coders are totally incompetent. And my vote on that is going to be NO.
RE: The Streak Breaker in COH. It was a bit of code added to the ToHit determination code. The Streak Breaker would force a Hit if you missed too many times in a row based upon your Chance to Hit. At 95% chance to hit, you were allowed only 1 miss. If you next attack was a missed, Streak Breaker would force a hit. IRRC it was like 19 or 20 misses at a 5% chance to hit.
I guess the reason for the Streak Breaker is because player's hate to miss. Especially missing too many times in a row when you have a high chance to hit. And yes I can affirm that missing 10 times or more in a row when trying to take out a peon would totally suck.
I gave up after that, on the rare chance I come across a PA I exchange it.
@jam062307 getting 3 Phaser consoles and 1 Disruptor Console would tend to disprove the theory the RNG is biased. And @commodoreshrvk I would put forth the obseration, you reaction a bit Conformational Bias.. the OP's sample size as other have point out is too small to tell if the RNG is biased or now.
The system folks could very easy do tests using the game engine to prove bias one way or other. Put a huge amount of NPCs on the map, code them to use the DOFF assignment loot tables make them give lots of loot drops using said tables, and use an "I Win Button" ability which kills everything on the map at once, and then collect and analyze the drops. Once a sufficient sample size is achieved (preferably several times) any RNG bias should be obvious.