In terms of things like motes from world mobs, it is at least possible that the drop rate is not entirely fixed. It is at least possible that it varies by time of day/zone crowding/whatever as a way to control the influx of commodity motes into the economy. Mobs spawn faster when an area is crowded, right?
It could also be possible that rather than a "one random item from pool A, one random item from pool B", for some technical reason it instead chooses from predefined "sets" of loot - so rather than a 1/3rd chance of each token, there is instead a 1/9 chance of each unique ordered token pair. If these tables are done by hand, it is at least _possible_ than some item combinations might be more likely or others impossible. It would be interesting to do an analysis of dkp sites keeping track of the loot combinations rather than individual loot.
And for everyone who says that it's not possible, why wouldn't they just use a simpler more reliable method, there's always the ridiculous wi flag story as proof that these things can happen in the morass that is MMO code.
No contrast there -- those could both be consistent with a "loot determined upon spawn" theory.
The nice thing about theories is that the are TESTABLE. If you find just one instance where the theory is false, then the theory is false, period. Of course, you can't prove a theory is true, but the fact that Emeraude's example yielded a result inconsistent with theory is enough for us to chuck that theory out the window.
If it is based on time --- 7:00 PM Wednesday is different from 7:00 PM Thursday.
However, I certainly don't think anyone here would conjecture that if 2 raid groups zone in in the exact same minute that all of their loot would be the same - that's much too large a window. It would be much more appropriate to use the milliseconds in the timestamp.
I'm perfectly willing to admit that I am pattern matching, or whatever the term is called.
With that said though, I think it would be nice if a different loot system was put in to place.
Loot is obviously streaky. I'm sure the reason will never be fully known to us because we don't have access to the code, so whatever.
The problem I see is that from a player perspective, it is a problem when certain drops simply do not drop. I realize the world is not perfect, but it would be nice to at least see some sort of effort to try and distribute loot a little more fair.
Killing gruul for 4 months and never seeing a shield was infuriating to say the least. After seeing 1 talon of azshara off tidewalker 4 months ago, we didn't see our 2nd until last week.
On the other hand, this has worked to our advantage on some items. We have 5 or 6 DSTs in guild, we've had close to 10 tsunamis drop (3 of which were destroyed because they dropped pre 2.1 patch and it was complete shit back then).
But honestly I would gladly trade the "good" for "equal distribution".
It would be interesting if they could make a raid ID last a little longer, such as 3-4 weeks. And instead of resetting the ID at the end of the week, new bosses spawn with different loot, as it would be able to track what has dropped for the last week, etc.
Obviously something would need to be figured out with locking yourself to a Raid ID, but I'm sure something could be figured out.
"Loot is obviously streaky. I'm sure the reason will never be fully known to us ..."
And I want to belabor this point because somehow this thead is losing it to the "pattern maching" or whatever you wish to call it.
The above poster correctly noted, the quest item example. If chance of item drop = 1/10 there is a 1 in 200 chances you will have to kill 50 mobs to get the item.
Somehow people fail to grasp what this tells you: Loot is streaky if it is based on a simple random number generator. And the RNG has no memory whatsoever of what your individual character did before, let alone your raid.
Example: Eye of Shadow used to be farmed on first demon kill or 100th by people.
Example: You get 5 Dragonspines and 10 Tsunamis, but just 2 Talons (nevermind that 2 Talon's in 4 months is almost certainly within a standard deviation of the precisely "predicted" number of Talons)
Example: Insert whatever drop item you want.
If an item has a 15% drop -- as a lot of these boss loots probably do given the loot pools -- there is approximately a 20% chance you won't see it in 10 kills. Pause on that for a second. You know it's 1 of 6 drops but in 10 kills you have a *reasonable* chance of not seeing it.
If it's the desired item off a boss, your raid will have several people go apoplectic over the lack of drop, despite the relatively unexceptional event.
Oh, and the Raid ID is fairly certainly not the seed for the RNG. You don't want to hand someone information they can back engineer into any sort of data. I'm fairly certain it's milliseconds on a server clock somewhere which does a fantastic job of approximating random, especially for purposes as simplistic as randomizing this tiny number of items without producing a pattern.
People still believe -- not saying any of you do -- that picking their own lottery numbers gives them a better chance of winning than a quick pick (machine generated one). This is obvious false.
World drops, and rare resources do come from a pool that is refilled at a certain rate. This controls the rate at which certain tradeskill items can enter the economy. This way, you can't simply have a ton of enterprising farmers hit every node possible and throw things out of whack. The most obvious example of this way back in the day was Arcane Crystals. The rate at which you would find crystals right after a server restart was much higher than usual. It is the basic token bucket idea that is used by many routers for flow control/packet shaping.
If it is based on time --- 7:00 PM Wednesday is different from 7:00 PM Thursday.
Yes, but it's the same raid ID.
The theories I've read on loot seed being determined by time say that the seeding occurs when the first person enters the instance. If that were true, the loot Aran drops wouldn't vary whether you killed him two hours later or two days later.
The fact that we killed Aran twice in the same raid ID and got two different lots of loot proves this theory is false.
Now, if you want to suggest that the RNG is seeded by the time the monster spawns -- that's a definite possibility, and consistant with what happened here. But it goes against the general wisdom (or perhaps "wisdom") that the loot seed for an entire instance is set at the start.
Long time ago, around 2 years or so, in MC we killed golemagg and looted him, only to have server crash and rollback for around 15mins. When we came back online, golemagg was alive again and loots have disappeared. We killed him again, and surprise, got exactly same loot. Of course it might have been coincidence, but seemed little too good to be such.
That would speak on behalf that loots are predetermined by something.
I had a very similar experience. My guild was just about to down Sulfuron when we got the "Server Restart in 10:00 minutes" message. We downed Sulfy and looted him before the restart. When the server came online again, the server had been rolled back and Sulfuron and all his trash was back. The trash would seem to indicate that a soft reset had occurred and that the raid was loaded from it's last "saved" point (the previous boss kill).
We got the same exact loot after killing him again.
While this seems to indicate that loot is generated when a boss is first spawned, I would in no way assume it is indicative of how every mob loot table in the game works. As many people have mentioned, the Blasted Lands mobs clearly seem to have loot determined on spawn and not death, while Aran seems to not. Two points that come to mind are:
- Not all mob loot tables necessarily function in the same way. The Blasted Lands mob seems to be a fairly unique situation, and not one I would perhaps use to extrapolate how loot is handled game-wide.
- Loot generation does not necessarily occur exactly the same way it does now as it did in 1.0.
With all the changes to "under the hood" mechanics (sound, UI/LUA, etc) I would not be surprised if BC instances function differently than the original (or even current) MC.
Also, please let me add my voice to the chorus that would discourage people from drawing any conclusions based on "streaky" loot they've noticed in their guild. If every guild in the game had a fairly well-balanced distribution of loot and rarely saw the same drops several weeks in a row, only THEN would we know for sure that the loot generation was not random.
- Not all mob loot tables necessarily function in the same way. The Blasted Lands mob seems to be a fairly unique situation, and not one I would perhaps use to extrapolate how loot is handled game-wide.
All loot is handled the same way, game-wide.
Originally Posted by Lookit
As many people have mentioned, the Blasted Lands mobs clearly seem to have loot determined on spawn and not death, while Aran seems to not.
All signs point to Aran having his loot determined at spawn. He was soft reset after he was dead, so therefor it had to be a new spawn, with new loot.
Originally Posted by Lookit
- Loot generation does not necessarily occur exactly the same way it does now as it did in 1.0.
With all the changes to "under the hood" mechanics (sound, UI/LUA, etc) I would not be surprised if BC instances function differently than the original (or even current) MC.
It has always been and probably always will be the same as it was in Diablo II. It's an incredibly fast and versatile system, you can literally make loot table rules anything you can imagine.
- Not all mob loot tables necessarily function in the same way. The Blasted Lands mob seems to be a fairly unique situation, and not one I would perhaps use to extrapolate how loot is handled game-wide.
I'm pretty sure the Blasted Lands mob have no different loot table functionality. The fact that they show (or showed, I don't know if it's still the case, it's been a long while since I was last there seeing it for myself) the weapon they are going to drop is pretty much certain only a flag on them, just as the "elite" status is a flag or some of their switchable behavior.
- Loot generation does not necessarily occur exactly the same way it does now as it did in 1.0.
There's no reason not to use the same system. There is a subtle difference though. Back in the old raidinstances, Bossmobs generally did reset/evade back when you wiped. In TBC it seems that almost every boss if not every single one despawns instead and then respawns. This may have been done in order to ensure that the boss-scripts do reset properly and there isn't leaking state or some missing cleanup with messy effects (happened every now and then and still does sometimes). Now if loot is determined on spawn, which it is, respawning a boss does reset his loot, evading him back to start does not.
So if you one hit everything, you get the loot determined on instance creation. If you don't, you don't. In pre-TBC it didn't matter, as bosses were rarely de/respawned. In TBC, about every mob despawns on wipe. And Hyjal is different as it spawns bosses and waves in after instance creation.
And as a response to a point made further up: The raidID you are bound to and is displayed in the raidtab is related to the raidgroup (raidleader?) and not time or anything else. If you don't believe this, go kill Gruul, then go kill Magtheridon with the same group and then look what it displays (you should have the same ID for both instances). You can also have the same raid ID week for week, however, the raid ID is not the seed, or at most only a part of it, as it certainly does not cause that you get the same drop every week with the same ID.
I
And as a response to a point made further up: The raidID you are bound to and is displayed in the raidtab is related to the raidgroup (raidleader?) and not time or anything else. If you don't believe this, go kill Gruul, then go kill Magtheridon with the same group and then look what it displays (you should have the same ID for both instances). You can also have the same raid ID week for week, however, the raid ID is not the seed, or at most only a part of it, as it certainly does not cause that you get the same drop every week with the same ID.
Don't mix up the two !
If I'd have to write some kinda mechanism for determining random loot for mobs, I'd most likely go with some rand and use unix time plus maybe some other info like raidid/realm name. Tho just unix time guarantees "enough" random loot. Also predetermined loot at spawn seems most likely. I'm sure that there are many raid groups which have killed same boss twice due to server crash, even if one of them has gotten different loot, it will debunk this theory.
If every guild in the game had a fairly well-balanced distribution of loot and rarely saw the same drops several weeks in a row, only THEN would we know for sure that the loot generation was not random.
No we wouldn't, because that could still be random. If I rolled a dice and got sixes a thousand times in a row, I would suspect the dice of being loaded, but they might not be. Similarly, if I rolled a dice and managed to get perfectly even distributions of all the numbers, it could still be random. I wouldn't know. That's how randomness works.
There's no reason not to use the same system. There is a subtle difference though. Back in the old raidinstances, Bossmobs generally did reset/evade back when you wiped. In TBC it seems that almost every boss if not every single one despawns instead and then respawns. This may have been done in order to ensure that the boss-scripts do reset properly and there isn't leaking state or some missing cleanup with messy effects (happened every now and then and still does sometimes). Now if loot is determined on spawn, which it is, respawning a boss does reset his loot, evading him back to start does not.
Are you sure about this? I can think of plenty of bosses that run back when wiping instead of despawning (TBC).
Are you sure about this? I can think of plenty of bosses that run back when wiping instead of despawning (TBC).
Hm out of those I wiped to recently I only remember Teron and Bloodboil running back. The Akama event certainly resets completely, not sure really if Naj'entus just runs back or not.
Hyjal is clear, everything spawns/despawns there. If you're fast (well ok, medium fast) at Archimonde, you can be at your buffspot before he reappears.
In TK I believe everything respawns except Voidreaver. Might be wrong on Solarian though.
In SSC Lurker is a no-brainer, Hydross respawns, Leotheras, hm not sure anymore, would say he respawns as well. Don't know anymore about FLK and Karatress.
Well I'm not really that sure about most anymore, but you're right, there's quite a lot more that do not respawn than I thought.
In SSC Lurker is a no-brainer, Hydross respawns, Leotheras, hm not sure anymore, would say he respawns as well. Don't know anymore about FLK and Karatress.
Leotheras respawns with the channelers. Fathom-Lord Karathress runs back, but his adds despawn. Tidewalker runs back, but the Murlocs don't reset until everyone is dead/feigned, in which case they despawn.
Hm out of those I wiped to recently I only remember Teron and Bloodboil running back. The Akama event certainly resets completely, not sure really if Naj'entus just runs back or not.
Hyjal is clear, everything spawns/despawns there. If you're fast (well ok, medium fast) at Archimonde, you can be at your buffspot before he reappears.
In TK I believe everything respawns except Voidreaver. Might be wrong on Solarian though.
In SSC Lurker is a no-brainer, Hydross respawns, Leotheras, hm not sure anymore, would say he respawns as well. Don't know anymore about FLK and Karatress.
Well I'm not really that sure about most anymore, but you're right, there's quite a lot more that do not respawn than I thought.
I'm fairly certain hydross does *not* respawn. He goes back to his spawn and his adds despawn.
Same with Leo. He runs back to his spot and the channelers repop and he goes back into "stasis."
'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.
I'm pretty sure the Blasted Lands mob have no different loot table functionality. The fact that they show (or showed, I don't know if it's still the case, it's been a long while since I was last there seeing it for myself) the weapon they are going to drop is pretty much certain only a flag on them, just as the "elite" status is a flag or some of their switchable behavior.
There's an even simpler explaination: they're just different mobs that share a spawn point and are identical in every way other than thier model and thier loot table.
As a more general question about the topic as a whole: Is there a good reason to have unpredictable, random loot at all in a competitive MMO with so many players and a widely variant "need" for certain sorts of items between multiple classes? Is there an aspect to it that can't be better solved by another means?
I try to think of randomness in other games, and it all has a point. If you look at, say, the damage range of an RTS unit, the randomness is there because a range of damage is easier to rebalance for a wider variety of situations than a constant, set, one-number unit, so it has a purpose. If you look at the random distribution of the shots from a hitscan weapon in a shooter game, it encourages better skill with weapon control overall, even if it does make certain encounters totally luck-based.
I can't make out any similar useful goal for random loot, though. Even if you just want to keep people playing, its still not the best solution you could come up, because true randomness means some people will benefit a lot more frequently too. Some guilds will get everything they want for the first five, or ten, kills in a row, and that certainly doesn't help retain their longevity as subscribers.
I'd say it adds suspense, to a certain point. If you know what you're getting no one's too excited about it one way or another, though the recipients may very well be pleased. But you wouldn't get everyone crowding around a corpse waiting for the ML to get rezzed and excitedly speculating about what *might* be on there.
The flip side to this is of course the irritation that people feel when a boss drops loots that were not what was desired by anyone. I would say a combination of guaranteed loots and randomness is optimal. See: the low number of people complaining after you drop Void Reaver, Kael, Vashj etc.
No we wouldn't, because that could still be random. If I rolled a dice and got sixes a thousand times in a row, I would suspect the dice of being loaded, but they might not be. Similarly, if I rolled a dice and managed to get perfectly even distributions of all the numbers, it could still be random. I wouldn't know. That's how randomness works.
If you roll the dice and get sixes a thousand times in a row, they might not be loaded.
But odds are that they are.
That's also how randomness works if a system isn't guaranteed to be random.
If you roll a die 6 times and get one of each number, that's a reasonable result for a random die.
If a hundred thousand people roll that same die 6 times, and get one of each number, something is probably cooked. Yes, it *could* be random, but the less entropy your results contain, the less likely it is that your result is random.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
On a general note, if you want to know how WoW's item generation and loot tables work, I'd suggest you start with Diablo II.
But the Diablo II loot system was quite predictable at least in single player. It was simply based on the mobs position when it died.
As for WoW's loot table for outdoor zones I have long been convinced it gives a bonus to people as they enter new zones. So many times i have taken alts to a zone they have never been to before and got 2-3 greens in the first few kills or even a blue. You get mostly silk of mobs that should drop mostly wool etc.
Even recently I needed large quantitiies of thick leather to level LW on alt. So after a moments thought I headed to to Azshara, large quantities of level 45 or so neutral deer. First deer I got skinned for Rugged leather, I killed 5 more deer and got rugged leather from them all. I checked wowhead. 75% thick leather 25% rugged leather according to them. After 9 kills I got my first Thick leather. By the time I had filled 2 bags with meat/greys/leather I had more thick leather then rugged. Oh and I got a boe blue from the 3rd mob.
[quote=Ngita;514797]But the Diablo II loot system was quite predictable at least in single player. It was simply based on the mobs position when it died.[quote]
Not even close. Did you even play the game, let alone write mods and loot tables for it? It's determined at spawn based on a cascading decision tree.
The flip side to this is of course the irritation that people feel when a boss drops loots that were not what was desired by anyone. I would say a combination of guaranteed loots and randomness is optimal. See: the low number of people complaining after you drop Void Reaver, Kael, Vashj etc.
I believe that we've gotten Talon of Al'ar on every kill - multiple months and it has dropped every time. Seeing garbage like that, or like the PvP rings from SSC/TK, drop instead of real loot is disheartening.
The loot tables almost certainly could use some serious revamping by this point. With PvP and now heroic badges providing literally pick and choose loot, there's no excuse for every single PvE item being completely random. Sure, keep things like the Warglaives on a drop system, but the fact that we've gotten four pieces of tank loot and shard/offspec 30%+ of our loot from SSC/TK points to something being wrong. (For that matter, I'm still using a blue necklace that I got on the ring where I dinged exalted with Cenarion Expedition because in my ridiculous number of maiden kills, I have never seen the necklace.)
Some things belong on RNG, other things do not, and right now we have entirely too much that does not belong on the RNG being rolled on.
We've gotten Talon from Al'ar way to many times now :| I do though think that the loot-distribution is completely random and that we will never discover the so called "seed". With tier-drops we've seen some nice congestion at times but then suddenly a swap, it happens. I'm well happy we got like 2 hero tokens on Vashj like three times in a month or something =) Only thing I'd wish for was generally an increase in item-drops from Bosses because we've only seen one Vestments of the sea-witch which I was lucky enough to pike.
10/15/07, 3:05 PM
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