Hey all,

Our standard group has been running hardmodes for the last 2 weeks. It's typically a guardian tank, sage healer, commando dps, and sentinel dps. We are seeing next to zero variance in drops when running with this premade group.

The couple times we have swapped out a member or two, is the only time we've seen different drops.

Take False Emperor for example. We've run it 13 times and seen the smuggler jacket 11 of those times. Twice it's been the Trooper jacket and those 2 times we had swapped out members.

Are other premade groups seeing this? Don't bother telling me random is random. I know how streaks are possible, but I'd love to know if other people that run with the SAME GROUP are seeing very little variance in drops.

Cheers!

Not to debunk your theory, but I run with a premade guild group and we've gotten loot variations on several repeat runs.

However on a slightly related topic, we spent... hours in The False Emp. last night on HM and were all quite upset when boss dropped BH chest - the only thing we couldn't use!

;(

So you don't want people telling you how it works? Too bad. RNG is RNG. You just got unlucky.

11 out of 13 runs is not just unlucky.. It's ridiculously unlucky. If the system is using something static to set the seed, or we are somehow getting the same "random" seed, it's not going to be random loot.

It's not just false emp... If we use the same 4 guys, we seems to get nearly identical loot from most bosses. We're talking 2-3 hard modes a day.

It's pretty easy to say RNG is RNG when you don't do the math. We're talking a 1 in hundreds of thousands of chance to see 11 out of 13 be the same. Hell, we might be into the millions by now.

Not to debunk your theory, but I run with a premade guild group and we've gotten loot variations on several repeat runs.

 

However on a slightly related topic, we spent... hours in The False Emp. last night on HM and were all quite upset when boss dropped BH chest - the only thing we couldn't use!

 

;(

I'm talking about hard modes specifically. While gearing up, it's quite obvious there is weighting put in place for loot that is usable to drop. Take that exact same group into False Emp for the next 2 weeks and see what you find.

I have seen the same thing. I (Sniper) run with two friends, a Powertech tank and a Juggernaut DPS. We then pick up a healer, which is always a Sorcerer. Every time we run any flashpoint, HM or not, about 75% of the drops will be Sith Inquisitor gear. We have done dozens of runs and it's always the same thing.

Thanks for the input. Specifically hardmodes, last boss for the Columi token. Are you seeing any significant variance there? Or is it 11 of one thing and maybe 2 of some other?

I'm seeing a decent variance. Running with the same group 4 nights in a row on false emperor gave us: trooper, smuggler, smuggler, knight.

Only real thing that was the same is that Taral V gave us trooper gloves 3 times in a row (lucky me).

I'm seeing a decent variance. Running with the same group 4 nights in a row on false emperor gave us: trooper, smuggler, smuggler, knight.

 

Only real thing that was the same is that Taral V gave us trooper gloves 3 times in a row (lucky me).

Thanks! What clases are your premade? I'm just trying to find some common ground here.

If you keep running with the same group for the next week, keep me informed of how it's going.

Thanks! What clases are your premade? I'm just trying to find some common ground here.

 

If you keep running with the same group for the next week, keep me informed of how it's going.

Guardian (Tank), Sage (healer), Trooper (DPS), and Scoundrel (DPS).

Having the same problem, im a DPS commando who runs with a Guardian tank, Sage healer and gunslinger DPS. Weve done the new flashpoints KuS 5 times now. Weve had 4 Jedi Knight helmets, 3 Smuggler and 3 JC...and no Trooper loot.

Infact, done about 20+ flashpoints now and ive only had 2 pieces

Having the same problem, im a DPS commando who runs with a Guardian tank, Sage healer and gunslinger DPS. Weve done the new flashpoints KuS 5 times now. Weve had 4 Jedi Knight helmets, 3 Smuggler and 3 JC...and no Trooper loot.

 

Infact, done about 20+ flashpoints now and ive only had 2 pieces

We saw the exact same hat from the bonus every time, and the same hat from the last boss.. Knight from bonus, consular from last boss every time.

Looks like you at least broke that streak.

I'm seeing the same problems as the OP, we run a group of:

Jedi Knight Guardian - Tank

Jedi Knight Sentinel - DPS

Jedi Consular Sage - DPS

Smuggler Scoundrel - Heals

It seems basically guaranteed that this class makeup will drop a trooper chestpiece in False Emperor HM. It's long been a 'hunch' of mine that the randomness is not really random (but rather seeded via group makeup), but at this point I feel it's a reality, and not just a string of occurances that appears like coincidence.

jugg tank, sorc healer, *** dps, op dps

Bountyhunter loot drops almost every boss. We'll get 2 usable drops and the rest have aim stats. We stopped running HM Flashpoints. 8man normal Ops are easier and drop better stuff.

11 out of 13 runs is not just unlucky.. It's ridiculously unlucky. If the system is using something static to set the seed, or we are somehow getting the same "random" seed, it's not going to be random loot.

 

It's not just false emp... If we use the same 4 guys, we seems to get nearly identical loot from most bosses. We're talking 2-3 hard modes a day.

 

It's pretty easy to say RNG is RNG when you don't do the math. We're talking a 1 in hundreds of thousands of chance to see 11 out of 13 be the same. Hell, we might be into the millions by now.

Someone doesn't understand how random works.

Someone doesn't understand how random works.

Someone doesn't understand how probability works.

Go ahead and tell me we have a 25% chance to see a particular drop every time and that 11 out of 13 being the same is perfectly expected.

Yes, it is POSSIBLE, it is just EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY unlikely to not see variance, even over a small sample.

It's like flipping a coin 20 times and getting heads 19 of those times. Yes, it might happen but it's more likely you'll celebrate a birthday while trying to get it to happen in practice.

Someone doesn't understand how probability works.

I do, actually.

I'll give you that 11 out of 13 drops being one token isn't probable but it also isn't unlikely in the context of a random generator. You only have a case where you can prove it is mathematically impossible to yield 11 out of 13 being one drop.

Someone doesn't understand how probability works.

 

Someone doesn't understand how software RNGs work. There's nothing actually RANDOM about it, but rather a man-made list of numbers, that is then seeded by something (in many cases the current number of milliseconds on the server clock), and then it does a modulus division by the range (divides by upper limit, and takes the remainder).

How Bioware is doing the RNG seeding is what we are questioning, but many people seem to think it has something to do with the classes in group creation.

I do, actually.

 

I'll give you that 11 out of 13 drops being one token isn't probable but it also isn't unlikely in the context of a random generator. You only have a case where you can prove it is mathematically impossible to yield 11 out of 13 being one drop.

Agreed. But when we can predict the loot that each boss is going to drop based on the people we bring, something is wrong.

When changing out 2 people in our group is the only way to get different loot, something is wrong.

If you look though this and the other thread on the first page, it's obvious that groups that are always the same makeup tend to see the same drops an abnormal amount of time.

Someone doesn't understand how software RNGs work. There's nothing actually RANDOM about it, but rather a man-made list of numbers, that is then seeded by something (in many cases the current number of milliseconds on the server clock), and then it does a modulus division by the range (divides by upper limit, and takes the remainder).

 

How Bioware is doing the RNG seeding is what we are questioning, but many people seem to think it has something to do with the classes in group creation.

Yes, that is what I am getting at, something seems out of whack in whatever is seeding the random.

I don't think it has anything to do with the classes per say.. Just that our standard group of players is seeing very predictable loot. Like they are assigning a number to each letter in the alphabet, adding up all the letters in the names of the characters or something that can be made static by running with the same crew.

Yeah sorry I meant to quote Mavery above, I agree with your conclusion.

I figured as much.

Dave keeps giving me more work.

I'll give you that 11 out of 13 drops being one token isn't probable but it also isn't unlikely in the context of a random generator. You only have a case where you can prove it is mathematically impossible to yield 11 out of 13 being one drop.

Let's say I gave you a function. I claim it randomly returns the values {1, 2, 3, 4} each with equal probabilities. I implement this function to always return 2, but you don't know that.

How many draws do you need to suspect this function isn't behaving as advertised? How many do you need to prove it is mathematically impossible for the function to behave as advertised?

If you're going for a 95% confidence, you only requires 5 draws. A 99% confidence only requires 7. To prove it's mathematically impossible you need infinitely many -- something that's not physically possible.

Are you going to conclude it must be implemented correctly, because a never ending sequence of 2's is mathematically possible based on how I described a function? No -- that's silly, but it's exactly what you're doing here.

Here's a thread where I posted our experiences and associated probabilities from a few days ago :

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2001546#post2001546

Since then we re-ran False Emp and got another smuggler jacket (which is what prompted Dave's post), and Battle for Ilum (with a slightly different group) and got the Sage off-hand.

Claiming this is "not probable" undermines just how unlikely this is, given actual randomness. Seeing this much consistency in drops across multiple flashpoints is less than a 1 in 2.5 million shot. Another way of putting it is, if every single person who purchased the game ran exactly this sequence of hardmode flashpoints, the expected number of times you'd see a sequence this probable (or worse) is less than 0.02.

In other words, you have about a 1 in 50 shot of seeing one individual encounter a sequence like this if all 2 million people who purchased SWTOR ran the same number of hm flashpoints as we have. It's also worth noting this estimate is going to be fairly high, since the game hasn't seen 2 million sales yet, and every single person most certainly isn't running hm fp's as frequently as we are.

The purpose of this thread is just raising the question -- are other people seeing the same behavior we are? Seems like some are, and some aren't. The fact that others seem to be is an indicator that something might be off with the loot system's function, given how unlikely it is to even see it once.

As was mentioned earlier in this thread -- outside of one specific device, there's no true "random" on computers. Pseudo-random number generators are simply recurrence relations that share a set of specific properties with truly random streams. This makes them incredibly difficult to test, and very error prone implementations if you're not extremely careful.

Something as simple as seeding the rng with a value that's static relative to the group would give it good behavior relative to the most commonly investigated tests (specifically, repeatedly querying a loot table to verify drops and looking at drop rates across the entire population), but cause exactly this sort of non-random behavior when faced with a static group who runs a few hm's at the same time every night. Using a rng that has poor uniformity at the bit-level can also cause significant swings in the probability of even & odd numbers occurring when used with standard binary encoding that could cause problems depending on if a (0,1) normalization or a modulus is used to bound the results.

What I'm getting at is, just because you're told it's random doesn't mean you should blindly believe it just because a sequence is possible. If it's claimed to be random and then behaves significantly differently from the supposed distributions & probabilities, then something else might be up.

Now, just to be clear -- we've tried the basic things. We've varied the time we enter the instance (but not much the time we assemble the group), who assembles the group, who loots the container, and who is the "owner"/"leader" of the story-mode. The token drops didn't seem to change. Also, while we haven't sufficiently documented the purple drops leading up to the token, we do notice they tend to be the same 1-3 drops from every boss, and (I believe) we do see completely new stuff when running with very different groups.

So basically, you guys won the loot lottery!

Just not in the way you would want.

Roughnesssssssss. However I would say that possibly, they could have a system attempting to tailor the gear and it is just misbehaving(misinterpreting the group makeup).

I mean HM Ops are dropping no gear at all so really it's not out of the realm of possibility. Certainly they have some bugs to clean up in their loot system and it's behavior.