Bag 80+ BM

[Masahiko]

Should, there anomalies but 25% by its very nature its 1 in 4.

 

My first 3 bags had tokens so someone else went at least 12 with none.

 

remember 25% game wide not account wide.

 

I wouldn't believe for a second that 25% is game wide. If you have that dev post please link. There is a great post above that shows the random but it still comes back to the definition i posted. The Devs made the choice to make it a low chance drop in the bags as a bonus. The real items from the bag are the currency. However, players dont see it that way. They see the item as the main focus of the bag and the currency as means to an end. If we just had the currency there would be no complaints (other than it maybe takes to long).

Edited February 17, 2012 by Masahiko

[Greennunu]

So you can get 16 bags a week. 80/16 = 5 weeks. 7 days a week x5 = 35 days. So you started getting bags on 1/13. But the bag change patch was only 2-3 weeks ago. Why are you using a number prior to the date of the patch and expecting it to be 25%? So if you math it out. According to your numbers it is 13.7% Now cut off the bags you got prior to the patch and you are probably sitting at 25%. Working as intended?

 

Pretty sure most people missed this in the heat of the arguement, the OP is just trying to start crap, it's impossible to get 80+ bags since the change was implemented. But in good faith he corrected the OP and readjusted the dates and bags that could have been opened and the math did work out to be 25% or so abouts.

[XenonParsec]

New BM here, out of 8 bags, 3 comms.

 

Hope no one is upset.

[Masahiko]

Sometimes very few (3-4 no comms) and sometimes a lot (12-14 no comms) drop. However, the odds increase incrementally. Unlucky is one thing, to hit astronomical odds is another especially when others are hitting it also.

 

http://www.random.org/analysis/dilbert.jpg

 

Just saying...

[MPagano]

That is not what Gabe said. He clearly stated that each bag has a 25% chance, not some average in totals.

 

"each bag has a 25% chance" literally means that if you open infinity bags, you will have a BM comm in 25% of them. It does not mean that 1 out of every 4 bags contains a commendation. What Gabe said is statistically accurate.

 

Before people start freaking out about this stuff, please at least try and educate yourself on statistical definitions. You can flip a coin 100,000 times and receive 75,000 heads and the coin will still have a 50% chance to land on tails each flip.

 

Probability is the idea that each time you perform the event (coin flip, open bag, etc.) the likelihood of a certain outcome can be characterized by a number between 0 and 1. Just because you don't experience that outcome after X attempts doesn't have any impact on the fact that there's still that chance next time. And if you take the total number of BM bags opened in the game and the number of commendations found in those total bags, it will be right around 0.25

 

/stats

[StormtrooperBob]

http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/binomialX.html

 

Probability of 11 or fewer out of 80: 0.010641093892

 

That means approximately 1 out of 100 players are likely to experience similar or worse results than you.

 

Go ahead and plug in your numbers if you feel like the system is broken and see if your results fall within the realm of possibility given the fact that there are thousands of people opening these bags.

 

It can be hard to gauge whether or not the system is working as intended based on such a small sampling size, especially on the forums.

 

The 1 out of 100 players that are getting 29 or more out of 80 are certainly not going to come to the forums to complain about it.

[EscVelocity]

Yeah that guy that AFK's every match, has an equal chance as you in getting gear upgrades, regardless of how much more you accomplish

[Masahiko]

http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/binomialX.html

 

Probability of 11 or fewer out of 80: 0.010641093892

 

That means approximately 1 out of 100 players are likely to experience similar or worse results than you.

 

Go ahead and plug in your numbers if you feel like the system is broken and see if your results fall within the realm of possibility given the fact that there are thousands of people opening these bags.

 

It can be hard to gauge whether or not the system is working as intended based on such a small sampling size, especially on the forums.

 

The 1 out of 100 players that are getting 29 or more out of 80 are certainly not going to come to the forums to complain about it.

 

Because its random it would actually ever have to land on a Comm bag ever. It should increase the % chance by 1% up to 100% for each bag opened such that if you open 74 bags without a comm you get one at bag 75 (as you would be 100% chance to get a comm). Thus the worst case scenario would be 75 bags.

 

On the other hand you would have people gearing up faster and im not sure they want that.

[Prophetic]

Im amazed at how people somehow have an accurate count of how many bags they opened. Do you have a notepad and write down how many you open? Im willing to bet its safe to divide whatever someone says by 2 possibly 3.

 

For Battlemaster bags, I never really counted.

 

For Champion Bags pre-patch I had a pretty good count due to Centurion Tokens.

 

(Total Number of Centurion Tokens -1 token for every Champ piece owned) /3 +1 for every champ piece owned = Number of Champ Bags opened.

 

Of course, that only worked until you bought a Cent piece. Even then you could find the cost of the cent piece you bought and add that total back into how many cent tokens you've owned and still find your amount.

[Pvpingwithnoobs]

Lol unless it's 100% per pag, you are never guaranteed to get anything.

 

You could flip a coin for the next 50 years every day and still only ever get a head.

 

That's how it works I am afraid.

[Amp_]

Remove RNG. Make everything cost an acceptable amount of commendations and leave it at that. Nothing wrong with making it take time to get gear, but making RNG the deciding factor is wrong.

[Ahhmyface]

The vast majority of you have a very twisted understanding of statistics (on both sides of the arguments). I politely request that you stop posting crap you learned in highschool,because you have not used it in long enough that you are confusing yourself and others.

 

My current bm count is 3/28. 10.7% makes me one of the unlucky ones. What a lot of people are getting wrong is that the chances of getting 0/80 and 40/80 are not at all the same. Neither are the chances of getting exactly 20/40 vs 40/80.

 

The odds of getting 3/28 is 28C3 * 0.25^3 * 0.75^25 = 3.8%

 

Now, if I got a 10.7% on 10 bags, I'd be unlucky. But if I got that on 20 bags I'd be even more unlucky. Approaching 30 bags, as I am, makes me incredibly unlucky. The chance of having 2 bags out of 28 is smaller, or 3/30, etc etc.

 

If we graphed the binomial distribution for 25%, we see this nice little bell curve. I'm way over on the left side. Lucky people are on the right, and average are in the middle. The more trials you add, the FLATTER the bell curve gets. This means that there is less chance of people landing at any given point.

 

So, maybe I am just unlucky, our samples are very biased because

 

1. People are who got lucky are not likely to come into this thread to gloat as losers are likely to come complain.

 

However, people continue to repeat the lie that the number of people rolling somehow affects the chance of me rolling bad. IT DOES NOT. If a gajillion people all roll good, this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH ME. Saying "well somebody has to get lucky and somebody has to lose" is completely false. If I was the only one playing TOR, my rolls would go exactly the same, and "mean" just as much (very little, but the point is that its not because of the number of people playing, its because my number of rolls).

 

So, anyway. Despite the protests of some in this thread, it IS possible to determine if the RNG is broken within a reasonable measure of confidence. We simply can't rely on old rumours and people who have come here specifically because they have been rolling bad. You take 20 people at this instant, and start recording their rolls HEREAFTER (this removes bias). Before long you will have enough datapoints to conclude within some confidence that the 25% value is correct, or incorrect. (Most people accept 95% confidence).

[rbguy]

After today's empty bag 2/23, just saying. Not arguing the statistical probability of 2/23 just reiterating worst...system..ever...in an mmo.

 

It's all I can do to just log in and have the nerves of steel to do the pvp daily, knowing that it's quite likely at the end of it I'm left with zero, zilch, nada progression wise after a couple hours.

Edited February 18, 2012 by rbguy

[Macroecon]

I believe Bioware when they state that the probability of a BM bag containing a BM commendation is 25%. But I also believe they do not understand the consequences of this mechanism.

 

I am 0 out of my last 26 bags. The probability of that occurring is (.75)^26 = .000564 or less than 1 out of 1,771. A shocking result you might say, and just plain bad luck.

 

In a way, yes. But in a way, also, NO.

 

There are 2 million subs to SWToR. If we project that 10% of them will eventually become Battlemasters before they unsubscribe, then 200,000 players (a conservative estimate since we assume no alts enter the picture) will go through the BM bag RNG process. And we can thus expect over 100 of them will have as bad (or worse) luck than I currently am experiencing.

 

If we use a lower frustration point (and yes, I was extremely frustrated at at going 0 for 20), and not making any progress on BM gear after 20 BM bags, then that probability is (.75)^20 = .00317 or less than 1 in 315. Which means that out of our system wide 200K BMs, you are going to piss off over 600 people. Even that is an underestimate, because your typical grinding BM will not just get 20 BM bags. He'll typically get 60-100, which means each BM will get 3-5 passes at going 0 for 20. You are literally talking about thousands of people who will have this fate.

 

This is the inevitable result of applying seemingly low probability events to very large population samples. The absolute numbers of these "bad luck events" is staggering. Now you might just say, "So what?". Well if a player was able to grief a paying subscriber and cause over a week of his play time to have no character progression, I can guarantee you Bioware would act. They would ban the griefer and eliminate the mechanism by which it occurred. But here we have a game mechanic that is going to grief thousands of paying subscribers, and the griefer is the dev who designed the BM bag mechanics. What say you, Bioware?

[Ushela]

"RNG" Bag System is gone soon anyway. And for what its worth, there are about 2 people in this thread who understand statistics Id say, so this thread is full of fail...

[wedo]

im currently 65 haing done the daily/ weeklies every day/week and ive gotten a total of 7 BM tokens and havnt recieved one this whole week so thats 7 days of dailies + the 2 weeklies:P and nothing all well

[wedo]

ON A SIDE NOTE guildie hit 60 last night or yesturday and his first 6 bags were all BM tokens lol..

[Ilintar]

Obviously you have no clue how a RNG works. BW has clearly stated that it's a 25% chance of getting a BM Comm from a bag.

 

Not that you should get 25% success of all bags opened.

 

Probability fail.

 

25% chance of getting a BM Comm from a bag = expected value of number of commendations from 80 bags is 0.25 * 80 = 20.

 

The bigger the sample size, the closer the real value should be to the EV.

 

11 in 80 means extreme bad luck (probably over two standard deviations away, won't do the maths now, which means it should only occur around 2% of all cases - then again, it's probably the case with forum posts in such a huge population.

[venjinze]

I've been defending BW for awhile now but I'm valor 64 and i have 1 piece, yes ONE piece of BM gear. I dont remember how many bags I've opened, I've been BM for 3 weeks doing dailes/weeklies 95% of the time in those weeks. I don't feel like putting any more effort toward this, see you guys in March. I do like the game, love the PvP but effort does not = reward. I also ran both HM ops and no inquisitor loot dropped, go figure which just adds to the frustration. I'm fine with that though but its just like argh. Probably shouldn't have called that guy who blew cigarette smoke in my face a ***** among other things, karma?

[Zeebie]

not sure if this has been answered only got page 3. There a lot of misconception about the probability factor. Each bag is 1 in 4, but your own personal collection of bags is a binomial probability (look it up, there should be calculators online)

to get 11 or fewer bags from 80 bags is about 1.06% (so 1 person out of every 100) that if there random number generator was working.

 

also to get 80+ bags would be some feat.., you can get 2 from weekly, and 14 from dailies so that 16 bags (if you did it each day) 80/16 give nearly 6 weeks at valor rank 60

Edited February 18, 2012 by Zeebie

[Ozzone]

Lol unless it's 100% per pag, you are never guaranteed to get anything.

 

You could flip a coin for the next 50 years every day and still only ever get a head.

 

That's how it works I am afraid.

 

Let's see... 50 x 365.25 = 18,262.5 times. In a row. Never get tails. Hmmm.

 

I couldn't begin to count the number of digits behind the ^ sign for that probability.

 

Either that or it's a fake coin.

[Daayz]

0/13 yay. have not recieved a single token since becoming bm.

[Ozzone]

Probability fail.

 

25% chance of getting a BM Comm from a bag = expected value of number of commendations from 80 bags is 0.25 * 80 = 20.

 

Expected. RNG ignores expectations.

 

The bigger the sample size, the closer the real value should be to the EV.

 

Exactly what I said in my first post in this thread. Eventually you reach exactly 25% but it takes probably millions of runs. I did 100,000 10 times and never hit exactly 25% but all were within 1/10 a percent from it up and down.

 

11 in 80 means extreme bad luck (probably over two standard deviations away, won't do the maths now, which means it should only occur around 2% of all cases - then again, it's probably the case with forum posts in such a huge population.

 

Exactly. You don't see many posts from the people that are lucky. What percent of the total server population posts on these boards? I have no clue but I bet it's 25%. Wait...

[lilbuddhaman]

Has anyone's bad luck with champ bags correlated to their BM bag luck? I'll be hitting 60 soon, with my success rate sitting at 1 in 40ish bags (don't have an exact number, i've got myself, and two companions in a full cent set plus a few healer spec pieces). If I'm looking like that with BM bags I'm gonna be a sad panda.

[Ozzone]

Has anyone's bad luck with champ bags correlated to their BM bag luck? I'll be hitting 60 soon, with my success rate sitting at 1 in 40ish bags (don't have an exact number, i've got myself, and two companions in a full cent set plus a few healer spec pieces). If I'm looking like that with BM bags I'm gonna be a sad panda.

 

I opened 44 Champ bags before getting a champ piece on my 45th bag. The odds of that are astronomical and I talked to 2 others in my guild and they had almost as bad. One had 32 bags before a drop and the other had 36.

 

The odds of 3 of us on the same server in the same guild reach infinity. That was not a 25% probability. Not even close.

 

However, all of us have had decent success with BM bags. Decent in that we've all gotten better than 25% so far. I have 12 BM pieces (missing gloves and 1 relic) and I've probably opened about 45 bags. Minus the earpiece and 2 implants (which I bought), still much better than 25%.

Edited February 26, 2012 by Ozzone