Statistical averages on the RNG of getting a full set of gear for a single spec.

[Khevar]

This number should be higher because of the various flavors of relics, implants, and earpieces. Curious how that would alter the simulation.

I took a stab at it.

 

Let's take a Darkness Assassin, looking for tank gear. And for the sake of this theoretical model, we'll assume that the different possible varieties of gear are the same as in 4.x.

 

10 relics (I think it would be fair to exclude "Ephemeral Mending" from the tank/dps loot table)

5 implants (Bastion / Adept / Initiative / Bulwark / Quick Savant)

5 earpieces (Bastion / Adept / Initiative / Bulwark / Quick Savant)

14 (head / chest / wrist / gloves / belt / leg / feet ) * 2 (Survivor / Stalker)

2 mainhand (Survivor / Stalker)

2 offhand (Shield / Focus)

 

38 possible pieces of gear.

 

To step away from maximum pessimism, let's take a player that can afford to augment gear drops with a handful of crafted gear to fill the holes. How about 4 pieces of crafted gear? Leaving 10 to come from crate drops, 6 of which being set bonus pieces.

 

The average number of crates to completion becomes 50.19.

 

Now, just for giggles, let's try a variation with NO crafting support. Let's pretend that the raw materials are so rare that the pricing is in the stratosphere and isn't a viable option for anyone but the super rich.

 

In that case (filling all 14 slots exclusively with crate drops), the average number of crates becomes 123.58.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Khevar

[phalczen]

Nothing says anywhere that we can only get items we need from the boxes, nor that BiS is necessary in every slot in this game to be capable for the hardest content.

 

I'm looking at what is required to be functionally capable at level and challenge, rather then min/max perfection. Min/max improvements can come as things progress over time.... but are not needed to be end game hard content capable.

 

But Khevar's simulation doesn't assume that he has a best in slot or optimized set. Only that the player has all 14 slots with something they can use, and by extension, a six-piece bonus. I would argue that in practice a six piece set bonus is probably more important than min-maxing for all but the hardest of HM/NiM and most competitive ranked pvp. A few hundred extra points of shield rating which ought to be absorb rating, or a hundred extra accuracy that ought to be critical rating, will certainly not spell certain doom for your unranked warzone or your story mode op.

 

But if the average is 91 crates... and you only get one crate each command rank, and we know that CXP required to rank up is a function that increases over time, well that's a heckuva lotta cxp to earn.

 

Lets pretend that for story mode the boss trophies are 20, and the weekly awards 40, and you need 100-300 for the first few command ranks. In most operations even the trash and spawned adds are gold elite or higher, so they'll give you CXP as well. Only 1-5 CXP that will still be enough to get you a rank's worth each operation at low ranks. I'm just "digging numbers out of the ground," so to speak.

 

Well, we know that the gear drops get better as you advance in command rank. But, in order to advance in rank efficiently, you'll have to progress to harder ops ... which is going to be hard to do if you don't have at least a full set of gear, since it seems unlikely they'll be adding a bolster for HM content.

 

But what if there were only 100 ranks? And what if, and I'm just pulling a number out of my head, by rank 30 you need 500 points and by rank 100 you need, 51,800 CXP.

 

I'll use S&V as an example, since we can make some basic conclusions in pve that we lack knoweldege about for pvp. After Dash'roode, there are what, three? groups of five adds before Titan 6. The bats that eat the power converter are only in HM, and the rats that come after you when you get lost in the sandstorm are silvers. Titan 6 spawns adds but they are silvers so they won't count towards CXP. After Titan 6 there is the tunnel with the rats, right? There are four groups of adds each with three golds IIRC, the other rats are silvers. That gets you to Thrasher, where she spawns three or four groups of three snipers on the balcony and the firebugs, and they are all golds. Then you go through a minimum of four groups of adds in the arms bazaar to get to to infiltration event, each with four or five golds in them, and then the two golds on each of the four color ops teams, prior to the chief, assuming you are able to avoid the arsenal droids. The chief spawns silver adds. Then you go right to Olok, where you have to fight usually four waves of three golds for the wealthy buyers and then, ideally, the two gold droids in each of the four rows before you get to Olok, who will then spawn three or four waves of two gold adds. Then, you have one? or two? groups of adds of five golds before the three cartel warlords. Only Tuchuck spawns adds, i think three of them during the fight. But each of the four warlords are golds too, yet they are one "boss." Finally, you'll have three waves of possessed trash mobs of whom i think there is one or two golds per group before you get to Styrak. Styrak's got the four gold dread guard healers, the others are silver. His dragon is gold, of course. His chained manifestation is gold and you'll have that what, three times? ("Now you'll see real power!"). The other adds that spawn in the corners that have to be taken out by dividing up the group and getting in melee range are silvers iirc. Then, the dragon is resurrected and must be killed again, before you finally kill Styrak. Whew.

 

If I estimated correctly, that's 120 obligatory golds. You've skipped the groups of adds that have the Accomplished Arms Traders and a couple other groups of adds that are easily avoided in the bazaar. So, 120 golds, plus seven bosses who are also golds.

 

So the boss trophies award, say 20 points each, so that's 140 points. The weekly is, say, 40 points, so now 160 points. Let's lowball things and say a gold is only worth 1 CXP. So, add an additional 127 points to get your story mode total of 287 points.

 

That may be acceptable for the first few ranks. You might be able to get 3 crates from that op alone.

 

If you are a dps jugg or PT, you have a 18/34 chance of getting a piece of gear you want on the first crate. That means you have a 47% chance of NOT getting something you need, and the probability of NOT getting anything useful three times in a row is only 10%. So, probably by the third crate you've gotten something.

 

But by rank 30, which also gives you your thirtieth crate, you might need two S&V's worth of CXP.

 

What does this mean to me? It means you'll need a lot more warzones to get geared out than the 4075 comms' worth of warzones you need on Live to get a tier 1 set of pvp gear (roughly three dailies' worth of matches plus the weekly). It means you'll be so far on the diminishing returns curve of Command Rank by the time you get all your slots filled with SM gear that you will not realistically be able to participate in progression unless you have crafted tier 2 left side stuff or twinked from an alt that was luckier with the RNJesus ... assuming you have enough time to play your alts.

 

498 crates for the outlier in a million simulations ... crazy. That's a lot of dead Kell Dragons.

[Nempo]

It was mentioned that you would get gear out of the crates based on the role of your specialization. Hence your class might be able to tank or dps, but if you are in the tank specialization then only tank gear will drop from the crates.

[Khevar]

It was mentioned that you would get gear out of the crates based on the role of your specialization. Hence your class might be able to tank or dps, but if you are in the tank specialization then only tank gear will drop from the crates.

You've said this in several threads, and several people (including myself) have explained why this isn't true.

 

I'm going to re-quote Eric to you again. Please read it this time.

I'll take a crack at these!

...

• It is based on Advanced Class, not Discipline.
  

...

Tank / dps are two different disciplines in the same advanced class. Healer / dps are two different disciplines in the same advanced class.

[gabigool]

At what level is it possible to have BiS drop from a crate? Is it 100 or is it some level below that?

 

This is what I'm unclear on.

[Khevar]

At what level is it possible to have BiS drop from a crate? Is it 100 or is it some level below that?

 

This is what I'm unclear on.

Yeah, very good question.

 

I really want to know that, as well as:

 

1. Do you only get one crate per rank? More?

2. Do you only get one piece of gear per crate? More? Less? (e.g. 70% chance for gear, 30% for something else)

Edited October 20, 2016 by Khevar

[phalczen]

At what level is it possible to have BiS drop from a crate? Is it 100 or is it some level below that?

 

This is what I'm unclear on.

 

As Khevar said, no one really knows, but I am guessing that there will be three tiers of gear since there are three levels of difficulty in 5.0. Despite Aowin's attempts to accuse me of wild speculation, I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption. So, presumably, the command ranks are in thirds, more or less, even if each slice isn't the same # of ranks in size (so not exactly 33 in each). By extension, the highest tier of gear would drop in the highest third of ranks (not necessarily rank 67).

[Tsillah]

Set bonus only needs 6 pieces, so one piece could be substituted using mods from repeated gear and a crafted armoring.

 

The set bonus is the part that worries me most, because that's the one part crafting cannot do. If you have bad luck, you won't get your 6 pieces together for all 3 set bonuses.

 

One thing I was wondering about is whether or not the set bonus armorings will still be locked to the gear slot. What I mean is that currently when you rip an armouring with set bonus from a chest piece, you can only stick it in another chest piece. Something that would help in this RNG set up is lifting that restriction so that if you have the bad luck of getting multiple chest pieces and no bracers or boots, that you could move the set bonus armouring to those pieces as well.

 

But yeh, the set bonuses are going to be the biggest issue in my view.

[Tsillah]

Yes, BUT, you are forgetting that the gear is coming in tiers as well. So while it could take about 20 boxes for a full set, is that a full set at max gear spec.

 

You also have to account for unwanted stats on set pieces. You may get all 14 slots filled, but are they all the correct stats? Even now set pieces come with unwanted stats that need to be pieced out. More important to know is how hard is it gonna be to get BIS....

 

Considering that you have 14 slots to fill, it is entirely possible that after opening 20 boxes there are still one or two slots missing. What if you only get one implant or relic. What if you didn't get a main hand? Can you craft those of equal quality then?

 

And as I said above, what about set bonuses, since they are locked to a specific slot. I might get 3 chest pieces, belts and greaves and no boots and bracers, leaving me stuck at 5/6 after 20+ boxes.

 

I haven't decided it's all gone wrong yet but I am concerned about these things.

[Khevar]

One thing I was wondering about is whether or not the set bonus armorings will still be locked to the gear slot.

I hadn't thought about that. Just updated the program and tried again with slightly different rules.

 

Basically, if head / chest / gloves / waist / legs / feet / wrists dropped, assume that the armorings were interchangeable. So 6 belts in a row would complete your 6-piece set bonus. The remaining slots, of course, had to match the type (mainhand / offhand / relics / implants / earpieecs).

 

Filling all 14 slots requires an average of 99.33 crates.

 

Going back to the "I can craft/purchase 4 pieces of non-set bonus gear", becomes:

 

Filling 10 slots (6 of which are set bonus pieces), requires an average of 35.65 crates.

[gabigool]

Yeah, very good question.

 

I really want to know that, as well as:

 

1. Do you only get one crate per rank? More?

2. Do you only get one piece of gear per crate? More? Less? (e.g. 70% chance for gear, 30% for something else)

 

I believe 1 rank = 1 crate = 1 piece of gear.

 

Do you mind sharing the upper/lower 20% and 10%? While I like And's results better, I think you have the more logical assumptions.

 

edit (I'm referring to your initial assumptions)

Edited October 20, 2016 by gabigool

[Tsillah]

I hadn't thought about that. Just updated the program and tried again with slightly different rules.

 

Basically, if head / chest / gloves / waist / legs / feet / wrists dropped, assume that the armorings were interchangeable. So 6 belts in a row would complete your 6-piece set bonus. The remaining slots, of course, had to match the type (mainhand / offhand / relics / implants / earpieecs).

 

Filling all 14 slots requires an average of 99.33 crates.

 

Going back to the "I can craft/purchase 4 pieces of non-set bonus gear", becomes:

 

Filling 10 slots (6 of which are set bonus pieces), requires an average of 35.65 crates.

 

Yeah that's not entirely encouraging.

[Morrolan]

So there are only 100 cxp levels right, so this means it will take most of that levelling experience to actually get a full set of gear on average and that won't even be at the highest tier of gear, wow. Edited October 20, 2016 by Morrolan

[Ryuku-sama]

10 relics (I think it would be fair to exclude "Ephemeral Mending" from the tank/dps loot table)

 

Considering the only spec that would ever consider using Epheremal Mending is PT tank? No, it's not a fair assumption to make.

 

Except that small nitpick.. I pretty much agree with most assumptions made here. Each have their own value... And each prove BW is really going down a worrisome path. Considering there are 3-4 tiers of gear. It means you can't start the real gear grind before you're quite deep into the grind already.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Ryuku-sama

[Khevar]

Do you mind sharing the upper/lower 20% and 10%? While I like And's results better, I think you have the more logical assumptions.

Certainly.

 

Using a 38-piece gear pool, filling all 14 slots, with a million iteration run:

 

10% required 73 or fewer crates.

20% required 84 or fewer crates.

(123.41 crates was the average, 115 crates was the median)

20% required 155 or more crates

10% required 183 or more crates

 

Using a 38-piece gear pool, filling 10 slots (6 with set bonus), and 4 slots from crafting:

 

10% required 34 or fewer crates.

20% required 40 or fewer crates.

(61.94 crates was the average, 56 crates was the median)

20% required 79 or more crates

10% required 94 or more crates

 

I'm not really sure why I got 62 crates on this test and 50 crates on this one. I made modifications on the logic since than run, so I suspect the previous test was flawed. I ran it a second time just now and got 61.91, so there's that.

[Tsillah]

So there are only 100 cxp levels right, so this means it will take most of that levelling experience to actually get a full set of gear on average and that won't even be at the highest tier of gear, wow.

 

Based on what we know now it does look that way, but we are still missing information, like who endgame gear crafting will work and whether or not set bonuses armourings are still locked to their slot or not for example.

 

I hope that BWA will make the necessary adjustments where needed, because I suspect that if it's going to be like we fear, that will likely create another exodus of a player group in this game. Not saying it will kill the game but it won't be a positive effect.

[Khevar]

Considering the only spec that would ever consider using Epheremal Mending is PT tank? No, it's not a fair assumption to make.

Are you suggesting I include Ephemeral Mending in the tank/dps loot table, bringing the total relics up to 11?

 

P.S. @gabigool -- upper and lower 10%/20% metrics on page 4.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Khevar

[Ryuku-sama]

Are you suggesting I include Ephemeral Mending in the tank/dps loot table, bringing the total relics up to 11?

 

Yes. May as well make the numbers as bad as possible to get an answers out of the team (yeah.. still believing in miracles) and be as general as possible.

[phalczen]

Technically, Khevar, you really need the 95% confidence interval for the range of crates opened.

Looking at your answer to gabigool on the prior page, 90% of people will require less than 94 crates to get filled. To me, for just the tier 1 set, and knowing that there are no longer separate pve and pvp sets, this still seems insane.

 

Really, this is going to be insane for people unless story mode Bolster is awesome and bug free, crafting is awesome, set bonus pieces stack with pre-5.0 pieces, or any of the above.

 

Again, like I said elsewhere, the more I wrap my head around all this the more I'm convinced 5.0 will be a significant boost to crafters ... if tier 1 and 2 gear doesn't require mats that only come from ops.

Edited October 20, 2016 by phalczen

[Khevar]

Yes. May as well make the numbers as bad as possible to get an answers out of the team (yeah.. still believing in miracles) and be as general as possible.

Alright. Using a gear pool of 39 pieces.

 

Filling 14 slots requires an average of 126 crates (up from 123)

Filling 10 slots requires an average of 63 crates (up from 61)

[Khevar]

Again, like I said elsewhere, the more I wrap my head around all this the more I'm convinced 5.0 will be a significant boost to crafters ... if tier 1 and 2 gear doesn't require mats that only come from ops.

I'm not gonna lie, the crafter in me is a teensy bit excited at that idea.

 

On the other hand, I have more credits than I need anyway, so I doubt I'll spend a lot of time crafting, other than to make gear for my alts, perhaps.

[Nevaeh-Heaven]

Tricky thing to calculate are relics. For your AC with a tanking discipline, you'll have only 2 different headpieces. Easy But relics ? Since Eric confirmed that Discipline (and therefore role ) won't be taken in account, then whenever you get a relic could be any of the what, 10 different kind ?

So if you need a relic, not only you need it to be "a" relic ,but "the" one you need/want out of 10 ( I think )

 

I only done a few op's and I don't remember getting any gear at all, I assumed that every player in the Op had to roll for the items and I just did not win. Or am I misremembering?

So how long did it take to get the gear you wanted before? You telling me that there were never duplicates or the item was not for your class? Is this really that different when it comes to the odds of getting the item you want? Ok the method is different but is the odds?

 

It would be better if item were bound to legacy so any item you get twice you can send to an alt, but at least you can disassemble an item towards your next box. I agree getting that last item will take time but was it not before?

[UmbralSpirit]

The maximum number of attempts to fill all 14 slots was 498. Can you imagine being THAT guy? The unlucky fellow that opened 498 crates in a row without completing their set? Ouch

 

That is pretty much the only number that is of any value, because everyone who ever dealt with RNGesus games knows that the majority of players aren't among the lucky ones, thats why terms like "Yolo" exist in the first place.

[GythralSWTOR]

That is pretty much the only number that is of any value, because everyone who ever dealt with RNGesus games knows that the majority of players aren't among the lucky ones, thats why terms like "Yolo" exist in the first place.

 

The maximum number is actually

∞

 

because pRNG is not truly random, this worst case is unlikely but millions of rolls to get a true spread is very likely

[phalczen]

I only done a few op's and I don't remember getting any gear at all, I assumed that every player in the Op had to roll for the items and I just did not win. Or am I misremembering?

So how long did it take to get the gear you wanted before? You telling me that there were never duplicates or the item was not for your class? Is this really that different when it comes to the odds of getting the item you want? Ok the method is different but is the odds?

 

It would be better if item were bound to legacy so any item you get twice you can send to an alt, but at least you can disassemble an item towards your next box. I agree getting that last item will take time but was it not before?

 

That's all true except for one thing. When you did win a loot roll for an unassembled token, it was for just that: a token for a specific gear slot: body part, weapon, offhand, relic, implant, earpiece, whatever. Being able to choose a piece of gear from the vendor that fit both the discipline you were in AND the slot you needed to fill is a significant measure of control that is absent in the galactic command system as we currently understand it.

 

Yes, the odds are worse in Galactic Command than on live. Let's pretend I am a Vengeance Juggernaut, in need of all his gear.

 

If I'm in a group off 8 players, and we've just downed Jarg and Sorno in Karagga's Palace, currently on Live, I have a 1 in 8 chance of winning a token that will allow me to purchase the boots, which I need because I need everything at this point.

 

If I've just earned enough CXP to rank up and earn my first Command Crate, I have a 18 in 34 chance of getting something I need, just not the exact boots I need. The boots I need are a 1 in 34 chance because the dps boots are only one of 34 possible things that the crate can contain. But I need everything at this point, so > 50% chance of getting something I can use seems better than a 12.5% chance, right?

 

However, let's alter the scenario a bit and assume you are further along on the gear progression path. Perhaps the boots are the only thing you need to complete your gear set.

 

If I'm in a group off 8 players, and we've just downed Jarg and Sorno in Karagga's Palace, currently on Live, I have a 1 in 8 chance of winning a token that will allow me to purchase the exact boots I need.

 

If I've just earned enough CXP to rank up and earn my next Command Crate, I have 1 in 34 chance of getting the exact boots I need.

 

Now it doesn't sound so wonderful, does it?