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

[RandomName_Ru]

Oh my... Please, please, powers that are, for the love of all you value and care about, do not let it be "any relic"! NOOOOOOOOOO!

 

*curls up in corner and cryes

[phalczen]

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.

 

I decided to elaborate a bit more on this. KP has five bosses, each with a different gear type that they drop. In a group of 8 people, the chances of you walking away from the operation empty handed are .875^5 or 51.3%. Conversely, the chances of you walking away with something (that is, not losing five rolls in a row) is 48.7%. So, very slightly worse than a coin flip.

 

It certainly appears that between the bonus CXP from group finder, the CXP from the gold trash, the CXP from the associated weekly, and the boost CXP from trophy dropped by each boss, you'll get command xp measurable in the hundreds. Musco said you can get set gear in your first command crate as early as rank 1. If we presume that the first few ranks of command xp are a similar order of magnitude as what you'd get from completing an op, then you'll likely have one crate after completing KP. If you are a dps jugg, you have an 18/34 chance or 52.9% chance of getting something you need.

 

Again, 52.9% chance to get something you need sounds better than 48.7% right? Of course, in Live, I know that there are three other operations that contain boots besides Jarg & Sorno, and coincidentally they're all on the second bosses. I could just attempt those operations and each time have a 12.5% chance of getting what I want, assuming everyone else is rolling on them as well. The probability of losing all four times is only 58.6% in Live, but 88.7% in Galactic Command!

 

In live, I compete against the other 7 people in the group. In galactic command, I'm competing against 34 possible outcomes (but admittedly less for other advanced classes.)

 

Let's also remember this is only based on operations, with no real knowledge on how readily CXP will come with pvp.

[Gokkus]

Statistics...fun stuff.

 

Though this only works if you believe the RNG to be completely random. I have my doubts about that.

 

It would be smart for them to include discipline for drops, that would greatly improve the system. And to reduce the chances of getting gear for a specific slot every time you get gear for that slot. So if you randomly get gloves, the chances of getting gloves again would be reduced.

[Jedi_riches]

Are we 100% sure the crates will be truly RNG and by that I mean a guardian is not guaranteed to get gear for their desired role? and that the game does not somehow determine that such as the role selector in Galactic command window?

[gabigool]

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?

 

Even better, if you're in a guild, and you need to quickly get an alt geared up, you can simply run the operations you need for your alt and have a full set in a couple hours. This is something teams will do when they need a replacement or alternate class. This will not be possible in a couple weeks.

[Quraswren]

Are we 100% sure the crates will be truly RNG

 

We have been told by BW that it is RNG based. They specifically answered a hypothetical question on was it possible to never get something they need? The answer to that was yes. Gearing at 70 is all RNG based except for some crafting. How good crafting will be is up in the air but if it's itemized like bought gear was, it's rather terrible.

 

and by that I mean a guardian is not guaranteed to get gear for their desired role? and that the game does not somehow determine that such as the role selector in Galactic command window?

 

Yes, you can and will get gear that does you no good depending on how you play. I only heal on a sage. I will get DPS gear that I do not want or need. There are multiple kinda of iterations for mods and enhancements you can get that you do not want or need. Same for a Guardian in your example.

 

RNG gearing is based off a system to make sure you do not get what you need for longer lengths of play time. Thats why it's used. It's designed against the player getting what you want to make sure you keep after the carrot.

 

You will lose out so much more than you win.

 

The only filter we know of and BW has stated is that it's based on advanced class and not what discipline you chose inside the adv class. So expect to get krap you do not need and expect to get that junk way more than you should.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Quraswren

[Vhaegrant]

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.

 

I took a stab on the issue with a spreadsheet and simple Geometric Distribution (number of attempts = 1/probability, sum results). Rounding to the nearest whole number.

 

14 pieces from 38 = 124

12 pieces from 38 = 67

10 pieces from 38 = 44

 

Should come as no surprise that those last couple of slots that need filling are the hardest to get.

 

I'm not sure on the exact pool of gear for a pure DPS Advanced Class such as Sniper, maybe someone would be good enough to correct me, but I'll go for a guess of approx. 20.

 

14 pieces from 20 = 65

12 pieces from 20 = 35

10 pieces from 20 = 23

 

Again, these are just the expected averages, the reality for an individual player could tend to an extreme

 

Would hate to think of the player that crafts their relics only to get said relics drop from the crates on a regular basis

Edited October 20, 2016 by Vhaegrant

[phalczen]

Are we 100% sure the crates will be truly RNG and by that I mean a guardian is not guaranteed to get gear for their desired role? and that the game does not somehow determine that such as the role selector in Galactic command window?

 

We are 100% sure that Musco said its based on advanced class, not discipline:

I'll take a crack at these!

• It is based on Advanced Class, not Discipline.
  

 

So, unless you are a mara/sent or sniper/slinger, you may get off-spec pieces.

 

It would be smart for them to include discipline for drops, that would greatly improve the system. And to reduce the chances of getting gear for a specific slot every time you get gear for that slot. So if you randomly get gloves, the chances of getting gloves again would be reduced.

 

While it is possible that the loot table is progressive, there is nothing to indicate that based on Musco's posts, nor is there any historical precedent in game. Just look at heroic rewards and alliance supply crates.

 

Most importantly there would have been no need to create a disintegrate button if the system was progressive.

[gabigool]

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.

 

Thank you.

 

Pretty scary IMO.

[Rion_Starkiller]

Are we sure that the highest tier of gear will be craftable? Let's say, for arguments sake, that 244's (49) are the highest tier crate drop. 1. Will they be RE-able/craftable? 2. If so, will they require a certain GC rank to equip?

 

((sorry if this has already been addressed somewhere))

Edited October 20, 2016 by Rion_Starkiller

[Vhaegrant]

Having seen some of the numbers now (and assuming my calculations are right) I would be really interested to see what the Reverse Engineering potential is for gear from crates and if you can RE gear what the material requirements will be to craft it.

 

I don't think it would be in anyone's interest to craft/buy gear before they'd opened their fill of crates.

 

Then when you're down to the last 2-4 items required stop with the crates and craft or purchase what remains.

 

This could give a huge boost to end game crafters if it is handled well.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Vhaegrant

[Khevar]

Are we sure that the highest tier of gear will be craftable? Let's say, for arguments sake, that 244's (49) are the highest tier crate drop. 1. Will they be RE-able/craftable? 2. If so, will they require a certain GC rank to equip?

 

((sorry if this has already been addressed somewhere))

I believe so, based on this:

...

• Players will be able to craft comparable item level gear without set bonuses.
  

...

While he didn't use the words BiS, it seems fair to expect that "comparable item level gear" was referring to the highest possible gear one could get from Galactic Commant crates.

 

The billion credit question is, how easy will it be to get the raw materials to craft BiS? If the materials are very rare, and the CXP grind ends up being particularly unpleasant, crafters will likely charge truly exorbitant prices.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Khevar

[Tsillah]

I believe so, based on this:

 

While he didn't use the words BiS, it seems fair to expect that "comparable item level gear" was referring to the highest possible gear one could get from Galactic Commant crates.

 

I would like to think so as well but I am hesitant. I believe that for endgame level there will no longer be commendation or crystal gear. It could then mean that the crappy gear that you can get from the crystals vendors nowadays is going to be available via crafting instead of the vendors but up to the max rating and therefore is of comparable level but not BiS.

 

At this time, as much as I want to, I do not trust anything they say till it's really confirmed. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.

 

Hopefully, we'll know more soon. I do hope your interpretation is the right one, but I'll believe it when I see it, if you know what I mean.

[kissingaiur]

Me and my friend talked about rolling for a full gearing pieces between specs/classes and he brought up a good point. Have you guys considered the stat overlap when gearing for every class? For example, the gear in 4.0 that is BiS stat wise for each class is rather similar. Relics/ears/implants etc are the same for every class. From what we can tell in 5.0 the gearing and stats are staying the same just scaled up or down. That means when gear you only need to technically roll for your unique class specific 6 piece gear bonus. Everything else would be easier to work around, rng wise. Edited October 20, 2016 by kissingaiur

[Quraswren]

I believe so, based on this:

 

While he didn't use the words BiS, it seems fair to expect that "comparable item level gear" was referring to the highest possible gear one could get from Galactic Commant crates.

 

SNIP...

 

I get the feeling that bw's comparable is similar to now. Compare 220 dropped gear and 220 bought gear.

 

Sure, it's comparable but bought gear is poorly itemized. What you might call, barely making the cut and not really comparable.

 

Thats the way I see crafting going. Loot crate gear being so much better than crafted gear because of how poorly crafted gear will be itemized.

 

bw will make sure there is enough difference to keep you on the gear treadmill. RNG end game goes does that. Allowing you to craft really good gear doesn't. So I don't see that crafted gear being all that good.

 

Maybe there are some RE schematics that are good but if thats true those recipes wont be easily accessible. They will be random from RNG loot crates. Low drops as to make sure there hard to get.

 

bw wants to make sure you have trouble gearing. Being able to craft really good end game gear just doesn't seem likely.

[Khevar]

Have you guys considered the stat overlap when gearing for every class? For example, the gear in 4.0 that is BiS stat wise for each class is rather similar. Relics/ears/implants etc are the same for every class.

This is true, but we're operating on the assumption that the gear obtained from the crates will continue to be Bind on Pickup. Moddable gear can get around this through the "legacy shlep", but relics / ears / implants cannot take advantage of this.

From what we can tell in 5.0 the gearing and stats are staying the same just scaled up or down. That means when gear you only need to technically roll for your unique class specific 6 piece gear bonus. Everything else would be easier to work around, rng wise.

I believe the only way to work around the relics/ears/implants RNG in 5.0 will be to use crafted gear. Which is a big question mark at the moment.

 

1. Will crafted gear be the same or worse than RNG crate gear?

2. Will schematics be very rare?

3. Will raw materials be very rare?

 

Last time I checked, crafted 220 gear was in the 1 million - 6 million range. That's pricey, but (IMO) not absurdly so. It could have been much worse, if it weren't so easy to obtain 220 gear through other forms of gameplay.

 

Now, seeing as how I'm in a pessimistic mood concerning 5.0, I cannot help but imagine the following:

 

a. The CXP gear grind may be very time consuming.

b. Dropped gear that could be RE'ed for a schematic is still BoP.

c. So if you win a relic on your Biochem, or an earpiece on your Armormech, you cannot learn the schematic.

d. Meaning the number of players that learn the schematics at all could be very very low.

e. Exotic materials required to craft may drop from crates as well.

f. Which, being time consuming to obtain (see assumption "a" above), means the supply would be quite low.

g. Resulting in crated BiS gear selling in the "ridiculously absurdly overpriced" range.

 

Now, to be fair, this rather pessimistic view may not end up coming to pass.

 

Maybe the CXP gear grind won't so bad. Maybe multiple crates drop per level up. Maybe multiple pieces of gear drop per crate. Maybe exotic crafting materials will be more abundant.

 

But the entire philosophy of this new system appears to be "slow down gearing to artificially extend play time".

Edited October 20, 2016 by Khevar

[Transcendent]

Here's my assumptions and methodology:

 

1. An Advanced Class with two unique sets of gear (e.g. tank/dps)

2. One piece of gear drops per crate.

3. Generate a random number between 1 and 28.

4. Any number above 14 is ignored (this represents a gear drop for the discipline we don't want)

5. A number between 1 and 14 is logged in a hastable to mark that slot as filled.

6. Count each attempt.

7. Once all 14 slots are filled, "attempts" represents a single iteration of "how many crates to fill 14 slots"

8. Add this value ("attempts") to an array.

9. Repeat steps 1-8 one million times.

10. Averaging those one million attempts together came out to 91.043.

 

As mentioned, in regards to the Relics / Ear / Implants (which I also failed to include when working out odds / chance), it would be nice to see a run with those as well (inc. healing relic) over a larger sample size of 10m+.

 

Always interesting to see how the law of averages works out in relation to the actual odds / chances.

[Khevar]

As mentioned, in regards to the Relics / Ear / Implants (which I also failed to include when working out odds / chance), it would be nice to see a run with those as well (inc. healing relic) over a larger sample size of 10m+.

 

Always interesting to see how the law of averages works out in relation to the actual odds / chances.

Yeah, I had failed to take into account the correct number of variations in my first test.

 

Using a gear pool of 39 pieces (including all 11 varieties of relics):

 

Filling 14 slots requires an average of 126 crates

Filling 10 slots (6 set bonus, 4 from crates, 4 from crafting) requires an average of 63 crates

 

For 1 million iterations, the 14-slot average was 126.84

For 10 million iterations, the 14-slot average was 126.80

 

;-)

[Psychopyro]

Statistics...fun stuff.

 

Though this only works if you believe the RNG to be completely random. I have my doubts about that.

.

 

It's not

 

Computers actually for some damn reason can't be completely random, usually rounding errors. That is why for electronic slot machines the numbers are weighted as opposed to just having that many numbers.

[Transcendent]

Yeah, I had failed to take into account the correct number of variations in my first test.

 

Using a gear pool of 39 pieces (including all 11 varieties of relics):

 

Filling 14 slots requires an average of 126 crates

Filling 10 slots (6 set bonus, 4 from crates, 4 from crafting) requires an average of 63 crates

 

For 1 million iterations, the 14-slot average was 126.84

For 10 million iterations, the 14-slot average was 126.80

 

;-)

 

Thanks! Also ouch

 

I really do hope that BioWare tone this down somehow. At the very least make the GC rank total CXP requirement set low, with a decent CXP gain for all activites, without increasing CXP required per GC rank.

 

I guess it'll depend on how much they wish to artificially extend the gear grind, because I'll lay a bet I'm the outlier requiring 400+ Command Crates to get one full set.

[Khevar]

I'll lay a bet I'm the outlier requiring 400+ Command Crates to get one full set.

What's even scarier than the "worst case I experienced in my 1 million iteration test" is that 5% required 216 or more crates.

 

That's 1 out of every 20 players!

 

Edit: Reworded sentence to combat pedanticism

Edited October 20, 2016 by Khevar

[Tsetso]

What's even scarier than the "worst case" example is that 5% (of the million iterations) required 216 or more crates.

 

That's 1 out of every 20 players!

 

as someone already mentioned the theoretical worst case is infinity

[TUXs]

Yeah, I had failed to take into account the correct number of variations in my first test.

 

Using a gear pool of 39 pieces (including all 11 varieties of relics):

 

Filling 14 slots requires an average of 126 crates

Filling 10 slots (6 set bonus, 4 from crates, 4 from crafting) requires an average of 63 crates

 

For 1 million iterations, the 14-slot average was 126.84

For 10 million iterations, the 14-slot average was 126.80

 

;-)

That is a terrifyingly high number...this is a game...I pay to enjoy myself, not frustrate the **** outta myself.

[Transcendent]

That is a terrifyingly high number...this is a game...I pay to enjoy myself, not frustrate the **** outta myself.

 

It'll defnitely be frustrating for those players who want to raid as a group, or participate in Ranked PvP. I'm sure the other content isn't really an issue requiring BiS gear (I can always be wrong on this, because, shiny stuff!)

 

Edit: 1 in 20.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Transcendent

[Jadescythe]

It'll defnitely be frustrating for those players who want to raid as a group, or participate in Ranked PvP. I'm sure the other content isn't really an issue requiring BiS gear (I can always be wrong on this, because, shiny stuff!)

 

Edit: 1 in 20.

 

And we haven't even been talking about BiS, just a piece in each slot with set bonus.