The Weekly Marmot - Is LFR Dropping Enough Loot?

[sifuedition]

I disagree with toypop's hostility in his responses and you are correct, Theotherone, from a semantics point of view, but I think you are also intentionally missing his point.

In an organized raid group, your chances of winning the loot WHEN it drops increase over time. In an LFR, that's not remotely true.

With the new LFR, there's not even a "drop" so the semantics are pointless. You have a chance at loot and then it could be any piece that is usable for your current spec. If there is a 15% chance at loot and there are medium chance bracers and a low chance trinket you can use, odds are you will be throwing away bracers 15% of the time after you get them the first time.

[Aggathon]

@Theotherone:

Except that if you are rolling against other people your odds are the chance the item will drop * the odds you will win the roll. As soon as the other person that wants the staff wins the roll then your overall chances each week go up because you're no longer reducing your odds by another roll.

In the LFR system each week you run changes the odds you will win something by the random class makeup that you get. You might be the only shield wearer in the group one week, so if a shield drops you would have a 100% chance of winning it, but then the next week there might be 10 people who all want that shield for some reason or another, reducing your odds of getting it by 91% (1-(11/100)).

Now all of this is assuming the OLD RF system. Under the new system the class makeup of the raid does not matter, and what you say is true, each week your odds of getting the loot are the exact same from one week to the next. Overtime, your odds of getting it do go up because you're drawing multiple times from the same hat, but you are correct than any individual week has the exact same odds as the week before it and the week after it.

As much as it begrudges me to say this, Toypop is correct that a fixed roster system increases your odds to get an item over time because competition for that item decreases. That's not to say that the odds of that item dropping increases over time, these are very distinctly different things. The current LFR system does not have a way to increase the odds over time due to not having to compete with people once they get it like fixed rosters do.

The question is: is this a bad thing? I would argue no because it keeps people coming back to LFR, and once they do get stuff on their main/main spec it allows them to then queue as offspec and get on alts etc. It keeps queue times low and increases interest in LFR. But there has to be some sort of brightline on the odds of winning a piece of gear on any given fight.

[Theotherone]

@Theotherone:

Except that if you are rolling against other people your odds are the chance the item will drop * the odds you will win the roll. As soon as the other person that wants the staff wins the roll then your overall chances each week go up because you're no longer reducing your odds by another roll.

I absolutely agree and undertand this; I'm speaking in terms of the boss drop rate, not your ability to win rate. Since the post about the kitty staff appeared to indicate that the staff dropped once and was not seen again until he poster was in DS. I had the same experience with the H Morchok Pally healing boots, 27 kills before I even saw them; but the boss drop being indepedent meant that all those previous kills had no effect on the boss dropping my loot.

But yes, your third paragraph is correct and I understand that. The probablities of heads coming up in a coin toss 5 times in a row is like 1 in 32, but the odds of tossing a heads on the 6th toss is still 50%.

I don't know that I like or dislike the present system. As I've said, I'd like to be able to choose spec for the boss to drop for me, but I don't feel strongly about it. I've been pretty lucky in lfr and the gearing of my hunter and pally has been more than reasonable. But as with all raids there will be at least one piece that will vex me - here I can see it will be a weapon for my hunter; in Cata it was tank shield (curse you Balerock) and in DS the pally healing boots. My healing partner, a shammy went BoT to H Blackthorn before he got a healing shield. I actually find that to be a fun part of the game, that one thing that makes you relate to Ahab.

[Aggathon]

I tanked the entirety of TBC, from Kara to Kil"Jaeden, wearing the Engineering helm, not the sunwell one... the first one...

[Theotherone]

Damn, Agg I thought 27 weeks was bad, but you got me beat I think.

I do really believe that it makes the game sort of fun, especially in your raid group. I know with me, it became a joke in vent about the boots; "hey Jack [I heal on my pally Jackstraw], guess what no boots again; want another H Hand of Morchok for your tank set?"

Then again not actively raiding for progression this teir had given me a more laid back approach to the game; gearing/playing for fun and not pressing progression makes a huge difference in terms of patience.

[Aggathon]

Really the main reason is that all of the tier helms sucked dick for warriors in TBC, and I never saw the offspec ones that were better. To say I got zero helms is a bit misleading.

I'll watch the full video sometime and report back.

[Ion]

I tanked the entirety of TBC, from Kara to Kil"Jaeden, wearing the Engineering helm, not the sunwell one... the first one...

Our MT wore the crafted 359 shield through all of Cataclysm...alts had shields from alt runs, but she never saw a shield drop.

Amusingly, our first kill of...some boss or another in MoP dropped a shield for her.

[sifuedition]

I got the Firelands helm three weeks before DS and the shield two weeks before DS. Other than bracers, most of the rest of my gear during Firelands was valor stuff due to no drops.

[Theotherone]

I'll watch the full video sometime and report back.

I'm lost.

[sifuedition]

This entire thread is in response to a video...he's watching it.

[Aggathon]

I'm lost.

I haven't actually watched this TWM yet, so I don't know exactly what Lore says here, so I don't know if I would be just repeating stuff or if he has a good point I'm not thinking of, etc., so all I can say right now is that statistically you're more likely to get gear in a fixed raid group than in LFR, whether or not that's a good thing or something that needs to be fixed, well... I don't really have an opinion on that yet. I'm leaning towards "it's not a problem".

[Bovinity]

I'm disappointed that no one has simply asked, "Is this really a thing?"

[Banzhe]

I think you got side tracked spewing hatred at RF players whilst lacking any understanding of the problems associated with balancing content where groups are formed randomly.

Pray tell us how you work towards the set goals in RF? The encounters are only as difficult or can only be tuned as difficult as your 24 randomly assigned team mates can handle. It is impossible to make people "work" in RF because the grouping system has limitations and cannot guarantee the quality of the players assigned to your group. That leads to the "lowest common denominator" tuning effect. 96% of your groups capability is determined at random. You as an individual are but 4%.

What work exactly do you require of them? Randomly rolling a dice for five months instead of four months doesn't really constitute additional "work"? Or do you want them to die more often purely because RNG assigned them players with poor outputs? Success or failure would simply come down to a dice roll when the group is formed.

I think you, and the person before you take the word work to literal, or simply didn't understand the context of my post to begin with.
As you can tell it's tied into not needing the items (Not even for normal or heroic modes)

If a player feels he needs X item so badly, then the work part comes into play by raiding normal or heroic modes.., if at that point people still think there should be a guaranteed loot table ruling out RnG or a drop-buff, then I would genuinely say there's something mentally wrong with the person.
The work part also comes into play in learning your chosen class / encounters so you don't "need" X item, it's always an issue about making mistakes or not knowing how to play properly / adequately etc.., so the "need" of an item is only tied into ensuring more leeway for error's, error's that can be ruled out through practice (or work if you will)

The general attitude these days is always about things not being enough and wanting more, personally I think it's well over due that someone just said stop to these "requests" which is more demands, there's absolutely no difference between this "issue" and the one claimed for dailies.

The issue is lazyness, and for those generally not doing anything other then LFR due to time constrictions caused by family, work or studies (Which is the wast minority when scouring through the Noa's flood of threads), they don't need the items as there's no progression in LFR, it's the end of the road for them.
They can if they chose to, just like normal / heroic raiders.., farm the living daylight out of LFR on that toon, or they can start another, there's no difference in that end of the spectrum!

As far as the win chance goes in normal / heroic vs RF, it's the exact same.., as I mentioned I went through all of Firelands without seeing Domo drop the firekitty staff more then once until after I had gotten 4p from Ds and the Dw staff.
RnG is RnG, if you're trying to claim that a fixed roster vs a random roster has any influence in the % drop chance of an item, then I can understand why you'd have an issue with the current LFR system also.., you're simply not able to understand the concept of RnG to begin with.

[Toypop]

This is dead wrong. A fixed group has absolutely no effect whatsoever on what items drop off a boss. A fixed group will increase your chance that you can win the item you want, since others in the group may already have it; but the drop chance has nothing to do with fixed or random group.And since the drop chance is constant and statistically independent from previous drops from that boss, it's the gamblers fallacy to believe that if the boss hasn't dropped your item 10 weeks in a row that the chances of it dropping are increased in week 11. If the chance that an item will drop is statistically independent, as WoW RNG is, then a 2% chance in week one, is a 2% again next week and exactly 2% the week after and so on.

Strawman I am afraid. I talked about the "win chance". You used the phrase "drop".

[Toypop]

if you're trying to claim that a fixed roster vs a random roster has any influence in the % drop chance of an item, then I can understand why you'd have an issue with the current LFR system also.., you're simply not able to understand the concept of RnG to begin with.

I understand RNG, you don't appear to have grasped what Lore, I and other posters have tried to explain about "win chance". Do you understand the difference and why one improves over time in fixed roster groups? Perhaps if you had watched all of Lores video...

[Tengenstein]

I really don't feel like I am though, in the old system if i got lucky, there was no competition, in the current system there is always no competition. THere is much less loot drama in LFR and if I really want a certain peice i just run a boss 3 times that week and use all my Charms on that boss.

[sifuedition]

I think you, and the person before you take the word work to literal, or simply didn't understand the context of my post to begin with.
As you can tell it's tied into not needing the items (Not even for normal or heroic modes)

If a player feels he needs X item so badly, then the work part comes into play by raiding normal or heroic modes.., if at that point people still think there should be a guaranteed loot table ruling out RnG or a drop-buff, then I would genuinely say there's something mentally wrong with the person.
The work part also comes into play in learning your chosen class / encounters so you don't "need" X item, it's always an issue about making mistakes or not knowing how to play properly / adequately etc.., so the "need" of an item is only tied into ensuring more leeway for error's, error's that can be ruled out through practice (or work if you will)

The general attitude these days is always about things not being enough and wanting more, personally I think it's well over due that someone just said stop to these "requests" which is more demands, there's absolutely no difference between this "issue" and the one claimed for dailies.

The issue is lazyness, and for those generally not doing anything other then LFR due to time constrictions caused by family, work or studies (Which is the wast minority when scouring through the Noa's flood of threads), they don't need the items as there's no progression in LFR, it's the end of the road for them.
They can if they chose to, just like normal / heroic raiders.., farm the living daylight out of LFR on that toon, or they can start another, there's no difference in that end of the spectrum!

As far as the win chance goes in normal / heroic vs RF, it's the exact same.., as I mentioned I went through all of Firelands without seeing Domo drop the firekitty staff more then once until after I had gotten 4p from Ds and the Dw staff.
RnG is RnG, if you're trying to claim that a fixed roster vs a random roster has any influence in the % drop chance of an item, then I can understand why you'd have an issue with the current LFR system also.., you're simply not able to understand the concept of RnG to begin with.

Oh, now I see. If they don't do "real" raiding as defined by you, then their chosen playstyle is laughable anyways so "stop crying".

Guess what, a player who knows what they are doing will see an improvement from an upgrade, possibly moreso than someone who doesn't know their class. That player may also be doing everything they can to help their normal mode guild progress, which may mean somewhat carrying others. Those incremental power upgrades matter to some players who are as good or even better than you.

I'm tired of elitist responses to any suggestion to "improve" the game from someone else's point of view. Not every player who could be in a HM guild is. Some of them enjoy playing with friends who probably can't make it in those guilds. Those players end up "needing" these kinds of upgrades because their normal mode guild might not be so easily able to down that fight on normal and often rely on that person more than average.

Nobody is asking for freebies here. We are pointing out potential flaws with lfr. There are two possible ways to look at this:
1. If you still need gear, you will keep going every week. If this is true, Blizzard wins and there is no "issue".
2. If you have invested way more than the gear is worth and still have not won the gear you "need", you stop participating. If this is true (and I point out how this happened to me last xpac) then Blizzard loses because people are not consuming the content they created and you can even run into issues like used to happen with massive LFD queues.

This video and most of the thread has been talking about how much is option 2 a possibility/probability. Is it enough to be an "issue". If you don't think it's a big enough issue to be a problem, then fine. Attacking people by saying their playstyle doesn't matter isn't contributing to the conversation.

[Theotherone]

Strawman I am afraid. I talked about the "win chance". You used the phrase "drop".

No strawman - you seem to like that word, I do not think it means what you think it means. The issue concerning the staff specifically said that the author saw the staff "drop" on their first Domo kill then didn't see the staff "drop" again until they were into FL. No amount of killing the same boss over and over is going to cause the item to have any greater "drop" rate and a fixed group has no effect on drop rate. Since you were speaking in terms of "win chance" in response to a statment concerning "drop" rate your reply was just irrelevant.

[Lore]

MAN I JUST LOVE ARGUING SEMANTICS DONT YOU GUYS?

[Toypop]

No strawman - you seem to like that word, I do not think it means what you think it means. The issue concerning the staff specifically said that the author saw the staff "drop" on their first Domo kill then didn't see the staff "drop" again until they were into FL. No amount of killing the same boss over and over is going to cause the item to have any greater "drop" rate and a fixed group has no effect on drop rate. Since you were speaking in terms of "win chance" in response to a statment concerning "drop" rate your reply was just irrelevant.

Another Strawman! Read the post and my comment on the staff again. I said it was irrelevant and that RNG streaks happen under either system. It was a classic Web forum red herring intended to derail the debate into a pointless argument about semantics. The issue is about win chances and not drops. Forget the staff, forget drops, stop attempting to nit pick and misquote posts and let's get back on topic.