Is this how loot/luck works?

General Discussion General Discussion
1

the following is my understanding of how luck works based on Dev posts and studying the database. If someone has a more accurate understanding I’d love to be corrected.

So basically, whenever you get random loot generated said loot is determined by a roll on a table according to what you’re getting loot from (a named enemy, an elite chest, ect.). This roll is integer based meaning it’s a set range but the table exceeds the range - the example I’ve seen given for this is logging - the roll for generating loot on chopping a tree has a range of 10,000 meaning with no luck you are rolling 1 - 10,000. With Tier V luck food, which gives you a bonus of 2000 it changes your roll range to 2001 - 12,000. If the roll required to get a particular rare drop is 10,001 your chance to get that item have gone from zero to about 20%

Based on developer comments it seems like it shouldn’t be possible to have “too much” luck, because the only way this would be a problem if the your luck pushed your roll range so high that the thing you want requires a roll below your modified roll range, however since the theoretical maximum general luck bonus possible is just over 57%, or a roll range modifier of +5700, it seems highly unlikely that the devs would be dumb enough to put anything actually desirable below this level, evidenced by the fact that if what you wanted really was that low on the loot table it would be showing up more than every other kill with zero luck modification, assuming everything I’ve read about these systems are both true and working as intended.

All that said, the roll your luck perks modifies doesn’t actually seem to determine the loot you get, rather it determines which “bucket” of loot you will get a piece from. This language was used in a Dev FAQ and near as I can tell these buckets are just a group of loot that’s kinda similar - so for instance The Surgeon might have on it’s loot table buckets like “Unique Named Items”, “Global Named Items”, “Random Weapons”, “Random Armor”, “Crafting Mats”, ect. Each of these buckets are what have a range on the general roll table with the more desirable ones being higher up on the roll table and your luck perks give you a higher chance of hitting those buckets, but once the bucket is rolled there is a second process that happens to determine what loot you actually get out of that bucket that is, as far as I can tell, unaffected by luck perks and bonuses.

If this is all the case, I think the Devs need to seriously re-evaluate how the buckets are set up and provide more open communication about what these buckets are and how loot is generated from them. There is currently too much confusion surrounding the topic and it feels prohibitively difficult to farm for the specific items you want due to how much garbage exists in these loot buckets and how opaque the systems governing loot still are over a yet into the game’s lifecycle.

2

This is exactly the problem with the current luck system, and why the ideal luck can vary boss to boss or one type of chest to another. It depends on the loot table of that boss/chest and the item you’re hunting for. Without seeing the exact loot tables, none of us can be sure where they placed the items. (and lets not put anything past the devs in terms of them not “being dumb enough”. Based on everything thats happened this game…well enough said

As to your point about if items were too low in the loot table that they would be showing up very frequently, i’m not sure if that would be the case. Its also about how many times something is in a loot table, not just about where it is in the loot table.

For example, if a stacked deck is at #1000 in the loot table out of a 10,000 normal roll, and your luck pushes you to roll between 2500 and 12,500. you could miss the item. If there’s only one stacked deck in the entire 10,000 item (or 12,500) loot table your chance of getting it is still very low and thus the item remains extremely rare. And it would be possible to “out luck yourself” and roll above the item with too much luck.

On the other hand if you were to put the stacked deck at # 12495, 12496, 12497, 12498, 12499, 12500 you’d have 6/12,500 chance to get it, but only with luck being at least 2500 (otherwise your standard 0-10,000 roll would always miss it. This is the fundamental problem with the loot system in this game today, the devs then are forced to scatter some of these rare items at different levels in the table, because they want you to have some kind of miniscule chance to get it without luck, then more chance with higher luck. My guess (without seeing the loot tables) would be that theres 1 stacked deck between 1 and 10000 (so that you could get it without luck maybe), perhaps 2 of them between 10,000 and 11,000 so you have a better chance with +1000 luck, maybe 4 between 11,000 and 12,000, and even more between 12,000 and 15,000. But who knows…if the devs not super careful though about how they implement this, they can easily create dead spots in the loot table.

I’m sure at some point in the future they will admit the luck system has been broken. They’re already always tuning loot tables to "improve the quality of loot dropped. The worst part is that all these changes are done in the dark, shadow nerfs/buffs we cannot see, so we have no idea if lucky really is helping or not.

In a good luck system, more luck should never hurt you, only help you. One could envision numerous ways to engineer a better luck system than what we have in this game today…

One idea would be that you keep everything within a single 1-10,000 loot table, and luck would give you extra rolls at that table, and then you’d keep the highest rolled item. You’d put the most desirable items at the top of the loot table, and rarity would still be determined by the number of entries in the loot table. For example #10,000 would be the loaded dice, #9999 and 9998 would be the stacked deck, #9995, 9996, 9997 would be the rabbits foot for your major/basic/minor trophy mats. Everyone rolls a random # between 1 and 10,000. But if you have higher luck you roll 1x,2x, or 3x, say you get 2342, then 5203, then 9000 and you use the highest of the rolls to select that item from the table.

Another idea would be that luck only increases the MINIMUM range of the roll range. (similar to how certain crafting foods only increase the MINIMUM gearscore, but keep the max). You’re still dependent on the devs to put the items at the appropriate place in the loot table (ex: 9,995 thru 10,000) and not stick something super desirable or rare in the 1-2500 part of the luck table for example. This way luck only helps you so instead of rolling 1-10000 you would roll 2500-10000 with 25% luck or 5000-10000 with 50% luck. Downside to this would be that with 50% luck you only get a 2x improvement on obtaining that rare item, but its at least an analog scale with luck % as opposed to some crazy # of roll thing I cooked up above. The other side effect would be missing out out common “normal” items when you have a high amount of luck rolled (Ex: pots, refining reagents). This easily could be resolved by keeping a certain # of them in the higher part of the loot table (aka 5000-10000) or also giving everyone a separate roll at 1-2500 w/o luck modifier on top of a good item roll of 1-10000 w/ luck modifier (shove all the common crap into the 1-2500 part of the luck table, keep the good stuff in the 2500 and up segment).

Anyway just some rants and thoughts, but this SHOULD BE fixable within the bounds of having luck gear in the game. I know others will disagree fundamentally and say they should not have to choose between luck gear and good pvp/pve perks, and I can understand that perspective, but thats a separate discussion on overall strategy/vision for the game.

1 Like
3

If we were talking about literally any other dev team, I would be inclined to agree with this. Their continual goof ups really make it hard, no matter how much good faith you have to believe anything in the game is working as intended.

3 Likes
4

My understanding, as I outlined in the OP, is that the loot table that we roll on that’s affected by luck doesn’t have any actual items on it, it has ‘buckets’ of items. Luck perks only affect what buckets are on your roll table, it has no effect on what item you get out of that bucket

so for instance, it seems like there’s a “Legendary crafting mats” bucket that contains things like the mats for the legendary crafted weapons, void essence, and the Major trophy mats. From anecdotal observations it seems like this bucket might be something like 9,000 - 12,000, so getting up to 20% would increase your odds of hitting that bucket but any more luck than that doesn’t change the odds, and it is physically impossible to have too much luck for this.

Now, if the results on the main loot table that correspond to this bucket are not all sequential as you’ve suggest (i.e. 8500 - 9000, 10,000 - 11,000, and 12,500 - 13,000 instead of 9,000 - 12,000) it would make the possibility of luck “dead zones” much higher but I doubt this is how it’s done since it’d be unnecessarily complex.

Honestly the fundamental idea of buckets and luck has a lot of merits, the problem is that there’s way too much garbage in the buckets. Even if you could get up to 30% odd on rolling the ‘legendary crafting mats’ bucket you still probably only have like a max 1% chance to get a stacked deck, for instance. Because these buckets have so much junk it’s incredibly unlikely to get anything you actually want

5

I think it was worked out to be 61.9% is the luck max threshold when you factor in food and pvp (which has its own set of paranoia attached).

To be blunt, nobody has the calculation / predicate logic here beyond AGS internally. There’s a theory on how it all snaps together, but historically speaking based off bug submissions and reactions from AGS this value is not clear. I’m sure our local “data miners” will be triggered from this statement and react in a spiral of word salad.

keyword: intended … the concern here is if luck formula or calculation is feeding in a static expression here, meaning the code being adjusted after every loot table modification over time becomes less, then the data flowing into the calculation and/or the alignment of the table with this calculation seems to be more of a “at server-time” content change discrepancy less a math issue.

Yeah, i used the door analogy to simplify it. Luck determines which doors you get to knock on, but once the door opens luck halts on what comes through the door.

To quote AGS here:

Which could be interpreted in the format you’ve outlined.

Well there are two parts to this issue. The first is yes “tell me what the bands of luck equate to so i can at least have a focus point of what i’m aiming for” the second is “also tell me what the value you arrived at once i layered on all my luck please”.

As only having one piece to this equation leaves the second piece open to more and more speculation of how it all strings together (queue data miner word salad here)

Absolutely. Its not just an small isolated feature in the game either, this is the entire governance of game play in the game. Everyone is farming a chest, boss or whatever daily to get X loot so they can unlock Y experience.

If there was ever an important feature to double down on its this one.

Where it gets confusing is when everyone but AGS comments on the validation of Luck. I myself am constantly looking for evidence Luck is actually doing as its intended, so far i keep seeing data points where it just comes up short.

Contradictions in opinions and outcomes.

6

Lets put aside the AS-IS luck system, as many echo that despite all the math gymnastics and expertise rhetoric - its broken and dumb.

The real core promise here the game offers is this. If you invest in Luck and really invest, like all features in the game that carry the same promise - i will reward you more kindly then those who don’t.

This is ultimately the core user experience on offer here. Until AGS sit down, unpack this and come up with a visual feedback loop that reinforces that this promise is being kept, threads like these and arguments that arise from them continue and over time players faith in AGS delivering on this very critical promise leads to attrition.

I feel that if anything is the universal agreement point - we just need more believable validation that my investment has paid dividends.

TBC that isn’t a greenlight for “well i have 50% luck now, so gimme that named BiS thingy within say 5 kills”. Happy that i have to spend hours rolling the dice to get the outcome of said BiS, i just want to be absolutely positive and re-assured that when i sacrafice perk on all my gear for Luck it has value.

Thats the ask of players.

7

This topic was automatically closed 21 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.