Luck

[Flatley.1620]

Hello. I (very, very, very) rarely post here and I'm certainly a few million miles from hardcore, being extremely casual and un-guillded... but I was wondering...

Is it possible that one of a players' characters can be luckier than another in terms of getting better loot drops? Or is it all just based on the account's magic find percentage?

Thanks!

[Randulf.7614]

No it is not possible. Fun fact there was an old conspiracy theory that certain accounts were luckier than others and was debunked in some detail a long time ago. Characters on a account being luckier than another is also simply not possible nor would such a system have any reason to exist

Magic find has some effect on certain loot and its account wide across all characters (the wiki will explain where it applies)

The only thing that did exist if I remember correctly - and I'm not sure it still does or not - is that light armoured classes could get slightly more silk types, medium get more leather types and heavy more metal types (or at least get those weights drop more often). That was a long time ago - I don't know if it ever changed as loot tables and systems got updated. But, no character will be "luckier" than others. No character would have an advantage to get say an infusion than another

Hope that helps!

Slight amendment as someone pointed out later: You can buff your character with temp boosts to magic find. So technically you can make a very, very tiny difference

Edited April 26 by Randulf.7614

[Ashen.2907]

There is no system in place to cause one account to be luckier than another but it is possible for drops to work out that way anyway. This is inherent to random number generation for loot. If you and a friend both play for a year, play the same content together, playing the same build, etc. he might get several precursors while you get none. He was luckier than you, but not because any given system in the game chose to make it so.

Edited April 26 by Ashen.2907

[kharmin.7683]

13 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

The only thing that did exist if I remember correctly - and I'm not sure it still does or not - is that light armoured classes could get slightly more silk types, medium get more leather types and heavy more metal types (or at least get those weights drop more often). That was a long time ago - I don't know if it ever changed as loot tables and systems got updated.

 

I'm guessing that this is no longer the case because it certainly isn't my experience to have loot drops like this.  I often seem to get a lot of drops that my character can't use.

[XSevSpreeX.2143]

18 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

The only thing that did exist if I remember correctly - and I'm not sure it still does or not - is that light armoured classes could get slightly more silk types, medium get more leather types and heavy more metal types (or at least get those weights drop more often). That was a long time ago - I don't know if it ever changed as loot tables and systems got updated.

I vaguely remember something about this, but I assume this is no longer the case. I've not heard anyone say or seen any guide, to include from the Fast Farming community, in recent years suggest people use one armor type over another for different drops.

Edited April 25 by XSevSpreeX.2143

[Astralporing.1957]

On 4/25/2024 at 12:15 AM, Flatley.1620 said:

Hello. I (very, very, very) rarely post here and I'm certainly a few million miles from hardcore, being extremely casual and un-guillded... but I was wondering...

Is it possible that one of a players' characters can be luckier than another in terms of getting better loot drops? Or is it all just based on the account's magic find percentage?

Thanks!

Yes, it is possible, but only in the same way as one person can be luckier in real life than another. So, we'd be talking here about nebulous mystical quality of a character (as influenced by RNGesus), and not about actual game mechanics impact.

Edit: correction, magic find boons can and will influence drops on per-character basis. Notice, that magic find affects only a certain subset of drops (i.e. most of drops are currently being delivered through chests, which aren't influenced by MF). Notice also, that a large part of Magic Find value comes not from those per-character boons, but from permanent account-wide Magic Find stat (that is obtained through achievement point tiers and from eating Luck).

Edited April 25 by Astralporing.1957

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

There's probably some weird method that generates a random number seed for all your random drops based on when you log in that day/week/month or whatever to determine drops for the day.  Accounts may appear luckier than others if they just consistently get better seeds.  However, there's also just your bias towards the negatives (Never getting the drop you want) and other people posting their good drops in global or otherwise.  So yeah, the only way accounts are 'luckier' is by random chance (When you log in or whenever the game regenerates the seed) and their magic find % (Which I think goes as high as 340% passively without any boosts at current available AP).

[Dawdler.8521]

Long, long ago there were rumours of such things… accounts that got gold by just poking an enemy in long events. Accounts that could barely get bronze fully going through the same events. 

But I suppose it’s just fluff.

[Bollocks.4078]

On 4/24/2024 at 5:42 PM, Randulf.7614 said:

The only thing that did exist if I remember correctly - and I'm not sure it still does or not - is that light armoured classes could get slightly more silk types, medium get more leather types and heavy more metal types (or at least get those weights drop more often). That was a long time ago - I don't know if it ever changed as loot tables and systems got updated. But, no character will be "luckier" than others. No character would have an advantage to get say an infusion than another

I specifically recall feeling like I mostly got drops I couldn't use in the early days.  I've been playing since day 0.

I think lucky accounts/chars is really just a perception due to the nature of RNG.  This is especially true for very rare things.  I've always felt like I have better than average luck in sone areas and worse than average luck in other areas.  For example, for all the hours I've played I've never gotten a precursor from mob drops, chests, etc.  But I have gotten 5 precursors from the Mystic Toilet.  That may be a completely invalid comparison anyway depending on what precursor drop chances are for the mobs, chests, etc vs for the Mystic Toilet.

[Danikat.8537]

There's no known way for one character on an account to be luckier than another and, aside from magic find which has limited and specific effects, no way for one account to be luckier than another.

In theory it's possible for Anet to program an elaborate system where the time of day you log in or how many other people have gotten "lucky" drops that day or whatever other factors they want feeds into it and subtly changes the probability. But it seems very unlikely because it would be a lot of time and effort and a lot of additional things that could go wrong for no real benefit. Humans are very good at seeing patterns, to the point where we can see them even when they're not there (like seeing faces in everything from tree bark to foam on a coffee or punctuation marks), we don't need a system like that to actually exist for people to start believing all kinds of superstitions.

Having said that if you feel like some of your characters are luckier than others and it doesn't cause you any problems to follow that there's probably no harm in acting like it's true. If you think one character gets better drops from world bosses or jumping puzzles or whatever then yeah, they can become the one who always does those things. As long as you don't end up doing something like effectively retiring a favourite character because they "have to" stay camping a chest because no one else can get good drops from it.
 

11 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Long, long ago there were rumours of such things… accounts that got gold by just poking an enemy in long events. Accounts that could barely get bronze fully going through the same events. 

But I suppose it’s just fluff.

There's always rumours. They're usually some combination of exageration, confirmation bias (where people remember the good results and forget the less interesting ones), confusing correlation with causation, ommiting details and out-right lies.

Years ago I was in a guild with someone who claimed they must have a lucky account because they got precursors much more often than other people. It turned out they not only put all the exotic and rare weapons they got as drops into the Mystic Forge but also spent a lot of their gold on buying or crafting exotics to throw into the Forge. They assumed everyone else (or at least people who cared about precursor drops enough to complain they didn't get them) did the same, because if you want a precursor why wouldn't you do whatever you could to increase your chances? Whereas most of the "unlucky" people they were talking to rarely or never did that and just hoped for a drop from enemies because they wanted the big payout from genuinely getting lucky, not just about breaking even on the gold they'd spent to get it.

[Astralporing.1957]

11 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Long, long ago there were rumours of such things… accounts that got gold by just poking an enemy in long events. Accounts that could barely get bronze fully going through the same events. 

But I suppose it’s just fluff.

Yes, it is.You are not only repeating hearsay based on people not understanding what was going on at some (very old) point in GW2's history, but also remember it wrong on top of it. First, it wasn't about participation, but about qualifying for drops. Second, the issue with this was that it was based on flawed tagging system where the threshold was set at certain percentage of overall damage caused to mob (which put hard limits on how many people could qualify). Third, the tagging itself was a little bit wonky when scaling mid-fight happened. And fourth, since there was no such thing as dps meters then, players tended to heavily overestimate (or underestimate) their own contribution.

Notice, that's an extremely old issue, that was fixed maybe few months after champion bags were introduced, and had nothing to do with event participation. The first time that real event participation wonkiness happened was recently when Anet messed with WvW event participation, and even there it's not random, but a sideeffect of badly designed participation requirements.

 

[synk.6907]

On 4/24/2024 at 6:15 PM, Flatley.1620 said:

Hello. I (very, very, very) rarely post here and I'm certainly a few million miles from hardcore, being extremely casual and un-guillded... but I was wondering...

Is it possible that one of a players' characters can be luckier than another in terms of getting better loot drops? Or is it all just based on the account's magic find percentage?

Thanks!

A lot of posts talking about whether an account is "luckier" than another, but for what you are actually asking --

Luck is the same across your account, so all of your characters will have the same foundation. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Luck

Magic Find is derived from this luck and then other sources. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magic_Find

So, an individual character's active magic find can be boosted and buffed in order to have more than other characters. For example, if one character has the 20% MF enrichment in the amulet slot and others don't, it technically has a higher chance with drops. However, these methods are available to any of your characters so ultimately you don't really have any "luckier" one character compared to your others.

[Zok.4956]

On 4/25/2024 at 12:15 AM, Flatley.1620 said:

Is it possible that one of a players' characters can be luckier than another in terms of getting better loot drops?

Yes, that is possible, but it is purely coincidental. It's just like luck that a few have who win the lottery. This is the essence of the random principle. Because a random distribution of loot does not mean that the distribution is always the same for everyone. A random distribution of loot just means that the chances of getting something are the same for everyone. Magic Find can increase the chances slightly and this may also be different for different characters (e.g. which food a character has buffed themselves with etc.)

 

Edited April 27 by Zok.4956

[Cuks.8241]

On 4/25/2024 at 12:15 AM, Flatley.1620 said:

Is it possible that one of a players' characters can be luckier than another in terms of getting better loot drops?

It's not just possible, it just is. Because drops are rng based I doubt there are 2 accounts/characters in the game that had the same drops over the course of their playtime. 

But that doesn't in any way mean that there is a system in place that makes a specific account or character luckier. Theoretically one account could roll the best drop from the loot table every single time and another account could roll worst or no drop every single time. And each of these 2 scenarios has exactly the same chance as any other possible different combination of rolls. 

[Blude.6812]

On 4/24/2024 at 6:15 PM, Flatley.1620 said:

Hello. I (very, very, very) rarely post here and I'm certainly a few million miles from hardcore, being extremely casual and un-guillded... but I was wondering...

Is it possible that one of a players' characters can be luckier than another in terms of getting better loot drops? Or is it all just based on the account's magic find percentage?

Thanks!

A long time ago, on the original forums the famous John Smith suggested there were 'outlier' accounts on both ends of the spectrum.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Accounts, yes....but, characters?  I don't believe he said anything about characters on the same account. 

But, of course, anything is possible with RNG. 

Edited April 27 by Inculpatus cedo.9234

[Zok.4956]

4 hours ago, Blude.6812 said:

A long time ago, on the original forums the famous John Smith suggested there were 'outlier' accounts on both ends of the spectrum.

Of course, every normal distribution (pure random distribution) can have outliers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution 

[Tinker.6924]

From Daft Punk's Get Lucky,

She's up all night 'til the sun
I'm up all night to get some
She's up all night for good fun
I'm up all night to get lucky
We're up all night 'til the sun
We're up all night to get some
We're up all night for good fun
We're up all night to get lucky

On 4/24/2024 at 6:15 PM, Flatley.1620 said:

Is it possible that one of a players' characters can be luckier than another in terms of getting better loot drops? Or is it all just based on the account's magic find percentage?

It's 95% your account's magic find, but there are food boons and infusions and guild magic finds bonuses and other things that are character-specific that can add a significant amount of character-specific magic find bonus

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

We can't confirm or deny any speculation unless we see the code directly. This hardly matters anyways since they are putting all new super rare drops in boxes that aren't effected by MF.

[Astralporing.1957]

On 4/27/2024 at 11:26 PM, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Accounts, yes....but, characters?  I don't believe he said anything about characters on the same account. 

But, of course, anything is possible with RNG. 

Unless everyone always gets the exact same things (with no RNG factor to it whatsoever), there will always be outliers. Whether we look at accounts, characters or players. It's just a natural byproduct of RNG - someone rolls high while someone else rolls low.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Still can't find where he said anything about characters.  That's the point of the post.

Not saying, again, that it's not possible; just that he didn't mention characters when discussing RNG and accounts. 

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Still can't find where he said anything about characters.  That's the point of the post.

And, as i said, this distinction was irrelevant in the context those outliers were mentioned then. Yes, there were (and are) outlier accounts. There also were (and are) outlier characters. In both cases it's caused by natural consequences of having an RNG system. It may not necessarily be strictly Normal Distribution, but the bell curve would still be there. Again, regardless of whether you look on players, accounts or characters.

[Dayra.7405]

In a Lotterie it is  very unlikely that you win, but it is likely that someone wins. Does this make the winner an outlier 😀

And if the winner and a looser play afterwards in a 2nd lottery, both have the same small chance of winning.

 

Edited April 29 by Dayra.7405

[Essence Snow.3194]

On 4/24/2024 at 6:42 PM, Randulf.7614 said:

No it is not possible. Fun fact there was an old conspiracy theory that certain accounts were luckier than others and was debunked in some detail a long time ago. Characters on a account being luckier than another is also simply not possible nor would such a system have any reason to exist

Magic find has some effect on certain loot and its account wide across all characters (the wiki will explain where it applies)

The only thing that did exist if I remember correctly - and I'm not sure it still does or not - is that light armoured classes could get slightly more silk types, medium get more leather types and heavy more metal types (or at least get those weights drop more often). That was a long time ago - I don't know if it ever changed as loot tables and systems got updated. But, no character will be "luckier" than others. No character would have an advantage to get say an infusion than another

Hope that helps!

Slight amendment as someone pointed out later: You can buff your character with temp boosts to magic find. So technically you can make a very, very tiny difference

 As other poster have noted....the very nature of rng means there will be statistical winners and losers. It's basically a bell curve, few on the left (unlucky}, most in the middle, and few on the right (lucky).  So not only is it possible...it's guaranteed.  If it were not..there would have to be a modifier to prevent it that was account or character specific.  The distribution moves more towards the center over repeated occurrences.  Magic find will skew the bell slightly to the right over time.

 

Edited April 30 by Essence Snow.3194

[Ashantara.8731]

On 4/25/2024 at 12:15 AM, Flatley.1620 said:

Is it possible that one of a players' characters can be luckier than another in terms of getting better loot drops?

I think I remember something mentioned about "overfarming" content for certain drops being a thing. But your general Magic Find is account-wide and does not vary between characters.