Discussion on Black Lion Chests Gambling Drop Rate RNG and Transparency

[Sombra.3246]

There has been a lot of discussions on the internet about in game loot boxes in general and gambling.

I myself am a fan of the Black Lion Chests, and I regularly buy keys to open chests. I sometimes get motivated to test out my luck by seeing all those youtubers getting lucky with the opening of their Black Lion Chests. But my luck has been consistently bad. I wanted to do some research on the subject and see if there is any information about the actual chance you have of receiving each type of drop.

The Official Wikipedia page on Black Lion Chest/Drop rate on the official has this disclaimer:“DISCLAIMER: The information in this article is based on experimental research conducted by the community, and may contain inaccuracies and speculation. This is not considered an official source of information from ArenaNet”

There is a lot of research being done by players themselves but no real information from ArenaNet. My goal of having this discussion is to get ArenaNet to be more transparent and disclose the official drop rates for categories like common, uncommon, rare and super rare drops and for the individual items themselves.

Anyone can calculate the win rate for any type lottery which allows people to try their luck gambling. They can calculate the real drop/win rate so that they do not have any illusions about the chance they have for getting the item/money they want.

In any case please let me know your thoughts about this topic and hopefully ArenaNet will take notice and make the numbers available for the community to make their informed decisions when buying Black Lion Chests instead of praying to the RNG gods.

[Mourningcry.9428]

Well, the only positive thoughts I can offer on the topic is that I'm pleased you didn't make it a poll.

[Sombra.3246]

@Mourningcry.9428 said:Well, the only positive thoughts I can offer on the topic is that I'm pleased you didn't make it a poll.

Lmao thanks :P

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

tl;dr ANet's never published exact rates; they prefer it to be a mystery. And even if they did, it's not likely to change the behavior of more than a few of us.

@"Sombra.3246" said:There is a lot of research being done by players themselves but no real information from ArenaNet. My goal of having this discussion is to get ArenaNet to be more transparent and disclose the official drop rates for categories like common, uncommon, rare and super rare drops and for the individual items themselves.They aren't likely to. Their philosophy about drop rates has always been to make it one of the mysteries of the game, that we can research. At best, they have said, "yeah, that's within the ballpark" or "no, you're forgetting something in your analysis." But I can only think of maybe 3-4 occasions that they've done even that much in the 7-8 years I've followed their remarks.

And I don't think we will ever see any useful community data for BL chests. There are simply too many types of drops. At best, we can get some benchmark guesses for one specific 'season' of drops, but we'll never know if they tweak the rate of common or rare with each new drop table, or only a few times a year, or only when they completely overhaul the contents, or... etc.

In any case please let me know your thoughts about this topic and hopefully ArenaNet will take notice and make the numbers available for the community to make their informed decisions when buying Black Lion Chests instead of praying to the RNG gods.

People aren't going make different decisions because they know the drop rates. Well, a few will, but the vast majority of people who understand statistics know that the odds are never in our favor; it's better to spend gems/coin on getting the items we want directly. And the vaster majority of people for whom stats is a foreign language aren't going to be better informed if we had the exact numbers. They'll see "odds are 1:10000" and think, "ah, that's not so bad; someone has to win with 25000 players buying a griffon mount — why can't it be me?"

As an example, a number of posters have provided our best evidence for actual odds on all sorts of items with RNG drops: wintersday gifts, ToTs, and so on. Numbers are published in as many places as we find players: here, Reddit, in game, various discord channels. And... we have changed the behavior of a tiny number of people for a few hours. It's very, very rare that we've changed the mind of someone who already knows stats or who is already confused by the numbers.

And part of the reason is: it's just a lot of fun to open RNG boxes. That moment right before we roll the dice is exciting, even if we know we will lose more often than we win. (Maybe especially when we know that.)

[Blude.6812]

it's better to spend gems/coin on getting the items we want directly.

Too bad I can't buy what I really want to due to arbitrary restrictions from Anet and broken RNG and obvious manipulation by Anet only increases the frustration.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Blude.6812 said:Too bad I can't buy what I really want toMost of the items that used to be gated by RNG are available via the BL Exclusives Chest or via Statuettes. What did you want to buy that isn't available that way?

[Obtena.7952]

I have yet to see any MMO every publish drop rates, especially when linked to revenues.

[ReaverKane.7598]

Drop rates vary even within each category, some common items are rarer than others and some rare items are more common than others.Funny thing that, like in the Wintersday chests, i'd get more "useless" uncommons sometimes than "useful" commons. Or like my brother who managed to get one of each of the uncommon drops from the Black lion chest, plus one rare, all but the one he wanted, the glider.

[Blude.6812]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Blude.6812 said:Too bad I can't buy what I really want toMost of the items that used to be gated by RNG are available via the BL Exclusives Chest or via Statuettes. What did you want to buy that isn't available that way?

I should have explained myself better. I would like to buy things directly from gem store/tp/NPCs . I don't want to buy keys to collect statuettes or chests and a chance at a couple of other things that may be good but generally drop what I don't need or want.

[mtpelion.4562]

@Blude.6812 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Blude.6812 said:Too bad I can't buy what I really want toMost of the items that used to be gated by RNG are available via the BL Exclusives Chest or via Statuettes. What did you want to buy that isn't available that way?

I should have explained myself better. I would like to buy things directly from gem store/tp/NPCs . I don't want to buy keys to collect statuettes or chests and a chance at a couple of other things that may be good but generally drop that I don't need or want.

I'm the same way, but I acknowledge that I (and you) represent a very, very, very small minority of humans in general and MMO players in particular. For the vast majority of people, the concept of chance is too alluring to withstand and even if they don't like paying for tickets they will do it anyway because every pull of that lever satisfies their love of chance.

Selling things this way is thus insanely profitable because you aren't selling the thing, you are selling the chance for the thing.

[mauried.5608]

Most MMOs use chance as a method of making some items hard to get , so the actual rate of supply of the items into the game is very low , so the items become more desirable simply because they are hard to get.Most MMO players want to stand out from everyone else in some way, so having extremely hard to get items is well worth striving for, even if it means some kind of in game gambling.Simply selling the items in the Gem store destroys all of this.

[Xbon.9086]

@mauried.5608 said:Most MMOs use chance as a method of making some items hard to get , so the actual rate of supply of the items into the game is very low , so the items become more desirable simply because they are hard to get.Most MMO players want to stand out from everyone else in some way, so having extremely hard to get items is well worth striving for, even if it means some kind of in game gambling.Simply selling the items in the Gem store destroys all of this.

Agreed. I like having unknown chances and exclusive items to the BLC. When you get them, it feels totally badass... When I got my bank contract for example, I was so ecstatic, bound it on the spot... and still one of my most used items in the game, if you simply sell permanent bank contract in the gem store for 8000-12000 gems, that'd be silly, and would defeat the purpose.

[Biff.5312]

I'm the same way, but I acknowledge that I (and you) represent a very, very, very small minority of humans in general and MMO players in particular.

I don't think this is true at all. LOTS Of players, and I suspect the majority, would prefer to buy the item they want rather than a chance at it. If everything you can get from a chest were available at a cost comparable to one key, I suspect key sales would drop to almost nil, which is why they don't do it.

[LightofConduct.1693]

Transparency would give players more confidence to buy black lion keys instead of being afraid to buy them because the of the very low drop rates and unknown rng.

[Zedek.8932]

@"Obtena.7952" said:I have yet to see any MMO every publish drop rates, especially when linked to revenues.

Excelsior.

There are some. In Asian countries, at least from what I've read, it's gambling and the government requires those companies to show their customers how their chances are.I mean, even in my homecountry, Germany, out of a sudden every lottery commercial had a "chance 1:140,000,000" text and voice at the end literally over night, so I can imagine in China or South Korea, they are way more strict with gambling and video game addictions.

(IIRC it was the RNG rate of the League of Legends lootboxes, but my memories are very vague about that).

EDIT: Here, Obtena.

[Tolmos.8395]

I like the way loot boxes were handled for mount adoptions- a finite number of options and you never get duplicates. I think they did an excellent job there.

I really do not enjoy loot boxes like the Black Lion Chests. Infinite cash money sinks where low drop rates can lead folks who are weaker against gambling addiction to drop large sums of money into the game.

Even if it’s a high number, I’ve always liked knowing there is a max cap to how much I can spend in game to get what I want out of it. When the answer is “all of it”, that’s a little less enjoyable. Especially spending money to be disappointed, as is often the result of the loot boxes.

Games are an escape from the real world to have fun and enjoy yourself; not somewhere to regularly experience buyer’s remorse.

[MarkBecks.6453]

I love the way RNG seems to be a way to explain the bad drops. I bought 25 keys over the week-end and the number of repeats including 1 scrap, and 3 extractors, 2 teleport to friend from my last 5 chests, means that either I am 100% lucky to receive the same items one after the other. I believe in game and drop manipulation rather than call it RNG, the same stuff drops all the time, and its not possible to say its truly random. I have to grind more for gold than I ever did, and I always sink it back into the game as all of us do. It would be nice if Anet would relook at drops because the only thing we do is re-purchase or make leggies which cost gold, or buy items that are helpful to game play, after all, it is just game currency and nothing more. I think sometimes businesses are like casinos, gamble for chest, but the house always wins. I did get 4 scraps from 25 chests, which means I need maybe 65 - 70 chests to make 1 ticket to buy a skin that sells for peanuts compared to the cost of those chests (average 120 gold for 5 chests) So this is a very clever gold sink with lots of adverts to entice us into believing we going to get something good and useful, or just nice for our characters. I always get excited when I buy chest, but as usual I get disappointed with the absolute useless stuff I can buy from Fracs (9000 tokens in my bank) Like 1 need 3 extractors to fill my black lion chests, really...

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"MarkBecks.6453" said:I love the way RNG seems to be a way to explain the bad drops.Because it does explain it.

I bought 25 keys over the week-end and the number of repeats including 1 scrap, and 3 extractors, 2 teleport to friend from my last 5 chests, means that either I am 100% lucky to receive the same items one after the other.When some things are more commonly dropped, it's not entirely unusual to see the same combinations repeat multiple times. For example, getting a couple of "sevens" in a row at dice is less surprising than getting the same amount of Snake Eyes.

I believe in game and drop manipulation rather than call it RNG, the same stuff drops all the time, and its not possible to say its truly random.In fact, it's possible to measure the likelihood that something is or is not random. If you have evidence of drop manipulation, I'd love to see it. (As would ANet.)

the house always wins.This is a consequence of the house setting up the rules which make it impossible for anyone other than the house to win in the long run. The expected values always favor the house, with some games offering less unfavorable odds, some worse odds.

[Sombra.3246]

@Tolmos.8395 said:I like the way loot boxes were handled for mount adoptions- a finite number of options and you never get duplicates. I think they did an excellent job there.

I really do not enjoy loot boxes like the Black Lion Chests. Infinite cash money sinks where low drop rates can lead folks who are weaker against gambling addiction to drop large sums of money into the game.

Even if it’s a high number, I’ve always liked knowing there is a max cap to how much I can spend in game to get what I want out of it. When the answer is “all of it”, that’s a little less enjoyable. Especially spending money to be disappointed, as is often the result of the loot boxes.

Games are an escape from the real world to have fun and enjoy yourself; not somewhere to regularly experience buyer’s remorse.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Sombra.3246]

In fact, it's possible to measure the likelihood that something is or is not random. If you have evidence of drop manipulation, I'd love to see it. (As would ANet.)

How is it possible to measure the likelihood that something is or is not random without any official data from ANet or information about the algorithms that they use for the RNG?

You cannot say conclusively it is or it isn't random or it is or it isn't manipulated because there is no transparency hence why I started this discussion.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Sombra.3246 said:

In fact, it's possible to measure the likelihood that something is or is not random. If you have evidence of drop manipulation, I'd love to see it. (As would ANet.)

How is it possible to measure the likelihood that something is or is not random without any official data from ANet or information about the algorithms that they use for the RNG?

You cannot say conclusively it is or it isn't random or it is or it isn't manipulated because there is no transparency hence why I started this discussion.

If you want to make an extraordinary claim, it's up to you to provide supporting evidence. If you have evidence of drop manipulation, please share it.

In the meantime, my point is that, in general, it is possible to measure the likelihood of drops being random. The community can — and more significantly, has — done this for all the things in the game for which we can obtain decent numbers: Wintersday Gifts, Halloween Trick-or-Treat bags, Unidentified Gear, Champion Bags (of various sorts), bags produced by the 'eaters', and even (early in the game's history) drops from random mobs. The evidence we do have says that drops are random.

So the claim that BL chest rates are manipulated is even more extraordinary, because it depends on ANet adding code to the game just for gem shop RNG containers. And it would also assume that ANet has managed to keep this secret from their other developers (and prevent such information from leaking out into the world, as have many, many other aspects of the game).

tl;dr if you have evidence of manipulation, share it. Otherwise it sounds like sour grapes rather than a legit criticism of the game, its mechanics, or ANet itself.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Sombra.3246 said:There is a lot of research being done by players themselves but no real information from ArenaNet. My goal of having this discussion is to get ArenaNet to be more transparent and disclose the official drop rates for categories like common, uncommon, rare and super rare drops and for the individual items themselves.

That's a reasonable goal. And I, for one, would be very happy to see such data.(I don't think it will significantly change player behavior, but those of us who try to understand the markets would be able to do quite a lot with such information.)

[Klowdy.3126]

FFS, get over it. Buy them, don't buy them, no one cares what you do. Just stop trying to things away from people that have fun with them.

[DarcShriek.5829]

I think they should list the odds of winning the different prizes. There is no evidence that it will hurt sales. Vancouver requires that the return of every slot machine be stated on the help screens. It doesn't seem to have hurt the casinos there. Also there are indian casinos that advertise that the average return of their machines is 95%. Finally, Singapore requires information regarding the combinations most likely to be hit. None of this seems to discourage customers, so the argument that Anet can't do it because it will lower sales just doesn't cut it.

[DarcShriek.5829]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Sombra.3246 said:

In fact, it's possible to measure the likelihood that something is or is not random. If you have evidence of drop manipulation, I'd love to see it. (As would ANet.)

How is it possible to measure the likelihood that something is or is not random without any official data from ANet or information about the algorithms that they use for the RNG?

You cannot say conclusively it is or it isn't random or it is or it isn't manipulated because there is no transparency hence why I started this discussion.

If you want to make an extraordinary claim, it's up to you to provide supporting evidence. If you have evidence of drop manipulation, please share it.

In the meantime, my point is that, in general, it is possible to measure the likelihood of drops being random. The community can — and more significantly, has — done this for all the things in the game for which we can obtain decent numbers: Wintersday Gifts, Halloween Trick-or-Treat bags, Unidentified Gear, Champion Bags (of various sorts), bags produced by the 'eaters', and even (early in the game's history) drops from random mobs. The evidence we do have says that drops are random.

So the claim that BL chest rates are manipulated is even more extraordinary, because it depends on ANet adding code to the game just for gem shop RNG containers. And it would also assume that ANet has managed to keep this secret from their other developers (and prevent such information from leaking out into the world, as have many, many other aspects of the game).

tl;dr if you have evidence of manipulation, share it. Otherwise it sounds like sour grapes rather than a legit criticism of the game, its mechanics, or ANet itself.

It's not inconceivable that ANet manipulates their chests. In England they used to design slot machines so that they would automatically adjust if they were winning too much or too little. Not sure if they still do. You should see some of the crazy games that Barcrest used to make.

It's really not an extraordinary claim, so please keep the hype down. They probably don't need to manipulate them but you never know. Just as he has no evidence that they do manipulate them, you have no evidence that they don't. Maybe you should be the one to stop with the extraordinary claims.