Gathering Tool rate of return skewed low?

[Metaljaw.6437]

I have noticed a change in the gathering tool drop rate for those that give excess components (e.g., Glyph of the Tailor, Glyph of the Leatherworker, etc.) a few months ago. It used to be a pretty systematic award on the third strike, but they appear to have changed to a more randomized distribution a bit ago.  I have kept tract of the number of items received though my home instance farming and it appears that the rate of return is closer to 28-30% than the advertised 33%.  Additionally, the number of time that I am seeing 10+ strikes with no bonus awards has skyrocketed (several times daily now).  Has anyone else noticed similar issues? I'm thinking the RNG associated with gathering tools might be skewed low for some reason. This has been reviewed over multiple months with over 100 strikes per day.  Also through some tracking in PvE play. Anyone else looked into the issue?

[Metaljaw.6437]

Too in the weeds, or does no one use these gathering tools and care?

[Strider Pj.2193]

8 minutes ago, Metaljaw.6437 said:

Too in the weeds, or does no one use these gathering tools and care?

I think there is a segment that wants to default to ‘not enough data’ for a decision, yet sees how long you have tracked it and notes that maybe it’s too much data to arbitrarily discount it.  
 

And an additional segment that would want to watch it more themself to see if there is a difference.

 

 

[Obtena.7952]

23 hours ago, Metaljaw.6437 said:

I have noticed a change in the gathering tool drop rate for those that give excess components (e.g., Glyph of the Tailor, Glyph of the Leatherworker, etc.) a few months ago. It used to be a pretty systematic award on the third strike, but they appear to have changed to a more randomized distribution a bit ago.  I have kept tract of the number of items received though my home instance farming and it appears that the rate of return is closer to 28-30% than the advertised 33%.  Additionally, the number of time that I am seeing 10+ strikes with no bonus awards has skyrocketed (several times daily now).  Has anyone else noticed similar issues? I'm thinking the RNG associated with gathering tools might be skewed low for some reason. This has been reviewed over multiple months with over 100 strikes per day.  Also through some tracking in PvE play. Anyone else looked into the issue?

I have noted (only anecdotally) that the garden in the home instance is typically resulting in lower chances, always. I didn't collect data, so I'm not raising it as a problem. It's a rather minor issue IMO. 

 

To be fair, if you want accuracy on the single percent levels, you need to record the results at least 1000's of events with the tool in a specific scenario (because as I observe, the garden results in different rates than ... everything else). Really, it's more work than it's really worth I believe. 

Edited July 9, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Khisanth.2948]

1 hour ago, Strider Pj.2193 said:

I think there is a segment that wants to default to ‘not enough data’ for a decision, yet sees how long you have tracked it and notes that maybe it’s too much data to arbitrarily discount it.  
 

And an additional segment that would want to watch it more themself to see if there is a difference.

 

 

Well OP has provide no data so "not enough data" is a perfectly valid point. OP has only provided claims and assertions.

 

Home instance nodes are also another confounding factor since they don't always behave the same as other nodes. Guild synthesizers and synthesizers in general would also be a dubious target.

[Metaljaw.6437]

I haven't tracked in open world as rigorously as a home instance just because keeping a running tally of how many strikes I have made is difficult and annoying in general. I have tried it, and in those instances for around 100+ strikes I was ending up low as well. I tried keeping a more accurate table, but kept losing count after a hundred or so strikes, and I'm not sure how to figure in the extra strikes you sometimes get.  However, my personal home instance currently has 106 strikes from the gathering nodes in it (discounting nodes that don't use gathering tools like the wintersday gift tree, cloth racks, and leather racks, and the like). From that it is easy to determine if I received close to the 34/35 extra yield cloth/leather expected (I farm with a character with a full set of the same type of glyph - either tailor or leatherworker).  Generally it has ranged from 28-36 with a couple outliers. The overall percentage is zoning in just under 30% over the last 75+ farms. I'm not sure why home instance nodes would be considered differently for the purpose of glyphs than open world.  Also, since the tools cost about 10-12$ each in real world currency, I sort of expect to get what is advertised.

[Obtena.7952]

100+ strikes won't yield enough data to conclude that the chances are off a few percent. My stats is rusty .. but you need more like 1000 to say that there is a difference in chance between what it says and what you got. 

[ywhl.8592]

repo

Edited October 19, 2022 by ywhl.8592
Removed

[Obtena.7952]

6 hours ago, Zynk.9015 said:

Read OP's post again. They are claiming 6000+ strikes.

Yeah, but how is the data organized? It's not clear that there is 'control' in that experiment. 

[ywhl.8592]

repo

Edited October 19, 2022 by ywhl.8592
Removed

[Metaljaw.6437]

Sort of why I posted. I only have my data an no access to a "control."  I'm trying to figure out if it is just that I have supremely low RNG luck or if there is an issue with ANet's RNG generator. Or the code that awards bonus materials.

 

As to how the data is organized:  Date, number of strikes, number of bonus materials.  I sum over the column of number of bonus materials and divide that by the sum of the column of number of strikes to get the overall percentage.