Rare Public Quest Rewards — Random Isn’t
An invitation is never required to find reason to complain about the occurrence of loot drops in EQ2, but Public Quests have earned a special place for frustration in this regard. Several players have multiple weapons or chestpieces which they cannot trade to alts, while others have never seen them.
The math on how loot in a Public Quest is actually rather simple, but vexingly random. The best result you can get from a Public Quest by pure effort (excluding luck) is a Humming Cache. There is a 50% chance this will get bumped to an Exquisite Humming Cache. And there is yet another roll/chance (less than 1%) to get a Weapon or Chestpiece appropriate for your class.
After the jump, some commentary from Windslasher, Public Quest guru and creator of the Dragon Ring and Wizard Spire rebuilding events which will be taking place in Eastern Wastes at a future date. Those have been described by testers we’ve asked as a whole lot more fun (and more rewarding) even than the Public Quests .
Some comments from Windslasher on how we perceive good vs. bad luck:
I think [players] heard more about Fabled drops right at the start just because there were more people playing. When you have 95 people in a zone and 80 of them are doing the public quest, it’s not surprising to hear about five or even ten fabled drops every hour. The sheer scale of the initial PQ rush surprised everyone, especially me!
There’s also some basic psychology at work here, I suspect. If I find a quarter in the change return of a vending machine, I feel good for a while but I quickly forget about it. I usually don’t talk about it. But if I put a quarter into the vending machine and it steals it from me, I remember, and I avoid that vending machine for days (or maybe forever!) and I tell other people about it, too.
When things work right, we don’t notice; when they break, we do. A bad luck streak is far more memorable and more often mentioned than a good luck streak, therefore it’s natural to percieve things as getting worse all the time. Especially if the perception is based off of personal memory and what people are saying. If you get a good sample size and plot drop rate over time, you’ll find that it averages out to something flat.
and would he do rewards the same way again, with items on a less than 1% drop rate being decided by luck?
The difference between humming cache and exquisite humming cache is a die roll. 50/50 chance of one versus the other. It has nothing to do with being a healer. You did everything right, and rolled on the best possible loot table.
It looks like you have just been suffering from poor luck. Stories like yours are why I’ve come to regard straightforward random drops as problematic. I don’t plan to use them the same way, going forward.
Tags: public quests
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Comments (8)
milliebii
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or for those mathematically challenged your chance of getting at least one rare drop on your next 100 Public Quest events (assuming you make the Humming threshold) is 63%, over the next 25 22%, over the next 10 9%.
Or the other way round over the next 10 Public Quests you do there is a 91% chance of getting nothing but the chest.
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Lejoni
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The most frustrating thing for myself and what I have herd from others is not the lack of BP/Weapon drop. But rather that many seams to get many of only one of them. Some get several BPs and never see a weapon and some get several weapons and never see a BP.
I think it would be better if they made so if your roll entitle you to a BP or Weapon. And your already have one of them (but not both) it will change it and give you what you do not have.
Oh and BTW! Take away the LORE on the Shaman BP!!
It is the only BP that has LORE tag and thus makes so when a Shaman win a second BP he/she wont get it to sell it to a merchant. (But other classes will).
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Miragian
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Or transmute as I’ve done that with a robe.
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Liftik
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I would like to see the BP / Weap. subject to the “48 hour tradable” rule that came into the game recently. That way, anyone who gets a weapon or BP can give it to anyone in the raid who was there if they don’t want it.
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Ellebeth
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I had thought about the 48 hour rule for the BP/Weapon. Though some people would give it to others or some might box an alt and trade it. Sadly, I can just see the amount of plat some people will want to trade the item to you.
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Killusall
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i like the loot drops for the pq like they are.
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Grebo
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The PQ drop rate in itself is a replay trap. The reason the drop rate on what you ‘need’ (Weapon or BP)is to keep you going back, the whole math this and luck chance that is bollocks. A great deal of what we are spoon fed is to keep you playing and paying. Building a truely great game is in the wind.
If you had all of the pieces in say a day or two of PQing; you’d most likely stop doing them. Is it right? Is it fair? Who can really say, everyone will have a differnet opinion. The addition of ruins (yellow and red), master drops and the like were much more in line with keeping the players returning every hour, but there needs to be risk vs. reward.
The PQ gear is more or less the middle ground for raiding players (leading to shard gear – then raid drops)and pretty much top end gear for non raiders (maybe a change once the MC gear gets ‘fixed’). So who suffers from low drop rate? Small guilds and solo non guilded players, I had no problems rounding up my guildies for the first couple of weeks to take our chances, we all did OK and out grew the gear with just a few runs of X2 and instance shard running; but without it there was little chance that we would ahve been successful. When I taverse the Great Divide and see small guild folks or soloers getting pwned by zone entry sea creatures and like I don’t wonder why many left game before figuring out DoV and how the new mechanic worked.
In the end the PQ’s are ‘raids’ and folks should be rewarded as such for patisipating, this whole how much effort you put in thing is a load. I’ve seen folks sit on the side lines (or ignore rez’s/stay dead)or as I have done a few times – come in late not be in the ‘raid’ put in a decient effort and get the same reward (which is good – public should mean that no one is exculded). I’ve run a few alts through PQ’s and have been turned down or not given an invite ‘because your gear is crap’. No duh, Sherlock I’ve come to the PQ’s to fix that problem.
I think a small revamp is in order for the drops not only to encourage replay of the PQ’s but a sense of accomplishment for those enduring the exact same senario over and over. Example: As one gains gear, that toon will be contibuting more to the raid as a whole, thus achiving a new level of partisipation. Slide that scale up a notch or two, SOE already has massive gear checks, damage checks in place with DoV – make those checks pay off for those who may not have (or want)a big guild to go X2/X4 raiding with. Give them a chance to get picked up by bigger guilds that may be short on raid night and looking for someone with at least a fighting chance gear.
I’ve always heard that EQ2 was a risk vs reward game, in 6 1/2 years I’m still waiting to be rewarded for the time and risk I put in.
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Zharxian
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You do not need to be in the raid to get the gear. My main got all the gear without being in raids. In fact most of the good gear she got was from soloing it. I will say, however, it is beneficial for your sanity to be part of a larger group in SG, since if you are a tank and don’t have any healers watching your back, you are going to die. A lot.
If you like being in a raid for the PQs, fine by me. I’m just saying you CAN get the gear, raid or no raid.
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