Understanding Map Drops - a statistical Approach

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FarmerTed wrote:

Thank you for this post. It was pretty fun to read. I am not a very good player and have been stuck at T6 for awhile. This gives me some ideas on what to change to move up some map tiers.

Honestly just buy T8s in packs of 10, alch-and-go and check if you sustain. Eventually, you will. Throw enough shit onto the wall, something will stick.

At least for T8s, which are sustainable alch-and-go by now. Especially if you also run the higher tier maps that drop for you.

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Char1983 wrote:

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FarmerTed wrote:

Thank you for this post. It was pretty fun to read. I am not a very good player and have been stuck at T6 for awhile. This gives me some ideas on what to change to move up some map tiers.

Honestly just buy T8s in packs of 10, alch-and-go and check if you sustain. Eventually, you will. Throw enough shit onto the wall, something will stick.

At least for T8s, which are sustainable alch-and-go by now. Especially if you also run the higher tier maps that drop for you.

I don't trade; I play this more like a 3D roguelike. I spend all day analysing stuff, so for me play time is about play. I like to go through at a slower rate using a more intuitive and playful approach. Thankfully, since you did all that number crunching, I can adjust some parameters in my playstyle without thinking too much.

Thank you.

If you can, roll for packsize and magic mobs. Those are the ones that have the best chances to advance you through the tiers.

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Char1983 wrote:

If you can, roll for packsize and magic mobs. Those are the ones that have the best chances to advance you through the tiers.

Cool. Maybe I can get the T15 boss and twinned boss challenges done before league end! :)

Exactly that kind of streaks i wish would be history, 'cuz, you know, next 10 maps you drop only shit!

Damn RNG.

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Astarte911 wrote:

Exactly that kind of streaks i wish would be history, 'cuz, you know, next 10 maps you drop only shit!

That is not really the kind of streaks I am talking about, though ;). It's a bit hard to disentangle.

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Boem wrote:

1) re-create this experiment with "building up a pool" instead of the "run highest tier".

Something like 50 maps of same tier = move up one tier (low-tier maps)

20 maps of mid tier = move up one

5 maps of high tier etc

OK, I can do this. I might have to buff the climbing through the map tiers first, though, because I have the feeling that in practice, the climbing happens faster. I will think about it.

More importantly, though, what does that mean? I get 20 T10s and start running T10s. The first 10 T10s I get no refunds and no +1s. What do I do?

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Boem wrote:

2) incorporate the lower tier maps to sustain the higher ones somehow. Since you can convert them to higher tiers, this is a useful mechanic and a good sink for lower tier maps, which i as a solo player constantly use.

OK, so we again need some guide values here. Once I have more than 20 maps of one tier, I vendor the ones over 20 up? So if I got 27 T5 maps, I keep 21 and convert 6 into T6 maps? That can easily be done.

^I was just suggesting some base-line value's :)

It's about the underlying strategy being applied which helps reduce the eratic behavior from the system in place.

You made a note on this that you are constantly pulled back to tier 4's etc.
While this is true for "eratic" mapping, it's not for somebody that builds up a pool slowly over time.

So what i am saying is that you should try and mimic this experiment but with a steady progression style instead of the eratic "run highest available".

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Char1983 wrote:

More importantly, though, what does that mean? I get 20 T10s and start running T10s. The first 10 T10s I get no refunds and no +1s. What do I do?

That depends on what behavior you would like to mimic. you could use accumulate + flush for example (collect 20, run all, drop back down to next available tier)

The point is, that you would want to mimic having a buffer available to combat the low-end spikes the chart clearly shows. Which is how a lot of people play that push maps slowly, but steadily.

Peace,

-Boem-

edit : from my own experience for example, i reach mid-tier sustainability at lvl 90+-, but i never fall down again out of it. So while it's a long progression play, it's also a secure one.

The erratic style purely depends on RNG to give you a succession of good seeds to combat the drought that will inevitably come.

@OP: Very solid work! To be frank that's a LOT closer to GGG's statement of intent than I expected it to be. Apparently, they really ARE looking at the statistics and adjusting accordingly.

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Barivius wrote:

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Boem wrote:

I have two suggestions.

1) re-create this experiment with "building up a pool" instead of the "run highest tier".

Something like 50 maps of same tier = move up one tier (low-tier maps)

20 maps of mid tier = move up one

5 maps of high tier etc

Please do this. I believe my less sophisticated number crunching tells me that it doesn't change the overall analysis, except you are less likely to be "lucky guy" and less likely to be "unlucky guy."

I build a pool of 8-10 before moving up. At T13, I stop worrying about pools and run them at my convenience.

This has absolutely zero effect on map drops, except that you could be running lower level maps than you could get away with.

That isn't to say building a base is useless. It does help you game the XP formula to run the lower level content at low levels, and the higher level content at high levels. But that's an XP consideration, not a drops consideration... and to maximize XP, you don't want to run a map you'd never run of you were using the highest-first method.

So what this means is, if you're trying to game the XP formula: let's say you're at t11. You try to make an educated guess as to whether you will run a t11 ever again, if you started running highest first from this point onwards. If the answer is yes, you never will, proceed to 12. Otherwise, run another 11.

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Char1983 wrote:

9) Conclusions

No. 1:
Map drop streaks happen, and happen over hundreds of maps. They do even out, but only over VERY long periods (thousands to tens of thousands of maps). The longest "dry phase" between two T15 runs in my model was 1101 runs without a T15 dropping, even though on average a T15 dropped every 16.5 runs.

And this is really the paydirt here.

This is the basis of my statement that high mapping isn't gated by RNG, it's gated by trade. As long as you're part of The Collective, all the RNG evens out in the end; by yourself, you just go until you bust, who knows how long that is.

The maprolling standards needed to run maps solo and expect sustainment are lightyears from the maprolling standards traders require to "sustain" maps amongst themselves. Actually, it's even beyond that; all the people overrolling their maps, hoping not to be that unlucky - but significant - minority of solo mapping collapses, results in the majority of solo mappers having a surplus... so the trade-savvy can roll maps well under the statistical sustainment quantity, parasitically, and profit more as a result.

edit: To clarify the point above... if you have ten thousand clones of Char1983, and they all run and roll maps the way he does, and they all run one hundred maps, and they all trade with each other, they'll end up running maps along these percentages

What these means economically is that t10 maps are shop-thread fodder, destined not to be run, except by outsiders who are hoping to climb up. The competition between the Char1983 clones would be so great that they could be bought at a pittance. So if you're just starting up, you buy t10s, run them Trans+Aug+go, and hope to get some t10s out of it; you can skip all the other tiers and just go straight into the end of the progression. The t11+ you get from the t10s are actually worth something.

Not everyone runs maps the way Char1983 does - in fact, we can reasonably conclude the vast majority run maps at a lower standard, and some even sell off their highest-tier maps - but you get the idea; the conventional wisdom doesn't apply once The Collective has established a map base already.

While true, this means that everyone would have to run their maps trade-centered. Now, there is a large percentage of players (I think, and I am one of them) that thinks that trading for content is plain stupid. I would not pay anyone to clear Core Malachai either, which for me is a similarly stupid exercise. Either I can do it by myself, or I cannot. However, in this case, I am not gated by my skills or knowledge (I fully clear each map, I kill every boss), but by RNG. And that is a pretty bad feeling.

It is also a pretty bad feeling to run T9s which you know can in the best case drop a T11, which then would have to have a best-case drop of a T13 again, to get to something really interesting. Yeah, I could buy those maps. I won't. It's just not the same as buying a good belt or weapon. It never will be. It's just consumables.

Anyways, it is too late to do anything useful here any more. I will show later that it is possible to make map drops better, and nicer.