Is Lockpick Retention Rate a Lie?

As I go through GWEN, I have noticed an alarming number of lockpicks breaking. Supposedly, I should I have a 52% chance of keeping my lockpick, but it seemed I was only keeping about 10%. So I started keeping track today.

PLEASE help me track this by posting your own results. Post (1) your chance of success, (2) how many Locked Chests you opened while you were counting, (3) how many picks you actually retained, and (4) what this percentage is.

My results today:

Chance: 52%
Opened: 18 chests
Retained: 6 picks
Percentage: 6/18 = 33%

So even though I was keeping more than 10%, my alarms were not unfounded and I was nowhere near 52%. Now, it could be that I had an "unlucky streak" here, and so will continue to keep track, but please post your results below. Thanks!

BTW, just out of curiosity, and only if you want, you could even post gold drops from the chests. From these 18 chests, I got four golds, and 14 purples.

My "gold from chests" percentage is: 4/18=22%.

18 chests is not quite enough to draw any conclusion from.

thats how probability works, the result of each use of the lockpick does not depend on the result of the previous time. What this means is over a short period more or less than 50% of you picks will be retained but over a very long period maybe 1000+ you'll have close to 500 retained lockpicks.

I understand odds, probability, and percentages, and that 18 chests is not enough for an accurate percentage. I meant to state that in my op, but forgot.

But many of those in my guild are saying they are noticing more picks breaking than should be, so I figured I would gather some actual numbers and hard data. If 50 people post their results on this forum, and each one opens 20 chests (1000 chests total), and the retention rate is lower for all of them than what it should be, then there is a good possibility that there is a problem with the lock pick code.

If nothing else, maybe I myself will continue to post my own results. As I open 1000 chests (I'm working on treasure hunter and luck title tracks), I will see if I have close to 500 lockpicks retained.

The thing is, only the people who notice more picks breaking are going to complain about. People like me who are lucky with keys (according to my title track) don't complain.

There REALLY is no fair way to do this accurately as a player project. Just one person could lie, miscount, or use a selective sample size. Even 1000 is still not "statistically significant."

After all, there is ~ a .08% chance for a US nickel to land on edge after you flip it. Good luck figuring that out by actually flipping a coin. The only way it can be done is with a mathematical model using physics to calculate the probabilty.

The safest way is just to bring five lockpicks for each area that you'll be in and ignore the probability >_>.

The area and NM/HM can also change the chances of retaining the lockpicks and getting a gold.

I currently have a 27% lockpick retention rate in HM. Tonight I went 0 for 17 in lock picks retained. Let's see, that's...zero percent!

In order to get up to 27%, I would need to open the next six chests without a pick breaking. That'll happen when ANet adds an auction house to GuildWars.

Lock pick retention rate is a lie.

I havent retained one for a long time either. I'm hearing the same from players in game as well.

yeah I thought it was pretty screwy too....my monk (level 3 wisdom) cant seem to keep a lockpick----had 16 of them, kept -0....my other characters with NO wisdom can seem to keep theirs.....its all luck.---or a roll of the dice.

i currently have a 2% lockpick retention rate. That's right folks, 2.

I actually retained one tonight in HM. That was out of 5 picks, but it's the first one I've retained in about 30 over the past few weeks. Same character, and in HM. Not sure what my % is, but I do have rank 1 in Treasure Hunter with that character and nothing in Lucky, which means my percentage is low, but 1 in 30 is a bit ridiculous.

I have been running a statistically significant number of chests recently and kept track of the retain rate, and I can't see any evidence for the retain rate to be anything else than what is announced. Sometimes I retain 6 times in a row with a 33% chance (HM), other times I break 10 picks in a row with the same chance - that's just the way randomness works (my luckiest pick so far opened 13 NM 600g chests before breaking).

The standard deviation of a simple yes/no experiment is sqrt(N (1-p) p) where N is the number of tries and p is the probability of one (either, doesn't matter) outcome. So, for 18 chests, 52% retain rate the expected number of retains is 9.36 +/- 2.12 and your outcome is just one point below the 1-sigma limit, so there's nothing tangible so far.

Any attempts to do collective experiments of this kind will likely suffer from selective bias as already mentioned.

I get the message I have a 40% chance of retaining my lockpick.

It seems like I do much better than that.

I haven't opened a lot of chests ( approx 60 high-end ) but today I used one key and it opened at least 3 chests before it broke. ( 2 in dungeon & 1 in explorable area all in EotN)

Out of those 3 chests, 2 Purples & 1 Gold , but also got a max gold earth scroll drop by an enemy right next to the chest in the explorable area.

The bottom of your idea is: random function is unfair! Which is a very funny idea if you think about it hard. You may have ended up in the wrong side of a random roll of dices, as it's been reported many times on GWG.

Did you also consider the key-cost bonus? I.e. the kind of chest you're trying to open. See:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lockpick

P.S.: I broke many lockpicks on their first use (may be about 40) then one day one lockpick opened about 5 chests!

For me, absolutely. I have "23%" retention in Hard Mode and retain nowhere NEAR that many. It's not uncommon for me to hit 10 chests a day and retain *maybe* one. One of these days I'm waiting for ANet to return the favor and I'll have a godly streak of retentions, but I'm not holding my breath.

well in one CoF run:
i once retained a lockpick and got a q9 sephis sword 15^50
for the rest they all broke and i got worthless purples

Moral of the story - Lockpicks are gold sinks.

I never retain in HM, and rarely in NM. Opening chests with Lockpicks in NM is retarded anyway. Most NM chests drop purples anyway. If you insist on opening NM chests, use keys.

Come back when you have Grandmaster Treasure Hunter so you actually have a decent sample to work on. And while you are working at that you have time to read a bit about PRNG-s.

No, but the cake is.

Remember, anything below 60-70% chance has a ''Huge'' Chance to break.
1000 out of a 1000 lockpicks COULD break.
It's not a conspiracy against you, it's bad luck.