Drop Theory Experiment

It is widely believed that the classes that fight up close tend to get more drops. As an elementalist, I can fight up close, or at quite a distance. For a long time I've strongly felt that I get more drops when I'm up close. I then went about testing my theory that close combat gets more drops.

To test this theory, I recorded all of my battles when in a group of human players. For a battle, I counted only those frays where we were fighting mobs of 3 or more creatures grouped together. I then recorded 20 battles from a far distance, using stuff like flare and fireball, at such a distance that I was pretty much never damaged by the creatures. Then I recorded 20 battles where I was up front taking damage using close up skills like inferno and close range fireball etc.

Out of the 20 battles where I was far away, I earned 8 drops.

Out of the 20 battles where I was up front taking the hits, I earned 17 drops.


I know that this is in no way flawless as far as scientific guidelines allow, but I did have some controls and saw quite a noticeable difference. I'm sure many of you will try to refute me and this experiment, but that's fine, I just wanted to test my feelings that close-up combat granted me more drops.

What are your reactions and ideas?

Up those battles to 100 and then we'll be talking sample size reliability :P

Hehe yeah yeah I know, but recording 200 battles didn't seem too appealinng.

Nope but it's possible you had a streak in that 20 sample run. There DOES appear to be a difference, now it just needs to be further tested :P

Well, when you have the time, repeat the same sample (20 of each). Either that will draw a pretty clear picture or it will muddy things up a bit.

You also should make sure it is in the exact same area(s).

Drops are random, plain and simple. Nothing you do in a party will influence what drops get assigned to you. Having it assign items based on anything other then a random number would be silly. Imagine if what your implying were true, now imagine how many monks/ele's would then begin to try and tank in parties and get up close and or take damage just to try and get a drop assigned to them. Do you really think the designers would intend for that to happen? I certainly do not.

There are A LOT of people that can testify with the same results.

I know if you are a certain distance away you have a 0% chance of getting a drop.

My warrior recieves 3 times more and better drops then my ranger or monk. That is a fact.

yeah,

It's a clever experiment. And doing it out of a hundred doesn't mean that you have to do 100 in a row with the same people (ideally the group should be the same).

I propose that you get like 10 friends who are keen on the experiment and cover all your controls this way: (perhaps I'm a little too ambitious on this)

(with all friends fighting and zoning into the exact same area, each with a team of the exact same henchmen)

friend 1 - 10 times ranged ele, 10 times up close ele
friend 2 - 10 times ranged ranger, 10 times up close ranger
friend 3 - 10 times ranged warrior (secondary), 10 time melee warrior
friend 4 - 10 times ranged mesmer, 10 times attacking mesmer
friend 5 - 10 times ranged necro w/ minions, 10 times attacking necro

the healer

friend 6 - 10 times smiting monk, 10 times healing monk
friend 7 - 10 times healing monk, 10 times melee monk

the control

friend 8 - 20 times random class, normal playstyle (control)
friend 9 - 20 times random class, normal playstyle, not zoning to fight same mobs (control)
friend 10 - 20 times random class, normal playstyle, not zoning and using a very different map

To be totally appropriate it would be best if all characters were the same level too... likewise you could try a level 10 taking on level 10 mobs and a level 20 taking on level 10 mobs... but I doubt that this would make much difference.

Simple fact: people remember the bad, and pass the good off as the norm.

When you actually try to prove this theory properly, you'll find the results to be less drastic. As people said before, test it more times. 20 is nothing.

Also, I'll note that you based your drops on the number of battles, not enemies. Your results will be seriously thrown off if you ended up killing more enemies close up.

i dont think drops is based on dmg or proximity(unless your far out of range) at all i never do any dmg to creatures cause i play a healer with no attack skills and i still get pretty good drops

Wouldn't it mess it up to use henchmen since one couldn't use the amount of drops assigned to henchies in comparison to human players?

Also, just to note, all the battles I recorded were against enemies approximately between 1-2 lvls below me and many levels higher than me, since they were all in the same area.

The best controlled experiment is to go out with two people--each can solo on their own. Have one solo all of them, then go yourself and solo all of them. Both of you stay together the entire time. Tally drop rate for yourself when done.

Keep the sample level and types of creatures constant.

This way, the ONLY variable is who is hitting them, and you have a superior basis for deduction.

Er, of course, this isn't your hypothesis, lol.

For your real hypothesis, have the same two-person setup but have one person kill up-close the entire time, while you vary distance.

Enemies or areas are not things you need to control. They are irrelevant. Different monsters dont change the odds of who gets drops. The only control you must have is classes, the classes of the people in your party must be the same. It would also be wise to keep constant the type of player: NPC, or PC because theoretically the chance of getting a drop could change between the two. Also I agree a higher number of recorded drops would be nice, but not necisarilly as important as some others make it seem. The best thing you could do to make this a very reputable experiment would be to do several tests in the same incriment. Lets say you tested the drops in the number of 20 as you did. Do the same thing 5 more times if the results are far in one direction everytime you may have somehting.

I find it highly unrealistic that the developers would have actually made the drops biased like that.

I reckon the drops are infact random, pure and simple.

good point.

So rally up a team of 4 war/monks. Get 1 to always tank and do dmg, get another to always hit ranged dmg (smite), get the third to always support (heal) and the fourth to always hang back and watch. Then see what the numbers look like after 20 or 50 groups of mobs.

Well my theory was that distance mattered, not class. This theory arose from my experience being a class that could either fight up close or far away. I'm sure that they would not bias it on class, for that would be unfair, but I thought that there might be some programming thing that gave preference first to those who were closest to the enemy.
This would not be a strict bias, for essentially anyone could be close to the enemy. Warriors just happen to be closest most often.

If drop rate is dependent on proximity, Alesia should be getting most of the drops.