The Math Behind the Conspiracy Theory: Nobody is Throttling Your Shards

Egnards

Good Morning Everybody!

For the last 3 years I've set about looking into some of the beliefs the community has in regards to "behind the scenes" actions being taken to psychologically make us spend more money.

While the first of these projects [involving bronziums, stun guns and shard shop currency] is no longer relevant to the game, my most longstanding data tracking saw me looking at the idea that the drop rate on shards is throttled as players near the end of a farm [especially those last couple of shards]..

This project started as one that I took on by myself, tracking each morning as I did my dailies, and as I continued to post my results to different outlets [never on the official forums], I opened the experiment up to other players I trusted to accurately take data.

How The Experiment Worked

I broke down shards into 4 groups to be tracked separately tracking the control group in one big mass, but each of the experimental groups completely separate for each farm

• Group 1: Anything below 75/100
• Group 2: 75/100 - 90/100
• Group 3: 90/100 - 95/100
• Group 4: 95/100 - 100/100
  
  My public copy of the data sheet tracks was last updated on January 31st 2024 [I personally have another 7 farms to add to the sheet, and have not checked with the other players to see what they may or may not have added to our private copy of the sheet].
  
  There are 146 farms accounted for, broken down by farm, account and experimental group; with over 80,000 total data points across all of those groups [the largest being the control group].
  
  A Couple of Notes
  • Accelerated drops are accounted for in the math on the summary page of the data sheet. The drop rate is still 33%, with 2 shards dropping [making it feel like 66%].
  • Double drops were also accounted for in a similar manner
  • Bonus drops and other sources of shards were not counted, as such when looking past the first page some farms may appear incomplete [like say if you received 5 shards from a GC that put you into another group]
  • Personally, on all of my own farms, I actively did not farm characters during double drops, in an effort to be as pure as possible.

Summarized Data

• Group 1 - Control Group
  • Battles: 64,639
  • Shard Drops: 21,150
  • Drop Rate: 32.72%
• Group 2 - 75/100
  • Battles: 4,838
  • Shard Drops: 1,620
  • Drop Rate: 33.48%
• Group 3 - 90/100
  • Battles: 1,593
  • Shard Drops: 550
  • Drop Rate: 34.53%
• Group 4 - 95/100
  • Battles: 1,731
  • Shard Drops: 568
  • Drop Rate: 32.81%

Conclusion

You can find the public viewable copy of the data sheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Rvw8UuqNBExfMSi5g3I-MsGYXgpqgwCrJN4ZpRkU9c/edit?usp=sharing

Based on the data we have no reason to believe there is any throttling of any shards going on at any level of gameplay. The drop rate of 33% is consistent and confirmation bias is responsible for making people "feel like" they're getting screwed over at 99/100, without remember they're more likely to. not get a shard than they are to get a shard.

Statistically when we talk about Confidence Intervals, there is no real statistical difference between any of these groups or their data points.

Ragnarok_COTF

I knew it! They boost the drop rate from 90-95 to trick you when they lower it back down from 95-100. Pitchforks and such... Obvious /s, I hope.

Thanks to Egnards and his crew for gathering data to test a hypothesis rather than relying on feels.

Egnards

Ragnarok_COTF wrote: »

I knew it! They boost the drop rate from 90-95 to trick you when they lower it back down from 95-100. Pitchforks and such... Obvious /s, I hope.

Thanks to Egnards and his crew for gathering data to test a hypothesis rather than relying on feels.

Obviously, the closer you get to the end, the easier they make it!

PrettyFly4QuiGuy

I thought this post was a necro

Egnards

It is not - I never had any real intention of posting this here, but even over the last few days I've seen people spewing this misinformation, and as I know many people don't venture over to Reddit. . .My goal is to make sure as many people are informed as possible.

Tsfletch

Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed…the ability to compile data is insignificant compared to my belief in the conspiracy!

lordvitiate3630

I have to admit it's impressive, but I doubt it's going to stop people from complaining, neither does it have that much of an impact on how we play the game from now on. I mean, it's a game, and as it is with many games, and activities in general, it's common and even natural for people to get upset when they've set a goal and something happens that makes it harder to achieve, even if that something is completely explainable. Case in point, shards. Logically, you know that you're not going to get a ton of, or any for that matter, shards every single time, but you're still likely going to get frustrated if that happens often. I'm trying to get my Gungans hopefullly ready for the next Jar Jar event, meaning I have a goal in mind; I also keep in mind that there's a drop rate on the shards, but I still get annoyed if I get 0 shards 2 or 3 times in a row. Or if I'm only let's say 6 shards away from a 7* character, and the node keeps giving me 0 or 1 shards most of the time. I repeat, logically we know that there's RNG involved, but it's still a tad frustrating.

Egnards

lordvitiate3630 wrote: »

I have to admit it's impressive, but I doubt it's going to stop people from complaining, neither does it have that much of an impact on how we play the game from now on. I mean, it's a game, and as it is with many games, and activities in general, it's common and even natural for people to get upset when they've set a goal and something happens that makes it harder to achieve, even if that something is completely explainable. Case in point, shards. Logically, you know that you're not going to get a ton of, or any for that matter, shards every single time, but you're still likely going to get frustrated if that happens often. I'm trying to get my Gungans hopefullly ready for the next Jar Jar event, meaning I have a goal in mind; I also keep in mind that there's a drop rate on the shards, but I still get annoyed if I get 0 shards 2 or 3 times in a row. Or if I'm only let's say 6 shards away from a 7* character, and the node keeps giving me 0 or 1 shards most of the time. I repeat, logically we know that there's RNG involved, but it's still a tad frustrating.

Just like in real life we have people on two sides of the spectrum and people in the middle. I have no hope to convince the conspiracy theorists, but I do hope to convince the “hmm well maybe” people in the middle.

dogwelder79

Didn't we know all this already?

Rebuc