Is it just me, or has farming become nearly impossible?

ghostfeather · May 8, 2016 8:15PM

I just spent over 600 combined cantina & holotable energy (all hard battles) and got THREE shards total. 11 cantina in a row yielded a massive ZERO shards.

Lately it's been feeling almost impossible to farm from the cantina or holotables, getting a max of 4 but usually just 1 or 2 shards a day.

Is it just me? Has anyone else noticed that wading thru mud feeling?

Darth_Paul_757 · May 9, 2016 12:13AM

I agree! I was noticing that recently and it bows

Pocitaces · May 9, 2016 12:37AM

Ditto, spent 360 in cantina and hit only 6 shards

Spydermb · May 9, 2016 1:02AM

I am seeing the same thing, drops are pathetic lately. It seems someone is making up for the doubles last week. I don't know why that would be......

JRA · May 9, 2016 6:21PM

I have had rotten drop rates lately. Several days in a row. It might just be a bad run, but usually over the course of a few days I would stay around 30% drop rate for shards. It's been holding around 15% for at least 3 days. I hope it's just a bad run of RNG.

ghostfeather · May 11, 2016 12:42AM

Finally turned out I did 17 cantina runs in a row without a drop. Worst day for it ever, but it has been slightly better today. Still, I'm convinced the drop rate has been lowered. I wrote to EA to ask, and they of course deny it... Blame it on the fickle Gods of RNG ;P

Aeron · May 11, 2016 11:19AM

Yeah, there has been a drastic drop in available shards to farm. I have played at different times all throughout the day and night and since the first big update that contained the Yoda Challenge I get to within 1 shard and then I could drain my energy and get maybe a shard or none at all. I don't think it is an accident that you will always get just within reach of your goal and then you either buy or wait.

ghostfeather · May 11, 2016 1:40PM

Heh, Aeron, we have a similar theory in our guild - what we've observed is that the closer you get to promotion the harder it gets to earn shards for a given toon. We're also pretty much convinced that Jedi shards become less easy to farm in the lead up to Yoda events, though this might actually be due to the same phenomenon as described in the first hypothesis...

It's sooooo hard to get decent data to prove or disprove these musings. The devs flat out deny that there is any kind of odds manipulation and I sincerely hope that this is true; I believe there might even be serious legal ramifications should it transpire that the odds were determined by anything other than a straight RNG protocol...

Haxthar · May 11, 2016 2:03PM

It only took me about two months of constant farming to max out my Kylo Ren, drops seemed pretty fair to me at about a consistent 25 percent I'd estimate, I of course had 6,7 draws without a shard now and then but then 2 or three in a row at other times, I never remember being frustrated

JRA · May 11, 2016 3:25PM

Haxthar wrote: »

It only took me about two months of constant farming to max out my Kylo Ren, drops seemed pretty fair to me at about a consistent 25 percent I'd estimate, I of course had 6,7 draws without a shard now and then but then 2 or three in a row at other times, I never remember being frustrated

When did you farm him? Overall in past months my drop rates have been solid over time, but since the double reward event ended it fell off badly. (15-20 in a row with no shard drops) I have heard it's supposed to be 33%, and that has been my experience in tracking it for days. Some ups and downs, but staying in that neighborhood.

But it's been less than half of that for over a week. Just wondering if that's a big enough sample size to call it a problem, or if RNGesus just hates my guts.

YaksterX · May 11, 2016 5:30PM

I have the same issue. To be honest I think I got about 10 shards altogether in the past week and that is about 1 per every 10 tries or so. I have been trying to farm Kylo to 85 shards for what seems to be like a month now with no success.

Also other characters. Only character I almost always get is Luminara but again I am not sure if it is her drop rate or because she has like 5 possible farm locations and I only get her for the swap shards feature.

DaysOfYore · May 11, 2016 6:16PM

There is no issue. When you "feel" like it is taking forever to get that last shard, it is simply confirmation bias. You don't notice it when you're at 36/100. But you're definitely going to notice it every time when it is 99/100.

You're just not understanding what random really means. Using a few days samples are not at all reflective of the drop rate. There are people who do month long studies with spreadsheets tracking drop rates. And they always end up coming up with the average numbers.

"Thinking" and "feeling" that they have done something is not objective.

JRA · May 11, 2016 7:54PM

DaysOfYore wrote: »

There is no issue. When you "feel" like it is taking forever to get that last shard, it is simply confirmation bias. You don't notice it when you're at 36/100. But you're definitely going to notice it every time when it is 99/100.

You're just not understanding what random really means. Using a few days samples are not at all reflective of the drop rate. There are people who do month long studies with spreadsheets tracking drop rates. And they always end up coming up with the average numbers.

"Thinking" and "feeling" that they have done something is not objective.

I'm not "feeling" anything. I track my numbers daily. I have good days and bad days, and over the course of several days to a week (thousands of energy spent) it always keeps fairly close to 33%. In fact I know for certain that I had one of my best streaks while finishing a toon to 7*. But since the double drop event ended I have had the longest running streak of across the board rotten RNG I've had since I started playing in January. I was just sharing what I've seen since someone asked. 52 shards out of 343 battles. Is that just a really bad week of RNG? I'm willing to believe that's possible. Are the game makers "turning back the dial" to make up for giving out freebies? I'm certainly willing to believe they aren't above that. Impossible to say without more data, so I wouldn't dogmaticly endorse or dismiss either. But I most certainly do not have any of those yucky, unreliable "emotions."

ghostfeather · May 11, 2016 8:37PM

In point of fact, what you derisively categorise as "feelings" might be the prodding of your intuition in the cognitive psychology sense of this word. "Feelings" can be the result of a complex but largely unconscious computational process, and for many years have been considered in cognitive science as an important indicator when determining, for instance, risk or chance... Experiments were done in the mid 80s to determine the difference between self-identified "lucky" and "unlucky" people that involved asking them to play a game of chance using their choice of two decks of cards. One deck was very very slightly weighted to give them an advantage in the game, but they were not allowed to investigate them except through play and the decks were too large for all but the most savant card counter to keep track of. Sure enough, "lucky" people began to get a "good" feeling from the positively weighted deck after a few games, whereas unlucky people reported either no feeling whatsoever or (sadly, perversely) that they did in fact get a good feeling but didn't trust themselves enough to act on it and reflexively chose the bad deck instead!!!

All of which teaches us, I think, that we should use the force

EasyRight · May 13, 2016 6:22AM

There has been a change since the May the 4th promo. It's well over a week and a pattern has set in. Several of my guild member have complained and we've compared info & it seems like there's been right under a 40% drop in shards if we had to guess. I've had three (3) days in a row where I went through 150 or so Cantina pts & received 1 to maybe 2 character shards. That is insane.
My Darkside/LightSideBattles battles are now producing about 3 or 4 shards total a day. This is down from an average of 9 shards a day.
I will continue to address this topic and discuss it any chance I get until they alter the odds back to pre-May 4th conditions. I urge u to do the same. Hopefully just enough players will vote w/ their time & money to force a change. We've already lost 2 guild members/player to Magic & I'm starting to invest more time into Marvel Avengers Alliance 2 (which is a far more generous game).

EasyRight · May 13, 2016 6:32AM

DaysOfYore wrote: »

There is no issue. When you "feel" like it is taking forever to get that last shard, it is simply confirmation bias. You don't notice it when you're at 36/100. But you're definitely going to notice it every time when it is 99/100.

You're just not understanding what random really means. Using a few days samples are not at all reflective of the drop rate. There are people who do month long studies with spreadsheets tracking drop rates. And they always end up coming up with the average numbers.

"Thinking" and "feeling" that they have done something is not objective.

I totally get what you're saying partner, but you're just wrong here. The game has been affected. It's obvious. Heck, they changed the gold & purple shards at this exact time as well. That is a fact that EA discussed. They just haven't admitted the change in odds is all. Watch 4 a couple more days & you'll see a drop in your character shard average from Cantina & D/L battles

ghostfeather · May 13, 2016 10:19AM

It's been 5 days since I posted my original observation. Of those, 3 have been days where I've spent 100-150 cantina energy on consecutive battles and won not a single shard. My daily average for holotable shards has dropped to 4, though I did get 6 on Wednesday.

I was happy until I recalled that 6 is an awful harvest...

ghostfeather · May 13, 2016 10:22AM

To put it another way: I have been trying to farm the last 2 shards to unlock Chirpa for 2 days and have not succeeded. That's ALL my cantina energy for 2 and a bit days, without a single shard drop.

If this doesn't change, I'm uninstalling the game...

JRA · May 13, 2016 1:26PM

Don't lose hope. Late yesterday I noticed a pretty good drop rate. 41%. Everyone in my guild has had the same complaint, but yesterday one after another I kept seeing people post that they were having a great day farming. Interesting coincidence that 50 people all had an entire week plus of rotten farming, and all had their drought end the same day.

ghostfeather · May 13, 2016 2:21PM

41% is pretty good, if the RNG is meant to offer a 33% chance of a drop... Weirdly, it's still within the realms of the "statistically probable" if the 33% figure is true

Less than 10%, which is what I'm getting, is getting way into the realms of the unlikely or improbable, suggesting maybe that 33% cannot be the true odds?

ghostfeather · May 13, 2016 8:14PM

That's 3 days without a single shard dropping in cantina people! Still think I'm my feeling that the odds have been nerfed is just, well, feelings?

Ravenclaw1974 · May 13, 2016 9:01PM

That's so you will spend money to buy the shards from the shop. Greed will kill this game if they are not careful

Bluerock · May 13, 2016 9:16PM

You're better off anyway - if you got the shards you so desire, you wouldn't be able to afford to promote and level the character anyway because the wall in this game is generic currency, not shards. It's insane.
But yeah I think you just have bad luck - I'm still right around 31-32% overall same as always.

Oda_Kosan_Awa · May 13, 2016 9:32PM

Theory: the drop rates changed during the 2x events or right after,. No one noticed because we were too happy getting two shards at once

But seriously, drop rates seem to have gone down. Maybe to 15% in LS/DS. Too many successful F2P, less money for EA

Edit: it should be easy to measure. Someone create a thread were the same people can report drops. 5-10 people and a week worth of data should be enough.

ghostfeather · May 14, 2016 12:10AM

Oda that's a great idea! I volunteer

ghostfeather · May 14, 2016 12:13AM

Incidentally, I disagree that f2p players means less money for the devs. Research shows that a thriving f2p culture is necessary to keep a game alive, and that games which have a large contingent of committed f2p players earn more in the long run.

I'm into this stuff. Digital cultures is my thing.

Frommer · May 14, 2016 12:35AM

JRA wrote: »

DaysOfYore wrote: »

There is no issue. When you "feel" like it is taking forever to get that last shard, it is simply confirmation bias. You don't notice it when you're at 36/100. But you're definitely going to notice it every time when it is 99/100.

You're just not understanding what random really means. Using a few days samples are not at all reflective of the drop rate. There are people who do month long studies with spreadsheets tracking drop rates. And they always end up coming up with the average numbers.

"Thinking" and "feeling" that they have done something is not objective.

I'm not "feeling" anything. I track my numbers daily. I have good days and bad days, and over the course of several days to a week (thousands of energy spent) it always keeps fairly close to 33%. In fact I know for certain that I had one of my best streaks while finishing a toon to 7*. But since the double drop event ended I have had the longest running streak of across the board rotten RNG I've had since I started playing in January. I was just sharing what I've seen since someone asked. 52 shards out of 343 battles. Is that just a really bad week of RNG? I'm willing to believe that's possible. Are the game makers "turning back the dial" to make up for giving out freebies? I'm certainly willing to believe they aren't above that. Impossible to say without more data, so I wouldn't dogmaticly endorse or dismiss either. But I most certainly do not have any of those yucky, unreliable "emotions."

Do you sit next to a pen and paper and write this down when you are pushing the sim button? Like seriously? Have you seen the sun this week?

JRA · May 14, 2016 3:31AM

Frommer wrote: »

JRA wrote: »

DaysOfYore wrote: »

There is no issue. When you "feel" like it is taking forever to get that last shard, it is simply confirmation bias. You don't notice it when you're at 36/100. But you're definitely going to notice it every time when it is 99/100.

You're just not understanding what random really means. Using a few days samples are not at all reflective of the drop rate. There are people who do month long studies with spreadsheets tracking drop rates. And they always end up coming up with the average numbers.

"Thinking" and "feeling" that they have done something is not objective.

I'm not "feeling" anything. I track my numbers daily. I have good days and bad days, and over the course of several days to a week (thousands of energy spent) it always keeps fairly close to 33%. In fact I know for certain that I had one of my best streaks while finishing a toon to 7*. But since the double drop event ended I have had the longest running streak of across the board rotten RNG I've had since I started playing in January. I was just sharing what I've seen since someone asked. 52 shards out of 343 battles. Is that just a really bad week of RNG? I'm willing to believe that's possible. Are the game makers "turning back the dial" to make up for giving out freebies? I'm certainly willing to believe they aren't above that. Impossible to say without more data, so I wouldn't dogmaticly endorse or dismiss either. But I most certainly do not have any of those yucky, unreliable "emotions."

Do you sit next to a pen and paper and write this down when you are pushing the sim button? Like seriously? Have you seen the sun this week?

Its pretty simple. I have 120 cantina energy. I'm farming a node that costs 12. That's 10 attempts. If I get 3 shards I nailed 30%. Takes 2 seconds to write down 3/10. I will say I do have more notepads covered in numbers, farming projections, and potential rosters than I care to admit. (Looks at floor shyly)

Davidstareater · May 14, 2016 7:00AM

I have to agree I'm seeing a big drop in rate some days I can go 1 for 10 in tries be it a shard or gear I'm farming

ghostfeather · May 14, 2016 11:53AM

JRA, you're a geek after my own heart

Be not ashamed, gentle warrior, for we are the keepers if the flame!!!

ghostfeather · May 14, 2016 11:54AM

And yeah, it doesn't take a degree in applied mathematics to know that an average of 1 in 10-20 over the course of a week suggests that a 33% drop rate might not be the case. It doesn't even take intelligence. It just takes the merest modicum of attention...

New player? Check out the new player index

Is it just me, or has farming become nearly impossible?

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