Progressive drop rates
by Eliah Hecht 
Mar 28th 2009 at 12:00PM
Jeff Kaplan has said some interesting things at this year's GDC (expect a full account from us soon). One of them concerned a new technology that debuted in Wrath of the Lich King which I, for one, had not heard of before: progressive drop rates for quest items.
Pre-Wrath, if you're on a collection quest, whatever you're trying to collect will drop at a constant rate (35% was apparently the standard). Overall, this averages to a predictable amount of kills per quest. But probability being the way it is, it was altogether possible to have terrible luck and have to kill 100 foozles to get your four gizmos, or to have great luck and get your gizmos in only four kills. It was the bad streaks that the devs were particularly concerned about, as those are very memorable and never fun.
In Wrath, according to Kaplan, drop rates for quest items are progressive - the more foozles you kill, the higher chance each one has to drop a gizmo. The standard quest item drop rate has been raised to 45%, and each kill you make raises that drop rate by some amount. Kaplan said that it can eventually reach 100%, at which point every kill would drop your item. This puts a hard cap on just how frustrating a collection quest can be. Seems like a smart idea to me. I hadn't really noticed Wrath collection quests being easier, but then, I wouldn't - I simply wouldn't have bad-luck streaks, the absence of which might not be easy to notice.
[via Shacknews]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Matchu Mar 28th 2009 12:07PM
I thought his statement that:
"In the beta, it got rid of the bad streaks, but it also got rid of the good streaks, so they eventually upped the "ideal" drop rate to around 42%."
Implied it was only in Beta, on Live they just upped the drop rate?
Etcee Mar 28th 2009 1:44PM
Can someone please Respond to this seemingly legit note? I am watching dozens of these "I sooo noticed that" messages go by, and no one addressing the apparently likely possibility that this system isn't in place at all.
my2cents Mar 28th 2009 8:40PM
TLDR Version: Average drop rates and progressive drop rates can coexist. That may be the case in Wrath.
I think what he meant was, in its early implementation in beta, the progressive drop rate system was still set up to have an average 35% drop rate. What I mean is even with a progressive drop rate, you can set it up in such a way that the overall average drop rate will remain fairly constant (assuming a large enough sample size.)
However, to compensate for the eventual 100% drop rates on a bad streak, they had to reduce the initial drop rate in order to maintain an average 35% drop rate. But this made getting a "good streak" even less likely than before, which was an unintended side-effect of the change. So they ended up adjusting the numbers to arrive at an average 42% drop rate.
I hope that makes sense, and hopefully it was readable enough to get through =P
Kolo Mar 28th 2009 12:08PM
Hmmm, seems like more of a subtle change where they should up the drops still. I remember still having some very frustrating drop rates in places such as Zul Drak.
The drop rates for the Frenzy dailies are ridiculous. In fact the frenzy dailies are ridiculously boring as it is (kill 50 of them? christ...)
Dhirvish Mar 28th 2009 1:45PM
I agree. There's a quest in HF where you have to dive underwater to catch fish from bushes. The first 7 bushes I checked I got 1 fish. Which is a terrible small quest rate, but in and of itself isn't awful. The sucky part is you have to swim from bush to bush, which takes forever. And it's not just a gather quest, its one of those gather, probably fight a hidden mob quests. Which are even more annoying since it combines the tedium of searching AND the tedium of killing a mob you really don't want to have to deal with. I was like 'you've got to be kidding me, how is this quest fun?'
I did the quest again on an alt, and it seems to take about 20+ bushes to get the 7 fish and took 10 minutes. The irritating thing is it unlocks other quests so you've got to do it. They've done an awesome job with this expansion, but someone fell asleep on that quest =)
Note: the horde journal part is funny, but considering you end up with 4-5 of them they should have all had different text to keep you occupied...
Zelius Mar 28th 2009 12:09PM
I noticed that the more mobs I killed, the more items dropped in this expansion. I thought it was just my imagination though.
Hansbo Mar 28th 2009 1:14PM
I have thought it worked like this from the start.
An interestinging thing to note, crit chances and such in Warcraft III (And WoW, I would assume) worked in this manner. That is, the longer you get a non-crit streak, the likelier a crit would become. Statistics wouldn't show this, since the percentual crit chance would still be the same (only you're less likely to get a lucky streak)
sinizuh Mar 28th 2009 12:09PM
Hmm. Does that mean that killing a mob AND receiving a quest item still raises the drop %? or is it something like that once you found a quest time, it resets your drop % back to default 45%?
I don't think I've ever gotten to a point in a quest where every mob I killed dropped a quest item (and that would be "Earl Z. Moade")
Chris Anthony Mar 28th 2009 1:40PM
When you kill a mob and receive a quest item, the drop rate does not increase, but it also is not reset. It simply stays where it was.
To illustrate (in an oversimplified way):
No kills: Drop rate 41%
Kill #1: No Quest Item: Drop rate after kill 42%
#2: NQI: 43%
#3: NQI: 44%
#4: Quest Item: 44%
#5: NQI: 45%
#6: QI: 45%
#7: NQI: 46%
#8: NQI: 47%
And so on.
Chris Anthony Mar 29th 2009 9:28AM
This has been bothering me since yesterday (sad, I know, but what can you do?): grinding enough quest mobs to get the drop rate to 100% is not easy-mode. Claiming that it is is patently ridiculous. It's like saying "beating Sarth+3D in those epics you worked for is ezmode, try doing it in level 1 greys, scrub".
thisguy Mar 28th 2009 12:11PM
What kind of monster would kill the foozles?
Kemikalkadet Mar 28th 2009 12:24PM
One that prizes Gizmo's.
Sunaseni Mar 28th 2009 12:13PM
I still remember to this day the stupid Magram centaur ears. Like fifty kills and none of them dropped the last effing ears. I was a freaking level 40 frost mage, my spells couldn't have destroyed both ears at once.
Kakistocracy Mar 28th 2009 1:15PM
I've had that trouble with troll ears in stranglethorn vale. What I would like to see would be increasing the number needed and making the drop rate 100% for items that it seems unlikely the creature would not have (I can imagine trolls having lost their ears, but some quests are just crazy).
But as it stands, I get the impression that we are, in fact, looting items the creature was carrying, not actually taking part of them.
B. Brown Mar 29th 2009 4:02PM
@sunaseni: I did this EXACT quest last night. Except instead of doing it coupled with the turn one tribe against the other quest line, I just farmed the Kolkars since I hate them anyway. Started off, one of every four or five centaurs dropped ONE ear WHAT THE HELL. Then I realized it was a dire mistake to have taken on this quest at 2am. I pressed on, and about halfway through (and having killed 2/3rds of the camp I was down to getting an ear from every other centaur. And at the end, I got the last 3 ears out of four centaur.
foxkreig Mar 29th 2009 4:51PM
i remember those centaur ears also.
when grinding my rogue up in vanilla wow ... i had just dinged and then ground up an entire level (with rested i admit) before i got the ears.
i think i was at it for two hours
Edmunt Mar 28th 2009 12:12PM
I've noticed this too in old world places too. Especially in HIllsbrad, if anyone remembers the hell those gathering quests where its finally over!
Krick Mar 28th 2009 5:35PM
I went back and did the Hillsbrad quests the other day (I completely skipped Hillsbrad and STV while leveling to avoid ganking) with my level 80 main. The gathering quests are DEFINITELY easier now. That annoying one with the lion's blood used to take hours and it only took a few minutes.
...
Krick
http://www.tankadin.com
Brad Mar 28th 2009 12:13PM
I suppose different quest items might have different rates of progression, but that said, this is going to work for the Wintergrasp dailies where you have to kill the elementals/opp. faction players, right? Please??
Tando Mar 28th 2009 2:31PM
So is this progressive percentage system in place for the entire game? Or only for quests for the newest expansion? Leveling new toons would be easier for collection quests if it's in place for all content--that's for sure!