The A.M.A.N. Trove BC

Your skepticism and sarcasm aren't lost on me. It just does more to highlight your ignorance than to actually make a cogent counter-argument. You're conflating concepts you don't understand, which is a clear indication that you probably should have buckled down in high school.

Drop rates from randomness-sources are often non-deterministic for a set of Item IDs. If you were to plot out the results of thousands of orbs, you'd find that the drop rates would follow a Pareto Distribution. This is by design.

Of course, the drop rates we experience do not have to necessarily be related to a specific campaign, but the only event we can really measure against is a regular Monthly Update. From my experience in May and June, there was a ridiculously high incidence of Voids/Shards that dropped from the 200 orbs I did in June compared to May. This is enough of an indication to me, that SE does change drop rates from month to month or at least has a categorical lever. (If you want a number, the ratio of Voids/Shards to other items were 7 times more likely, for all of the completed orbs I did).

Also, keep in mind that May was unique as far as campaign months go, because of Free Week and a higher than normal occurrence of active campaigns. We can only speculate as to what SE hopes to achieve from May other than "lol more subs".

To your point about "tampering", this is just a weak editorialization you use to imply that drop rates should always and forever remain fixed. If you're following me so far, this is a naive assumption for many reasons. Player engagement in an open world game (i.e. closed system) is something that SE does monitor, even if the metrics are simple, limited or crude.


They probably don't pay a single dedicated person but probably have 1 or 2 floating operations staff that does the meager grunt work ranging from GM calls to running scripts. Also, you seem to be conflating Operations Support with Software Development and they are far from the same thing.

Enabling and disabling campaigns are not development effort. Adjusting drop-rates are not a development effort. These aforementioned configuration adjustments are no more development than if you were to add a new gearset or weapon toggle to any of your over-bloated Frankenstein Lua files. These kinds of adjustments exist so that SE can avoid the overhead of producing a new build and avoid performing regression tests for things that SE may want to change frequently. (This is called the software development lifecycle).

As far as SE's wallets are concerned, very little of their monthly investment into FFXI has anything to do with the software development lifecycle, except for the fact that SE clearly wants to make as little code (new build) changes as possible. As a result, they merely tweak and adjust their configurable parameters based on a limited set of player metrics. The bulk of what SE does for FFXI is operational overhead and associated cost management (infrastructure). For the voids/shards example, perhaps an increase in shards from Troves sends more people to Dynamis and helps redistribute players and workload to a different datacenter in a region or a different set of physical or virtual servers? Maybe the backend storage for FFXI has a performance bottleneck that blows up when a certain performance threshold is met. As players, we just don't know.

In any case, thank you for taking the time out of your day to make your very first post in this thread, but your contribution wasn't very constructive and actually detracts from the conversation being had.

It was a joke, and obviously not a counter-argument. My opinion is that the game works like we should expect it to. It's your idea that is counter. My opinion is formed from my experience, which is the opposite of ignorance. Nobody disrespected you so I don't deserve any from you. Check your tone.

Platitudes, sir.

We're not talking about mapping a perfect explanation for ever facet of Troves. We're just talking about the prevalence of some loot over others, from month to month. Yes, you can do X amount of troves per month, even just 5 and come to a conclusion about the prevalence of certain item sources over another (Omen drops, Dynamis shards, Cursed gear, Skirmish Stones, etc.) In my post, I specifically said I saw a 7x increase of Dynamis shards in winning orbs Treasure Pools from May to June. For example, this is true: "I got absolutely zero omen drops in 200 orbs in June" but it would be incorrect to conclude that: "it's impossible to get omen drops from Troves". I hope you understand now the degree to which your statement is often used, both correctly and incorrectly.

In any case, this also lends itself to the idea that Thorny's assertion is true. I do believe the probably of getting a mimic is a shifting one. The probably of a mimic that changes for N, N-1...,2,1 remaining chests, give SE a certain amount of control over the percentage of times people can get to the final (8th and 9th) chest before finally opening the terminal coffer.

If SE did not do implement some kind of sliding window / shifting probability, then across thousands of players, we would trend towards a specific percentage of wins / losses. (And we know that's not the case).

For all we know, the first chest is a 50/50 between a mimic and some noise/thud/LT. We would need a distribution of everyone's choices before a mimic, in order to come to that kind of conclusion.

Anyway, this isn't as far-fetched as you might think.

This is where I also differ from most people. Beause SE hasn't shared it with us, doesn't mean there isn't something mechanism in place. It can be crude or extremely sophisiticated, we can only speculate or gather massive amounts of data and draw an educated guess. However, I also believe the opposite: I tend to believe what SE says verbatim, but I will still trust, but verify as often as I can.

As an example of my skepticism for SE's frequent omissions: When you do Nyzule Isle and it asks you to go Left or Right every 5 floors, did you know that the client sends the SAME EXACT packet no matter what you choose?

Edit: I guess you can take my example and say: See? Look how lazy SE is, and you may be right.

Consider for a second flipping a coin. You have a 50/50 chance of getting heads or tails. Now flip the coin ten times. Each coin flip during those 10 flips are still a static odds of 50/50. Nothing has changed but what are the odds overall of getting 10 heads in a row? It's obviously not 50/50 but now about 1/1024. So yes, each box can be static odds and the likelyhood of not getting the mimic can decrease the more boxes you open.

Almost everything in this game boils down to a dice roll. For them to track all the boxes and adjust odds everytime would be overly complicated and unnecessary when static odds would do the same job just fine.

The game calculates enspell damage on every attack round. That's much more complex than 1 box every couple seconds.

Unnecessary and complicated is everything ffxi embodies.

(I'm not saying either way which I think it is. Just that logical path is flawed)

It has too because you can change gear and adjust the number (with +enspell damage gear). There's no conflict between the two theories.

It counts skill in every swing instead of on cast, damage+ isnt what im referring to

Something else incredibly stupid it checks ever melee swing but I forgot what it was.

What's the difference? You can add or subtract skill gear too.

Well im not goin to argue with you for 2 pages, youll never get it through your thick skull my dude.

Being overly complicated is not a dis-qualifier. Infact the more stupid it sounds the more likely it's true. They do too much ***assbackwards.

Yeah... I thought so lol. Apparently, logical discussion has no place in these forums.

Completely different scenarios. One is a balance decision (you have to decide whether to use MA, STP, or enhancing skill gear) and the other is an RNG mechanic with no player input at all.


My pleasure. Glad that your days aren't so busy that you can still find time to make baseless guesses about drops in a completely random event, to the benefit of literally nobody. Let's say you're right and they do change the drop rates of dynamis shards, crafting mats, escha-zitah items, etc. every month. What's the plan? Someone burns 600 orbs a month and reports their results, so that other people can decide whether or not they want to use orbs based on flimsy statistics? Who's going to be the person to use the first 1000 orbs every month before knowing "which month" it is, for the betterment of the community?

Ditto the same for the static RNG vs shifting RNG.
-How in the world would you ever determine this is the case?
-If you do determine it, how are you going to adjust your "strategy" for the BCNM based on this?

Speculation on a mechanic is the first step to utilizing that mechanic. In the early days of abyssea, blue procs were considered all but impossible to force and people tried as many WS as they could field. Eventually, we narrowed down the concept to blunt/piercing/slashing windows, then further limited the WS within each window to make what was a seemingly impossibly complex random event into a very predictable and usable formula.

I am not saying there is very much likelihood we will find a way to improve trove odds based on this, but what harm is there in speculating? 200 orbs is certainly enough to observe a statistically significant trend in the common trash drops, though it absolutely isn't enough to say the same of anything rare.

RE:Mimic. Static vs dynamic odds is very easy to prove. If it were a static chance on each box, even if it were 15%, you would just need an unbiased sample of roughly 100 8th box results. If it's a predetermined location or the odds change with number of remaining boxes, you would expect roughly 1/3 mimics, which will create a difference sufficient to conclude one way or the other. If you believe it to be static odds every box(I think this is incredibly unlikely), start coordinating with people to get a sample and prove it.

Determining whether it's fixed on spawn or decided at the time you open chest with a shifting probability is effectively impossible without source code. It doesn't and can't change anything about strategy, either, unless there were a way to identify the predecided mimic.

no, and there's also no way to know, Seun just seems dead set on the idea that it's preselected

Observation bias is a common occurrence:

"I'm just saying. I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it's flat to me. I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle, and all that stuff about gravity, have you looked outside Atlanta lately and seen all these buildings? You mean to tell me that China is under us? China is under us? It's not. The world is flat." - Shaq

When you interact with a mimic in Abyssea, there is no dice roll. Why wouldn't they just apply the same thing to Trove(different name, abilities, ect.)?


Nobody has provided any solid argument as to why it isn't just a variation of an ages old gambling game. There really isn't any reason to believe that they would deviate unless it was somehow required, but I don't think it is.

You're arguing about how it's coded, not how it presents itself. Since we have no way of knowing, and their systems are relatively unknown even to the people working on them, there is plenty of reason for a dev to roll at time of box opening. Doing that ensures, with absolute certainty, that there will be no way to figure out which box is the mimic and cheat the system. Seeing as past events like Treasures and Tribulations, Apollyon SW, Golden Salvage have been able to be cheated, there is reason for them to consider it.

I don't think we actually disagree about the results, but you're dead set on saying it was coded to be a fixed chest when not only do we have no way of knowing, it is a simple and pragmatic way to ensure security of the minigame.

The idea that all chests could return mimic completely abandons the intent of the game. I'm of the opinion that they have created a variation of a very basic gambling game. Given what we do know as fact, I find it hard to believe they would stray from that idea unless it was absolutely necessary, and I don't see why it would be.

Request/Question for you because you are braver than I am: If you get a 2 Loud Thuds from chests 1-9 (not counting terminal coffer), please share a screenshot. I know someone said they saw it earlier in this thread but I'd love a screenshot to confirm before I go full throttle.

Also, I noticed the same thing, I also pick the same 3 in a row. A kind of linear back-off algorthim. I tell myself it has an effect but sometimes it's probably just a placebo.

What you have me quoted as saying, was not directed towards you. Also, I mentioned in my previous post an answer to your question. If I had to guess, SE probably adjusts drop rates to drum up activity, interest, or traffic (increase user-engagement) to the content (servers) that need it the increase in utilization. SE just completed a cloud migration and might be more cost effective to keep traffic moving along different servers with co-located zones and content. (It's not unheard of for any internet-based services to do this).

Also, you may have forgotten that even Dynamis Divergence had a weekly treasure zone for months/years. I don't even know if it' still in effect, but that's what an item-incentive such as this accomplishes.

(FYI, it was asked in the Official forums too: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/56578 )

And to add another cherry on top of this sundae, SE added new key items recently, rather quietly, which indicates if you can reforge Relic AF+2 and +3, as well as Empy AF+2 and +3. SE added these key items, well after people will already making the associated armor. This also tells me that there's more happening behind the scenes or underneath the hood, and it's worthy of speculation.

One of several I've seen personally. There were also others in this thread, but IIRC nobody has broken 3 prior to 9th/terminal chests.

Much appreciated. There have been a few runs where I get a LT on the very first pick. Now I know what's technically out there

3 is the most I've seen prior to the 9th box. With that said, I doubt I'd bother opening more chests after the LT unless there was a belligerent bang or I was really close to the 9th chest.

...that's new, right? Never seen or heard of anyone getting an amplifier before.