Not a single agent dossier dropping from missions

I am confused. After 100 tries without getting an Agent, your next chance is still 0.2 % ( I think some one added a zero in their estimate. ) Looking backwards across the entire list of reward chests, every single one of them had a 0.2% chance, never increasing simply because a player hunted down more chests. Is someone going to tell me the Loot Tables remember what you did or didn’t get ?, or that random, isn’t really random ? Isn’t the thinking that “the more you play the better your chances” at the core of the Gamblers Fallacy ?

Gambler fallacy is (in terms of the agent system) the expectation to have a better chance for future missions for agents because you didn’t get an agent so far.
Or in coin throw: If you throw 5 times head people expect it’s more likely to throw tail while the chances are still 50/50.
On the other hand is it pretty easy to calculate a case of probability. Here I went and calculated the chance of at least no agent. The chance for not getting an agent assuming a drop rate of 3% is 97% or 0,97 in mathematical terms. The chance to not get an agent in two missions is 0,97 times 0,97. With hundred missions it ends up being 0,97^100.
Leading to 4,7% chance that every mission doesn’t drop. Every mission having a 3% chance for an agent but among all those chances adding up to 95,3% (Since it’s not 3%+3%+…that would give you 300% chance for an agent. While in reality it’s 3% of 100% (which is 3%)+ 3% of 97%(2,91%) and so on getting less and less)

Gambler’s Fallacy is where you think that because you’ve lost many many times previously, your next game is obviously going to break the string of bad luck. It may or may not, but your odds for that game are the same as for every individual game along the way. Unless there is a “streak breaker” mechanic going on, it would be wrong to think that after 100 failures, #101 has any better odds (as they are independent events).

If you are calculating the odds of getting a minimum number of successes in a series of tests, the length of the series does increase your odds. As a very simple example: If you’re looking for at least one head on a theoretical fair coin, then 50% of the time (on average) you can stop after your first flip. Half of your remaining attempts will succeed after a second flip, so you end up with a 75% chance (50% + 50%/2).

It can get confusing pretty dang quickly though… There’s only a 25% chance that they’ll both be tails, but there’s a 50% chance that they’ll both be the same. As soon as you bring goats and doors into the picture things get really messed up (and also, hopefully, totally unrelated to this system).

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Interesting. Am going to have to read up on this to better understand.
Thanks for the comments :slight_smile:

Maybe FC could consider giving players one hex coin after every 100 missions with no agent. It would take awhile to still get an agent buying with hex coins.

It’s like waiting for intricate fierce glyphs or xyz talisman of uberness. It can be frustrating while you’re waiting.

Gambler’s Fallacy is also something that’s somewhat frequently used incorrectly. Specifically, I have seen people trying to use the Gambler’s Fallacy to use it as an argument when talking about the likelihood of streaks, when what it actually applies to is the with the likelihood of the continuation of streaks.

Roulette is probably the best example for that.

If the same color, say red, comes up consecutively for a larger number of times, many gambler’s will start betting against the streak: that’s basically the prototype of Gambler’s Fallacy.

On the other hand, there’s this system of betting on a color and doubling the bet each time one loses until one finally wins (which will yield a net win equal to the original bet). I’ve seen people refer to that as Gambler’s Fallacy, which isn’t correct.

The system never assumes anything about the next spin; it merely assumes any streak will eventually come to an end. Mathematically speaking, as long as the color coming up actually has a non-zero probability, approaching infinity that is strictly true.

The reasons the system still isn’t very good in practice are that with finite resources, you need a streak to end after a finite number of spins and that table limits in real casinos tend to further limit the number of spins you have before the streak outlasts the system. Neither has anything to do with the Gambler’s Fallacy, though.

That is called Martingale

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Huh. Kind of surprised I never came across the name before.

Wait, people actually thought this was a winning strategy?

It’s trivially a long-term zero-sum strategy for a game with a finite allowed number of coin flips (for a game of at most n coin flips, on average one in 2^n will be a catastrophic loss of 2^n-1 times the initial bet, offset by 2^n-1 wins of the initial bet), so it can’t be a winning strategy for a real-world game that’s no in one’s favor to begin with.

I only even knew this as a loss minimizing strategy four roulette…

What I’ve noticed was that mission reward windows are saying I got one, then when I click to collect, it disappears and I get nothing.

Reward windows say you have a small chance to get one.

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Well, they display some icon that’s not very descriptive without a mouseover. It’s been pointed out before that’s probably not ideal, because someone who doesn’t really know how it works yet might think

It would probably be good to come up with something clearer.

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Sorry. What I meant to say was this. I finish a mission. Hit ctrl-r to report and the reward window comes up. Shows that wow, I actually got an agent reward. Click collect. It vanishes into the night. Five time since agent system brought in. I get the reward…it does not go to any inventory, it just goes. Will screen shot for when this happens again.

No, it doesn’t. You only get rewarded with the chance to earn a dossier. Whether this chance materializes or not is decided when you accept the reward.

chance

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21 more missions, i will let you guess how many agents dropped, hint: it is a round number.

Oval ? :wink:

15 characters

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8 has nice curves? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Which people don’t actually know unless they know or do a mouseover. That’s the problem - new players in particular are likely to think the icon means they get an agent.

In this particular instance, I think unambiguous textual information (just say “chance to receive an agent dossier” below the other icons) might be better than an icon - unless somebody has a really brilliant idea for an icon that clearly conveys that more precise information to someone who doesn’t already know that’s what it means.

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Could always just put a big red X over the dossier icon :v:

Meh, they could just give us “Agent bags” (character bound) which, similar to container keys, disappear into 50 shards when you got a blank or a dossier when you hit the jackpot. They could also include gear in the loot table.

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And today in my 10th mission i get my very first agent drop!

And i get the same agent i bought yesterday in the AH :rage:
Do not forget this lesson, you can lose even when you win :stuck_out_tongue: