F/GO NA Free Quests Drop Rates messed up?

Supposedly the averages are just that, averages from people who have farmed these nodes on JP for over thousands worth of AP.

But with that said I've heard enough stories of the drop rates being abysmal that I can see where people are coming from. As is I'm going on 300 AP spent on trying to get a single Demon Heart and yet to have anything better than a small Caster Ember drop from that quest.

That's why I don't farm mats outside of events.

I somewhat doubt that the drop rates are significantly changed in the NA version. Averages are just that, average. You get good luck, you get bad luck, you get thrown into the muck. I haven't tried the heart node yet, but in one run on the pages node, I got a page, secret gem, tearstone of blood, and some 3 or 4 star ember. Someone out there is cursing the game with their pitiful reward of QP while I'm thinking, I don't even need any more tearstones.

Looking at the possible drops, I'm even having doubts on what I remembered dropping. The thing is, people took the time to write down everything they got for a period, and many also compared notes with others to ensure that they had was accurate. Just as I pulled Ishtar and Sanzang in a single 10 pull, and another used some 700+ SQ to pull a single copy of Edmond Dantes, it's a relatively isolated incident that had an abysmal chance of happening. Unless someone else goes ahead and repeats that same kind of measurement for the specific nodes and finds vastly different data after multiple checks and comparisons... there's no reason to doubt the data.

That's just how the distribution of a ton of quest nodes work. You can go 400 AP with no heart drop and then get 2 drops in a row. On average that's still fairly similar to the overall drop rate even though you might feel hard done by.

The huge problem people with complaints seem to have is that they take abysmally small sample sizes (10-15 runs) and try to use that to discredit the drop rates. Due to the low drop rates, it will take far more runs than that to get a solid and clear picture of the rates. That's the danger of anecdotes.

When it comes the most well known farming nodes, know that the data for them is very rock solid. The number of runs submitted equal between 10 to 20 thousand for each of those maps.

Additionally, people get confused by the APD vis a vis events. Events often have 40 AP nodes, while Free Quests have half that. An item with the same drop rate will show up twice as often on the 40 AP one, but will still have the same APD. Based on feelings alone, you might think the event one is better, but it's not. Bronze materials especially are very prone to seem better than they actually are in events.

Finally, and I cannot stress this enough, I take reporting and data entry for the free quest nodes extremely serious. Whether for events or free quests, due diligence IS being done, and when our drop rates are based on a small set of data we do note that within the text for those events. Free Quest data is generally of faaaar better quality than events, what with sample sizes dwarfing those of events.

I cannot stress enough that people's personal experiences are not as credible as the data of thousands of players, and that a few dry spells of drops is very normal and often over time cancelled out by successful runs later. People will just not be as eager to share (or remember) those multiple drops in the span of 100 AP or so.

TL;DR, Anecdotes are bad civilization.

The pattern I saw is that most of the people who complain runs 5 times, got 1 heart, complained that the stats are wrong with the same argument "I ran 500 million times and only got 1 hearts."
Don't trust those people unless they show more than just that 1 sentence they will keep pummeling into your face.

For example, just take the gacha since we know the published odds. The chance to get an SSR is 1%, so that means roll 100 times and you get one, right? No, actually the chance you get an SSR in 100 rolls is actually only 63% or so (1 - 0.99^100, if you want the math).

RNG is never an even distribution. Randomness clumps together, even in truly random (i.e., not just computed psuedo-random numbers). In fact, I've been told that people who look for "faked" random results often clue in to results without such "clumps" because humans tend to not want to clump results if they're trying to simulate a manipulated random result.

dont know, but i runned 3 time the quest with the doll (for the sq) and i got 8 eternal gear.
it may very well be just pure luck, or meaby the drop rate is actually messed up.
thing is, with only a few game for exemple you cant create a valid drop rate possibility.
so its quite pointless to think about it for the time being.