"There was someone a few days ago just saying to send data from a single clan for 2 weeks and they could prove/disprove ...  Surely that is not randomly sampled?  "

You did not hear me saying that!  100% agreed this would not be a random (or sufficient) data.

That was me, lol, though I don't think that is exactly what I said. But I would argue that a full clan of any duration with complete data would be far superior to what we have so far. 

But hey, I have joined the Russian pov didn't you see :)

- Comrade trips

In a sense you are correct.  You need reliable data from the population at large, then you need data from the population you are trying to demonstrate is significantly different from the population at large.  The assumptions would include that the particular clan population was somehow different from the population at large.  This subsumes that the 18% of affected players are seperated by clan, rather than geography, spending, etc.  All you could rule out is that that particular clan was not significantly different from the population at large.  But you'd have to have the data for the population at large as well.

Basically. Tbh, at least with uninterrupted data from one entire clan we can rule out some self selection bias and selective reporting. But this is still self reported survey data, always crap in my experience:)

Basic analysis of limited clean data > rigorous advanced statistics on crap

This is why statisticians often get in the way of business strategists :)

Hi Sorry, my posts are a general reply to all I have read and I don't always remember who said what.  I also usually only have a short time at the computer to write.

I am interested in others analyses because the only tools I have are google sheets and javascript since I am no longer with a university or government institute.  As I said my tests were limited to looking for an anomalous number of people getting zero Sacreds at all, as I have.  I only looked at people getting zero sacreds over n drops and found no such anomaly. 

In the bimodal distribution reported there was a reduced chance of getting a sacred in the group getting more ancient books.  However, using google sheets or any other online software on such a large data set is just too slow for me to continue.

I remain convinced that anyone with the appropriate software could test the data from the Bot for tampering because there is an analytical model that gives the accurate population distribution to test again.  I think that most of the limitations talked about are more for situations where you do not have the actual population distribution but are trying to infer it from a sample.

Hence my case against non-random sampling. How likely is it that some bias in the sampling was able to produce not only the bimodal distribution in the second month, but also from the expected population distribution in the first month?  It would have been different if the first months data was not included.

Oh and as for where I want to go with this...  I just saw some curious data and I would like an explanation.  For me the most interesting explanation would be to see someone prove evidence of sampling error or demonstrate some mathematics I could learn.  Or for someone to admit to some hoax I guess.  I very much doubt that Plarium would admit if there was a problem, given how far this has gone I would expect it would just vanish in some future patch...

Similarly for my own record of not getting any sacred in over 50 drops now...  I think I would actually prefer that Plarium proved to me that I was just unlucky, like 1 in 40k or whatever it was....  I have managed these fusions without any sacreds, partly by learning to hold on to claim any rewards from fusions and shards until they count towards a champion chase.  Rewarding me with 10 sacred shards I missed out on is would just be one click and likely not give me one of the top rank legendaries or Epics that would make a big difference.

The only reward that would make a real difference for me would be Plarium offering instead to do the grind in my account for 1 week to give me a holiday where I could spend my spare time instead trying to complete a new faction wars boss.

Hi. We have some updates!

We suppose, that this case can be closed. Dec 24th we detected, that UNM CB drop rates got back to normal. So now we have drop as usual.

Truly speaking we need about 4 weeks to make sure, that actual chances (after rollback) are the same as before Nov 17th. But we believe that everything will be okay.

Plarium claimed that there were no changes, and in theory it can be true, but the chances are extremely low. We think that most relevant version is A/B test.

We wish you happy holidays!

i

i

Thank you very much for the update. Happy Holidays to you as well. 

Thank you for the update.  I really appreciated your work and sharing your data with everyone.

It is really frustrating that we may never know for certain although I personally think something was up!  maybe one day an insider from one side of the argument or the other own up!

Was there a client update I missed at the time it changed back?  Or any way to tell about server updates from a version tag in the data mining?

Gorl and Masha's posted data has no data mined information, just drops logged by users over time. Nor is such data mined stuff really allowed on the forums or the official discord, I have been told.

There was a server reset, and it was announced in the discord. :)

Usually you don't need server restart to switch off a/b exp.

Exp config looks like {"id":"exp-111", "data":{"rate":0.1, ...}} or something like this. Server asks exp-system: "which exp is enabled for user with id-1234?". And gets back exp-id. You need server update to be able to handle exp with defined id. (Without update game-server does not know that it should change drop prob if exp-111 is enabled)

To stop exp you should just remove (or set expire date) exp config from exp-system. Usually you can do it via web ui.

Ofcourse implementation can be different, but generally it works like I described.

*Also it means that start of exp can be much later then related server update.

All your numbers all your graphics all your bots

 ARE BASED ON CHANCE

there is no way to prove that drop was changed even if it was

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

After talking to Gorl and Masha, I'm closing down this thread since they have nothing new to report, and the discussion here is just going in circles.

Thanks everyone!