Thoughts on reworking TTYD item drop information?

[jdaster64]

Hi all, I've made a handful of contributions directly or indirectly to MarioWiki over the years, and appreciate a lot of the in-depth list articles, bestiary tables, etc. on the site.

I've also been an active member of a few communities that discuss a lot of challenge running and game mechanical stuff in various Mario RPGs, and some of the Wiki's articles are a bit unclear or inconsistent in how some of the data is presented. We've gotten by relying on secondary resources when necessary, but I thought I'd reach out here and see if there's interest in systematically changing up the way certain data is presented.

In particular, calculating item drop rates in The Thousand-Year Door is something that I think can't really be completely described with numbers in a table; the actual drop rate for an item varies based on the total weight of the items in an enemy's table, whether or not the battle takes place in the Pit, whether or not the player has an Item Hog badge (or multiple!) equipped, and in the case of the Switch release, exactly how many and which enemy types appear in a battle, since all enemies' drop tables are checked in sequence, rather than just the front.

I'm wondering if there's precedent for having an article that goes into item drop calculations in detail (similar to Bulbapedia's page on damage), which could be linked in a tooltip or in the header of an particular enemy's item table, with the table just containing the raw weights?

If that's not preferred, then it would probably be best to remove the numerical information entirely so it's not misleading (as the current values are incorrect in any case), and use a more abstract rarity scale instead. I know there's a Japanese strategy guide for the original game that presenting the information in a similar fashion (with circles and triangles for a scale of very common to very rare), but I can't find a screenshot.

I'm curious as to what other folks think would be best!

 

[jdaster64]

(I'd also be interested in helping clean up any other statistical information in which I might have some expertise for PM64, TTYD, SPM, or some of the M&L games, if anyone has any suggestions for improvements!)

 

[Waluigi Time]

This certainly sounds like something we could (and should) do. I'm not familiar with TTYD's internal workings in the slightest, so bear with me. Are the Pit of 100 Trials and/or Item Hog "flat" modifiers (i.e. do those variables always increase/decrease the chance of drops by a specific percentage) or is it different for each enemy? That would go a long way towards deciding what info should go with enemy statistics and what should be covered on a general page for how item drops work, which seems like a good idea. (I'm not sure if there's direct precedent for this specific situation, but we already have articles covering the nitty-gritty of Mario Kart stats. That seems close enough.)

 

[jdaster64]

How things work in general are that there two sets of "weights" per item type, plus a weight for no item, used for choosing held items and as part of choosing random drops, e.g.:

Hyper Goomba
Nothing - 200 H, 300 D
Life Shroom - 5 H, 5 D
Tasty Tonic - 0 H, 5 D
Ice Storm - 5, 5
Boo's Sheet - 20, 20
Repel Cape - 10, 10
Last Stand - 2, 1
Last Stand P - 2, 1
Charge - 0, 2

[These are the GameCube weights; the Switch ones are different but relatively equivalent for most enemies.]

For enemies holding an item, these weights are used directly to determine whether they hold something / what it is they hold (and the same weights are used for Mowz's Kiss Thief), but for dropping items, the game first does a meta-check for whether to try to drop a held item, drop a random item, or drop nothing. The relative chances of those cases are 25/25/50 (1/1/2) for most fights but 20/20/60 (1/1/3) for the Pit, and wearing N Item Hogs multiplies the "held drop" and "random drop" cases' chances by N + 1.

If neither the "held drop" or "random drop" case is hit, or one of them is hit and doesn't succeed (either no held item exists or no random item is chosen), if Item Hog is equipped, there is a 50% chance of one of a special pool of items dropping. In the event a "held drop" is attempted, if one or more enemies were holding items at the start of the fight, it picks one of them at random to drop, guaranteed. In the event a "random drop" is attempted, it uses the "drop" weights above to determine whether / what to drop.

Notably, the GameCube and Switch versions treat the random drop case differently; the former only checks the front enemy's table for random drops, but the latter checks each enemy's drop table in order (dropping the first one to come up non-None, if any), meaning the exact odds of an item dropping are dependent on how many of a particular enemy exist and where they are in the loadout (as other enemies might have been checked first).

I suppose we could present the weight tables as the "base chance" of an item getting chosen in the event a random drop check occurs for a single enemy, but at that point I think it's kind of needlessly obscuring the actual underlying weights. (I realize this is somewhat hypocritical, having come up with my own preferred scales for Mario Kart stats back in the day, lol)

 

[Waluigi Time]

So if I'm understanding this right, each item has its own base drop chance, but the actual drop chance is affected by the rest of those factors? If that's the case, I would suggest this:

• If it would be useful information, include the chance each item has to be dropped without any other modifiers on their pages.
• Keep loot tables in the enemy statistics, but remove the percentages.
• Create a page that goes more in-depth into the mechanics of item drops.

That would be how I would tackle it at least, assuming I'm understanding everything correctly!

 

[jdaster64]

Sorry, I've been busy the last week or so and will probably remain as such for the rest of the month, lol.

Each item has a base weight, which could be phrased as just a relative number (e.g. 5 held, 5 drop for a Life Shroom in Hyper Goomba's table above) or a "base chance" out of the total weights, including the weight for nothing (e.g. 5/244 held, 5/349 drop for a Life Shroom in Hyper Goomba's table). I personally think just dropping the denominators looks cleaner, but could go either way.

Either way, I'd be down to help make those changes.

 

[jdaster64]

Sorry to drop the ball on this, but if the rates are currently only on badges' individual pages, then here's an example of what a new version might look like:

Using fractions instead of internal weights makes more sense without the rest of the drop table as context.

My proposal for new roll-over text:
- Hold rate: "The rate of an enemy holding an item or badge in battle, as well as the chance of that item being stolen using Ms. Mowz's Kiss Thief if an enemy is not holding anything. In 25% of battles (20% in the Pit of 100 Trials), one of the held items, if any exist, will be guaranteed to drop. Wearing Item Hog badges will increase the chance of this occurring."
- Base random-drop rate: "The base chance of an enemy randomly dropping an item or badge at the end of a battle. In 25% of battles (20% in the Pit of 100 Trials), the front enemy (in the GameCube release) / all enemies in turn (in the Nintendo Switch release) will perform a check for a random drop. Wearing Item Hog badges will increase the chance of random-drop checks being performed."

Let me know if that copy sounds reasonable, or if you'd prefer I use different terminology for the different releases of the game.

If we wanted a page to go over drop mechanics in more detail and list all of the drop tables, that could be added to the template and linked from the bestiary entries at a later time.