A place to share Temporary PoP Epic Orb Drops

[lasergun]

Context:

• In the April 14th patch notes, it was announced that the drop rate for epic orbs in the temporary Places of Power missions would be reduced.
• The change was generally met with disapproval, and shortly after, it was removed from the patch notes.
• Staff commented that it had been decided to undo the nerf. (May have only been a joke, implying that it was included in the notes prematurely by mistake.)
• Several players have reported experiencing significantly worse drop rates recently despite this. (Possibly just anecdotal.)
• Additional changes are coming soon which may further impact drop rates.

The purpose of this thread is to collect data on PoP epic orb drop rates to see whether or not they really have been restored to the same levels as before, and to determine what the new drop rate is if it has changed.

Please include the total number of times you completed the "It's Just Natural" mission, as well as the number of times it resulted in an epic orb drop. If possible, please include the date that the drops were collected on, with a new day beginning when the date changes in-game.

(I will be regularly updating this post with more data)
My overall drop rate between the 4/14 and 4/20 game updates: 6/38, or 15.79%
My overall drop rate between the 4/20 and 4/28 game updates: 8/56, or 14.29%
My overall drop rate since the April 28th update: 5/45, or 11.11%
My overall drop rate since the nerf: 19/139, or 13.67%

My drop log:
2021/4/14: 1/4 drops
2021/4/15: 1/6 drops
2021/4/16: 0/6 drops
2021/4/17: 2/6 drops
2021/4/18: 0/6 drops
2021/4/19: 1/6 drops
2021/4/20: 1/4 drops
-----4/20 PATCH OCCURS HERE-----
2021/4/20: 1/2 drops
2021/4/21: 1/6 drops
2021/4/22: 0/4 drops
2021/4/23: 3/11 drops
2021/4/24: 1/6 drops
2021/4/25: 0/9 drops
2021/4/26: 1/9 drops
2021/4/27: 1/9 drops
-----4/28 PATCH OCCURS HERE-----
2021/4/28: 1/9 drops
2021/4/29: 2/9 drops
2021/4/30: 1/7 drops
2021/5/1: 0/4 drops
2021/5/2: 0/6 drops
2021/5/3: 1/6 drops
2021/5/4: 0/4 drops

Edited May 5, 2021 by lasergun

[Zorba the Geek]

I dunno,  I think it did happen.  The orb drop alternative between cash and orbs seems to have been reduced by three times as at the time of this posting.  For example, in accounts where I've had three 'It's Just Natural' play options in play, where once I had one chance in three to get three orbs, now I get around one chance in nine.  That's a big drop.  Over all my accounts, I can now do three or four rounds in PoP without a single 3-epic orb drop. I used to get at least one in every round in at least one account.

Me?  I expected it because I found it generous.  The relatively good drop rate for getting girls in Epic Pachinko meant that the previously good chances of getting EP orbs gave me a lot of girls.  This started to become routine.  So I'm not complaining too much sine I play for free.

I'm more concerned at the substituting of the 3 MP orb bundle with kisses for playing seasons.  For me this was a big loss.  Also. if there's some rebalancing required it's in Mythic Pachinko.  There are far too many avatar drops compared with boosters in particular.  As for girls.  This disastrous.  Nevertheless, it's because of MP I managed to gain some much needed 5 star legendaries in the right classes for me.  Also, I got fed up with not getting many chances of getting Plavala in any which way until she came up alone in one account this round of MP.  She's one of my favs and I simply had to waste bundles to get her.  I wasn't disappointed, except for her affection scenes.

[lasergun]

I found the drop rate a little generous as well, but only for high-level players. I also felt it was justified because of several recent game additions/changes:

1. The resource sink that is Mythic Days eating all our kobans (and affection items) and leaving none for classic events.
2. The increase in girls in classic events from 6 to 8, but not even having enough free resources to consistently get all villain girls anymore without buying refills.
3. The overlapping of Mythic Days with classic events, further reducing our ability to obtain all villain girls for free.
4. Not having enough affection to upgrade our girls anyway; as of right now, I have 171 girls in my harem sitting at 0 stars!
5. The massive (and ever-growing) girl pool in Epic Pachinko with no real way to chase the ones we want except hoping they appear in Mythic Pachinko/Epic Days. (I've been playing for 3.5 years and finally just got Nami Skytte and Lupa like a month ago...)
6. Removal of orb drops from villains/champions, and removal of combativity rewards from leagues.
7. Club Champions, if your club isn't the most active, becomes another feature that costs resources for the girls. I've had to spend a few thousand there.
8. Kinky Cumpetition potentially being yet another resource sink depending on whether or not Megumi comes back this month. We'll have to see.

The epic orbs were what made the above feel tolerable for me.

Anyway, the alarming thing is that most people seem to think more types of temporary PoP missions are coming, which would make us receive the orb one less unless they increase the number of weekly missions as well. If that happens on top of a drop rate nerf, that would definitely be overkill. It's also super messed up if it turns out they did lie about nerfing the rates/just tried to hide this. I guess time will tell.

Edited April 18, 2021 by lasergun

[jelom]

@lasergun  Sorry if I don't help you with this initially in the format you are using, I feel I am taking too much raw data from the game for my liking and I don't want to add more. But as I track the spent orbs and girls obtained in EP, the next month I will be able to compare how many orbs I have received, and calculate aproximate drop rates in this post.

Edit: Discounting orbs from Season, leagues and PoA

EPx1 orbs received from PoP between 16/04/21 and 28/5/21 (43 days): 152 (38 drops)  Rough estimate of drop rates:  19%

 

Edited June 4, 2021 by jelom

[Bomba]

Eh, I had a terrible drop rate that week, so I'll join.

A week of PoPs that ended 2021/4/17 (2 "It's Just Natural" TPoPs ) : 1 drop out of 36 total. 2.8% droprate.
A week that started 2021/4/17 (again, 2 "It's Just Natural" TPoPs ): 8 drops out of 34 total. 23.5% droprate
A week that started 2021/4/24 (1 "It's Just Natural" TPoPs ):  2 drops out of 15 total. 13.3% droprate
A week that started 2021/5/1 (3 "It's Just Natural" TPoPs ):  2 drops out of 6 total so far.

I'll update it later.

Edited May 1, 2021 by Bomba
Edit: update

[Pelinor]

One Epic Orb (It's Just Natural) = One Girl (no complaints from me)😄

 

[Sweet_Pussy]

Over the past 4 days, I haven't got a single EP from 2 places of power. This collection of statistics can affect something. Or are we just collecting it for fun?

[jelom]

2 hours ago, Sweet_Pussy said:

This collection of statistics can affect something. Or are we just collecting it for fun?

Knowledge can be fun.

[Kenrae]

1 hour ago, jelom said:

Knowledge can be fun.

And useful to make decisions.

[430i]

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but is anyone else observing anomalies with the orb drops in the last week or so? Since the 28th of May I haven't gotten a single orb. I understand how probabilities work, but getting 0 orbs from 23 "It's just natural" PoPs in a row is highly improbable.

[jelom]

1 hour ago, 430i said:

0 orbs from 23 "It's just natural" PoPs in a row is highly improbable.

The probaility of that is 2,4% if drop rate is 15% and 8,9% if drop rate is 10%.

[430i]

2 hours ago, jelom said:

The probaility of that is 2,4% if drop rate is 15% and 8,9% if drop rate is 10%.

Is it really that low for orbs? For the others I get around 35% for the "better" option, including for orbs up until a week ago. Only for the past one week I got 0%, if the probability for orbs is really that low (10-15%), then I guess its not that surprising.

[jelom]

3 hours ago, 430i said:

Is it really that low for orbs?

Don't assume the probability is 10-15%, there are still too few data. My guess is 15-20%, but the data people posted here suggest the former. I just showed you that a zero wasn't so improbable as you said.