Let me begin by clarifying that our point system was designed to introduce the mechanism of guaranteed drops, not to increase drop rates to OSI levels. The huge increase in drop rate that happened on OSI is a thing on its own, and it was highly contested at the time. I honestly believe their developers did not intend for such a drastic increase, but that's not relevant for Demise.
As also mentioned before in other threads, the average gain in Doom is still very much like the old drop rate. Drops have simply gotten a higher chance of occurring at regular intervals. Our point system can be seen as a normalization of the drop intervals.
We've been monitoring Doom artifact drops for a little over a month now. From May 18 to June 18, we had a total of 170 Doom artifacts spawn. That's an average of 5.48 per day, or about 38 a week. That means there's an ornament of the magician being spawned every week. (And indeed, in that period, 5 ornaments of the magician spawned.)
When comparing this to OSI, yes, this drop rate is indeed too low. However, if everyone was able to obtain all their desired Doom artifacts within a day, there would soon be no point in keeping Doom around at all. The server would be flooded with them. This also goes for Treasures of Tokuno, which is not enabled permanently for the same reason.
OSI must've realized this somewhere along the way, which is why you can see later expansions adding back rarer and better artifacts, with drop rates similar to the old Doom rates. (The Stygian Dragon and Medusa artifacts, for example.) Every game needs its "diamond ore".
This is why I believe that OSI drop rates are a bad idea. You may want that ornament of the magician now, but when you're getting one daily and struggle to even sell them, the whole system becomes irrelevant.
Now, I don't make decisions based solely on my own views. I'm willing to experiment with the Doom point gains to find a healthy value for the shard, which is why we'll begin awarding double points after this coming server wars. The point rewards may increase, or decrease, based on the observed drops after that.
For those wondering about the internal workings of the Doom point system, I will explain how the system that is currently active operates. (Beware, technical mumbo jumbo ahead.)
The system is based on the pseudo-random distribution, which is used and documented for other games as well (one such link). It works by increasing your chance with every roll, so that eventually the chance becomes so high that a successful roll is inevitable.
The accumulated chance starts at 0, and your chance increases are much lower than the projected average success chance, which makes it unlikely to get a successful roll early on. Similarly, after some time, the accumulated chance becomes sufficiently high that not getting a successful roll becomes unlikely. The result is that successful rolls are more likely to happen at similar intervals, rather than all over the place. (Which isn't actually truly random, but more "comfortably random".)
Getting down to the specific system in place on Demise, every player character has a "total points" value which starts at 0. When killing a gauntlet monster, the total points from that monster are divided over all players with loot rights as follows:
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points = totalPoints * ( 1 / totalPlayers ) * ( damage / totalDamage ) * ( 1 + luckMod )^2
The luck modifier is a bit more complicated, and it is based on the GetLuckChance() calculation used for increased loot and such:
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luckMod = luckChance / 8500
luckChance = luck^( 1 / 1.8 ) * 100
After the points are updated on all players, a roll is made for each player where the total accumulated points represents a chance out of 100. When one player's roll is successful, the system stops rolling. This happens so that only one artifact can drop per monster (but everyone gets points). On a successful roll, the player is awarded a random artifact and their points are reset to 0.
Because the roll is out of 100, this means that once you've collected 100 points, a roll is guaranteed to succeed. (Unless someone rolls successfully for the artifact before you do, but then their points will reset and you will likely win the next roll.) In practice, however, people never reach 100 points. Most people receive an artifact at 0.3-0.7 accumulated points.
In the observed Doom drops from May 18 to June 18, 118 drops (70%) occurred before reaching 0.7 accumulated points, 148 drops (87%) occurred before reaching 1.0 points, and the highest point accumulation one person got was 2.27.
The total number of points a monster gives is different for Dark Fathers than the rest of the mobs:
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DF totalPoints = 9.0 / 128 (old value was 9.0 / 256*)
other totalPoints = 9.0 / 512 (old value was 9.0 / 1024*)
*Points were doubled June 2014.
These values may seem quite arbitrary. They were decided upon through simulation of the system for different values. Using these matches the system very closely to the old drop chances (only slightly higher), for various luck values and player counts.
The above specifications should allow anyone to simulate the system completely.
I don't expect many people to read this post in its entirely, but if you, %i, are one of those people, then I salute you. Any further questions will have to wait until my keyboard recharges with ink.