[Spreadsheet] Mystery Tour Villager "RNG" (Peppys only. Spoiler: Species gets rolled first, thus odds are not equal)

[Sheba]

EDIT: It's clear now! TL;DR: Game rolls species first, then villager if there's more than one in the species, making the odds uneven - less possible villagers in a species mean higher chances for those villagers appearing. Thank you to ForbiddenSecrets for helping me realize this!
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So, as I had posted yesterday, I am desperately trying and failing to get Bunnie or Dotty as a Peppy villager for my initial Peppy pick. Given that I have already and very quickly found a Lazy and Normal I like, I am currently only getting Peppy villagers. However, I not only failed to find Bunnie and Dotty but basically every single bunny, despite there being so many in the Peppy pool.

And so, spreadsheets. I have 450 NMT to use (but will stop when I get Bunnie or Dotty). I will use them in batches of 50 and will vary daytime and date to see if it has any influence. For now, here's tickets 1-50, done on Friday afternoon. And look at this data, it's already interesting and has a pattern:

As you can clearly see, species with only one possible villager in the Peppy group appear A LOT! There are nine villagers who are the only "Peppy"s of their species, out of 49(!) total, but they make up almost half of the island populations! This is a huge thing, obviously, and rabbits seemingly just don't happen unless the stars perfectly align because there's so many of them. At least not in the afternoon hours.

I will start my second 50-batch once my Switch has recharged and edit it in here once I've collected the data. It's now in the middle of the night here in Germany, so the second 50-batch will happen at around 3am and we'll see how that influences things. Given that I had done all tours at night until now and I'm at this since almost two weeks, I can say: It likely won't change much and I expect the same results based on my experience. But science and all that... also I am horribly frustrated. I just want Bunnie or Dotty...

EDIT: I got Dotty (AAAAAAAA!), so collecting is over for now, but it's pretty sure at this point that ForbiddenSecret has it right and the game rolls species first (all equal chance). And, if there's more than one possible villager for the set personality in that species, it rolls again. Hence, if there's only one villager possible for a species, said villager will appear far more often than if there's eight villagers in a set species and personality type. To summarize: If you want a peppy bunny, be ready to cry. If you want Audie, your chances are pretty good during the initial three houses!

Will collect more if a set personality happens again on the mystery islands. But this is pretty confirmed.

 

[RenaiRider]

I remember your torment over trying to get Dotty or Bunny, and I'm SO sorry you're still going through this when you're only rolling for Peppy villagers D:<!! I'm glad you're keeping track now, as data is very interesting and telling if it's true RNG or not. So far, seems like you've had similar luck to me when it comes to recurring species when island hopping. Keep up the good work, and good luck!

 

[Sheba]

I remember your torment over trying to get Dotty or Bunny, and I'm SO sorry you're still going through this when you're only rolling for Peppy villagers D:<!! I'm glad you're keeping track now, as data is very interesting and telling if it's true RNG or not. So far, seems like you've had similar luck to me when it comes to recurring species when island hopping. Keep up the good work, and good luck!

Thank you so much! I refuse to give up and am willing to sacrifice all those tickets, but it's honestly just soooo frustrating! Mainly because I just want to play with all the things the game has to offer, but I'm not even having fences yet, not to mention all the other things like island designer and the like... if I had more unlocked, I wouldn't mind so much, but like this, it's torture. But I feel if I just accept someone and continue on, getting Dotty or Bunnie when all personalities will be in the pool will end up being impossible.

Going to start the second 50-batch now. At least there will be more data if I fail...but I'd prefer less data and more Dotty or Bunnie, haha.

 

[ForbiddenSecrets]

It kind of looks like the game randomizes species first and then the villager from that species. So maybe there is 1/22 chance of seeing Bunny and then you have to get lucky after that. There are 9 species with only one villager. That's 40% of the species. You hit them 48% of the time which isn't unreasonable for the sample size.

Other data I've seen on the islands seems to point that way but obviously we need a much lager sample to make real conclusions.

 

[Sheba]

It kind of looks like the game randomizes species first and then the villager from that species. So maybe there is 1/22 chance of seeing Bunny and then you have to get lucky after that. There are 9 species with only one villager. That's 40% of the species. You hit them 48% of the time which isn't unreasonable for the sample size.

Other data I've seen on the islands seems to point that way but obviously we need a much lager sample to make real conclusions.

That sounds smart. I am honestly shoddy with math and percentages, so I'm glad you're spelling these things out for me because I would have calculated wrong for sure. Second 50-batch is happening now, 2:44am my time. Results look a lot like the first batch so far.

 

[Bk1234]

I don't know if this is helpful in any way, but today here were my mystery island encounters:
Note: These are my encounters post-first campsite villager
1. Becky (Snooty)
2. Billy (Jock)
3. Gabi (Peppy)
4. Wendy (Peppy)
5. Teddy (Jock)
6. Alli (Snooty)
7. Shari (Sisterly)
8. Walt (Cranky)
9. Reneigh (Sisterly)- INVITED

 

[jiojiop]

It kind of looks like the game randomizes species first and then the villager from that species. So maybe there is 1/22 chance of seeing Bunny and then you have to get lucky after that. There are 9 species with only one villager. That's 40% of the species. You hit them 48% of the time which isn't unreasonable for the sample size.

Other data I've seen on the islands seems to point that way but obviously we need a much lager sample to make real conclusions.

This is a great deduction. It's also a really stupid way for Nintendo to go about this.

Thanks @Sheba for getting all this data and tabulating it so well. I adore Bunnie too and this is pretty disappointing.

 

[Sheba]

Thanks everyone for pitching in so far! I've done ten tickets now and the only new villager who wasn't in the first 50 so far is Ketchup the duck. I've seen Truffles twice again, too, which makes me wonder if all members in the species are equally likely to appear as I haven't seen the second pig yet but Truffles quite a bit. Data collecting continues...

 

[Saga]

I'm following this closely because I have a villager moving out tomorrow and am trying decide between taking my chances with RNG or buying/trading a villager but risking the plot glitch...

 

[ayeeprill]

That’s insane as I found Bonbon and Pippy on back to back islands a week or so ago! Really want to know how this works.

 

[Sheba]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I GOT DOTTY AAAAAAAAAA Sorry guys, data collecting got cut short for now, but I will continue this if there's a second round where I will whittle things down to a single personality appearing on islands (I think there might be? Not sure. I heard there'll be three more villagers from set personalities who need to be invited later?)

Nevertheless, I collected everything until Dotty happened. I think it's safe to say that ForbiddenSecret got it right in that the game rolls for species and those are all equally likely. So if you're in the stage of the game where only set personalities appear on the island, you are more likely to get your dreamie if they're the only one of their species in that personality group. If they're not, you need extra luck the more villagers are in that species and personality since there's a second roll for who will appear out of the rolled species then.

 

[Miss Misty]

The RNG rolling for species first rather than individual villager would explain a lot. I can see why Nintendo would do it that way. Some species (cats) have more animals than others (octopi) so they might have done it that way to make less common species have an equal chance of appearing. It would explain why people like me can go on a lot of island trips and not see certain species at all, despite seeing every member of other species. It would also explain why the octopi appear to be slightly more common here.

I'm glad you were able to get your bun!

 

[kiyyie]

Just wondering if you can help because this is slightly hard for me to absorb, if I were looking for Judy (only snooty cub) with NMT, is it estimated to be a low chance?

 

[sicklewillow]

Does this mean cat villagers have a low chance as well?

 

[ctar17]

Interesting data. I had a suspicion that the game randomly selects a species first instead of a villager right off the bat as I performed a Chi Square test on octopus vs. not octopus with about 350 sample size and found that it's not pure RNG based on 1/391 chance for each villager. The octopuses were appearing way more than 3/391. The test confirmed that the probability for them appearing 12 times in 344 was very very very low like less than .00001%, therefore it was out of my set confidence interval of 1% so I could conclude that it wasn't strict RNG where every single villager has a specific chance.

Post automatically merged: Apr 17, 2020

It kind of looks like the game randomizes species first and then the villager from that species. So maybe there is 1/22 chance of seeing Bunny and then you have to get lucky after that. There are 9 species with only one villager. That's 40% of the species. You hit them 48% of the time which isn't unreasonable for the sample size.

Other data I've seen on the islands seems to point that way but obviously we need a much lager sample to make real conclusions.

I went back to my data and re-performed the Chi Square test but instead of doing specific villagers, did specific species for the observed vs. expected results.

Here is what I found:
The Chi Square value was less than the p value for the confidence interval (of 5%), this means that the observed and expected results are NOT statistically significant. I conclude this to mean, like the OP and ForbiddenSecrets said, the game randomly rolls for species first and then randomly rolls a specific villager in that chosen species. Thank you OP and ForbiddenSecrets for providing this info!

 

[AshdewCrossing]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I GOT DOTTY AAAAAAAAAA Sorry guys, data collecting got cut short for now, but I will continue this if there's a second round where I will whittle things down to a single personality appearing on islands (I think there might be? Not sure. I heard there'll be three more villagers from set personalities who need to be invited later?)

Nevertheless, I collected everything until Dotty happened. I think it's safe to say that ForbiddenSecret got it right in that the game rolls for species and those are all equally likely. So if you're in the stage of the game where only set personalities appear on the island, you are more likely to get your dreamie if they're the only one of their species in that personality group. If they're not, you need extra luck the more villagers are in that species and personality since there's a second roll for who will appear out of the rolled species then.

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Congratulations!! Thank you for making this thread, I was following it because the data was really interesting. I wonder if after your initial 3 plots personality will be a separate roll as well.

 

[ctar17]

Just wondering if you can help because this is slightly hard for me to absorb, if I were looking for Judy (only snooty cub) with NMT, is it estimated to be a low chance?

Using the species first RNG that is theorized from OP and my data both:

The estimated chance to specifically find Judy is equal to the chance that cubs are selected (1/35) multiplied by the chance that Judy is selected from the cubs (1/16). This equals 1/560 or 0.18%

 

[sicklewillow]

So if I'm looking for Kid Cat or Raymond, 1/35 times 1/23=0.00124

 

[ctar17]

So if I'm looking for Kid Cat or Raymond, 1/35 times 1/23=0.00124

well technically if you're looking for Kid Cat OR Raymond, it's double that (chance to get either one) so: 0.00248 or 0.248%

 

[Aliya]

Thank you for sharing this and I'm glad you finally found Dotty! I assumed this also while I was island hopping since I saw so many repeats in smaller species like the octopi and barely any of the cats or dogs etc., but I just tracked names and not personalities so I would need to clean it up prior to posting.

That's disappointing if you're looking for that one elusive villager who happens to be one of many of that species (especially once you get passed the initial 5 villagers when all villagers personalities can appear)! I hope more people continue to share their data like this so we can analyze more.

Also @ctar17 thank you for running a Chi Square test! My brain is happy