Overwatch player works out loot box drop rates

Wondering why your luck with Overwatch drops is so bad? A Redditor by the name of Ourobouros felt that he was getting the short end of the stick, so he did the natural thing: He sat through videos that collected up more than 1000 loot box openings, tallied up what came out, and then worked out the drop rate for Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary items. The results will amaze you! 

No, actually, they won't, because it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect: Common items are, well, common, making up 59 percent of dropped items (a 97 percent drop rate) while Legendaries, at two percent of the total (nine percent drop rate) are exceptionally rare. (Rares, on the other hand, are just uncommon.) The difference in numbers, Ourobouros explained in a follow-up, is because the total percentage is based on a per-item count, but each loot box drops four items. 

“The drop rate is the chance of getting an item of that rarity from the box,” he wrote. “One item is guaranteed to be rare or better. So there's a chance that you could get three commons and one epic, for example.” 

I'm not sure how practically helpful this is, because it's not as though you can use the knowledge you've gained to improve your odds of scoring sweet loot. But it is interesting, and the numbers don't seem unreasonable to me. Just for kicks, I've dropped a line to Blizzard to see if these results are close to the real thing—I'll let you know what I hear.
 

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.