After five hundred responses I pooled the data on what's been working for different people and Update #4 below has some suggestions on how to improve your odds of getting a crimson doubles ghost shell to drop.
Original Post: How many hours/matches did you put into Crimson Days without a ghost shell dropping? I'm 17 hours in and still no ghost shell. And after all those matches I've only seen one ghost shell drop for one teammate.
UPDATE #1: I'm having a blast playing and don't care about 320. I'd just like to get one of each shell to drop at any light whatsoever and I was wondering how it was going for everyone else.
UPDATE #2: It seems like most people are getting their ghost shell(s) either by the 10th match they play (win or lose) or sometime after their 200th match, with very little in between.
UPDATE #3: Thanks for all the posts everyone! Bungie heard us and posted an update with good news. One guaranteed 320 doubles ghost going to your postmaster after the event if you competed in seven matches. Whether it's crimson or chocolate is going to be a 50/50 RNG. More details here: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/News?aid=44361
UPDATE #4: Despite the good news of a guaranteed 320 ghost shell after Crimson Doubles ends Bungie doesn't appear to have upped the drop rate for getting a ghost as an end game reward, which means you're only guaranteed to get one of the two event specific ghosts. I've been gathering a few theories from various commenters and decided to try them out and I got a low-light crimson ghost last night on my fourth match and a second crimson ghost by my tenth match. It's hard to pinpoint if I was one, all, or none of theories that I tried that got ghosts to suddenly start dropping for me, but I'll detail the three theories and people can try them out one at a time or in various combinations to confirm what works.
The first theory is that you need to have both the Crimson Doubles specific emblem and either the Rosebright or Valentines shader equipped while playing matches. There's no official buff, but some people believe this helped their odds.
The second theory is that you should keep both of the Crimson Doubles shaders in the inventory of the character you're currently playing on. While you may have gotten the shaders to drop multiple times on each of your three characters while doing the Crimson Doubles bounties (for instance having the Valentine's shader drop on your warlock and the Rosebright shader drop on your titan), those shaders will continue to drop multiple times until each character has gotten both shaders—but once you have both shaders on each character the drop rate for the Crimson Doubles shaders appears to go down, which could likely boost your chances of getting a ghost shell as a drop instead. Again, just a theory.
The third theory is that the ghost shells appear to be dropping more frequently for either lower light characters OR less experienced characters who've put less time into the game (such as they've only run hard mode Oryx a couple of times). Since you can't undo running the raid on a character and I would [i]never[/i] advocate deleting a character for a week-long event, you can either throw on some year one weapons, equip rare blue weapons and armor that you have laying around for infusion, or put on your original, white generalist ghost shell in order to drop your light below 300 and potentially trigger the game into thinking you're a newer player to the game.
The fourth and final theory is that if you've been playing Crimson Doubles primarily on one character trying running the doubles for a couple nights exclusively on a different character. The thinking behind this is that the random number generator isn't quite random and can sometimes end up in an endless loop. Most players see this quite frequently with the three of coins: they're missing a particular exotic (say the mida in my case) and it never seems to drop when you play as a particular character (for me it's my titan), instead you get half-a-dozen repeats of the same exotic (say seven telestos alternating with seven invectives), but when you switch characters (to a warlock for instance) and main that character for a couple weeks the three of coins finally drops the exotic you've been missing and you see almost none of the exotics you've been getting so many repeats of. SO, all that to say, if you've been playing doubles primarily on one character switch it up and grind a different character.
So last night I put all of these theories into practice and got two Crimson Doubles ghost shells to drop, one in my eighteenth hour and a second in my nineteenth hour of playing doubles. I put on the emblem and the Rosebright shader, I made sure I had the Valentine's shader in my inventory (I picked it up from the kiosk after getting it on one of my other characters), I put on the generalist ghost shell dropping my light to 288, and I switched from playing primarily on my warlock to playing exclusively on my titan. The ghost shells I got were between 290-300, but I don't care, I just wanted to make sure I got one of each ghost shell (and it's been confirmed by several commenters that your light level doesn't seem to effect the light level that the Crimson Doubles ghost shells drop at, so it seems I just got an unlucky roll, but at this point I consider getting any ghost shell at all lucky).
Those are the working theories and they worked for me. I hope they help some other guardians out there as well. Keep the faith and let me know if trying one or all of these theories helps you get your first Crimson Doubles ghost shell to drop. Best of luck guardians!
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2 RepliesI did 2 matches and got a pink 311 ghosts to drop. Welcome to the world of rng.
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1 ReplyI'm getting frustrated now. I don't care about the light. I'll take a 260 ghost. Just one pink ghost please :(
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2 RepliesI think about 2 hours and I got a 319.
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1 ReplyI played a couple hours Tuesday night and had 2 chocolate ghosts drop and 1 red ghost. RNG smiles upon some and frowns upon others.
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1 Reply2 days and I already got 5.
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Lel got a 315 sugary shell on my 10th match
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Once again i dont know how bungie would think keeping the drop rate low would be a bad thing? It runs for a week and its a cash cow. So you would think giving someone something that makes a player feel like they are important to the company (pleasing drop rates) the player would be more likely to be satisfied enough to maybe spend a lil cash on microtrans. Regardless of the money why would you hold back from making players who dedicate their time feel rewarded
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2 Replies2nd match
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5 RepliesDo you have to complete your CD bounties in order to have a chance of a ghost dropping, post match?
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5 RepliesMy younger brother played 3/4 and got one
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2 RepliesI've played a good few hours each day since it started and I've had about 7 ghosts
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3 RepliesPlayed the bounties for three chars and only one
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1 ReplyI got a crimson shell on my 7th match got lucky my buddy has about 30 hours into it and still hasn't gotten one
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1 ReplyI've played 50 matches maybe even more and have No gotten a shell. I've seen 3 drop (320,319,312) but none for me.
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4 RepliesGet 1 per day lol
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1 ReplyI've played 0 . They're going to drop next week in nightfall.
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1 ReplyNot sure how many hours but probably a lot and only had 1 Crimson ghost at 303 which I deleted, if I would have known how horrible the drop rates were I would have kept it lol
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2 RepliesThe drop rate is 3.8% but it seems like .038%
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3 RepliesGot a 319 on the last game I played to finish the bounties on my 3rd character. Only one I've gotten. I don't really care tho I've had good luck with ghosts from raiding and have infused a trials ghost and an iron shell to 320, plus I have one 320 from the raid still.
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4 RepliesGot both on day 1 as well as the shaders lol. But they both had crappy light I think it was 300 and 303
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Ive played for a few hours last night and a couple on tuesday had a 311 and 312 of each ghost drop and then today had a 318 drop
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1 Reply40 matches and 1 ghost shell at 300 light
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1 ReplyOn behalf of the whole destiny staff we apologize for the bug that is keeping guardians from receiving Crimson/Chocolate ghosts. As a token in good faith towards our game every guardian will be receiving a random level event ghost on February 16th. ~ Deej out! "Statement on Twitter Check It!"
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15 RepliesSeems that everyone that does the raid 3 times a week since it came out are getting no drops and those that are too bad at the raid get everything for free...... Totally logic right there......
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About 10 hours, 5 on my hunter, 3.5 on my warlock, and 1.5 on my titan. Hunter and warlock got the red ghost, titan got the chocolate ghost (which is the one I wanted :D)
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6 RepliesI got 2 in ten matches. 311 and 314. Guy i was playing with got none in the 70 plus matches he'd played. I also got a vanguard ghost on completion of the quest.