Reverse engineering 20% my foot

[Sorwen]

Lets put it this way. Two people crafted the same item and in 40 attempts(20 apiece) neither got a blue schematic during that time. It needs to be fixed. Edited May 18, 2012 by Sorwen

[Trekket]

I agree this is broken something aweful, working on the 49th implant with no luck.....should be called REdiculous engineering

[Teykos]

Lets put it this way. Two people crafted the same item and in 40 attempts(20 apiece) neither got a blue schematic during that time. It needs to be fixed.

 

Because clearly those two people were the only ones in the entire game across all servers reverse engineering items at that moment of time.

 

I know I've gotten a streak of 70+ on the same item before on an item I still don't have the schematic for. It's the only skill barrel I don't have a blue for. (IIRC it was the level 43 skill barrel...) I've also gotten 5 schematic results in a row before. (Whether they were the 5 I wanted is a different story...) When you put it the way you've stated, you're just stating "We got unlucky; it needs to be fixed."

[Kahldor]

I just REed 23 Armors and Mods in one sitting 5 minutes ago and got Nothing... Not one schematic!!! There is a .005% chance of that happening... Or 1 in 200 percent chance of that happening and I just was the 1. So the other 199 people on my server should be good for a little bit. This system is BS. It should add a small % success chance for each failure. Just like in life, when you screw up over and over. Typically you get better and eventually accomplish your goal with a better chance of success. This game needs to add that... Nevermind, it is already half way down the toilet anyway.

[Kahldor]

Make that 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 and 29... no success... piece of crap system Edited May 18, 2012 by Kahldor

[Sorwen]

Because clearly those two people were the only ones in the entire game across all servers reverse engineering items at that moment of time.

The point is in 20 crafting attempts one of the two people should have gotten it. If everyone else on the server got it on the first attempt or the 3rd that is still an indication of a problem.

 

I know I've gotten a streak of 70+ on the same item before on an item I still don't have the schematic for.

Then that would be a problem. You having a greater difficulty doesn't indicate there isn't a problem.

 

It's the only skill barrel I don't have a blue for. (IIRC it was the level 43 skill barrel...) I've also gotten 5 schematic results in a row before. (Whether they were the 5 I wanted is a different story...) When you put it the way you've stated, you're just stating "We got unlucky; it needs to be fixed."

Yes. Because that or yours is going beyond unlucky. The other thing you have to understand is there is no such thing as totally random number on a computer. A random number is totally dependent on the seed number. Give the same seed number and you get the same resulting "random" number each time. So 20+/70+ on some would seem to point to something wrong in their random selection.

[ZaRree]

I've broken down 10 Assault Shriekers now, nd the tool tip says I have a 20% chance at a blue schematic. I haven't gotten anything from it but lost materials and time. I understand sometimes you get a series of low rolls but I can count the times I've gotten 2 schemes breaking 5 items on 3 fingers. I can't count how many sets of 5-7 items I've broken apart in a row and not gotten squat. So does this mean Reverse engineering is still broken, broken on some items or am I really this unlucky this consistantly? I mean I'm talking level 9 green items here

 

Here we go again....

The answer lies in math

[Kahldor]

Here we go again....

The answer lies in math

 

And math also points to once populated servers like Ebon Hawk... slowly dying... Its all in math.

 

Anyway you slice it, as per my example above... 29 straight RE failures starts to work on some people's psyche. Is the time invested worth the outcome? I find myself asking that more and more with this game and all of its lackluster gameplay ideas. So I basically stopped crafting for the day. The IP of SW can only keep it going so much.

 

EDIT: And to bring my post up to date, I just RE'd what was in my bag to bring the total to 39 RE's since my last successful schematic. The supposed chance of that occurring is 1.66e-4 or almost 1 in 1000... Crap system.

Edited May 18, 2012 by Kahldor

[GnatB]

So yes. The *design* is (probably) working correctly, nobody has really disproved that. (and without a HUGE sample size, isn't really disproveable.)

 

That being said, we all agree (including Bioware, incidentally) that the design isn't optimal. They are aware that somebody WILL get a bad streak, and they are (or were) looking into a solution.

 

Continuing to harp (especially on the 20% my foot side of things) is pointless.

[Kahldor]

So yes. The *design* is (probably) working correctly, nobody has really disproved that. (and without a HUGE sample size, isn't really disproveable.)

 

That being said, we all agree (including Bioware, incidentally) that the design isn't optimal. They are aware that somebody WILL get a bad streak, and they are (or were) looking into a solution.

 

Continuing to harp (especially on the 20% my foot side of things) is pointless.

 

It is not pointless. It keeps the attention on the issues. If you sweep every problem you identify under the rug and say, "I need to deal with that" then it will most likely be pushed off and pushed off until you force yourself to deal with it. Complacent behavior is not necessary especially when the consumer has a right to share their displeasure with the product it is purchasing.

Edited May 18, 2012 by Kahldor

[ZaRree]

And math also points to once populated servers like Ebon Hawk... slowly dying... Its all in math.

 

Anyway you slice it, as per my example above... 29 straight RE failures starts to work on some people's psyche. Is the time invested worth the outcome? I find myself asking that more and more with this game and all of its lackluster gameplay ideas. So I basically stopped crafting for the day. The IP of SW can only keep it going so much.

 

EDIT: And to bring my post up to date, I just RE'd what was in my bag to bring the total to 39 RE's since my last successful schematic. The supposed chance of that occurring is 1.66e-4 or almost 1 in 1000... Crap system.

 

Yeah i agree with you, i'm just pointing out that the success rate is probably right. There is always a chance of failure when u deal with "random" events. I would also like if they made RE success rate scale with attempts.

 

P.S yea servers are dying.

[Kahldor]

Yeah i agree with you, i'm just pointing out that the success rate is probably right. There is always a chance of failure when u deal with "random" events. I would also like if they made RE success rate scale with attempts.

 

P.S yea servers are dying.

 

I can deal with a streak of 10 to 15, but when the mats and time (hours of missions) it takes to collect them for RE'ing Blues start to add up it is just not worth it to me.

[kcon]

I think they should have a buff system when RE different items, every time you RE an item you gain a 30 sec buff that increases your RE chance by a set percent and make it so this buff stacks. so for example we will set the buff to a 10% increase, so you make 5 resolve hilts and then RE them all, the first 4 you RE would give you a buff that increases your chance to crit by 40% plus 20% regular chance giving you 60% chance on your final RE, doing this would give you a 100% chance to crit when RE items 8 times in a row. and then the buff falls off after 30 sec. Edited May 18, 2012 by kcon

[GnatB]

I think they should have a buff system when RE different items, every time you RE an item you gain a 30 sec buff that increases your RE chance by a set percent and make it so this buff stacks. so for example we will set the buff to a 10% increase, so you make 5 resolve hilts and then RE them all, the first 4 you RE would give you a buff that increases your chance to crit by 40% plus 20% regular chance giving you 60% chance on your final RE, doing this would give you a 100% chance to crit when RE items 8 times in a row. and then the buff falls off after 30 sec.

 

Yeah, 'cause that isn't exploitable at all.

 

Craft a mess of inexpensive low level items, 1 or 2 expensive high level ones.

 

RE bad items until you fail enough times you get a nice big +% buff. RE (successfully) the expensive item.

[Zhiroc]

It's not terribly difficult to write a dice roller program in whatever language you are familiar with. I wrote one in python.

 

If you roll the dice a million times, counting how many tries it takes to get 20 or less out of 100, you will find that almost every time, you will find a streak of 50 or more failures before a success. In fact, in some million-roll experiments, I had as many as 5 such streaks. In about half of my experiments, a failure streak of 60 or more was seen.

 

Yes, the likelihood of rolling 50 failures at an 80% chance is quite remote, but you have to be careful. Most people quickly calculate it as 0.80^50, which is correct, but that is the chance that I will fail 50 times in a row starting with my first attempt. The chance that I would roll that streak at any time during a string of a million rolls is quite different.

[Teykos]

It's not terribly difficult to write a dice roller program in whatever language you are familiar with. I wrote one in python.

 

If you roll the dice a million times, counting how many tries it takes to get 20 or less out of 100, you will find that almost every time, you will find a streak of 50 or more failures before a success. In fact, in some million-roll experiments, I had as many as 5 such streaks. In about half of my experiments, a failure streak of 60 or more was seen.

 

Yes, the likelihood of rolling 50 failures at an 80% chance is quite remote, but you have to be careful. Most people quickly calculate it as 0.80^50, which is correct, but that is the chance that I will fail 50 times in a row starting with my first attempt. The chance that I would roll that streak at any time during a string of a million rolls is quite different.

 

This.

 

Everyone starting a "Oh no, I couldn't get a result after x0 tries so it must be broken" complaint always present their woebegone experience as if they are the only person in the entire game doing Reverse Engineering, and it's really mind-numbing how so many people can't see the forest for the trees.

[Cleet_Xia]

I don't mind an RNG. There's a common fallacy in the real world that if you work really, really hard at something, you'll eventually succeed...

 

I just wrote a quickie simulator in python. I ran 1000 dice rolls at a 20% success rate:

• 194 successes out of an actual roll count of 990, or 19.6% success (I ignore the trailing failures)
  
• median: 4 rolls to success
  
• max rolls seen for success: 27
  
• about 10% took 10 rolls or more
  
• about 5% took 15 rolls or more
  
• about 1.5% (4 tries) took 20 rolls or more
  

 

Edit: I just ran the simulation with 100,000 dice rolls:

• Median is still 4
  
• Max rolls: 42 (!!!)
  
• 90th percentile: 10 rolls
  
• 95th percentile: 14 rolls
  
• 99th percentile: 21 rolls
  

 

I love this !! I'd really like to see what you're results are if you drop the success rate to 10% I have personally never RE'd more than 35 of any item on 4 toons before I got the proc. As a consequence I feel that the overwhelming bulk of complaints about RE chance on this forum are pure QQ - and claims of Reing 100's of items without a proc are total BS.

[Zhiroc]

I was thinking about this, and realized there's no need to do this experimentally. You can calculate the probability of success for each # of dice rolls, and by adding up the percentages, calculate the percentile.

 

So, for either 10% or 20% success:

• 50th percentile (median): 3 (20%), 7 (10%)
  
• 80th percentile: 8 (20%), 15 (10%)
  
• 90th percentile: 11 (20%), 22 (10%)
  
• 95th percentile: 13 (20%), 28 (10%)
  
• 99th percentile: 21 (20%), 44 (10%)
  
• 99.9th percentile: 31 (20%), 66 (10%)
  
• 99.99th percentile: 41 (20%), 87 (10%)
  
• 99.999th percentile: 52 (20%), 109 (10%)
  

 

If you're not familiar with percentiles, it represents the percentage of the samples that fall under the given number. The most familiar percentile is the 50th, which is also called the median. In other words, if you roll for an RE at 20%, about half the time you'll get it 3 rolls. (FYI, the actual median is actually between 3 and 4, but I avoided fractional values here...)

 

Continuing on, the 80th percentile represents the 4 out of 5 success number, or conversely since we're focused on failure, the point at which 1 out of 5 take *more* than the given number. 90th is the 1 out of 10 point for failures, 99th, 1 out of 100, 99.9th, 1 out of 1000, 99.99th, 1 out of 10,000, 99.999th, 1 out of 100,000.

 

OK, so let's say the playing population is a million and that a tenth of them RE one green item every day. That means there's 100,000 trials (OK, you may quibble with the two factors I used, but come up with some estimate of how many trials yourself). And thus, *every day* one person loses the lottery and it takes them over 50 tries.

 

EDIT: Here's a link to the spreadsheet data

Edited May 19, 2012 by Zhiroc
Added spreadsheet link

[noctoi]

Oh I so agree with this thread. I'm not sure whether to put in a ticket about it or not, but I'm getting to the point where I'm considering just pretending the crew skills don't exist and deleting them all to save frustration. I've made 15 of a particular item today and didn't proc a schematic from it.

 

Two days ago I made 30 of an item on another toon and didn't proc a single schematic. Thats after spending thousands of creds grinding useless companion gift quests to try and get my underworld metal quests (because you can guarantee that when you need Abundant or above in a particular type of quest you will only ever get Companion Gift quests and moderate yield of the one you need....) and quest after quest of the other gathering skill trying to get a decent amount of mats from that. (Silica anyone? Try and grind that in a reasonable amount of time. It's SO damned hard to get despite being a crappy green material when you are not on a planet with nodes)

 

Eh I"m so frustrated I'm rambling. The point is that I don't even bother making 4-6 of an item to RE anymore. I make them in lots of 20. Then I swear a lot and start the grind all over again when inevitably it takes 2-3 lots of 20 RE sessions to FINALLY get the damned proc. By the time I get it the toon I'm making stuff for is passed the level of the item and I have to start all over again... again...

 

It's soul destroying. And NOT fun.

[Jeadeye]

Yes RE % chances are a sham!

I've spent hours RE'n crafted items hoping for a purple recipe only to use every single material i have (often several full stacks) , every material from the GTM and also from companions farming missions ... only to get NOTHING !

No point lodging a ticket as they merely auto reply saying to make suggestions on the forums, so here I am.

 

10% or 20% my butt !.. more like a big fat ZERO %

Fix this system please as it completely sucks !!

 

Tired of spending hours attempting to make items and getting nothing but my time wasted.

Perhaps a new game is on the cards ..

[Zhiroc]

FYI, I keep accurate records of all my RE attempts, and I can say that out of 150+ rolls I have gotten about a 21% success rate. So for me, their random number generator is operating pretty much on-target.

[Laris_Rai]

20% fits with my own success numbers. I think it's a pretty fair success rate. You have to usually work at it a bit, but it's not super impossible.

[Samoth_Nomad]

RNG is RNG guys. It's the same on drops. One day I had 2 purple drops happen within killing 5 guys on belsavis dailies. I would give anything for that same luck in black hole(magenta crystal schematics), but alas, I've killed thousands of mobs with only one purple drop.....

It's like rolling 1 on a hundred side die. At least with RE, it's like rolling 1 on a 5 side die.

[MorgonKara]

Heh, I feel your pain. Just wait until you start trying for high lvl purple schems and it takes 25 minutes to craft the blue with a 10% chance to RE for a purple.

[Robbygoof]

Yes RE % chances are a sham!

I've spent hours RE'n crafted items hoping for a purple recipe only to use every single material i have (often several full stacks) , every material from the GTM and also from companions farming missions ... only to get NOTHING !

No point lodging a ticket as they merely auto reply saying to make suggestions on the forums, so here I am.

 

10% or 20% my butt !.. more like a big fat ZERO %

Fix this system please as it completely sucks !!

 

Tired of spending hours attempting to make items and getting nothing but my time wasted.

Perhaps a new game is on the cards ..

 

One, i think you may be exagerating a little bit and Two, you are RE'ing BLUE level items to get the Purple level items right??? Cause if you are truely at 0% I could easily see it because you are RE'ing green level items thinking you are going to get a Purple....