Reverse Engineer 20% Broken

[Darzil]

In an interview with WoW designers they said they originally made say a drop 25% but then people will just complain about being unlucky so they made the drop say 20% but +5% for each mob that didn't drop it so that the overall % is the same but you will eventaully get your drop no matter how unlucky you are because that number will hit 100% eventually.

 

It seems like this is the system people prefer. By the way if this system is in, your initial chance to RE has to be less than 20% because it increases on failures so it can't be 20% to start, assuming the goal is still to ensure 20% success rate on average.

 

It's a good system, but works best when you're only tractking a few factors. I'm guessing WoW did that on quest drops (tracking the number killed in the quest, dropping the data on quest completion), rather than other drops (so you'd have to track many different items, for very long periods).

 

Using it here might be troublesome and complex. If you do counted every item RE seperately, that'd be 1000's of extra numbers to track against each character. If you just counted number of RE's since last success, you'd have emergent strategies where the optimal strategy becomes RE something cheap and low level til you have failed X times, then try the expensive high level one. Personally I don't want to have to muck around like that to be optimal!

 

Personally I'd make the 10% rates 20%, and see what results. I think personally that 10% chance to make a random one of five purples is harsh, especially trying to go from purple to purple, where it can take hours to get the materials (needing two crit successes on missions that take an hour to get enough for one attempt). 10% chance if there was only one option would be fine. Maybe even offer legacy character perks for an additional small % chance of RE success.

[finelinebob]

...

 

Using it here might be troublesome and complex. If you do counted every item RE seperately, that'd be 1000's of extra numbers to track against each character. If you just counted number of RE's since last success, you'd have emergent strategies where the optimal strategy becomes RE something cheap and low level til you have failed X times, then try the expensive high level one. Personally I don't want to have to muck around like that to be optimal!

 

....

You wouldn't need much, just one counter variable ... which they already implement in situations such as quests where you have to loot a certain number of items from dead mobs. Here is how an increasing chance for RE success based on past failures could work:

 

RE chance for success = 20% x (RE fail counter +1)

• If the counter starts at 0 for "no fails yet", you need to add 1 so that you are not multiplying by zero and making the first RE an automatic fail. For the "no fails yet" situation, you wind up multiplying by 1 so the base RE chance for success is not affected.
  
• For your first and subsequent fails, you are multiplying by a number larger than 1 so the modified RE chance for success increases.
  
• Under this model, after 4 successive REs, you have a 100% chance for success.
  
• As soon as you succeed, the counter resets to zero. No need for counters for different types of items.
  

 

Two further modifications I would suggest are:

• Introduce a "scaling factor". If a guaranteed success in five tries is too fast, then the modifier can be multiplied by a factor of, say, 0.5 (to cut the improvement rate in half) or even have some non-linear function applied to it so that it approaches some theoretical cap. That may sound complex, but the game already does this sort of thing with our Secondary Stats like Critical Chance.
  
• This system introduces a possible abuse (like what you suggest). Say you want to RE a blue level 50 scattergun to a purple. What will stop you from "priming" your chance by crafting a few low-level green items first? One more variable -- the item/schematic last crafted. If the item you try to RE is different from the item you last crafted, then your fail counter is reset to zero. If you're unhappy that your counter gets reset: tough. That's what you get for gaming the system and, besides, the system is still increasing your chances to succeed compared to what currently is.
  

 

The math for this is simple. It only requires, at most, two more variables to track. Even throwing in a complex scaling factor is something that is a fixed function and something that they are already doing in the game. This sort of thing is easily achievable, and it would improve the business of REing items immensely.

 

I've got other suggestions for improving RE, but what's above addresses the points you raise specifically.

[Goretzu]

I've seen the same in every other game where RNG comes into play, especially around crafting. Always pointing to long unlucky streaks as evidence that RNG is broken, rarely understanding that long unlucky streaks is a sign of actual random behaviour too.

 

There have been games in which RNG was broken, generally early ones. Nowadays it'd be more effort to create a broken RNG system than just to reuse a working one. The sign of a broken one was "if I do this, or craft in this area, or just after zoning, or at this time past the hour, I'll always succeed or always fail", basically ways to inflence success that shouldn't have been possible with RNG.

 

 

To put the other side to that though, every MMORPG I've ever played has either had a broken or riggable RNG at some point or one they had to make a lot more random (or both).

[Nolenthar]

Yes. What you're failing to understand is that, in terms of probability, your entire crewskill production from launch until this moment isn't a 'large sample'.

 

Randomisation needs indeed a big sample to be proven right or wrong but one user's experience doesn't make it wrong, and the amount of time an item has been re- doesn't matter.

 

If I throw a Six face dice six times, my numbers will be far from once out of 6 times for each face. However that number will be closer and closer the more I throw the dice, till it more or less evens out after 600 throws.

 

1 person RE and writing each result can easily track how accurate it is, as 500 RE should clearly show a success result between 25 and 15%.

 

One person can't have 1% and the other one 40% after 500 tries, that's simply not possible .

[Jerid]

It's a good system, but works best when you're only tractking a few factors. I'm guessing WoW did that on quest drops (tracking the number killed in the quest, dropping the data on quest completion), rather than other drops (so you'd have to track many different items, for very long periods).

 

Using it here might be troublesome and complex. If you do counted every item RE seperately, that'd be 1000's of extra numbers to track against each character. If you just counted number of RE's since last success, you'd have emergent strategies where the optimal strategy becomes RE something cheap and low level til you have failed X times, then try the expensive high level one. Personally I don't want to have to muck around like that to be optimal!

 

Personally I'd make the 10% rates 20%, and see what results. I think personally that 10% chance to make a random one of five purples is harsh, especially trying to go from purple to purple, where it can take hours to get the materials (needing two crit successes on missions that take an hour to get enough for one attempt). 10% chance if there was only one option would be fine. Maybe even offer legacy character perks for an additional small % chance of RE success.

 

There's a simple way to avoid "gaming" the sytem... just make it check and make sure you're REing the same item. If you switch to a different item the "Counter" resets back to 0.

[SilentArcher]

RE'ing is fine. The problem is the community. Way too many people only care about instant gratification. Anything that takes any prolonged amount of time and effort they feel it is a broken system.

 

Is it annoying making a bunch of some item, RE'ing it, and not learning anything new? Sure it is. There has been many times where I'm sitting here thinking damn this kind sucks. But I just go to something else and try again later.

 

The crafting system in this game is pretty terrible, it sounds cool on paper, but in practice it just fails. If everyone got whatever schematic they were going after by RE'ing one item then there would be that much more competition for people trying to sell the same item further driving down prices.

 

I like the general idea behind RE'ing something, but if definitely needs to be tweaked or totally reworked. I understand this isn't a sandbox MMO so we can't and won't see a crafting system similar to what SWG offered, but is one many people including myself consider one of if not the best crafting system of any MMO to date.

 

While I like the current system a lot more then what is offered in WoW, I just wish it was more then what it is in it's current state.

 

I am enjoying playing Star Wars, but it is just missing the exploration factor that you find in some other MMOs. Again I understand this is a theme park style MMO, not a sandbox, but I really wish everything didn't feel so linear. A MMO is supposed to be MASSIVE, but with each planet I go to it's all the same thing. You are unable to explore a large part of the planet, areas are closed off, often times the only way to enter somewhere is from only one entrance.

 

Kind of went off on a tangent so I'll stop myself lol. The game is still pretty new so there is a lot of room for change as long as Bioware is willing to listen to what it's playerbase is asking for, but honestly I don't feel that happening. The general vibe I get from this game and the community is that Bioware simply doesn't understand how to run an MMO and make it work.

 

I love Bioware as a company and I really hope they can get things back on track with this game before it just becomes another failed MMO and turns into a crappy F2P game with pretty graphics.

[asbalana]

I've seen the same in every other game where RNG comes into play, especially around crafting. Always pointing to long unlucky streaks as evidence that RNG is broken, rarely understanding that long unlucky streaks is a sign of actual random behaviour too.

 

There have been games in which RNG was broken, generally early ones. Nowadays it'd be more effort to create a broken RNG system than just to reuse a working one. The sign of a broken one was "if I do this, or craft in this area, or just after zoning, or at this time past the hour, I'll always succeed or always fail", basically ways to inflence success that shouldn't have been possible with RNG.

 

The issue is that no player can prove that the rng RE system is not broken. I have seen any number of responses claiming that players need to understand the math and that streaks can happen, but none that actually provides any proof that this system (you noted that there were games with broken rng systems) provides the stated results.

 

Comments from the devs addressing the issue would help. They could verify that they are closely monitoring the system and actually provide some numbers and / or analysis of results over the entire player base. They can say that they are aware of he issue of long fail steaks and actually are aware of the impact on players and the credibility of the crafting system. They can say that they are actually alive and do exist and are aware that the game has a crafting component that is important to some players and that they actually care about it. They can say sometihing - anything would help.

[asbalana]

RE'ing is fine. .

 

Prove it, or is just that your unsubstantiated opinion based on your own limited experience?

 

Sorry, I do not intend that comment as hostile. The positiona and assertion that the system is working is no more valid and has no more proff than the claim that it is broken.

Edited July 12, 2012 by asbalana

[Captain_Zone]

I've had runs on my Armstech and Armormech where I would RE 20 or 25 of the same item and not get jack squat. Then I've had other runs where I RE new schems 4 or 5 times in a row. It does appear to be working correctly. Just a feast or famine type of luck in my case. lol

[wainot-keel]

There are probably close to 10 million RE event taking place across the game every day. Which means people have the possibility of seeing all sorts of statistically unlikely events.

 

 

I can see in any given populated server with many players and thousands of RE process a streak of 60 fails.... but all those happening to the exact same player ? hmmmm

Edited July 12, 2012 by wainot-keel

[Khevar]

The issue is that no player can prove that the rng RE system is not broken. I have seen any number of responses claiming that players need to understand the math and that streaks can happen, but none that actually provides any proof that this system (you noted that there were games with broken rng systems) provides the stated results.

 

...

I've seen plenty of posts where people tracked their stats of RE's and the larger the sample, the closer to the expected results it was.

 

A while back I started tracking stats myself after a string of bad luck, and this is what I came up with at the time:

 

691 greens RE'ed - 132 successful (19%)

316 blues REed - 35 successful (11%)

 

This was close enough to the 20%/10% tooltip that I stopped counting.

 

But just now I asked my Magic 8-Ball if you would accept this answer and it replied "Outlook is Bleak"

[SilentArcher]

People are never happy. If RE'ing had a really high chance to occur then everyone would be walking around with the same schematics thus making the auction house flooded with the same items all the time.

 

By having RE have a low chance to happen this causes several things to happen that are actually good for the game's economy.

 

1. Takes crafting materials out of the economy, which means people have to farm more to keep up with the demand. As long as there is a demand people will be supplying the materials needed, thus giving both crafters and gatherers something to do.

 

2. Slows down the rate at which people learn various schematics. This helps control the rate at which items are put on the auction house. If everyone learned how to make the same item at the same time then the auction house becomes flooded, driving down demend, but raising supply, which causes prices to crash as people compete to see their item before someone else does.

 

Granted sooner or later the person next to me is going to learn the same items that I have, whether it happens tomorrow or next week. But it goes back to him needing to keep buying raw materials or farming them himself, which then drives the economy.

 

I know many of the people reading this are either going to go against everything I have said, not read this at all, or argue against everything I have said. That's all well and good, this is my opinion I am by no means an expert on the mathematical formulas that Bioware uses to determine RE chance nor do I know exactly how the in-game economy works. I am simply trying to develop and talk about valid points as to why RE'ing has a low chance and why a higher chance would actually harm the economy.

[Telanis]

People are never happy. If RE'ing had a really high chance to occur then everyone would be walking around with the same schematics thus making the auction house flooded with the same items all the time.

 

By having RE have a low chance to happen this causes several things to happen that are actually good for the game's economy.

 

1. Takes crafting materials out of the economy, which means people have to farm more to keep up with the demand. As long as there is a demand people will be supplying the materials needed, thus giving both crafters and gatherers something to do.

 

2. Slows down the rate at which people learn various schematics. This helps control the rate at which items are put on the auction house. If everyone learned how to make the same item at the same time then the auction house becomes flooded, driving down demend, but raising supply, which causes prices to crash as people compete to see their item before someone else does.

 

Granted sooner or later the person next to me is going to learn the same items that I have, whether it happens tomorrow or next week. But it goes back to him needing to keep buying raw materials or farming them himself, which then drives the economy.

 

I know many of the people reading this are either going to go against everything I have said, not read this at all, or argue against everything I have said. That's all well and good, this is my opinion I am by no means an expert on the mathematical formulas that Bioware uses to determine RE chance nor do I know exactly how the in-game economy works. I am simply trying to develop and talk about valid points as to why RE'ing has a low chance and why a higher chance would actually harm the economy.

 

It doesn't have to be a higher chance, though. Instead of a random 20% chance per RE, they could simply require exactly 5 REs to learn the schematic. It's the same overall probability, but it ensures that you can't be unlucky and fail to learn a schem 50+ times in a row.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Telanis

[wainot-keel]

It doesn't have to be a higher chance, though. Instead of a random 20% chance per RE, they could simply require exactly 5 REs to learn the schematic. It's the same overall probability, but it ensures that you can't be unlucky and fail to learn a schem 50+ times in a row.

 

They could something like the augment kits mats. Everytime you RE something and fail you get like a "token" of some sort (could be go straight to your mission items tab). Once you accumulate like 30 or 40 of them (whatever the "right" numbe should be), the next RE will be a success. This shoul be tiered ofc, so you won't be REing garbage to help you on high level stuff. With something like this, a fail is not a complete fail and you won't be hit by an awful streak of bad luck.

[finelinebob]

Randomisation needs indeed a big sample to be proven right or wrong but one user's experience doesn't make it wrong, and the amount of time an item has been re- doesn't matter.

 

You're doing well so far, but...

 

If I throw a Six face dice six times, my numbers will be far from once out of 6 times for each face. However that number will be closer and closer the more I throw the dice, till it more or less evens out after 600 throws.

 

1 person RE and writing each result can easily track how accurate it is, as 500 RE should clearly show a success result between 25 and 15%.

 

One person can't have 1% and the other one 40% after 500 tries, that's simply not possible .

 

Oh, but it is! You're falling victim to something called the Gambler's Fallacy.

 

If you throw a six-sided die six times, the probability that you will get 1.2.3.4.5.6 or some arrangement of those is exactly the same as the probability that you would get 6.6.6.6.6.6 or any other combination, because each toss of the die is independent of the other. It doesn't matter if you throw the die 5 times, 50 times, 500 times, or 500,000 times -- none of those numbers are large enough for the Law of Large Numbers to come into play. Quick explanation of that is: The measured rate of an event occurring will approach its expected chance of occurring as the number of measured events approaches infinity. Now, it is certainly a reasonable expectation to see things "average out" in a much smaller sample, but for one person at any given time to experience a dry spell of 100 in a row? It's going to be common -- it just happened to me. 1000 in a row? Not quite so common, but not totally ... well, "unreasonable."

 

The whole idea of your success rate converging on that expected value of 20% or 10% only applies for every single RE event you do plus every single RE event everyone else does. You can't grab some subset of 50 tries and say "That was a string of fails, so I'm bound to get a string of successes" and know that with any certainty. A string of 50 fails would be precisely as likely to occur as a string of 50 successes if it wasn't for one thing: we do not have an equal chance to succeed or fail. We have at best an 80% chance to fail and at worse a 90% chance to fail and, since results are heavily weighted towards failure, it's much more likely to get a long string of failures than it is to get a long string of successes. So, although I recently saw a string of about 50 failures in a row on blue 10% items as well as a recent string of 3 consecutive successes on blue 10% items, I sincerely doubt that the success string will be repeated anytime soon, if ever in the course of this game. A long string of consecutive failures? More likely. Those, as they say, are the odds.

 

This is all why a purely RNG-driven system is such utter nonsense. Randomness doesn't make things hard or challenging, it makes them futile or serendipitous. There is no skill involved. Would you put up with a pure RNG determination for our combat skills? Yes, combat has randomness to it. There is a chance that you will miss on your attack or heal. But the game gives us ways to mitigate that chance. We can get our mitigation -- our Accuracy -- over 100%, making a hit guaranteed unless the target has some way to reduce our mitigation. Even actual crafting has mitigation of a sort: (1) you have a base chance to crit on a craft, (2) your skill compared to the skill level required affects your chance to crit, (3) your affection score, if maxed, for the companion crafting increases your chance to crit, and (4) your companion may have a skill modifier from +1% to +5%. All of this, if you choose wisely, will get you at best an improvement to a hard cap of 25% chance to crit -- you have your "skill" maxed out, and you still have a 75% chance to fail each and every time. And what does that crit get you? For equipable items, an augment slot. Arguably, this is worthless now that 1.3 has come out since you get a 100% chance of success for an augment slot if you craft a kit and apply it for a couple thousand credits. Given the amount of money you can spend on resources failing to produce an item with an augment slot, going with a kit is the smart money. That new Legacy Perk for crafting? A total of 3% improvement, to in rare situations a cap of 72% chance to fail? Is it really worth 350,000 credits, or is it a waste of money?

 

Getting back to RE -- what do those factors have to do with RE chance for success? Does your skill level matter? Does the affection level of the companion who crafted the item you RE matter? Does any skill bonus the companion who crafted the item you RE matter? Does the Legacy Perk matter? The answer is a clear, emphatic no. You cannot mitigate your failure rate for RE. Any thoughts of improving your chance to RE by failing a lot, by REing a lot of the same item, by sticking to low-level items to RE ... those are all fantasies. That simply is not how probability works, and so it's not how RE in this game works.

 

So yes, again, RE is broken. Not because you fail and fail at it and it gets frustrating, but because the system does not allow you, no matter how "skillful" you are, to improve your chance to be successful at REing items.

Edited July 12, 2012 by finelinebob

[finelinebob]

...

 

2. Slows down the rate at which people learn various schematics. This helps control the rate at which items are put on the auction house. If everyone learned how to make the same item at the same time then the auction house becomes flooded, driving down demend, but raising supply, which causes prices to crash as people compete to see their item before someone else does.

 

...

 

But how slow is reasonable?

 

If you know your crafting and REing, you know there are 3 blue prefix schematics to every equipable green schematic you can buy from your trainer, and 14 purple prefix schematics that come from those 3 blues. Some of those purple combinations are pointless -- example, a scattergun with shield chance (yes, shields and scatters are both off-hand and mutually exclusive and yes, the devs were stupid enough to put them in the game). I can imagine the crafters-at-heart out there, like me, think of one day having all those purple schematics all the same for what they can craft. Fact is, you may need to get the useless ones since you currently have absolutely no control over which schematic you get from an RE success ... more mindless RNG crap.

 

But how long would it take to get all those purple schematics?

 

I did the calculations for Armstech elsewhere; follow the link if you are interested. My calculations assume that your success rate will approach your chance for success when REing to get new schematics, and this is a fairly reasonable assumption -- for only the equipable items that begin as green schematics for Armstech, it will take you on average around 75,000 items crafted to get all your purple schematics (around 72,000 of them being blue items). That is about 1.5 years of running crew skill missions 24/7/365. Of course, if you get all your companions to max affection before you start crafting and run all 5 companions 24/7, that should cut your time down to a little less than 3 months of crafting. Good luck getting some sleep or something to eat in that time!

 

Is that reasonable?

 

It's not the worst of it, though. In order to prepare for that crafting grind, you need crafting mats. I'll leave out the scavenging mats and fluxes, since those are really small investments ... a matter of several weeks of 24/7 harvesting and buying from a vendor (to save time -- you'll need it). For your Investigation materials, it will take something more like 61 years of crew skill missions, running them 24/7/365. Running 5 companions at a time, max affection, increased yield on missions will probably cut that to between 8 and 10 real years, if you are lucky enough to get 5 Research Compound missions in a row for the mats you currently need. And once you finish this, THEN you will have the mats for that 3 month/1.5 crew years grind of actually crafting items. Cost in credits? Expect something in the neighborhood of 15 million credits overall.

 

What will you have that you can use for yourself, give to friends, sell on the GTN? Nothing. These calculations are simply for what you need to RE items to get schematics. You have your schematics, but you have no goods to show for it.

 

So, is that slow enough for you, given the system as is?

Edited July 12, 2012 by finelinebob

[Khevar]

...

 

So yes, again, RE is broken. Not because you fail and fail at it and it gets frustrating, but because the system does not allow you, no matter how "skillful" you are, to improve your chance to be successful at REing items.

I don't disagree with the points you made at all.

 

However, I feel that "broken" isn't the correct term. Broken (in software at least) implies bugged or not working as intended. The RE system is, in fact, working as the developers intended.

 

It may be a good system, a poor system, or a system that is terrible and needs to be rebuilt. But most of the posts claiming the system is broken are describing a situation of "My results don't match the tooltip percentage"

[finelinebob]

I don't disagree with the points you made at all.

 

However, I feel that "broken" isn't the correct term. Broken (in software at least) implies bugged or not working as intended. The RE system is, in fact, working as the developers intended.

 

It may be a good system, a poor system, or a system that is terrible and needs to be rebuilt. But most of the posts claiming the system is broken are describing a situation of "My results don't match the tooltip percentage"

 

Yeah, you're right. When I say "broken," I mean that the very idea itself is bad. That's not very precise.

[asbalana]

I've seen plenty of posts where people tracked their stats of RE's and the larger the sample, the closer to the expected results it was.

 

A while back I started tracking stats myself after a string of bad luck, and this is what I came up with at the time:

 

691 greens RE'ed - 132 successful (19%)

316 blues REed - 35 successful (11%)

 

This was close enough to the 20%/10% tooltip that I stopped counting.

 

But just now I asked my Magic 8-Ball if you would accept this answer and it replied "Outlook is Bleak"

 

LOL, your Magic-8 ball is working as expected.

 

I have run three attempts at REing in a row that resulted in 1.) 40+ tries no hit gave up, 2.) 57 tries to hit, and 3.) 15 tries to hit when the tooltip said I had a 20% chance of success. Does that prove anything? No. It indicates that the system may be broken but nothing more. Does your experience prove that the system is not broken? No. It indicates that it may not be and nothing more.

 

Why should anyone accept your answer over the posts of others that have had different results? My point was that, like your post, the assertions that the system (supported or not by individual experiece) is not broken are no more valid than the those that say it is broken. Neither claim is provable. As has been ponted out so many many times, a players bad experience does not prove that the system is broken. But the converse is also true, a players experience that the system is yeilding the tooltip results, does not prove that the system is not broken. Given enough players and considering the amount of REing being done, one would expect that a broken system could provide a significant number of players with the advertised results.

 

Broken can also mean a number of different things. A broken system can indeed yeild the expected average results as you have experienced, but have a flaw that produces long steaks. As a lame example, if the chance of success is advertised as 20% but is actually 10% for twelve hours of the day and 30% of twelve hours of the day then if an equal number of tries happen in each twelve hours, the chance averages to 20%. One player (the first twelve hours) thinks that the system is broken and never gets 20%, one player is laughing up his/her sleeve because they are beating the odds, and one who plays during both time segments is getting around 20% and challenges (with his/her numbers) everyone who says that the system is indeed broken and they are not getting the 20%.

[Khevar]

^^

 

I get where you're coming from on that.

 

From my perspective, one of two things could be happening:

 

1. Bioware developers wrote a simple 20%/10% rng program that is working correctly. Some people get the expected results, some people get better than the expected results and some people get worse than the expected results. The happy people rarely express their voices on the forums. The unhappy people are worried something is wrong and post.

 

2. Bioware developers wrote a much more complex rng calculation, or wrote an rng program that is buggy, or they wrote one with a chance lower than the 20%/10% tooltip. People who are refuting the claims of broken and post their results are actually outliers, and even though their results match the tooltip (for the most part) they are, in fact, getting MORE than the program should deliver.

 

Sure, #2 could possibly be happening -- it's just far-fetched and no where near as likely as #1 above.

 

Most posts I've seen about RE and percentages are

 

a) RE doesn't work, here's my small sample size where I show it's broken.

b) RE doesn't work, because <insert gambler's fallacy>

c) RE works, here's my larger sample size where I show it works.

d) RE might work, here's my larger sample size where it's close but still a little low

 

If more people had posted, "here's my 1000 RE's and I only got 91 successful greens to blues, that's only 9.1% instead of 20%" I would take notice. But I don't see those.

 

So I say the system is functioning as intended. Doesn't mean it doesn't suck or it's a great system or anything. Just that the tooltip is correct.

 

[finelinebob]

If more people had posted, "here's my 1000 RE's and I only got 91 successful greens to blues, that's only 9.1% instead of 20%" I would take notice. But I don't see those.

 

Don't quite have 1000 per category, but here are my numbers since 1.2 to the point where I stopped keeping track because all they showed was that things were working as intended:

• 20% Green: 616 trials, 118 successes -- 19.2% success rate
  
• 20% Blue: 252 trials, 48 successes -- 19.0% success rate
  
• 10% Blue: 504 trials, 46 successes -- 9.1% success rate
  

 

A couple of observations:

• It's rather disheartening that I had to craft 504 Blue items to get 46 Purple schematics AND that this is Working as Intended. That is a lot of time, a lot of resource and a lot of money for ZERO actual product, even though these figures are from all my crafters at skill level 400. Skill means nothing. Companion affection means nothing. It's pure random RNG crap.
  
• All of these success rates are about 1% below the expected rate. Yes, that is within the "bounds" of Working as Intended. You'd hope that with close to 1400 trials overall that your actual rate would be closer to the expected value, but the Law of Large Numbers tells you to expect those two numbers to converge as your number of trials approaches infinity ... and 1400 is a long way away from that.
  
• People might want to say that the "Law of Averages" should encourage me to think that my success rate are going to rebound now, since they are below what is expected. The problem is that the Law of Averages is not a statistical law; it is an urban myth if anything. The only statistical law that applies to my next RE trial is the Law of Probability and, given the conditions, it tells me that I am far more likely to fail than succeed. In other words, in the short run it is far more likely that my success rates will actually get worse than get better. If I didn't know my stats, that might lead me to think that the system is broken. It isn't. It's just a crappy system not worthy of a top-rank game like SWTOR. It's just more evidence that BW needs to replace the crap that they've given to us.
  

[GnatB]

^^

So I say the system is functioning as intended. Doesn't mean it doesn't suck or it's a great system or anything. Just that the tooltip is correct.

 

 

Minor pet peeve, but I'd be inlined the use the term "working as designed". It's usually intent->design->implementation. The intent is presumably to make a fun/interesting crafting system that would keep us engaged in the game and keep our subscription $$ rolling in. (or something along those lines) The design to accomplish this intention is the 20%/10% success rate to prevent things being too fast/easy, and still get success. The design is the problem, as it isn't accomplishing the intent. So it's not working as intended.

[ThunderVamp]

Don't quite have 1000 per category, but here are my numbers since 1.2 to the point where I stopped keeping track because all they showed was that things were working as intended:

• 20% Green: 616 trials, 118 successes -- 19.2% success rate
  
• 20% Blue: 252 trials, 48 successes -- 19.0% success rate
  
• 10% Blue: 504 trials, 46 successes -- 9.1% success rate
  

 

A couple of observations:

• It's rather disheartening that I had to craft 504 Blue items to get 46 Purple schematics AND that this is Working as Intended. That is a lot of time, a lot of resource and a lot of money for ZERO actual product, even though these figures are from all my crafters at skill level 400. Skill means nothing. Companion affection means nothing. It's pure random RNG crap.
  
• All of these success rates are about 1% below the expected rate. Yes, that is within the "bounds" of Working as Intended. You'd hope that with close to 1400 trials overall that your actual rate would be closer to the expected value, but the Law of Large Numbers tells you to expect those two numbers to converge as your number of trials approaches infinity ... and 1400 is a long way away from that.
  
• People might want to say that the "Law of Averages" should encourage me to think that my success rate are going to rebound now, since they are below what is expected. The problem is that the Law of Averages is not a statistical law; it is an urban myth if anything. The only statistical law that applies to my next RE trial is the Law of Probability and, given the conditions, it tells me that I am far more likely to fail than succeed. In other words, in the short run it is far more likely that my success rates will actually get worse than get better. If I didn't know my stats, that might lead me to think that the system is broken. It isn't. It's just a crappy system not worthy of a top-rank game like SWTOR. It's just more evidence that BW needs to replace the crap that they've given to us.
  

 

This post sums it all up for me. This post details exactly why I dislike this crafting system so much. Affection affects nothing. Skill affects nothing. It's all just RNG, period. I hate it.

 

On top of that, I hate the random selection of missions you can get. For example, on my Biochem, I use Diplomacy. I am strictly light side on this character. I tried to send out companions on Diplomacy missions, and 3 of the 5 were Dark. All of the 5 were companion gifts. I'm trying to freaking CRAFT here! Why make this such a freaking CHORE??? So I send 2 of the companions out and set the others to do something else. And what happens then? Failed missions, both of them. I send those 2 out again. 1 failed, one success. I send them out AGAIN. first succeeds, the other fails. I send them out one last time. Both failed, again. 6 fails out of 8 missions. That is insane. I gave up. It gets to the point that I don't want to even bother because it's just not fun. And I don't want to pay money for something that's just not fun.

Edited July 13, 2012 by ThunderVamp

[Khevar]

Minor pet peeve, but I'd be inlined the use the term "working as designed". It's usually intent->design->implementation. The intent is presumably to make a fun/interesting crafting system that would keep us engaged in the game and keep our subscription $$ rolling in. (or something along those lines) The design to accomplish this intention is the 20%/10% success rate to prevent things being too fast/easy, and still get success. The design is the problem, as it isn't accomplishing the intent. So it's not working as intended.

That's a fair point.

 

I've seen a number of discussions of crafting systems in other MMOs, and the various pros and cons. It's been very interesting to read about it, as TOR is my first MMO, so what I get here on the crafting system is all I've had experience with.

 

I suppose due to this fact, the current system doesn't really bother me, as I have worked around it's limitations (I have 6 crafting alts with complementary skills, yada yada yada). I generally seem to have the materials, money and equipment that I need, for the most part.

 

This isn't to say that I wouldn't be thrilled with an improved crafting system, however!

[finelinebob]

On top of that, I hate the random selection of missions you can get....

 

I know, I feel like this:

"Hey Doc, we need some supplies. I know you have contacts in the Underworld and you're better at it than anyone else, so see if you can score some Mandalorian Iron. I know, I know, it's not like going to Walmart or something, more often than not nothing is available, just see if you can get it. If not, pick up some Ciridium. Or even some Nanosilk if you can't get anything else ... maybe that new Sage at the Temple is crafting some light armor and will buy from us. You'd think with all the Mandalorians around, SOMEONE would have a nice, stable supply of this stuff on hand. Well, if all else fails, can you pick me up a gift for Kira? Our anniversary is coming up and she force pushes me into the crew quarters if I forget it." Role-playing crew mission selection FTL!

 

BTW, I use Working As Intended because I'm an old SWG player and that was the #1 CSR excuse for some aspect of the game being crap. To paraphrase Mike Myers, "If it's Working As Intended, it's CRAP!"