Refining upgrade %

stocksaucer · January 2017

Does Arc review the %'s fore refinement when upgrading? Either I am having some major "bad luck" in playing percentages or not sure if they are correct. Just spend 40 wards to refine on a 5% chance. I am going to start seeing if I could follow a trend also, but appears that when upgrading, it usually happens on the first or last ward I have. Just wanted to see if others feel they have better percentages, and I guess maybe the averages will balance out in the long run.

mordekai · January 2017

I know its not what you want to hear, but it balances out over time.
I used 12 Pres Wards on a 25% chance at the weekend.
That stung.
The weekend before I got three 5% ers in a row with no loss of Wards..
Which was great!

Because we individually only see a really REALLY small sample of the data in the averages across the whole player base, it often looks like the chances are skewed or even broken, but RNG is actually one of the sturdiest systems in this type of game.
It just doesn't always feel that way when we are individually on the wrong end of what looks like anomalous results.
It's also usually the case that we only notice when it seems to be at odds with what we expect. And we forget the majority of the time where nothing untoward happens and we run through our refining, only losing wards at a roughly expected rate.

kuero21 · January 2017

stocksaucer said:
Does Arc review the %'s fore refinement when upgrading? Either I am having some major "bad luck" in playing percentages or not sure if they are correct. Just spend 40 wards to refine on a 5% chance. I am going to start seeing if I could follow a trend also, but appears that when upgrading, it usually happens on the first or last ward I have. Just wanted to see if others feel they have better percentages, and I guess maybe the averages will balance out in the long run.

actually you were pretty lucky that you only consumed 40. Most players have to burn far more for attempting on a 5% chance

mightyeriksson · January 2017

I'm currently at 125+ wards on one 5%, and it isn't ready yet

missdayum · January 2017

Percentage is percentage. I recently upgraded JUST FOR FUN 4x vorpal shards into 1x lesser vorpal with exactly 4x preservation wards attempts successfully. Tried it again after 25x I gave up.

posineg · January 2017

To the OP: I feel your pain. I have been complaining about the RNG of this game for a while. 5% is a 1 in 20 chance. I understand that this should not always hold true but even looking at the micro view, 40 tries for a 1in20 is not close to a 5% chance. To claim 125 attempts on a 5% chance is also crazy. The % chance is not a group thing but a individual attempt, even having a bell curve for results does not allow 125 attempts for a 5%.

Neverwinters RNG is not close to perfect and the usage of % is greatly misleading.

ltsmithneko · January 2017

In the end it's RNG~<3 An R12 may take you 1 try with 0 Prez Wards lost or may take you +100. Sooo good luck

zman81420 · January 2017

Yup^ I spent 173 preservation wards going from 11 to 12 on one brutal last 2x rp. The other three I upgraded took 20 combined. It's just <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> chance wrapped with luck soaked in a middle finger sometimes.

Unknown · January 2017

This content has been removed.

fearhodorwillie · January 2017

Sorry crazy, 36 wards on a 40% chance. That said I also upgraded 3 rank 10 enchantments to 11 with only 16 wards during the last 2x RP. So RNJesus is real. Always random.

stocksaucer · January 2017

Well, maybe luck will shine in the future. Another 42 on a 5% chance. If some have spent over 25 on a 40% chance to upgrade seems like would be off a bell curve opportunity. Sounds like for 12's I probably should head the coal. ward way.

Thanks all.

mordekai · January 2017

Remember that there are thousands of RNG calculations in this game every second.
Every time someone attacks or is attacked an RNG runs for crit, deflect, lifesteal, and all the enchantments, feats powers and companion bonuses on your character, as well as many other variable factors.
The same framework structure runs for lockboxes, refinement and God knows what else.

If RNG were as broken as some people keep carping on about, it would be reflected in every aspect of the game. Most noteably COMBAT.
And if combat were broken, the bitching would have broken the servers by now.

fearhodorwillie · January 2017

I couldn't agree more mordekai! I've had some bad luck with higher chances and good luck with lower chances, so it seems to even out.

posineg · January 2017

mordekai#1901 said:
Remember that there are thousands of RNG calculations in this game every second.
Every time someone attacks or is attacked an RNG runs for crit, deflect, lifesteal, and all the enchantments, feats powers and companion bonuses on your character, as well as many other variable factors.
The same framework structure runs for lockboxes, refinement and God knows what else.

If RNG were as broken as some people keep carping on about, it would be reflected in every aspect of the game. Most noteably COMBAT.
And if combat were broken, the bitching would have broken the servers by now.

FAIL

Combat RNG when compared to Item Refinement: Do you often miss your opponent? NO. You always hit. Critical chance is a whole number and between 1-100. Most of the time, 1out4 gets you a crit.

For refinement: With a 5% chance, 1in20 should get a success. 173 tries is a .5% chance... not even close. 40 tries would be a 2.5% chance and that still means out of 40 tries, 1 of those tries would succeed.

Anyone can set chances. I have a 50% chance that this post will get flamed. What real life and this game differ is that the RNG used for NWO does not hold to the scope that is set. A game designer should be able to run the test... does this really produce a success in 1in20 (5%) or not. There is no other proof.

When majority of players indicate that there 5% chance takes more than average then the RNG is faulty.

sundance777 · January 2017

I think we only tend to see the posts about poor experiences but I would agree the 21x for a 50% seems suspect,
"If you flip a coin a million times, you have a 38% chance of seeing 20 heads in a row." http://marknelson.us/2011/01/17/20-heads-in-a-row-what-are-the-odds/

drw · January 2017

Unfortunately, when regarding upgrade % most people on this game forget basic math: EACH INDIVIDUAL attempt has a 5% chance, and the CUMULATIVE amount of chances taken is irrelevant. You could fail 10,000 times in a row, and still have a literal and proper 5% success rate. The game mechanics do no take into account that you've tried "X" amount of times - every time you roll, you have a 5% chance of success. It's 5% individually, NOT a 5% curve. That's why people think that eventually they will have the winning lotto ticket - just have to try enough times!

In other words, if you are rolling 1-100, you need a 95 or greater to succeed. Does it suck that you rolled 94 or less 10,000 times in a row? Indeed, that's some terrible luck - but the 5% is STILL AN ACCURATE prediction of success. You could fail 100% of the time, forevermore, and still your chances of success would be 5%, predicted accurately.

Because Math.

Bum luck OP, I feel you. I've had 20+ failures on 50% success, and I've lost materials by NOT using wards on a 95% success and I've also had 1% chance work on the first try... on the bright side, pres wards are fairly cheap and if the failure rate exceeds your tolerance, at least they built in a way to have 100% success, albeit expensive in time or cash. Keep on pushing forward, you'll get it one way or another

mightyeriksson · January 2017

drw#0700 said:
Unfortunately, when regarding upgrade % most people on this game forget basic math: EACH INDIVIDUAL attempt has a 5% chance, and the CUMULATIVE amount of chances taken is irrelevant. You could fail 10,000 times in a row, and still have a literal and proper 5% success rate. The game mechanics do no take into account that you've tried "X" amount of times - every time you roll, you have a 5% chance of success. It's 5% individually, NOT a 5% curve. That's why people think that eventually they will have the winning lotto ticket - just have to try enough times!

In other words, if you are rolling 1-100, you need a 95 or greater to succeed. Does it suck that you rolled 94 or less 10,000 times in a row? Indeed, that's some terrible luck - but the 5% is STILL AN ACCURATE prediction of success. You could fail 100% of the time, forevermore, and still your chances of success would be 5%, predicted accurately.

Because Math.

Bum luck OP, I feel you. I've had 20+ failures on 50% success, and I've lost materials by NOT using wards on a 95% success and I've also had 1% chance work on the first try... on the bright side, pres wards are fairly cheap and if the failure rate exceeds your tolerance, at least they built in a way to have 100% success, albeit expensive in time or cash. Keep on pushing forward, you'll get it one way or another

If you have an interest in math in general, and statistics in particular, you would see that the rng in Neverwinter has a very "streaky" behavior, and as such it is pretty far from "random"...

That is one of the reasons why you often see two admin messages about lockbox pulls pretty much simultaneously.

So rng in NW is not "because math", it's because of a bad rng algorithm.
And yes, "true" rng isn't easy (or possible) to achieve digitally, but there are better alternatives)

In the end, I think refining should havecsome sort of cumulative chance at upgrade, mostly because after I use an unrealistic amount of preservation wards, I'm very, very far from a mood in which I'm likely to give Cryptic money, which is what their goal is.

Happy customers spend more

mordekai · January 2017

posineg#7890 said:

mordekai#1901 said:
Remember that there are thousands of RNG calculations in this game every second.
Every time someone attacks or is attacked an RNG runs for crit, deflect, lifesteal, and all the enchantments, feats powers and companion bonuses on your character, as well as many other variable factors.
The same framework structure runs for lockboxes, refinement and God knows what else.

If RNG were as broken as some people keep carping on about, it would be reflected in every aspect of the game. Most noteably COMBAT.
And if combat were broken, the bitching would have broken the servers by now.
FAIL

Combat RNG when compared to Item Refinement: Do you often miss your opponent? NO. You always hit. Critical chance is a whole number and between 1-100. Most of the time, 1out4 gets you a crit.

For refinement: With a 5% chance, 1in20 should get a success. 173 tries is a .5% chance... not even close. 40 tries would be a 2.5% chance and that still means out of 40 tries, 1 of those tries would succeed.

Anyone can set chances. I have a 50% chance that this post will get flamed. What real life and this game differ is that the RNG used for NWO does not hold to the scope that is set. A game designer should be able to run the test... does this really produce a success in 1in20 (5%) or not. There is no other proof.

When majority of players indicate that there 5% chance takes more than average then the RNG is faulty.

Do you want to go back and point out the part where I said anything about an RNG for hit?
Those 1 in 20 and 1 in 4 chances are determīned by.... drum roll.... Random Number Generator.
If you think that a few people who don't have a fraction of a fraction of the data to hand, moaning about how their refinement took too long constitutes "majority of players" and that that in some way constitutes an empirical study, you need to go back to school and pay attention.
I'll type this slowly so you can try and keep up...
Without ALL the data on RNG results, rather than the tiniest fraction, there is no way to correlate the chance vs success.
RNG is, by its very nature RANDOM, and therefore not subject to statistical compliance in very small data clusters.
(you may think a hundred refine rolls is a lot, but in the game as a whole... (it rolls that many RNG's ever second and some...) it's the blink of an eye.

RNG is a standard function of every computing device in the world.
Probably the most common function in every game played on a computer.
It's not like its coded in by the designers, its a function of whatever data language the programme runs on.

Its more likely to be a problem with the console its being run on than with the core programming, and even that is ridiculously unlikely,since its such a simple function.

Bleating "RNG is broken..." every time someone has a run of bad luck is like someone claiming voter fraud in a general election.
It's technically possible, and may have occured a few times in history... but its more likely to just be some malcontent gobshite sounding off about HAMSTER they clearly don't understand.

drw · January 2017

Fact is, all ANY of us can do is guess. Some people need an imaginary monster to blame for their problems, some don't. Realistically, there is nothing any of us can do to change the situation - so choose to believe what you will and move on

Either continuing to have fun or to something more fun for you!

Refining upgrade %

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