I spend hours playing this event, running candlestick keeps in less than 4 minutes at a time. I collected a total of 532 pages this event and not once did I find a single book......
http://new4.fjcdn.com/comments/3769586+_be19001ab968bb8c1c49907c0395bd42...
So does this mean there is a way to influence the spawning of BK and book drop rates?
Do you really want Three Rings to patch it if what your trying to say become an exploit?
To be fair, the books seem to spawn at a rate of 1 per 200 kats, meaning you'd collect an average of 600 pages per book. Either way that's tough luck, but all you can do is keep on trying next time.
I've killed well over 1,000 kats since the first event began, only book i ever saw was in the first event and it went to someone else (back when drops were randomized)
@Bopp
"Maybe the game tracks how many enemies you spawn and how many enemies you kill, and adjusts the spawn rate accordingly. And by "spawn rate" I mean either black kats per kat or books per black kat."
Nope.
@Holy-Nightmare
"So does this mean there is a way to influence the spawning of BK and book drop rates?"
There is none (well ... actually there is one, but that's more magic than math).
"Then I'm 100 pages overdue for a book...."
That's not how the math works
As I mentioned in post #1, I don't really believe those ideas. So I have no interest in arguing that they are true. But your post certainly does not show that they are false.
That would blow your database completely out of proportion. You'd have to log when/what/where/difficulty for every spawn/kill for every player.
What do the developers care whether collecting data is difficult or not? Just because a game rule would be difficult for us to measure, that doesn't mean that the rule cannot exist.
You would have a lot of funky side effects to deal with. For example, a support bomber with a shivermist would get flagged as a speedrunner due to the fact that he usually spawns, but rarely delivers the deathblow. You would also promote more solo play (you can never be sure if a teammate has been flagged and that hurts your party). The ruleset here becomes real complex real fast and therefore not worth doing it.
I was imagining that the data were collected on a per-party basis, not a per-player basis. Then it would not be difficult to implement. Sorry, I should have mentioned that.
Dynamic adjustments are precisely what OOO is not interested in. The value of items like the BKC depends on their rarity. With a fixed droprate they can roughly control/predict how many rare items come into existence per event. When you add a performance component to the equation, this becomes much more difficult.
I agree that Three Rings has an incentive to keep the rarity predictable. But predictable based on what other variable? Levels finished or playing time or something else? The answer determines whether they would be interested in dynamically tuning the drops.
Without viewing the code (ahem), I see no reason why dynamic tuning couldn't or wouldn't be happening. And let me reiterate that I also see no evidence that it is happening either.
Spiral-Spy's graph seems to largely underestimate the spawning rate of Books.
This one is based on books spawning every 200 Kats
You are one of the theoretical 42% of people who have not found a book by their 170th Kat. You're hardly "unlucky".
@Bopp
You are overthinking it. Rule #1 in software design: KISS. Make it unnecessarily complex and it will just blow in your face. There really is nothing to gain from dynamically adjusting BK spawns based on player performance and a lot to loose (I only scratched the surface with the reasons given above). Maybe the following argument helps: spawnrates (for "rare" items) are a business decision. Software developers don't make business decisions, marketing people do. The later typically don't have the time nor the skill to mess around with the code. They do however have a need to make adjustments from time to time and that means config files where you can crank up or tune down a numerical value for a setting.
Check the odds for the promo boxes in the wiki to get a rough idea. They are quite telling to the keen observer.
@Hexzyle
Be careful with the 200 Kats. That number came from me and I tend to round my figures ;).
@Spiral-Spy
"Rule #1 in software design: KISS. "
Rule #1 is deliver it on time.
Rule #2 is make it work.
"You'd have to log when/what/where/difficulty for every spawn/kill for every player."
There's actually evidence that they already do record that sort of stuff [with slightly less precision]. I'm too lazy to find the image right now, but I definitely recall an image with # of total hours played by all players, # of monsters killed, and a bunch of other big data characteristics about the game. They have the data for energy transactions recorded down to the second the transaction is made.
Just because you put time into a game doesn't mean its RNG engine owes you something. I can't tell you how much time I've put into SK and other games just to have RNGesus screw me over.
Be careful with the 200 Kats. That number came from me and I tend to round my figures ;).
Came from you?
The community originally decided from general estimations that Kat Spawns and Book drops were probably around 1%, as what I thought other rare spawns were, then later looking at the math and realising that there is no way people could be so unlucky with it at 1% (Since there have been quite a few reports of 1000 pages without a book: 0.99^333= 3% chance, while 0.995^333 = a more believable 18% chance. Your graph indicates that over a third of people who have 1000+ pages have not found a book) and its almost definitely always an "OCD Number", just like the rare drops out of prize boxes.
This means that it has gotta be 0.1%, 0.2%, or 0.5%. And people have been finding them far too regularly for the former two.
Unless, of course, Three Rings are SUPER into minute number tweaking.
And looking at the gear balance, I'm pretty sure that is not the case: Kat Farming doesn't earn Three Rings money directly so they have little reason to be Megacorps about it.
@Hexzyle
I don't really want to argue about who called out the 200 Kats first. Fact is, that number is rounded.
Your "OCD Number" argument is based on a wrong assumption, namely that gambling odds have to expressed as percentages. We players use the percentage notation because for us it is convenient to calculate with. That's not (necessarily) the case for OOO's business department. They do the math differently (using ratios) and that, more often than not, results in odd, non OCD numbers in percentage notation. To illustrate:
Assume the "Pseudo Prize Box Promo". It can either contain a bolted vee or a darkfang shield. After digging through sales statistics, it is determined, that the accessory to shield ratio should be 250 to 1. Obviously, these are nice OCD numbers for the ratio, but in percentages this means you got a 1/251=0.3% chance to roll the shield.
How do you know that OOO's business department uses ratio's instead of percentages? Well, for starters, you could sum up the individual percentages on the wiki pages of the promo boxes (that's why I said earlier in this thread that they are telling to the keen observer). The current solstice box has 3%+5%+14%+45%+23%+10%=100% chance for rolling crowns, auras, crests or tickets. Curiously, there also is a less than 1% chance for getting wings which doesn't fit in unless you assume that the numbers were first converted from ratios and then rounded nicely.
Except that the Book drop has no other spawns to compete with, so therefore it will be a clean number.
@Hexzyle
Except that the Book drop has no other spawns to compete with, so therefore it will be a clean number.
Ehhhh ... no. You can use 0.5% to calculate with, but you shouldn't assume it to be precise.
Your "OCD Number" argument is based on a wrong assumption, namely that gambling odds have to expressed as percentages
No, it's based on Three Ring's habit of delivering everything as a lump sum. All announced buffs have been 10 or 20%. Bonus prize chances from prize boxes are divisible by 5%. Winterfest materials are required in lumps of 25. Craft prices for equipment, recipe prices, player & shield health, the list goes on.
Any situation where Three Rings isn't carefully balancing the odds of cosmetic items out of prize boxes to garuntee the most cash, they generally just chuck in whatever number feels right, and then don't tweak it for like 3 years.
Assume the "Pseudo Prize Box Promo". It can either contain a bolted vee or a darkfang shield. After digging through sales statistics, it is determined, that the accessory to shield ratio should be 250 to 1. Obviously, these are nice OCD numbers for the ratio, but in percentages this means you got a 1/251=0.3% chance to roll the shield.
Except that the Book drop has no other spawns to compete with, so therefore it will be a clean number.
P.S 1:251 is almost exactly 0.4%. If you're going to round down rather than to nearest, then there's no point even writing "250" when you could just as easily have the number "307" in there and it'd mean the same thing. It's certainly more accurate for the reader regarding the end result, even though it's less nice to look at.
which doesn't fit in unless you assume that the numbers were first converted from ratios and then rounded nicely.
But the point of the matter is that they intentionally chose numbers in the first place that would result in clean percentages. It doesn't matter if you're typing in weight=320 or chance=0.4 if the result is exactly the same. Three Rings have shown that even they they throw a small weight on the rare item (which is also likely a clean number like 0.5%) that they try to keep the bulk of drops having a neat x10% or x5% chance drop.
Ehhhh ... no. You can use 0.5% to calculate with, but you shouldn't assume it to be precise.
Does it really matter if we assume its a 0.5% chance instead of a 0.497% chance? I'm gonna go with "no".
“Rewards for good service should not be deferred a single day.”
― Sun Tzu
With that many tokens you could probably afford buying a Cowl by selling fetishes, once they become valuable again.
@Hexzyle
Ah, yes, 1/251= 0.00398406374501992031 - I had set my calculator to clip after the 3. digit and was already wondering why i ended up with such a "clean" number. My mistake. Of course, that strengthens my argument.
You are wrong in your assumption that book drops have no competition and that therefore the odds must be a clean number. The later doesn't follow and the former is already false in a mathematical sense. If books did not have any competition, then their droprate would automatically be 100% ("if your lottery bowl only contains winning tickets, then every drawing results in hitting the jackpot"). The competition for the book drop is the "no drop". If you kill a Black kat, it either drops a book or nothing (in addition to the guaranteed pages). So if you had a ratio of 250 empty drops to 1 book (just to stick with the numbers from the "Pseudo Prize Box Promo" example), you would end up with a 0.00398406374501992031% drop chance instead of the clean 0.5% you propose.
Of course, for practical purposes, 0.5% is an ok value to calculate with. My point just is that you jump directly from assumption to conclusion in a dangerous way.
Maybe the game tracks how many enemies you spawn and how many enemies you kill, and adjusts the spawn rate accordingly. And by "spawn rate" I mean either black kats per kat or books per black kat.
Remember how gathering minerals used to be our main purpose on Cradle? Maybe the game tracks how often you have a mineral when you get on the elevator, and adjusts the spawn rate accordingly.
(I don't really believe or disbelieve these claims. I'm just making conversation.)