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What is the Real Probability of Success for Level 2 Forging?

6 replies [Last post]
Mon, 02/17/2014 - 10:59
Nolidor's picture
Nolidor

Over the past 2 days, I've done 15 level 2 forges for 70 or 75%.

10 have failed, 5 have succeeded.

I ran a binomial distribution calculation here to see what the odds of that are:

http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx

p = .7, n = 15, x = 10 (p should be higher, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt, the extra 5% is treated as a bonus)

The chance of getting exactly 10 outcomes was 20%.

The chance of getting less was 28%.

The chance of getting more was 52%.

Seriously? This is too much to believe that 70% is what's really going on.

Mon, 02/17/2014 - 12:55
#1
Avenger-Of-Troy's picture
Avenger-Of-Troy
Luck

It's just a random number generator.

You do a 70percent thing 10 times. This does not mean it will will 7 times. It could work 10 times. It could work no times. Just like the chances of a book in SK. While some people may thrive and grind 24/7 black kats to get the 1/1000 book, a random player who has never heard of the katalysm may stumble open the creature and have it drop a book.

Mon, 02/17/2014 - 13:42
#2
Seiran's picture
Seiran
lolmath

Well, that's a way of calculating probability distributions (or predicting the chance of certain numbers of outcomes). Just one of many models of doing so, and those results are well, expected (for that distribution model).

But still, per trial, it's a 70% chance. Heck, if you want to rely on the calculator, put in .7 for the probability of success and check the chance for 1 trial/1 success.

Bonus:
According to that calculator, the chance of your outcome of having 15 trials and 5 successes with 70% success rate was 0.3% chance.
That's some luck you got there B|

Mon, 02/17/2014 - 13:54
#3
Kathrine-Dragon's picture
Kathrine-Dragon
@Avenger-Of-Troy

I remember when that happened. A returning player logged in just in time for the kat event and got a book. He then proceeded to sell it to a vendor for 500cr.

Mon, 02/17/2014 - 14:38
#4
Tanonev
Working as Intended

Every time I see a post like this, it's actually confirmation that the random number generator IS behaving correctly. Why?

Take a player. The probability of that player having a bad streak like yours (or worse) is 0.0037.
Now take 1000 players. The probability that among those 1000 players , there will be someone who has a bad streak like that, is 0.974. Now, who do you think is more likely to complain on the forums? That person who got the bad streak, or everyone else who didn't?

This, incidentally, is why many games actually derandomize* their "random" events. A telltale sign that independent random events are properly implemented is that when your userbase gets large enough, SOMEONE gets screwed over. I'll argue that independent random events are bad game design, but they're definitely not a bug.

*The ideas behind this are actually pretty cool, and there's a decent amount of history behind it. Older RPGs (including the original Final Fantasy, I think) would give you a fixed independent chance (say, 10%) of encountering an enemy every time you took a step. This resulted in streaky behavior (sometimes you would get fight after fight after fight, and other times you would go forever without finding anything), so later games instead randomly set the number of steps you needed to take (say, 5 + a number chosen uniformly at random between 0 and 10) before the next fight, which gave each individual step the same chance (still 10%) of having an enemy encounter, but removing the independence between the steps (so that the more steps you had gone without an enemy encounter, the higher the chance that your next step would be an enemy encounter). Later games with critical hit and dodge chances (such as League of Legends and Path of Exile) use a similar trick: If you haven't interacted with anything in a while, your "critical value" is set to a number chosen uniformly at random between 0 and 99%. When you attack, you add your critical hit "chance" to your critical value; if it breaks 100%, then that hit is a crit (and your critical value rolls over, so 105% -> 5%); otherwise, it isn't. This means that if your critical hit chance is 33%, every third attack of yours will crit, though it's still random in the sense that you don't know whether it will be hits 1-4-7, hits 2-5-8, or hits 3-6-9. (Your critical value gets reset to a new random number if you don't interact with anything for a while so that you can't "store up" a crit by hitting something easy to fight over and over again until you figure out the pattern, and then just before you would crit, stop attacking and go find the thing you really want to fight.) Other times, games will roll a random number each time (like independent events), but after each roll, nudge the success probability by a bit in the direction it takes to balance out the results. For example, if your forge success probability is 30% and you fail, the next time the probability will be 35%, say. This preserves the potential for short streaks (and let's face it, streaks in our favor feel really good) while basically getting rid of long streaks.

Mon, 02/17/2014 - 14:54
#5
Skepticraven's picture
Skepticraven
Well...

The students t test is better to prove your point...
Using WolframAlpha Edit: Hit two-tailed test for the alt hypothesis to become what it should be.

However, when you say 15 lvl 2 forges... for what items and what multiples of fire crystals?
I'm assuming you meant "medium" crystal multiplier (2x) for a 3-5* item.

The main problem with statistics is that random anomalies like this still happen.
I do have a spreadsheet set up in the wiki edits about forge mechanics. Most of the contributers are interested in the change of forge prize boxes, and less about confirming the OOO chance for successful forgings. My spreadsheet calculates it all.

Mon, 02/17/2014 - 15:48
#6
Nolidor's picture
Nolidor
Guys, I understand

Guys, I understand statistics.

The point is that from an internal perspective, one's gameplay sample seems very biased. By default, everyone in the gameworld isn't going to contribute their results for overall analysis since they're satisfied by what happens or convinced that the game isn't worth their time after what happened screwed them over.

We can talk about sample sizes and confidence levels and standard deviations and all that, but at the end of the day, the player who doesn't actually observe that can't confirm what the statistics suggest.

In essence, you're blaming the individual victim for a supposed collective good which doesn't even necessarily exist.

Is it possible that what happened is true? Yes, but not necessarily.

In any case, the derandomization strategy before makes sense, and should be integrated. Individual players will think they're being ripped off when what actually happens doesn't match what's supposed to happen.

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