The runic distribution curve - analysed (a bit long and technical)

[Zardo Zap]

Foreward

This is for you who have been following a discussion kicked off and pursued by Kylas - who noticed that runic hammers don't give bonuses the way we expect them to.

Its rather long, but since there will be a number of people who disagree with the results I thought I better set it out in detail, so that I minimise the risk of being misunderstood. To those who feel its too long winded I apoligise, you can always skip the conclusion.

Finally, if you hope to sell a high end hammer, don't let your customer read this.

Background - the problem

The first thing Kylas noticed was that... well lets explain by example take a shadow hammer (why a shadow will become clear later /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif ), shadow generates intensities in the range of 20% to 45%. Now when an intensity is generated you might expect it to generate a roll in the range of 20% to 45% - But it doesn't - this is the chop "effect". What it does is generate an intensity between 1% and 100%. If its below the hammers minimum it raises it to the minimum (in a shadow's case 20%). If its above the maximum it lowers it to the maximum (here 45%). This effect is readily apparent if you are looking for it. All runic hammers create a disproportionate number of items at either the minimum or maximum of the range (well obviously not valorite at the top of its range). I think everyone accepts the "chop" effect.

The more controversial element is the distribution. When it generates its initial intensity does it generate it straight line e.g like rolling a 100 sided dice, the same chance to roll 2% as 34% as 67% as 1% as 99% etc or is their a "distribution curve" that is, is it more likely to roll something in the range of 1-10% than it is in the range of 91% to 100%?

"Well" I thought to myself - "I think there is a distribution curve lets see."

The experimental set up

I didn't have enough bronze hammers to waste in an experiment, copper hammers were no good as they could produce either 2 or 3 enhancements and it might be difficult to work out which hammers only had one intensity apply to their enhancements. Shadow was perfect - I had lots - and they produce two intensities always.

The idea was I would use 6 hammers, produce 265 ringmail gloves (iron) [the actual idea was I would only produce 264 gloves, but I used all of one hammer by mistake]. I would then check the distribution of resists on the gloves which got one and only one resist and for which I could spot where the other enhancement went.

The reason for making sure I knew where the other enhancement went was because IF both enhancements were applied to the same resist (e.g. fire), the higher one would prevail and this would skew the results.

I would then have a number of enhanced gloves, with a single resist enhanced in the range of 20% to 45%.

So what do I mean an enhancement of 20% to 45%, resists are in the range of 1 to 15 right?

Yep, but 20% of the max (15) gives us 3 - which is what the minimum of the shadow hammer is. Curiously the resists round up, so a roll of 21% up to 26% gives us 4. The full list is here (note I have rounded to the nearest full percentage which causes a slight discrepency, but as we will see that is not significant)

For a shadow runic - remembering the "chop" effect the enhancement percentages to resist points are as follows

<ul>[*]0%-20% 3 points[*]21%-26% 4 points[*]27%-33% 5 points[*]34% to 40% 6 points[*]41% plus 7 points[/list]

Just note out of interest that the 45% max of shadow still only gives you the 7 points you would get if you get a 42% intensity.

The d100 hypothesis

Or as some might call it all the "all intensities have equal chance" hypothesis.

If this were right, then using the above calculation, of the pieces I make with one and only one resist we would find the following distribution,

20% of them would have 3 extra resist points,
6% of them 4 points
7% of them 5 points
7% of them 6 points
and 60% of them 7 points

Note - actually the 4,5 and 6 points would have the same chance this is the rounding error I alluded to earlier.

The results


I got 90 gloves (out of 265 made) with one and only one resist enhancement.

They were distributed as follows

7 resist points - 30 gloves - 33% compared with hypothesised 60%
6 resist points - 6 gloves - 7% compared with a hypothesised 7%
5 resist points - 8 gloves - 9% compared with a hypothesised 7%
4 resist points - 12 gloves - 13% compared with a hypothesised 6%
3 resist points - 34 gloves - 38% compared with a hypothesised 20%

Well! The high end and the low end is completely different from a straighline prediction.

I could do a standard deviation check, make sure I have statistically significant data, but that would bore you, bore me and is not needed.

Kylas you are vindicated, in my mind at least the d100 theory is dead.

So how are runic hammers distributed ??

A new theory

Well its OSI, lets see something used elsewhere.

When calculating the impact of luck on monster drops they use an inverse square root distribution ... lets see if that fits.

What do I mean by an "inverse square root distribution" - good question! Let me answer it in an inverse way /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif If you wanted to calculate the chance of rolling in the range of 0-10, you would go 100 minus 10 gives you 90, square 90, gives you 8100, subtract from 10000, gives you 1900 and divide by 10000, gives you a 19% chance of rolling 0-10. Or if you wanted to calculate the chance of rolling above 90 (hold on to your hats here), calculate the chance of rolling 1-90 as 100 minus 90 equals 10, square 10 to get 100, subtract 100, from 10000, to get 9900, or a 99% chance of getting 1-90, and only a 1% chance of getting above 90. [Valorite hammer owners who were hoping to get a few properties above 90% might be feeling a bit sick at this point.]

Difficult to explain, but easy to calculate especially as OSI has a square root approximater they use for luck. So generate a number between 1 and 10000, and take the square root,
and subtract it from 100, 1 becomes 99%, 100 becomes 90%, 8100 becomes 10%.

If you don't follow me, just take it for read that it really reduces your chance of rolling big.

So that's the new hypothesis lets compare it to the results...

If I am right I would expect the following percentages:

Chance of 7 resist points is 36% - experiment gives 33%
Chance of 6 resist points is 9% - experiment gives 7%
Chance of 5 resist points is 9% - experiment gives 9%
Chance of 4 resist points is 10% - experiment gives 13%
Chance of 3 resist points is 36% - experiment gives 38%.

Oh - that is quite close - you know the hypothesis could be right.

Well the only way to get a better confirmation would be to burn some bronze and see if the top end dies away as we would expect. Bronze can go up to 10 resist points. Any intensity roll above 60 will give you 10 points.

Under the (in my mind discredit) d100 theory you would expect 40% of bronze made armour with one resist to have an additional 10 points of resist. Under the Square root theory you would expect only 16% of them to have the 10 points - sadly that fits my memory of the results I got.

Just to finally spur the Agapite plus owners into action you only have a 4% chance of an intensity greater than 80 (12 points) and a 1% chance of a verite or valorite hammer getting a resist geater than 90% intensity (14 points).

Oh well at least we know, but what we don't know is - was it intentional!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Data provided by McHuberts
McHuberts recorded all the information he made on well over 260 bronze armour pieces. From the data there were 112 items which had one and one only resist enhanced.

The "inverse square" theory predicts (rounded slightly) ...

The chance of getting 10 points = 16%
The chance of getting 9 points = 5.1%
The chance of getting 8 points = 7%
The chance of getting 7 points = 8%
The chance of getting 6 points = 9%
The chance of getting 5 points = 55%

The data provided by McHubert gave the following results (out of 112 hammers)

10 points - 15 items - 13% compare with predicted 16%
9 points - 5 items - 4% compare with predicted 5%
8 points - 5 items - 4% compare with predicted 7%
7 points - 7 items - 6% compare with predicted 8%
6 points - 15 items - 13% compare with predicted 9%
5 points - 65 items - 58% compare with predicted 55%

The differences could be down to just fluctuations, but if anything the inverse square theory over states the chances (although my gut feel is still that its right).

The predicted marked drop off for 10 points was certainly found to exist.

I would also note as an aside of the 264 items made (thats about 7.5 hammers!) he only got 3 items which had resists (or potential resists if they had been made of valorite) of 50 or over! that's 1.1% - I predicted 1.8% (with bit of guess work). They certainly seem to be in the same ballpark.

Whats important to realise is except for the fact that you have a chance of more properties applying to resist these same stinking odds apply to the bigger hammers too - and you have less strikes with them. It really is a bit pathetic.

Zardo

 

[Shelleybean]

First of all, thanks very much for the experiment and the information. I had to reread it a few times and I *think* I understand. And if this is really how runic hammers work, I see no reason at all to try to get a high end runic hammer. Bronze runics seem to be pretty good, and can be obtained from a sbod. It would be nice if someone from development team could take a look at this and let us know if this is indeed how runics are supposed to work.

 

[Kylas]

Zardo very well done.

(Moderator.. This needs to be made sticky. This information is too valuable to smtihs that want to consider their time and money investment when trying to go for high end hammers.. )

On a seperate note.. Our findings contradict the reason the development team stated for lowering the number of charges on high end hammers.. IF the distribution was linear I might agree.. But clearly the the weighting is SO harsh on high end hammers you cannot justify the argument.

Zardo we need to make a Smith calculator that correlates Effort vs. chance of getting something decient.

For example.. Smith picks Valorite hammer (Goal). #Smiths collection bods..

Estamates (In my case.. 8months of work) for 15 charges.

Average 3 bonuses (not 5) per item... 1% chance to get a bonus &gt; 90% intentsity.,

Result = Total waste of time.

Once again I give some examples of a REAL items I made with my UBBER valorite hammer.

(Daggers) Iron all Exceptional

Dagger #1

Hit Life leech 24%
Spell Channeling / -1
Physical Resist 8%

Dagger #2

Hit Physical 36%
Luck 57
Fire resist 8%
Cold Resist 8%

Dagger #3

Durability 50%
Luck 50%
Defense chance 8%
Poison Resist 8%

Dagger #4

Hit Stamina leech 12%
Defense Chance 8%
Damage Increase 35%

Dagger #5

Hit Life Leech 24%
Defense chance 11%
Neon

Dagger #6

Hit lighting 12%
Luck 50
Swing speed 5%
Poison 8%

Dagger #7

Hit Poison area 30%
Ophidian slayer
Luck 59
Physical resist 8%

Pike #1

Durability 60%
Spell Channeling / -1
Hit Chance 9%

Plate Gloves (Exceptions. Verite or val)

Durability 50%
Hit point increase 2
Hit point regen 1
Lower Mana cost 4%
9/3/13/6/5

Plate Gloves #2

Stamina Regen 2
Night site
Lower Regs 14%
Lower requirements 70%
9/8/5/7/4


There is 10 OF 15 uses from that UBBER valorite hammer that the dev team has made SO hard to get..

Ill save everyone some grief. DONT attempt to do any high colored lbods.. Just go for the bronze hammers.

Dig.

(Good job again Zardo)

Your post needs to be added to the FAQ at the top of the board.

 

[Zardo Zap]

Kylas,

Thank you for that - I must admit I felt a bit mislead by the whole description of runic hammers and since on the UO forums I had posted that I understood why they dropped valorite hammers down to 15 - I thought I should sort it out. The update from the data provided by McHubert has put the issue beyond doubt in my mind at least. I may not have got the exact formula - but its at least as bad as we think

When you first posted your results and thoughts it just clicked with me. Prior to then I would have stared at your valorite hammer results with disbelief, now they make perfect sense.

Really on an effort basis - why would you. It stinks.

It might be that the argument is the chance of getting four or five properties (and the double up kills) on a weapon or armour is, in iteself, uber. But I don't buy that.

I suspect you are better off with monster drops.

So what do we do now - the Devs don't appear to be interested!

Zardo

 

[nuttyprofessor]

Hey that looks like the tpyes of items I made with my 2 valorite hammers!! 29 items only 2 were of Pre-AoS standards for a valorite hammer.

I went to the UO player luncheon last month. About 7 members of OSI was there along with Hanse...
My roomate and I asked about the horrendous performance of the runic hammers. Hanse told us the hammers and he used the valorite hammer as an example, lost their charges due to the fact that they could make powerful items in AoS and it had to be balanced with the rate that the game would spawn good items.
He says the valorite hammer had the potential to craft a artifact level item. which it does to be honest but maybe 1-5% of the TIME!! With this in mind they made the hammer weaker because they did not want more artifact level items crafted than the game would spawn artifact level items. Weaker meaning all this randomness!!

Now look at Kylas and I, He used 10 charges and i used 29 charges of a valorite hammer. We did not make a single Artifact level item.
If only 2 valorite hammers will come each year, on my server there will not be another for at least 12 months since I got 2. that makes 0 artifact crafted items by a player this year while the game will certainly spawn at least 12 this year.
Hmmmmm........ Server 12......players 0 thats really balanced!
I did not push it harder on this point I regret not doing it but it wa due to the fact that I was shocked they knew so little of how the code they write actually work! The main response was we will get it to QA. It seemed he knew what it was suppose to do but had no idea that it was not peforming as he wanted it to...sighs..
We also asked that crafters had more control over what we make. i mean for crying out loud I have no idea what I am making nowadays! They seemed receptive to that and told us they would work on it or I should say Hanse would look at it. He seems to get most of the projects heeh.

 

[Kylas]

&gt;&gt;suspect you are better off with monster drops. &lt;&lt;

You are indeed.. And its alot easier to get monster loot. It lacks the frustrations that bods bring.. And it doesnt cost anything.. Compared to the effort to fill lbods.

&gt;&gt;So what do we do now - the Devs don't appear to be interested!&lt;&lt;

Well the only option I could find was close down accounts. Why should I reward a company so out of touch with its users? So they are now getting 1/3 the revenue they use to from me.

Dig

 

[Kylas]

Where is our moderator?

Nadia wake up! The orginal post needs to be made sticky and locked so all smiths can use this information when determining weither its Worth trying to go for a high end hammer.

(Earth to Nadia!) Come in please.

Dig

 

[Arctic_Wolf]

*sigh* oh well, in the face of such evidence, I guess I have to accept it.

Guess I have just been really lucky with my dice rolls when runic crafting

*grins*

It is always worth going for the high end hammers. Even if they are (currently) not worth making stuff with, at least you can say 'I have one' (or sell it for squillions of gp)

 

[Zardo Zap]

It is a shame that you didn't press him harder - I am not sure that he realises just how unlikely a valorite hammer is to generate a great item (but then again I don't think many of us believed how bad it actually is).

Now its true that an item with 5 properties - all at the 50% to 65% intensity level is potentially good (although given you get lots of repeats you don't even get that and you don't invest a year's of time (plus!) to make 15 mediocre to good items - I completely agree that valorite hammers are, currently, a shocking reward for the effort they take - you just need to look at the items Kylas made), but its just not true you can create artifact level items as:

1) Artifacts have intensities above 100% - if you look at the artifacts detailed by UO - almost all of them have intesities ABOVE 100% eg. swing speeds of 75% (normal max 25%), 100% hit area effects (normally a max of 50%), + 5 hit regen, 2 faster cast etc. A valorite hammer creates only up to 100%.

2) the chance of even getting one of your 5 intensities above 90 is small - 1% for any intensity being above 90 - and less than 5% of any one of the properties having an intensity in excess of 90 (less because this doesn't take into account the chance of one of the properties being mage armour, night sight etc).

Finally my formula probably isn't quite right, but it gives the chance of an intensity being 99% or higher as .01% - thats right one in 10,000.

How many valorite hammers would that be?

Zardo

 

[Zardo Zap]

Welcome to the "gloomy" side /php-bin/shared/images/icons/members/face8.gif

I don't think any of us wanted to believe this was the way they implemented the hammers - but as you say the evidence is becoming a bit overwhelming.

<blockquote><hr>


It is always worth going for the high end hammers. Even if they are (currently) not worth making stuff with, at least you can say 'I have one' (or sell it for squillions of gp)


<hr></blockquote>

Yep! Although (as I say in my intro to the thread) if we want to retain the price of hammers we will need to hope that customers don't read the thread!

Zardo

 

[MYUO]

Zap, thank you for the good info! Your formula may not be 100% accurate but it fits in ballpark of my experience (a few hundred bronze and up runic armors). It acutally makes sense to have skewed distribution on intensity between 1-100% enhancement becasue otherwise the lower level the runic is, the higher chance to get max enhancement.
Ironically, after publish 19, any runic hammers below bronze will be worthless because runic products don't get the new exceptional bonuses. Even bronze hammers will only be able to create marginal better armors than a tong in most of the cases. I think the new crafting changes will hurt runics (both smith and tailor), pvm, T-hunting to the extent that most of the loots/products will be discarded. I am going to start a thread on UO Hall and reference your findings.

 

[mephisto113]

A simple fix for that (if any member of the dev team is reading, here's a suggestion for you!) would be:

keep the same repartition curve, but apply it to the range of the runic instead of the 1-100% range...
this way, you keep high end stuff harder to get than low end stuff, but you don't have that huge % bump at the end of the range...

 

[Kylas]

How about just making it linear like the web sites and all the posts by the reds pre aos lead us to believe.

I should have the same chance of rolling a 50 as I do a 100.

Dig

 

[mephisto113]

well, first they said nothing that would indicate it's linear..
they said it was in a given range, wich is true, they said it COULD give high end results, wich is true though it's rare...
they obviously don't want to make getting top end stuff too easy... but they also obviously made it too hard...

 

[Zardo Zap]

<blockquote><hr>


... but they also obviously made it too hard...


<hr></blockquote>

Yep like if you use 130 valorite hammers you should be able to get ONE item which has 100% intensity. (And none of the other properties made with any of the other hammers will have a single property at 100%!)

Guess we are not going to be overrun with high end items on the current system /php-bin/shared/images/icons/members/shock2.gif

Zardo

 

[Zardo Zap]

I decided to do some more playing around with the numbers and have refined some of my probabilities - although when I am looking at chances of 2 out of 5 powers being resist enhancements etc - well lets just say I can get confused /php-bin/shared/images/icons/members/eyecrazy.gif

I thought this might be of interest

The chance of different hammers getting total resists of 50 or more:
Copper 1.4%
Bronze 1.8%
Gold 6.1%
Agapite 6.9%
Verite 10.2%
Valorite 26.1%

So over a quarter of valorite hammer made armour items should have 50+ resist.
But that is not uber - its goodish but not uber (I assume all exceptional with valorite).

Uber is 60 or over (roughly what is required for an all 70 suit).

Lets look at the odds of this

Bronze 0.02% (yep thats 2 in 10,000)
Gold 0.07% (err 7 in 10,000 - seven times better /php-bin/shared/images/icons/members/firedevil.gif
Agapite 0.24% (hmm getting better thats one in every 500! You only need 20 hammers
Verite 1.54% (down to only needing three and a quarter hammers)
Valorite ..ta da... 1.84%

Gosh when I get my first verite hammer - only one sbod to go, Ill practically be flooding the game with uber items /php-bin/shared/images/icons/members/devillaugh.gif

Zardo

 

[gryphix41]

In laymans terms:

Odds of getting a valorite BOD = extremely low

Odss of getting another val BOD = Just as low

Odds of finally getting / finding the right val BODS to fill your unlikely valorite LBOD = So incredibly low that it can only be described as "yeah...right"

If you finally miraculously accomplish this, You get a valorite hammer (potentially) with 15 nerfed charges to produce simething you can find on any dragon corpse.....

hmmm....I dont think that even bringing high end runic charges back up to 50 would balance this. Given the rarity of the high end BODs required to even GET a top end runic, I would think that ALL material generated with these hammers should be artifact quality.

Betchya there is already more artifact quaility items introduced in game since AoS then there are valorite hammers, with the BOD system being around for a long time.

 

[Kylas]

&gt;&gt;Odds of getting a valorite BOD = extremely low

Odss of getting another val BOD = Just as low

Odds of finally getting / finding the right val BODS to fill your unlikely valorite LBOD = So incredibly low that it can only be described as "yeah...right"

If you finally miraculously accomplish this, You get a valorite hammer (potentially) with 15 nerfed charges to produce simething you can find on any dragon corpse.....

hmmm....I dont think that even bringing high end runic charges back up to 50 would balance this. Given the rarity of the high end BODs required to even GET a top end runic, I would think that ALL material generated with these hammers should be artifact quality.

Betchya there is already more artifact quaility items introduced in game since AoS then there are valorite hammers, with the BOD system being around for a long time. &lt;&lt;

wonderfull summation of what Ive been screaming since day 1.

And your right.. They are increasing the likehood of artifacts spawning also. So far with the Hammer recharge ive burned 22 charges off my Val hammer and I havent made one item that even comes close to artifact level.

Now it took me 8 months of HARD work to get my hammer (about 5mil gold too). That works out to 16 days of work PER charge.

Now who here thinks if they spent 16 days working doom champs they wouldnt get MANY MANY MANY more items of higher quality then One strike with the Val hammer.

And Yet all we hear is silence from the dev team.

Oh joy.

Dig

 

[Zardo Zap]

<blockquote><hr>


hmmm....I dont think that even bringing high end runic charges back up to 50 would balance this. Given the rarity of the high end BODs required to even GET a top end runic, I would think that ALL material generated with these hammers should be artifact quality.


<hr></blockquote>

Thats right - the chances of getting a high end intensity are very low. It would be silly to change the hammers so that they churn out a bunch of mediocre to good items with the chance of a very good one. Far better to give them the ability to churn out a number of very good ones. When you factor in the rarity of val hammers what is the harm in allowing a smith to produce 15, say, top-end items with a val hammer as his reward.

I would love a dev comment on this issue. "Yes its working as we thought" or "You aren't taking into account..." or "When we said artifact quality we meant..." or "Hmm lets check your results..". But so far nothing.

Now Hanse is probably the best one to answer this and he is obviously pretty busy on bod books, but fingers crossed sometime soon.

However, even a "we hear you...let us look into it for you" would be nice.

There are a range of possible solutions to this problem. Maybe I should post them in a different thread.

Zardo

 

[Uten Ansiktet]

OK, this is the big question we are all asking I think. What is wrong with a high end runic hammer (valorite, verite, and even agapite) making 'artifact quality' items every single hit we get with the puny amount of charges on them when they are infinitely much more difficult to get and time consuming than any of the arifact items? Its not like there are ever going to be an abundance of high end items ever created with these high end runic hammers because of the extreme difficulty in getting them and the low amount of charges on them. These high end runic hammers are extremely hard to get. And just to point out how hard these runic hammers are to get....first of all, they are limited to how many are given out per shard per year. But that aside, listen to this; I have been collecting bods since the system began. I have one smith. I do lots and lots and lots of trading bods because its necessary to be able to ever fill any of the Lbods above iron. I just received my first gold runic hammer yesterday. This has got to be obvious to anyone on the dev team that runics and usage of them needs to be adjusted in the very least. Clearly they have screwed up runics and they either don't give a crap about fixing it, or are just lazy and will not open that can of worms because they KNOW they have alot to fix and have screwed over smiths royally.

BTW, I have used 12 of the 30 charges on my golden runic hammer. Not one keeper piece of armor out of the 12!!! And quite honestly, I am afraid to use the last 18 charges. Because when I get 18 more pieces of garbage after all that work on getting the golden runic, it will be all too clear to me that I did nothing but waste my time...

I have nothing else to say about this except for: Thanks OSI dev team for wasting my time and yet another great disappointment handed to me by you. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/angryfire.gif Perhaps its time to 'lay down my smith hammer'.

 

[sasheria]

I always think BODs are like the lottery... you have a chance to hit big, but the probability is very low usually like 1 in 50 mil? (especially in Texas now.. since you have 5 numbers 1-48 and bonus ball 1-48 and YES you can have duplicate number on the bonus ball vs the rest of the 5 numbers. Thus lower the chance of winning.

even with 0.01% chance of making "artifact" level item it is a 0.01% better than 0% right? (sure it does not sound good... but it is better than nothing)

personally I have to agree with other posters that having a high luck suit and hunting high end mobs have a better chance of getting items than trying to smith with runic hammers.

Personally... couple of changes would make this interesting.

1. Item decay... bring back old every time you repair reduce durability by 1... thus there will always be a need for newer items (unless using with powder giving 100+ durability hehe)

2. higher skill total should have some "effect" in getting higher chances of better result... thus making ASH more useful than have a higher chance of exceptional.. (thus increase the price of ASH in a way)

3. (my personal wish) have a context menu that allow us to "concentrate" on the area of enchantment with each swing of a hammer. (I made a post about this a while back) but I'll do a quick recap here.

4. Remove the "double effects" of course this would take more coding to check "previous" applied magical effects to prevent double applicate of magical effects.

Concentration:
For a sacrifice of 1 extra charge. A user can choose their concentration area to before swining their hammer. (of course it might be tedious doing each swing but maybe a "menu set" until change) I made a "chart" of possible concentration area

Resist
Combat enhancement
Defense Enhancement
effects
misc

Combat enhancement would be like + damage or increase swing speed
defense would be like damage reflect etc
effects would be + to stats or attributes
misc would be like mage armor, lower reg etc
and resist are resist.

of course the randomness of "concentration" would limit to area.. thus if I chose to spend an extra charge with a val hammer on say resist. then 1 of 5 magic property WILL go into resist (randomly one of the 5) which the other 4 magic properties will go into something else.

 

[Uten Ansiktet]

Or, instead of it being something complicated...they (osi) could change the runic hammers back to their former glory. Leave the amount of charges on them that they currently have, but return the runic hammers former quality. Why would anyone want to spend a year collecting the sbods needed and the Lbod needed to get a val runic hammer only to have it produce junk when used? I can't think of anyone that has this in mind while putting together the necessary bods and taking the time to do it. Its not easy to do at all, and then upon completion, what do ya have to show for it? Nothing, unless you just want to lock down the runic hammer as a 'semi rare' in your house. A .01% chance at creating something excellent out of something that requires so much time to get, is simply not worth it. The ingots alone to fill the bods are worth more....

 

[Kylas]

&gt;&gt;even with 0.01% chance of making "artifact" level item it is a 0.01% better than 0% right? (sure it does not sound good... but it is better than nothing) &lt;&lt;

No its not better then nothing. Look at the time/effort required to get the hammer then ONLY to have a 1 in 10,000 chance of making something usefull (Only 15 tries) thats not better then nothing. .Thats a receipe for headaches.

Imagine if it took 8 months to get into a DOOM champ spawn and when you got there you had 15 tries to get an artifact only that each time you had a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting one.. Do you think thre would be ANY on any shards in the next 5 years?

The answer is no. Personally I shutdown all my extra smithing accounts and I spend my time working doom champs Ill get better loot MUCH easier and in days time not months.

Dig

 

[Uten Ansiktet]

So, I guess this thread isn't going to get stickied or anything for the valuable info on it about the runic distribution curve? That will be a great loss to not have this info handy.

 

[Kylas]

I asked the moderator on several occasions to make it sticky. I guess she doesnt see the value.

Dig

 

[Zardo Zap]

I think there needs to be a bit of a radical think on the whole randomness thing.

I can only think of two reasons to have "random" armour and weapons coming from runic:

1) Its an attempt to keep the good items which can be created down.
2) There is a belief that the thrill of a good item "rolled" is worth the pain of a bad one.

Keeping the numbers limited

The problem with this is the sheer frustration of working hard, going through the trading system or the luck system with bods, and at the end of the day having another roll of the dice and getting something you didn't want.

There are better ways to keep the numbers down - limiting charges is one of them.

If we limit the discussion to high-end runics - then is it really a problem?

With valorite hammers, verite hammers even all the way down to gold - would it really be a problem if EACH CHARGE produced a good item.

15 good items on a valorite hammer will probably not (I suspect) cause much imbalance or flooding of the market. As Kylas says, once the Dark Father starts dropping artificats - they will be far more prevalent than valorite made items.

The "thrill" of the roll

Again whilst a good roll might cause a "fist in the air" YES - unless they are a lot more common than "bad" rolls the "really PO factor" is a lot more damaging than the transient feel good factor.

I can't even begin to describe how cheated I felt when two high level lbods I submitted in a row (months and months work) translated to two more high-level ash's to join the ones already gathering dust. Random after hard work is not good.

Sure there can be a random element, but after months of work you want to be assured that you are going to get something worthwhile, maybe (and the jury is out on this one) maybe with the chance of getting something fabulous.

How to move forward

I think the dev team needs to take a look at the number of high end hammers per shard. Using this as a base work out just how bad it would be if people could control the destiny of their hammers a bit more.

I personally would allow some or all of the properties to be controlled by the smith. Sure you will get a lot of "to die for" combos out there - but what is a lot. Its only 15 per valorite.

It must be kept in mind ANY high end hammer represents a lot of work by someone.

Maybe allow the properties to be determined but the intensities random - but not ridiculously low weighted (i.e. give us a good chance of a 100% with a val or 90% with a verite - not 1 in 10000, or 1 in 100 as it is just now).

Maybe allow hammers to have intensities which add up to a certain number (.e.g with verite you can have up to 4 properties, whose intensities add up to 220), with a random add to some of them.

All of these would allow a few very good items to be created reliably as a reward for the smith - the rarity of the hammers and the limit to charges.

Also how about making some of them very special - if you get an artificat quality item (and you should be able to generate artificat quality items regularly from a val or even a verite hammer) - let the smith name it. Not game unbalancing but what a "wow" factor. (Of course you need to balance that against the fact that you might get some rather silly/rude names).

Anyway this is a bit rambling - but you can see my jist.

Something does have to be done however, just now its soul destroying, especially when we know the chances are shocking.

Zardo

 

[Luthien. Elf]

Well I don't know about letting the smiths pick what properties they get since I like the surprise of seeing it when it comes. I do think that the real solution is to make the random numbers generated be inside the intensity range and not a number that is from 1-100 and then bumped to the high or low end if it is outside that range. I think if you did that you would see some far different items comming out of the high end runics. I mean look at the valorite hammer. If you roll anything from 1-50 you get the bottom intensity. What they need to do is roll the number between 50-100 randomly. That would change what you get by a bit I think. You would no longer have a 50% chance of getting the bottom intensity.

I do like your idea though of naming an item. Set up a requirment that if you get such and such an item the smith can name it would be cool.

 

[Zardo Zap]

Luthien,

Actually its a lot worse than just if you roll 1-50 you get 50. If you roll 1-75 you get 50.

With a valorite hammer the full ranges are:

if you roll 1-75 you get 50%
if you roll 76-84 you get 51%-60%
if you roll 85 to 91 you get 61% to 70%
if you roll 92 to 96 you get 71% to 80%
if you roll 97 to 99 you get 81% to 90%
if you roll 99.1 to 100 you get the last 91% to 100%

In otherwords you have less than 1% chance of getting an intensity in the range of 90-100% (and about a .01% chance of it being 100)

Its a lot lot worse than just chopping of the high and low ends.

Zardo

 

[Zardo Zap]

Kylas,

Maybe the thread is too long to be "incorporated" into the faq -

Perhpas we could ask the MOD to incorporate the following information into the faq (whilst we lobby to get this changed)

How do runic hammers work?

Each hammer can create an item with one or more magical properties.

For each property which the runic hammer will bestow, the property to be enhanced is chosen (this may result in a property being chosen more than once - for instance increased damage - in such a case the highest intensity rolled is chosen, the intensities are NOT combined - you can tell this has happened when, say, a bronze runic hammer, creates an item which appears only to have two magic properties and not the three the hammer is supposed to give).

Once the property has been chosen, if it is one which does not have intensities (eg night sight, mage armour) then the process finishes. If it does have intensities then the dice is rolled to determine the intensity strength.

A number (n) between 1-100 is generated. The following formula is applied 1 - ((1 - n/100)^(1/2)).

This gives another, scaled, number between 1-100 e.g.

10 becomes 5.1%
20 becomes 10.6%
30 becomes 16.3%
40 becomes 22.5%
50 becomes 29.3%
60 becomes 36.8%
70 becomes 45.2%
80 becomes 55.3%
90 becomes 68.4%
95 becomes 77.6%
99 becomes 90%
99.5 becomes 92.9%
99.99 becomes 99%

Then the resulting intensity is raised to the hammer minimum or chopped back to the hammer maximum. (so if you rolled 68 out of a 100 with a val hammer, this would translate to 43.4% and would be raised to the hammer minimum of 50%).

The final intensity is then multiplied against the maximum property value and this is what is added (so for instance resists range from 1 to 15).

If you use a gold hammer and get a resist property (say fire), then using your 1-100 roll, have a good roll, say 90 out of 100. This gets changed to 68.4% which is within the hammers range. So 68.4% of 15 (or 11) gets added to the resist.

If you use a val hammer and get a resist property. Then using your 1-100 roll you roll 70 out of 100, then this is below the minimum of the hammer and 50% of 15 (or 8) gets added to the resist property.

If you use a val hammer and you roll 99 out of a 100, then 90% of the 15 gets added (14 points). You would have to roll over 99.6 out of 100 to get the 15 resist point add.

And thats it!

Zardo

 

[portal]

Was thinking about what about the intensity and how it's application/distribution on armor items. Your studies which is impressive and well figured, but only isolates it to the compounded sum of the resists. Just a thought, but does the added properties or intensity of the of the added properties effect overall resist of the armor? I have crafted tons of armor and regrettably didn't payed much attention to specific detail but rather noticed that the more intense the properties were the less the resist was and vice versa. Of course, there were execeptions that items made that were completely uber alien equiptment and others not worth mentioning. Which makes me think, is the intensity or distributed intensity a hit or miss strike on per individual property and individual resist?

Just got back from yesterday from 1 1/2 weeks of late spring break, so gotta excuse my babble.

 

[Zardo Zap]

Portal,

I think I understand what you were saying - I was quite careful to isolate the armour I was studying so that

a) I knew what the resists were would be if no bonus was applied; and
b) I knew that one bonus and one bonus only was applied to the resists.

Its true that I wouldn't be able to tell in each case which of the five resists got the bonus - but for determining the level of intensity one application of a bonus resist gave this was not a relevant factor.

(So to explain if a bonus of "5" was to be applied it would be 5 whether it applied to physical, fire etc).

The study could equally easily have been done for any property (luck would have been the most logical as you can see all values from 1 to 100) BUT since there are 5 resists the chances of a piece of armour having one and only one resist enhanced are substantially greater than it having luck enhanced one time. (not quite 5 times, but we don't need to get there).

So in order to keep the sample size up I used resist. Indicative analysis of the "luck" results were consistent - the sample size was just not sufficient to give a significant result.

In any event I am now pretty certain that the results are near as darn it those specified above - I just wish we could get some form of official comment. Maybe when Hanse's pub 19 stuff goes into Q&amp;A (always the optimist!)

Zardo

 

[RedPhoenix]

Alot of quality patches have come out of Q&amp;A (makes me wonder if they even test anything), and in the pub 19 changes runics will only be good for making armor, since normal GM weps gets 40% damage increase while runics get the standard 20%. Would be easier to find a weapon as loot with good mods and 40% or higher damage increase then it will be to make a runic weapon of same type.

 

[Zardo Zap]

Well if you are looking at just damage increase alone - its going to be very difficult to make such a weapon with a runic.

I understand that with non-runics you get +40% with exceptional, with runics you get +20% plus any increase. So to get at least as good as a non-runic you need to get +20% intenisity which is a 40% intensity.

Unfortunately the chance of this is less than - um approx 36%, so even if you get a damage increase likely its below +40%.

With armour its just as bad. Its like you have to use up a property and GET LUCKY just to get to the position you would have been if you hadn't used a runic hammer.

If they just fixed up the way the intensity is rolled (and stopped duplicate rolls), it would all bearable. If you could choose or influence the properties it would be good.

Zardo

 

[Nadia of_Sonoma]

<font color=blue>I understand that with non-runics you get +40% with exceptional, with runics you get +20% plus any increase. So to get at least as good as a non-runic you need to get +20% intenisity which is a 40% intensity.</font color=blue>
Close. Runics give 20% Damage Increase if Exceptional. If a Runic-made weapon gets Damage Increase as a Runic property, and if the Damage Increase is greater than 9% then Exceptional Damage Increase bonus is lowered from 20% to 10%. So to get that 40% the Damage Increase property generated must be 30%. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/sick.gif

 

[Kylas]

&gt;&gt;I understand that with non-runics you get +40% with exceptional, with runics you get +20% plus any increase. So to get at least as good as a non-runic you need to get +20% intenisity which is a 40% intensity.
Close. Runics give 20% Damage Increase if Exceptional. If a Runic-made weapon gets Damage Increase as a Runic property, and if the Damage Increase is greater than 9% then Exceptional Damage Increase bonus is lowered from 20% to 10%. So to get that 40% the Damage Increase property generated must be 30%. &lt;&lt;

Another reason smiths are getting jacked.. Im seeing SOoooo many people now wielding super high end weapons from Doom champs and Artifacts I still havent seen a Valorite weapon that can comapre.

and more insulting is the dev team wont even "mention" this topic.

Dig

 

[Zardo Zap]

<blockquote><hr>


If a Runic-made weapon gets Damage Increase as a Runic property, and if the Damage Increase is greater than 9% then Exceptional Damage Increase bonus is lowered from 20% to 10%.


<hr></blockquote>
Holy toledo!

That's unbelievable. Basically if you roll damage increase on anything from bronze runic under, you have wasted a property as you can't get better than +30% (well okay 33% with bronze) with those hammers.

Even if you are using gold+ you only have about a 16% chance of a damage increase better than an exceptional weapon.

I know damage increase isn't the be all and end all, but was this really thought through. If so what were the thoughts? /php-bin/shared/images/icons/members/redwacko.gif

I try and keep positive, and runics could be so good, but the random factor makes it difficult and random /php-bin/shared/images/icons/members/cussing.gif makes it even more difficult.

Zardo in need of an injection of a bit more positiveness (or any dev comment!)

 

[Kylas]

&gt;&gt;Holy toledo!

That's unbelievable. Basically if you roll damage increase on anything from bronze runic under, you have wasted a property as you can't get better than +30% (well okay 33% with bronze) with those hammers. &lt;&lt;

Yup... Even more bad news for us..



(Hey look this important thread made it back up top!)

Dig

 

[Zardo Zap]

I notice that at the House of Commons chat it wasn't raised directly, but some of Hanse's comments weren't exactly encouraging.

It seems that the dev deam is smitten by the idea that things like night sight and mage armour can make up for lack of resist (well okay I am not being entirely fair here, but I don't feel like being fair just now /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif )

Zardo

 

[kettel]

I wish this thread was locked. I find this information a little disturbing.

 

[Zardo Zap]

<blockquote><hr>


I find this information a little disturbing.


<hr></blockquote>

Its just shocking - I remain convinced that the devs are unaware of the meaning of their programming and just how bad they have made top end hammers and valorite hammers. There is a recent post saying that someone went through two valorite hammers and did not get anything above 90% intensity. Its just shocking. Lets remind ourselves - its 1% to get 90% or above with valorite and only 0.25% to get above 95% or above.

A valorite hammers creates 5 times 15 properties (65). Of the 20 properties armour can have at least 10 of them don't have intensities (night sight) or max out relatively quickly (so mana regen has a max of 2, achieved with 50% intensity) and str increase has a maximum of 8 so maxes out at 89% intensity.

So half of the 65 properties are wasted = 33 properties left to try and beat the 90%+ intensity mark. So one in every 3 valorite hammers should have a property with 90% intensity and above. And one in every 12 valorite hammers should have an intensity of 95% and above.

Whoopy Do!

Its not that surprising that in two valorite hammers no properties above 90% were experienced.

To say the range is 50% to 100% without any more detail or even a warning that of the distribution curve is, near as dammit, deceitful.

Darn I have got angry again, I promised myself I wouldn't.

Anyway the devs seem blissfully unaware of this, people need to pester them until it clicks.

<blockquote><hr>


I wish this thread was locked


<hr></blockquote>

It would be nice if it were, but as long as people give me a post to reply to we can keep it current /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

Zardo

 

[dorkuberalles]

if mana regen is maxed at 50% intensity, why would i still make mana regen 1 items with a valorite hammer? i've made 2.

 

[mephisto113]

Actually it's maxed at 51%...
1-50 is mana regen 1
51-100 is mana regen 2

and since you have 75% chance to get a 50% intensity with your val hammer, it's no surprise there...

 

[Zardo Zap]

<blockquote><hr>


if mana regen is maxed at 50% intensity, why would i still make mana regen 1 items with a valorite hammer? i've made 2.


<hr></blockquote>
Doh! Like mephisto said (sorry sloppy thinking on my part).

So if you roll exactly 50%, you get 1 anything above it 2.

Of course with valorite, if you roll 1-50 it gets raised to 50 (exactly) so you get one.

That means 75% of valorite items give a mana regen of 1, and only 25% give one of 2.

Wonderful, innit.

Zardo

 

[BoneAR]

this is crap!

 

[Uten Ansiktet]

Going off the lack of interest/responses from the development team, one can only guess that this is the way they want it to work. *shrugs* I have quit turning in bods. Simply, I can not justify the time it takes.

 

[Zardo Zap]

Does anyone have Hanse's email address? Maybe I should email him. Heck maybe we should all email him!

Zardo

 

[Zardo Zap]

I thought this chart might help put everything in perspective

Zardo

 

[kettel]

Pukes on exe valorite 15 plate Lbod locked down. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/sick.gif

 

[Kylas]

&gt;&gt; thought this chart might help put everything in perspective &lt;&lt;

I just made a print out and Shot it about 50 times with my bow.

The picture makes it even worse then the picture I had in my head already.

Ug

dig

 

[Belganon]

And still no comment from OSI.

There is nothing fun or funny about every "game within a game" being a lottery.

Truly, these system are great for a while, but when you realize that it is next to impossible to get an excellent piece of armor or weapon from a reward that is "supposed" to give you a chance at 100% intensity, and only took several months to a year, to collect the parts for...well, it just makes me wonder what kind of sick people work for OSI.

They dropped the charges on runics saying that the new items that they could create would make up for the lack of charges.
To that, I say bull**it.

Personally, I'd rather have a bronze runic than a valorite at this point in the game. At least I know that I have a chance of making something with the bronze's top end and something possibly worth selling out of the 35 charges it currently gets.

Using a charge on a valorite hammer and getting another piece of junk is very similar to the feeling ones gets when you take a completed large smith bod to turn in, hoping for a smith scroll, or going to the tailor to get your tailor bod offer for that quarter of the day, hoping against all hope that you might get a large deed...even in cloth.

Please, lets get rid of this Lottery IQ and allow us some chance at success.