I give up.

[Tanivar]

Coming up with the grinds llike some of this has been is just, well, I don't have words I can think of that would work on stratics...

Fitting words would be so colorful they would make the brightest glaring neon colors ever created seem pale dull and lifeless.

 

[Kabraxis]

Except that we had a Dev TELL US 10 years ago that the Pseudo RNG was broken, after he examined the RNG in better detail. To paraphrase Draconi

Most games don't use the "programming language" RNGs - partially due to the faults with them. They typically use their own RNGs, which add in more steps to further randomize the results. However, if they use an existing RNG "engine", they might have to pay royalties for its use.

UO's RNG is a variation on a common (effectively public domain) Pseudo-RNG type that is often used as a programming assignment for 200-300 level college programming classes for CS majors. Variants also appear to be commonly used in a sizable number of Facebook games, since it was basically free to play with.

If samples are taken over millions, the raw results give the false appearance of a fair RNG.
Examining smaller periods of samples within the larger arc, though, shows where it fails. It tends to have small-scale streaks, but the streaks can happen at ANY point along the curve of results.
Therefore, When you take the usual number of samples to look for a bias, all the streaks tend to cancel out - but that doesn't help the guy who just failed 5 times in a row on a 99% smelt chance for an ore type, or gets hit 8 times in a row despite his attacker only having a 50% chance to hit. That something could go the other way at a later date as "balance" (in an unrelated field, usually) isn't consolation.

Draconi started investigating after we (several of us that were math or CS degree holders or pursuing those majors in college) told him of the anomalous results were seeing. He eventually found the root, and started developing a replacement RNG for UO, that he was testing in his spare time, and planned to bring up for testing as soon as the next development arc (Stygian Abyss/EC replacing Kingdom Reborn?) went live. Except, that's when EA laid him off, and he never had the chance.

I agree with you, although i believe that if the RNG engine is implemented in the language distribution there is no need for royalties since it's usually the one that is, as you put it, public domain. To be fair i have experience with mainly open source languages, and some .NET which is going partially open source as we speak. I believe there might be a solution using Fisher - Yates shuffle algorithm (a.k.a. Knuth shuffle) which can provide unbiased results. I'm gonna fiddle around with it now.

 

[railshot]

The RNG can not be broken, C++ and pretty much every semi descent programming language has some sort of which obeys the same algorithm. It is not true RNG it is Pseudo RNG which means that the things we experience here, are expected and not abnormal at all.

I am aware that all those RNGs work off a clock or some other constantly changing variable. But I assure you, they very well can be broken. All it takes is one one UO developer deciding to "improve" it.

 

[Whyterose]

Ok on Oceania, been fishing up mibs for days now trying to get Kalens staff. (I had 40 mibs at the start of the process and figured that would be plenty) I am now up to 129 mibs fished up, for zip. I have 0 mibs now and basically give up.

It is the most soul destroying thing I have ever done. I want to be doing other parts of the arc here but frankly have gotten so pissed off with this whole moronic system that I seriously do not know if it is worth the aggravation. @Kyronix is this working as intended? That a person can fish up the staff on 1 (one) mib and others spend hour after hour after hour doing the same thing for nothing?

I am out of mibs now and none available to buy on the shard, I have purchased 200k worth of salvage hooks and gone through the process of spending hours chucking them into the water and killing the mobs to get more mibs.

I thought maybe the char was bugged, so went to iver's rounding and killed undead for the caretakers key which I got in 5 mins. I can't stone the fishing skill to another char as my fisher is 120 fishing skill and I don't have another 120 scroll to put the skill on another char.

If anyone on Ocenia can get one of these staff's please msg me.

I have never experienced anything that has pissed me off more in this game than this. I seriously wonder why anything is designed like this instead of there being a hard coded 'limit' (ie get it between 0-20 attempts) or something so that players can actually progress at reasonable speed through quests like this.

I have all the other bits to hand in but I am not gonna spend another minute on this and am totally over it.

I have given up on this event as well, I do not have hours and hours to try to fish up this Staff. After spending several hours fishing up SOS's and running out of SOS's I decided this just isn't fun anymore, its a game and its suppose to be fun. I am at peace knowing I will not complete the event before it ends, and I just don't care if I do anymore.

 

[Jovi]

Don't worry about the sos and pagan slayer so much... it's only to get a title and non equipment reward. The only thing really useful is the Magery spellbook with high ssi and only a handful mages carry them in part 4. Once they are killed no one bothers to finish the spawn and fight the titan. I didn't even use my pagan slayer more than 2 times, just a pet will do. All the time wasted in part 2 is not worth it. Currently it's evening time for my shard and no one doing the invasion. This is bad.


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[railshot]

Don't worry about the sos and pagan slayer so much... it's only to get a title and non equipment reward. The only thing really useful is the Magery spellbook with high ssi and only a handful mages carry them in part 4. Once they are killed no one bothers to finish the spawn and fight the titan. I didn't even use my pagan slayer more than 2 times, just a pet will do. All the time wasted in part 2 is not worth it. Currently it's evening time for my shard and no one doing the invasion. This is bad.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Yep, I am seeing this too. Fewer and fewer people are bothering to show up.

I think one possible solution would be to give warrior general something like 1 in 3 (not lower if you want to have an effect) chance to drop a slayer spell book.

 

[BeaIank]

Yep, I am seeing this too. Fewer and fewer people are bothering to show up.

I think one possible solution would be to give warrior general something like 1 in 3 (not lower if you want to have an effect) chance to drop a slayer spell book.

This, except I would suggest a 1 in 2 chance.
Cora has a 1 in 3 chance of giving a drop and the last 15 I have done didn't drop anything...

 

[Uriah Heep]

This, except I would suggest a 1 in 2 chance.
Cora has a 1 in 3 chance of giving a drop and the last 15 I have done didn't drop anything...

That's just a streak in the RNG. Nothing wrong there, just a streak. In about another 1000 Cora's it will level out to that 1 in 3 avg.

 

[railshot]

This, except I would suggest a 1 in 2 chance.
Cora has a 1 in 3 chance of giving a drop and the last 15 I have done didn't drop anything...

Oh yeah. When I said "1 in 3" I meant in real world probabilities, not in UO math.

 

[Tyrath]

On the bright side of fewer people doing it, when you do get a titan to spawn it is a lot easier to get in the top damager category than when there are 50 other people whacking at it.

UO math is very much like Pa Kettle Math when it comes to odds, chances and the RNG.

 

[Jovi]

On the bright side of fewer people doing it, when you do get a titan to spawn it is a lot easier to get in the top damager category than when there are 50 other people whacking at it.

UO math is very much like Pa Kettle Math when it comes to odds, chances and the RNG.

Any idea what the reward in part 5 is? A banner, title deed or cloak that says I am the TOP scorer. This doesn't entice me and my friends to kill so many generals just to get to it.


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[Basara]

Don't worry about the sos and pagan slayer so much... it's only to get a title and non equipment reward. The only thing really useful is the Magery spellbook with high ssi and only a handful mages carry them in part 4. Once they are killed no one bothers to finish the spawn and fight the titan. I didn't even use my pagan slayer more than 2 times, just a pet will do. All the time wasted in part 2 is not worth it. Currently it's evening time for my shard and no one doing the invasion. This is bad.

You need to find a better shard.

We always kill everything, though as a small shard already it might take 2-3 hours per invasion to get to a titan, and 5 minutes to kill a titan. I've gotten 5 spellbooks so far, and none with over 30% SDI, though 4 of the 5 have been slayers (Demon, Undead, Dragon and Flame)

On the original subject, I noticed something on the one staff I've gotten SOS.

I did about 20-25 SOS before I got mine.
But, on all but the last one (literally the last I had), I got close to the spot where the chest was, and pulled it up on the first or second cast nearly every time.
The last one, I started outside the success radius around the point given for it, and fished my way toward it using my macro that was designed to move me from resource square to resource square, fishing about 10 times after stopping. After going through a couple of squares, and still almost a full degree from the SOS location, I got the chest with the staff.
I'm beginning to think that they appended the staff chance to the wrong line of code or wrong part of a line - so that the greater the chance of fishing the chest up, the lower the chance of it having the staff. But, I don't have the additional SOS to test.

 

[skett]

Sounds like a good theory on the sos

But I think they made a change I went out and got after 17 went the next sos spot right on top of it went bed logged the next day cast once got onther one. So 2 with 18 sos after doing hundreds to only get a few.