BTW, Gowron -
A standard deviation of 6+ is fairly abnormal, for the range of numbers being tested. The equation for determining the type caught SHOULD by all accounts be a normal distribution, and this is an indicator that there's something wrong. Try running the results through a normal distribution curve, and look at all the outliers that result.
That there was about a 3% difference between normal crab & normal lobster in popps' sample, and 1/5 as much difference in Kas' sample (only 50% larger) would indicate that something skewed popps' numbers of one of those types, and that it's probably a 40% chance of the 12 named types (or, 3.3333%, or 1/30 to be more exact), and each of those being equally likely.
Still, by the time I was approaching 1200 & 1800+ samples when testing BODs after the 2008 changes, the expected numbers were already closing with that from the actual data (and were within hundredths of a percent, if their chance of occurring allowed them to be in the dozens like the above crabs/lobsters). I'm not seeing that type of convergence in popps' & Kas' samples, which still show differences of around a half percent, up to 1% or more (in popps' smaller sample).
Most likely, it's that stupid RNG that they're planning to replace (that is prone to streaks at all points along the curve) that is causing the majority of the issue. Over a sample of hundreds of thousands, or more, the streaks will start to balance each other out - but most fishers, due to the nature of the trap fishing, are at less than 1-5% of that amount.
But, that multiple people seem to be getting hit hardest in the types they need to catch most urgently, indicates circumstantially that someone might have attempted to code a bonus for that type during the development of High Seas, and made an error (resulting in a penalty). It might even be something not officially in the code (left over from internal testing), but believed (in error) to have been removed or commented out.
It could also mean that the streaks of quests asking for similar fish types comes from part of the RNG seed being based on some factor that is different from character to character, but relatively constant (but slow-changing over weeks) for each specific character, allowing a synergy between the streaks of catching certain types, and getting quests for other types, to lead to repeated shortfalls of a few types - but those types end up changing a few weeks later, as the RNG seed alters.
A example from my own fishing is that initially I was being bombarded with quests for spiney & hummer lobsters, but none were asking for Shovel-nose Lobsters or Apple Crabs. However, I was catching twice more shovel-nose lobsters and apple crabs than any other given types, and practically no Spineys, with Hummers being about the expected rate. Now, I'm not getting any hummer quests, spiney & apple quests are "normal", and I got 4 quests out of my last 8 wanting shovel nose, and an equal number wanting dungeness. I was able to fill all the shovel-nose quests with the pile I had on hand (I had over 100 Shovel nose before I'd caught more than 50 of anything other than unnamed stuff), but since Dungeness jumped from "catching about what I needed" to "everybody wants them", I'm now 28 crabs from finishing two quests, after fishing for a week to finish 2 others (having used up all the ones on hand the week before).
