Resist "streak" anecdotes, anyone?

[Tecmos Deception]

TLDR: I'm annoyed enough by having an apparent 1 in 2500 resist streak happen twice in the last several hours of gameplay that I scoured logs and parses and posted this during med breaks over the last hour. Commiserate with me.



I feel like I notice resists come in streaks. Anyone else notice similar, or have data?

I just had 3 resists in a row on a level 30 mob (I'm 35), then a success, then a 4th resist. This annoyed me to no end, so I looked in my log for other recent resists. (I actually started to type up a post like this a couple days ago because I was feeling the same way after a couple of resist streaks in short succession after a couple hours with very few and scattered resists, but I lost the interest in looking at it in much detail before I actually got around to it.) It'd been 26 minutes since a resist. And I had to go back another 39 minutes to find the previous one to that. And another 29 minutes to find another before that. And this is killing 1 mob every 5 minutes on average, with 3-4 spellcasts per fight.

So I fired up Gamparse to look for more detail on resists, since I've been playing for 35% of level 35 this morning and have quite a few kill racked up to look at, and I bolded stuff happening back to back:


[Mon Nov 18 07:29:06 2019] Your target resisted the Walking Sleep spell.
[Mon Nov 18 07:29:10 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.
[Mon Nov 18 07:38:24 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.
[Mon Nov 18 08:10:07 2019] Your target resisted the Scourge spell.
[Mon Nov 18 09:04:42 2019] Your target resisted the Root spell.
[Mon Nov 18 09:20:32 2019] Your target resisted the Scourge spell.
[Mon Nov 18 09:26:24 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.
[Mon Nov 18 09:42:17 2019] Your target resisted the Scourge spell.
[Mon Nov 18 09:42:29 2019] Your target resisted the Scourge spell.
[Mon Nov 18 10:11:24 2019] Your target resisted the Scourge spell.
[Mon Nov 18 10:50:07 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.
[Mon Nov 18 11:16:07 2019] Your target resisted the Walking Sleep spell.
[Mon Nov 18 11:16:16 2019] Your target resisted the Walking Sleep spell.
[Mon Nov 18 11:16:20 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.
[Mon Nov 18 11:16:34 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.


So there was only that one big streak of 3 (which was part of 4 resists in 5 casts, 3 resist, 1 stuck, 1 resist), and one more streak of 2 (and a time with 2 resists in 3 casts, resist, stuck, resist). This is out of 75 envenomed breaths, 22 roots, 58 scourges, 49 walking sleeps, and 27 winter's roars. Average overall resist rate of 6.5%. Winter's roar had no full resists, nothing else stands out individually imo. Ignoring winter's roar, average resist rate was 7.3%.

So that doesn't seem all that streaky really, right? Only 2 actual occurrences of back to back resists in nearly 4 hours of grinding exp.

But the chances of that 3 resists in a row are only 1 in 2500 (is it a lower or higher chance to see 4 resists in 5 casts at 7.3% average resist rate? I'm unclear on how to calculate that)!


Yesterday:

[Sun Nov 17 21:13:57 2019] Your target resisted the Scourge spell.
[Sun Nov 17 21:14:11 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.
[Sun Nov 17 21:29:06 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.
[Sun Nov 17 21:29:12 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.
[Sun Nov 17 21:29:22 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.
[Sun Nov 17 21:38:12 2019] Your target resisted the Walking Sleep spell.
[Sun Nov 17 22:14:59 2019] Your target resisted the Scourge spell.

Another 1 in 2500 "jackpot" but in a much shorter session? Same NPCs, same level for me?


I don't know. Maybe I'm just nuts. But I've always FELT like resists came in streaks. And seeing a .000389% thing happening twice in under 5 hours of play, just 250ish spellcasts or so? It stood out to me. I know "RNG is RNG" ... but still.

As I continue grinding through 35 on the same mobs, I'll keep an eye on it and post the rest of the info later.

[Tecmos Deception]

[Mon Nov 18 12:52:45 2019] Your target resisted the Walking Sleep spell.
[Mon Nov 18 12:52:49 2019] Your target resisted the Envenomed Breath spell.
[Mon Nov 18 12:52:54 2019] Your target resisted the Walking Sleep spell.

Yeah. Resists must have some kind of streak code built into them.

[Danth]

Most everything "random" on P1999 tends to be similarly streak-prone. I regard it as most likely a quirk of the random number generator system used by the emulator.

Danth

[Tecmos Deception]

Most everything "random" on P1999 tends to be similarly streak-prone. I regard it as most likely a quirk of the random number generator system used by the emulator.

Danth

Yeah, this makes sense as I think about it.

Practicing divination? No skillups for 2 whole mana bars, then you get 4 in a row. Facetanking low blue cons? No problem at all for 40 fights, then you hear the ripping-cloth-you-just-got-obliterated sound 10 times in a row and you wonder if you're going to survive. Etc.

[Uuruk]

Did you try RMTing first?

[oldhead]

I swear there is code that when you are lom you fizzle more as well.

[Videri]

It’s my understanding individual mobs can have varying statistics and resistances, as well as levels. If you got a higher-level mob and/or a higher-MR mob, it might be more likely to produce a streak of resists, or at least a streak.

[Tecmos Deception]

It’s my understanding individual mobs can have varying statistics and resistances, as well as levels. If you got a higher-level mob and/or a higher-MR mob, it might be more likely to produce a streak of resists, or at least a streak.

Levels can vary on some stuff, like "a spectre," or even on named NPCs like "Misty Storyswapper." But Guard Kilson and Guard Pryde always are level 30 and always have the same max hits and hp and stuff. But if they could have variable resistances, that'd be news to me and it'd possibly explain streaks of resists or other things like that.

[Videri]

Source: remembering that someone said something about that being a thing sometime.
:D

What I mean to say is, perhaps someone who knows can confirm. Paging Daldaen, Wenai, Secrets, Haynar?

[Donkey Hotay]

Tradeskill skillups also occur in groups. I am half-convinced that there is a time window involved where skillups are gated and then blocked until another interval has passed. Swimming skill shows this behavior as well.

I've had two consecutive Gate collapses occur, resulting in a fatality. I would guesstimate half a dozen overall on Green across two casters.

On a tangent from oldhead's observation, on P99 (presumably EQemu in general) you'll notice that if you attempt to cast with what appears to be just enough mana, the client will start the cast, poll the server, then correct your mana to a lower number and interrupt the cast with "insufficient mana". Fair enough but it will continue to do this even if you wait a tick and will continue this indefinitely unless you wait two full ticks.
On live, I recall the server returning spell fizzle chains in this scenario so that the fizzle dropped your mana total lower than the spell cost and continued to do so until you had sufficient excess mana.

Videri's theory has a proponent here. Some otherwise identical mobs just resist more.

[fadetree]

The RNG in use is inherently streaky. I would really like to see the implementation of it in source code, and also how they gather and process entropy. Anyone who has ever done tradeskills can see that it goes like this:
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
'you have gotten better!'
'you have gotten better!'
no 'you have gotten better'
'you have gotten better!'
'you have gotten better!'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'
no 'you have gotten better'

and so on. Whatever the implementation of the RNG is, it's not very good.

[cd288]

Tradeskill skillups also occur in groups. I am half-convinced that there is a time window involved where skillups are gated and then blocked until another interval has passed. Swimming skill shows this behavior as well.

I've had two consecutive Gate collapses occur, resulting in a fatality. I would guesstimate half a dozen overall on Green across two casters.

On a tangent from oldhead's observation, on P99 (presumably EQemu in general) you'll notice that if you attempt to cast with what appears to be just enough mana, the client will start the cast, poll the server, then correct your mana to a lower number and interrupt the cast with "insufficient mana". Fair enough but it will continue to do this even if you wait a tick and will continue this indefinitely unless you wait two full ticks.
On live, I recall the server returning spell fizzle chains in this scenario so that the fizzle dropped your mana total lower than the spell cost and continued to do so until you had sufficient excess mana.

Videri's theory has a proponent here. Some otherwise identical mobs just resist more.

Maybe there's a rough target percentage for things like resist rates and it just compensates to keep it within that percentage range of occurrence whenever it goes too long without hitting a resist? Doubtful though I suppose.

[fadetree]

yeah the grouping consistency almost makes me think there is some kind of persistence or other incremental stuff going on in the chain, because if that is just straight up the output of the RNG itself, it's terrible.

[Zheta]

Swimming skill is probably the easiest way to see this in action.

[larper99]

I always thought it was some sort of macro killer. In UO, people would "coffee-cup" a skill to maximum: Literally resting a coffee cup on a keyboard to auto macro a skill, and go to bed.

I always thought it was intentional, for non-combat skills. What I hate is the string of misses while melee-ing. ESPECIALLY when the enemy is fleeing. It seems harder to hit them from behind than it is from in front.

[fadetree]

It has occurred to me that it might have been designed to be streaky...I suppose it's possible. Without streaks you'd get a nice smooth, predictable distribution, and you wouldn't have surprise streaks of 6 fails/fizzles/misses/collapses in a row very often. If the distribution is spiky then you never know when you are going to get slapped down hard by a bunch of sudden failures...it makes the game a bit harder and in a sense 'more random' than a nice smooth bell curve.

[flacidpenguin]

Got two fear resists in a row on treeants in SK, died to being nuked to death.

[Tecmos Deception]

It has occurred to me that it might have been designed to be streaky...I suppose it's possible. Without streaks you'd get a nice smooth, predictable distribution, and you wouldn't have surprise streaks of 6 fails/fizzles/misses/collapses in a row very often. If the distribution is spiky then you never know when you are going to get slapped down hard by a bunch of sudden failures...it makes the game a bit harder and in a sense 'more random' than a nice smooth bell curve.

Hmm. Maybe. My poor little troll shaman mana pool can't stand a bunch of resists or else I'd try fighting even cons for a few hours. I kinda suspect that I won't suddenly see streaks of 5-6 resists in a row even from mobs that tend to resist 20% of my spells... Even though true randomness would mean that's more common than the 3-resist streaks I've been seeing on low blues. Maybe it's got a bit of quirkyness to the rng for better and worse.


I always thought it was some sort of macro killer. In UO, people would "coffee-cup" a skill to maximum: Literally resting a coffee cup on a keyboard to auto macro a skill, and go to bed.

I always thought it was intentional, for non-combat skills. What I hate is the string of misses while melee-ing. ESPECIALLY when the enemy is fleeing. It seems harder to hit them from behind than it is from in front.

For sure you won't miss 15 times in a row until the mob is fleeing towards his buddies at a snail's pace, then you will miss miss miss miss.

[larper99]

For sure you won't miss 15 times in a row until the mob is fleeing towards his buddies at a snail's pace, then you will miss miss miss miss.

You either miss or you hit for minimum.

[Polixa]

Getting streaky resists could be due to mobs spawning with a range of possible resist values, instead of being fixed each time. Once in a while that same L30 mob spawns with elevated resists?

Not a serious suggestion really, but would we ever know without sight of the code?

[Waldo73]

Had snare resist 8 or 9 times in a row on an even-con Bull Elephant yesterday. Resists in general seem slightly more frequent than classic. A bit surprised to see folks feeling like resists are less on p99.

[Tecmos Deception]

Had snare resist 8 or 9 times in a row on an even-con Bull Elephant yesterday. Resists in general seem slightly more frequent than classic. A bit surprised to see folks feeling like resists are less on p99.

I think the issue people have with claiming resists are too low here is that they're talking about blue cons (often LOW blue cons) that have been debuffed. If you throw even a mid-level tash or malo on a mob 6-8 levels below you, it will stay rooted forever, it'll almost never resist any magic-based spell, it'll have a long average charm duration, etc. But they just stretch the fact that a low blue mob with -100 magic resist from tash, malo, and -mr gear isn't too hard to charm and is trivial to CC into "MR resist are too low!!!!!" across the board.

An even con without a debuff will resist the shit out of you for sure.


I've gotten most of the way through 35 today now. 550ish spellcasts total now, and resist rate has climbed a little from the 7.3% earlier. It's more like 9% now. So my 1 in 2500 resist streak really is more like a 1 in 2000 I guess. It has happened yet another time today now though :)

[Nirgon]

There's a first cast bug with pvp on blue or something.

Big stun or cascading darkness will land on high MR first cast. Not sure how to do it. Great for botb.

Dunno how that might impact pve.

[SharkStomper]

My theory is the server is actively trying to kill me. When things go wrong it seems more things are likely to go wrong until the server is successful and I'm DRT.