Avatar of Fear spawn rate post merge

[silverbolt]

we had 20/21 PHs. 1 AoF had claws. This normal or did they nerf drop rate because they're concerned with how many people have MS, Rubi, and guise already?

[Albanwr]

drop rates have not been changed...

[Pootle]

https://i.insider.com/51b8e89ceab8eaa87d000009?width=400&format=jpeg&auto=webp

EDIT: ok i fail at making this image thing work.
But its a guy in a Tin Foil Hat and would have been hilarious, but i ruined it.

[drdrakes]

I once experienced 27ph and then claws.

[Tecmos Deception]

Standard P99 RNG, I'm afraid.

A 10% spawn rate going 27 spawns with nothing and then 3 named spawns in a row is par for the course here, despite the unlikeliness of something like that happening on a regular basis if it were truly random.

[Phaezed-Reality]

AoF literally the most troll spawn, i have had the opposite, over 40 hours we must have had like 30 AoF's, all claws. Was hilarious. 10/10 would go crazy again for rubi bp.

[tommydgun]

"drop rates / spawn rates have not changed"... OP i experienced the same thing trying to get my mask the other day. First day the assassin didnt even spawn for 16 hours and then the next day when i finally got my mask i was number 1 on the list and we had 0 masks in 15h 30m but 3 spawns. in my time observing spawns that is 32/32 PHs and then 28/31 PHs on a supposed 20-25% spawn rate. i know people like to use the argument "RNG BUDDY HEEEE HEEEE" or "thats a small sample size", but 63 spawns isn't really that small of a sample size statistically for a single random observation. maybe if we were talking sample size for a multivariate linear regression, but i am sure the uneducated will try to tell me im wrong.

[Tecmos Deception]

"drop rates / spawn rates have not changed"... OP i experienced the same thing trying to get my mask the other day. First day the assassin didnt even spawn for 16 hours and then the next day when i finally got my mask i was number 1 on the list and we had 0 masks in 15h 30m but 3 spawns. in my time observing spawns that is 32/32 PHs and then 28/31 PHs on a supposed 20-25% spawn rate. i know people like to use the argument "RNG BUDDY HEEEE HEEEE" or "thats a small sample size", but 63 spawns isn't really that small of a sample size statistically for a single random observation. maybe if we were talking sample size for a multivariate linear regression, but i am sure the uneducated will try to tell me im wrong.

Like I said, p99 RNG is just super, super streaky. It's come up a few times since green launch on the forums and basically nobody disagrees. Way too many streaks (3 resists in a row on a mob with an overall 8% resist rate, 30 PHs in a row on a mob with a 10-30% spawn chance, no skillups for 15 minutes then 3 in 15 seconds, etc) happen on a daily basis instead of once in a blue moon to believe that the RNG is truly be random.

[tommydgun]

tecmos you cant be serious man... you cant code "streaky rng"... the rates either just arent as good/bad as you think they are or the "streakyness" happens less frequently than people claim. "streakyness" when related to average rates only really applies to sports where players legitimately perform better in short intervals of time (e.g., a batter hitting 5/5 in a game when he is a career .200 batter). things that are computer calculated will always diverge to their mean over time... you cant tell me 63 spawns over two days is just "hee hee streaky rng bruh always been like this!" the wiki is just probably wrong and the spawn rate is probably 10% or 5%

[Tecmos Deception]

tecmos you cant be serious man... you cant code "streaky rng"... the rates either just arent as good/bad as you think they are or the "streakyness" happens less frequently than people claim. "streakyness" when related to average rates only really applies to sports where players legitimately perform better in short intervals of time (e.g., a batter hitting 5/5 in a game when he is a career .200 batter). things that are computer calculated will always diverge to their mean over time... you cant tell me 63 spawns over two days is just "hee hee streaky rng bruh always been like this!" the wiki is just probably wrong and the spawn rate is probably 10% or 5%

Do you know how RNG works?

The shit is easily verified. You can fight the same exact mob forever, have an average resist rate on a given resist type of 10%, but still see 3 resists in a row happen every couple hours for days on end. The odds of that happening are worse than me getting hit by a meteor before I finish typing this sentence. Either the RNG is not very random or there is some mechanic at work that accomplishes a similar result (like variable resistances or a specific streak code).

[Furitor]

Using statistics on Random Number Generators isn't 100% correct. You can statistic all you want, but you can't avoid pseudo-random number generator flaws.

Here are a few topics if you care:
https://www.kdnuggets.com/2017/06/surprising-complexity-randomness.html
https://www.random.org/randomness/

Plenty of topics showing that people try to avoid "streakiness" in their own games:
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/160217/how-to-use-moving-average-to-avoid-lucky-streaks-in-rng
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/11217/how-do-i-avoid-too-lucky-unlucky-streaks-in-random-number-generation

Depending on how things are coded, you can even exploit randomness very easily depending on the game. Obviously, EQ would be fairly difficult, but for games that rely on save states and so on you can exploit it to oblivion (Pokemon is one such example).

So yes you *can* cause the software to have streaking RNG as by nature RNG isn't true random and therefore you can't just use statistics in a "perfect world" scenario to say "no you can't code streaky rng".

Now whether this is true on P99 remains to be seen as psychology also comes into play here, especially with tedious camps that mess with your brains like Manastone or Rubi BP camps.

[bubur]

they're not micromanaging spawn timers

[Phaezed-Reality]

Now whether this is true on P99 remains to be seen as psychology also comes into play here, especially with tedious camps that mess with your brains like Manastone or Rubi BP camps.


seems like spell rng, droprate rng, among other things are all the same rng code, and when item drops, or fizzle, or gate collapse or charm break, it all happens at once for a few and then goes back to being random. every single experience of mine has been this repeatedly.

edit: tecmos does a better job at explaining it than me.

[Pootle]

Have to support Tecmos here, as a long time tradeskiller both on live (back in the day) and here on P99, I have experienced the RNG's streakyness many times.

If anyone wants to test this I suggest getting a tradeskill up to around 150+ then gathering supplies for 100 or 200 attempts and burn through them.

[Furitor]

I would assume all the "action" oriented RNG is the same (combat, casting spells, fizzles, charm breaks), but drop-rates and spawn rates may not be. Depending on how you seed any of the aforementioned you can run into some fun bugs.

That said -- I actually personally have experienced what Tecmos has with spell casts (fizzles especially).

I've tried a few things like stopping casting as soon as I see two fizzles to see if I would get a third one 30 secs or 1 minute later (and I did not fizzle). However, we'd need more testing here. If that's the case, then there might be some sort of clock seeding bug (if they're using the clock for a seed, which would be the easiest thing and also have it's own flaws).

Again, without seeing the source, it's very hard to tell (even seeing the source it might be hard to tell lol).

Then again... the streakiness might just be classic lol.

[Tecmos Deception]

Sense heading fails a ton of the time the first time you use it, even at 200 skill. Then it works 20 times in a row. Not random.

And about everything else feels similar.


Then again... the streakiness might just be classic lol.

Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it.

I don't really mean to sound like I'm complaining, it's just hard to get out of the RPG mindset that stuff is randomly determined and expect goofy streaks, even after all these years of p99.

[Lordgordon]

There's actually a very little man on the other side of the screen deciding if you've earned your pixels or not

[tommydgun]

Do you even know how it works? You are saying 3 resists in a row... that doesnt compare to 32 PHs in a row observed back to back days... the cumulative probability of that many failed named spawns in a row is less than 0.01%. That happening twice in two days is not random lol. But trying to explain math to you is clearly impossible

[Tecmos Deception]

Do you even know how it works? You are saying 3 resists in a row... that doesnt compare to 32 PHs in a row observed back to back days... the cumulative probability of that many failed named spawns in a row is less than 0.01%. That happening twice in two days is not random lol. But trying to explain math to you is clearly impossible

You can fight the same exact mob forever, have an average resist rate on a given resist type of 10%, but still see 3 resists in a row happen every couple hours for days on end.

You're talking about a "less than .01%" chance thing happening twice in two days. My example was a .1% chance thing happening every couple hours ad infinitum (aka a streak of 3 resists happening every ~100 spellcasts instead of the every 1000 you'd expect, on average). My example was inspired by actual logs and a thread I made a couple months ago, and IIRC my overall resist rate on a given mob was actually only 7-8% but I still saw 3 resists happen a few times and 4 resists in 5 casts happen once in the matter of only like 5-6 hours of play.

They're both examples of how what we call "RNG" on p99, whether it concerns spawns or drop chances or spell resists or melee swings or tradeskill skillups or whatever, is streakier than it should be if it were actually random. And it seems streaky enough to me, just on a gut feeling anyway, that it is unlikely to just be a pseudo-RNG that is accidentally a bit wonky.

[fadetree]

Tec and the others are right. Anyone who has done any tradeskilling can clearly see a repeated pattern-- long string of fails, then a couple successes almost one after the other, then another string of fails. This is so consistent that I am almost convinced there's some internal state information associated with the generation process...meaning that it's not just a bare RNG, there's some other processing going on in the code.
We don't even know whether the same RNG process is used for everything, or there are different routines for different activities. The last time this came up I was going to log in and do like one thousand /rand 1000, then process the log and feed it into a randomness analyser to get the chi-squared and other measures of how good the randomness is, but I got tired and wandered off.
I was also thinking that we could look at the code-- isn't the stock emu code available somewhere? I doubt that P99 would have custom re-engineered the RNG. Looking at code could explain a lot.

[Tecmos Deception]

but I got tired and wandered off.

Ok Towelie :D


I'm gonna log onto red (because why not?) and do a bunch of randoms while I sit at jailmaster.

[tommydgun]

You guys just dont get my argument. It's ok. There are approximately 48 assassin or ph spawns per day at a "25%" chance this would be on average 12 assassins per day in the long run. This isnt even close to happening lol. The rate is clearly not 25% or even 20%. I'm just saying it is much lower lol. Not here to argue about your 3 fizzles in a row over the span of 5 seconds. I'm talking about observations over days.

[Jubal]

You guys just dont get my argument. It's ok. There are approximately 48 assassin or ph spawns per day at a "25%" chance this would be on average 12 assassins per day in the long run. This isnt even close to happening lol. The rate is clearly not 25% or even 20%. I'm just saying it is much lower lol. Not here to argue about your 3 fizzles in a row over the span of 5 seconds. I'm talking about observations over days.

I did 32 hours at assassin to get my guise. Saw 6 assassins during that time, which is a spawn rate of about 4%. Half had dirks.

[DMN]

I did 32 hours at assassin to get my guise. Saw 6 assassins during that time, which is a spawn rate of about 4%. Half had dirks.

that's actually around 12% spawn rate.

[tommydgun]

What is that math? 32 hours is roughly 64 assassins with 6 spawns that's 6÷64 which is 9.375% spawn rate. I actually believe the true rate is 10% so this checks out.

[Glasken]

If you have ever had the misfortune of seeing 3 manastones back to back, followed by 38 hours of nothing but frogs and the occasional bag...yeah, its streaky.

True RNG does not exist on computers. Several posts back has some good articles for those who are curious. Consider the time EQ was written as well.

It is a well known experience by EQ players that even trivial camps or encounters can sometimes go terribly wrong due to a long string of seemingly impossible resists, early breaks, lucky full damage hits etc..its all just part of the game, flawed or otherwise.

[drdrakes]

Manastone currently approaching 40 hours without a drop. All I can do is bitch now.

[Octopath]

Manastone currently approaching 40 hours without a drop. All I can do is bitch now.

Stay positive. You are #1! Once it drops you are forever done

[Nirgon]

Stay positive. You are #1! Once it drops you are forever done

Then you get to camp other items and maybe socialize while doing so.

EverQuest.

[Octopath]

Then you get to camp other items and maybe socialize while doing so.

EverQuest.

I dunno I made some really good friends from my time spent at manastone camp. Strong bonds were formed

[drdrakes]

Stay positive. You are #1! Once it drops you are forever done

Thanks for this! Been at camp for 72.5 hours now with just a few naps cause my my wife loves me, for now.