Will someone please explain how Overseers dynamics work? As in random success or fail? I have 2 fails, and I just got a Critical Fail in a recover task. The reason I ask is, all my FAILS come from Buying to Complete via Marketplace. My brain cannot fathom Pay to Fail.
Interesting you mention this. From May 1, 2020... Overseer: [Finish Now!] Causing more critical failures. I believe the Finish Now follows a different success/fail criteria. The Devs say no, but the data I've collected suggest yes. They aren't going to do anything about it. I just stopped spending DBC on Overseer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am convinced of this as well. I don't typically use DBC for overseer but I did a few times to speed up leveling to 120 (using accumulated DBC) and the failure rate was really high.
Yeah, there are several accounts of people paying to finish tasks immediately after starting and the failure rate is super high, like almost every time. I personally have never done that (pay to finish right after I start a task), so I've never seen that bug. If I pay to finish a task early, it's typically when there's less than an hour to go on the task or tasks, and I just don't want to wait. I think I've seen it fail in those situations once or twice, but definitely not every time. I don't think it's intentional. It's probably just a bug that'll never be fixed because they don't really care enough about Overseer to make sure it's working perfectly.
I was trying to use this method to help get the six buffing characters I have on one account to 120 a little faster but got really annoyed, really fast with the number of fails I was encountering - so I stopped. I'll just be eeking what little bits out that I can with regular overseer, collections, mercenary tasks and light grinding...two done, one at 118.72, one at 116.14 and two sitting idle waiting their turns.
You have solved the mystery all by yourself! Actually, one question... did you buy to complete immediately after starting the task? That's when I've seen this happen (three times, then never tried again), and what's been reported on the forums. I have done buy to complete maybe 20 other times, when there's just been a short time left on the quest (to get my quest timers back to where I want them), and those all completed successfully. I haven't done a buy to complete in almost a year and a half, so this is old data, but may be helpful.
I did not end now right away. But it was sooner that any previous uses. Here's what happened. I had awoken and having coffee while doing my routine web searches. Usually 20 mins. I then log in to EQ. Waiting for buffs in the GL, I go to my Overseer and check running tasks. To keep my tasks running concurrent, I use end now. Ok, to get to 120! I am a Molo player. Can't remember last time i grouped with real people. I do not box, kinda. I have 2 other accounts I drag around at times. They just sit there while I do all the work. So not quite boxing. N e way, Overseers is a god-send for players like me. I don't like the easy, over old-day grinding, but I'll take all I can get! My main stayed 105 for many years. I have been playing EQ before Luclin was first released. Now to be fair, and I had been meaning to do so, publicly, the two fails were rescinded and removed off my list. I also got rewards window for both. Thank-you. After my 2nd end-now fail, I just accepted that to occur, and went about my business. But today, not quite awake, first into EQ I get this big, red, threatening, CRITICAL FAIL, in my face. Dang! Only thing I thought to do was /q and go on with my day. Would you kinda make that fail notice a bit tamer? I hope ya all catch my drift. Not something life-changing. I would like to understand how it works so to better my success rating.
Agreed on all counts--and I have a bit of data. Before ToL on my server I had accumulated around 1300 Overseer quest completions, and like 6 failures. Four of those 6 failures came from early on when I paid for completions. So only 2 failures out of 1300 came from regular Overseer quests that are allowed to complete using the normal timer. One thing should be noted--a huge % of the quests I've done have >5% failure rate listed in the quest before I started it, frequently the success chance will be listed anywhere from 80-92%. The observed failure rate for me, over again--more than 1300 attempts, is less than a 0.02% failure rate if you let quests finish on their own. That means at the very least, it is highly probable the "success chance" the Overseer window displays when you start a normal Overseer quest, does not accurately reflect the real success rate for a normal quest completion--it appears that basically normal quests almost never fail. Now when ToL came out, to try and front load as much XP as possible, I was paying for Overseer quest completions and doing full completions of as many quests as possible right as they rotated each day. Doing that I accumulated something like 7-8 failures in a couple days of quests. That means when paying to complete, I failed more quests in a couple days at the start of ToL than I failed in over 1300 regular Overseer quests in the prior year. Recently (around the time of the 64 bit update) my Overseer quest statistics all reset to 0, so I don't have the hard data any longer, but it seems like the likely bug is actually that letting quests complete as normal has a bug in it and it almost cannot fail, meaning the real success chance of a "regular" Overseer completion (regardless of what the interface shows you) is > 99%. It seems like maybe the finish early for DBC option actually applies the "displayed" success chance--which I have plenty of Overseers I start with only a 75% success chance shown, which suggests it would not be unusual at all if the finish early for DBC option is actually applying the displayed odds.
Overseer percentages are almost certainly not the actual values listed, still. My fail rate at 82-92% success, never buying a speedup in the last two sets of data wipes, is hanging out at 5.555555555555555% on test (across 16 accounts, but only 1 with any regularity), and 5.4% on live (on 2 accounts). My agent disable rate has been, since implementation, roughly 3 agents per 5 quests, almost always the second or third agent in the order, never the first.
This was brought up before and the Devs claimed that buying completion does not effect the fail rate. However they are wrong! It most certainly does. I have never failed a task, EVER by letting it run it's full course. On 3 accounts, for as long as it's been out now. ALL 20 fails or so that I've ever had on the 3 accounts, came from buying completion shortly after starting the task. All I can say is at least try to wait a little bit before buying one and I seem to have a little less chance of fail. Aka, the longer a task runs, the less chance of failing. Buying completion right after starting a task seems to have around 50% chance of failure and about 25% chance of Crit failure.
I should probably explain better. From what I've seen, it's not the actual buying completion that makes it fail directly, but it does indirectly because of time. My guess is it's not supposed to work like that, but it does. Meaning time is the real factor on fail rate. The more time you try to buy out, the higher the fail chance. At least that's been my experience thus far. Facts: 10's of thousands of tasks completed on 3 accounts 100% of fails came when buying completion 0% fails ever letting tasks run their full course 90-95% of the fails I've had came from buying completion right after starting it. (the other 5-10% came from buying completion near the end of the task) 100% of Crit fails came from buying completion right after starting it.
In my experience, when I let the quest run it's course naturally, I have about a 1 in 3000 chance of failure. When I pay to finish early (like skipping the last hour or less) I have about a 1 in 20 chance of failure. I never pay to finish right after I start and I always run quests at 80+% success chance... and mostly at 88+%
This is probably gonna ruin it for everyone; but the pattern I've seen across 9 accounts is that failures only happen if you keep the same character logged in for the duration of the overseer quest. There is probably a bug in the saving/loading of overseer data after logging out that makes failure extra unlikely. If you leave a character logged in sitting in PoK over several days only switching to the EQ client to do overseer (or advancing the clock with DBC) you get the higher, probably correct, failure rates. You might try dropping to character select, and reloading before paying to finish.
QFT. I never stay logged in, and do Overseer first thing when I do log in. Pre-patch (2-3 months ago, forget which one), failure rate was about .1% (yes, really, about 1 in a 1000). Since that recent-ish patch, they changed something, and now it's about 1%. Can't give exact percentages, since they keep wiping out the stats on the last Overseer tab
I do overseer then i log off (baz offline trader) failures are quit annoying though. Stupid agents leaving quest and when your at 20% to success its not a pretty picture.
I've tried pay to finish twice, both resulted in the only failures I had up to that point. Never again will I give money for this tripe.
