Every single critical failure I have experienced is from using Finish Now. I have 9 critical failures and 10 failures. Every quest I have critically failed on has been 91%+ Success (a couple of which were 97%) , except for one, which was 88% Success. It doesn't seem to matter what the quest duration is. I have seen this happen on 6h, 12h, 24h, 36h, 48h quests. Is there some mechanism that increases fail rate when spending DBC to finish an Overseer quest?
Purchasing early quest completion and completing quests naturally calls the same code / success rolling. Looking over how critical failures are calculated, I don't see anything that looks wrong, but if you have more details about when you got critical failures (log time, server, character name) I can check.
It seems odd to have as many failures as I have seen across a spread of accounts on missions with a high percentage rate of success. Sort of like the lesser the chance of having a failure the more likely it is going to happen. The agent selection is good, it meets the bonus attributes and they were totally incompetent. Like they went out drinking instead. To have the same thing multiplied across other players seems weird. Like it is an accelerated rate of failure because there were no recovery quests. Add to that my concerns about doing conversions so I can even just have the agents to be able to do some of the missions I am getting now. Logs don't show the failures or incapacitation so no way to do a statistical analysis anyway. It's like in Discworld the hero succeeds even though the odds are so high against it but in reverse.
I have almost everything to level 3 on 6 accounts and it definitely "feels" like the failure happens more frequently as the levels have gone up, regardless of success rate. It also "feels" like I get more failure when I spend DB cash to finish a quest. However...when I consider how I tee off the missions..the success/failure count "feels" in line with the average reported success rate on the quests. Of course, until I bother to track the data, this is just more anecdotal fluff. Unless I get the itch to accelerate acquiring new agents, accelerating that last bit of a level or aligning timers, I just let the timers tick down. Normally I will try to do the recruit/recovery/rare/uncommon in that order to fill the queue. If I cannot get 90% or higher on common tasks and at least one trait match per agent, I won't start it unless there are just no other tasks left to match up with agents which cannot happen without blowing a bunch of DB cash or needlessly converting all the agents. How low I would go on uncommon and rare depends on what the task is and what other tasks are available. I have yet to be able to start an elite task. Going below 85% success rate feels pointless if you are going to wait for the timers. If you have DB cash to burn...I equate it to a slot machine and would fire away at any success rate. You are probably already just buying the agents anyway to get the entire set rapidly. They have my attention for now as I want to see where the end is for myself on at least 1 account even if someone can tell me how it all ends up. After that...the rewards would be the only thing that would make all the clicking "feel" worth it. Right now...those rewards just do not exist. I have 5 accounts that I just go straight exp rewards on as they are still leveling. The main account is strictly coins for the ornaments. After this, the time spent vs. reward value curve (dopamine hit or otherwise) "feels" like it is going to drastically change. Failure on a recruit/recovery/uncommon/rare task always makes me "feel" worse. Unless the critical failure means something beyond more time for incapacitated agents...I "feel" nothing about it. The cost to recover an agent "feels" insane, especially now that recovery tasks function.
Every Crit Failure, for me, happens using the finish now button. And I just got another Crit Fail today using Finish Now on a 98% success level 3. How????? To put it in perspective, every other task I completed today using Finish Now was under 90%, all of which succeeded, and I scored several crit successes. Again... HOW?? It just seems a little skewed.
This sounds a lot like the "Gambler's fallacy". If you really wanted to prove something is wrong, you would have to collect enough real data over time. If you want to truly compare buying the outcome to waiting on the outcome, that is going to require a lot of time.
I haven't experienced the bug/issue noted (I have never used the early finish), however given your reply I thought I'd add my observation of what to me is unusual display behavior in case it might be related. When I first go to the active quests tab and select a completed quest, it will show the original success rate of the quest for a few seconds (60%, whatever) before adjusting for my agents (where I can see a blip over to 95-100% usually), then it immediately flips the display to success/critical success/fail and lets me finalize the quest. Given that it clearly displays a sequence of steps during the display to me, it does make me wonder if the people using that early finish are getting the initial success rate before the adjustment for the agents.
I appreciate the notion of real data. I do not appreciate the notion that I don't truly want to prove something is wrong. I realize my data is anecdotal at best. I realize there are problems with accepting a sample size of one in any theory game. Gambler's Fallacy is only valid if two (or more) events can be proven to be statistically independent. In this case, I am making the assumption that the script calls the exact same script every time. If this is true (we may never know), then my assertion stands on its own merit. And your suggestion of Gambler's Fallacy is null.
I may not be understanding your argument. I was not implying you personally in using the word you. You is anyone. If anyone wanted to prove the system that determines the outcome of a quest run is failing more often when buying the result vs. waiting for the timer to tick down, they would need to gather enough real data concerning the relevant events. In saying "this sounds a lot like the Gambler's fallacy" I am just saying you (you personally and probably others) are giving weight to the outcomes of a series of events (quest failures upon buying the result) that are very likely completely independent rolls of a virtual die. We have some influence over what the failure/success range is on the die roll but in the end, a die is still being rolled and one quest result is very likely not influencing another. We should not let our feelings cloud our perspective here as the results are likely very predictable. I am assuming the same thing as it makes a lot of sense but we do not have to assume. We do not fully know what is happening here but we can make some reasonable inferences. If the system is calling the same code, the process being executed would be the same each time. The differences being the moment the code is called. Unless the time remaining on the quest, current time, or other variable information outside of the current quest is part of the success/failure calculation, the inputs would not be any different now versus 6, 12, 18, 24, 36 or 48 hours from now. The die roll would happen the same in either instance. We should see no real difference in buying a result versus waiting for a result, given enough samples. Our perception is another matter. My own anecdotes have me feeling the same way, it feels like my failures always come at the worst possible time (buying the result, recruit/recovery/rare/uncommon). However, if I consider how games typically work, how I have been playing, the number of quests/successes/failures I have over 6 accounts, it is much harder for me to argue the odds are against me when buying a result. All of my assumptions could be wrong as well. One of them is why make this process more complicated than it has to be? They are trying to entice us to spend money by creating opportunities a group of people may perceive value in purchasing. I cannot understand why they would attempt to further manipulate the chance of success without charging us more for that privilege and opening themselves to complaints of "pay to win". Right now, as it states when we click the button to buy completion, we are simply buying the privilege of not having to wait to roll the die. Other possible perceived benefits include, the reward(s) given at that time, clearing a list, opening a slot for another quest that just popped up, etc. All that aside, of course something could be broken. niente left that possibility on the table and offered to dig deeper, provided we offer more information. Obviously, they would want to remove any negative perception of anyone paying to obtain quest results immediately but they can only go so far.
Precisely. I am not asking for a win button, just an equal chance to succeed. It strikes me as more than a fluke or wild chance, though, that the ONLY crit failures I have seen in 382 quests completed have been from a) 91%+ success rate tasks; that, b) have been completed early using the Finish Now button. I have 10 critical failures in total out of 382 quests. I will make a conscious effort to gather this data. Thanks for your input!
[Date of Error] 5/15/2020 [Time] 4:05PM CST [Game] EverQuest [Server] Povar [System] Overseer [Quest] Level 1 Uncommon Recovery 96% success rate. Clicked Finish Now at 5h 59m 58s quest timer. Mission Outcome: Critical Failure. If you need my account name, please PM me.
Does seem like something is wrong. I've started just taking the 500 sc instead of LoN packs monthly, and using it to finish out the longer quests when they get reasonable price (like a 48 hour recruit one that gets down to like 70 sc when you're close to 20 hours left or whatever), or things almost done (so pay like 5 sc to finish something with an hour left when I won't be playing in an hour). And I'm seeing the same thing, not done it a lot, but more failures from hitting finish now for maybe 20 quests versus the 1200+ regular quests done across 6 accounts seems less and less likely a RNG issue. Does seem like how on a regular task, you go to the quest page, it shows the success % without some level of bonuses from the agents (its definitely showing SOME, but not all, for example, a level 5 quest with a 39% initial success rate, that you get to 94% with agents, you got to the task page and it shows 73% on it before clicking over to "success" or whatever (I don't seem to ever see it click back up to 94% before going to the success/failure). So maybe some of the bonus isn't calculating. You'd think the devs could just put 10,000 SC on a ftp account and start testing themselves.
This is what it seems like to me, too. Like using Finish Now is calculating completion on a lower % chance. I am sure that testing method is viable, I just don't know if they have the time.
It would be weird that they wouldn't be able to have a unit test that simulates using SC than having to load an account. It would be even more impossible that they are using client displayed values in order to calculate success. It's more likely that the % isn't cached client side and it has to calculate it for the display every time Overseer is refreshed, and any display lag will give you a visual "glitch" before the value is displayed. They have said that the quest completion calculation is the same code whether it times out or you click the finish now. It would be weird to have separate code to do the same thing but for different events. Unless there is a race condition that is being hit, it would only be "more visible" when you can spam quest completions than if you let them complete normally under timer (as you would get more quests completed in a shorter amount of time, so you would potentially notice it). To see data trends, capture both timer completions and finish now over (at minimum) a week, though that would still be a small sample size: Total # timer completions - * Timer completions critical success - * Timer completions success - * Timer completions failure - * Timer completions critical failure - Total # finish now completions - * Finish now completions critical success - * Finish now completions success - * Finish now failure - * Finish now critical failure -
