We actually have a loose consensus in one of the refining threads, so I thought I'd write it up. Well? Thoughts?
The stack processing itself sounds great, but it has the potential to bring us back to where we were with a great influx of rares, especially if people are fueling all this with multiple goblins and ponies. Then we're back to more arguments.
I keep seeing people talking about this great influx of rares on servers I can tell you this the prices stayed pretty steady on Naggy. Most people I know that craft at end game and would have the refine ablilty or the goblin for the matter dont sell rares they pack em away in guild banks or depots in houses just incase they might need them some day.
The pony and gobby bring back about 200 commons en toto, I believe. So by this math, at the liberal end 5 trips out makes a rare. 15 at the conservative end. One fully stuffed guild box would turn into between 7 and 20 of each rare. I figured that was a decent starting spot for twiddling with the numbers.
They're steady-to-down on Unrest (except for ones that were nigh-useless before but now have actual uses... hello banyan roots). But, this is a new xpac, with new uses for some rares (unadorners, wormholes), and a zillion alts leveling up and needing new spell upgrades. If demand goes way up and prices don't, it must mean the supply has gone way up, no? And when that new-xpac demand fades in a month or three, the supply of rares will be somewhere between "overwhelming" and "gonzo"?
So..what would be the refresh rate on the refining ability? Right now its...1 hour for 1 point? Instant for 5 points. Would it stay at 1 hour and the amount refined vary? Or are you proposing 1 point be changed to instant recast and then amounts vary like with mass production? If the same refresh times were kept then only the 5 point investment would be viable for large amounts of common material conversion anyways (the same as it is now, just faster). I'm all for reducing the number of clicks to get rid of a stack of common mats (seriously, drowning in them). Personally I think having the ability changed to be instant recast at even 1 point and amount you can refine at once go up is very reasonable. Having to wait even 60 seconds between refine casts makes the ability exceedingly tedius.
Everything was working fine, someone got a wild hair and nerfed it into oblivion. Good luck ever getting it right again.
Why do you think stack processing bad on a repetitive process which can actually injure players, especially the elderly, by contracting carpal tunnel syndrome? Have you thought about that? Stop worrying about an influx of rares - it is not the end of the world if a lot of rares are created. The point is for people to have fun, not get an injury because of game mechanics!! Some people are way too emotionally and irrationally upset about rares coming into the game -- IT DOESN'T HURT THE GAME unless you are into the broker profit thing,
You keep spouting this in every thread related, broker profits, gouging etc. The opposite is actually true here, people are way too emotionally and irrationally upset because they can't get an abundance of rares only to take away from people that enjoy harvesting for rares and selling them for a profit. The only reason you need an abundance of rares is to make items to sell on the broker, harvest them yourself or take the cost of acquiring them into account and see if it is worth it to you, if it isn't why do you think it is good to rob from Peter to pay Paul but ONLY if YOU are Paul.. If you want rares they are more than easy enough to get spec for the increased chances at rares and bountiful harvests, wear gear that increases your harvesting skills, as well as bountiful harvest chances and run potions of bountiful harvests (more than easy enough to obtain). They got it wrong at the start, and they adjusted it. There was a bigger influx of rares coming in from these new methods than they intended, the semantics of the way the ability is worded is a lol argument, it does not in any way even hint or indicate that you will or should get any particular number of rares. It also isn't going to have any impact on my 'broker profits', I have hundreds of rares just sitting in a PHD all but a handful were obtained by harvesting and more than half were obtained when you didn't just roll your eyes when you got the nontification "You have found a rare item!", it actually at one time was a rare enough event, but even then it really wasn't all htat bad. The goblin rare harvester was a bad enough idea to begin with and the ability to turn commons into rares is not even worse. Finally this nonsense about the RNG being biased towards some as someone is trying to make a case for only goes to show a complete lack of understanding of RNG and probability.
Were you around in the "good old days"? Back when rares were 1 in 5000 harvests and when you went to harvest a node you had a chance to get 1 material from a click and each node despawned after 3 clicks even if it didn't produce any harvest per click? That is what harvesting was like back when we made legendary gear and The Forge was the number 1 murderer of young adventurers (followed by Exquisite Chest). As an aside, if we started refining entire stacks of materials there is no way the goblin+pony could keep up with the old rate that common harvests use to produce. Your talking 1 full stack maybe every 6 hours of harvsting NPCs making runs if your waiting on their timers like a hawk. If people were really trying to abuse refining to get rares...they would have to harvest and discover that the bonus from the harvesting prestige line way outperforms refining.
I most certainly was (just go to eq2u and looke me up Everfrost server originally Grobb), and it was nothing like 1 in 5000 harvests, not anything even remotely close to that. As for the Forge and Exqusite Chests though you are spot on, too bad you had to taint your argument with a ridiculous claim of 1 in 5000 on a rare. I was an alchemist and I was flat out loaded with coin at all times, I didn't ever have stuff to put on the broker, my orders poured in through tells and regulars who mailed me coin and items with instructions of what they wanted, and what I needed I harvested.
I dont know about that.... I definitely recall going completely through a tier doing overland quest content, harvesting all the way, and levelling out of a tier without getting a single rare from that tier.... on more than one toon. That situation didnt last terribly long though...I think it changed in 2006?
Now let me preface this. I don't want anyone to give themselves carpal tunnel while playing. I think the proposed change keeps what I believe was the intended use of Refining but relieves much of the tedium by allowing mass refining. What I wonder is people argue that they have all these materials comming out of their ears with all the resources available to gain harvests. When I have all the harvests I need, I simply don't send out the Guild Harvesters. Don't collect from the pony. The mechanism to deal with an over-abundance of materials has always been here. Just don't collect any more. Saves a lot of extra character swapping in the process. And at some point, people have to take a little personal responsibility. Be it refining, actual harvesting, spamming a target or cure macro, If there is so much clicking that it is causing injury you have to police yourself. Pain in my knee forced me to give up basketball for 6 months before I could have surgery to repair the damage. I wanted to play every day but it wasn't worth the possibility of permanent damage later in life. Same principle applies here
There was a argument as to what the intended purpose of refining commons was. But I think both sides (mostly?) agreed, that there was an intent to be able to use it on your overflowing commons. As such, the ability to use it on a stack (or partial stack, the numbers are flexible), just makes sense. We can quibble over output and return rates. But it seems to make a little more sense if an ability you can use on your extra commons to put them to 'better' use, doesn't require 3200 clicks/hour to do so (*). *(Assuming you've got 800 commons you want to poof - although if you stage it right, change some game options, you can get it down to 800 clicks with no mouse movement, then it's just clicky tedium.)
Well I would like to be able to one click and transmute an entire bag of items, I could go for them letting you do 1,5,10,15,25,50 or 100 like the bulk crafting, I see little harm in that, as long as the rare is in the ball park of 1 in 1250-1500 raws, any more than that it is too much.
I propose to drop refining as a tradeskill prestige skill entirely! Do refining recipes (one for each tier) for transmuters. Use 1 rare + 1 (new?) uncommon mob dropped item + multiple regular harvests + fuels = 1 refined rare. Refining common 1 by 1 is ridiculous and mass refining loses the purpose (it shouldn't be that easy).
If they were to implement mass refining 1:2000 would be an acceptable rate imo. Not to say that you couldn't get lucky and get 2:1000 if the RNG gods smile on you. On the other hand making the refinement process a Transmuter related skill would be an interesting approach though I think your recipe is a bit large. I like the concept of Refining but its implication is off.
Hello Lempo, Ignorant here. Would you please explain the RNG process and probability, because I don't understand it completely? I thought for the most part it's all random. Thanks for your time, ~Feara
Allow me. There is no such thing as random, at least as far as computers go. What there is is psuedorandom. Computer programs take a seed number- a very large number with a very large amount of digits on both sides of the decimal place, and then perform a lot of mathematics on that number. The program then takes a very eclectic assortment of digits, like the 2nd, 27th and 113th decimal places of the 'answer', slams them together and calls that the "random" number that it returns. It can be decent. If there is variation built into the program about which math operations were done in what order, and which pieces of the resulting number were used to create the 'random' number out of the 'answer', then any pattern that might exist in the 'random' number outputs would be so miniscule as to be meaningless. The program that SoE uses (and has used for a very long time) is not an excellent example of the kind. It exhibits something called "trending". That means that any given 'random' number that is delivered is more likely to be closer to the last and next delivered numbers than it is likely to be distant from them. So we aren't close enough to actual random to trust it, because there are measurable deviations from random. It still takes a crapton of data to show that though. Even though it is flawed, there still is no bias to any individual person. That seed number exists on the server- and is only used once each server startup. After that, the 'answer' from the previous iteration is used as the seed for the second (in theory. you can do better than this in a good RNG program). There is nothing on the client machine (yours) that influences the RNG, as that would make it ridiculously easy to hack. So people who claim to be consistently lucky or unlucky have two things to deal with. First, the RNG does operate in streaks. So if you're in a bad streak, take a break, let others have the RNG for a few hours and come back. Second, psychology does creep in here too. If you believe you are unlucky, you are more likely to remember examples that fit your perception and forget the ones that don't, and reinforce your perception. Avoid that when you can by using actual data instead of your memory or 'feel' of what you think happened over the course of time. That help?
That isn't a bad synopsis but the last statement is not entirely accurate. Data can be taken from client machines without such risks, gathering data from mouse movements, free memory, time that the computer/OS has been up since last restart. This kind of data actually improves the quality of the output, especially when combined with data from other clients. From a single client unless you knew exactly what operations were performed on the data gathered from your client you couldn't even begin to hack it or influence it in any beneficial way whatsoever. But study after study has proven that peoples memories only recalling the worst case scenarios and never remembering the good ones. As for the trending, it is really not likely to do you any better to 'walk away' for a while and trying again later, [QUOTE] Avoid that when you can by using actual data instead of your memory or 'feel' of what you think happened over the course of time. [/QUOTE] This. 1000x over. Logs. Logs. Logs. Peoples recollection of events is rarely ever even remotely accurate, especialy when they describe them as some have in this thread, claiming RNG bias against them and for others is anything but rational.
