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Comments
Make forged equipment have slightly random stats (so all weapons are at least usable, with a chance to be noticeably better but not overwhelmingly so), then have several different commands/things you can do at certain points during the forging process, which influence the stats/RNG in various, undocumented ways. Then there can be some skill/timing involved, with different forgers coming up with different techniques and some forgers being better and more knowledgeable than others, giving them a slight edge. I imagine it would be something like fishing (with the different strategies for teasing/jerking and different timings), though hopefully it won't turn into something that requires automation.
I also like the "rare ores" idea.
I agree that those kinds of options would be truly amazing, but I am always cared of the slow forced auomation. The reason I can currently live with the RNG type stuff is that I know I can go to certain forgers, like @Trey and he will always have something good for me.
Granted I know that he has honestly just looped the same commands for quite a few hours, but he smelts em down and so when I do go see him, it really does seem like he is the master forger. Always providing me with treats in the 200's range for speed.
Is there an annoying automation behind this? yes. But it still does make Trey the master forger.
If a system with rare ores could come around, that would be very amazing, as well as additional things like when to fold steel, when to temper, etc etc, would be really cool. Thing is, I know that @Sena's curious nature would cause her to break the code of any kind of inherent system after not too long, and then someone else would, and then forging scripts appear once again.
I don't mean to nitpick, but... In 2011, out of 90000+ rapiers, 198 were 230+ and 9 240+. In 2012, out of 90000+ rapiers, 201 were 230+ and 13 240+.
In 2013, out of 70000+ rapiers, -126- were 230+ and -5- 240+.
I don't mean to keep fanning the formula argument, but it certainly seems like either a whole lot of people got boned by the RNG, or something changed to make the numbers drop a lot.
I certainly recognize 20,000 instances isn't an insignificant difference, but in 2011, the proportion of rapiers that were 230+ (counting 240's) was .00227 (I'm cutting a ton of decimals). In 2012, .00234. In 2013, .00185. In 2014, so far, .00189. Do you have any idea what might account for that discrepancy? It seems minor, but that's a pretty hefty change for people looking for the elusive usable rapier.
Edit: Sometimes I forget to finish sentences.
ETA: Looking over the rest of the years, and not counting the first, since people didn't forge a whole lot back then, it seems, there's only one other year that dips beneath the .002 mark, and that's only by a very tiny bit. Again, I know .00234 to .00185 doesn't seem like much, but... it certainly seems undeniable that SOMETHING is different.
While I'm sure Tarot users are grateful, is there a new system on the forge as well?
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
> Forging is stacked levels of RNG, it really is horrible - nothing has changed code-wise though, just people hitting the jackpot. Good thing there's a new system on the cards!
You sir are quite the tease
With all due respect to Tecton, I tested the rapier statistics provided and the result suggests that the the likelihood of forging >230 speed rapiers may have changed in the past couple of years.
I assumed that the >240 rapiers are counted in the >230 column. If not, my apologies; I will redo the calculations.
Under the above assumption, I tested the null hypothesis that the probability of forging >230 rapier in 2013-2014 is no less than in preceding years using the two-proportion z-test (justified because the sample is large enough to capture over 30 successes in each of the two time periods). Arbitrarily choosing 2013-2014 as population 1, I computed z=-1.856135. This corresponds to a p-value of less than 0.0322 (probability of getting a value as extreme as this by chance), allowing us to reject the null hypothesis with 95% confidence. That is to say, there probably was a decrease in the chance of forging >230 speed rapiers over this time period.
This does not necessarily mean the underlying algorithm determining rapier quality has changed; it's also possible that more rapiers are being forged without a hammer of forging: they would tend to decrease the proportion of >230 rapiers their results tend to be less extreme.
There's a lot of long words in there miss, we're naught but humble forgers.
Summary: either there was a change in the quality of rapiers produced, or the equivalent of someone rolling a natural one on a d20 happened.
Statistics are great and all, but random chance doesn't always balance out perfectly. All that's clear from the spreadsheet is that forging, like wines, has good years and bad years.
Pretty much every knight i've ever talked to has hated using rapiers, but there's nothing else even close to viable for knights to use.
If Stats were more stabilized than the rng world we lived in knight/bard could be more balanced upon those rapiers instead of Oh hey I can't damnation people with 231's unless there runed, Especially since there's been 4 over 240 made this year and I know im holding at least one of them.
With the average speed of rapiers being 180something and 231-240 being the kind you actually need for combat as a knight.. doesn't this seem kinda silly?
Not to mention on that point that a 60/130/251 Is likely worse than a 74/160/231. since your going to miss everytime anyways.
But pretty sure this is getting fixed in Knight updates yay
I did not say that the difference was necessarily caused by differences in the code, and a possible non-coding explanation was provided in the last paragraph of my original post. I would also argue that it is perfectly valid to ask questions about a chunk of code if the results differ from what's expected, just as it's valid to ask questions if a dice rolls ones more frequently than expected; sure it may be pure luck, but the dice may also have been accidentally damaged and the outside observer should lean towards the latter until it's demonstrated otherwise.
If anything, I was being conservative in my interpretation of the z-test. If we use Tecton's claim (that there has been no changes) as the null-hypothesis, it would have been a two-tailed test instead of one-tailed and the p-value accordingly halved to 0.01611, or less than a 1/50 chance. Rare events do happen but something this rare may appropriately raise half an eyebrow.
Speaking as a programmer, understanding everything in a huge piece of software like Achaea is very unlikely, even if you were the only person who ever worked on it (which, in the case of Achaea, is not true).
No offense to @Tecton, but there simply wouldn't be any need for the BUG command if he understood everything in his own game.
Perhaps he checked the code before commenting here, and therefore does have a final, resolute answer, but even then it's still completely possible he missed something when doing so, unless they have a long history of version control, and there were absolutely no changes in any of the code even loosely related to forging.
For example, forging could have even been affected by a change in random number generation code. If they use OS or hardware to perform random number generation, it could even been affected by upgrading that - without any code being touched.
As d20's can be jerks. I presume the rng is similar.
If I learned anything from golden sun, rng typically isn't random at all. but based off from mathematical elements.
In other words there's generally a formula for everything, figuring out the formula can completely screw over the game however.
For instance with gambling there's actually a "Pattern" to how the rng works for it. If you can figure out the Pattern your going to be f'in rich. On the other hand if you figure out the pattern and abuse it then someones going to have to change how the rng on gambling works.
For instance say your playing a game of poker, where all the cards are random. (irl) but you know where every card is and you also have practice shuffling so much that you can put any card where you want to. that ability would win you every game but at the same time your doing something called "Cheat shuffling"
With that being said however, the rng element could be anything from the time of day, year, what day of the month it is. how many times people have logged in that month divided by the amount of people online times the square root of the amount of mob kills so far in achaea, times 7.
So in other words, it's rng. unless technology has advanced since game boy advance.
Almost all computing applications use pseudro-random number generators (PRNGs), which is a fixed list of numbers from which you draw a number, with or without using a "seed" (the location where you start reading). A good PRNG and/or seed selection process would be unexploitable even if you know everything about them, because one or more elements would be opaque to the player. Assuming seeds are not used: as a player, you would be only able to draw one or two numbers at a time and as you don't know how far apart the numbers you drew are (since everyone else is drawing too), you shouldn't be able to locate your position in the PRNG sequence in the first place.
A more appropriate analogy would be a deck of a few thousand cards (at least) made up of only the King of Hearts and the Queen of Hearts. The cards drawn are replaced and the cards are always in the same order. Good luck coming up with a way to break the game.
Historically the implementation of PRNGs have been uneven, to say the least. I'm sure that some GBA games have horrible PRNGs (heh, reminds me of the joke "This random number generator will randomly choose the number 2"), but I doubt Achaea has the same problems, especially since it is not as constrained by hardware.
If the difference in the rate of >230 rapiers is a result of random number generation, then we have just done two sampling of numbers generated by the PRNG and they are significantly different from each other. That may be a good reason to check if these particular PRNG has known problems and/or weaknesses.
Tl;dr: If the observed difference is caused by the random number generator, it may have known weaknesses and may need to be replaced. Most modern PRNG are not (and ought not to be) as bad as what Caladbolg is suggesting.