Is Global Quest Possibly Broken?

[Amaara]

When the ingredients for global quest were changed on July 2nd, was the ratio for number of increased rare days from the global quest reward also changed? If not, would the new random day that was added on August 20th affect the increased rare days global reward through a programming glitch??

 

It's been an extremely long time without a naturally occurring rare day, so many players are wondering if this specific global quest reward is indeed broken.

 

Would it be possible to show if a bad day were removed by the global? For example, "Day of Solar Flares was removed by global quest."

Edited August 23, 2012 by Amaara

[Faxie]

Would it be possible to show if a bad day were removed by the global? For example, "Day of Solar Flares was removed by global quest."

 

I think that would be an awesome addition, that way the people that donated to the global quest can see their reward

[Zilding]

I've only been playing for a few months, but this week has easily been the longest stretch of 'ordinary days' I've seen. There was a sponsored Sun Tzu on Sunday, I think, since then there hasn't been a special day at all. Usually it seems there's at least one special day in every 24-hr period, and often more.

[Zamirah]

http://www.el-cel.co...?date=2012,8,23

 

Day of Aleksei Stakhanov the 19th were sponsored

Day of Robin Tell were not.

Edited August 23, 2012 by Zamirah

[Rabbitman]

Would it be possible to show if a bad day were removed by the global? For example, "Day of Solar Flares was removed by global quest."

 

I think that would be an awesome addition, that way the people that donated to the global quest can see their reward

 

I don't think this is how it works. There is normally an equal chance for each special day to occur. So 100/# of days is the chance per. For this global, I believe that the "bad" days are considered as a half day each for the chance above, effectively increasing the chances of every good day and neutral day. This would yield each bad day having 1/2 the chance as each good or neutral. What this means is that you wouldn't have a "you were saved from. " in the code.

 

As to the number of special days, yeah that could be broken. Or it could be we don't have enough data to statistically tell and have just had bad luck when this global has been active.

[Amaara]

What this means is that you wouldn't have a "you were saved from. " in the code.

 

I don't understand why not. Wouldn't a break statement or even a simple if statement work? Been awhile since i've done programming code, but from what I do remember this should be possible

 

if day = negative {

$printf $negativeday was removed by global quest;

}

[Vidriel]

I think Rabbitman is correct here, the bad days have just smaller chance to happen than usual, not that they have been removed. We have seen a few bad days happened during this global reward already... so such condition would not help because the day will start when it's rolled anyway.

 

Maybe we lack of statistics big enough (all and all it's still luck, bad or good, compare it with monster drops chance or the armor breaking quest) but unfortunately our experience seems to give an impression that global is indeed broken - or at least not worth the price it cost. So far it's only Robin Tell day and even it's one of the top favourite, comparing it with special days luck in last global cycle when this reward was not active, well... people joking it's doing opposite

[Maxine]

With respect to the 'bad day removal effect', I thought I remembered radu saying that the global had done this at some point ages ago when people had been complaining about the ineffectiveness of this global. Havent had the time to dig through my huge chatlog and he might just have been joking.

[Amaara]

Well I think enough people have been so disappointed by the last few "more special days, less bad days" global reward that no one is working on the current global quest items.

[Cyrano]

I think the problem with this global is that the difference between normal chance of good & bad days and the global good & bad days is relatively small. This coupled with perhaps a run of randomly generated normal days gives the impression that this global does nothing, I think over a large enough sample things would even out & the reward become apparent.

 

That said the last one did appear to be quite poor even if bad days are removed and we aren't aware of it happening. If indeed they're removed, then the above suggestion of a global message about the bad day being removed would be nice.

 

I'm still donating stuff to the global & I see other folk are too, perhaps everyone preferred to take advantage of the day of half cooldowns & day of joule yesterday...

Edited August 28, 2012 by Cyrano

[Entropy]

Basically the chance of each day, good or bad to happen is equal (of course, there are more good days than bad ones).

When this global is active, the chance of a day to be a special day is slightly higher (something like 25% instead of 22%).

Bad days have this code:

 

if(global_flags[FLAG_GLOBAL_ENHANCEMENT_TYPE]==ENHANCEMENT_TYPE_LESS_BAD_DAYS)
if(my_rand(100)<50)return;

 

So the chance of a random day is not a lot higher (just a bit), but bad days have 50% lower chance of happening. Which is why it is possible to actually get fewer special days during this enhancement.

[Rabbitman]

Based on what Entropy said, it is coded in a way it could show a global message when a we are saved from a bad day.

 

Instead of outputing an ordinary day, could we have it re-roll among the special days if we are saved? That way the global will statistically still have an increase in special days. It would still be possible to roll a bad day, actually the chance would go up a bit.

 

Based on what Entropy said, it is coded in a way it could show a global message when a we are saved from a bad day.

 

Instead of outputing an ordinary day, could we have it re-roll among the special days if we are saved? That way the global will statistically still have an increase in special days. It would still be possible to roll a bad day, actually the chance would go up a bit.

[Entropy]

Of course it would be possible to reroll to get a good day, but this is not how I intended it to be.

[Burn]

I'm thinking the "slight" may need to be "slightly more". I've seen this global 5 times since returning this year. The wording doesn't quite fit with what's actually being done if I understand the above correctly.

 

Due to randomness apparently, all 5 times we actually got much less special days at all compared to when this wasn't running. And there seemed to be more bad than good of the few that did happen naturally. The 3% increase in chance either isn't doing much, or the days turned out to be bad and eliminated so we saw nothing.

 

Which from our perspective would look like the first part "more special days" is actually less special days.

 

"There are more special days, and less bad days."

 

 

Basically, what's seen by us isn't really well-described in this, which has led to people being disappointed in this particular global because we haven't seen the "more days", much less even.

 

 

 

On my part, only 2 of the 4 current possible global rewards are personally worthwhile, this and the less food while mixing one. (I have perk that nullifies less mini's, and game play time makes the cut in daily wait not useful). Having been disappointed with others in the outcome of this one, that has left only 1 worthwhile, which has led to less interest in the global.

 

 

Perspective may be the key for this one... since we don't see bad days being eliminated, we don't know it's happening, all we see is a *lot less* special days, which goes against what's written. Seeing that a bad day was avoided may fix that perspective. Which in turn could revive the interest in the global quest. It's mostly the ones who actively participated in it that have been disappointed with this particular global.

 

 

 

Perspective change on this particular reward, and agree with others that some different possible rewards that would interest a larger base of people could keep the global going strong like it used to be. Even stronger if the latter is done since that could get more people to actively participate who have no interest in any of the current rewards. I'd personally be happy with just the 2 of 4 possible good ones if I could see this particular global was actually working.

 

With 5 times having incredibly few special days, and each time the bad days were actually equal to or more than the good ones, it's been hard to look forward to this.

[Rabbitman]

There are currently 40 special days. 33 of these are good/neutral, and 7 are bad. Without the global and at 22% chance for a special day, this equates to 0.55% chance for each special day to happen. With a 25% chance, this yields 0.625% per special day. However, the 7 bad days essentially have only 0.3125% to occur. Therefore, 25%-7*0.3125% = 22.8125%.

 

Thus, the global only increases the chance of special days occuring by 0.8125%.

 

If the goal is to actually observe a 3% increase in special days, the following equation shows the % chance should actually be raised to 27.4%.

 

Y-(7/2)*(Y/40)=0.25

 

Where Y is the chance that must be set.

 

Rabbitman

[Zilding]

Was anything changed in one of the server updates? The global seems to be putting out special days quite a bit more this time around.

 

Z

[nathanstenzel]

Was anything changed in one of the server updates? The global seems to be putting out special days quite a bit more this time around.

 

Z

Grapes were replaced by black dragon scales, I believe.

 

New quest.

Improved the stats of all the axes.

Replaced grapes for global quest with black dragon scales.

Some bug fixes.

Edited November 29, 2012 by nathanstenzel