Lucks and Insights do not work the way you think
By
Amarsir,
Posted on: 2006-06-06 11:23 in Player Guides
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A lot of people have reported oddities with inspirations, especially lucks, and occasionally insights. I finally had a chance to test those out. Wasn't easy, let me tell you, and the tests were nowhere near the level of precision I would like to have, but I was able to see pretty conclusively variations in the behavior of the insps over what we all assumed was their behavior, based on their textual descriptions. So I had something of positive proof to take to the devs for enlightenment.
The textual descriptions are wrong: very very wrong.
Here is what the insps actually do, according to pohsyb:
DEF
S - 12.5%
M - 25%
L - 33%
ACC
S - 7.5%
M - 18.75%
L - 37.5%
RES
S - 10%
M - 15%
L - 20%
DMG
S -25%
M - 33%
L - 50%
Well, at least they got the damage and resistance ones right. But lucks are half the strength you think they are, and insights were created with a random number generator.
(Please don't reply that the insights aren't actually random, I know that.)
The good news is that SR isn't a little more than one small luck, its a little less than three. At least I think that's good news: all of you that were wondering why you sometimes needed to chomp four or five of these little guys now know why: it takes five of these guys to floor an even level boss in I6 (four in I7).
The bad news is that lucks and insights aren't actually balanced. In lower level zones where drops are often the smaller variety, lucks are a little stronger than insights. Not too much, but some. In RV, where drops are more often of the larger variety, insights are stronger than lucks.
So as tohit buffs become more common, from the BB to SC to WB to RV, insights also become more powerful than lucks. That's probably not a good thing either.
You would think by now we wouldn't trust the text descriptions for anything, and here's yet more proof that you shouldn't believe everything you read. Unless it comes from me, of course.
And this is worth noting: because lucks are defense, and therefore probabilistic in nature, not everyone will tend to see "average" performance. Some people will see behavior close to what they really do, and extrapolate their performance correctly, and some people will see bursty behavior that is out of line with their true behavior, and extrapolate their behavior incorrectly.
But in this case, it was the people who complained about seeing oddities that were right, and the people who thought they were working correctly that were wrong. Including me: sorry guys and gals, it took me a while to eventually come around and devote testing time to this.
The question, of course, is whether anyone else but me will know this, after this thread gets pushed down into page 42 with all the Issue 7 threads.
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this wasn't always the case. I've noticed lucks diminishing in effectiveness after i4. I used to be able to pop 4 lucks as a blaster and go to town without fear. Now I pop 2 with my brute who's EA and a lot get's through.
Am I upset? Sort of. See the amount of protection lucks provide is still "enough" Especially now with the defense changes. Heck it actually put's them in balance really.
but..... it's another [censored] stealth nerf from the people you can trust.....
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So Insights SAY +25% _Accuracy_ but what they mean is +25% (or not even that, but whatever) _To_Hit_Buff_.
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An interesting theory is that lucks *are* "+25% defense" relative to base 50% tohit. Perhaps in the distant past, all critter types had base 50% tohit (and they do again). Lucks date to that time when a player popped a luck, he was reducing net tohit by 25% for all attackers; +12.5 percentage points DEF = "+25% defense" colloquially. Given other things I've seen and heard, this is not a bad theory.
Insights, though; good luck coming up with a theory there.
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I must eat a little crow here. A friend in my SG had gone to the Arena (using 2 accounts) to test accuracy/lucks, and got the 12.5 number from using HeroStats. (IE seeing it took 2 lucks to reduce chance of being hit from 50 to 25.)
However, multiple devs (including all-caring _Castle_) stuck with the additive nature of lucks, and that one luck was 25, so 50-25=25.
So, boardname newchemicals, you were right when the devs were wrong, even though you're not playing this game these days.
It seems then that:
the additive nature of defense (or subtractive if you like) is accurate, but instead of:
50 - 25 = 25
it's 50 - (25 * .5) = 37.5
And that extra multiplicative step was not admitted to by the devs in any past redname posting that I'm aware of. (Even _Castle_ told me in a PM that the 50 - 25 = 25 was correct as far as he knew. Of course, if he looks for a 25 and finds a 25 in the spreadsheet, that doesn't tell him to check the acc formula for the 0.5 multiplier...)
Heph...
I was just thinking that... wondering if these #s have always been there, or if it has just been since one of the updates... They changed the insps but not the text, perhaps "accidentally on purpose" as my mom likes to say.
F
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Heph...
I was just thinking that... wondering if these #s have always been there, or if it has just been since one of the updates... They changed the insps but not the text, perhaps "accidentally on purpose" as my mom likes to say.
F
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It happened like that for the exemp system, so I wouldn't be surprised if enhancements also got an "accidentally on purpose fix" at some point, too.
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Get this moved to Guides so it doesn't get deleted!!!
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I thought it made more sense as a discussion topic here and would draw more attention. I'll make sure this thread or a reposted version eventually makes its way to the Guides section for permanence.
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Board Rules
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Thread/Post Content
1. Post in the correct forum and do not cross-post.
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I'm thinking she is more then likely to get it moved by a friendly Mod though, and that is well within the rules.
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Geko is basically right: accuracy is not broken, and basically never has been. But practically everything related to accuracy has been broken at least once in some way, sometimes for extended periods of time, and often the hurdle to prove it is extremely high.
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Even that is not a correct statement. One of the serious problems with the game is that there are THREE things related to to-hit, and those things are confused even by the devs themselves. In this case when Geko said "Accuracy has not been nerfed," what he meant was, "Base to-hit has not been nerfed", but he called base-to-hit, in this case, "accuracy."
There are three numbers here: Base To Hit, To-Hit Buffs, and Accuracy. The problem is that the devs use them interchangeably with WORDS, but they are not interchangeable MATHEMATICALLY. So Insights SAY +25% _Accuracy_ but what they mean is +25% (or not even that, but whatever) _To_Hit_Buff_.
The devs need to learn to, as Lucy said in the Peanuts years ago, "Say what they mean, and mean what they say." The sloppy use of the lingo is 90% of the problem.
F
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Fraktal, as usual, you're spot on here.
Also, I wonder if testing of the PPP numbers should begin in earnest.
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Great work Arcanaville. We all felt Lucks were overpowered based on the in-game description numbers & expected some kind of nerf to them eventually. Of course even these numbers are likely still too high.
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I'm not sure they haven't been like this for quite awhile. The numbers are consistent with my experiences back through issue 3.
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I concur this this as well. I've had situations with my Kheldians back when they were lowbies that seems very inconsistant. I had used 2 Lucks to supposedly (nearly) floor a Quantum Gunner accuracy. I got hit 2 in 5 or 3 in 5 attacks o too many occations.
And those numbers explain every single combat weirdness that I've noticed in the far and recent past when inspirations were involved. Situations where Accuracy should have been floored or capped where no where near those limits.
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My main point Arcana wasn't which side was right or wrong but that people need to stop dismissing veteran misgivings based on "you don't have the numbers to back that up."
If a bunch of veterans say to the devs, "Boy we seem to be missing a lot," the devs need to freaking check into it and stop asking us for demorecords. Assume we know how to play their game after 2+ years for crying out loud.
F
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I'm not making excuses, but for what its worth, most of the reports were about lucks "occasionally not working" or "working intermittently."
Although I cannot say she was the first to put it this way, it was Kali's multiple reports of lucks "not working until enough of them were used" that got me thinking that they might not have been broken, just weaker than advertised. Which caused me to run specific tests looking for the ramp up/ramp down behavior, which I was able to reproduce consistently in at least one instance.
The question I posed to pohsyb was this (paraphrased): are lucks modified by the AT scale modifiers, in such a way to reduce their strength, because they appear to me to be working at lower than their advertised numerical value.
The answer was: no, but it must have prompted pohsyb to think about it further, because after looking at the modifier values (inspirations use the "ones table") he then took the next logical step and looked at the base values, and here we are. It would have been my next question anyway, if the mods were not the issue, but it illustrates the train of thought.
However, even *I* had no idea how to replicate people's impressions that lucks were working intermittently and that didn't match my experience.
I wouldn't say I ever "dismissed" the reports of malfunctioning lucks, so much as I couldn't reconcile them with my experience. Its entirely possible the devs were in the same position. The real lesson, I think, isn't that we should listen to players more, but rather (and I kick myself because I actually teach this) sometimes you have to stop listening to the players, but still hear what they are trying to say.
When players said *sometimes* two lucks worked fine, and sometimes not, it was important to realize players can't tell when they are working fine. I definitely should have rejected some of the players observations, the problem was I rejected the wrong ones.
Hear the problem, not the symptoms. Troubleshooters everywhere know what I'm talking about.
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By the way, does anyone think I'm being selfish in thinking all this accuracy testing deserves a badge? 
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They tried to award it to you, but missed.
This is astonishing. Truly astonishing. The one set of statistics modification numbers that the devs haven't hidden behind the veil of "Aaah! No 'City of Math'!"...has turned out to be half wrong, and apparently they've been wrong since the beginning of the game two years ago.
Why on earth did this take so long to come out? Why wasn't, say, the fact that the oranges were "so much weaker" than purples when they were introduced, sufficient to get the devs to say, "Oh, and by the way, purples are really not 25/33/50 after all..."? It seems clear that the oranges' numbers were being scaled against the actual values of the other Inspirations rather than their described values. Why didn't anyone correct it at that point?
I mean...wrong for two whole years?
This makes me wonder what other "facts" that we take for granted aren't true.
With this level of QA, Cryptic is really squandering the first-mover advantage in the superhero MMORPG genre. If they don't get their act together, and Marvel or DC come out with something better, they're going to eat Cryptic's lunch but good.
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Great work Arcanaville. We all felt Lucks were overpowered based on the in-game description numbers & expected some kind of nerf to them eventually. Of course even these numbers are likely still too high.
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I'm not sure they haven't been like this for quite awhile. The numbers are consistent with my experiences back through issue 3.
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Kali, actually I didn't mean to imply that I thought that inspirs were recently stealth-nerfed. I expect that these have been the real numbers for a long time, probably before I got here in the early days of I4. My tendency to edit my posts on the fly while working can result in not always saying what I mean. 
Anyway, I do think these have been the inspir values for a long time. But I wouldn't be surprised if adjustments to the DEF cap around I5 were the source of some of the odd DEF/To Hit/ACC issues that some posters have noticed over the past many months. But without the real numbers on this stuff, it has been too easy to dismiss these anomalies more-or-less out of hand. Here's to hoping that the increase in numbers verification issuing from the Devs is a continuing trend.
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This is astonishing. Truly astonishing. The one set of statistics modification numbers that the devs haven't hidden behind the veil of "Aaah! No 'City of Math'!"...has turned out to be half wrong, and apparently they've been wrong since the beginning of the game two years ago.
Why on earth did this take so long to come out? Why wasn't, say, the fact that the oranges were "so much weaker" than purples when they were introduced, sufficient to get the devs to say, "Oh, and by the way, purples are really not 25/33/50 after all..."? It seems clear that the oranges' numbers were being scaled against the actual values of the other Inspirations rather than their described values. Why didn't anyone correct it at that point?
I mean...wrong for two whole years?
This makes me wonder what other "facts" that we take for granted aren't true.
With this level of QA, Cryptic is really squandering the first-mover advantage in the superhero MMORPG genre. If they don't get their act together, and Marvel or DC come out with something better, they're going to eat Cryptic's lunch but good.
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like I said robo. those 25/33/50 numbers used to be accurate.
and really they were broken. You shouldn't be able to pop 4 lucks and out tank an ice tanker. I don't mind the "re-balance".
I just don't appreciate the stealth nerf.
Way back in Issue 1, I could easily hit a +10 critter (held of course) with my level 16 Martial Arts Scrapper. The 'Purple Patch' changed a lot of things. Maybe the inspirations values were changed in the 'Purple Patch' but the number we all used remained the same?
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I think whatever the explanation this is rather ugly. If the devs can be this wrong on something this basic for so long, it makes me wonder what ELSE they are wrong about.
In particular I think there are real issues with finding bugs that occur between the value of a thing in their SQL (or whatever it is) database, and the execution of the script implementing it. The example of a 25% def buff being, further down in the code somewhere, multiplied by 0.5 to get 12.5% as a final number, is a good one. I have had this awful feeling for a long time that when we report something seems off, the devs check their SQL spreadsheet, and see that the "numbers are right" and stop there... when in fact what might be off is a script routine down-stream... one that never gets checked because (as I mentioned above) player "feelings" get dismissed out of hand -- especially if those feelings do not dove-tail with the SQL data.
I just wonder how many more of these little nuggets there are in the game. At this point... I'd bet on "hundreds" at least.
F
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The textual descriptions are wrong: very very wrong.
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Nice to know.
My first impression is that these numbers feel more "appropriate" than the ones given in the text descriptions.
Excellent work, thank you.
Do we know if the yellow inspirations work as an accuracy boost (like an ACC SO) or a toHit boost (like Aim)? I read the thread but it wasn't clear.
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This is astonishing. Truly astonishing. The one set of statistics modification numbers that the devs haven't hidden behind the veil of "Aaah! No 'City of Math'!"...has turned out to be half wrong, and apparently they've been wrong since the beginning of the game two years ago.
Why on earth did this take so long to come out? Why wasn't, say, the fact that the oranges were "so much weaker" than purples when they were introduced, sufficient to get the devs to say, "Oh, and by the way, purples are really not 25/33/50 after all..."? It seems clear that the oranges' numbers were being scaled against the actual values of the other Inspirations rather than their described values. Why didn't anyone correct it at that point?
I mean...wrong for two whole years?
This makes me wonder what other "facts" that we take for granted aren't true.
With this level of QA, Cryptic is really squandering the first-mover advantage in the superhero MMORPG genre. If they don't get their act together, and Marvel or DC come out with something better, they're going to eat Cryptic's lunch but good.
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like I said robo. those 25/33/50 numbers used to be accurate.
and really they were broken. You shouldn't be able to pop 4 lucks and out tank an ice tanker. I don't mind the "re-balance".
I just don't appreciate the stealth nerf.
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I'm told the posted numbers have been the same pretty much all the way back to release. To the extent that at least the numeric values of the inspirations haven't been changed, inspirations haven't been nerfed.
And they seem to have always worked the same way mechanically, so I don't think a tohit formula change altered their behavior either.
There are still other possibilities, but I have no real proof their effectiveness has changed over time. They don't *feel* like they did to me, but of course in this case that's probably not worth a lot.
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I think whatever the explanation this is rather ugly. If the devs can be this wrong on something this basic for so long, it makes me wonder what ELSE they are wrong about.
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coughclawscough
they get basic stuff wrong all the time.
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My question is, as usual, what do we want the result of the re-examination of Inspirations to be?
How many Large Lucks should it take to floor an even-level Boss? Should a Medium Luck be half of that and a Small be half of that?
How should Lucks compare to SR or other Defense Powersets?
Should one Luck of a given size have the same value as an Insight of the same size?
Some number of Lucks of a given size will 'cap' Defense. Should the same number of Sturdies of the same size cap Resistance?
Should Insights affect Accuracy or ToHit?
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Actually, I think the problem in this case was that there were a lot of very experienced people on both sides of this issue who were going by feel, and no one wanted to do controlled testing of something like this, because controlled testing is not easy to do (ten bucks says no one comes close to guessing what sort of testing uncovered this).
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If I was going to test a transient defense buff like Lucks, I might consider using Rain powers.
Using Ice Storm, it seems like you should easily be able to fit about 150 tics into the duration of one single Luck (more if you use Hasten).
But this seems too easy to be the answer.
So that means it takes 6 lucks to equal the defense protection that mog gives minus the psi of course?
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Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
More than likely, F, it just gets lost in the code. There's alot of it and if they lose a key programmer or two, it becomes difficult to track down some of this stuff.
Regardless, the error is there, and despite the many attempts from the player base to get it looked at over a long period of time, it remains.
Disappointing to say the least. Not the error- what it took/ is taking to get it resolved.
And many,many thanks Arc!
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Excellent work, thank you.
Do we know if the yellow inspirations work as an accuracy boost (like an ACC SO) or a toHit boost (like Aim)? I read the thread but it wasn't clear.
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They are tohit buffs.
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My main point Arcana wasn't which side was right or wrong but that people need to stop dismissing veteran misgivings based on "you don't have the numbers to back that up."
If a bunch of veterans say to the devs, "Boy we seem to be missing a lot," the devs need to freaking check into it and stop asking us for demorecords. Assume we know how to play their game after 2+ years for crying out loud.
F