Treasure Hunter Tweak

[Feba]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

I've heard the sysclock theory before, but I don't think even SE could screw up the programming *THAT* bad nowadays.


Then again, this is the same company that thinks they won't get as many hackers if you can't change windows...

[Sabaron]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

I've heard the sysclock theory before, but I don't think even SE could screw up the programming *THAT* bad nowadays.

The ANSI Standard C/C++ library functions use the Mersenne algorithm, therefore, SE would have had to have written their own dumbed down PRNG for some unthinkably stupid reason. I would have to agree that there is no way...absolutely no way, that one can use the sysclock to determine activation of TH notwithstanding sysclock ticks on most systems are at least 66Mhz or 66,000 ticks per second.

[seq]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

that would be nice!
one more thing, can't they explain the difference betwen TH1 and TH2?
we all know MNK gets MANY "Martial arts" job traits, right?
they stack on each other, even MNK75 will only see ONE "Martial arts"
why thief have two "Treasure Hunter" job traits shown in the job traits? both have the SAME "Increases chance of getting treasure"...
really started to think one is for picking coffers/chests and another for Mob/NM/HNM drops.
now someone will jumb on me saying Moon/day can change drop rates (without a clue) but hmmmm
2/24 on Megalobugard as THF66/WAR33
2/15 on Megalobugard as WAR75/THF (not me, a real friend of mine ^^)

what's treasure hunter?

[Hearshot]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

that would be nice!
one more thing, can't they explain the difference betwen TH1 and TH2?
we all know MNK gets MANY "Martial arts" job traits, right?
they stack on each other, even MNK75 will only see ONE "Martial arts"
why thief have two "Treasure Hunter" job traits shown in the job traits? both have the SAME "Increases chance of getting treasure"...
really started to think one is for picking coffers/chests and another for Mob/NM/HNM drops.
now someone will jumb on me saying Moon/day can change drop rates (without a clue) but hmmmm
2/24 on Megalobugard as THF66/WAR33
2/15 on Megalobugard as WAR75/THF (not me, a real friend of mine ^^)

what's treasure hunter?

You only gave 2 examples of drop rates. It may not always *kick in* so to speak. The variables need far more testing than one job is *this* and the other was *that* during *some time*.

I got thief's knife 1/11 as nin/war, while tons of thfs are 0/100. I understand some feel TH doesn't effect droprate of this specific item, but regardless, i played the odds and won. You can just as easily play the odds and lose.

[Aeni]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

You only gave 2 examples of drop rates. It may not always *kick in* so to speak. The variables need far more testing than one job is *this* and the other was *that* during *some time*.

I got thief's knife 1/11 as nin/war, while tons of thfs are 0/100. I understand some feel TH doesn't effect droprate of this specific item, but regardless, i played the odds and won. You can just as easily play the odds and lose.

I agree. I also heard stories (from level headed players) where they're hunting for something like Moldavite Earring for their other main (BLM or RDM) job. Their primary main is obviously a THF. So they go and camp the NM for days, get a claim here and there (competing with other players) and when it is all said and done, 2 months later, they are still empty. Calculate their horrible rate of having 30 something claims and no drops under any condition you can think of (Claiming after server reset, claiming on full moon, claiming on new moon, claiming on just any other days, claiming under the presence of an elemental, et cetera)

And here I am, with a Moldy after just one kill with a friend helping me claim the NM and this friend is now 3/3 on Moldy. On main RDM.

Then you have also the really lucky THFs. Like a friend that's 6/6 on LL, 9/11 on VE, et cetera.


I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that the ID governing your content ID is used when calculating using PRNG.

[Maju]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

Making the inner workings of the engine obvious makes the game less fantastic, mysterious, and special... Too Blizzard-y... If I were designing FFXI, I would be leaving much, much more out of the public eye . Take for example the Crafting Recipe people.... boom. Sieglinde no longer a know-it-all? She only knows say... 50% of the recipes and the rest can be "unlocked" by discovery and say, trading her the crafting components for "research" or something neat like that. Less boring, more discovery, more secret knowledge.

This is an MMORPG. There is no such thing as "secret knowledge". Everything will be revealed to the masses eventually and then things like hidden recipes just become a nuisance when you have to go check them online.

[supersimian]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

I did an experament with TH about a year ago (sort of)when I lvled thf to 15 to sub blm due to my frustration in drops from aga farming with blm/red-whm.

Before subbing thf for TH with aga farming I would round up about 25 mobs and then lay waste to them. I did this so many times, atleast 100 times (rounded up aga kill,observe) before I was fed up with my ingame income and started to play thf to lvl 15 at the time (25 later for flee)and subbed it with blm to do the ussuall aga farming that was common of me at the time. Now almost every time (tried this atleast 100 times with TH aswell as without) I got about 1.5 to 2 times as much as without TH almost every single time. Im not saying that TH doubles your chances or anything mathematically certain at all. All that I have found from my extensive past aga farming is that with regular mobs it makes a huge difference. I was getting so many items at a time that I had to go straight to my inventory most of the time after the final aga cast to sort the stuff and stack it as fast as I could before some of it just fell to the ground. Yes that actually happens when you get like 20-30 items all at once and you don't sort your stuff out quick enouph. Its as if your treasure pool can only hold so much or something.

One thing that I can say for certain about TH is that it definately works.

I would like to know if TH 2 has any benefits in Dynamis/Sky/NMs. I heard NMs, havent tested it myself as it is hard to get a control on an NM as they are so rare to spawn, you would have to camp one for a long time to get a good control out of the subbing thf, and subbing something else difference.

[Sabaron]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that the ID governing your content ID is used when calculating using PRNG.

Again, presuming they wrote their own. There's no reason they would've done this. Let us examine "Randomosity" for a moment.

Take a given infinitely large sample of random numbers taken from a given set of N numbers (not pseudo-random). Here are some things you will find in it:

The probability of a given number existing in the string is [Infinity]/N or simply infinity. Therefore, each number in the set exists in our infinite set of random numbers.

For example, take some fish bubblers, insulated copper wire, various fish, and some very small (or ballasted) Neodymium Rare Earth Magnets and place into a fish tank....measure current(s) from the wire(s).



The probability of an "repeating sequence" of I numbers is (1/N)^I * [Infinity] or, Infinity... Therefore any sequence of any finite length of numbers exists within the set. Therefore, there exists within the chain a sequence of say...4 billion 0's all of which are indicative of a TH failure. Therefore, it is possible that there exists a thief somewhere so incredibly unlucky that he shall never within his existance get a particular drop from a particular monster.

Randomosity is a harsh mistress...

Math question/food for thought:

What about an infinitely long sequence of a single digit or repeating multi-digit string?

What if instead of N characters, we use the set I (Integers) or the set R (Reals)?

Before I get flamed by someone taking a math class... Yes, indeed, one cannot "multiply" (or in fact perform any operation on/with Infinity). Therefore, each of the above is actually a limit problem that I have condensed....

[EDIT: Add]

If I were SE, I would invest in a Randomizer just to mess with everyone who thinks they can use Numerology to determine their success in game.

A randomizer is a device that creates electrical "noise" that is then digitized and used to seed a PRNG or applied to a Z-distribution.

[seq]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

You only gave 2 examples of drop rates. It may not always *kick in* so to speak. The variables need far more testing than one job is *this* and the other was *that* during *some time*.

yah, just 2 examples
one is MAIN thief, another is supporting thief.
if anyone can /THF and have the same effects Thief main plays for, what's thief for?
Thief is already kicked for the main rule they play in party (managing hate), this is the second rule that i see anyone can /THF and get it.

[Balodoth]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

Back when FFXI was still new to the U.S. the commonly accepted explanation (supposedly backed up by japanese research) was that TH I worked like adding one person to the party. The idea was that the monster had a pool of items and you got to roll once for each item in the pool. If there were two people in the party, there were two rolls. And if somebody had TH I, that added a roll for the item.

I believe there were some situations not completely explained, so research was ongoing. This would, however, explain supersimian's experience of nearly doubling his drops.

[Karinya]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

Preliminary note: Saying that a statement is "wrong" is not a flame if the statement actually *is* wrong. Lots of people are wrong about lots of things. No personal insult is intended.

Take a given infinitely large sample of random numbers taken from a given set of N numbers (not pseudo-random). Here are some things you will find in it:

The probability of a given number existing in the string is [Infinity]/N or simply infinity. Therefore, each number in the set exists in our infinite set of random numbers.

No, it's more complicated than that. This kind of reasoning doesn't even work for *finite* strings: the chance of getting at least one heads in two coin flips is not 2/2.

The probability that event E will happen at least once in N independent trials is 1-(1-P(E))^N. For P(E)>0, the limit of this number as N increases is 1 - i.e. any possible event will happen eventually. It's not infinity (which isn't even meaningful as a probability).

The probability of an "repeating sequence" of I numbers is (1/N)^I * [Infinity] or, Infinity... Therefore any sequence of any finite length of numbers exists within the set.

This is also not correct, but because the successive numbers are no longer independent with respect to the substring condition (the same digit is the first digit in one substring, the second digit in another substring that starts 1 position earlier, etc.), I'm not sure I could write out the correct formula off the top of my head. I think it would still converge to 1, though.

Therefore, there exists within the chain a sequence of say...4 billion 0's all of which are indicative of a TH failure. Therefore, it is possible that there exists a thief somewhere so incredibly unlucky that he shall never within his existance get a particular drop from a particular monster.

Possible, but there are only a few million subscribers in FFXI, not infinitely many. Therefore math about infinitely long sequences doesn't apply - there are probably no more than a billion random events per second, and that's a generous estimate. (The vast majority of which aren't related to drops - they're hits and misses, damage rolls, resist calculations, which direction an idle monster decides to walk next, etc.)

It's "possible" that somebody could fight Kirin and have him miss every single swing for the entire fight, too. And if there were infinitely many subscribers (on infinitely many servers so they can actually spawn and fight infinitely many Kirins), it would happen to somebody. But with the finite number of subscribers we actually do have, I don't think it has happened yet. I doubt it is likely to happen within the age of the universe, let alone the age of the game.

Before I get flamed by someone taking a math class... Yes, indeed, one cannot "multiply" (or in fact perform any operation on/with Infinity). Therefore, each of the above is actually a limit problem that I have condensed....

Incorrectly, unfortunately. This is not a flame - probability is confusing at best, and so are infinities; the combination of the two is mindboggling and very easy to screw up if not approached with proper mathematical rigor.


To return to the point: all this confusing probability stuff is exactly why nobody understands how drop rates and TH work in the first place. The distribution of low-probability events (like a Bounding Boots drop) is counterintuitive and often poorly understood, and that makes it even more difficult to determine whether or not something like TH is having an effect or not.

Thus you get all kinds of wild rumors about TH not working on NMs, or not working on Rare drops, or not working on EX drops, or working differently in different phases of the moon. Some of them might even be true, but who has enough evidence to know for sure? Has anyone killed LL 100 times with TH and 100 times with TH1 and 100 times with TH2 and compared their number of drops, using the appropriate statistical tests to determine if the differences are significant? I don't think so. (Although you could, theoretically, test the rare and ex claims with 2-leaf mandragora buds, which wouldn't be that hard, I'm not aware of anyone having actually done it. Controlling for day and moonphase would be a pain.)

[Hearshot]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

Has anyone killed LL 100 times with TH and 100 times with TH1 and 100 times with TH2 and compared their number of drops, using the appropriate statistical tests to determine if the differences are significant? I don't think so.

QTF!

Regardless if you are a thf or have a thf in your party, you are not guaranteed a drop. I do believe, however, after failing to get a drop, you are MORE likely to get the drop off the very next pop, instead of waiting till someone else has THEIR chance at getting drop. This idea works for me whether i'm thf or nin. But Treasure Hunter would imply you are more likely to get a drop sooner, to me.

[Sabaron]

Re: Treasure Hunter Tweak

Preliminary note: Saying that a statement is "wrong" is not a flame if the statement actually *is* wrong. Lots of people are wrong about lots of things. No personal insult is intended.

I generally consider a "flame" to be an unsubstantiated, generally rude comment with no basis in fact--your's doesn't qualify as a "flame". I'm used to people correcting my rather "loose" grasp on mathematical things.

No, it's more complicated than that. This kind of reasoning doesn't even work for *finite* strings: the chance of getting at least one heads in two coin flips is not 2/2.

The probability that event E will happen at least once in N independent trials is 1-(1-P(E))^N. For P(E)>0, the limit of this number as N increases is 1 - i.e. any possible event will happen eventually. It's not infinity (which isn't even meaningful as a probability).

Yes, my probability equation was incorrect, but the point was that the Limit as X->[Infinity] is 1. I should've put "1" instead of infinity because, truly, infinity probability means nothing because all probability groupings are generally based on a "percentage".

This is also not correct, but because the successive numbers are no longer independent with respect to the substring condition (the same digit is the first digit in one substring, the second digit in another substring that starts 1 position earlier, etc.), I'm not sure I could write out the correct formula off the top of my head. I think it would still converge to 1, though.

I should stop trying to work through Random Number Theory math in my head while writing posts.

Possible, but there are only a few million subscribers in FFXI, not infinitely many. Therefore math about infinitely long sequences doesn't apply - there are probably no more than a billion random events per second, and that's a generous estimate. (The vast majority of which aren't related to drops - they're hits and misses, damage rolls, resist calculations, which direction an idle monster decides to walk next, etc.)

True, but a given sample set does not have to include all generations of random numbers within the game. We can take a subset of those rolls, say Player X's Utsusemi: Ni scroll drop rolls or something like that with roughly the same result when extended over an infinite string [read: very long string of unknown length].

It's "possible" that somebody could fight Kirin and have him miss every single swing for the entire fight, too. And if there were infinitely many subscribers (on infinitely many servers so they can actually spawn and fight infinitely many Kirins), it would happen to somebody. But with the finite number of subscribers we actually do have, I don't think it has happened yet. I doubt it is likely to happen within the age of the universe, let alone the age of the game.

LOL. I wasn't stating that such a circumstance currently existed, merely that it was possible that there exists a person of such unfortunate luck to have the distinction. ^^

Incorrectly, unfortunately. This is not a flame - probability is confusing at best, and so are infinities; the combination of the two is mindboggling and very easy to screw up if not approached with proper mathematical rigor.

Indeed so...sigh...so many dead trees as the result of my mathematics courses...

To return to the point: all this confusing probability stuff is exactly why nobody understands how drop rates and TH work in the first place. The distribution of low-probability events (like a Bounding Boots drop) is counterintuitive and often poorly understood, and that makes it even more difficult to determine whether or not something like TH is having an effect or not.

I like that about FFXI--a one line blurb that says something like "Increases the chance of finding treasure." I wish other things in FFXI were undocumented. Confusion? {Yes, Please}