View Full Version : Where have all the adventures gone?
SeaBee1964
04.06.13, 13:45
Is there some sort of limit on how many adventures are available in a server?
I have 3 explorers and I send them out on adventure hunts all the time. I used to get at least 1 adventure out of the three, occasionally 2 and very rarely 3. Now, since the CQ started, all I get is map fragments. I know that more people needed adventures during the CQ, but does this mean that there are fewer adventures to go round?
Yeah, your not the only 1 who is experiencing this but remember it is all down to luck if u find any. 74% chance u will get mf's on the easy adventure search. Basically u need 4 explorers to find 1 adventure through each search. Not great odds!
I feel u there guys, the drop rate of adv from explorers and granite from adv loots are very very very low chance of getting now, am lucky if i find a adventure a week with 5 explorers, and when i do its either sons of the veld or seculeded experiments, and loot is worse, i'd be happy with exotic logs but ll i get is titanium ore and saltpeter, granite or logs i only get 2 out of 10 adv,
Can't say I'm having the same issue with granite. As a level 33 player I'm in no need for granite yet, but I tend to keep finding it.
For the advantures though, I also have the feeling there's a limit: as soon as got 5 adventures in store, all I found was 3 map fragments.
Harald_Villraade
08.06.13, 09:49
There´s no limit to the number of adventures you can own, and the number does not influence the explorers search. Neither does how much granite you own, or anything else you can think of. It is amazing how superstitious the human mind gets when facing absolute randomness. We just can´t accept it, and will try to influence it in any way imaginable, or start fantasizing about the conspiracies behind our bad luck.
If in doubt, ask a roleplayer or wargamer about dice... :P
I cannot be absolutely sure that bb cannot in some way manipulate the searches, but I veery much doubt it. :)
Did you ever read a thesis on "random behavior"? I read several and I can tell you that you didn't use the best example.
Rolling a dice (IN REAL LIFE) is not as random as you would think, since there are quite some things influencing the outcome:
- how do you keep the dice in hand before rolling it; always with the 6 up?
- are you always rolling it on the same table with limited lenght/width?
- do you always use about the same strength to roll it?
Professionals for sure will pay attention to such details, herewith making the absolute randomness less absolute.
So, this bring us back to the non-real life, where computer programmers use mathemetical random generators. Did you ever try to understand the formulas behind the random generators? I did; I even checked and programmed the formulas described in a few thesis. Differences are huge; some were even not resulting in randomness at all.
So in the end it all comes down to how the settler development team programmed it. Did you try to get absolute randomness? And if so, did they use the right formula for doing so?
A decidedly non-technical take:
It is difficult, in real life, to find a "perfectly spherical chicken" but I think, as an RL example, Harald_Villraade hit the proverbial nail on its head.
We like patterns, a lot, and if there isn't one to find we will often create one simply because it makes more sense to us. In-game, much like in RL we tend to notice things only when we seek them specifically or when they behave in a manner that disagrees with how we feel they should behave and the conclusions we draw from what we notice don't always reflect how things truly are.
This conversation comes up fairly often here, the first Crisis Quest with its insane requirements to "get lucky" filled the forum with posts and eventually gave us the delightful: Nostril Method :D (http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/22656-Four-Winds-Quest?p=215369&highlight=nostril#post215369) and I remember many conversations about the useless abundance of Exotic Wood, back when very few people were a high enough level to need it. Now that many of us do need it our simply using it instead of stockpiling it is often read as a change in the game's programming. Too, while I know many people who've done SFtR hundreds of times and found no Castle, I also know people who've done it once and found one and one friend has five.
Back to the "technical":
So in the end it all comes down to how the settler development team programmed it. Did you try to get absolute randomness? And if so, did they use the right formula for doing so?
Goodness only knows what goes on in the minds and fingers of The Powers but my Explorers go out and come back with... things. Sometimes stacks of pretties, sometimes exactly what I want, and many sometimes's nothing I feel is useful which seems to be exactly what the numbers predict. I have a silly number of Adventures and yet they bring them and I've done SFtR many times and have no Castle but that taken with all those who do have them seems also to fit. Though I may not like it much.
Did they manage absolute randomness (within the listed percentage chances)? I'm afraid I've no idea but I do agree wholeheartedly with this:
I cannot be absolutely sure that bb cannot in some way manipulate the searches, but I veery much doubt it. :)
Edit: There are times the chances for things do change, like recently when the new Adventures were added to the Explorers searches. Naturally percentages had to be juggled to make room for them, but I really don't believe BB tweak chances nearly as often as we think they do, nor do I think they tucked away bits of programming like that which stops my music channels playing "Fernando" at me 23 times in a row. They could have, I suppose, but it just seems profoundly unlikely while our continued hunt for patterns explains things much more simply.
Iolanthe, normally I'd be in complete agreement but for me there was a complete 'sea-change' following a maintenance last November.
Apart from my eternal curse never to receive a White Castle, most of the other stuff generally played fair with the laws of chance. It seems to be more than coincidence that since that time, TO prices for the goods which seem no longer to appear have rocketed. If this is a bad streak, then it's a heck of a long one!
My French and German accounts fare a little better, German explorers have recently been finding plenty of advs, and last night IOP actually coughed up a Motherly Love on the French, very noticeable considering the number of times we've been forced to play it lately. :)
But even these two show a significant shift to favouring e/w over granite, and any variance usually means saltpeter or tit ore.
One major exception, the new adv Lost Skull has so far been quite fair on the granite drops.
I do get what Harald intimated, it does 'feel' as if supply of certain resources has been biased one way rather than another, making aspects of the game seem somewhat out of balance since the apparent shift.
6 times in a row 3 map fragments; starts to get close to winning the lotery when doing the chance math. And that chance it kept low on purpose.
It might be suspicious me...but I sense programming that links the chance for finding adventures to the amount of adventures you already got...
And, since this is a commercial game, it would make sense to have such programming done. Money is made via the shop; why would all of us go to the shop if you can find the adventures via your explorer?
Nogbad, your No Castle streak gives me pains. It's just brutal. (Not laughing, really... :rolleyes: but it's just so impressively awful! :/) If there were any way I could (and assuming I had one) I would happily hand it over.
Something may well have shifted in the last better-part-of-a-year, I'm not saying things here never change, but that I sincerely doubt they change as often or as whimsically as we think. I can't say I remember a specific change last November though I do recall looking in a few months back on a very annoyed Granite-less thread on a day I'd had three Granite drops from three Adventures. Course all that tells us is that there is Granite out there and that I chanced into it while other players did not.
As far as trade prices go I can't help wondering if a large part of that isn't simply due to our actually using the harder to find resources. For a long time most Islands had little need of it but now many of us feed Granite to our Islands at an alarming rate and prices that began sky high when fewer people could do the Advs that gave the most then fell when there was a surplus have now risen again as demand has out stripped supply.
6 times in a row 3 map fragments; starts to get close to winning the lotery when doing the chance math. And that chance it kept low on purpose.
It might be suspicious me...but I sense programming that links the chance for finding adventures to the amount of adventures you already got...
Only six in a row? Not bad. :D Seriously though, there is a 70% chance of Frags on each Short search, you can see the other numbers here: http://www.siedlertools.de/wiki/Entdecker (http://www.siedlertools.de/wiki/Entdecker) I have over 100 Advs (Don't ask, I'm wishing I hadn't just counted. o.0) and two of them came in two days ago. Two days ago I switched to Treasure Hunts, for obvious reasons.
Having watched this conversation play out what feels like (but clearly isn't) countless times and over various resources (I'm betting it will be Titanium soon, course I could be wrong. :D) my point is mainly that while it is useful (and fun) to explore different possibilities it's also often wise to be very cautious before deciding cause and effect.
Wow, a 0,16% chance for Sons of the Veld...and I keep finding it (sorry, KEPT finding it).
Iolanthe, yes it has to be the most impressively awful record ever (unless of course someone can better it!)
In case someone doesn't know the record so far:
437 SFTRs to date - no Castle.
Nearly all solos, couple off LS swaps just to see if that could buck the trend.
Drunken_Abbott
07.10.13, 07:25
lol ive gotten 5 or 6 castles from probably less than that amount of SFTRs, the search returns are pathetic though, after striking 13 blanks on long adv search at least 6 months ago, i havent searched for an adventure since, its just too expensive so I buy em all. now we have science tree I will specialize 1 explorer for adv searching, but he aint going back on it til fully trained.
does any one know the current odds for finding different adventures?
Asking for the odds is pointless. Any player generated table of results is just a historical record of the results obtained by those generating the table. The tables posted by players on the various severs/fan sites do not include the sort of information which allows us judge how valid those tables are. Therefore any prediction has to be taken with a large dose of salt.
Saraptheold
07.10.13, 17:32
I used to get at least 1 adventure out of the three, occasionally 2 and very rarely 3.
I used to get 1 out of 12. Lately I've been getting 2 and on a few occasions 3 out of 16, so for me it's actually better for me. But I see that I can get more for map fregments too, so maybe overall, people are finding less adventures.
437 SFTRs to date - no Castle.
I used to hunt that elusive castle too. My record is not as impressive as yours, but if it was determined by maths alone I should have had quite a few. I have none. Now I don't really want them anymore other than as throphies in my star menu. If I ever get one I'm never selling it.
I used to get 1 out of 12. Lately I've been getting 2 and on a few occasions 3 out of 16, so for me it's actually better for me. But I see that I can get more for map fregments too, so maybe overall, people are finding less adventures.
I used to hunt that elusive castle too. My record is not as impressive as yours, but if it was determined by maths alone I should have had quite a few. I have none. Now I don't really want them anymore other than as throphies in my star menu. If I ever get one I'm never selling it.
If you think the maths say you should have had quite a few you are either applying the wrong maths or have failed to understand the implications of the right maths.
Saraptheold
07.10.13, 18:31
If you think the maths say you should have had quite a few you are either applying the wrong maths or have failed to understand the implications of the right maths.
It's strange how you can say that when you don't know how many times I've done SFTR. You only know that it's less than 437 times. I know the results of probabilty calculations are not absolute. That is why I said maths alone. I know that it is just as possible that I would have ended up with hundreds as none, but it's not as likely to happen. Would you please care to explain how I am wrong about the maths again? Is it no probablity what so ever that I should have had a few? As far as I know there's a 3% chance to get it and I haven't heard any other numbers. BB certainly won't neither confirm nor deny that number.
I'll just assume that you misunderstood my last post. :)
442 now, still trying. :)
Saraptheold
08.10.13, 00:47
I raise my glass of brew in salute to our grumpy-looking easter bunny as he keeps chasing that rainbow. May both you and I find that useless pot of gold that is the white castle one day. Though what we really should be chasing is that even more elusive witch tower.:D:p
It's strange how you can say that when you don't know how many times I've done SFTR. You only know that it's less than 437 times. I know the results of probabilty calculations are not absolute. That is why I said maths alone. I know that it is just as possible that I would have ended up with hundreds as none, but it's not as likely to happen. Would you please care to explain how I am wrong about the maths again? Is it no probablity what so ever that I should have had a few? As far as I know there's a 3% chance to get it and I haven't heard any other numbers. BB certainly won't neither confirm nor deny that number.
I'll just assume that you misunderstood my last post. :)
I do understand your post. What you fail to understand is that the 3% is hearsay, if this was a court of law it would not be admissible as evidence. Unless you understand how computers generate random numbers you are not in a position to produce a compelling argument, if you do understand then you know that given how the random numbers are being used means that any player generated percentages are absolutely worthless.
Saraptheold
09.10.13, 22:07
I do understand your post. What you fail to understand is that the 3% is hearsay, if this was a court of law it would not be admissible as evidence. Unless you understand how computers generate random numbers you are not in a position to produce a compelling argument, if you do understand then you know that given how the random numbers are being used means that any player generated percentages are absolutely worthless.
You are right I fail to understand. I fail to understand that computers generating random numbers are not subject to probality mathematichs in any way. I fail to understand that the 3% is a hearsay and not a statistic that a group of players on the german server calculated based on a large number of loot spots. I fail to understand that even if they are wrong and that the number is only 1% there is little or no probability that I should ever get one castle. I fail to understand that this is a court of law... or not... or whatever. I fail to see that statisics is worthless in probability calculations. I fail to see that the little slight of writing "if it was determined by maths alone " instead of writing "statistically speaking" should matter coming from one who doesn't have english as his first or even second language. I do understand that you are right and I am wrong. So you win this discussion and that's the end of it for me. :) (Seriously we will never agree so let's just stop there.)
Now, back to what I really came here for. I sent out all 16 of my explorers to find adventures and 9 (ta-dah) came back with adventures. So it still is possible to get lucky on adventure hunts. One even brought home SFTR. Hmm. Maybe I'll invite Nogbad to a trophy hunt. :cool:
When I first got my adventurer and started sending him out for adventures, he came back almost every time with a new adventure. Then I got a savage scout and sent him out on short adv searches. He too kept coming back with them. Then I got a quest for finding treasure, so sent them out for treasure. Once I completed the quest I went back to searching for adv.
That's when my luck ran out. Since that event several weeks ago, I am lucky to get 1 adv every 5-10 searches. While I logically think it's just randomness, I can't help but feel that it may have something to do with the number of adventures I have.
I have recently started doing my adv, almost 1 a day. Once I get through a few of them and the number of adventures drops in my star menu, I tend to get a spurt of new adv. 1 out of 2-3 searches. While all this sounds like I have worked out some elusive formula on how these searches work, the logical part of me insists its still random, and my mind is just finding a pattern. I honestly doubt the coders have done something this complex. If I was to program it, I would have just used a randomizer without relying on checking your current adv totals or anything.
If they actually do, do that, my hats off to the devs...haha. At the end of the day, I have plenty of adv to do, and my 2 adventurers go out searching 24/7. Just thought I would share my perceptions as a relatively new user. I am lv38 and consider myself fairly inexperienced in this game for now.
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