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Forums » List all forums » Forum: Ice Discussion » Thread: The list of problems i encountered with Greedies |
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Thread Status: Normal Total posts in this thread: 22 |
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Fazzed
Joined: Jan 10, 2015 Posts: 118 Status: Offline |
Ahoy mates! Lincoln from Ice again. So I've done quite alot of greedies and can safely say that these problems im going list happen quite often. - First off spawns of greedies. I have a theory how the spawning mechanic works: There are multiple ways to spawn greedy pirates, such as; Ramp, loot in hold, greenies on board(havent tested this) and choice of sailing route. Now how i believe it works is that everytime a requirement is met a coin is flipped to determine if a greedy pirate(or multiple depending the ship size you attack) will spawn or not, So if landed on heads they will appear and if tails better luck on the next battle. Again this is just a theory, i based off this because it's the only logical way to explain how on certain routes i take like Shatterstone island - Fort Royal i never see any greedies or sometimes after losing my ramp i will fight a sloop with 4/5 pirates being greedy or how i can have a ramp of 9+ and only have 1 or none spawn for me. If it's completely random then that's ok. But i really do think some of the routes on Ice seem to have a severe lack of greedy spawns. -Swordfighting Greedy pirates. Now im sure most of you know that 3x3 blocks are the best way to deal with greedy pirates but i find they miss nearly half the time. And if you've maxed out the enemy ship then having a 3x3 strike fail to knock the treasure off the pirate it has a good chance of knocking the pirate out instead. I've taken to doing only 3x4 as they seem to have a 99% effectiveness so far. But these blocks take alot of time to build and is the very opposit of "greenie" friendly. In short: the Swordfighting is wildly unbalanced to the rumbling. -Exploits Now i did manage to find an exploit with the chests being delivered to the ship regardless if the battle was won or not. Now with rumble being quite easy to knock chests off quickly I managed to be able to get 7 chests off of a war brig 5 vs 21. After losing i did not lose any of the chest i had stolen off them and simply ported with a pretty amazing divvy as reward with very little work. Now yes that exploit requires quite a bit of skill and luck but to be honest it can be done effectively well with practice. -booty division I think i've ranted about this one quite alot almost to a point where i dont like hiring new jobbers after the first battle. Several times i've had a ship full and had the occasional leavers and new jobbers. And i've come to notice a pattern. For example: I did a run with 12 battles 11 wins 1 loss, and about 8 jobbers 4 of which stayed the entire trip, the other 4 stayed about 1-7 battles. now whats interesting is that the 1 that stayed for a single battle got 6 of the 20 chests we had found with 5 trinkets and poe, and I received 1 trinket and another jobber who had stayed the entire trip received only poe. Now this would really need to be looked into as this could break this highly potential update Also i have screenshots i can post if requested. -Not so greenie friendly Now it's been ages since i've done a greeter pillage since i believe greenies to be a myth now. But i do fairly remember that keeping a ramp with greenies is slightly difficult. Now dont get me wrong i believe profitable pillaging will keep new players to stick around longer but not bring new ones to the game because only ADVERTISING would do that. Sorry ranting... Anyway also if a ramp is maintained the fighting can get very very hard I have no solution to fix this issue to make it greenie friendly yet not unbelievably too easy for elites either. Yet im sure if we figured that, this game and community wouldnt have killed off the less skilled pirates. So these are mostly my problems or rant with Greedy pirates I will make a list of things i love about them later today because i dont like stomping on the hard work the devs have made ---------------------------------------- Shinwa on emerald |
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farmboy236
 Joined: Mar 2, 2006 Posts: 1008 Status: Offline |
Pretty accurate analysis as far as I can tell, well done. ---------------------------------------- Majorjr on Cerulean Littlemenjr on Meridian Major on Emerald Aristoza greeter chats, "Hello! I'm an Ocean Master, an administrator of this game. Please shut yer trap" |
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GreatBob
Joined: Sep 3, 2005 Posts: 1465 Status: Offline |
I feel like there needs to be a sanity check on the amount of greedies given. 6th battle in, all previous battles won, but no greedies? The system should catch this and convert a few into greedies. If the "coin flip" is happening on an individual basis (as opposed to shipwide) this could definitely help explain the variance we're seeing. If each bot has a 25% chance of being greedy in a given battle, instead of the ship containing between 15-40% greedies, we're going to have more peaks and troughs. This all depends on the intention of the design though. Right now we're actively hunting greedies, instead of pillaging and seeing them as a bonus. I would like to see each ship have at least one greedy, effectively serving as the captain. This makes sense in lore, as would larger/more successful ships having multiple greedy pirates (officers). ---------------------------------------- Penguinpaste, SO of Polaris, Obsidian. Dark side. Avatar by Phaerie. |
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Fazzed
Joined: Jan 10, 2015 Posts: 118 Status: Offline |
Let's be honest, upon release the vast majority of pillages will be run with one thing in mind, Lavish Lockers. :P Perhaps we are supposed to see it as a bonus but no one will haha ---------------------------------------- Shinwa on emerald |
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jlh0605
Joined: May 1, 2007 Posts: 2243 Status: Offline |
Exploit of being delivered immediately: I do like that they are delivered immediately. This is a good thing. However, that exploit you mentioned, of taking a few highly skilled and attacking a wildly superior ship to nab some quick chests is a direct result of this, and could definitely result in greedies being used for elitism. Maybe you could have a 50% chance of losing chests if you lose the fray you won them in (similar to losing CI frays). Maybe that chance could increase if you attack red ships, or if your ship's average strength is too high. Booty division weirdness: As long as there are significantly fewer chests than pirates*battles, randomness will certainly cause some weird distributions. I do think that you shouldn't be able to win more than one chest per battle/expo, since getting more than a chest per pirate per battle currently is almost impossible, without the exploit above. Another suggestion would be to make some (about half) of the PoE from the chests be put into the booty, then spread that way. So each pirate would get "Ye get X PoE from the booty." then "Ye get Y PoE from the distributed lavish lockers." This way, a good chunk of the Lavish Locker PoE is being distributed by effort, rather than by RNG luck. With the number of greedies, I do like what was mentioned about the idea of each brigand having a chance to be greedy vs. shipwide how many. The problem with this is that I think it would be too predictable. For example, I might be able to say "If I do a pillage with me and these two hearties, I always get 0 greedies in the first battle, then 2 then 4." I do like the peaks and troughs more, I just wish that having zero happened less often. What if instead of guaranteeing one greedy, make it so you can "earn" a guarantee of one greedy, with each additional one being based on a per-brigand chance. Forculus stated (in the release notes) that the greedy encounter rate is affected by three things: # battles won, current ramp, and greenies aboard. So, make it so the way to "earn" the guaranteed one greedy per battle is by doing one of these three, namely: * You won your last battle (not your last fray. Disengages count against you for this point.) * Your ramp is above a certain cutoff (higher than what you leave port with, of course) * You have X greenies (or Y % of greenies) aboard (with logic to help prevent alt manipulation). With this method, you are not guaranteed of a greedy every battle, but in a relatively short time, you can guarantee to get at least one fairly quickly. Greenie Friendly: I would suggest making a new series of tutorials. By tutorials, I do not mean missions; rather, I mean a quick, concise "explain this to me", similar to what the duty puzzles already have (each new piece has one in bilge, along with crabs, and puffferfish, etc.) The first one has a simple explanation of what a pillage is, how pirates work together, and how most of the booty is split at the end. The second one would be about greedy brigands, that describes what they are, the three things that help them spawn, and how you knock the treasure loose. These tutorials will always be readable (maybe from any ship's hold, or from Ye --> Help?), and they will automatically pop up the first time a pirate encounters them. So if a greenie is on a boat, and there's a battle, an Ahoy! notice could say "Teachy Pirate X would like to tell ye about pillages. Are ye interested?". Then the first time you encounter a greedy, "Yarr! I've noticed that ye have encountered a greedy brigand. Would ye like to learn more about greedy brigands?" If they say no, tell them how to find it later. This should help answer a greenie's basic questions about what the heck they're doing (and help old hands learn about greedies, too). And this could also be done for blockades, flotillas, evading, ship swabbying, each type of expedition, each type of SMH, etc. Heck, I'd write the text for each of these... Of note to us is that Forculus has said that the booty ramp figures into the number of greedies. We're Ice testers. On average, we're more skilled than the average production ocean pirate, and Ice stats are screwed up anyways. I don't know exactly how our relative strengths affect the ramp, but they do. I don't know if that will make it easier or harder to get greedies once this goes to production. Let's also keep in mind that we have very little, if any, testing of what actually happens with greenies on ships, which is one of the three items that affects spawn rate. Does each greenie add a noticeable boost to the number of greedies? If so, maybe the current system isn't as bad as we think. ---------------------------------------- ~Jamesh on Emerald Avatar by PixelPixie Galene tells ye, "You are awesome." |
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Fazzed
Joined: Jan 10, 2015 Posts: 118 Status: Offline |
Looks like i may have to sub some new accounts and give it a go. But my main problem is with the ramping itself, i would be happier if greedies were 100% random. like you can find 0 on a sloop or all 7 can be greedy, but still think back to when you did pillages with new/less experienced players they would come and go during the trip often and this would mess with the ramp. so what im wondering is do greenies compensate for the potential lost of a ramp? Im not saying that having greenies makes it impossible to ramp with, it's just unlikely that you can maintain a decent one. Sorry if im only coming out with arguments against the current functions, this is just the first update in years i actually cared about lol ---------------------------------------- Shinwa on emerald |
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saintdiana
Joined: Dec 15, 2006 Posts: 385 Status: Offline |
looking at all the instances where leavers got the most or best items, i'm wondering if the problem is whether this time, "worth" is judged by performance in fights, not duty puzzling or time spent on the voyage. and instead of effectiveness, considering rather.. not making mistakes? on a list of all people who've set foot on your pillage, clearly those with fewest mistakes are those who participated least. to put this worry at ease, could we temporarily please have labels for items awarded? that way we may know what to pay attention to. edit: that isn't to say i'm advocating for rewarding treasure-getting. there's enough elbowing already, if everyone gets an even shinier green light to be selfish, it'll be chaos. ---------------------------------------- ~ owlwhisperer ~ ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by saintdiana at Sep 16, 2016 4:20:45 AM] |
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Sagacious
Joined: Mar 6, 2006 Posts: 4798 Status: Offline |
I documented this as more of an intended "feature" of sorts - and I believe that it's something the developers are aware of. If it is unintended, expect it to change in the next few patches. Otherwise I kind of like it - because it's hit/miss to find the greedies in the first place, trickier to get strikes off on them before KO'ing them, and they don't always drop anything even if struck. So it's nice that if they do drop any chests you can keep some of them even if you lose - because maybe your fighters are a) new and/or b) trying to strategically form strikes against the special targets, and therefore placing the fray more at risk of failure as a result. ---------------------------------------- Cerulean & Meridian - Icemeister Emerald & Obsidian - incognito! #TeamPurple |
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ryujinpp
Joined: Nov 27, 2009 Posts: 548 Status: Offline |
joined a sloop pillage hosted by ttoonnyy earlier and the "random" divvy is rather skewed  14 battles, all won 39 lavish lockers..... 27 contain items, 12 contain poe (ranging from 3k to 5.5k) this is the breakdown of how many battles each participated in, and the lavish lockers received from divvy (extremes being bolded): corrine ...... 4 battles, 2 lockers jadoo ........ 6 battles, 2 lockers notowl ....... 7 battles, 4 lockers ryujin ....... 8 battles, 3 lockers shutterfly ... 14 battles, 4 lockers ttoonnyy ..... 14 battles, 5 lockers wild ......... 3 battles, 7 lockers image links: http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy04.png http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy05.png http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy06.png http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy07.png http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy08.png http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy09.png http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy10.png http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy11.png http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy12.png http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy13.png http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab33/ryujinpp/greedy14.png i felt that the randomess is rather extreme and it might be better if the distribution is measured by participation rather than any other factors.. for example: number of lockers awarded to individuals = (participation / total battles) * total lockers participation = number of battles the pirate participated in total battles = total number of battles from every pirates combined total lockers = numbers of lockers which contain item applying this suggested formula to the above pillage means: total battles = 56 (ie 4 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 14 + 14 + 3) total lockers = 27 (bcos 12 out of the 39 lockers contain poe) it would then results in the following distribution (rounded to nearest number) which is fairer corrine ...... 4 battles, 2 lockers jadoo ........ 6 battles, 3 lockers notowl ....... 7 battles, 3 lockers ryujin ....... 8 battles, 4 lockers shutterfly ... 14 battles, 7 lockers ttoonnyy ..... 14 battles, 7 lockers wild ......... 3 battles, 1 locker imo, a fairer distribution of lockers would encourage jobbers to stay on the pillage fer as long as they could.. which is very beneficial to minimise ramp fluctuation on jobbers' movements will continue to test tomorrow ---------------------------------------- Galene tells ye, "I reserve the right to not deliver prizes to you anymore in the future :P" Galene tells ye, "You crashed me 6 times!" Ryujin on all oceans |
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xelto
Joined: Mar 18, 2007 Posts: 5707 Status: Offline |
So, 5 people with fairly normal distributions (some better than others, but close to normal), 1 who got few, one who got a lot... looks like a normal bell curve to me. While it sucks to be the guy who gets shafted, it gets balanced out by the times you get extra. And random selection (which ends up naturally involving bell curves) is easier to program/maintain the program properly than trying to maintain an "even" split, given the way people will come and go on any given voyage. ---------------------------------------- Gurndigarn on Emerald Ocean "Oh, come on. You jobbed onto a ship called the Cursed Isle Raider and you expected *refined*?" |
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ryujinpp
Joined: Nov 27, 2009 Posts: 548 Status: Offline |
incorrect... the only TWO pirates who stayed the entire voyage were screwed shutterfly 14 battles, 4 lockers ttoonnyy 14 battles, 5 lockers meanwhile, someone who participated in about 1/5 (3 battles vs shutterfly's 14 battles) of the voyage were rewarded with nearly twice (7 lockers vs shutterfly's 4 lockers) as much bell curve or not, this is very wrong if we must go by the bell curve methodology, then we should follow the blue line in the illustration below.. and not the red line  a bit of randomness (+/- 1 thingy) makes the unpredictability a little more interesting, that i do agree but extremes are bad even if it only happens once out of every 5-6 times what do we want to encourage when this update goes live? do we want to see this? (1) jobbers log into 3-4 alts and job on 3-4 different pillages at the same time, performing poor/fine duty report and stalling during melee.. then hop off after 3 battles messing with the ramp thereby affecting the greedy spawn; (2) bnavers going out with just 2 friends (really, all ye need is a sailor and a gunner) bcos it gets icky seeing high jobbing turnover due to (1) or do we want jobbers wanting to stay on fer more battles (keeping the ramp steady) bcos rewards are tied to the % of battles they partake in that voyage; and bnavers very willing to run all-inclusive pillage knowing that everyone will try their best at puzzling & stay as long as they could ---------------------------------------- Galene tells ye, "I reserve the right to not deliver prizes to you anymore in the future :P" Galene tells ye, "You crashed me 6 times!" Ryujin on all oceans |
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saintdiana
Joined: Dec 15, 2006 Posts: 385 Status: Offline |
you're not taking into account that the leavers and stayers tend to be consistent, and the pair of booching straightlining alts that you'll plank from your wb will be replaced by the next pair, but go on to snatch trinkets from someone else's ship. in this case, a gold list may be short, while a black list endless and impractical. the occasional need to leave that happens to the stayers won't make up for being slighted most of the times. ---------------------------------------- ~ owlwhisperer ~ |
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Sagacious
Joined: Mar 6, 2006 Posts: 4798 Status: Offline |
The division rules (Even, Jobber's Delight etc) affect the distribution of the lockers too or just raw PoE? That battle was by Even so the "fairer" distribution that Ryujin gave should have been the split no? I'm not a statistician so I might be missing something. I always thought there were more shares than just 1 share per Pirate per battle that got generated. Is the division system very simple or more complex than it appears? ---------------------------------------- Cerulean & Meridian - Icemeister Emerald & Obsidian - incognito! #TeamPurple ---------------------------------------- [Edit 2 times, last edit by Sagacious at Sep 19, 2016 1:42:20 AM] |
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MaxPain
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A few notes from my solo pillage. It was set to barbarians only and I maintained excellent dnav with the exception of two league points. I had 7 spawns, 5 were barbarians, 2 were brigands. Worst score I had was max-3.5, which I disengaged, the remaining battles were max-0 to max-2. Won 6, lost 3, two losses were against the same ship at the end. First battle was barbarians, no greedy. Second battle was barbarians, 6 out of 7 greedy, I knocked two chests. This is where I noticed a little glitch perhaps. When you target a greedy (in this case it was red), the black pieces in rumble show the color of the greedy (it was a red ring around the black piece), even though they shouldn't show anything. Third battle was brigands, with all bots being greedy. I managed to knock two chests. Fourth battle was barbarians and resulted in a drop, I only received 2 greedy bots out of 7. Even though I didn't have any drop in dnav performance and I won all battles previously, there was still a significant drop in greedy bots. The only possible options would be that I had a change from rumble to sf and then back to rumble, or that I got that spawn after an easier league point (this one being the last league point before Winking Wall). Anyway, the remaining battles went as I expected with 3-4 greedy bots on average, though I lost 3 of them, I ported with 7 chests and got 5 trinkets and 6097 pieces of eight. What I also noticed is that it is much easier to knock treasure off in rumble than in sf, as noted by others. But the interesting part is that I was able to knock treasure off by breaking groups of 10-12 pieces that only contained 1-3 charged pieces in them. I did this at least 3 times. Needs to be tested more, but that is my initial impression. ---------------------------------------- Icce on Sage ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by MaxPain at Sep 19, 2016 8:44:29 AM] |
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saintdiana
Joined: Dec 15, 2006 Posts: 385 Status: Offline |
is that all that counts, dnav and fray outcome? where did your disengaging fit in? and why is it interesting that ALL the bubbles highlighted count, when in sf it's the same? ---------------------------------------- ~ owlwhisperer ~ |
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MaxPain
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I wouldn't know about all the factors, but my assumption that fray outcome and dnav are some of the most important ones is probably incorrect. I did experience a dip in greedy brigands after pretty much constant performance related to both factors. The battle that i disengaged might provide an explanation to why i had a dip in greedy brigands from 5/7 (in the re-engaged battle) to 2/7 in the next one. Maybe there is a penalty related to disengaging? Obviously it is just an assumption based on what happened, I really cannot tell for sure until it is tested properly.
The thing with rumble is interesting because, as you mentioned to me, one needs a certain number of charged pieces, not a group with a single charged piece (or even without a charged piece, still to be tested). Before this my logic went like this, in swordfighting it needs to be a connected shape, as mentioned before 3x4 giving you almost 100% chance of knocking off treasure. The fact that you'd need to build blocks in swordfighting led me to the assumption that you would need to create groups of charged pieces in rumbling in order to increase the chances of getting treasure. I do not have any conclusive results about this, but it seemed to work. I could barely get 2 chests in a swordfighting fray with 5/7 greedy brigands, yet I managed to get all of them in a rumble fray with 5/7 greedy barbarians let's call them. My impression is still that it is easier by far to get treasure in rumble. ---------------------------------------- Icce on Sage ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by MaxPain at Sep 19, 2016 10:25:30 AM] |
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Fazzed
Joined: Jan 10, 2015 Posts: 118 Status: Offline |
I dont mean to toot my own horn, but i'd say im quite good in both puzzles to say that both Rumble and SF are equally balanced at this point. Rumble has it's own spawning system which can greatly help you if it spawns a color you need to take out a greedy. Where as SF you need to rely on your own skills and using NPC attacks to your advantage of course same could be said about rumble. The main problem with SF is that once you dispatched a greedy of their treasure, your board might be a bit cluttered. This hindrance can be overcome by practice by using different styles of blocks to take out Greedies, a block 2x5 or 3x4 or even 3 blocks of 2x2 that are connected to each other all works the same ---------------------------------------- Shinwa on emerald |
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saintdiana
Joined: Dec 15, 2006 Posts: 385 Status: Offline |
is battle score not involved at all in greedy numbers? to me it seemed a huge factor, some weeks ago when someone kept doing 3-1 wins, we barely got 1 greedy every (other?) fight. in my own solo battles, when i'm grappled early i meet few,if any, of them next fight, but in max-something low, it reaches 5/6.
don't misquote me :(. what i suggested was that you try a plain large sprinkle, given the chance, not because it needs answering, but because you probably wouldn't trust my "anecdotal" evidence. it works. it doesn't need to be charged at all. and every single lonesome piece is highlighted in rumble, as opposed to sf. you probably build well enough in rumbling that the 12+ required is below your standard. stop being surprised :p. ---------------------------------------- ~ owlwhisperer ~ |
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Sagacious
Joined: Mar 6, 2006 Posts: 4798 Status: Offline |
I largely agree - they are both different puzzles although they seem similar (breaking pieces with other pieces, colours etc, combos). There's slightly different tactics for each in terms of teaming and building combos - as not everyone is either comfortable or familiar enough with building combos on Rumble, but those that are do so very well. ---------------------------------------- Cerulean & Meridian - Icemeister Emerald & Obsidian - incognito! #TeamPurple |
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saintdiana
Joined: Dec 15, 2006 Posts: 385 Status: Offline |
after the division system update, i'd like to propose the following amendments, if possible: - if you straightline, you don't get points for that battle. that could mean keyboard/mouse not in use, or a single key pressed continually (mechanically, with a weight) to prevent idling. - as a pillage runner, if you plank someone with max score possible for them (i'd have said "as many points as you", but this version would allow for late-comers as well), you lose points. in this way we might prevent a share of the problems. ---------------------------------------- ~ owlwhisperer ~ |
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Sagacious
Joined: Mar 6, 2006 Posts: 4798 Status: Offline |
Yes - if only to prevent abuse through the captain sailing with several alts and letting them straightline to get more shares. ---------------------------------------- Cerulean & Meridian - Icemeister Emerald & Obsidian - incognito! #TeamPurple ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sagacious at Sep 22, 2016 3:40:18 AM] |
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Fazzed
Joined: Jan 10, 2015 Posts: 118 Status: Offline |
First off, i'd like to thank Ryujin for running a Wb pilly to test the new Divvy more thoroughly. As well as thank everyone that showed up to make it a great success! The spawn for Greedies on the wb was varied but i'd say very fair too. I believe gunnerfreak had kept count and it fluctuated between 20 ~ 65% greedies either way a great success despite the booty divvy mishap but that's why were here on Ice making sure it's top quality before it hits Main oceans. It can be safely concluded that the divvy needs more work, as we only received poe and 0 items. This was also reported by 2 other players that do solo pillaging. Also there still seems to be an issue with having a small amount of poe left in the divvy after the initial division is made normally it's below 100 poe and most of the time it's ignored until you get a random divvy cut a half hour later. On the topic of the Freebooter's hat. there seems to be a yellow rim on it but it doesnt require any yellow or gold cloth to make. Of course having gold cloth on ice is very hard to obtain :P, speaking of which if anyone has the Schematic for a freebooter's hat let me know what colors you want and i can have the cloth ready with in a couple hours. ---------------------------------------- Shinwa on emerald |
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