[Not a bug] Adventure Board misconfigured for Traitstone tasks

Platform, device version and operating system:
PC/Mobile, likely other platforms as well

What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened:
I was expecting traitstone tasks on the Adventure Board to appear at roughly the same rate after the introduction of deeds. Instead, we are now getting flooded with this type of task, it shows up roughly twice as likely as before, from ~20% to ~35%. For a detailed analysis with a statistically significant number of samples please see this thread.

How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
Ever since the task distribution rate was adjusted to accommodate deed tasks. This is such a huge downgrade in reward quality, itā€™s either a fudged reconfiguration or an intentional nerf that failed to get communicated.

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Working by design. I said this was going to happen when the AB came out but people were too busy arguing, ā€œDAAAH I GOTS DA 150 GEM TASK TODAY YOUR STUPIDā€ so I guess they got what they wanted. Iā€™d love to see it adjusted too but it gets my goat a little bit that the only response I got for months was ā€œstop complainingā€.

It stank then and now it stinks worse. This is why you donā€™t praise a trash can even if you found a gold ring in it one time.

You got the commend how the developers/publisher is making it look, like they actually listen, when in fact they just found some clever loopholes for some new system thatā€™s actually not better than the old one, because in actuality it gives less than it did before. I was not fooled, but many fell for it.

The rates werenā€™t touched when AB Tasks were made global - itā€™s just that now players donā€™t have a chance to be luckier than others so itā€™s appearing like the numbers are incorrect compared to the numbers in the thread you linked but actually the sample size was too small to get accurate data for that thread compared to the hundreds of thousands of tasks that used to be spawned across our entire player base.

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Kafka, Iā€™m not sure what to make of this response. Of course the rates were touched, to fit in deed tasks. Itā€™s really impossible for rates to all have remained the same, thatā€™s such basic knowledge, why do I even have to point this out? Iā€™d also like to point out that this isnā€™t about ā€œgetting accurate dataā€, itā€™s about proving that the likeliness for traitstone tasks has increased significantly. And Iā€™d like to point out that the sample size is large enough to arrive at a confidence level for this assumption commonly referred to as ā€œdead certainā€.

Could you please forward this to whoever is responsible for the adventure board tasks? And remove the ā€œ[Not a bug]ā€ tag until this has been looked at by someone familiar with the numbers involved?

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Worth noting that we have trended down on our traitstone percentage since the first three weeks (sitting under a 30% average finally), and the post-patch and pre patch samples are within each otherā€™s margin of error when using a 95% confidence interval (about 17.5~21.5% at 95% CI prepatch and between about 20~39.5% at 95% CIā€¦ we donā€™t have a great sample size post patch, but if they are ā€œthe sameā€ then it is far more likely that we collectively have ā€œbad luckā€ now compared to us collectively having ā€œgood luckā€ when taking the earlier samples).

However, Iā€™m a bit concerned at this comment:

We are dealing with supposedly random and supposedly independent events, right? Speaking, at least, to any given day of adventure board rolls, since repeats of the same task within a day have never been shown. In these cases, the accuracy of the sample should in no way be affected by the size of the data not sampled but estimated by the size of the sample itself. Sure, youā€™d have more accurate data if you took more samples, but if you sampled say, 100 adventure board pulls and only 100 pulls had ever been done versus sampling 598 when 800,000 had been done, youā€™d be more likely to have an accurate estimate of the rates of tasks supposed to be appearing on the adventure board with the latter. Again, assuming independent and random.

So, at the moment, our traitstone rates are still indistinguishable from ā€œbad luckā€ with a degree of certaintyā€¦ just barely. But also worth noting that while sampling will never be ā€œdefinitiveā€ it can still be used to say things about a much larger data set. And right now it is saying ā€œmaaaaybe something changed hereā€.

If you are just saying ā€œtrust us, its correct, and it hasnā€™t changedā€ā€¦ Iā€™ll be blunt, but that has been said before when it wasnā€™t true, and each time it happens becomes a little harder to just accept it when there is any evidence to the contrary. And I know you guys are busy, and I know a lot of threads about something being ā€œwrong with the RNGā€ are a combination of cognitive biases and misunderstandings with no hard data attached, but being presented with actual evidence something might be off and then getting it summarily marked ā€œnot a bugā€ without even checking with the dev(s) that configured the numbers really makes me wonder why bother reporting anything that needs this much effort just to get blown off without so much as ā€œwe will keep an eye on itā€.

So, work with us here, maybe you donā€™t want to bother the team with this yet (even though its been almost a full patch cycle and it will probably be two more before we get a low enough margin of error on the post-patch samples that shows if the samples converge or diverge, and thats if the ABs arenā€™t just changed in that time) what level does this have to rise to for it to be checked out by someone in the know?

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This, very much. :pray:

My focus is more towards battle mechanics (A New Mythic Approaches - Ubastet (Nintendo Switch)) and translations (Improving Gems of War Translations), but the brushing off attitude from devs is indeed rather noticeable, especially when compared to a year ago when I started lurking the forums.

:sweat_smile::vulcan_salute:

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Itā€™s especially hard to accept when it canā€™t possibly be true. You canā€™t add troops to the game without changing the total number of troops availble. You canā€™t add kingdoms to the game without changing the total number of kingdoms available. And you canā€™t add deed tasks to the Adventure Board without changing overall task rates.

Iā€™m still not sure what to make of this. That official response is so blatantly obviously incorrect, I donā€™t really see how it could have been anything but intentional. Is this the way of telling us to no longer bother with bug reports? Will the next one that takes multiple hours of analysis get closed with ā€œNot a bug, because today is Christmas and Easterā€, to really drive the point home for the last few still trying to support the game?

Math time, for those interested in number juggling.

For the first 39 days of the reconfigured Adventure Board there have been 37 traitstone tasks out of a total of 117 tasks. The question we need to ask here is the following:

ā€œIf the chance for traitstone tasks is still at 20%, how likely is it to get at least 37 traitstone tasks out of 117 tasksā€.

To calculate this, we need to calculate the likeliness to get exactly 37 traitstone tasks, plus the likeliness to get exactly 38 traitstone tasks, plus the likeliness to get any other higher number of traitstone tasks up to 117.

The likeliness to get exactly 37 traitstone task out of 117 tasks is:
(0.2)^37 x (0.8)^80 x 117! / (37! x 80!)

The likeliness to get exactly 38 traitstone tasks out of 117 tasks is:
(0.2)^38 x (0.8)^79 x 117! / (38! x 79!)

ā€¦

The likeliness to get exactly 117 traitstone tasks out of 117 tasks is:
(0.2)^117 x (0.8)^0 x 117! / (117! x 0!)

This sums up to a total likeliness of 0.1988% to get at least as many traitstone tasks as we are seeing.

In laymanā€™s terms, if someone says ā€œtraitstone rates havenā€™t changedā€ a very polite reply would be ā€œpull the other leg, itā€™s got bells attachedā€.

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If traitstones are appearing more often than intended, it might help explain why we still havenā€™t received enough deeds to max a single kingdom after an entire quarterly update cycle. We were never given any firm estimates on how long that would take, but itā€™s hard to believe this is what was intended.

I donā€™t want to turn this into another deed griping thread, so Iā€™ll just say that Iā€™d really appreciate if someone could check the code. If the rates are correct and intended, at least we can stop speculating.