Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Crafting Critical Failure Rates
Angan
Since this topic is near and dear to me, I made a few doc/medic components last night (advanced BEC, CRDM, and SDS) to test some recent resources I'd gathered and to see what the faliure rates were like right now. My goal was to make 1 schematic worthy sample of each of the 3 types I wanted to run.
Results:
Total assebly attempts: 10
Assembly results: 1 Amazing Success, 5 Great Success, 4 Crit Failures (back-to-back falures, two separate times)
Total Experimentation attempts: 42
Experimentation results: 1 Amazing Success, 37 Great Success, 1 Good Success, 3 Crit Failures
I am a Master Doc using a +14.9ish tool & +43.xx station. The actual crit failure rate was 7 in 52 or 13.46%, which is bad but I'll be the first to admit this was a small sampling and so the data is easily skewed a bit--I was suprized not to see any moderate successes or failures, as an example. However, the fact that it took me 10 sets of resources and subcomponents to make 3 usable items equates to a 70% item failure rate. This is simply too high, especially factoring in my skill level and the quality of the tool, station, and resources I use. I tend to agree with many of the other posters here in that a Master crafter should seldom if ever fail, and even in a failure it is hard to justify a total loss of subcomponents.
The system is in need of a revamp as far too many resources go to waste since none of us, in general, use less than Great Successes to make our items/schematics.
Thanks Chrysalide, this is a great thread and shows your interest in dealing with the situation. It is exactly the kind if interaction that builds a postitive relationship between vendor and customer.
Cafa wrote:
R2DADROID wrote:
Chrysalide wrote:
[snip]
Please feel free to continue the discussion on this topic, as we will continue to check on the thread and review the feedback.
As always, thanks!
Jeff "Chrysalide" Carpenter
Developer
Thank you, Chyrsalide.
This is exactly the kind of communication we've wanted to get from the developers for 7 months.I hope we can expect morelike thisfrom now on.
Let me be more BLUNT.
Bless you Jeff, or whatever manager had the courage to finally let one of you talk to us like human adults. It's much appreciated.
Thanks.
This is a result of my working with the correspondents. I argued the issues and the team pushed for development time to be slated for these players issues. Jeff is the bomb and chose to work with me and us.
My thanks go to JustG, Blair and Runesabre for putting up with me...
Its a long process but it is working 
PunkRod wrote:
I'm afraid my answer will be lost in the thread, but as a weaponsmith, I think I have much more experimentation failures at master.
the experimentation critical failures are fine to me...
Nope. Not lost. We are looking into this isse aas part of this process...
Thunderheart wrote:
Cafa wrote:
Let me be more BLUNT.
Bless you Jeff, or whatever manager had the courage to finally let one of you talk to us like human adults. It's much appreciated.
Thanks.
This is a result of my working with the correspondents. I argued the issues and the team pushed for development time to be slated for these players issues. Jeff is the bomb and chose to work with me and us.
My thanks go to JustG, Blair and Runesabre for putting up with me...
Its a long process but it is working
Thank you very much, Kurt! 
Cafa Asia
Did you try crafting with the best stations/tools/bonuses you can use?
Though I don't have "hard data", it seems to get worse the better you should be. Using just a plain old droid and15+ tool I hardly ever get CF's, using my 43+ station and 15+ tool I get them all the time...
Personally I think there is some sort of "wrap around" bug where the variable used flips back to zero and starts there once you go over a certain amount, rather than just capping off at the limit. Like this:
43+ station with15+ tool andskill of 100 should equal (say) 125 (capped).
Instead it hits the 125 cap, wraps back to0 and ends up as 33...
Chrysalide wrote:
Hello everyone,
For those of you with which I have not had the pleasure to interact, I am the developer that has been tasked with reviewing the rate of critical failures during crafting. We felt that this was an important issue to look into, as many of the player correspondent for the crafting professions are reporting that the crafting community as a whole are reporting an abnormally high percentage of critical failures.
In an effort to document some concrete numbers, Thunderheart and I worked in conjunction with some of the player correspondents on Test Center over the last several days. We began logging crafting attempts for assembly and experimentation, and the critical failures for these areas, to see exactly what the rate of failure was. The results of this test case are as follows:
Assembly attempts: 1448
Assembly critical failures: 65
Assembly critical failure rate: 4.49%
Experimentation attempts: 1284
Experimentation critical failures: 54
Experimentation critical failure rate: 4.21%
These numbers do fall within the expected parameters of the crafting system. Regardless, the significant number of people that have raised this issue does still lend this topic an air of legitimacy. I am interested in hearing any suggestions, comments, and/or concerns that the crafting community (or anyone at all) might have about critical failures as they relate to the crafting process.
I do have a minor change to crafting in development somewhat reducing the rate of critical failure. I believe this solution will be amicable to everyone, but I am definitely open to hearing any feedback about the existing system that anyone might have. While we may not be able to implement every suggestion, we do take them to heart and will do what we can to make it the best system for all parties involved.
Thanks to everyone for all your help, and your continued support,
Jeff "Chrysalide" Carpenter
Developer
Message Edited by Chrysalide on 01-26-2004 12:13 PM
My first thought is, why did you check on test center? It seems a bit obvious that test center is not a perfect clone of the live servers - also, it will have new code not on the live servers. Also, it will not have the number of people that say Chilastra has on it.
Secondly, is there a difference in equipment used? The fact that it did not enter into your calaculations at all makes me doubt that those numbers do anything at all for critical failures. Shouldn't they?
Third, does the difficulty level in what you are making matter? It doesn't seem like that factored into your 4% calculations, either. Shouldn't it?
Fourth, as a Bioengineer, critical failures are not merely aggrevating. Most classes that fail on a craft have lost a few hundred or thousand resources while significant, are typically coming from stacks of 10K or 100K. A BE critical failure often represents hours of hunting for the DNA, and risking damage to equipment getting the DNA, and the loss of what are close to unique items. Losing mutant rancor DNA to critical failures is a very heart breaking feeling, and several BE's have left the game over the loss of time and effort.
Critical failures on pets seem much more common in recloned animals. If it is supposed to be that way, you should tell us. But losing 20 original samples of DNA that have been recloned through successive generations for an hour of sorting and doing the math on resists and HAM and Damage and getting the semi-random special attacks you want, well, that is very harsh.
Pet Stim D's fail a lot too. Maybe they should. But it would be nice if you guys could tell us what the rules are, and how we improve our chances, because right now, I'm not convinced you guys know, either.
A few comments here for you Chrysalide :
1. Your sampling of assembly and creation - big enough but what are the profession and skill level you are using? there is no representation as such. Are you using all Masters? what are the average skill mode?
2. There is a huge difference in crit fails for each profession. For example, Artisan making a drink vs BE using hard to get DNAs.
3. 5 percent crit fail rate falls into your expectation. Is that for the Masters? or its a general scope? For a Master live in an upgraded city, 5% is too high in my humble view. There should be a set rules for skill mod instead of a 5% straight out from number of attempts. You should have a more realistic scheme such that when you are a Master with skill mod such and such, your failure rate is 2%...with skill mod such and suhc, the rate should be 3%...
4. Finally, I am not sure about the test center setup, is it totally mirrow a live server?
I personally ran into more crit failures when I am using a high end station plus a high end tool. This is being observed by a lot of ppls. I am guessing you have a rounding error when you are calculate the outcome. I would suggest you check this out again. Thanks.
One thought-
with a 5% assembly failure rate and a 5% experimentation critical failure rate, it looks more like a 10% overall failure rate from the point of the crafter. Why? Because 19/20ths of the time you'll succeed on your initial assembly and 19/20ths of the time you'll succeed on your experimentation (assuming you only do one). A critical failure on experimentation is almost the same thing as a critical failure on assembly because oftentimes it will drop the experimental percentage down to 0% (meaning that statistic can no longer be experimented on and is fixed at the minimum for that item). This works out to a success rate of 361/400 or around 90% (10% failure rate).
This is also only taking into account single experimentations. Figure that on any given item a crafter will experiment roughly 3 times (3 points/3 points/4 points). Even with only a 5% chance of a critical failure on each experimentation, that lowers the probability of success to (19/20)*(19/20)*(19/20)*(19/20) or around 81%. That means that on any given item the crafter has close to a 20% chance of failure- at that's assuming the crafter is only doing 3 experiments. If they were to acutally spend each of their experimentation points individually, that would work out to (19^11/20^11) or 57%. That's a 43% chance of a critical failure while crafting that item.