Why Upkeep is a Little TOO Realistic, or: Why Math is Awesome.

[Blondin]

Do you have a solution to make it less realistic?

[Rusty_Shacklefjord]

Do you have a solution to make it less realistic?

Slightly lower upkeep?

Ideally, everyone could use anything that they own and all armor and weapons would be properly balanced. That way there would be a trade-off rather than one outfit being definitely better than another. Increasing the weight of plate, for example. Then if you chose to wear heavy armor you would have the disadvantage of significantly lower damage and mobility, to counter the significantly higher defense. Choice of gear would be determined by personal choice and playstyle rather than what you can afford. Really, upkeep is just a result of the devs being lazy (or incompetent, I guess). They don't want to deal with properly balancing gear, so they just make the good gear less affordable.

[Nagasoup]

Geez... your math is terrible. No offence, but atleast learn probability before you make a thread. Go search up Walt_f4's threads, if I remember correctly he has one covering every aspect of upkeep for the latest patch. I dunno why admins havent stickied Walt's threads yet, they are very well done.

edit: here you go http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,8400 not sure if its the most recent patch, but it gives a pretty good overview.

[Dehitay]

There's nothing wrong with his probability unless you know for certain that somebody is only playing for a set amount of time. But since players play the game indefinitely, the number of ticks is going to be indefinite and you could just as well use infinity. As you get closer and closer to infinity, the variance will slim. And when you hit infinity, it will disappear. So with an infinite number of ticks, each piece of equipment will break once every 25 minutes. But that is ignoring wpf. Somebody mentioned wpf, but that's too much variability to get into.

For the record, I finished college with an engineering degree, which means I took Probability & Statistics as well as a crapload of other math classes.

[Beans]

Yeah, I realize now that my math is off by some degree. At the very least the axiom regarding earnings is wrong, since x1 is only 50 gold per tick and the ticks are once a minute.

This is also incorrect. The first two ticks occur at 30 second intervals, after that it is then 1 minute.

Slightly lower upkeep?

Ideally, everyone could use anything that they own and all armor and weapons would be properly balanced. That way there would be a trade-off rather than one outfit being definitely better than another. Increasing the weight of plate, for example. Then if you chose to wear heavy armor you would have the disadvantage of significantly lower damage and mobility, to counter the significantly higher defense. Choice of gear would be determined by personal choice and playstyle rather than what you can afford. Really, upkeep is just a result of the devs being lazy (or incompetent, I guess). They don't want to deal with properly balancing gear, so they just make the good gear less affordable.

This is already true. You can get on the battle server everyday and see it. Tons of horrible players wear heavy armor(always gothic plate for whatever reason) and continue to be bad. Great players dominate with or without armor. Ser Butts owns with his horrible gambleson, dexxta owns with that corranzia armor.

It already is a big choice to wear heavy armor or not, it slows you down a disgusting amount. Try it out. Most people don't want to realize that they are simply not good because, well, they are not good. They would rather point at the gear of the people who killed them. "Man one day I'll have that weapon/armor and I'll dominate just like them!", then you get there and realize woah nope! Not that easy. That is why I play cav 

No really, whatever server you play on, pick whoever you think is the best armor/gear whore and get their exact gear. Use it, even for a brief time that you can. See if you end up 23-2 like they do.

[Kafein]

the break rate for each item is 4% chance per minute played.
- for every 5 minutes played each item has a 20% chance of breaking.

Fail.

End of reading.

[Kafein]

Consider this:

the break rate for each item is 4% chance per minute played.
- for every 5 minutes played each item has a 20% chance of breaking.
- with only 5 items, on average 1 of them will break per 5 minutes played.
- on average an entire 5-piece outfit will break every 25 minutes.

one tick of income is generated every 5 minutes.
- assuming an average multiplier of x3, you will earn 300 gold every five minutes.
- in 25 minutes you will earn an average of 1500 gold.

upkeep for each item is 7% the cost of the item.
- with a 5-piece outfit you will pay 7% of your total cost every 25 minutes.
- 1500*.07=21428.

Therefore, with an average multiplier of x3 your total cost must be less than or equal to 21428 gold in order to break even.

~21.5k is barely enough money for a set of cheap medium armor and a weapon. Players depending on an average income are forced to wear this sort of meager gear, while long term multi-generational characters with huge stockpiles of money are able to wear whatever they want. I frequently see vets running (or worse, riding) around in full plate with masterwork weapons. Newer players flail impotently against them, then are cut down in a single hit. It reminds me all too much of rich medieval knights in their shining armor, passed down from generation to generation, cutting down hordes of poor helpless peasants. This sort of wealth gap may be realistic, but it's certainly not fun - at least for the majority that are on the receiving end.

Fail.

End of reading.

Btw, this is the explanation :

Dude, your item can break or not during every of those five minutes. Chance for that is always the same and it's 4%. Also probability of breaking doesn't change over time.

Probability for opposite event to happen (item didn't break) is 96%.

So chance for your item not to break during five minutes is 0.96*0.96*0.96*0.96*0.96 or 0.96⁵. We're multiplying because all those events have to occur, item shouldn't break during first, then during second, then during third, fourth and finally during fifth minute. By multiplying we're decreasing the chance for item not to break and increasing the break chance!

Opposite event for item not breaking during five minutes is to break at any given time during those five minutes. Which means that we have to

1 - 0,8153726976 to get the change for breaking.

0,1846273024 is the break chance for item during those five minutes.

The same problem arises with both of these :

- with only 5 items, on average 1 of them will break per 5 minutes played.
- on average an entire 5-piece outfit will break every 25 minutes.

This isn't realistic :

- assuming an average multiplier of x3, you will earn 300 gold every five minutes.

Achieving an average multi of x3 would require you to have a W/L ratio of 74%. We know from another thread I can't find again that :

1 + ratio + ratio^2 + ratio^3 + ratio^4 = average multi

And there's another error here :

- with a 5-piece outfit you will pay 7% of your total cost every 25 minutes.

Each item can break or not break and this isn't linked to the other object or when did the item break in the past.

[Leshma]

Include how wpf reduces break chance if you want an accurate reading.

Does anyone know how that works?

Fasader maybe?

[Ylca]

Are you taking into account the winning team has a significantly lower chance of breakage?

[The_Bloody_Nine]

lol, kafein totally not on topic but I couldn't stop laughing reading your sig-graph about helping parents with computer-problems. Endless hours when I visit my parents or on phone and all I'm doing is on this sheet. Though on phone things can get really complicated...

[OoberNoob]

Adding percentages? 4% every min for 5 min = 20%  Well in that case your equipment has.. lets see.. 96 x 5 equals a 480% chance of not breaking.  Ill take those odds.

[Torp]

do this per tick and do the math right like so many others have already done (try using the 'search' function)

Assuming a multipleir of 2 (that is about the average multi; many topics on this issue use search for more info)

you will earn 100 gold per tick. those 100 gold will on average be able to sustain 100*25*(100/7)=35,714 gold.

got the *25 from the 4% break chance (1/25 chance of breaking, breaking once every 25 ticks - you pay 1 repair per 25 ticks) and *(100/7) from the 7% repair cost (7/100 cost of the original item price)

EDIT: the original formula is 100/((4/100)*(7/100)) but the other one is simpler

[Torp]

Or Paul, or cmp or...

...anyone old enough who attended university and finished it....

University shouldn't be neccesary for this kind of math... a highschool student should be able to do stuff like this

[duurrr]

There's nothing wrong with his probability unless you know for certain that somebody is only playing for a set amount of time. But since players play the game indefinitely, the number of ticks is going to be indefinite and you could just as well use infinity. As you get closer and closer to infinity, the variance will slim. And when you hit infinity, it will disappear. So with an infinite number of ticks, each piece of equipment will break once every 25 minutes. But that is ignoring wpf. Somebody mentioned wpf, but that's too much variability to get into.

For the record, I finished college with an engineering degree, which means I took Probability & Statistics as well as a crapload of other math classes.

variance is such a bitch...
did you also play some poker? you sound like someone whos playing +ev poker. i didn't know you could learn about variance in university

[obitus]

Lots of noobs in here who didn't take statistics.   

Assume a 4% chance of item break every minute.  Assume gear is 6 different items whose average cost is 5000 gold, totaling 30000.  Every repair on average is therefore 0.07*5000=350 gold.

There are seven discrete outcomes for an average minute of gameplay...between 0 and 6 items will break.  Let us calculate these probabilities.

No repairs = 0.96^6 = 78.28% chance to pay 0 gold
One item broken = ((0.96^5)*0.04 * 6 combinations = 19.57% chance to pay 350 gold
Two items broken = (0.96^4)*(0.04^2) * 15 combinations = 2.04% chance to pay 700 gold
Three or more items broken = 0.11% chance (fuck outliers).  I'm lazy so lets just say 0.11% chance to pay ~1400 gold

Now we weight the costs with their probabilities...

0.1957 * 350 + 0.0204 * 700 + 0.0011 * 1400 = an average of 84.315 gold spent per minute on a 30000 gold equipment setup.

This necessitates an average multiplier of between 1x (50 gold per minute) and 2x (100 gold per minute) to break even -- not terribly hard.

Repair costs exist for a reason - as the game's main gold sink.  Gold is useless without repair costs.