Advanced Calculator

[Zavian]

I can pull up the advanced calculator and enter the information, but when I hit calculate it clears the screen without listing the usual results. I can enter information into the basic calculator and get the normal output.

Is it just me or is anyone else having this problem?

[Zacatac]

I had the same problem when I tried it just now. I've never actually used that one before, so had to go check it out.

[KyrosKrane]

Should be fixed now. Let me know if you find any other problems.

[Sukrasisx]

where?

When I click on the Calculators link, I see only one calculator, no mention of it being "advanced", no link to a more advanced one, etc. Am I missing something?

Also, when I tried the calculator that I did find, I noticed something odd about trivial combines. It seems to be using the rule that your success rate goes up past 95% by 1% for every 40 by which your skill (unmodified) exceeds the trivial. E.g., at raw skill 252, a trivial of 92 shows up as 99% success, 93-132 yield 98%, and 133 yields 97%. I remember seeing (and can still find) a post that says the success rate goes up 1% for every 50 by which you exceed the triv. Is the calculator wrong, or is it really 1% per 40?

This actually matters to me, since there are some trivial but expensive items I've been holding off making until my skill reached another multiple of 50 points above the triv, trying to shave another 1% off my failure rate. It could be that my chances are already better than I thought.

[KyrosKrane]

Whoops, I thought I'd fixed the menu thing. Re-fixed it now.

The calculation is 1% per 40 points; this is why items whose trivial is 200 points under your skill become no-fail.

[Neebat]

Now if the EQ designers would just get thier act together and include most of this information in-game, where it belongs. /sigh

If I'm looking at a bunch of materials and considering combining them, I don't get some arbitrary "trivial" number, I get a rough idea of how likely I am to succeed and maybe some notion of how likely I am to learn something in the process.

I don't mind listing the trivial rating, but it shouldn't be named "Trivial", since that confuses so many people, and more importantly, it shouldn't be alone. It should have "Chance of success" ranging from 0% to 100% and "Chance of Learning Something" in the same range. Take into account no-fail combines, minimum failure rates and skill-up bonuses.

[Ngreth Thergn]

As for "Trivial" I don;t like that name either, but there has been many conversations about this, and I still have not seen anything better.

As for the rest... The designers have their "act together" they just happen to disagree.

Thank you for your confidence in my abilities.

[Astroshak]

The word "Trivial" is a holdover from the past. It used to say, when you couldn't gain any more skill from the combine, that the combine was trivial to you, so the skill at which that happened became known as the combine's trivial.

While it doesn't quite fit today's Everquest, I've never heard anyone propose anything for an alternative ...

[Sukrasisx]

The word "Trivial" is a holdover from the past. It used to say, when you couldn't gain any more skill from the combine, that the combine was trivial to you, so the skill at which that happened became known as the combine's trivial.

While it doesn't quite fit today's Everquest, I've never heard anyone propose anything for an alternative ...

Part of the problem is that, as the skill levels have gotten higher, your chance of success "at the trivial" has an increasing tendency to blur with the other, unintended meaning, "as easy as it can be". I think it's at 174 that, if your skill exactly equals the triv, you get the 95% success that used to be as high as you can get. So for most high-end recipes, the two mean the same thing, and the problem is that people tend to forget which meaning is the real one down at the levels where it matters. And so you get players who don't understand why they're failing so often on a "trivial combine", and they think the game is broken.

So yes, it's an awkward term. What we want is a term that doesn't imply "easy", but carries more of the meaning, "there is no more to be learned from making this recipe." We could say you "understand" the recipe, but that doesn't lend itself well to a shorthand like "triv". One that comes to mind for me (but I don't know if that's dating me) is "grok". Merriam-Webster online attributes it to Heinlein and defines it as "to understand profoundly and intuitively."

So we could say, "when your skill is 188 you'll grok that recipe", or "that recipe groks at 252." I could almost see it, especially if someone can suggest a word that's better known than grok. (Or am I mistaken and everybody knows that word?)

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I would think that if you grok it it would absolutely for certain be no-fail.

[Ngreth Thergn]

And on the subject of putting actual chance numbers...

Do we put actual chance to hit an NPC in the game?

Actual chance that it will resist when you cast a spell on it?

Actual chance that the NPC will hit you?

There are MANY "chances" that we do not spell out in the game.

We have had no thoughts on putting an actual "success chance" in the game.

What we have thought of is at least some indicator on if there is a capped success chance, in general terms. Again, not a number but something that indicates "this combine is more difficult than normal"

[olhoss]

I WoW, though, you can tell how much damage you could expect to mitigate from a mob at your level. While this isn't a complete giveaway, it should give you an idea of where you stand.

The problem with trivial numbers, like with cons, is that they DON'T really give you an idea, because of such things as success caps.

[Bara]

I WoW, though, you can tell how much damage you could expect to mitigate from a mob at your level. While this isn't a complete giveaway, it should give you an idea of where you stand.

The problem with trivial numbers, like with cons, is that they DON'T really give you an idea, because of such things as success caps.

I guess I'm old school, but I am of the opinion a person should do the research on the web or with other players to find out this information. EQ should not give them the information on a platter. Because it doesn't is the reason I play it. If there is no challenge, success is hollow. When I click combine I want a measure of uncertainty. That makes a challenging combine all the better when it comes off. Your milage may vary. I'll stick to EQ and you can go play WoW.

[Strokker]

And on the subject of putting actual chance numbers...

Do we put actual chance to hit an NPC in the game?

Actual chance that it will resist when you cast a spell on it?

Actual chance that the NPC will hit you?

There are MANY "chances" that we do not spell out in the game.

We have had no thoughts on putting an actual "success chance" in the game.

What we have thought of is at least some indicator on if there is a capped success chance, in general terms. Again, not a number but something that indicates "this combine is more difficult than normal"

True, there are no absolutes in this game just like life. EQ is actually based off of the Old D&D type of dice game and there never has to my knowledge been a one sided die < unless you got the same number on all sides> even a coin flip has a 50/50 chance so with random number generators in game you will never have a definate 100 % chance of anything.

[Sukrasisx]

True, there are no absolutes in this game just like life. EQ is actually based off of the Old D&D type of dice game and there never has to my knowledge been a one sided die < unless you got the same number on all sides> even a coin flip has a 50/50 chance so with random number generators in game you will never have a definate 100 % chance of anything.

But that's not the same thing. We're not talking about 100% chances. We're talking about knowing the what the chance is. In D&D you often know that you need to roll, say, an 18 or higher on a 1-20 roll, i.e. 15%. Even if you don't know the chance, you can often figure it out. For instance, if you don't know your target's defenses, you might not know how high you have to roll to hit them. But over the course of a battle you might discover that a 14 hits but a 13 misses, so you know your chances are 35% each swing.

And that's actually closer to what EQ does. The players can try doing something over and over and gradually get an idea how the numbers work. It's harder to figure out, but we have a lot more people generating data. And even so, sometimes developers have offered details such as how the success and skillup rates work for tradeskills. But there's no need to clutter the game itself with that level of detail.