Firing Failuers

[Colino]

I was wondering what the deal with firings is as to their trivials and what skill firing things uses. I was under the impression that firing fails were dependent on your pottery skill, however recent events have made me think otherwise.

Upon doing reasonably high level pottery (ceramic shields, swords, skulls, gravels, etc., as well as golden idols, primarily tunare), I have, a number of times, succeeded on the actual combine but failed on the firing. I've now failed in more firings than i have in actual combines (in about the past month), and this is not combining fails from idols with PoP stuff.

A few numbers..

10 idol combines, 10 success - 2 fails on firing
8 idol combines, 7 success - 1 fail on firing
3 shields, 2 success - 0 fail on firing
15 swords, 14 success - 2 fail on firing
5 skulls, 5 success - 0 fail on firing

Just wanted to know if it was my horrible luck, or if there was some reason for this. I am 247 skill with my trophy, and always skill with the trophy on (in range, not ammo).

I know the trivials SHOULD be far below the item trivial, and successful combines have told me they're trivial at my level, but what I know (obviously..) there is still a chance at failing. I've heard that this is a 5% chance, is that true?

Thanks =)

[Krazick]

OK, silly question... when you attempted the firings and SUCEEDED... were they always trivial?

The general suspicion is that Firing items is a low trivial (around 15) for a majority of the items... but this could be a false assumption. It may be that for the PoP Items you are making that the Firing Trivial may be 115... or even 215... in which case the chance of failure would be much higher.

Not too many people have actually produced the unfired item, and handed it to someone else for firing. But maybe with the shared bank space, and someone on a pottery binge could make 20 of an item (unfired), stuff in the bank for their alternate with a low (to non-existant) pottery skill to pick up and fire to see if they get some freebie-skill ups. Heck I might even try that with my 216 Pottery skill ... ;-) now to get the components for 10-20 high level combines...

[Obina]

In my opinion, this is bad luck but statistically speaking not even horrible bad luck. Ignore the wheel part for the moment. You fired 38 items. You expect to fail 5% of these or 2. Of course failing exactly 2 is only one possible outcome. I can run the numbers, but you will very often fail less than 2 or more than 2.

Failing 5 (as you did) is about 3 standard deviation from the expected result of 2. This itself will happen 5% of the time. One way to look at this is that if 20 people fire a bunch of things, one of them will have this luck. Last night it was you. Tonight it may be me (I hope not on the Artisan's seal I'm making).

On a true RNG, really bad luck happens at times! How many people play EQ? If there is a million to one chance that something will happen, it probably happened to some poor palyer today!

Here is hoping your luck changes

Obina R.

[Obina]

Ok, I couldn't remember enough math to figure this out by hand, so instead I conducted an "experiment" using EXCEL random number funtion.

In the first box I put =INT(RAND()*100)
In the next box I put =IF(A1<5,1)

Then copied this 38 times going down. In the 39th row I summed up the resulting true values (true means failed on firing). Then I pressed F9 to "run" the experiment. I did it 77 times, which is like 77 people firing 38 very trivial items. My result is

0 fails: 6
1 fail : 26
2 fails: 27
3 fails: 11
4 fails: 6
5 fails: 1

So it happens! We cant prove that the fail rate is 5% from your result, of course, but your result does not mean that the rate is more than 5% either.

(As a check this experiment represented 142 fails on firing 2926 idols or 4.85% failure - so the Excel RNG ain't perfect either!)

edit-->
I think the equation for the chance of firing 38 things and getting 5 failures is

[(38!/33!) x (95%^33) x (5%^5)] / 5! = 2.8%

But I'm open to corrections from other Erudites.

Obina R.

[Colino]

When I succeeded the firings were trivial.

I did another 12 idols today - success on 12, 1 fail firing.

My question is why am I having such higher chances of success on a 242 trivial than on a (theoretical) 15 trivial? What is the chance of failure on a 242 trivial item vs. a 15 trivial? Are they both 5%? Theoretically, it would make a lot more sense for the chance of failure on the idol to be much higher, but from my data, there's about a 3.7% chance to fail on idols, and a 14.8% chance to fail on the firing.

Just crappy luck i supose =/

Realistcally, at a 5% chance of fail on both firing and wheel combine, you should only succeed on 9 out of 10 combines. Failing 4 of 27 really isn't all that bad when I think about it that way - 13 successes (to even it out) with no fails isn't all that unrealistic either. All part of the "fun" of tradeskilling i guess =)