Plentiful Harvest Bug

tmbrinks · August 2023

The theories of this bug have been brought up multiple times on the forums over the past years.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/566457/plentiful-harvest-passive-does-not-equal-50-tested/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/564705/plentiful-harvest-cp-star-underperforming/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/582678/plentiful-harvest

It's been a while since the last post, and it's still underperforming. There had been rumors that the CP star was underperforming by 1 "level". That is when you have 10 points into the passive, you're supposed to get a 10% chance for a double proc. Instead you get 0%. At 20 points, should be 20, you get 10.... up to 50 points, where you should get a 50% boost, but instead you only get 40%.

So, to test. I dropped my points down to having only 10 points in the Plentiful Harvest perk and farmed some nodes in the starter zone.

There were 140 distinct nodes collected (which could be doubled by plentiful harvest). Exactly ZERO of them were doubled in this sample. The odds of that happening if the drop rate is 10% is 0.9^140 = 0.00003926% - which is statistically significant by any measure.

Prior to this I was running surveys with plentiful harvest fully maxed out (50 out of 50 points)

In this sample there were 134 clothing survey nodes collected. Of those 46 of them were doubled. 46/134 = 34.3%. Statistically there is less than a 0.02% chance of this occurring if the drop rate is actually 50% - which is statistically significant by most measures (some real world physics experiments at the LHC in Switzerland require a higher confidence interval).

I would love for there to actually be a comment on this, as it's been a persistent bug for years. The tooltip in the game should match what we are actually getting.

I hope I have provided sufficient evidence of this to have it warrant being looked at. (I was counting by hand, so the numbers may be off by a couple, but that does not change the conclusion)

My hypothesis is that there is simply an error in the formula for calculating the drop rate bonus and that they are all off by 1 level.

Thanks,

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_RichLambert

Deserrick · September 2023

Like you, I put 10 points in, and for over 300 nodes, did not see any doubles, despite ensuring I put the skill in a slot and confirmed it.

I do not yet have enough points or PTS access to test my own hypothesis, and I am wondering if you have any interest in testing it. My hypothesis is that, while they were adjusting it from 100% to 50%, they also felt that 50% was too high, and further adjusted it to 33% (as some sources calculated), but left it as 50 points and did not update the tooltip. If this is the case, 10 points would give -7% (functioning as the 0% we both experienced), 20 points would give 3%, 30 would give 13%, 40 would give 23%, and 50 would give 33%.

I should have enough points to test 20 points myself in two days.

Deserrick · September 2023

I had said two days, but it's not going to be ready today. It probably won't be ready until Monday. However, I have harvested another 100 nodes without a single double, so that is now 90%^400, which is a .00000000000000005% chance of harvesting 400 nodes without a double.

Aorys · September 2023

I always felt I received less than I should when collecting surveys. Should get around 170 dust per map but my average is 150, makes sense now

tmbrinks · September 2023

Deserrick wrote: »

Like you, I put 10 points in, and for over 300 nodes, did not see any doubles, despite ensuring I put the skill in a slot and confirmed it.

I do not yet have enough points or PTS access to test my own hypothesis, and I am wondering if you have any interest in testing it. My hypothesis is that, while they were adjusting it from 100% to 50%, they also felt that 50% was too high, and further adjusted it to 33% (as some sources calculated), but left it as 50 points and did not update the tooltip. If this is the case, 10 points would give -7% (functioning as the 0% we both experienced), 20 points would give 3%, 30 would give 13%, 40 would give 23%, and 50 would give 33%.

I should have enough points to test 20 points myself in two days.

I haven't had time to test at other levels, I've barely had time to do my writs even lately.

ZoS could answer the question in less than 5 minutes of testing on their internal server, but despite at least 2 dozen threads on this topic over the past few years, there has yet to be a SINGLE developer comment... on a bug that affects literally every player in the game.

KlauthWarthog · September 2023

They are too busy working on improving their communication to be able to answer questions.

Deserrick · September 2023

tmbrinks wrote: »

ZoS could answer the question in less than 5 minutes of testing on their internal server

Maybe. I had (perhaps naively) hoped that the reason they haven’t answered is because they can’t find the source of the issue, meaning they checked the previous hypothesis, which is why I proposed an alternative.

I am finally CP 358, so now I can test with 20 points. I will report later.

harvey07 · September 2023

it has felt off for some time now. at least a month for me (i think) when i started noticing.

Deserrick · September 2023

With 20 points, and harvesting 362 nodes, 24% of the nodes were doubles.

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The first ~100 results are better than the proceeding ~200 results, so maybe the other hypothesis of an anti-farming penalty to percentages is responsible, and my results will get worse as I continue.

virtus753 · September 2023

harvey07 wrote: »

it has felt off for some time now. at least a month for me (i think) when i started noticing.

It has never worked right, not even on the PTS when it first was tested (January 27, 2021).

valenwood_vegan · September 2023

KlauthWarthog wrote: »

They are too busy working on improving their communication to be able to answer questions.

Don't forget, they were also too busy with a content-less bug fix update.

VaranisArano · September 2023

Deserrick wrote: »

With 20 points, and harvesting 362 nodes, 24% of the nodes were doubles.
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The first ~100 results are better than the proceeding ~200 results, so maybe the other hypothesis of an anti-farming penalty to percentages is responsible, and my results will get worse as I continue.

I did some of the older farming results cited in the linked threads. My farming runs were usually an hour or more (Craglorn and Hollow City) and I never noticed any drop-off with my stats that would indicate an anti-farming penalty.

tmbrinks · September 2023

VaranisArano wrote: »

Deserrick wrote: »

With 20 points, and harvesting 362 nodes, 24% of the nodes were doubles.
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The first ~100 results are better than the proceeding ~200 results, so maybe the other hypothesis of an anti-farming penalty to percentages is responsible, and my results will get worse as I continue.

I did some of the older farming results cited in the linked threads. My farming runs were usually an hour or more (Craglorn and Hollow City) and I never noticed any drop-off with my stats that would indicate an anti-farming penalty.

Yeah, I've done 4+ hour survey collecting marathons and have never noticed (admittingly anecdotally) an altered drop rate related to time.

Deserrick · September 2023

500 nodes with 10 points -> 0% doubles
608 nodes with 20 points -> 25.5% doubles