MythBusters - ESO Edition

SlayerSyrena

As particular information regarding in-game mechanics, workarounds, etc ... is sometimes hard to obtain, I can understand how some myths/rumors have risen to take the place of the (elusive) facts.

What I'm wondering is, which of these ESO myths are true? If you have heard any, please feel free to post them here and maybe, if we are lucky, we might get some answers. Anyways, I will begin with a myth that has me scratching my head ...

Myth #1

Generals are more likely to spawn at an anchor if you leave all four pinions open until the end.

(I've had players with Vet rank characters insist this is true, and that if you don't know this you are a 'n00b'. I've also had players whisper to me, upon my arrival to an anchor, 'please do not close the pinions!', yet, when I've practiced this myself, I have not seen an increase in Generals at the anchors. I have also seen no proof of this being anything but a rumor, despite my searching online.)

AshySamurai

A patch or two ago I heard that vanity pet can "steal" your healing from healer(pet become a target for nearest ally heal). I was asked to hide my pet. Is it true?

kallistiGAD

SlayerSyrena wrote: »

Myth #1

Generals are more likely to spawn at an anchor if you leave all four pinions open until the end.

(I've had players with Vet rank characters insist this is true, and that if you don't know this you are a 'n00b'. I've also had players whisper to me, upon my arrival to an anchor, 'please do not close the pinions!', yet, when I've practiced this myself, I have not seen an increase in Generals at the anchors. I have also seen no proof of this being anything but a rumor, despite my searching online.)

I heard a variation of this that says the larger your group is, the more likely a general will spawn. So far, I have gotten to defeat two generals within half an hour at anchors with large groups but I think that was just luck. Can anyone confirm if the chances for a general spawn are increased with large anchor groups?

zaria

kallistiGAD wrote: »

SlayerSyrena wrote: »

Myth #1

Generals are more likely to spawn at an anchor if you leave all four pinions open until the end.

(I've had players with Vet rank characters insist this is true, and that if you don't know this you are a 'n00b'. I've also had players whisper to me, upon my arrival to an anchor, 'please do not close the pinions!', yet, when I've practiced this myself, I have not seen an increase in Generals at the anchors. I have also seen no proof of this being anything but a rumor, despite my searching online.)

I heard a variation of this that says the larger your group is, the more likely a general will spawn. So far, I have gotten to defeat two generals within half an hour at anchors with large groups but I think that was just luck. Can anyone confirm if the chances for a general spawn are increased with large anchor groups?

Group size increasing the chance of generals makes some sense because the dolmen will scale and they want to reward group play even this is pretty unlikely.
leaving all 4 pins up makes no sense, hard to see how it could affect spawn rate even as a feature/ bug.

Pets stealing heal sounds like an old bug who was patched long ago.

All sounds a bit like the cast fortify luck 100 then entering an dungeon in Oblivion as it should give more / better loot.
I proven this wrong with an simple mod

Note that both leaving the pins up so people focus on killing the mobs instead of hunting the pin closing achievement makes sense.
Also keep pets out of dungeons to reduce possible confusion and reduce clutter is also good practice. The dwemer sphere in a dwemer dungeon is obvious.

Vonovosi

i have never really kept any numbers on how often they spawn, and I have done over 500 dolmen, but I have had them spawn when I solo dolmens on several occasions.

Gyudan

I heard that RNG is completely messed up.

I've been doing hundreds of veteran dungeons and I barely managed to get one full set of Worm's Raiment gear (super rare). Yesterday I simply switched to a laptop with another IP address and got 2 pieces in 1 day. Messed up?

Lord_Kreegan

Gyudan wrote: »

I heard that RNG is completely messed up.

I've been doing hundreds of veteran dungeons and I barely managed to get one full set of Worm's Raiment gear (super rare). Yesterday I simply switched to a laptop with another IP address and got 2 pieces in 1 day. Messed up?

Everyone claims that in every game. Generally, they have no clue what a pseudo-random number is. Short of using a white noise generator (Commodore-64 anyone?), the algorithmic methods used on computers do not produce truly random numbers.

The RNG used in this game is most likely the standard Microsoft rand(); it is a simple "multiplicative congruential method" generator which combines a large prime number with a seed value through a modulo calculation. It is used pretty universally by everyone because it represents a very small computational load (one line of code in C, not counting framing).

From an operations research perspective, however, it isn't a very good RNG. There are twenty statistical tests applied to RNG and the standard rand() fails a lot of them.

The more complex drand48() that is also provided as part of the Microsoft math library is much better in terms of randomness (passes all tests), but it is a much more CPU-intensive method of generating random numbers; so it is almost never used.

The standard rand() will produce sequences of numbers that are consistently high or low sometimes, which makes it appear non-random. If you don't like your results, log out and back in; most games use a clock sample for the initial seed (RNG is client-based, not server).

Dracane

I'm supposed to be the strongest and mightiest mage. Is that myth true ?

zaria

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

Gyudan wrote: »

I heard that RNG is completely messed up.

I've been doing hundreds of veteran dungeons and I barely managed to get one full set of Worm's Raiment gear (super rare). Yesterday I simply switched to a laptop with another IP address and got 2 pieces in 1 day. Messed up?

Everyone claims that in every game. Generally, they have no clue what a pseudo-random number is. Short of using a white noise generator (Commodore-64 anyone?), the algorithmic methods used on computers do not produce truly random numbers.

The RNG used in this game is most likely the standard Microsoft rand(); it is a simple "multiple congruential method" generator which combines a large prime number with a seed value through a modulo calculation. It is used pretty universally by everyone because it represents a very small computational load (one line of code in C, not counting framing).

From an operations research perspective, however, it isn't a very good RNG. There are twenty statistical tests applied to RNG and the standard rand() fails a lot of them.

The more complex drand48() that is also provided as part of the Microsoft math library is much better in terms of randomness (passes all tests), but it is a much more CPU-intensive method of generating random numbers; so it is almost never used.

The standard rand() will produce sequences of numbers that are consistently high or low sometimes, which makes it appear non-random. If you don't like your results, log out and back in; most games use a clock sample for the initial seed (RNG is client-based, not server).

You are right however this will not affect drop rates in dungeons, first RNG us used for lots of stuff from crit chance to monster behavior, secondly other than your group does calls against the RNG function, all on the same shard server do calls so the end would be far more random than just looping trough and generating an list for analyzing.

I think that drop tables are more to an blame, Items are set to drop with different chance, also plain luck.

I have another weird experience who might me believe its not random.
Has done 8 run of the huge dwemer dungeon in the fighter guild quest line.
in 7 of the dungeons I have had one page dropped and just one, dungeon contains around 250 containers. With an drop chance of 0.4% you should get one average each run, however why so many runs with 1 drop and just one with none, why no with two?

TheBull

Dark Cloak gives enemies a 100% chance to miss for 2.9 seconds.

gilandbb14_ESO

Closing a pinion actually gives the closer a complete heal of all 3 stats. if you are low on stam for instance, closing one gets you right back in the fight. it might actually be everyone around the pinion. Free heal/mana/stamina is a good thing

Grunim

littleasswhole wrote: »

i have never really kept any numbers on how often they spawn, and I have done over 500 dolmen, but I have had them spawn when I solo dolmens on several occasions.

I feel like I see the generals more often when soloing a dolmen. It also might just be a weird RNG thing.

Haquor

Myth #2: reflective scales is OP

xaraan

I don't believe that Dolmen one to be true at all. Tried it, didn't see any sort of bigger rate. Solo'd them and played in groups of various sizes, no real rate change. Pretty sure it's just RNG - sometimes the rng is good, sometimes bad.

As for the pet thing someone asked - I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm guilty of spreading that rumor because I think pets out during dungeon runs or pvp or trials or whatever is pretty f'n stupid. IMO pets are more for hanging out or solo play. But that's just me.

bellanca6561n

And here I thought those VR14s were just being nice to me holding all those pinions open for lowbee when I showed up.

Happy to know I pissed them off.

You get all sorts of myths with random interval reward schedules.

And, yes, I posted something similar regarding the RNG failing the R test for Hirelings and got promptly pelted by people who'd claim to get gold enhancements all the time. Little did they know they were proving my point.

Kartalin

gilandbb14_ESO wrote: »

Closing a pinion actually gives the closer a complete heal of all 3 stats. if you are low on stam for instance, closing one gets you right back in the fight. it might actually be everyone around the pinion. Free heal/mana/stamina is a good thing

Actually it's not just the closer but everyone involved in the dolmen that gets max resources when a pinion closes.

AshySamurai wrote: »

A patch or two ago I heard that vanity pet can "steal" your healing from healer(pet become a target for nearest ally heal). I was asked to hide my pet. Is it true?

Whether they steal it is debatable, but they are valid targets for rapid regen spells. I have personally seen this at dolmens.

ers101284b14_ESO

SlayerSyrena wrote: »

As particular information regarding in-game mechanics, workarounds, etc ... is sometimes hard to obtain, I can understand how some myths/rumors have risen to take the place of the (elusive) facts.

What I'm wondering is, which of these ESO myths are true? If you have heard any, please feel free to post them here and maybe, if we are lucky, we might get some answers. Anyways, I will begin with a myth that has me scratching my head ...

Myth #1

Generals are more likely to spawn at an anchor if you leave all four pinions open until the end.

(I've had players with Vet rank characters insist this is true, and that if you don't know this you are a 'n00b'. I've also had players whisper to me, upon my arrival to an anchor, 'please do not close the pinions!', yet, when I've practiced this myself, I have not seen an increase in Generals at the anchors. I have also seen no proof of this being anything but a rumor, despite my searching online.)

Don't know if it's true but when I went General farming I always left all 4 pinions up till the last possible second and got all the generals in all the zones in less than a week. It wasn't hardcore farming either more like an hour or two a day. So even if its not true I did it anyway and made me feel ok with it.

SlayerSyrena

So, here's a break down of the Myths presented in this thread so far:

Myth #1
Generals are more likely to spawn at an anchor if you leave all four pinions open until the end.

Myth #2
Vanity pets can "steal" your healing from healer.

Myth #3
The larger your group is, the more likely a General will spawn at an anchor.

Myth #4
RNG accounts for some people having no luck with rare drops.

Myth #5
Dark Cloak gives enemies a 100% chance to miss for 2.9 seconds.

Myth #6
@‌Dracane is the strongest and mightiest mage!

Myth #7
Reflective scales is OP!

Anyone have any other myths to share? (Or perhaps someone can 'bust' a few of these?)

AshySamurai

Myth #5 and Myth #7 the same.

Myth #8
Reflective scales is OP!

This skill will be changed in 1.6, so it won't be OP soon,

PBpsy

SlayerSyrena wrote: »

Myth #2
Vanity pets can "steal" your healing from healer.

It was not a myth for a while at least with respect with rapid regen.It was fixed very quickly though.

Myth.
Nightblades are a rogue,ranger,assassin class.

It gets me every time.

SlayerSyrena

AshySamurai wrote: »

Myth #5 and Myth #7 the same.

Myth #8
Reflective scales is OP!

This skill will be changed in 1.6, so it won't be OP soon,

Thanks (fixed)! And ty for the tip on #8 (which, due to the edit, is now #7).

Artis

Myth #8
You need a DK or a templar tank to complete Veteran DSA.

I've done it 3 times with my NB tank. Enough said

Razzak

A nice thread. Keep it up.

SlayerSyrena wrote: »

As particular information regarding in-game mechanics, workarounds, etc ... is sometimes hard to obtain, I can understand how some myths/rumors have risen to take the place of the (elusive) facts.

What I'm wondering is, which of these ESO myths are true? If you have heard any, please feel free to post them here and maybe, if we are lucky, we might get some answers. Anyways, I will begin with a myth that has me scratching my head ...

Myth #1

Generals are more likely to spawn at an anchor if you leave all four pinions open until the end.

(I've had players with Vet rank characters insist this is true, and that if you don't know this you are a 'n00b'. I've also had players whisper to me, upon my arrival to an anchor, 'please do not close the pinions!', yet, when I've practiced this myself, I have not seen an increase in Generals at the anchors. I have also seen no proof of this being anything but a rumor, despite my searching online.)

I would also like to know if there is any truth in this?

AlexDougherty

Razzak wrote: »

A nice thread. Keep it up.

SlayerSyrena wrote: »

As particular information regarding in-game mechanics, workarounds, etc ... is sometimes hard to obtain, I can understand how some myths/rumors have risen to take the place of the (elusive) facts.

What I'm wondering is, which of these ESO myths are true? If you have heard any, please feel free to post them here and maybe, if we are lucky, we might get some answers. Anyways, I will begin with a myth that has me scratching my head ...

Myth #1

Generals are more likely to spawn at an anchor if you leave all four pinions open until the end.

(I've had players with Vet rank characters insist this is true, and that if you don't know this you are a 'n00b'. I've also had players whisper to me, upon my arrival to an anchor, 'please do not close the pinions!', yet, when I've practiced this myself, I have not seen an increase in Generals at the anchors. I have also seen no proof of this being anything but a rumor, despite my searching online.)

I would also like to know if there is any truth in this?

I doubt it, it probably happened a couple of times to someone, and they became concinced it was a cause-effect link. Add to this superstitious thinking (millions of people are convinced their good luck rituals affect the results of big sport events, despite them not being involved (I must wear my lucky underpants so my football team will win the match))

Lettigall

Haquor wrote: »

Myth #2: reflective scales is OP

In ESO live it was said that they even considered to make it ultimate ability, but didn't want to remove any of current DK ultimates so they decided to nerf it!

EDIT!
Don't beleve? Check ESO live 8 on youtoube, can start watching from 1.43.30

SantieClaws

This one has heard a rumour that Santie Claws isn't real and that no one will be bringing us presents for Fishmas! This is a filthy lie probably spread by elves.

There will be fishy goodies in this ones stockings come Fishmas morning I am sure!

Rodario

MYTH #11: Imperials have a "lucky" racial bonus even in ESO.

If true, I have not seen it help with motif farming so far.

TehMagnus

Since we're at it. Power extraction improves the rate of Kutas that come from Enchanting Hirelings.

Is it the same for tanning, temper, resin expertise?

Does having 3 points in them increase the chances of legendary tempers in Hireling emails?

AlexDougherty

magnusnet wrote: »

Since we're at it. Power extraction improves the rate of Kutas that come from Enchanting Hirelings.

Is it the same for tanning, temper, resin expertise?

Does having 3 points in them increase the chances of legendary tempers in Hireling emails?

That one is likely to be true, My hirelings did start bringing better tempers and runes when I invested in extraction, and have continued to do so.

It could be a coincidence, that I invested just before they fixed something with the hirelings, but the fact it's been consistantly better overall (tempers and rosins have been more plentiful for any four week period after the investment than any four weeks before)

TehMagnus

AlexDougherty wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

Since we're at it. Power extraction improves the rate of Kutas that come from Enchanting Hirelings.

Is it the same for tanning, temper, resin expertise?

Does having 3 points in them increase the chances of legendary tempers in Hireling emails?

That one is likely to be true, My hirelings did start bringing better tempers and runes when I invested in extraction, and have continued to do so.

It could be a coincidence, that I invested just before they fixed something with the hirelings, but the fact it's been consistantly better overall (tempers and rosins have been more plentiful for any four week period after the investment than any four weeks before)

I almost wonder if it's not account wide, I used to have only my main character with level 3 hirelings and I used to get a lot of legendary tempers (have the expertise in all).

I leveled up 2 alts and got them at level 32 of crafts to be able to get the hirelings but I only got power extraction on them, not tanning, temper and resin expertise.

Since then, it feels like the amount of legendary tempers I get on my main has decreased except for the enchanting Hireling. Thought it might be bad luck so didn't pay much attention to it, but this made me wonder if tanning/temper/resin expertise actually helps getting better items in Hirelings..

Dracane

SlayerSyrena wrote: »

.

Myth #6
@‌Dracane is the strongest and mightiest mage!

I slightly looove you *-* you've made me happy.