Bulk Refining is Broken - WARNING!

mamericus

So, this may be debatable, but in my extensive experience crafting in this game since 2014, I noted that when you log into the game with a decent random seed (the hidden variable that creates your RNG), the yield of legendary improvement mats (tempering alloy, rosin, dreugh wax) would have a rough ratio of 10:1, meaning you could get one for roughly every 10 refine actions (100 raw mats).

After trying the new instant bulk refine feature (and logging into the game a few times to make sure I had a decent random seed), it seems that the yield is substantially lower than what I would get before, refining stacks of 10 at a time. For instance, I got 55 tempering alloys out of a stack of 10,000 rubedite, when I would have typically gotten somewhere in the range of 85-100 of them when refining one by one. I had the same result with ancestor silk and rubedo leather: exactly 27 dreugh wax each from refining 6,200 and 6,300 respectively. I then tried refining my ruby ash wood one by one and, sure enough, I had obtained 3 rosin before I was into 300 raw mats; I then bulk-refined the remaining 10,400 mats and obtained 69 rosin, a bit higher ratio albeit still far from my yields pre-patch.

Now this wouldn't be a huge issue since you still have the option to refine mats 10 at a time, except that the UI defaults to the max number of refine actions according to the items in your inventory/craft bag. In order to do a single refine action, you must now click on the button labelled "Min" to revert back to a single stack of 10, and you must do it after each refine. Failure to click on the button even once, will automatically bulk refine your remaining mats, effectively making single refining a nightmare.

By my calculations I lost upwards of half a million gold today using this feature. It would be nice if ZoS at least added an options toggle to either turn it off, or default the bulk refining option to "Min" instead of "Max" when selecting a stack of raw mats.

Please leave your comments and insights below.

Skorro

How do you manage to farm 10k rubedite teach me sempai!

mamericus

Skorro wrote: »

How do you manage to farm 10k rubedite teach me sempai!

Oh that's easy. Do your crafting writs every day, hoard them surveys.

redspecter23

The accepted rate of gold mats is 1 per 20 refines. If you were seeing 1 in 10 before, it was either observational bias, low sample size or extreme luck.

Most players that refine tens of thousands at a time will tell you 1 per 20 refines (or 1 in 200 raw mats) is what you will generally see.

10,000 raw mats would then lead to...
about 50 gold mats which is right in the range of what you saw.

tmbrinks

mamericus wrote: »

So, this may be debatable, but in my extensive experience crafting in this game since 2014, I noted that when you log into the game with a decent random seed (the hidden variable that creates your RNG), the yield of legendary improvement mats (tempering alloy, rosin, dreugh wax) would have a rough ratio of 10:1, meaning you could get one for roughly every 10 refine actions (100 raw mats).

After trying the new instant bulk refine feature (and logging into the game a few times to make sure I had a decent random seed), it seems that the yield is substantially lower than what I would get before, refining stacks of 10 at a time. For instance, I got 55 tempering alloys out of a stack of 10,000 rubedite, when I would have typically gotten somewhere in the range of 85-100 of them when refining one by one. I had the same result with ancestor silk and rubedo leather: exactly 27 dreugh wax each from refining 6,200 and 6,300 respectively. I then tried refining my ruby ash wood one by one and, sure enough, I had obtained 3 rosin before I was into 300 raw mats; I then bulk-refined the remaining 10,400 mats and obtained 69 rosin, a bit higher ratio albeit still far from my yields pre-patch.

Now this wouldn't be a huge issue since you still have the option to refine mats 10 at a time, except that the UI defaults to the max number of refine actions according to the items in your inventory/craft bag. In order to do a single refine action, you must now click on the button labelled "Min" to revert back to a single stack of 10, and you must do it after each refine. Failure to click on the button even once, will automatically bulk refine your remaining mats, effectively making single refining a nightmare.

By my calculations I lost upwards of half a million gold today using this feature. It would be nice if ZoS at least added an options toggle to either turn it off, or default the bulk refining option to "Min" instead of "Max" when selecting a stack of raw mats.

Please leave your comments and insights below.

The drop rate is 0.5% for tempers. 1:200. 1 per stack. 1 per 20 refines. However you want to word it. Your "new" numbers match that.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yQDUjYNQVsIFl0ktkbkSlfYPkzP6pgCOTMQ-qCuzfaI/edit#gid=1078240196

700,000+ refines since December.

mamericus

redspecter23 wrote: »

The accepted rate of gold mats is 1 per 20 refines. If you were seeing 1 in 10 before, it was either observational bias, low sample size or extreme luck.

I should point out I always first ensure I have a good seed before proceeding to refine large amounts of mats.

redspecter23

mamericus wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

The accepted rate of gold mats is 1 per 20 refines. If you were seeing 1 in 10 before, it was either observational bias, low sample size or extreme luck.

I should point out I always first ensure I have a good seed before proceeding to refine large amounts of mats.

I also tap my plushy pac man on the head 4 times and rotate my chair 360 degrees before refining.

mamericus

I also tap my plushy pac man on the head 4 times and rotate my chair 360 degrees before refining.

Well, that might work for you, but I'm talking about resetting computational variables here, not praying to Zenithar.

You should give it a try sometime, I'd be really interested in seeing your results.

redspecter23

mamericus wrote: »

I also tap my plushy pac man on the head 4 times and rotate my chair 360 degrees before refining.

Well, that might work for you, but I'm talking about resetting computational variables here, not praying to Zenithar.

You should give it a try sometime, I'd be really interested in seeing your results.

If you're suggesting that you can manipulate the RNG in the game, I'd be wary about posting that in an open forum. That's treading into exploit territory. Oddly enough, anyone not reporting a potential exploit would be in violation of the TOS. Not too much of a concern if with all that manipulation you're still seeing the exact same results posted by @tmbrinks in the post above.

tmbrinks

mamericus wrote: »

I also tap my plushy pac man on the head 4 times and rotate my chair 360 degrees before refining.

Well, that might work for you, but I'm talking about resetting computational variables here, not praying to Zenithar.

You should give it a try sometime, I'd be really interested in seeing your results.

Considering I have refined "thousands" of materials at a time "hundreds" of times, and they pretty much all fall within the accepted drop rate of 1 in 200. I even have data to back it up! Something I've NEVER seen any of these people who "claim" to get better drops have No videos, no spreadsheets, nothing.

You're telling me that I've never gotten a good "seed" in any of those hundreds of refines. Even if I was doing NOTHING to ensure that drop, I'd have gotten it randomly.

Your premise is flawed, full of bad math, and worse statistics.

LUC1D7

What benefit does a "seed" provide from a resource standpoint when the random number is generated at runtime?

There are basically 2 types of rng. HRNG and PRNG and neither of those generate a seed on the client. It is all controlled server side without client input. This it could easily be manipulated.

SirAndy

Try several thousand mats with ZERO gold tempers ...


Let me quote myself from another thread:

If i had to guess, whoever implemented this at ZOS does not roll the dice for each part in a bulk refinement but only rolls the dice once for everything, which would allow for a return of absolutely no gold tempers for thousands of raw mats.

redspecter23

SirAndy wrote: »

Try several thousand mats with ZERO gold tempers ...


Let me quote myself from another thread:

If i had to guess, whoever implemented this at ZOS does not roll the dice for each part in a bulk refinement but only rolls the dice once for everything, which would allow for a return of absolutely no gold tempers for thousands of raw mats.

While that could be a possibility, the simple fact that not everyone is experiencing this would lead me to believe that if there is a bug, it has more requirements than simply mass refining. Perhaps some variable that you (and a few others) have that others do not. A specific character, time of day, crafting station. It could be anything. Talk to the OP. You probably triggered a bad seed by while attempting to reset your computational values.

tmbrinks

redspecter23 wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Try several thousand mats with ZERO gold tempers ...


Let me quote myself from another thread:

If i had to guess, whoever implemented this at ZOS does not roll the dice for each part in a bulk refinement but only rolls the dice once for everything, which would allow for a return of absolutely no gold tempers for thousands of raw mats.

While that could be a possibility, the simple fact that not everyone is experiencing this would lead me to believe that if there is a bug, it has more requirements than simply mass refining. Perhaps some variable that you (and a few others) have that others do not. A specific character, time of day, crafting station. It could be anything. Talk to the OP. You probably triggered a bad seed by while attempting to reset your computational values.

I have noticed, that on occasion, when deconstructing gear that nothing showed up in the middle of the screen to show my "loot". However, items were still placed in my inventory. Perhaps it's simply a UI error?

kringled_1

The few multiple refines that I've done have given gold tempers in more or less the expected ratio. For people who are cautious or think they are experiencing this issue, please check your temper amounts before and after the refining. As tmbrinks notes, it's definitely possible to get UI issues where some or none of your refining output is displayed in messages, most often when many messages are queued. Multiple refinement makes it easier to get a lot of messages at once and may be more prone to causing this error.

Abhaya

Refined like 20 silk and 80 rubedo using the max refine feature the other day and got 2 wax. It’s just RNG. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose but statistically it should drift close to the %chance the more you refine. That is unless you did something to upset the gods.

SirAndy

Abhaya wrote: »

Refined like 20 silk and 80 rubedo using the max refine feature the other day and got 2 wax. It’s just RNG. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose but statistically it should drift close to the %chance the more you refine. That is unless you did something to upset the gods.

It's not "just RNG". Anyone using that phrase does not know how RNG works.

Without any bugs in the code and actual straight RNG that isn't weighted, the chances of getting zero gold tempers from refining 10k mats are literally astronomical.

redlink1979

mamericus wrote: »

Skorro wrote: »

How do you manage to farm 10k rubedite teach me sempai!

Oh that's easy. Do your crafting writs every day, hoard them surveys.

Agree. Sitting on 35k raw rubedite over here.

EmEm_Oh

Another issue I observed is indirectly ADDING multiple mats to be MAX refined.

I think we need to go back to what we had and whoever is in charge can offer updates on the PTS in the future.

As it stands...it's taking me more time to refine.

Katheriah

tmbrinks wrote: »

The drop rate is 0.5% for tempers. 1:200. 1 per stack. 1 per 20 refines. However you want to word it. Your "new" numbers match that.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yQDUjYNQVsIFl0ktkbkSlfYPkzP6pgCOTMQ-qCuzfaI/edit#gid=1078240196

700,000+ refines since December.

Nerd

tmbrinks

Katheriah wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

The drop rate is 0.5% for tempers. 1:200. 1 per stack. 1 per 20 refines. However you want to word it. Your "new" numbers match that.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yQDUjYNQVsIFl0ktkbkSlfYPkzP6pgCOTMQ-qCuzfaI/edit#gid=1078240196

700,000+ refines since December.

Nerd

Yup. Very much so. Thanks for the compliment!

redspecter23

Katheriah wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

The drop rate is 0.5% for tempers. 1:200. 1 per stack. 1 per 20 refines. However you want to word it. Your "new" numbers match that.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yQDUjYNQVsIFl0ktkbkSlfYPkzP6pgCOTMQ-qCuzfaI/edit#gid=1078240196

700,000+ refines since December.

Nerd

Someone has to do the math so that we have people to explain to the normies why they are wrong... with logic they refuse to understand.

Calm_Fury

tmbrinks wrote: »

mamericus wrote: »

I also tap my plushy pac man on the head 4 times and rotate my chair 360 degrees before refining.

Well, that might work for you, but I'm talking about resetting computational variables here, not praying to Zenithar.

You should give it a try sometime, I'd be really interested in seeing your results.

Considering I have refined "thousands" of materials at a time "hundreds" of times, and they pretty much all fall within the accepted drop rate of 1 in 200. I even have data to back it up! Something I've NEVER seen any of these people who "claim" to get better drops have No videos, no spreadsheets, nothing.

You're telling me that I've never gotten a good "seed" in any of those hundreds of refines. Even if I was doing NOTHING to ensure that drop, I'd have gotten it randomly.

Your premise is flawed, full of bad math, and worse statistics.

Forum seem to be exceptionally full of conspiracy theories regarding RNG these days...

Heatnix90

Because people will just speculate and put numbers out instead of hard data (because the data doesn't back their claims up lol) I'll just cross post from the other refining thread

Heatnix90 wrote: »

Did a few refines this week

Round 1


Round 2


Seems perfectly normal to me

Ardaghion

I would say it's not beyond the pale for there to be a bug that might impact some users and not others. Without understanding the code changes it would be hard to say how ZOS implemented the multicrafting and the drop rate for tempers. I doubt they decided to simply run the original "stack of ten" refining code multiple times and calculate the drop chances on each stack, although it's possible. If that's how they programmed it then the drop chances shouldn't change.

I'm on console so I'm interested in seeing if these reports are accurate or not before we Xbox and PS4 users get to try the update. I think we just need more hard data from more individuals, problem on the live server is the possibility of lost tempers and/or other mats if the reports turn out to be correct.

Lauranae

Heatnix90 wrote: »

Because people will just speculate and put numbers out instead of hard data (because the data doesn't back their claims up lol) I'll just cross post from the other refining thread

Heatnix90 wrote: »

Did a few refines this week

Round 1


Round 2


Seems perfectly normal to me

Based on your post, i went and refined 4k of each : wood, metal, cloth, jewel and my results were not the one i could have expected after reading you.

- Metal : i got 3 temper, 1 blue, a boat load of traits
- Cloth : 2 dreugh wax, 3 purple, 2 blue, 7 green
- Wood : 4 resin, 5 purple, 5 blue, 10 green
- Jewel : 0 gold, 2 purple, 1 blue, 2 green

I wish i could do myself the refining, 10 by ten, i am sur i would yield more result based on my years also on the game.

The addon Multicraft was more reliable than this one. Yes i agree i gain lots of time but i loose also lots of mats. My time is precious sure but not if i have to sacrifice some good refining