Legerdemain wierdness

krachall

With the new, awesome, armory system (maybe my favorite addition to the game in years!) I'm doing a lot more thieving -- being able to switch from a Trials build to a Thieving build is great! I have maxed out skills but haven't used them in ages. So in the last week I've been farming safeboxes for Leads and pickpocketing for the Black Market Mogul Achievement (920k and counting!). In doing so, I've seen some really strange things.

I was failing to force a lock (Intermediate or Advanced) more than not so I started tracking it. In 125 intermediate or advanced boxes, I failed 71 times. My displayed success rate is, at its lowest, 75% (for an advanced) and higher for an intermediate. That's about a 43% success rate when I should be over 75%. But it gets stranger. For multiple boxes in a row, I would fail, fail, succeed. Meaning it took me three attempts on 2-5 boxes in a row! It's almost like the RNG gets stuck. Mathematically possible? Sure. But highly improbably. I finally got the last lead I needed so I stopped tracking.

Then onto pickpocketing. I didn't track my overall success rate but I only picked targets that had 100% or 90% success. My success rate at 90% was far lower but I didn't track it. What was stranger was the consecutive failures. I'm doing the standard pick-pick-stab and my success rate is 100% then 90%. I always wait for the green 90% to light up and only pick a stationary target. At one point I failed 9 consecutive 90% attempts. I also had failure streaks of 6-8 multiple time. I never succeeded more than 3x in a row.

Obviously part of this is due to the display lagging behind the drop in success. But even at a 70% success rate, these are absurdly low. I estimate that about 2% of the time, I pick when the display reads 90% but the actual percent has dropped back to 70%. I'm estimating this based on an actual count of failing 2% of my 100% success chances.

Has any of this been addressed or am I just that unlucky? And, of course, if you want to respond with "sample size is too low," feel free. But also post your calculation.

Kwoung

Oddly, the last time I went on a treasure chest spree, I found that my failure rate on forcing simple chests far exceeded my failures on Intermediate, Advanced or Master chests, which I could generally pop in a single attempt. I used to be able to pop simple chests at near 100% success, but it seems at some point over the past year or so, that changed drastically... or I just have terrible RNG with Simples and amazing RNG with Masters.

UntilValhalla13

I once failed like 10 simple chest forces in a row. 95% chance of success...

ArchangelIsraphel

Then onto pickpocketing. I didn't track my overall success rate but I only picked targets that had 100% or 90% success. My success rate at 90% was far lower but I didn't track it. What was stranger was the consecutive failures. I'm doing the standard pick-pick-stab and my success rate is 100% then 90%. I always wait for the green 90% to light up and only pick a stationary target. At one point I failed 9 consecutive 90% attempts. I also had failure streaks of 6-8 multiple time. I never succeeded more than 3x in a row.

I pickpocket regularly, and have also noticed this- along with the strange delay where I see 100%, but end up failing the pick somehow because it seems that what is being displayed is behind the actuality of what the game actually should be displaying. While this has happened once in a very rare while in the past, it is happening almost constantly recently.

Bat

Your "luck" resets each time you find a chest. It isn't per total, it's per singular.

Kwoung

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

Then onto pickpocketing. I didn't track my overall success rate but I only picked targets that had 100% or 90% success. My success rate at 90% was far lower but I didn't track it. What was stranger was the consecutive failures. I'm doing the standard pick-pick-stab and my success rate is 100% then 90%. I always wait for the green 90% to light up and only pick a stationary target. At one point I failed 9 consecutive 90% attempts. I also had failure streaks of 6-8 multiple time. I never succeeded more than 3x in a row.

I pickpocket regularly, and have also noticed this- along with the strange delay where I see 100%, but end up failing the pick somehow because it seems that what is being displayed is behind the actuality of what the game actually should be displaying. While this has happened once in a very rare while in the past, it is happening almost constantly recently.

Yeah, that is directly attributable to server lag, which while having been the bane of PVP for a long time, is now making it's way farther and farther into PVE content. They can only add so much new content and expect those 8 year old servers to still be able to handle it. The smaller PVE zones (compared to Cyrodiil) have kept the lag at bay for a long time, but sooner or later the game was bound to hit a breaking point, and that time is upon us.

HybridFreak

It seemed to me to always be like this, even before the armory update. 80%+ chance to force a lock and it'll almost always regularly take 4-5 attempts. 🤦‍♂️

krachall

Kwoung wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

Then onto pickpocketing. I didn't track my overall success rate but I only picked targets that had 100% or 90% success. My success rate at 90% was far lower but I didn't track it. What was stranger was the consecutive failures. I'm doing the standard pick-pick-stab and my success rate is 100% then 90%. I always wait for the green 90% to light up and only pick a stationary target. At one point I failed 9 consecutive 90% attempts. I also had failure streaks of 6-8 multiple time. I never succeeded more than 3x in a row.

I pickpocket regularly, and have also noticed this- along with the strange delay where I see 100%, but end up failing the pick somehow because it seems that what is being displayed is behind the actuality of what the game actually should be displaying. While this has happened once in a very rare while in the past, it is happening almost constantly recently.

Yeah, that is directly attributable to server lag, which while having been the bane of PVP for a long time, is now making it's way farther and farther into PVE content. They can only add so much new content and expect those 8 year old servers to still be able to handle it. The smaller PVE zones (compared to Cyrodiil) have kept the lag at bay for a long time, but sooner or later the game was bound to hit a breaking point, and that time is upon us.

Well that's an absurdly easy thing to fix. Add a half second delay between when the percent changes on screen to when the actual percent changes. worst case, lag-free situations get an extra half second to make the pick. No biggie. Best case, 100% generally means...wait for it...100%.

drunkendx

so I'm not only one annoyed by these "good" success chances...

I have better odds of succeeding 75% than 90% pickpocket chance.

as someone who likes tracking odds for fun, this is annoying.

Hapexamendios

I don't bother forcing locks in open areas where someone could steal it. Seems half the time there is someone just waiting for that opportunity.

Kwoung

Hapexamendios wrote: »

I don't bother forcing locks in open areas where someone could steal it. Seems half the time there is someone just waiting for that opportunity.

IKR /rude

Playing ESO has considerably lowered my opinion of the human race. What ever happened to first come first served, or being polite, or just simply not being a jerk? Apparently, clearing a spawn even while standing on a chest/node, means go ahead and take it, I am just doing this for the exercise... fail at a chest on the first try, swoop in the vultures come. It is quite a sad statement on how messed up and selfish so many people really are, because it happens all the time in game.

I am not usually one to ask, but maybe locking nodes/chests to the person engaged with the mobs within 5m or so should be a thing. Same for failed lockpicking, you get 3 tries before the next guy gets to jump in and take it.

drunkendx

Kwoung wrote: »

Playing ESO has considerably lowered my opinion of the human race. What ever happened to first come first served, or being polite, or just simply not being a jerk? Apparently, clearing a spawn even while standing on a chest/node, means go ahead and take it, I am just doing this for the exercise... fail at a chest on the first try, swoop in the vultures come. It is quite a sad statement on how messed up and selfish so many people really are, because it happens all the time in game.

I am not usually one to ask, but maybe locking nodes/chests to the person engaged with the mobs within 5m or so should be a thing. Same for failed lockpicking, you get 3 tries before the next guy gets to jump in and take it.

Whenever someone snatches chest I've been trying to force or ninja's node I've been clearing of mobs, he gets "special" mudball.

WraithShadow13

Yeah, these numbers have never been accurate for me. Ever.


forcing locks has been pretty low but usually always seems to fail the first time, and succeed the second, with the occasional third or fourth attempt but it really doesn't seem to be as accurate as the tooltip says it is.

Pickpocketing has been less noticeable bust still a thing that isn't quite what it says it is.

WraithShadow13

WraithShadow13 wrote: »

Yeah, these numbers have never been accurate for me. Ever.

As a side note, this also seems to effect the blade of woe and vampire feeding animations, since i really only see two specific animations on those, the blade toss for BoW and the telekinetic ranged feeding. I only see those, at a good 90% of the time, with the better more fun animations being so rare, they might as well not exist. i hate that ranged vampire feeding, too. This isn't legacy of Kain...

hafgood

There is an error you are making in the maths.

90% chance does not mean you will pick the pocket 90% of the time. It means on that attempt you have a 90% chance of success.

So with bad RNG you could fail a 90% pick 100% of the time, equally you could succeed 100% of the time.

tim77

Yes, i noticed the same. For years now. A 70% pickpocket rate is pretty much a definitely fail.

Easy chests? Oh damn, it will just not work - but master chest? good chance to break it 1st or 2nd attempt.

BTW how did you track it? Is there an addon or manually? If there is an addon, can you link it? I think i wanna track it too, just to prove how buggy unlucky i am with such things.