Lockpicks and % in general.

I've been thinking this for a while, and I know others are annoyed by this, but isn't it about time game makers stopped lying about %? I have a 46% chance to sucessfully retain my lockpick, and it's closer to 5-10% chance, and this is over months of picking locks, it's just not possible to fail that many times with that high a chance. I've noticed this with salvaging 50% chance and I'm lucky to keep the item 1/5th of the time.

Anyone else have really messed up unrealistic rolls on the salvage/lockpicking or any other % things with GW?

And is there anyone that actually gets higher then 1/5th retaining on the two with a 50% chance to do so.

Mine is 20% and I am lucky if I keep my lockpick 1 in 20 times, let alone the 1 in 5 chance I should be seeing.

If you flip a coin 50 times and it lands on Tails each time, you still have a 50% chance of it landing on heads the next flip.

I love the "Price of Failure" skill with its '25% chance to miss'... you hit a foe with that on 30 times and 29 times you just miss and take damage, effectively killing yourself on one skill. It's more like '100% chance to miss, unless Jupiter is aligned with Ur-anus'.

Uhhh yeah it's 50% each time, but no way in hell are you going to get constitently heads 80% of the time if you flip it a million times, you may have short times where you flip it heads more often, but your not going to have it ALWAYS land that way. the chances of it doing that are astronomical, just as the chances of 80%+ failure rate on 46% lockpick rate is impossible.

Yeah plus enemies seem to have a 80% chance to hit on blind.

If you have a coin, and have 1000 people flip it, and everyone averages 80% heads, your going to start to think the coins rigged.

You're only fooling yourself if you think you'll retain more if you broke before

Its alll in your head...

Your attack not hitting and you getting red numbers is way more memorable than when you suceed.

Okay mister smarty pants, has anyone ever said they've gotten 80% lockpick retaining all the time? Or even 50% retaining? No it's pretty much a gaurantee that you hit less then the % and they hit more. A gainst the arena champion in hold he was hitting way too often with blind on him

I average 1 lockpick per 3 chests...sucks but then I have no wisdom title etc so it's expected.

I have a listed 55% retention of LP chance. My actual retention is ~20%. I sent in a ticket to support to ask them if my account was bugged. They said they sent it to the devs, and not to expect an answer.

I asked about this same thing in the questions forum last month. Everyone said it was just me, and that I was having "bad luck." Guess i'm not the only one with bad luck.

On coin tosses... if you hit a warrior with blind, and he manages to hit you on 4 out of 5 swings, you wouldn't be thinking "damn that sure was lucky of him." Well, you might think that. But if it happened the exact same way on the next five warriors you encountered, you'd be thinking, "did this skill get nerfed and I missed the update notes?"

Something is up with the lockpicks and their retention rates. Not everyone is feeling it (one of my guild officers is fairing mighty close to his listed percentage), but obviously others are not... in spades.

Since all the chests in GWEN require LPs to open, it would be nice if the dev team could double check that LPs are functioning as they should. Gaile said they have infinite records of our interactions (they know when we move an item from one slot to another in our storage), so I'm darn sure they can pull up data on how many chests a player has opened with an LP and how many times that LP broke. I volunteered my character as a guinipig for the research (sent in the info in my support ticket). If you've been having LP problems, maybe you should send in a ticket too. If enough tickets generate, maybe it will weigh in as a higher priority problem and worthy of spending time on.

This is the red light phenomenon. It feels like the traffic light is always red for you because every time you stop there it's red. When it isn't you don't stop, and thus don't add it to the mental tally.

Plus, variation in results is expected. If I had a thousand people flip a coin 5 times the odds are pretty good one of them withh get 5 of the same in a row. In fact, pretty likely that both 5 heads and 5 tails are going to show up. Each of those individuals would probably feel the coin wasn't behaving properly, but only because of their perspective.

Heh if it's meant to really be a 20% chance...then they should list it as that I really hate games *and always been this way* where you need a 70-80% chance to do something to actually have any chance of doing it regularly.

When bison hits thought blind, you will notice, big time, but you are likely to ignore 9 other missed attacks because there is nothing special about them and they are taken for granted.

Why noone said they retain more than they should is simple:
* Its in nature of forums to bring up to light things to complain about rather than be happy about them
* Showing off with this kind of thins is not really that cool and most people rather pass it.
* You dont notice it.

If you really want to come forward, you buy 100 (or 1000) lockpicks and open 100 chests and keep record about EACH retain/break. If you are avid chestruner, it can take one evening.

I thought about that, for chance to hit yeah I can see that. But with lockpicks there is a really easy and permanite way to check this out. I bought 11 lockpicks today, 11 chests and I have 2 lockpicks left. On average it's 3-4 chests per lockpick at best, other times I can buy 10 and lose all of them without a single retaining *on easy mode*. When you buy 11 number and open 11 chests and your down to 1-3 lickpicks by the end, it's not even close to 50%.

wisdom title has no effect on Lockpick retention. It's "Treasure Hunter" and "Lucky" that are supposed to increase retention.

And if I read what you said correctly, you are opening 3 chests with 1 lockpick... That's 66% retention (keeping your pick 2 out of 3 tries).

I have a listed 55% retention (I have R3 in Luck and Treasure), and I actually end up using 4 picks to open 5 chests = 20% retention.

So, if we both opened 10 chests, I'd use 8 LPs and you'd use 3 LPs. So far doesn't look like it sucks too much for you.

I have Lucky (5) and Treasure Hunter (4), I think it lists just over 60% retention rate in normal mode (I am away from my gw right now so I can't check). I have to say I have found this to be very accurate.

I even took a weekend to use 50 picks while running Lutgardis for Kurzik faction. I opened until they were gone then looked to see how many points my treasure hunter had climbed. I forget the actual number but it was within 1-2% of the 'published' rate.

I'm not saying it's not possible that it's broken.

I like the suggestion of buying lockpicks and actually counting how many you use. Then determine where 95% of the trials the size of your sample will end up - if you are in that range you don't have enough evidence to reject the notion that it's working right.

I don't use lockpicks, excepting when they happen to drop for me. I don't have a great retention rate, but I use them in HM and I only have rank 1 Treasure Hunter (which in itself is somewhat miraculous) so I wouldn't expect many to survive.

Maybe I'll splurge on 20 or so and see how many chests I manage to open with them as a test.

Flip a coin. We'll assume it is perfectly flat, the same on either side, so no weight difference, no matter how minute, is present.
Flip it again.
Flip it a thousand more times.

As stated above by another poster, you will always have a 50% chance to get either side. That's just common sense. But if you got, say, 60% of the flips Tails, and the other 40% Heads, would you say then that when flipping a coin, one has a 60% chance to get Tails? I'd hope not, as that is pretty illogical. Each lockpick's chance to break or be retained is determined individually, and from what it looks like here, some of you are lumping them all together without actually having any real mathematical data on the subject to refer to.

So yeah. Go buy 100 lockpicks, run some chests, and keep a record. It still won't be totally accurate, but it'll be better than "Well I guesstimate that I have lost...".

Well I can`t be arsed keeping any figures on the real %`ages anymore but YUP! Agree totally they are broken, wide across the game and have been for a long time so take advantage. Or is that against the EULA (exploitation of known bugs) haven`t read it for a while?

*snicker

Hmm

I'll buy 50 or so tomorrow and see how it goes. My necro has no titles that will effect my percentage rate. Maybe the % rate is just a load of crap.

I have 46% of retaining and this week I retained one lockpick 10 times.
A month ago I couldn't retain one.
pure luck

Wasnt there game where people compained so much about something similar to this that devs reacted?

They added counter that counter number of failures/successes on event with random background and then showed precentages to players.

It kinda showed that in long run observable precentages are similar to displayed ones, with few lucky/unlucky people.

I suspect what we are seeing here is a lot of people just not used to using a LOT of lockpicks .

Well some of us with engineering backgrounds are silly enough to do the maths, so here is the story of my last few months.

I am slowly working on maxing the chest run title as a time-killer aside from normal play. When lockpicks came out, I switched over to them because the maths said that shoud work. I used to buy keys for 600, but can puy lockpicks in bulk for 1250. I have a suppposed retention rate of 66%, so it should cost me a lot less :

100 picks

66 successful keeps first run through (100 chests opened)
44 successes on 2nd run (66 chests opened)
29 on 3rd (44 chests opened)
19 on 4th (29 chests opened)
12 on 5th (19 opened)
8 on 6th (12 opened)
5 on 7th (8 opened)
3 on 8th (5 opened)
2 on 9th (3 opened)
1 success (2 opened)
and one final chest picked which is a failure (1 opened)

That should add up to 289 chests opened at 1250 * 100 = 432 gold per chest (as opposed to 600 or higher for high end keys)

Looking over my records, over the past 2000 chests I have the following stats :

1) Retention rate = 59.2% (lower than expected, but probably 60% of the time I was doing this I was 64% to open and I only levelled the last 2% at the dragon festival)

2) Biggest string of failures = 19 (was in Vabbi and they were all grapes as well that day)

3) 2nd biggest string of failures was 14 and that was in last week's preview event (so I feel a little cursed by GWEN purple faiulures too, but I know these things happen when you use a lot of picks - sometimes you keep getting tails)

4) Biggest success string of retentions = 12

5) Best record per 100 chests = 78

6) Worst record per 100 chests = 24 (blech - but I did get 2 req 9 inscriptable gold Fellies that day and sold then each for 90K).

So I think we are seeing people not understanding that it all works out well over the long term, but that it can go horribly wrong in the short term.

I don't believe I get short changed over lockpick percentage, and I don't think you guys and gals are having that happen to you either.

Nope, you have a rigged coin.

All tails is just as likely as any other combination of results.

It's funny that the first substantial data posted in the thread supports the null hypothesis (of % being what it says it is) yet everyone else with their unbased claims complain about broken %.

Why exactly is chance been discussed...

I went to bed 1 night during the last afk weekend with 2000 tickets. I woke up the next morning with 2500 tickets. Stastically i should've been down alot of tickets, instead i went up. Overtime it would balance out...

Do better experiments and statistics, then you will see it works out. Im not sure you keep track well enough to do some proper data analysis. I suspected at some point that pick rates were a bit off but after a few runs with 10 lockpicks each I was fully convinced its all random.

for % numbers to be accurate, you'll need to run a long range of tests, at least in the 1000s. the way %s work is that it'll approach the % over time.

I went on a vanquishing HM run the other day, opened 6 chests, retained my lockpick all 6 times. (2x% chance!) It's just luck.

I have 7 treasure, 6 wisdom and 5 lucky. And after opening almost 11,000 chests now ... it is RANDOM at best. Real results do not even come CLOSE to the percentage I am supposed to have on retention. I put it at around 25-30%. I break as many lockpicks and miss as many salvages as my monk that is only rank 3. Yes, it would be nice if Anet were to learn simple math so they could figure out what 72% chance actually means. LOL, the salvage is totally a joke since I have only a 10% chance of breaking and still break stuff all the time.

o.O I have a 48% and I open about four chests per pick. My record was six without breaking!

And the day after my person record, I broke almost every pick I had.

Chance is chance. Probability only GUESSES the outcome, not forsees it.

Well there is a rather simple in game method of checking. divide your unlucky stat by 25 and your lucky by 250. Right now my unlucky stat has about 12 more then my lucky. With 925 lucky and 6016 for my lucky

50 lock picks (50 purples ftl) retained 10

Yeah...screw chests and lockpicks.

Assuming the coin is balanced correctly, yes.

However the program could be unbalanced or have some little glitch to make your probability lower or higher. A few weeks ago I had a key that lasted 4 chests so it isn't all that bad.


However I do think that the number of purples that drop for 1.25k chests is way too high. If a purple drops, a diamond, ruby, or sapphire should also drop with it IMO. I also haven't seen any normal or elite tomes from GWEN chests yet.

Tomes only drop in hardmode. GWEN doesn't have hardmode. Don't expect tomes. And your opinion about purple drops... why make diamonds and et cetera so common they are worthless? No offense, but that's just unbalanced.

Out of the last 10 chests opened, I've had 2 reuses, and those didn't last past the second reuse. At 1.5k gold a pop, that's a rip off. Out of all those chests, I've gotten one gold item. Hardly worth the cost.

Keeping track on GWEN stats (as opposed to the normal ones I posted earlier):
Chests opened in last 24 hours - 38

Warrior (66% LP)
opened 22
retained 12
percentage 55%
Gold items 9

ranger (54% LP)
opened 16
retained 11
percentage 69%
Gold items 7

I have one character a little behind in percentage and one well ahead. 16 gold items out of 38 is reasonable to me.

More stats will follow.

On the subject of dropping a diamond with a purple - geesh - that would make a diamond worth about 20g and then you completely negate the purpose of your suggestion. Something wortless then becomes slightly (nay marginally) less worthless.

I am closing in on the max chest run title, and I know that the there are enough rares out there to offset the cost of the 10000 keys (or lockpick equivalent). They may come in week one or month 5 but they do come if you are persistent.

It makes money and at the same time grinds up the account wide lucky title and keeps progress happening in the ID one.

Also - anyone who pays the 1.5K at the merchant is robbing himself for a start. People who have a guild that owns a town in factions can buy them for 80% (ie 1.2K) from their discount merchant and they mass sell for small margin (ie charge 1.25K per pick) in Spamadan and Kaineng.

I was "persistent".

I am about to hit 11000 opened and NO it does not even out. The MAJORITY since about 5000 on have been high req NON max purples.
The standard merchant price of 104 gold. They say there isnt farm code but my account shows otherwise. Enough rares to offset title? Kidding right? The title is a gold sink no more no less they WANT you to LOSE money. I am still only rank 6 wisdom with buying over 3000 unids and only doing the unids from all chars on the warrior. If you are having a streak of luck congratz .. but please dont act like the rest of us don't understand basic math. My typical average is 1 in 6 being gold with peaks of brutal from anet hitting 1 in 38 being worst. On topic of breaking? LOL they must factor that percentage over 1 million opened .. only way to explain the high break rate.

The upside to title is ... it is about the only title that cant be cheated or ebayed.