I've been attempting to get two of the three blue versions of a Focus. Specifically, the Focus of Masterful Insight. I have the Overkill version, but neither of the other two. I have crafted and RE'd some 20-25 of these now and still have not received a schematic, though several successful augments. Is the learning chance really 20% or is there some hidden value that reduces this chance significantly?

Anyone have any thoughts?

You're unlucky. Keep trying. There is no 100% of getting a schematic even in 100 tries, only 99%.

In some cases I had to re 50 times to get a schematic, an sometimes I got one almost immidiately.

The important thing to remember is that *how many things you have crafted does not affect your chance of getting a crit the next time*.

It's *always* 20%. Every time you RE a new object. Doesen't matter how many you've RE:ed before.

Right.. it's always 20% regardless of the number you do. Therefore the math is real easy. If you RE 10 items, then the odds of you getting a schematic is as follows:

(1 - (4^10/5^10)) or 1 - the chance of failure.

To illustrate (and make my math easier) if I RE 5 items. My odds are not 100% that I will get a schematic. My odds are: 1- 4^5/5^5 or 1 - 1024/3125 = 1 - .328 = .672. Effectively If I have my companion craft 5 items, I should get a new schematic about 67% of the time.

If I craft 20 of these things like I have done, my odds go to 1-0.011 or about 98.8% chance of getting one.

Therefore, it's not just luck... the schematic should have popped up by now. There is another factor not accounted for or a mistake in the RE math.

I'm going to make 20 more of these. A new schematic should pop up. If not, there is a break in the math.

Most greens pop up a blue in the first few tries... I usually get a blue in 3 - 6 tries, which is about right for "average". In fact, I just started a different (higher level foci) and just got the blue Overkill version. I'm going to build 20 of these as well. Between the two foci, I should get two new blue schematics (non-Overkill versions). If not, there is direct empirical evidence that RE'ing is not as it seems.

Right.. it's always 20% regardless of the number you do. Therefore the math is real easy. If you RE 10 items, then the odds of you getting a schematic is as follows:

 

(1 - (4^10/5^10)) or 1 - the chance of failure.

 

To illustrate (and make my math easier) if I RE 5 items. My odds are not 100% that I will get a schematic. My odds are: 1- 4^5/5^5 or 1 - 1024/3125 = 1 - .328 = .672. Effectively If I have my companion craft 5 items, I should get a new schematic about 67% of the time.

 

If I craft 20 of these things like I have done, my odds go to 1-0.011 or about 98.8% chance of getting one.

 

Therefore, it's not just luck... the schematic should have popped up by now. There is another factor not accounted for or a mistake in the RE math.

 

I'm going to make 20 more of these. A new schematic should pop up. If not, there is a break in the math.

 

Most greens pop up a blue in the first few tries... I usually get a blue in 3 - 6 tries, which is about right for "average". In fact, I just started a different (higher level foci) and just got the blue Overkill version. I'm going to build 20 of these as well. Between the two foci, I should get two new blue schematics (non-Overkill versions). If not, there is direct empirical evidence that RE'ing is not as it seems.

You, quite simply, have a sample size that is far too small and are trying to look at this too optimistically. You have a 20% chance of learning. Which means you have an 80% chance of NOT learning on each attempt.

There is a difference between a broken system and a sucky system.

This system is not broken. It does, however, suck because of how streaky it is.

There's also quite a few threads about this. This is not new. This thread has people who have written and run their own simulations showing that not only is long streaks of failure (as in 60+ failed attempts) possible, it is normal. (Well, it does after the first few pages of whining.)

Nope, this has to be broken. I don't care what maths you bring to the table, As a Sniper with Armstech crafting a lvl 20 custom sniper rifle, it is absurd that after nearly 40 attempts I have not made one with an augment slot.

Kaliyo is meant to be efficient with armstech, so it would indicate that bioware intended this to be a complimentary crewskill even as far as recommended. But seriously, I should be able to combine all 10 and merget them into 1 augmented rifle. But in its current form, it must simply be broken.

You have had some bad luck, while others have had great luck at the same time. I've had several cases where I got all 3 blue schematics from REing a single set of 5 greens, and streaks with 2-3 crits in the same group of 5. Being as unlucky as you guys have been is VERY rare, when there's several thousands of players doing the same thing, even the very rare things will happen to someone.

For example, OP mentioned that he should had a 98.8% chance of getting an another blue schematic, which may be true (I didn't do the math myself), but that means there's a 1.2% chance that you won't. If we have, for example, 10 000 players, even only running one sample each, then statistics would indicate there should be 120 people in that sample that got the same result as you.

It's not just luck. I did some more experimentation and though I don't have numbers in front of me, almost all of the greens which I attempted to get the first Blue version did so within 5 tries, and all of them within 10 tries. Once I had learned a single blue of a particular green, that green will not RE another blue for 20 tries (and still haven't).

It's very clear that there is a % chance modifier for learning schematics once you learn one. The lucky ones are the few who have gotten multiple blues right away. There, either luck was on the player's side or was prior to the 1.2 patch or that particular item has a crafting bug where it spawns the blues without the modifier.

I should say, all of this experimentation I have done is on Foci/Shields/Generators as they are the only non-linear RE items that Artificers get. It is possible this is localized to Artificers only.

Regardless of any math or computation, the reality is that every time one attempts to craft an item, be it the first or the one hundred and first, they have an 80% chance of failure. The predictable odds may change, but the percentage for success does not.

This is just unfortuante bad logic. Don't use this going to Vegas (I kid, I kid.. well a little anyway).

Each individual crafting attempt has a 20% chance of success is true. However, you must take into consideration the sum of all attempts. If you try 100 times with a 20% chance of success and you fail 100 times, you have an outlier situation outside of 3 sigma!! (or 99.99% chance of success).

I'm not saying I've done RE'ing 100 times for any particular blue, but I think you get the jist.

If you want a better illustation, think about rolling a pair of dice. To get a 7 you have a 6/36 chance of success or 1/6. To roll a 7 ten times in a row is not 1/6, it is 1-(30^10/36^10) (or 1 minus the chance of failure).

So again, you MUST take in the consideration of all attempts made to determine the likliness of getting a success. No one should ever fall into the extreme end all of the time.

Lastly, I am talking about these % chances only going after the 2nd or 3rd blue after learning one. I fully agree that the 1st blue learned seems to fall within the expected 20% success chance.

For example, OP mentioned that he should had a 98.8% chance of getting an another blue schematic, which may be true (I didn't do the math myself), but that means there's a 1.2% chance that you won't. If we have, for example, 10 000 players, even only running one sample each, then statistics would indicate there should be 120 people in that sample that got the same result as you.

I would agree with this sentiment if it wasn't for the fact that I have yet to learn a 2nd blue version of a given item, having tried (for the most part at least 20 tries each) at 98.8% one or more of these should have resulted in a second blue. When you add this up collectively (as you must) the odds of success indicate I am an extreme outlier, which should not exist in the simplified 20% chance of success. If the success rate gets changed to 1% (or something similarly small) to learn each of the other two blues, I would imagine the math would make more sense since I haven't gotten to 100 tries (or perhaps more) for any given schematic.

I would agree with this sentiment if it wasn't for the fact that I have yet to learn a 2nd blue version of a given item, having tried (for the most part at least 20 tries each) at 98.8% one or more of these should have resulted in a second blue. When you add this up collectively (as you must) the odds of success indicate I am an extreme outlier, which should not exist in the simplified 20% chance of success. If the success rate gets changed to 1% (or something similarly small) to learn each of the other two blues, I would imagine the math would make more sense since I haven't gotten to 100 tries (or perhaps more) for any given schematic.

I don't think you know what "extreme" means. As already noted, (0.8 ^ 20) is about 1.2%. There are 1 million-ish players, and hundreds of millions of RE attempts. 1.2% of hundreds of millions is millions of streaks just like yours. And it seems like all of you come here and post the same garbage. It needs to stop.

BioWare keeps stats on rolls, RE attempts, and so on. If this ever breaks, the deviation in the stats will make it apparent and they'll fix it. But an individual user will NEVER be able to legitimately claim there's a bug in the RE chance because you don't have access to any meaningful statistics, even if you keep track of your own (unlikely). You're one in a million.

For what it's worth, I had a streak of 50 once before I learnt the next version of an item. It sucks but it happens.

You're unlucky. Keep trying. There is no 100% of getting a schematic even in 100 tries, only 99%.

 

In some cases I had to re 50 times to get a schematic, an sometimes I got one almost immidiately.

It's not just "you're unlucky." I just had to RE 23 *GREEN* armor inserts to get the blue pattern. That should be about 1/2 of 1% of the time on a 20% RE. And if it was just that, I could chalk it up to really bad luck, but the last 4 or 5 RE's I've done have been similar. "Oh, 20% chance, well, you only have to RE 20 to 25 of them." "Oh, 10% chance... well... my advice is to forget it, and do something else." After 40 or 50 tries, I did exactly that.

Something is DRAMATICALLY wrong with the % chance for RE's.

If you were right, and even a low estimate of 10% of the people experiencing it comes here to post about it, you'd have a TON more people complaining about it. That alone proves that you are one of the 1 in a million cases.

Personally, I've raised armormech, armstech and cybertech to the 350-370 range and artifice to about 260 or so, and while raising them I REd everything I made. I have had very few cases of getting less then 2 successfull REs out of the 10 items I make in each bracket of 20 (1-21, 21-41 etc etc), and quite a few cases of getting 3-4, including several cases of getting all 3 blue items from a single set of 5 greens. The same has held true when I've just REd stuff that I want/need without leveling from making the items,

...And then I've also had to try 20 times before I got the first blue earpiece.

It's all down to luck, and when there are millions of streaks every day (assuming the above claim of 1 million players is correct - I haven't checked), these things WILL happen.

It is possible to change to code to adjust future chances based on past results (Sid mentioned in a presentation that they did that for at least one of the Civ games) so that extreme cases like this doesn't happen, but just because BW hasn't done that, that doesn't mean the percentages given are wrong - rather the opposite, making that change would cause the percentage to be off.

If you were right, and even a low estimate of 10% of the people experiencing it comes here to post about it, you'd have a TON more people complaining about it. That alone proves that you are one of the 1 in a million cases.

Personally, I've raised armormech, armstech and cybertech to the 350-370 range and artifice to about 260 or so, and while raising them I REd everything I made. I have had very few cases of getting less then 2 successfull REs out of the 10 items I make in each bracket of 20 (1-21, 21-41 etc etc), and quite a few cases of getting 3-4, including several cases of getting all 3 blue items from a single set of 5 greens. The same has held true when I've just REd stuff that I want/need without leveling from making the items,

...And then I've also had to try 20 times before I got the first blue earpiece.

 

It's all down to luck, and when there are millions of streaks every day (assuming the above claim of 1 million players is correct - I haven't checked), these things WILL happen.

It is possible to change to code to adjust future chances based on past results (Sid mentioned in a presentation that they did that for at least one of the Civ games) so that extreme cases like this doesn't happen, but just because BW hasn't done that, that doesn't mean the percentages given are wrong - rather the opposite, making that change would cause the percentage to be off.

They could actually balance it out so that the percentages stayed the same. For example they could clump it into groups of 20 REs. Let's say you only learn 3 schems after 18s REs, that means your next 2 are both guaranteed. On the flip side, if you learn 5 schems after 10 REs, then your next 10 are guaranteed to fail!

People would probably cry bloody murder if they did that, though -- "You mean I have to waste all these mats on purpose with a 0% chance until my next clump of 20?" -- so I don't see them doing it. If they went with only poor-streak limiting they'd have to reduce the nominal chance of success so that they didn't make it too easy to learn schems, which I also can't see them doing. I think the current pure randomness is best.

I do wish they would make a specific subforum to stuff all these "RE chance bug" threads into, though, so the rest of us didn't have to see them!

If you were right, and even a low estimate of 10% of the people experiencing it comes here to post about it, you'd have a TON more people complaining about it. That alone proves that you are one of the 1 in a million cases.

Personally, I've raised armormech, armstech and cybertech to the 350-370 range and artifice to about 260 or so, and while raising them I REd everything I made. I have had very few cases of getting less then 2 successfull REs out of the 10 items I make in each bracket of 20 (1-21, 21-41 etc etc), and quite a few cases of getting 3-4, including several cases of getting all 3 blue items from a single set of 5 greens. The same has held true when I've just REd stuff that I want/need without leveling from making the items,

...And then I've also had to try 20 times before I got the first blue earpiece.

 

It's all down to luck, and when there are millions of streaks every day (assuming the above claim of 1 million players is correct - I haven't checked), these things WILL happen.

It is possible to change to code to adjust future chances based on past results (Sid mentioned in a presentation that they did that for at least one of the Civ games) so that extreme cases like this doesn't happen, but just because BW hasn't done that, that doesn't mean the percentages given are wrong - rather the opposite, making that change would cause the percentage to be off.

I'm doing artifice and of the three crafting type you mentioned of your time, none of them are artifice. What I'm trying to point out in this thread is that something is amiss, whether it be Artificing itself, the crafting system itself or perhaps a person-to-person error, we don't know. But the math proves out that the tool tip of 20% after the first blue is learned is not accurate.

Nope, this has to be broken. I don't care what maths you bring to the table, As a Sniper with Armstech crafting a lvl 20 custom sniper rifle, it is absurd that after nearly 40 attempts I have not made one with an augment slot.

 

Kaliyo is meant to be efficient with armstech, so it would indicate that bioware intended this to be a complimentary crewskill even as far as recommended. But seriously, I should be able to combine all 10 and merget them into 1 augmented rifle. But in its current form, it must simply be broken.

You will be able to in 1.3 I believe (or at least make an augment kit from the reverse engineered stuff). However, it's worth noting that a companion who is efficient at armstech just makes it faster, you want one with improved critical chance in order to be more likely to make one with an augment slot.

I recently did a LOT of crafting to help a guildmate gear up and I would say that my attempts to get both blue and purple schematics was "typical"

there were times when I made 20 of one item and did not get a schematic off RE

there were times when I made one and got a schematic right away (not necessarily the one I was hoping for though) and canceled the rest of the crafting

And there were times when the percentages worked out and I got a schematic in 5 or 10 crafts

The point is that over a much longer haul then ANYONE can do alone, the numbers will work out - 20% = 1 in 5 and 10% = 1 in 10.

Just because you crafted 100 items and did not get a schematic off RE does not mean the system is broken; it means that somewhere someone else got all their schematics in one shots.

That being said, there is something else to be considered. I remember early on when i REed something I got a notice in the chat window that I discovered a schematic but I already had it. I do not know if they took that "feature" out or whether they just hid it from view. So there is the possibility that you are discovering schematics you are just discovering the same ones you already have. It sucks, but that could explain why some find it difficult to get that last schematic.

I recently did a LOT of crafting to help a guildmate gear up and I would say that my attempts to get both blue and purple schematics was "typical"

 

there were times when I made 20 of one item and did not get a schematic off RE

there were times when I made one and got a schematic right away (not necessarily the one I was hoping for though) and canceled the rest of the crafting

And there were times when the percentages worked out and I got a schematic in 5 or 10 crafts

 

The point is that over a much longer haul then ANYONE can do alone, the numbers will work out - 20% = 1 in 5 and 10% = 1 in 10.

 

Just because you crafted 100 items and did not get a schematic off RE does not mean the system is broken; it means that somewhere someone else got all their schematics in one shots.

 

That being said, there is something else to be considered. I remember early on when i REed something I got a notice in the chat window that I discovered a schematic but I already had it. I do not know if they took that "feature" out or whether they just hid it from view. So there is the possibility that you are discovering schematics you are just discovering the same ones you already have. It sucks, but that could explain why some find it difficult to get that last schematic.

It is possible that we have succeeded but the learned schematic is one already learned. I didn't put that in the total list of possibilities of which BW has not told us. However, the where RE'ing 100 items and not getting a schematic is considered okay, is not within the normal 3 standard deviations for 20%. Please read the previous posts for the math. What I have been saying is that Bioware either has a broken system or a hidden component to the learning % which is not represented in the tool tip. And because it is not in the tool tip, I think BW needs to spell out the exact % chances.

The odds are roughly the same (actually slightly better) than rolling any one particular number on a 6-sided die. There is a 1 in 6 chance of rolling any one number. Over a large enough sample size, you will average 1:6 for each of the 6 numbers on the die. Which also means you should be averaging one recipe every 5 attempts (20% = 1:5) over a sufficient sample size. However, after having reverse engineered hundreds of items (probably well near a thousand by this point across all toons), I would say that the coding is broken. It is NOT properly calculating the chance of success. My average is more likely around 1:15 or 1:20, and definitely not 1:5.

Simply put, the average should equal the ratio. Roll a 6-sided die 100 times, and you should see each number show up around 16-17 times approximately (although 100 isn't really a sufficient sample size). That's a 1:6 ratio with 1:6 results. Reverse engineering is supposed to be a 1:5 ratio, but we are not seeing 1:5 results when reverse engineering, and there are far too many people reporting the same thing. So we're talking a sample size of tens of thousands of attempts when everyone's input is considered. Bioware needs to check their coding.

The odds are roughly the same (actually slightly better) than rolling any one particular number on a 6-sided die. There is a 1 in 6 chance of rolling any one number. Over a large enough sample size, you will average 1:6 for each of the 6 numbers on the die. Which also means you should be averaging one recipe every 5 attempts (20% = 1:5) over a sufficient sample size. However, after having reverse engineered hundreds of items (probably well near a thousand by this point across all toons), I would say that the coding is broken. It is NOT properly calculating the chance of success. My average is more likely around 1:15 or 1:20, and definitely not 1:5.

 

Simply put, the average should equal the ratio. Roll a 6-sided die 100 times, and you should see each number show up around 16-17 times approximately (although 100 isn't really a sufficient sample size). That's a 1:6 ratio with 1:6 results. Reverse engineering is supposed to be a 1:5 ratio, but we are not seeing 1:5 results when reverse engineering, and there are far too many people reporting the same thing. So we're talking a sample size of tens of thousands of attempts when everyone's input is considered. Bioware needs to check their coding.

The problem is that your sample size of a few thousand include only those that are complaining because they had bad luck. Everyone else that match or exceed the expected amount of successes just keep going without complaining.

If you travel around to schools and take down everyone's ages, you're gonna have a very large sample and your sample would show that the average age is quite low, and if you go to retirement homes instead, it would show a very high average age, but despite both studies having large sample sizes neither of them are accurate.

Tl;Dr: Large sample != good sample.

For example, you claim you've had a success roughly one in 15 tries. I've had roughly 1 in 3, or in other words 5 in 15. For the 2 of us, that means 6 in 30, or 20%.

The problem is that your sample size of a few thousand include only those that are complaining because they had bad luck. Everyone else that match or exceed the expected amount of successes just keep going without complaining.

If you travel around to schools and take down everyone's ages, you're gonna have a very large sample and your sample would show that the average age is quite low, and if you go to retirement homes instead, it would show a very high average age, but despite both studies having large sample sizes neither of them are accurate.

Tl;Dr: Large sample != good sample.

For example, you claim you've had a success roughly one in 15 tries. I've had roughly 1 in 3, or in other words 5 in 15. For the 2 of us, that means 6 in 30, or 20%.

Still doesn't explain how some people can go 30, 50 or even 100 tries in a row without success (myself included). Individual results wont always match the greater number of results in a larger sample, however they shouldn't differ so greatly.

We are not looking for a 20% chance across the board, we are looking for a 20% chance for an individual. As a crafter what does it matter to me if i never hit an RE when my best friend hits every time (making us 50% chance total)? No, the only solution is to look at individual results and see what is broken