Just as a side note, I have a Phd in Math and although pure did take my share of applied courses and do understand probability.

I have always run a good number of crafting missions and done a lot of REing and have seen the streaks that people have talked about. I have posted as others that this sort of stuff happens and on the whole things seem to be working as they are supposed to. But after 1.3 and the most recent update, I am not so sure any more. While most everything seems to be working (REing going as it should), I have seen over a number of gathering missions results that are making me change my mind. There are two things that have happened to me and my wife that are making me scratch my head.

Edit - In all fairness, I just REed a pair of lvl 41 armormech bracers and got them on the 10 try. Unless something was fixed in the latest patch downloaded today, I stand by my opinion.

1. - From beta to Monday of this week, missions that retun zero results / unsuccessful have be few and usually relagated to low affection companions on low level missions. Now we are seeing about a 20% to 30% failed mission rate on maxed affection companions with efficiency in the mission area being run. What the heck is gong on.

2 - My wife and I have run a good number of level 6 Slicining missions over four combined characters. We have indeed as noted in 1. above started to getting failed missions. On top of that, no one tech mission has returned an augmentor. After about 30 to 40 slicing missions on max affection characters we have not seen one augmentor. I understand that the returns can run in streaks, but whet the heck is going on. Is anyone getting good results in the slicing missions?

I have stopped selling augmentors and am hesitant to keep throwing credits down the tube. Maybe we have hit a string of really bad luck (the rng delight), but "I have a bad feeling about this" and do wonder if the returns on gathering missions have been nerfed.

PS - The mail system is screwed up with things that you click on just disappearing and the mail dropping off into space and the stack splitter has become an adventure to use since in many cases it give NaN if you enter a number that with the 1 that is there gives more items than is already in the stack or if you try to get rid of the default 1, it goes to NaN and freezes there.

This all seems to be BW as usual.

Just as a side note, I have a Phd in Math and although pure did take my share of applied courses and do understand probability.

 

I have always run a good number of crafting missions and done a lot of REing and have seen the streaks that people have talked about. I have posted as others that this sort of stuff happens and on the whole things seem to be working as they are supposed to. But after 1.3 and the most recent update, I am not so sure any more. While most everything seems to be working (REing going as it should), I have seen over a number of gathering missions results that are making me change my mind. There are two things that have happened to me and my wife that are making me scratch my head.

 

1. - From beta to Monday of this week, missions that retun zero results / unsuccessful have be few and usually relagated to low affection companions on low level missions. Now we are seeing about a 20% to 30% failed mission rate on maxed affection companions with efficiency in the mission area being run. What the heck is gong on.

 

2 - My wife and I have run a good number of level 6 Slicining missions over four combined characters. We have indeed as noted in 1. above started to getting failed missions. On top of that, no one tech mission has returned an augmentor. After about 30 to 40 slicing missions on max affection characters we have not seen one augmentor. I understand that the returns can run in streaks, but whet the heck is going on. Is anyone getting good results in the slicing missions?

 

I have stopped selling augmentors and am hesitant to keep throwing credits down the tube. Maybe we have hit a string of really bad luck (the rng delight), but "I have a bad feeling about this" and do wonder if the returns on gathering missions have been nerfed.

 

PS - The mail system is screwed up with things that you click on just disappearing and the mail dropping off into space and the stack splitter has become an adventure to use since in many cases it give NaN if you enter a number that with the 1 that is there gives more items than is already in the stack or if you try to get rid of the default 1, it goes to NaN and freezes there.

 

This all seems to be BW as usual.

OK, so you have a PhD in math ... did you crunch the numbers? If it wouldn't surprise you if this happened to a single person, it shouldn't be very much more surprising that it's happening to two people. Seems just like coincidence that this is happening to you and your wife.

I haven't seen more complaints than usual about this, and as you know, that wouldn't really matter too much as the number of people who post about these things isn't statistically meaningful. BioWare does have the stats, so I'd just trust them to detect if something goes wrong. This stuff isn't hard to get right after all, and so far the bugs with

RE chance have been relegated to improper tooltips and the like (things that are likely not confirmed by multiple BW employees, unlike important game algorithms, and were probably just mistyped).

There are certainly other crafting and item bugs to be reported, like mail as you say, but those are both obvious and can be independently confirmed rather than in aggregate. I'd stick with reporting those.

Just as a side note, I have a Phd in Math and although pure did take my share of applied courses and do understand probability.

 

I have always run a good number of crafting missions and done a lot of REing and have seen the streaks that people have talked about. I have posted as others that this sort of stuff happens and on the whole things seem to be working as they are supposed to. But after 1.3 and the most recent update, I am not so sure any more. While most everything seems to be working (REing going as it should), I have seen over a number of gathering missions results that are making me change my mind. There are two things that have happened to me and my wife that are making me scratch my head.

 

1. - From beta to Monday of this week, missions that retun zero results / unsuccessful have be few and usually relagated to low affection companions on low level missions. Now we are seeing about a 20% to 30% failed mission rate on maxed affection companions with efficiency in the mission area being run. What the heck is gong on.

 

2 - My wife and I have run a good number of level 6 Slicining missions over four combined characters. We have indeed as noted in 1. above started to getting failed missions. On top of that, no one tech mission has returned an augmentor. After about 30 to 40 slicing missions on max affection characters we have not seen one augmentor. I understand that the returns can run in streaks, but whet the heck is going on. Is anyone getting good results in the slicing missions?

 

I have stopped selling augmentors and am hesitant to keep throwing credits down the tube. Maybe we have hit a string of really bad luck (the rng delight), but "I have a bad feeling about this" and do wonder if the returns on gathering missions have been nerfed.

 

PS - The mail system is screwed up with things that you click on just disappearing and the mail dropping off into space and the stack splitter has become an adventure to use since in many cases it give NaN if you enter a number that with the 1 that is there gives more items than is already in the stack or if you try to get rid of the default 1, it goes to NaN and freezes there.

 

This all seems to be BW as usual.

I've been getting purple drops from slicing missions rarely, as expected. RNG is not broken. The demand is sky high and the supply is quite limited. I'm having to level slicing on a couple other toons to try to keep up with it.

I've been getting purple drops from slicing missions rarely, as expected. RNG is not broken. The demand is sky high and the supply is quite limited. I'm having to level slicing on a couple other toons to try to keep up with it.

Thanks.

Than I guess, I am in a bad streak and will work through it.

The trouble with a rng enterprise with a finite number of throws is that any result is possible. I asked because in light of that, if I tossed a coin a 1000 times and came up with 1000 tails, I would understand that it is possible if not probable and sure as heck check the coin. Asking others about their experience post 1.3 is as close as I can get to checking that coin as far as swtor is concerned.

2 - My wife and I have run a good number of level 6 Slicining missions over four combined characters. We have indeed as noted in 1. above started to getting failed missions. On top of that, no one tech mission has returned an augmentor. After about 30 to 40 slicing missions on max affection characters we have not seen one augmentor. I understand that the returns can run in streaks, but whet the heck is going on. Is anyone getting good results in the slicing missions?

Please clarify what you mean by "augmentor."

If you mean the Augmentation Kits (MK 1-6), those are crafted. They do not come from slicing missions.

If you mean the materials needed to craft the Augmentation Kits, those come from reverse-engineering armor pieces (perhaps weapons as well). Not from slicing missions.

Slicing missions drop materials to craft augments (note: not the Augmentation Kits, but the augments to go in the slot). And they also drop schematics for making augments. (Again, not the kit, but the augment.)

I agree with you, I am seeing MUCH more failed missions than usual. Almost every single run of 5 missions sees 1 sometimes 2 failed missions on maxed affection companions. This is across 8 toons so I do feel like something is not quite right.

However, on the other end, I am seeing plenty of purples from my slicing missions (going for about 30k on my server right now), assuming they don't fail outright.

I can sympathize with you OP as I am in the same boat. Eventhough I understand the math and the numbers with statistics, when I'm having a bad streak it's difficult to keep my head straight when my guts tell me that it's not possible to be that unlucky.

But then a few weeks ago I've seen the same person roll twice a "1" with a /roll for loot, so yeah, numbers... are harsh sometimes.

So to answer your question, personally, with 1.3 I've not seen any "extraordinary" bad streak on my side.

OK, so you have a PhD in math ... did you crunch the numbers? If it wouldn't surprise you if this happened to a single person, it shouldn't be very much more surprising that it's happening to two people. Seems just like coincidence that this is happening to you and your wife.

 

I haven't seen more complaints than usual about this, and as you know, that wouldn't really matter too much as the number of people who post about these things isn't statistically meaningful. BioWare does have the stats, so I'd just trust them to detect if something goes wrong. This stuff isn't hard to get right after all, and so far the bugs with

RE chance have been relegated to improper tooltips and the like (things that are likely not confirmed by multiple BW employees, unlike important game algorithms, and were probably just mistyped).

 

There are certainly other crafting and item bugs to be reported, like mail as you say, but those are both obvious and can be independently confirmed rather than in aggregate. I'd stick with reporting those.

Hold on a moment. I've seen you post this same thing on multiple threads. When you say that Bioware has the stats, does that mean you are a Bioware employee and have actually seen the stats you're talking about? Or are you simply making an assumption? I just thought you might want to clear that up for us.

You should also feel free to use this opportunity to produce the factual evidence that what posts exist about this and similar issues aren't statistically relevant (you really seem to be enamored with statistics). My eyes tell me there are actually a fairly large number of posts similar to this dating from launch.

I also note that you begin your replies being derisive of the person you're replying to. I'm pretty sure most of the folks that take time to post here about crafting issues aren't doing so frivolously. They, for whatever reason, have all encountered something that they perceive to be out of the ordinary. I don't see how that should earn them your ire.

About the math; the majority of the posts I've seen have a lot of chatter about whether the math is right or wrong. I think that line of reasoning is missing the forest for the trees. After all, the math is the math as far as that subject goes.

However, there is much more going on behind the scenes than just one calculation. A lot of code must interact interdependently for these ingame functions such as crew missions, reverse engineering, etc. Add to this the environment variables, for instance software or hardware loads, and you could see behavior that is undesirable and/or unpredictable. The more laggy behavior you see in more populated locations is a simple example of this (undesirable, but predictable).

My point is that at least some of these people posting may be experiencing something that has nothing to do with a mathematics calculation for a random number. It could be something else entirely. If that is the case, then neither mathematics nor statistics will be useful for investigating the possible issues being posted by players. For that reason alone I don't think it wise to disregard this and similar posts.

And before you ask: I'm currently a Senior Systems Engineer with 15 years in IT at a medium size company. So I can say that I'm at least somewhat familiar with the subject. But hey, a PHD in math doesn't mean much to you so I don't expect my creds will either.

I have been getting a lot more fails on missions too.

Also, RE chance seems to have plummeted also. It has taken me 3-4x as many RE's to upgrade a green schem to blue than before the patch.

(all my slicers are 10k affection)

I too have seen quite an increase in failed missions and I have to say that over the last 2 days I have run (I'm fortunate that I'm able to run missions while at work) at least 80 slicing missions and have only gotten 12 Augmentors (we are talking about the purple slicing mat) back.

This is very low compared to prior 1.3

I'm not really angry since I understand the need to control inflation. It is what it is!

 

Hold on a moment. I've seen you post this same thing on multiple threads. When you say that Bioware has the stats, does that mean you are a Bioware employee and have actually seen the stats you're talking about? Or are you simply making an assumption? I just thought you might want to clear that up for us.

 

Thank you for your comments. The only reason that I referred to my background in mathematics was to establish that I understand a system based on rng and what one can expect as results. I was going to ignore the derisive post and much appreciate another player's support.

It is simple, there is absolutely no way that an individual player can determine if an rng system is working correctly or if it has been modified / stealth nerfed. I noticed a large change in my experience in Slicing crafting missions this week. I could only think of three ways to determie if indeed a change had occurred although they only offerred an indication and not a definitive answer. The first was to keep going and see if things evened out over time and a larger sampe, the second was to ask other players if they were seeing the same thing, and the third was to look at the prices of mats on the GTN under the assumption that if demand stayed somewhat constant over the short term a change in supply would cause prices to go up.

Over the day since my initial post, I have seen the number of failed missions continue to be significantly higher than expected and previously experienced and the number of tech missions that hit and return a purple grade six augmentor have gone down as a percentage of missions run. A few people have posted (again thank you) that they have seen an increase in failed missions (thanks for taking the time to comment). I have not seen much of a change in pricing on the GTN.

Of course one day and just a few comments is not meaningful, but I am starting to wonder if indeed the die that we are rolling has been weighted or has become broken. I put in a ticket asking about the percieved change in experience, but if history is any indicator do not expect an answer of if one does come do not expect it to be meaningful.

I'll chime in here with my experience since 1.3. I'm DEFINITELY seeing an increase to mission failures. All of my companions are 10k. Rarely did they ever fail a standard gathering mission(maybe 1 in 100). As of today, they failure rate seems to be about 50%.

no, it wasn't that good and it certainly isn't that bad now. I would say the fail rate before was like 5% with maxed out companions and now it feels more like 15-20% fail rate.

Well, now that you say it the mission fail rate is indeed higher too!

But for me there is an other thing far more annoying and that is the droprate of schematics, which is the same "problem"/change BW did to crafting. I have saved up about 40 purple UT 6 missions before 1.3 went live, because of the new orange schematics (not only wrist and tailles but the ones to complete several sets, that I already have). And after running around 10 or so, of said purple missions I stopped wasting them! I didn't get a single schematic of it or any other UT mission since 1.3 and I'm running UT on 3 chars almost 24/7!! Before 1.3 I'm quite sure every single purple UT mission gave me a schematic, right?

I guess, no hope that BW changes droprates for crafting very soon again! I can understand that they did lower it but it's far too much now!

Well I'm still getting a decent return on augmentor, so I think you just had bad luck.

But what is annoying to me right now is the failure rate on actual crafting. C2 has failed on crafting two augments in the last 2 days, and I can't recall him *ever* failing before. I've successfully crafted 4 augments in that time, btw. Anybody else seeing this?

Before 1.3 I'm quite sure every single purple UT mission gave me a schematic, right?

Nope. (at least, not as far as I remember).

It's always been completely random and apparently unrelated to crit (or yield, for that matter).

C2 has failed on crafting two augments in the last 2 days, and I can't recall him *ever* failing before. I've successfully crafted 4 augments in that time, btw. Anybody else seeing this?

I've *never* had a craft fail. I have had crafts eaten by the (known) crafting bug or converted into other less valuable items by it, but never had one out and out fail (that I've noticed, anyways)

I've *never* had a craft fail. I have had crafts eaten by the (known) crafting bug or converted into other less valuable items by it, but never had one out and out fail (that I've noticed, anyways)

Same here, never seen the crafting of any object, including augments, fail. I've seen some failed missions lately, but no more than previously. Certainly not anywhere near the 50% that one poster claimed.

Just as a side note, I have a Phd in Math and although pure did take my share of applied courses and do understand probability.

 

I have always run a good number of crafting missions and done a lot of REing and have seen the streaks that people have talked about. I have posted as others that this sort of stuff happens and on the whole things seem to be working as they are supposed to. But after 1.3 and the most recent update, I am not so sure any more. While most everything seems to be working (REing going as it should), I have seen over a number of gathering missions results that are making me change my mind. There are two things that have happened to me and my wife that are making me scratch my head.

 

1. - From beta to Monday of this week, missions that retun zero results / unsuccessful have be few and usually relagated to low affection companions on low level missions. Now we are seeing about a 20% to 30% failed mission rate on maxed affection companions with efficiency in the mission area being run. What the heck is gong on.

 

2 - My wife and I have run a good number of level 6 Slicining missions over four combined characters. We have indeed as noted in 1. above started to getting failed missions. On top of that, no one tech mission has returned an augmentor. After about 30 to 40 slicing missions on max affection characters we have not seen one augmentor. I understand that the returns can run in streaks, but whet the heck is going on. Is anyone getting good results in the slicing missions?

 

I have stopped selling augmentors and am hesitant to keep throwing credits down the tube. Maybe we have hit a string of really bad luck (the rng delight), but "I have a bad feeling about this" and do wonder if the returns on gathering missions have been nerfed.

 

PS - The mail system is screwed up with things that you click on just disappearing and the mail dropping off into space and the stack splitter has become an adventure to use since in many cases it give NaN if you enter a number that with the 1 that is there gives more items than is already in the stack or if you try to get rid of the default 1, it goes to NaN and freezes there.

 

This all seems to be BW as usual.

Crafting in this game has been royally screwed from the beginning. There is just too much cross over as to what goes to what. Artifice for example should have been able to make hilts, artifice only mods, artifice only crystals, artifice only enhancements. More swords other than just light sabers. All recipes and materials contained in the 3 crafts needed for this. Armstech should be the same. Both of these should be able to make the kits too. Basically each craft should be self contained meaning none would need stuff from the other crafters just for those items, you would need stuff for the armor if you need it if you could only make weapons or vice versa. Slicing would stay as it is since its kind of its own thing. Thats how I would fix crafting in this game by making it less confusing and less tedious.

I'll chime in here with my experience since 1.3. I'm DEFINITELY seeing an increase to mission failures. All of my companions are 10k. Rarely did they ever fail a standard gathering mission(maybe 1 in 100). As of today, they failure rate seems to be about 50%.

I'm also seeing a spike in failed missions. It's difficult enough to do anything other than combat in this game - there's so little incentive to do anything other than combat - without placing arbitrary hurdles in the way.

you don't need a phd in math to understand basic probability. No, 20% chance does not mean that if you do 5 re's you'll get a pattern, but it DOES mean that if you consistently are doing 15 to 20 (or more) RE's, something is wrong.

Its like flipping a coin, and finding that over a fairly large number of flips, you're getting heads 4 times out of 5. Time to try out a new coin (OR, time to take that coin to the back alley & make some bets).

It has been five days since my OP and thought I would let this thread die with my observations since then.

1 - REing is indeed screwed up. I have tried to RE four times since my first post. My failure count comes simply from noting the number of augment slot components I end up with after starting with zero.

The first try was to RE a blule Vibroknife - probability 10%. I ended up quitting after 48 tries. The probability of 48 fails in a row is about .64% (a little over six tenths of one percent).

The second try was to RE two different blue implants at the same time - probability of each at 10%. It took 57 attempts to get my first purple. The probability of that is .25% (or once out of 400 such runs). It then took 16 tries to get the other purple.

I then tried to RE a helmet from blue with a probability of 10% and got it after 19 tries.

One of the strangest things happened in the three cases where I did get a purple. In each case, there were three or four blues left over and in each case when I REed them just for mats, I hit a second purple schematic. It is pure crazy but it seems that after the first hit, a second from the same blue is very likely.

My wife has had similar experiences with Synth and her tries at armormech.

If I look at the probability of my first two efforts (48 misses and then gave up and 57 and then hit for 105 misses in a row), I believe that the probability is about .0016%

Are these results possible? Of course. Are they likely? No? Either my wife and I are the most unlucky people in the world, or there is something grossly wrong with REing. I choose the second option.

I would say to BW that any crafting structure where it is possible (even if it were not screwed up) to go 105 trials before a hit, is very very poor game design to the point that it bewilders me.

2 - I did not keep a count, but am still seeing more and more companions returning from missions with the message that the mission was a failure.

3 - I am also seeing the sucess rate of Slicing and other gathering mission much below the point prior to 1.3. By sucess rate I mean the percentage of missions that return purple mats.

As far as observations 2 - and 3 - above, I am not sure about the cause of the change, but am sure that a change for the worse has occurred. I suspect that the failed mission jump and mission sucess drop are the result of a stealth nerf to crafting. I suspect further that BW did not want to announce the changes and take the heat and just sneaked it in. The beauty of doing that from their prospective is that in a rng based system, no player can prove what was done.

I did put in a ticked concering the mission failure rate and after about three days recieved a canned response that my question had been referred to the devs and that it would be considered in due course.

The first try was to RE a blue Vibroknife - probability 10%. I ended up quitting after 48 tries. The probability of 48 fails in a row is about .64% (a little over six tenths of one percent).

I'm afraid I may have stole all your successes. Crafted a set of blue vibroknives. (10 of 'em). already knew 1 purple, (vehemence, IIRC, but really want expert).

2nd RE was expert.

4th RE was also a schematic

5th too.

6th as well.

As to the OP, I'll agree that my perception is missions are failing a LOT more often than they used to. That being said, I suspect it's because I'm running a lot more missions now that CAN fail, which is skewing my perception. Before patch 1.3, while I was doing some higher end missions when I was running low on parts, and somewhat stockpiling shortly before 1.3, by and large I was mostly doing midrange missions pushing out items to sell (and trying to learn lower level augment schems). So the vast majority of the missions I was running were grey, and basically couldn't fail. Since 1.3, I've pretty much been doing NOTHING but grade 6 missions across alll my characters, and of course, they are green or yellow, and thus CAN fail.

edit: Also, I've been doing the FASTEST missions I can (especially for UT) which means I've also been getting results far more frequently, so the number of failures has likely gone up due to that, as well.

For what it's worth, I'll add my observations over the last few days, since I've been running a lot of missions.

Between Friday, 6/29, and Monday, 7/2, I leveled Diplomacy, Investigation, Treasure Hunting, and Underworld Trading on four characters from about 350 to 400.

Those characters' companions are all between 6000 and 6200 affection.

I estimate the total number of missions run at around 120 (about 30 missions per character).

I don't believe I had any failures whatsoever in Diplomacy, Treasure Hunting, or Underworld Trading. However, I had about half a dozen failures in Investigation.

So, failure rate over the entire 120 missions was about 5%. Failure rate on all missions except Investigation was 0%. Failure rate on Investigation missions was about 20%.

Note that I'm not making any claims about whether or not the RNG is working properly. IMO, my sample size is far too small to be statistically relevant. I'm only posting this information because the OP requested information about other players' experiences after Patch 1.3 went live.