Percentage mechanics and the new tradeskill racial traits

[Prrasha]

Currently, on Live, there's an earring/belt set (from Far Seas Supply Division & Tradeskill missions) that gives a +5% durability "bonus".On a normal failure round of -50 durability, +0 progress, wearing these items gives you -52,+0. I re-verified this behavior within the past week on a Live server*.Now on Test, we have racial traits that can give a +1% durability "bonus".So there are 2 significant problems with this:1) Look at the way fractions are being rounded... they aren't. They're being dropped. 5% of 50 is 2.5, which if rounded would be 3, not 2. So a 1% modifier will only have an effect if the base number is at least 100... how does one get a +100 durability round? Only when the "Insight" event happens. (The other two rare events give you +1000, which is the entire durability bar, so the +1% there has no additional effect.)2) More significantly, it's modifying the NEGATIVE numbers the same way as the positive ones. Considering how often Durability is a negative number versus a positive one, a +% durability effect is currently a penalty more often than it is a bonus (consider the starting and ending positions of the bars... you wind up with 1000 more progress at the end of a craft than when you started, but you almost always have less durability than when you started... at best, you have exactly the same amount. So any across-the-board percentage effect is a net bonus for progress and a net penalty for durability as the mechanics are now.)Please fix the mechanics of this effect (i.e. only apply the +% if the progress/durability number to be modified is positive, ignore the +% otherwise), and make "+1%" into a number more meaningful than "only matters if you get a rare Insight event after already losing a lot of durability on previous rounds," by either changing the rounding effects, or raising the value above 1%.If nothing else, scrap the whole idea of "+percentage durability" and just make all the effects "+constant-number durability" like the other style of +2-durability racial traits.* - Sorry for not re-verifying in the Test environment, but my /testcopy add commands still haven't had any effect, even after re-issuing one of them yesterday. All my previously-testcopied characters have been wiped, and my normal-Test characters are too lowbie to have these items.

[Barx]

Agreed. Once this stuff goes live. ALL the durability items that used to give +X % durability need to be changed to be a raw +durability/round.

This bug has been in there for a long time, and it seems that the new racials show there is a way to fix it.

[LivelyHound]

Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Agreed. Once this stuff goes live. ALL the durability items that used to give +X % durability need to be changed to be a raw +durability/round.

This bug has been in there for a long time, and it seems that the new racials show there is a way to fix it.

There was always a way to fix it, they just need to change the sign in the code from

durability loss = random(0, -10, -50, -100) determined during the crafting tick success roll.durability change = durability loss + ( durability loss x durability%bonus ) todurability change = durability loss -  ( durability loss x durability%bonus )

due to the fact that it only affects base ticks and base ticks can be either 0, -10, -50 or -100. In other words durability loss is always a negative and the bonus therefore needs to be swapped to give a positive.

I imagine they currently have something like:

durability%bonus = racial durability % bonus + aa durability % bonus + gear durability % bonusdurabilityabsolutebonus = racial durability amount bonus + aa durability amount bonus + gear durability amount bonus

durability change = durability loss + (durability loss x durability%bonus ) + durabilityaboslutebonus

(aa durability % bonuses dont exist but they may in the future so I included the term in preparation)

Which is why the racials work and the % bonus doesnt. Its a very quick and simple fix. However if they dont want to hardcode that + to a - becuase they are worried about turning any current or future positive amounts that come from that part of the formula into negatives the following would fix it. Im sure theres a better way:

%durabiltychangeamount = durability loss x durability%bonusif (%durabiltychangeamount < 0) then %durabiltychangeamount = -%durabiltychangeamountdurability change = durability loss + durabilityabsolutebonus + %durabilitychangeamountIn java you can just use the Math.abs function

durability change = durability loss +Math.abs(durability loss x durability%bonus ) + durabilityaboslutebonus

Problem solved.

Not that the +durability amounts will actually help much except in group crafting missions. Remembering of course that they essentially only have +10 to play with because that is the cost of a regular success tick, and the number of fail ticks is/should be very low due to all the current bonuses. Thus if they added +1, +2  and +3 for the 3 respective durability sets on live and then you add in the +2 from a racial, then you are suddenly at -5 a tick as opposed to -10 a tick and you have a 50% reduction in the crafting penalty which in theory is huge! But in fact is pointless as the current mechanics mean that no amount of +durability is necessary unless you are an afk or semi-afk crafter. The new traits might help new low level crafters and I am going to see with my new woodworker how the numbers look.

As to the rounding that, I imagine, is just becuase they are casting the fraction into an integer as fractions make no sense in crafting ticks As in %durabiltychangeamount = Int(durability loss x durability%bonus) It could be rounded properly I imagine but it would take more time and slow the code down and that lost 1 here and there I can forgive for a little speed. They could cahnge this using a rounding function giving something like:

+Math.abs(Math.round(durability loss x durability%bonus))

Total code:

durability%bonus = racial durability % bonus + aa durability % bonus + gear durability % bonusdurabilityabsolutebonus = racial durability amount bonus + aa durability amount bonus + gear durability amount bonus... other crafting code...durability change = durability loss + Math.abs(Math.round(durability loss x durability%bonus)) + durabilityaboslutebonus

Test for bugs

However, maybe their current code is a lot more complex and so the fix isnt that easy, no idea as I've not seen the code This would however add in two extra function calls to determine the proper value to be added by % bonus items and that might slow the whole thing down, but I doubt it. Well it would be one actually as the math.round is a cast to int at the moment but hey...

This does of course ignore the fact that crafting arts are unaffected by these bonuses.