I know that there are "frequencies" as such, but this in-game documentation is not exactly comprehensive.
I have made some observations, but I want to ask if there was any thread on this here.
edited by Rostygold on 4/26/2017
While there’s no documentation in Fallen London itself, there is documentation in StoryNexus detailing the relative frequencies. To copy the wiki’s list:
- Rarererest (1)[/li][li]Rare (10)[/li][li]Unusual (20)[/li][li]Very Infrequent (50)[/li][li]Infrequent (80)[/li][li]Standard (100)[/li][li]Frequent (200)[/li][li]Abundant (500)[/li][li]Ubiquitous (1000)
There are no (known) Rarererest cards in FL itself, so you can just ignore it and divide the listed frequencies by 10.
Thanks for that citation, though I already know about that.
So there was no thread about this here? My searches are not yielding anything.
What are you asking then, outside what the frequencies of cards correspond to?
This is nothing official but the last time that I am aware of that we had a discussion about this was here
ETA: I see from the other thread that one of the things that Rostygold is getting at is the Infrequent Location specific cards that are coming up a lot more frequently than Standard. I don’t have an answer to that. I’ve mulled it long and hard and I admit it stumps me.
edited by genesis on 4/26/2017
It seems probable to me that the card’s actual frequency and the frequency it displays are not 100% in agreement for every card.
Maybe they could get an intern to take a few hours to look over every card and ensure it’s displayed and actual frequencies match up.
The problem with that supposition is that from what I gather from FBG via support those cards are in fact listed as Infrequent in their database. So the labels are correct. Whatever is going wrong it seems to be with the dealing mechanism as it applies to location specific cards.
[quote=genesis]This is nothing official but the last time that I am aware of that we had a discussion about this was here
ETA: I see from the other thread that one of the things that Rostygold is getting at is the Infrequent Location specific cards that are coming up a lot more frequently than Standard. I don’t have an answer to that. I’ve mulled it long and hard and I admit it stumps me.[/quote]
Thanks for the link.
[b]One of my theory of the card-drawing was that when a card is drawn, the "frequency" rating of the card is determined first via a weighted RNG roll, using only the listed scores of the weights of the card type. After that, a type of card in the selected frequency band is selected randomly from the range of cards in that band. This theory of mine is WRONG.
[/b]I arrived at that theory because I was seeing certain Infrequent frequency cards - namely the Clandestine Rendezvous-giving cards - appearing far more often than "standard" frequency cards. I thought that because the "standard" band was saturated with more cards than the other bands, the probability of a specific "standard" card being drawn is far lower than the probability of a specific card from a less saturated band. (Incidentally, the Infrequent band is the narrowest.)
Genesis, your theory is the other theory that I believed would have been likely, i.e. each card adding its own weightage to the deck and thus expanding the RNG roll range. (That’s how I summarize your theory.)
I have recently done some shenanigans that I thought would make certain cards appear instead of other cards of the same frequency; in other words, I prevented those other cards from appearing. The cards that I wanted to appear more often did not seem to increase their appearance rate in order to compensate for the absence of the other cards, which is what I wanted to happen. Hence, my aforementioned theory is wrong, and I believed that your theory is likelier.
Yet, after those Clandestine Rendezvous cards have been removed, the Amanuensis card and Mr. Pages’ card (both of which are Infrequent) are not appearing more often in order to compensate. In fact, in hindsight, the now nerfed/fixed Clandestine Rendezvous appeared far more often than either card. Neither theory applied to these cards.
Now, I don’t think that the frequency rating of each and every card is reliable. I think that the Clandestine Rendezvous cards had far greater weightage than their ratings suggest.
I don’t think that it is due to the Clandestine Rendezvous cards’ status as location-specific cards; "Call in Favours in the Flit" is just as difficult to draw as any other specific ‘standard’ card, for example. I think it was because they were gold-trimmed cards.
edited by Rostygold on 4/26/2017
It’s worth bearing in mind, too, that in a truly random distribution it’s possible to see rare cards come up more often than their claimed rarity would suggest, just as a non-weighted coin, when flipped, will sometimes come up heads 50 times out of 50.
Of course. The sample size has to be big enough to be statistically significant. Note two things:
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The sample size in the Reddit thread is 4500 card draws.
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In your example: sure, mathematically it’s possible that you’ll get 50 times heads in a row. However, the chance of that actually happening is so astronomical, that’s it’s much much (much) more likely in such a scenario that the premise (i.e. that each coin toss indeed has a 50% chance) is incorrect instead.
Think of it like this: I show you a coin which I claim is fair, toss it 50 times and it lands on head all 50 times. If you now have to bet, would you say that (1) the next coin toss has a 50% chance either head or tail, or that (2) I was mistaken when claiming the coin was fair?
May i ask how do you collect the data?
I think dov referred to this link https://www.reddit.com/r/fallenlondon/comments/50ctcr/card_draw_probabilities_an_exhaustive_study/
The data on the reddit thread seem to suggest that the frequencies of the opp cards (at least the “standard” ones) isn’t equal; there are (it seems) standard cards that appear more often than others.
I understand. But i am interested if there is a tools to record such data. Or its all done by hand.
Hand, cloud documents or extension to do so.
Last one is far by best and requires some work. Problem is you’ll end up using the other options if you can’t always use Chrome (for cloud storage and sync). Either way, as Estelle mentioned some time ago, there’s no point in grinding like a mad man, finding exploits and optimizing the card.
It’s a frigging great game with immersive story and after the grinds all those numbers and notes will be gone; only the pleasure and the feeling the writing offers is all that’s left. So best not skip that part and let the other grind parts as a little hobby besides the game. I know there are a few (probably more now) articles regarding multiplayer games, number reward (the bigger the better), gaming that isn’t a gaming experience anymore, but more of a job and the list can go on. You get the picture!
There’s an old joke:
A gambler, a statistician, and a stage magician are all watching someone flip a coin. After 9 times, the coin has always come up heads.
The gambler bets on it landing on tails next, thinking it’s tail’s turn to come up.
The statistician bets randomly, thinking that there’s no way for them to predict which it will land on.
The stage magician bets heads since the coin is obviously rigged.
/offtopic
@Skinnyman great words! But there is not much content left for me. Except for seasonal events and slow SMEN. I am exceptional friend for 4 months and not impressed by EF stories at all. Seems like devs have no intention to finish the game (Ambitions, Shadowy/Dangerous branches, Zee and other minor stories) because of economical reasons. So very soon there will be only grind for me.
edited by Waterpls on 4/26/2017
My guess from watching cards, not from any particular mathy stats - somewhere in their use of the RNG, they compensate for cards showing up less than expected by making them show up more. So if you have seen a card significantly less often as you’re “supposed” to, my guess is that it is more likely to show up than its listed rate. My guess is they’re explicitly putting in the gamblers’ fallacy into their code to make sure players don’t get as screwed by the RNG as they could be.
Immediately after Mood cards were reenabled, I drew them, and I saw other folks on the forums discussing having drawn them as well. So even though they’re really rare, when they were first enabled they showed up very fast. This would also affects location-specific cards - if you don’t spend all your time flipping cards in one location, the location-specific cards for that location would be “behind” and would show up more often. I remember that immediately after the switch from Connections to Renown for Urchins, I very quickly drew the cards that had to do with Urchins favors that had been redone.
Don’t know for sure obviously.
One thing that I’ve noticed about how cards are drawn is that the “deck” of 6 cards (10 for EFs) does not actually exist; rather, it is just a count of how many times you get to pull from the entire pool of available cards. I know this because on a few occasions I’ve drawn a card, discarded it, and then immediately drawn it again. If there were actually a six-card deck free of duplicates, that would be impossible.
Correct. What you pull is not determined until you actually pull it; the cards in your deck merely represent opportunities to draw.
This can be taken advantage of, to some degree. If I really need to draw multiples of a certain card, then in addition to deck-thinning I will arrange things so that I’m only drawing one card at a time, thus giving me the best opportunity to draw it twice in a row. It’s not a huge difference, but every bit counts.
[quote=Amalgamate]My guess from watching cards, not from any particular mathy stats - somewhere in their use of the RNG, they compensate for cards showing up less than expected by making them show up more. So if you have seen a card significantly less often as you’re "supposed" to, my guess is that it is more likely to show up than its listed rate. My guess is they’re explicitly putting in the gamblers’ fallacy into their code to make sure players don’t get as screwed by the RNG as they could be.
Immediately after Mood cards were reenabled, I drew them, and I saw other folks on the forums discussing having drawn them as well. So even though they’re really rare, when they were first enabled they showed up very fast. This would also affects location-specific cards - if you don’t spend all your time flipping cards in one location, the location-specific cards for that location would be "behind" and would show up more often. I remember that immediately after the switch from Connections to Renown for Urchins, I very quickly drew the cards that had to do with Urchins favors that had been redone.
Don’t know for sure obviously.[/quote]
This all sounds highly unlikely. While possible, confirmation bias on your part seems a far more probable explanation than FBG intentionally implementing the gambers’ fallacy. There’s no way to know for sure besides checking the code, but the evidence you’ve listed here is nowhere near enough to draw a conclusion.
Your evidence is also incomplete. For example, when Mood cards were reenabled, I too drew one a couple days later. But that isn’t evidence of weighted draw RNG because the pattern hasn’t changed. My deck is pretty trimmed and I regularly draw one or two mood cards a week. What you mentioned isn’t clear evidence because you’ve only given your impressions of card appearances at those times, but not during the earlier "sparse" period or the period after the frequency is no longer "behind".