ANSWERED:Remove chance of failure from Influence

[Nagapie]

18 minutes ago, cyradis4 said:

For myself, every time I've *noticed* an Influence Fail, it was actually user error (me), having used the wrong pink.... or influenced the wrong egg. Checked via Action Log. Now, I've had, over the years, many wanted but not necessary dragons gender what I thought was wrong. Those I didn't care enough about to check, so can't say if they were influence fail or not. But a lot of failures, in my experience, can be traced back to user error. 

 

In short, I have NEVER seen a screen cap of an Action Log of an influenced egg that then gendered different from influence. I'm sure it happens, but I've never seen proof, and never seen any myself. 

 

For myself? If its something I'm going to regret miss-gendering, I use Precog after influence.... And have found multiple eggs *I* influenced wrong that way. 

 

Just saying: lets see some proof that the influence fail is actually there, and prevalent, before we start jumping to conclusions. The fact that the failures seem to happen regularly for some and not at all for others suggests either huge differences in eggs influenced, or perhaps more casual influencing practices. 

 

Cheers!

C4.

 

Honestly, this is a great idea. If not that, perhaps some official confirmation on whether or not there actually is a failure rate? The description of the Influence action says that it increases the chance that the egg will be gender x which would suggest that it doesn't always succeed, but perhaps it's still already a 100% success rate and the failures are merely a myth born out of human error. Seeing how many veteran players say they've never had Influence fail for them, it seems quite unlikely that there even is a failure rate. It would not make sense mathematically. I'd prefer to have a confirmation on what the situation is nevertheless, especially now that I'm also interested in how this information would affect the value of Aeons.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Nagapie

[cyradis4]

At the time Influence was released, I heard numbers in the "increases by 50% range", which frankly I don't remember if they came from TJ or not. The original thread should be on the forum still, somewhere. That's where it'd be if it was anywhere. However, I'm almost certain that was wrong, since that would put the failure rate at 25%..... 

50% females to males. Influence all for female. Half succeeds and is female. Remaining half "fails", and is what they naturally would be, so half of 50% is female. Call it 25% males. 

The rate seems to be a lot lower than that. 

 

If everyone grabbed common eggs, and influenced them all female..... we could see how many miss-gendered. If the rate is anything above 10%, we should see some miss-genders in the first lot, if more than one person does it. And it'd provide actual proof. So, that's what I'm doing: grabbing commons from the AP to influence all female. 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

[osmarks]

I agree. It's like how I find sickness: a useless difficulty-increasing mechanic which requires annoying boring workarounds.

 

I have not observed it happening to me (I don't actually have any pinks whatsoever and rely on aeons if I want to know a thing's gender) but I imagine it'd be very annoying for people doing lineage projects (again, not me).

 

@cyradis4 Interesting experiment. Please note that it comes under the ridiculous reverse engineering terms and maaaay result in bad things.

[Nagapie]

I was also interested in the experiment, but yeah, indeed, I suppose it would be considered reverse engineering by the admin as pointed out by osmarks, given that the part about reverse engineering in the site's Terms and Conditions says "Users of the site agree not to reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to derive any processes or formulas used by the site’s internal calculations.". So I guess we're kind of stuck when it comes to that.

[osmarks]

Just now, Nagapie said:

So I guess we're kind of stuck when it comes to that.

It is claimed that the only enforcement of this was regarding the formulae EATW used for optimal egg views, so you should be okay, possibly, maybe.

[cyradis4]

*snort. We've been running this sort of experiment openly on the forums for years, in fact the results have been brought to TJ's attention before. We're even run overt ones for other reasons. EATW's transgression was far more extensive than what was reported on the forums. 

 

So I have no fear that we'll be penalized for running an in-game experiment without recorse to external software and mass-data collection.

 

Cheers!
C4. 

(from someone who has been there, done that, and gonna do it again). 

[Ruby Eyes]

I influence almost everything - especially everything that I breed for lineages, and I breed a LOT. I think I can safely say that I would have noticed if I had had an influence fail in the past years.

[JavaTigress]

10 hours ago, Aalbiel said:

Has anybody actually kept track of how often this happens? Because it's still pretty rare....

 

And HM, it would affect the use of Precog because very many people use Precog after Influence to check that Influence has worked, which would be pointless if there was no fail. Not saying this in a positive or negative way but it does very much affect Precog.

This is... a good point actually. AND ats coming from someone who KNOWS that they have had Influence fail from time to time.

I have been known o use Precog EXACTLY as described here... for important stuff,anyway.

 

As for the fails themselves... Annoying? Absolutely. Game breaking? Nah.

 

I can totally understand the place this idea comes from.

There have been a few of mine that have been quite frustrating.

 

However... 

Quote

 I'm guessing it's for lore reasons. Since Influence is based on the IRL reptile trick of changing the egg temperature to raise the chances of certain gender offspring, a failure rate is to be expected.

 

While it is annoying, a guaranteed Influence would essentially render Precognition a useless BSA. Aeons would lose a lot of their value as a result and Pinks would suddenly be more sought after...making them harder to actually get, I would think. And THAT would be even more annoying. I'd rather have loads of Pinks and risk a failure...than only have one way to control my eggs' gender, yet have to pay an arm and a leg to acquire the derg that lets me do that.



I can see this concern as well. Still, as others have said, pinks ARE more common than Aeons ( At least it appears so to me), so I dunno how HUGE of an issue this is.

Edited September 18, 2018 by JavaTigress

[purplehaze]

22 minutes ago, Nagapie said:

I was also interested in the experiment, but yeah, indeed, I suppose it would be considered reverse engineering by the admin as pointed out by osmarks, given that the part about reverse engineering in the site's Terms and Conditions says "Users of the site agree not to reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to derive any processes or formulas used by the site’s internal calculations.". So I guess we're kind of stuck when it comes to that.

Oh come on! This requires only observation, not any sort of "reverse engineering". No one has ever been punished for observing and reporting things in this way and I really don't see how it can be seen as against the ToS. We observe and report on our dragons' behavior all the time! Let's not get super paranoid here!

[Nagapie]

14 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

Oh come on! This requires only observation, not any sort of "reverse engineering". No one has ever been punished for observing and reporting things in this way and I really don't see how it can be seen as against the ToS. We observe and report on our dragons' behavior all the time! Let's not get super paranoid here!

 

Fair enough, I take back what I said. I haven't been here long enough to know these things for sure so I'll just go ahead and trust the judgement of you more experienced players.

 

I currently have three longer time eggs I could influence to be female to participate. I was planning to influence them female in any case so I suppose this would be a way for me to try and help as well despite my limited resources (I currently have about 5 female Pinks so the rate at which I can test isn't very fast). I'll let you guys know if I find anything.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Nagapie

[pinkgothic]

I'd like to see any failure possibility of Influence disappear, as well.

 

I don't see it making Precog useless - if you trade for ungendered hatchlings, you still need Precog. If you grab low-time eggs, you still need Precog. If you're not actually interested in influencing your egg, you just want to know what it's going to be (e.g. so you can better trade it as an ungendered hatchling, by mentioning what it will be), you can use Precog (or Influence, to set the gender to one or the other).

 

At most, over the years, I've had two Influence fails, and I couldn't swear those weren't use errors, so I barely use Precog as is - the failure rate is super low, and I'd rather not use the BSA of a dragon as rare as Aeons when I can use the BSA of a dragon as common as pinks. If the egg is extremely irreplacable, I might use Precog, but even then I've usually not bothered. All in all, this happens far less often than I trade for ungendered (usually CB) hatchlings, where Precog continues to be very valuable.

 

Regarding the failure rate, if indeed one still exists, one thing I recall being said about it years ago was that it was dependent on your ratio of males and females on your scroll. So, if you have a number of female pinks, and you tried to influence absolutely every egg you got female, eventually you would run into a sequence of Influence fails. (Whether it actually works that way, on the other hand, is a different question.)

 

So why, if I'm pretty sure the failure rate is insignificant or may not even exist, do I support removing it? Because the "chance of an Influence-fail" causes people who trade in irreplacables a lot (code dragons, for example) a lot of anxiety. If a statement were made to the effect of "Influence has no failure rate" (or "Influence's failure rate was removed", either way), that would do a lot to remove that source of stress. 

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

Given all the discussion as to whether influence failures are even an actual thing, I believe it’d be best PMing TJ or mods to confirm or deny whether they’re real or not before this goes any further tbh

[animatedrose]

I agree with @RealWilliamShakespeare. I've always been under the impression that Influence had a tiny failure rate but from all these accounts of "failure was due to user, not Influence itself", I suddenly really want to know if Influence fail is legit or not.

[osmarks]

The experiment detailed above ought to confirm which it is, though admittedly it's not really possible to prove that there are not influence failures.

[cyradis4]

9 minutes ago, osmarks said:

The experiment detailed above ought to confirm which it is, though admittedly it's not really possible to prove that there are not influence failures.

 

If enough of us participate, it should prove if they happen often enough to be noticeable, but you are right: there's a chance we won't get any failures, which just proves that they are super rare rather than non-existent. But then, that in and of itself is useful. But just the same, be sure to mention your gender ratios, because linking the failure to gender ratios on a scroll is just the sort of thing TJ tends to do. Mine via Allure are: 

• Males	4,419	45.53%
• Females	4,346	44.78%

 

Yea..... I really have that many dragons.  So its unlikely any gender ratios are going to affect what I do, simply because I have such a deep well of dragons. 

 

As for PM'ing TJ, don't hold your breath for an answer, at least in my years here I've never seen him answer this sort of question via PM. I have seen him come swanning around a thread, if someone else wants to ping him.... 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

[Fuzzbucket]

7 hours ago, purplehaze said:

Whoa! I thought precognition was 100%.

 

I'm not sure I have ever had an influence fail. One time that I thought I had I went back and checked my action log and found that I had forgotten to influence at all. I'm pretty neutral on this suggestion. Fails happen so seldom that I'm not sure they really serve whatever purpose they are supposed to have, but when they do happen with rare pairs they can be devastating.

 

It is 100%.

 

5 hours ago, cyradis4 said:

For myself, every time I've *noticed* an Influence Fail, it was actually user error (me), having used the wrong pink.... or influenced the wrong egg. Checked via Action Log. Now, I've had, over the years, many wanted but not necessary dragons gender what I thought was wrong. Those I didn't care enough about to check, so can't say if they were influence fail or not. But a lot of failures, in my experience, can be traced back to user error. 

 

In short, I have NEVER seen a screen cap of an Action Log of an influenced egg that then gendered different from influence. I'm sure it happens, but I've never seen proof, and never seen any myself. 

 

For myself? If its something I'm going to regret miss-gendering, I use Precog after influence.... And have found multiple eggs *I* influenced wrong that way. 

 

Just saying: lets see some proof that the influence fail is actually there, and prevalent, before we start jumping to conclusions. The fact that the failures seem to happen regularly for some and not at all for others suggests either huge differences in eggs influenced, or perhaps more casual influencing practices. 

 

Cheers!

C4. 

 

PS: The influence failure rate can be dealt with easily now using PreCog. 

 

I influence almost  everything. I have had two fails in all my time playing. A while ago, but I promise you I have. My first ever fail was this: https://dragcave.net/lineage/iJbJ2

 

I PROMISE you I influenced correctly. And it is something I will never forget. We didn't have precog then. GOD I wish we had had.

[HeatherMarie]

While this is not 'proof' by any means, the on-site Help section does seem to imply that Influence has some fail rate. The text for all the different BSAs either deliberately say 'chance' or deliberately don't say that, ie Precog says 'Reveals the gender of an egg or hatchling.' that means it's 100%. Incubating says 'Incubating an egg removes one day from its timer' so it's 100%. 

 

On the other hand, Fertility says 'Fertility allows you to increase the chance that a certain dragon will breed successfully.' See the word chance there? Earthquake also has that word, 'The earthquake action has a chance of forcing your eggs to hatch'. Neither are 100%. Influence says this:   This action enables you to increase the chance of an egg being the same gender as the dragon that uses this action. This allows you to essentially choose which gender you would like an egg to be.

Due to the 'chance' and 'essentially', it's logical to assume that Influence does indeed have a fail rate, however small it may be. 

 

[Dracaena]

5 hours ago, pinkgothic said:

 

Regarding the failure rate, if indeed one still exists, one thing I recall being said about it years ago was that it was dependent on your ratio of males and females on your scroll. So, if you have a number of female pinks, and you tried to influence absolutely every egg you got female, eventually you would run into a sequence of Influence fails. (Whether it actually works that way, on the other hand, is a different question.)

 

This had slipped my mind when I posted earlier.  I would say that the fact I've been religious about maintaining male/female balance on my scroll is likely a factor why I've not experienced an influence fail.

 

Afraid I can't make a neat box like cryandis4 but here are my current stats as reported on scroll statistics on Allure of Neglected Dragons.

 

Males 3750   49.54%

Females 3739  49.40%

 

I rarely freeze ungendered hatchlings.  I have a grand total of three which are 1 ribbon dancer, 1 rosebud, 1 mutamore, which would be 2 female and 1 male.  Not a large number of ungendered frozen hatchlings to skew my numbers.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Dracaena

[Pilauli]

It occurs to me that, if the scroll gender ratios are at fault, what we really ought to do is recruit a bunch of new players without many dragons.

 

Something like "here, if I send you 4 female pink hatchlings, will you use them to influence a batch of AP eggs and tell me if any of them gender male?"

 

If you catch them soon enough, the 4 female pinks (on a scroll with no more than eight other dragons, maybe?) might be enough to seriously skew their gender ratios.

[purplehaze]

1 hour ago, Pilauli said:

It occurs to me that, if the scroll gender ratios are at fault, what we really ought to do is recruit a bunch of new players without many dragons.

 

Something like "here, if I send you 4 female pink hatchlings, will you use them to influence a batch of AP eggs and tell me if any of them gender male?"

 

If you catch them soon enough, the 4 female pinks (on a scroll with no more than eight other dragons, maybe?) might be enough to seriously skew their gender ratios.

New players often come to the Help forum asking why all their dragons are gendering male/female. It takes time for a scroll to balance, it seems.

 

I am not sure how much of a factor it is anyway. My scroll is slightly skewed toward female yet whenever I leave an egg uninfluenced because I don't care how it genders, it will often gender female anyway.

[Nagapie]

Seeing as there are people that have barely seen any Influence fails in years of playing and the difficulty of accurately testing the Influence failure rate, I suppose this topic can just float on to oblivion. I still think that having an already miniscule failure rate in this action just to keep people on their toes is pointless, but seeing as it is so unlikely to begin with if it even exists and can be countered with the use of other BSAs in the case of a really important dragon, I suppose it doesn't really matter either way in the long run. I apologize for having started a suggestion topic based on what little information I had on the matter and thank everyone for clarifying just how unlikely having an Influence fail actually is.

Edited September 23, 2018 by Nagapie
Changed "abysmal" to "miniscule" as abysmal was not the right word for the situation.

[Fuzzbucket]

An ABYSMAL fail rate ? It's minuscule. It almost never fails. I think you have the wrong word there, as you go on to say how unlikely a fail is   - just in case anyone quotes you and the discussion goes sideways.

[Nagapie]

12 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

An ABYSMAL fail rate ? It's minuscule. It almost never fails. I think you have the wrong word there, as you go on to say how unlikely a fail is   - just in case anyone quotes you and the discussion goes sideways.

 

Yeah I stand corrected. 😅 English isn't my first language so I sometimes pick the wrong word like that.

[Fuzzbucket]

I realised that - that's why I posted No worries; as a rule your English comes over as English anyway - VERY good indeed.

[BlueLatios]

3 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

An ABYSMAL fail rate ? It's minuscule. It almost never fails. I think you have the wrong word there, as you go on to say how unlikely a fail is   - just in case anyone quotes you and the discussion goes sideways.

And even in that miniscule rate of failing, when it came, it had to happen on one of my Rare CBs :l

 

Same case, that time I don't have an Aeon Wyvern for precog (or too lazy to use one)