Treasure Hunter Tweak

[Miji]

Is it possible to make note of what items were dropped from a monster due to the thief's Treasure Hunter ability?

Example:
You find a fire crystal on Tiamat.
Treasure Hunter! You find a pair of herald's gaiters on Tiamat.
You find a wyrm horn on Tiamat.

Since SE goes through great lengths to hide the method of Treasure Hunter's functionality, could we at least see when it works? This would add a bit more recognition to what could be the thief's best ability if people actually knew it was working, not to mention how fun it would be to seem them shine when they cause a nice drop.

[Murphie]

I suspect that Treasure Hunter is intentionally ambiguous. SE seems to really enjoy having certain things be a mystery like that. Still, it would be kind of cool to see the tangible benefits of TH.

[Feba]

TH just doesn't work like that

[Miji]

TH just doesn't work like that

Clearly this statement requires explanation.

[sevenpointflaw]

TH just doesn't work like that

Are you claiming to know the inner workings of TH?

[Feba]

No, but it is extremely obvious that TH doesn't trigger after rolls, and say "oh! and that and that too"



it's much more complicated, and is either in the roll calculation itself, or something that isn't just "TH yes no"

[Miji]

No, but it is extremely obvious that TH doesn't trigger after rolls, and say "oh! and that and that too"

No, I never found it to be that obvious at all. Treasure hunter methods obscure, yes, obvious, no.

[levish]

I was always under the impression that

1. there is a loot pool
2. there is a chance to get loot from that pool
3. TH adds to the % chance to get stuff from that loot pool
4. TH1 and TH2 have the single biggest effect on %
5. Assasin's Armlets and Thief's Knife are roughly +1% to % droprate (thief's knife was tested to this effect).
6. Moon phase has a effect on droprates

[Aeolus]

5. Thief's Kote and Thief's are roughly +1% to % droprate (thief's knife was tested to this effect).

Thiefs kote give +3 steal, do you mean Assasins Armlets? What is the second thief in that sentence, knife or just the job?

[levish]

yes armlets i mean sorry, fixed OP

[Omniblast]

I think that this would be nice to see, though I'm not sure how SE would view that a "thief" has finally become useful visually. I like thiefs, I like Treasure Hunter. I would like to see this implemented.

[Sabaron]

Making the inner workings of the engine obvious makes the game less fantastic, mysterious, and special... Too Blizzard-y... If I were designing FFXI, I would be leaving much, much more out of the public eye . Take for example the Crafting Recipe people.... boom. Sieglinde no longer a know-it-all? She only knows say... 50% of the recipes and the rest can be "unlocked" by discovery and say, trading her the crafting components for "research" or something neat like that. Less boring, more discovery, more secret knowledge.

[Kutch]

If TH indeed has a random effect on each mob down, one could output something like "NN's aura shimmers briefly" or so during the encounter, just as a paladin presence sometimes makes undead critters uneasy.

But, I suspect that the treasure calculation is not random, but more like a constant percentage up in chance of drops.

[Renaissance 2K]

No, but it is extremely obvious that TH doesn't trigger after rolls, and say "oh! and that and that too"

it's much more complicated, and is either in the roll calculation itself, or something that isn't just "TH yes no"

If an item drop works like every other pseudorandom number generation performed by a computer, it's based on the system clock. For simplicity's sake, let's say this system clock has 1000 increments, from 0 to 999.

Throwing out some ambiguous numbers, a Rabbit Hide has a 25% chance of dropping from a Forest Hare. Let's say Treasure Hunter adds a 5% chance of dropping to all items.

If the mob is killed when the system clock is 0-249, a Rabbit Hide will drop.
If the mob is killed when the system clock is 250-299, a Rabbit Hide will drop only if someone has Treasure Hunter in the party.
If the mob is killed when the system clock is 300-999, no Rabbit Hide will drop.

In this scenario, it is easy to tell when Treasure Hunter "kicked in" and when it didn't. If the mob is killed during a certain clock time that is only "active" when Treasure Hunter is available, you can conclude that Treasure Hunter is what's to blame/thank.

Another theory is that Treasure Hunter "rerolls" the item drops. When the mob is killed, the same range is checked. If it's 0-249, a Rabbit Hide will drop. If it's 250-999, it generates another pseudorandom number as a sort of "second chance". If you calculate the probabilities of these two scenarios, an item has a higher chance of dropping with multiple rolls.

So if the Rabbit Hide drops after the initial "roll", it's not because of Treasure Hunter, and there wouldn't be a message. If the initial "roll" fails but the "reroll" gets the Rabbit Hide, it'd be easy to add the message.

It'd be an interesting addition, but I see the value in keeping some thing secret. If this message were to be added, it wouldn't be long until people released the true meaning of Treasure Hunter and how it affected individual days, moon phases, zones, etc. Soon after, you'd see people taking advantage of the situation, more people leveling THF... It's better if we just keep it a secret.

[Sabaron]

Pseudo-random number generators do a lot more than grab the system clock number...

Most modern PRNGS are Mersenne Twister:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_twister

I realize it's wikipedia, but it's good enough for most. ^^

[EDIT: Add]

I don't want anyone getting the idea in their head that slaying a monster at a certain time interval will actually help them get better drops The last thing we need is more superstition. I can see it "You n00b!! You're supposed to wait another 3 seconds before you kill it. GTFO /blist! Kick!"