Devs state that Steal IS NOT affected by stats

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by Rones
I used to spend many hours in tahronghi canyon train farming because there is few people around to steal my kills. So I can train up 40-50 mobs and kill them in 3-4 spells in 10-15min. I'll spend an hour doing that and get at best 10-15 drops. Then I have exped out there solo with different jobs (home nation is bastok so I didn't have signet and wasn't getting crystals) and exped for an hour and ended up with a full inventory (getting a drop nearly every kill). Any melee that spends hours farming can vouch for this effect.

That's funny, because I have spent several hundred hours farming in Tahrongi with RNG/THF and (post-45) THF/RNG, and I know for a fact that with TH1, 4 stacks of arrows = ~40k worth of drops; with TH2, ~50k.

I'm not saying SE is lying or wrong, I'm saying I question the authcenticity of the interview over what I see as a blatently false statement. What proof does this website offer for the interview beyond slapping a SE staff member's name on it?

So now you are claiming that that website made the whole interview up?

Talk about sticking your head in the ground.

We had this same argument over delay.

No, we surely did not. If there existed an interview in which Squenix said "100 delay = 1 sec," my discussion with you would have been much shorter. It probably would have went something like this one is about to:

Squenix has unequivocally stated that drop rate is not affected by level.

If you disagree, you are wrong. Period.

As far as I'm concerned, you can keep clinging to your superstition, just like all the people who still swear that enmity is affected by CHR and TH doesn't affect Rare/EX drops. Some people simply refuse to accept reality.

[Timoham]

Originally posted by Omena
That's not even possible. Skins are limited to 1 per lizard max, and so are lizard tails. In fact, most drops are lmited to one per mob killed and 99% of the rest are limited to two per mob (insect wings for example). Some mobs, such as rams can drop up to four skins and two horns, but they are special.

Doesn't seem like level affects drop rates. I get just as much stuff as I did at lower levels.

I've killed rams a shit load. The most amount of skins I've gotten solo was 4. Come out with a full party going to Beadeaux, find a random ram, kill it... guess how many skins... TEN SKINS! It was a bit ridiculous to me. x_x No TH2 or even TH1 even. I remember seeing a conversation between a player and a GM about spiderwebs. GM said with more people in your party you can get more drops or something along those lines. Don't feel like finding the screenshot of it. :p


There was also something in the update about train farming not giving as many drops as killing stuff one by one. I've witnessed it many times myself going to waughroon shrine with my LS to do BCNM40. We train EVERYTHING in palborough EVERY time getting 50+ mobs. After we kill the entire train with an AOE or two, we get maybe 5 drops. I've done some farming of palborough on my own with a boomerang and one hitting quadavs without any form of TH and fill up my pack with shell shields, scrolls, backplates, etc. in less than an hour. That's 48 items in less than an hour killing less mobs than the train does. Even moon phase and day can't really account for that.

Sorry to get off topic, this doesn't have much to do with INT and TH :x

[Omena]

Originally posted by Timoham
I've killed rams a shit load. The most amount of skins I've gotten solo was 4. Come out with a full party going to Beadeaux, find a random ram, kill it... guess how many skins... TEN SKINS! It was a bit ridiculous to me. x_x No TH2 or even TH1 even.

I know more players increases drop rates, but it doesn't allow you to go over the drop limit. By the way, I have killed rams in 6 person parties and the most skins we ever got was 4, just like when soloing.

[Sabastion]

I had a ram drop 5 skins and 2horns lastnight. 4 rams filled 21slots >.<

[Rones]

So now you are claiming that that website made the whole interview up?

Talk about sticking your head in the ground.

Squenix has unequivocally stated that drop rate is not affected by level.

If you disagree, you are wrong. Period.

So going off what you say...joe schmoe can throw up a website with an supposed interview with SE that claims TH lowers drop rates and you would believe it and anyone who disagreed with the website would be wrong? Just because someone puts it on the net doesn't mean its reliable (far from reliable in most cases). Seriously, how hard is it to make up interviews that do nothing but mostly repeat obvious facts about the game in order to attract more people to your website? I'm not saying that is necessarily the case here, but it is certainly possible given how many web site out there claim these exclusive interviews with SE. You sir are the one with his head in the ground.

We had this same argument over delay.

No, we surely did not.

Take the time to fully read my comments before making snide comments. The argument we had before was in reference to you requiring exact parsers with days worth of logs to have any kind of a creditable argument (while you never provided any of that yourself). I argued the proof didn't have to be so extremely precise while you did. This is the same thing. You argued you need lots of parsed logs:

Have you ever actually logged your drop rate? Newer versions of the FFXIParser will do this.

Yet, like in the case with delay, the difference between the two was so large that parseing was pure overkill for something more easily determined with less hassle. Drop rates for me is the same thing. I can get a full load inventory of ram skins very quickly while killing ep and dc rams, but if I go after them with my lvl 69 whm I have to kill 10 just to get a single skin.

[Sabastion]

Theres stubborness and then theres just being thickheaded. :p

[xcalibur2k]

well, I don't want to take any sides. But I think warcry is considered a reputable site when it comes to MMORPG gaming.

So, with that in mind, I would trust what they put on their site than some average joe's post on some forum or any other average joe's website.

[Macht]

Lol, OMG I can't believe that everyone would believe word of mouth from any official without trying themselves. An actual occurence that is happening with me right now and the company I work for.

We are building a new website, we hired a company "Multimedia Live" to help build it for us. Our "Liason" guarenteed us that the website when they release it to us will have minimal bugs (5-15 or so), he even explained how it's background end will work and so on.

He released it to us and every single thing he said was completly inaccurate. Not only did we have over 100 bugs to fix (first day we got it, still more we are finding), but it's background end doesn't have the relations like was being explained to us. Our "Liason" did not program it himself he was present during its progress and yet still he didn't give us any reliable information.

I spent a whole freaking week to just learn basics of how it's background end works because the training session he gave us on it was crap. Mind you this is only a current situation that's occuring, I've had this stuff happen with multiple other companies we've worked with making an actual statement and it being wrong.

The only and I mean ONLY person I would have some trust in believing is the person(s) who actually put the freaking thing together. The ones that sat their and did all the coding, those people and ONLY those people are often the ones that know best how it works (Sadly enough I've have had a few rare cases were even they wouldn't know, still boggles me how that could be especially since they built the freaking thing).

My caution of believing what crap spews from a "Liason" of a company is well developed from my own experience working with those people and using my own knowledge of programming and database designs.

[xcalibur2k]

Originally posted by Macht
Lol, OMG I can't believe that everyone would believe word of mouth from any official without trying themselves. An actual occurence that is happening with me right now and the company I work for.

The problem is that a lot of people who posted in this thread (and many other older threads) did try it for themselves. But the results we get are inconclusive. I myself tried it and found out that I don't see any different on the drops regardless of my level. And then another person posts in this thread saying that it does. So now how would you go about finding what the truth is?

Originally posted by Macht
The only and I mean ONLY person I would have some trust in believing is the person(s) who actually put the freaking thing together. The ones that sat their and did all the coding, those people and ONLY those people are often the ones that know best how it works (Sadly enough I've have had a few rare cases were even they wouldn't know, still boggles me how that could be especially since they built the freaking thing).

My caution of believing what crap spews from a "Liason" of a company is well developed from my own experience working with those people and using my own knowledge of programming and database designs.

I do sympatise with your plight. Maybe you're dealing someone that is a salesperson and not a spokesperson?

Anyway, we are not going to get the developer to come out and give a statement on the 6 o'clock news in front of thousands of witnesses. So I would think the next best thing are spokepersons or reporters giving interviews and publishing the results to reputable magazines or credible websites.

[Macht]

No, he isn't a salesperson. He's suppose to be my contact when anything goes wrong with it. I talk to him on a regular basis he is part of the managment for the website taking care of the programming parts on their end while I take care of the programming parts on my end.

He doesn't actually do a single part of the programming only relays the info to his techs that then make the corrections and he relays us the info that his techs say (This at times I have found that he re-worded what the tech said and gave us bad info as a result).

At most what I could believe from that interview and about steal is that it isn't dependent on stats alone, that equipment and other factors may have a heavier influence. It is hard for me believe much else then that from the statement.

Most of the time when I see stuff on this forum that comes to inconclusive results is because the testing methods were terrible. There are many different things not controlled in the test and way to many assumed functions. If you were to relate many of those tests to something of investigating a homocide, many of the times results allowed past would be along the lines of saying "so and so couldn't of murdered said person because they are related".

As far as I've seen there are many different things that would have to be tested to find a better conclusion. Tests would have to be recorded down Day (Firesday, Earthsday, etc.), monster's check results, equipments (keeping in mind possible hidden effects as well), possible race bonuses (Mithra can eat fish without any special equipment and Galka can eat meat so this can't be excluded), Moon Phase (Prefferably actual %), even ranges of hours (Probably steal works better between 3:00-6:00 and 20:00-0:00), Level, other items, foods if any, Zone, Weather effects, stats, and possibly elemental alignments (I've programmed with MUDs that used elemental alignments for multiple purposes not just resists so this also can't be ignored).

Now I've yet to see any testings that would relay info that in-depth. Many times when you have a mass of people testing for you they are terrible at doing it, many giving past data they can't accuratly recall and many times not relaying all the info (NEVER assume anything, that is a basic rule all my Science teachers taught me when testing a theory).

It's those assumptions that will kill a test result and make it inconclusive. I know some of the stuff I stated may seem silly but getting an acurate result isn't suppose to be a pride full process were you let your belief interfere with it. Other then what I've stated the only places I've seen come anywere near close to do a good test have been on japanese websites but still they didn't test all controls so their results are still inconclusive.

EDIT:

Basically what I'm stating is when you give data for everyone to use to come to a conclusion every scrap of detail has to be known no matter how insignificant you think it is. Heck possibly even in battle vs. not could have some sort of result to your steal results.

I just realized something I'll have to clarify with these, when I stated all those conditions for testing I ment that all that info has to be recorded for that single attempt. When you come up with another condition to look at then that condition along with all previous conditions has to be recorded.

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by Rones
So going off what you say...joe schmoe can throw up a website with an supposed interview with SE that claims TH lowers drop rates and you would believe it and anyone who disagreed with the website would be wrong? Just because someone puts it on the net doesn't mean its reliable (far from reliable in most cases).

Ah, so your contention is that Warcry's founders made a website... waited several years... then secretly executed their master plan to make a fake FFXI interview, throwing people off of the real truth that drop rate IS affected by level! Brilliant!

You have provided exactly zero evidence that Warcry made up this interview. Either cite your evidence that they are lying, or STFU.

You're just objecting to the interview because you don't like the conclusion.

The argument we had before was in reference to you requiring exact parsers with days worth of logs to have any kind of a creditable argument (while you never provided any of that yourself). I argued the proof didn't have to be so extremely precise while you did. This is the same thing.

No, it is not. In that case, I was asking for lots of logs because of the strength and quality of the test I designed, compared to the uncontrollable nature of stopwatching.

In this case, Squenix directly stated in an interview with Warcry that drop rate is not affected by level (if you say they are lying, prove it). In order to disprove this clear and conclusive statement, you need a mass of data so ridiculously large as to be able to contradict THE PEOPLE THAT MADE THE GAME. I doubt this much data is even possible.

Oh, and if I were really interested in playing the anecdote game, I would start by pointing out that I've farmed well over a million gil worth of items in Tahrongi, and that my drop rate is exactly the same as a 58RNG as it was when I was a 44THF, and as it was when I was a 30RNG. But I don't need to start dumping pages of logs into this thread because Squenix has proven my point for me.

I can get a full load inventory of ram skins very quickly while killing ep and dc rams, but if I go after them with my lvl 69 whm I have to kill 10 just to get a single skin.

Taken with a 50+ THF:

Wait, let me guess... TH2 cancels out the level-affected drop rate?

[Ixaera]

Big difference between a Joe Schmoe's site that's been up and running for two weeks and Warcry, a gaming site that's been around for years and has built up a reputation.

But, if you still want to hold steadfast onto the myth that steal is affected by your stats, go ahead. I have some +stat rings you can buy

But if you want to really know what will help you steal...wait for the monster to cast or use a tp move, and steal while it's still doing it. I have *statistical* data (56 attempts' worth, so far) showing that on targets I have a 60% success ratio on with no bias to waiting for tp move or spellcasting, if I steal while it's doing one or the other, my success rate is 75.9%

A clear improvement, and demonstrable over and over again.

On the flip side, if I purposely steal when the enemy is doing nothing but sitting in auto-attack, my success ratio is 44.44%

(And I do have the data to back that up, but would prefer to wait for a larger test sample to build up.)

[Rones]

Dan, I must once again salute you for your selective reading of my post:

I'm not saying that is necessarily the case here, but it is certainly possible given how many web site out there claim these exclusive interviews with SE.

Ah, so your contention is that Warcry's founders made a website... waited several years... then secretly executed their master plan to make a fake FFXI interview, throwing people off of the real truth that drop rate IS affected by level! Brilliant!

Again, you did not read my post:

in order to attract more people to your website

Any ffxi website could easily make up an interview and throw in q&a over topics that are fairly obvious or too vague to be disproved. You say what proof do I have that the interview is fake? None except a suspecision about one of the stated 'facts' being wrong. What proof does there website offer that the interview is legit? None. Do I think the website faked that interview? I'm undecided really, we have too little information either way. I'm just attempting to point out it is possible and that you shouldn't accept something as 100% truth just because a website says it had an interview with SE (we all know how good SE is about giving information to the public. )

This would be a good time for people to go reread that interview and examine SE's responses to some of the question. How many of those could a veteran player not have given solid answer or at least made a good prediction on? Some of the answers are even very indecisive for someone who supposdly has access to the master plans:

We currently have no plans to increase the level cap.
...
we will consider raising the level cap.

Nice way for them to cover all the bases. Doesn't prove either side, but it can be a reason to raise suspecision.

compared to the uncontrollable nature of stopwatching.

I noticed you choose to backout of that topic quite a while back. Arguing over a 5% margin of error (that's being extreme) when you get result difference of ~40% between the two projections is illogical. It is nothing more than an attempt to discredit the overwhelming evidence that was against you while you offered no better proof yourself (you never tried a melee weapon, we knew ranged weapons worked differently yet you continued to apply it to melee weapons).

my drop rate is exactly the same as a 58RNG as it was when I was a 44THF, and as it was when I was a 30RNG.

Thank you for actually supporting both our arguments. After you get beyond exp range the drops bottom out from my experience. Since all those are beyond exp range for tahrongi canyon you fail to prove anything. On top of that, you select an individual instance with thf2 against a battering ram to show a picture of. Of course you can get a pic of good drops with all those going for you. Most of my battering ram kills results in one skin or a horn, at best a couple items. Would you like me to post some screenshots of me killing battering rams and getting 0 drops? Wouldn't prove anything really.

Big difference between a Joe Schmoe's site that's been up and running for two weeks and Warcry, a gaming site that's been around for years and has built up a reputation.

But, if you still want to hold steadfast onto the myth that steal is affected by your stats, go ahead. I have some +stat rings you can buy

Please do not associate me with the argument that +int affects steal. I haven't a clue about it and is of no concern to me.

[Spider-Dan]

edit: I originally typed out a long response, but it's a waste of time.

If you are so obtuse and impervious to reason that when Squenix is generous enough to give us direct insight into how the game works, you choose to ignore it, then you don't deserve to know the truth.

Have fun in the land of Make-Believe.

[Rones]

Just curious, have you tried your 100delay=1 sec theory on a melee weapon yet?