ATTN : Karazy (and the other GMs).

[aliencreature]

Interesting subject...
First I want to say that Karazy seems to be a nice guy. I had a positive experience with him and he really seems to care and to feel responsible of this game which I am happy with.
But I would like to tell him to don't be surprized that the players consider PW staff liars, because the history of this game unfortunately proved that the things are like this. For example: remember for how long you kept the characters unbalanced?! (which was totally against players satisfaction, against those who put money in this game and against those who pay you at the end). And the examples can continue...
The truth is Karazy that this game have a whole history of being NOT FAIR with his own players, so please don't be surprized when people consider you a liar even if when you are not. Let's be honest YNK and PW lied a lot in the past, they took decisions that were against the players and you can see the consequences even today...
Regarding the rates, this was always a mistery and an uncertain thing and you make money with this uncertainty... - this is in the sphere of small tricks and this is not fair... what is the exactly rate? Nobody knows... It is one of the reasons I always had the feeling that this game is more against the players than for the players.
Make the things very honest: guys the rate for success in forging an ancient weapon is 3% for exemple.
I will not be surprized to find out that the rate to + a ring is 10 to -6, like the life time of an atom in a specific state.
Karazy did you ever ask yourself how is the player satisfaction in Rohan? or to put it in management terms - customer satisfaction?
Let's make a Rohan meeting. I would love to participate

With my glasses on it seems it is necessary of some game laws, because it is almost unacceptable to sell for exemple preservation stones that gives % success rate without saying the exact value.
Ok, but what is the percentage exactly, I want to know what I am buying, you can't sell something that is ambiguous and don't have a clear description.

Nice idea you have there but I stopped dead when I read the preservation stone stuff. If you have the time to read the item description, you'll notice that it doesn't say "additional success rate". FYI, the preservation stone only preserves your item when forging failed. There are no more additional function mentioned in the item description. Furthermore, no game will ever disclose the exact rates on their server (unless the game is a private server. ). Why? There are many factors behind it like revenue, player base, customer satisfaction, COMPANY POLICY, etc.

[White Arctic Fox]

Notice me senpai

[PenguinJoe]

Nice idea you have there but I stopped dead when I read the preservation stone stuff. If you have the time to read the item description, you'll notice that it doesn't say "additional success rate". FYI, the preservation stone only preserves your item when forging failed. There are no more additional function mentioned in the item description. Furthermore, no game will ever disclose the exact rates on their server (unless the game is a private server. ). Why? There are many factors behind it like revenue, player base, customer satisfaction, COMPANY POLICY, etc.

There is more involved than that. Rates with a component of chance cannot be quantified unless you are using huge samples for your statistics. Even the server owner tells you that the success rate is say, 30%, you can still fail more than 70 times out of 100. You can fail 99 times out of 100. Success rate is not an absolute. Sometimes you are just plain unlucky and will fail 99% of the times when the rate is 30% success. Other times you may succeed 8 out of 10 times at the same rates. In order to get an accurate success rate when chance is involved is to use huge numbers (I'm talking in the millions here - not the hundreds) for determining your success percentages. No single user can really determine a success percentage while playing this game.

Of course when talking rates where no chance is involved like experience rates, you can pretty accurately calculate those.

[SerpeleRosu]

Nice idea you have there but I stopped dead when I read the preservation stone stuff. If you have the time to read the item description, you'll notice that it doesn't say "additional success rate". FYI, the preservation stone only preserves your item when forging failed. There are no more additional function mentioned in the item description. Furthermore, no game will ever disclose the exact rates on their server (unless the game is a private server. ). Why? There are many factors behind it like revenue, player base, customer satisfaction, COMPANY POLICY, etc.

I was talking about the stones that preserves your ring but also give some success rate. "Provides increased chance to succeed reinforcement dependant on abradant stone grade."
I didn't thought I have to be so explicit. :P

[RBNXD]

I personaly don't think that posting the actual rates will be bad for the server in the contrary posting good(decent?) rates will probably attract players from pservers that will come and try them out just to play in a real stable server.
For example when i see stat refine being 25% I say "holy sh1t that's fked up" (yeah i have tried them in a pserver and it was the best crone sink hole ever) as for level refine being 40-60% is more than enough it will fail but not a lot nor it will succeed too much that it will be very easy. Forging being 60% rare, 50% unique, 40% ancient is the best rates a server could have. Anything less than 35% is going to piss off players for sure and I am not sure if the rates in this server runs around those numbers but who ever made them like that has no idea how the games roulette works.
Part of the marketing for this game should be posting how good rates are, events, prices for playing and logging in, "balanced" game play, etc etc etc.

[PenguinJoe]

The problem is that PWI is not a pserver. Pservers can advertise rates and if they don't live up to them, nobody really cares. They are not accountable to anyone. You can't haul their asses in front of a judge and sue them (I am sure PWI would like to do just that to them if they really could). The most you can do is stop playing there and take as many pals you have made with you as you can. That is why they will advertise rates that you would not catch someone like PWi, Blizzard, Perfect World, GPotato or any other game developer/publisher doing.

A company like PWI on the other hand is accountable to their customers. If they publicly make claims that they do not deliver, they can be held accountable in a court if you can prove it. So they have to be very careful about what they tell us and advertise. For instance they will sell you a deluxe abradant with the statement "improves chance of success". If you still fail, you can't do anything because they really did not tell you how much better that chance of success was. Even if it improves by .0005%, it is still in the eyes of the law an improvement. Trust me that PWI is very, very careful to fuzz any claims they make - if they make any at all.

[aliencreature]

I personaly don't think that posting the actual rates will be bad for the server in the contrary posting good(decent?) rates will probably attract players from pservers that will come and try them out just to play in a real stable server.
For example when i see stat refine being 25% I say "holy sh1t that's fked up" (yeah i have tried them in a pserver and it was the best crone sink hole ever) as for level refine being 40-60% is more than enough it will fail but not a lot nor it will succeed too much that it will be very easy. Forging being 60% rare, 50% unique, 40% ancient is the best rates a server could have. Anything less than 35% is going to piss off players for sure and I am not sure if the rates in this server runs around those numbers but who ever made them like that has no idea how the games roulette works.
Part of the marketing for this game should be posting how good rates are, events, prices for playing and logging in, "balanced" game play, etc etc etc.

It is bad. Just like what PJ stated, it could get them into trouble. That marketing strategy is only for Pservers. Ever wonder why other mmorpgs run by legit companies don't post this exact rate as well? Let's be real here, if pwi post their rates and we know it's pretty low compared to private server, would they ever attract players? I guess no. Now on the other side, if pwi has 95% success rates and decided to advertise it, of course many players will join but no one would avail the stuff that pays the bill to run this server. It's like no money, no honey XD

[RBNXD]

Well it was just an idea but that is up to the company they could find a work around that problem and be more appealing to all those players that still like this game but get all disgusted just by the mention of the official server.

[bosshunt]

There are plenty of games where the probability of a some random events are revealed to the players; it is simply not such a big deal if the company has managed to find a middle ground with the players and has considered the fact that for a healthy game it is not just the incentive to succeed that matters, but also the actual success.

I don't see it becoming a legal issue, because it would be strange to suggest that 50% success chance must mean 5 out of 10 items will succeed (if that was so it wouls not be chance). Of course, you could escalate things if you had reasonable doubt that the rates were seriously rigged, but a small chance exists that you just got unlucky and if that was found to be true during the investigation you'd be paying for having brought the whole thing that far. Indeed, you could already do it on the basis of things like events and abradants which claim increased rates, while in theory a selection of attempts can contain more failures than average with increased rates, especially if the selection is small. Most (all even, I dare say) players will not bother with it and rather just quit if the rates become so bad.

[EaglePhoenix]

I don't need to know the exact rates to know they suck.

I don't need to know the exact rates when they are good, if ever. If you're afk grinding for 4 hours and made only 1.8% as an aoe class (scout), you know something's wrong.