Upcoming changes to S/A/M/D

Honestly? Maybe I'm reading my own code wrong. It's very old code and near impossible to work with at this point. The log says it's using 1/180 so that's what I'm going with.

1/180 seems somewhat reasonable, and I totally understand the "I can't read my own old code part".

Just to put out the fire that my comment seems to have suddenly created, a 3/2 multiplier does mean it is for sure a 50% boost, i.e. 1/160.

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Regarding shinies and albinos still being "infrequent", I think it is an issue of variance rather than probability at this point. If the odds say you should expect an albino on average once per 150-200 eggs, getting none in 500 eggs is annoying. The way to "fix" this is to increase the probability of a "success", but also increase the number of "successes" required to hatch a shiny/albino/melan. For example, currently a PokéRadar chain of 40 with no Shiny Charm results in a 1/200 chance of hatching a shiny. However, let's say we change this to a 1/50 chance to increment a hidden counter. When this hidden counter reaches 4, the player gets a shiny, and the counter resets. This keeps the same average number of eggs between shinies (50*4=200), but decreases the variance by roughly a factor of 4. That is, the standard deviation is (a little more than) halved from 199.5 eggs to 98.99 eggs. Doing the math shows just why this is an issue. Currently, the standard deviation is 199.5 eggs. This means roughly 13% of the time, a player will not hatch a shiny in the first 400 eggs! Do I think this needs to be changed? I think it's worth looking at, but I'd like to see a little more data before someone puts it in the suggestions forum. It hasn't even been three weeks; give it a little more time.

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For those interested in the math, the terms you are looking for are "Geometric distribution" for what we have now, and "Negative binomial distribution" for the method I brought up. Note that both distributions, but especially the latter, have multiple conflicting defintions. If you do the math yourself, make sure you are using the correct numbers.

So... it’s 1/160 then, right? Since that’s what the math comes out to? Now it seems even Niet isn’t sure what they actually are..? I’m very confused why they were even adjusted in the first place if the code is so hard to deal with, since from what I’ve seen in these threads is only negative reactions due to the nerfed albino rate and the imbalance of money spent vs. rewards earned people are experiencing now with less daily specials. And, yes, I understand they were changed bc there were ‘too many specials’ flooding the market, but so far it does not seem like nerfing the albino odds has had a positive impact, and in fact has made things more confusing and frustrating for both free and p2w players.

I did a bit of experimenting with the idea, and it's certainly interesting. In the test run I simulated 100,000 Shiny Hunts, and with the current system the worst hunt needed 2,100 Eggs to get one Shiny, but that was of course a rather extreme outlier. I then experimented with the "hidden counter" idea, and while it does indeed reduce the longest chain outlier, it does something else that I think is actually more harmful: it removes the ability to "get lucky". In fact it would completely remove the concept of a "random chance" Shiny, since you'd need to get lucky 4 times in a row to get that. Using the given numbers of 1/200 Shiny chance versus 4x 1/50, a "random chance" Shiny would go from 1/200, to 1/6,250,000!!! Basically nobody would ever hatch a "full odds shiny" ever again with the variance-reducing system.

Yeah, that's exactly why I called it a "fix", with air quotes. To be fair, my idea was to specifically tie it to the Radar, and leave non-Radar hatches as full odds. The reason to tie it to the Radar is that if you don't, you risk someone incrementing the counter with an easy to hatch Pokémon, and then switching to a 30K EXP Pokémon after ~150 hatches. However, then you need to maintain multiple sets of probabilities... Oh well, I just wanted to bring it up. *shrugs*

It's still on the table, I might just need to poke at the idea a little longer.

Now, aside from maths I has an idea mulling over for quite a time now. It has come to light tha not many people are melan hunters but casual hunters as well, who do not like the Shiny Charm considering the fact they are paying 200 ZC upfront and about 8 ZC equivalent everyday to recharged.(These are the usual rates I have seen going around).So here's my suggestion,reverse the roles of shiny charm and ubercharm, make it such that You buy a monthly voucher for 250 ZC which gives a 2.5x Shiny Boosts and a daily charm where if you recharge you get 6x melan boosts. I feel this might be gamechanging and everyone would be happy! On the note of rates, I do feel the it should be merged slightly like from 1/180 to 1/160, because going over Melanistic Hatching thread, and hunt complain threads, I feel a lot of problem is that either people are hatching melans early or not getting a single one for a very long time. Maybe a change in Long Change melan rates are also needed so that people who gives dedication to a single Pokemon for months may feel rewarded?

I would not mind this at all! I tend to use shiny charms every day when I am hatching, as Sir Quackie said. If I could have a monthly voucher to boost shiny rates, but a separate melan charm to activate on Shazi/Sei days, I would be very happy indeed ^^

Just wanted to say this is a pretty interesting idea, I appreciate you having brought it up and done the math with it. (We're working with it right now in college so it's pretty funny to see it out in the wild.) When it comes to standard deviation, I think a lot of the problem is actually psychological. Obviously if someone sees a 1/200 number, they think they'll probably get one within those 200 eggs, and feel really bummed and frustrated when it goes over. The thing is, they could also hatch a shiny really early. Or multiple. The same way this hurts us, it also helps us, and it would basically extinguish any chance of getting "lucky" persistently. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be toyed with, per se, just food for thought-- I personally like the lack of predictability. Tl;dr, I think it's a matter of some individuals tempering their expectations, and weighing their good luck with the bad.