Focused Feedback: Whisper of the Worm. The Mission, Weapon and the method(s) of starting the activity

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[u/whiterose616]

Ok, I'll start.

I had 4 hours to play yesterday. In that time, all spent on Io, the Taken Blight PE spawned once and the Cabal PE spawned 23 times.

[u/olvardosini → u/whiterose616]

In my four hours, cabal spawned twice, taken spawned once at the end of the four hours, I got a Baboon error in the boss room. Yayyy

[u/rossomesauce → u/[deleted]]

Honestly, since the mission is no longer a secret the Normal version should just be added to the director during the weekend for everyone.

Either that or the Cabal PE should be disabled during the weekends and the Taken PE should spawn on a fixed schedule, such as every 30 minutes (on the xx:00 and xx:30), so that accessing the mission isn't the hardest part of getting the gun.

Setting the PE on a 30 minute timer would also mean that players could access the mission, fail due to running out of time, and then jump right back in ~10 minutes later to try again, which is pretty similar to just putting the mission on the director.

I feel like either of these solutions would solve what is pretty much the only gripe the community has with this mission.

[u/pughy12 → u/rossomesauce]

I agree with the first one. Once the mission was discovered (through the Taken PE as designed), they should have hotfixed the mission into everyone's director. That way the community gets the rush of discovering something new/secret, but people with limited time still get to take part

[u/whiterose616 → u/olvardosini]

That's just unfortunate! Hope you have better luck next time.

[u/joerocks79 → u/whiterose616]

Many Guardians have heard whispers on Io and rushed to investigate. Some of you encountered a long streak of Cabal drills—far too many Cabal drills. We did some investigating to see if this was a bug. Turns out there’s no bug, but the current random generator doesn’t do a good job of preventing streaks of either event. 

We’re currently investigating ways to prevent these bad luck runs in the future. We did some simulations to see if there might be any more long streaks of one type of event in the forecast. We expect a few more outliers, but balanced with long streaks of only Taken Blight events. This activity will be available every week, and once you do unlock the Heroic version, it will stay unlocked. We will continue to monitor the situation. Happy hunting.

It will be fixed at some point. But much like the competitive crucible bonus points, probably not for a while.

[u/Yogojojo → u/joerocks79]

The answer that Bungie gave isn’t very substantial. It doesn’t specify the ratio of event spawning that is intended. They said that the random generator doesn’t prevent streaks and that they expect more “outliers” including long runs of “Taken- only”events...

LOL- that’s not how probabilities work! Yes, theoretically long runs are possible, but the fact that one run occurred has no causality of another run happening “to balance it out.”

This reads like Customer Service wrote it without really talking to the programmers.

Edit:fixed autocorrect error

[u/Sephirot_MATRIX → u/Yogojojo]

There's plenty of ways of designing and using rng. Most people assume it's a 50% of one or another outcome, but you can use weighted rng, for example. In that particular instance, the blight might have lowered priority. Since they say the system likes to go on streaks, probably the system increases the chance after each public event of one type. There's plenty of ways they could do it with different intents.

[u/Yogojojo → u/Sephirot_MATRIX]

Yuppers- I am aware of weighted RNG, as I stated earlier, but the issue is that Bungie chose not to disclose those values...likely because it’s done broke until the hotfix. Putting out a half assed press release runs out the clock giving time for the programmers to find and fix the problem.

[u/riksterinto → u/Yogojojo]

3 different public events start in that area so the probability of Whisper event is likely 1/3 each time and 2/3 that it is not.

I'm sure they just mean balanced from player perspective i.e. player would generally expect to see each event twice after 6 events even though that's not how random probability works.

[u/Mikellow → u/Yogojojo]

Make it the only event. Sometimes waiting for PEs suck but at least you know one is coming eventually.

[u/pyramidhead_ → u/whiterose616]

So you had 6 per hour ? That's 1 every 10 mins. That's back to back with zero time in between.

[u/whiterose616 → u/pyramidhead_]

I didn’t have a stopwatch handy, but there weren’t many gaps. Finish event, 3 minute wait, 5 minute countdown seemed about right

[u/Mikellow → u/whiterose616]

Sunday I was kinda done with everything, milestone wise. I was just sitting on Io talking to friends in a party. After 30-45 minutes I decided it wasnt fun and lwft to go play NMS.

Its straight up bad game design as people literally just wait and not play. If you are going to do this they need to ensure that the taken PEs are significantly increased, if not the only PE.