Project 1999 - Game Mechanics: CHA seems to be impacting charm durations on P99 far more than it did on Live

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CHA seems to be impacting charm durations on P99 far more than it did on Live

Compare this test on P99 with varying charisma scores on a blue mob:

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First, I found a pet who was just on the cusp of charming viability. At level 52 I grabbed a goo hitting for 116. Prior to this we tried a goo hitting for 120 but even with full charisma gear could not keep it charmed with duration good enough to exp reliably. This choice was intentional, because what I really care about is keeping the best mob I can for as long as I can. I'm sure results would be very different for a light blue mob. On every break the mob was tashed and re-charmed. I just pulled all the data out of my log file after our session and crunched it all using excel. results are as follows:

High Charisma dataset (CHA = 224)
Time of trial: 0:40:18 (or 0.672 hours)
Breaks: 7
Breaks per hour(extrapolated): 10.42
Avg Duration: 5.76 minutes
Median Duration: 3 minutes 10 seconds

Low Charisma dataset (CHA = 95)
Time of trial: 0:58:04 (0.968 hours)
Breaks: 25
Breaks per hour(extrapolated): 25.83
Avg Duration: 2.32 minutes
Median Duration: 1 minute 4 seconds

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...9&postcount=52

To this test conducted in classic with varying Charisma scores on a blue mob:

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Xenti, you said there have been studies done on both mes and charm. I don't ever remember data being posted on charm. That was the whole reason I did this test was to provide hard numbers. Can you give me a link to the previous test?
With that said, in my insanity today I decided to run more tests. This time I ran them on Ssolet Dnaas, an Iksar in Warslick's Woods that is for part of the Veeshan's Peak key quest. He is 50th level and cons blue to a 60th level player. This means that he is most likely in the level range that most people with Boltran's will be engaging. And to test on an even con mob with Boltran's would require doing the tests at 53rd level as after that you can only charm blue cons.

I also decided to extend my tests further this time. I did the first 2 tests again of 75 cha and 205 cha each with a sample size of 25. Then I ran 2 more tests of 25 samples at 75 and 205 cha, but this time I also buffed the Iksar with Resist Magic. Here are the results.

Test 1
Charisma = 75
Mob Buffed = No
Total Resists = 3
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 424 seconds (7:04)
Average Duration Charm = 204 seconds (3:24)

Test 2
Charisma = 205
Mob Buffed = No
Total Resists = 1
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 425 seconds (7:05)
Average Duration Charm = 119 seconds (1:59)

Test 3
Charisma = 75
Mob Buffed = Yes
Total Resists = 11
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 231 seconds (3:51)
Average Duration Charm = 71 seconds (1:11)

Test 4
Charisma = 205
Mob Buffed = Yes
Total Resists = 10
Lowest Duration Charm = 4 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 143 seconds (2:23)
Average Duration Charm = 36 seconds

Conclusions

The tests without buffing show some strange occurences. With 75 CHA the average duration went up by almost a full minute, and with 205 CHA it went down almost a full minute from my previous test. My guess is that this means there simply aren't enough samples taken yet.

Now it is very obvious that MR has a very large impact. Not only did it cut the max duration charm for both CHA settings in half, it also cut the average durations in half. And on top of that resists went up significantly.

And the most interesting thing with this new set of tests is that all of the tests performed better when run with 75 CHA than they did with 205 CHA. The average durations at 75 CHA where almost twice as long as those at 205 CHA.

So what does this mean to me? After running 150 tests I still see no data showing that high CHA gives any benefit at all. In fact it might be just the opposite. The only thing that does stick out to me is that charm is much more successful when magic resist is lower. So I will continue to keep my CHA wherever it ends up when focusing on other gear, and will use Tash while charming.

Wandatin Dai'Noga

http://web.archive.org/web/200105011...c&f=9&t=004395

The effect of CHA on his charms was so small that it got lost in the statistical noise.

I suspect P99 is allocating much too high of an impact to Charisma score when calculating its impact on charm duration.

I read recently that in the early days of EQ, people believed that lower charisma improved the success of Necromancer charm.

In both of the original poster's sets of tests, lower charisma clearly correlates with higher average Enchanter charm duration.

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Originally Posted by strawman (Post 3030568)

I don't think so, because he also ran a test with a light-green-con Seafury Cyclops and it showed no impact of CHA on his charms. If it were a negative impact I would expect it to show something. Rather it just looks like the effect of CHA was so small it gets lost in statistical noise.

From the same classic link:

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Ok, first off I don't know anything about statistics. About the only thing I do know is that the larger the sample size the more accurate the results. So maybe if we band together on this some we can all help contribute to a large sample size.

First off, the specifics. I am a 58th level Enchanter. The tests were run on a Seafury Cyclops in the Ocean of Tears. Both tests where run on the same Cyclops. The Cyclops conned green to me, but at the end of the test I killed it and it did give me experience so it was probably 1 level below blue. The tests where run without using Tashanian so as to only see the benefits of Charisma. And each test includes a total of 25 charms. Yes, I know this is WAY too low to have a completely accurate result set, but damn, I can only sit it one place for so long charming the same mob.

Test 1
Charisma = 75
Total Resists = 2
Lowest Duration Charm = 5 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 428 seconds (7:08)
Average Duration = 156 seconds (2:36)

Test 2
Charisma = 205
Total Resists = 2
Lowest Duration Charm = 7 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 426 seconds (7:06)
Average Duration = 161 seconds (2:41)

Specific Charm Durations:

Test 1: 164, 310, 352, 47, 185, 169, 115, 102, 390, 178, 65, 108, 34, 375, 5, 20, 22, 213, 11, 428, 22, 70, 90, 426.

Test 2: 260, 111, 26, 426, 80, 426, 56, 143, 226, 112, 10, 103, 185, 280, 7, 343, 42, 9, 212, 308, 132, 27, 51, 425, 31.

Conclusion: Well, I don't even know if I should be making one as this is far too small of a sample set. And feel free to tear me a new one for doing so, or even better yet contribute your own hard data to give a better understanding.

But what I see from this is that CHA makes no difference at all. The reason could be the mob was green. I can't test on an even con as Boltran's doesn't work on a 58th level mob.

Each test had a total of 2 resists. The lowest and highest durations between each test only had a difference of 2 seconds each, oddly with worst lowest on low CHA and worst highest with high CHA. And the average duration between the tests was only 5 seconds yet there was a difference of 130 Charisma.

What this means is that I will stick with my gut feel of 160 played days and go with another stat besides CHA. I didn't believe in it's value before, and I won't change my mind unless I can see some good hard numbers that show me otherwise.

Wandatin Dai'Noga

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Originally Posted by Dolalin (Post 3030592)

The inverse charisma effect was present in the same magnitude in both sets of tests on the blue mob, and it was absent in both sets of tests on the green mob.

If we're using this data to prove no correlation between charisma and charm time, it seems strange to hand-wave away the correlation it shows between charisma and charm time.

If CHA were working to increase mob resistance don't you suppose we'd see it in the result set for the green mob too?

It just seems really improbable that it worked to decrease charm duration. But maybe it was bugged that way. Wouldn't be the first time Verant screwed up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dolalin (Post 3030611)

This data says to me that there is indeed a ticking CHA-based resistance throw for charm, but it's always successful on a trivial mob, and it's backwards on non-trivial mobs (succeeding more with lower CHA).

This doesn't necessarily make intuitive sense to the player, and maybe the backwards CHA check is a bug, but Verant did make items like https://wiki.project1999.com/Staff_of_Writhing for some reason.

(Upon actually reading the Staff of Writhing wiki page, it drops from a mob that charms. I wonder if that was supposed to be a clue?)

^^ I really think that's a massive leap.

Out of curiosity I searched for what TAKP had come up with regarding CHA and charm durations. Torven figured the effect of CHA on charm duration was so small (if at all) that they just don't take it into account at all.

Links:

https://www.takproject.net/forums/in...in.5487/page-3

https://www.takproject.net/forums/in...75/#post-13018

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Charisma not affecting duration mostly comes from old forum posts of enchanters, plus Kayen's investigation.

I'll message Torven and maybe he can chime in.

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Conclusion: Well, I don't even know if I should be making one as this is far too small of a sample set.

Items of note:

- tests done on p1999 (both propo's and loraen's) were done WITH tash, but the test linked to from classic era was done WITHOUT tash.

- Loraen's tests - https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=92423 - show pretty similar charm durations on higher-level charms (loraen at 60 vs a 53) to the durations shown by the classic chanter (58 chanter vs a 50).

- But loraen's tests show MUCH LONGER charms against a level 46 (minimum blue con) than the level 58 chanter's charms against a seafury (exp-awarding green con) did. Again, remember Loraen was using tash and the level 58 guy was not.

- Classic-era test from the 58 chanter showed that MR was having an enormous impact on charm duration. While he never (that we saw) posted a test where he was using tash, he did post a test where he put Resist Magic on the same level 50 mob he'd been charming earlier, and charm outright resists, durations, etc. suffered a lot.

What would be fantastic is finding a test from classic era where someone tested charm durations WITH tash on, both on a higher-blue and on a low-blue or green con. But even without that, I "feel" like charisma needs to have a more minor role in charming but without that change affecting durations of charms on p1999. It seems possible/probable that low-level mobs charm too easily on p99, but I haven't seen any data of classic-era tests done with tash on lower-level mobs to see how that played out.

While lots of folks are currently complaining about charm being OP (and have always been doing so, really), if we assume that MR debuffs affect charm durations in a more-or-less inverted way to the way Wandatin's Resist Magic affected his charm durations... then it seems to make sense for p1999 charms with tash to hold well, and p1999 charms with malaise also to last REALLY well, and p1999 charms with -mr gear to last forever when charming a mid-blue con.

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Originally Posted by Tecmos Deception (Post 3030710)

This seems like a very valid argument to me.

Also, I'm sort of confused how the original evidence presented in this thread shows anything. It shows a bunch of samples that are inconsistent with each other. Not sure what conclusion is supposed to be drawn from that.