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

[strawman]

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.

[Dolalin]

Originally Posted by strawman [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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.

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:

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

[strawman]

Originally Posted by Dolalin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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:

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.

[Dolalin]

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.

[strawman]

Originally Posted by Dolalin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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.

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?)