Cooking has now become obsolete

[Kalen]

Exactly. And Vik’s fallacy was using a theoretical projection to describe the next meal counting the meals already eaten. Kalarro wouldn’t be so quick to back Vik if he could see that Vik isn’t looking at the probability of puking at least once over the next 3 meals and thinking there could be a 12% chance of it happening. Vik is looking at the meal in front of him and saying that he didn’t puke up the last two so now in this moment he has a 12% chance to puke it up.

 

No. It’s 4%.

 

Putting it into your terms I would say there is a 99% chance a player will puke at some point while they are playing if they play for 100’s of hours. But all that really matters when playing the game and eating a meal is that you have a 96% chance of being just fine.

 

And if you do puke without any backup food you’ll have 100% chance of suddenly having goals and objectives that will make for an interesting story.

 

Gotcha.... to be clear, I actually like the current system and don't really worry about food poisoning. Sure it's happened to me, but I don't really see it as a big deal, unless it's pretty early in the game.

 

Edit: Honestly, though I didn't think Vik was saying that.... I read it as he was looking at total probability not each individual meal.

[Viktoriusiii]

So while it is correct that each event is independent of the others, it's also correct that eating fewer large meals is far less likely to make you throw up than getting the same total food amount from many small meals. Just not in the way that Viktoriusiii says.

 

 

(Nervously waits for the math teacher to check his work...)

 

Where did I say that? I said exactly what you said. That the overall probability rises with every meal you need to take.

[Morloc]

Roland.

 

You're correct that each instance where a probability of 4% is defined will have a 4% chance of happening whether you do it once, or 10,000 times. If it comes up positive 9,999 times, the 10,000 try is still a 4% chance.

 

However...

 

The question at hand is defining your odds over a given number of attempts.

"Out of 100 tries, what are my odds of hitting a target at at least once?" The answer is no longer 4%.

 

(1-.04)^100 = 0.016870

 

1-0.016870 = 0.98313 x 100 = 98%

 

 

-Morloc

[Roland]

Viktoriusiii is indeed getting it wrong, but you're being a bit misleading when you say they're totally independent - they are technically independent, but when calculating the probabilities for a string of consecutive independent events you still combine them in some situations.

 

Let's say you are on 20% food - very hungry - and you wish to get yourself to 100% food.

 

You have a choice of either eating two Lobster Thermidors that will give you 40% food each, or sixteen Caviar Canapes that will give you 5% food each. Either of those has a 4% chance of giving you food poisoning, and therefore a 0.96 probability of being fine.

 

To fill yourself up with the two Lobster Thermidors, you need to get the 0.96 chance both times. Each of those "die rolls" is independent, but you need a series of two successes. So the chance of eating two Lobster Thermidors is 0.96^2 = 0.9216, or approximately 92%.

 

To fill yourself up with the sixteen Caviar Canapes, you need to get the 0.96 chance all sixteen times - since any one hitting the 4% will make you vomit and have to start again. Again, each of these "die rolls" is independent, but this time you need a series of sixteen successes in order to reach 100% food. So the chances of eating sixteen Caviar Canapes without vomiting is 0.96^16 = 0.5204, or approximately 52%.

 

So while it is correct that each event is independent of the others, it's also correct that eating fewer large meals is far less likely to make you throw up than getting the same total food amount from many small meals. Just not in the way that Viktoriusiii says.

 

 

(Nervously waits for the math teacher to check his work...)

 

Great example of how theoretical probabilities can help you plan and strategize. But what you can’t do after downing that 15th Caviar is look at the 16th in front of you and think, “I have a 52% chance of puking this up” because that would be the fallacy.

 

Theoretical probability is what drives you to plan to make the Lobster dishes but the only thing that needs to guide your action in the moment is the actual probability which is unaffected by the past.

[Liesel Weppen]

I play single player but also in multiplayer this should not be a big problem. The vending machines are restocked daily and you can easily get coins from the quests. In addition, these vending machines are located in many POIs and each machine has its own inventory.

(Canned) food was our biggest problem in the begining. Because your are 4 players, you don't get more loot than single.

And even if you can get anough out of traders and vending machines, you need to invest the time to get dukes, just to spend them on food later.

Some of our players also play singleplayer and all of them were surprised what issue food becomes in multiplayer.

 

Basically you maybe do not to want put skillpoints into cooking in SP, but in MP it's less "loss" to invest the skillpoints, since only one needs to learn the skills and can than cook for the others.

 

Can food gives you up to 15 food. A little more than grilled / charred meat and about halve of vegetable stew or bacon and eggs.

UP TO 15 food! Half of them only gives 5 or 10. And also half of the canned food deosn't restore health at all.

Bacon & eggs give you 36 food, thats already more than twice then the best canned food. But grilled meat and bacon & eggs is not what i call "cooking". Meat stew gives you 50, sham chowder 53 and hobo stew even 64 food. So basically over 3 times more then even the best cans!

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

Great example of how theoretical probabilities can help you plan and strategize. But what you can’t do after downing that 15th Caviar is look at the 16th in front of you and think, “I have a 52% chance of puking this up” because that would be the fallacy.

 

I Completely agree. I hope I didn't accidentally imply that that was the case.

 

Theoretical probability is what drives you to plan to make the Lobster dishes but the only thing that needs to guide your action in the moment is the actual probability which is unaffected by the past.

 

Lobster and Caviar confirmed for A19!

[Roland]

Where did I say that? I said exactly what you said. That the overall probability rises with every meal you need to take.

 

I guess it is language. The overall probability does not rise with each meal you eat. The overall probability rises as you look forward and choose to look at your next 20 meals or your next 100 meals. But what good is that other than to say, “ I’ll probably puke once in the next 100 meals”. As you are actually playing and eating your next meal will always be 4%.

[Viktoriusiii]

I Completely agree. I hope I didn't accidentally imply that that was the case.

 

nobody was. I think the only ones that think that I think that are roland and the ones who came in for funny one liners without reading what I wrote or the math that I showed.

 

 

Roland:

Again. Fresh start.

If you are at 30 stamina of a max of 100 (as a bonus homework until you are at 150 max stamina). How high is the chance that you get food poisoning again and need to start again for the following foods:

baked potatoe (4 stamina 4%)

bacon and eggs (36stamina 4%)

sham sandwich (28 stamina 12%)

 

Baked potatoes: 52% that you need to start over (70.6% for overeating)

bacon and eggs: 12.5% (16% for overeating)

sham sandwich: 31% (48% for overeating)

 

So while every single bite has a 4 (12 for the sham)% chance, if I start from 30 stamina, I can be 50%certain that I will start again with baked potatoes and 25% certain that I need to do it again afterwards and overeating is nearly impossible.

Okay? AGAIN yes every bite has 4% chance. But when you are at 30% the probability of those 4$ happening is what matters.

[Reth]

Math is a universal language so stop describing in words and show us your math of how you arrive at 12.5%. Also please show me the math for the chance to puke if it is about to be my 26th meal of bacon and eggs and I still have never puked. and to get really ridiculous let’s see your calculations for the probability of puking if it is about to be my 150th meal of bacon and eggs and I’ve never puked.

 

 

It’s a 4% chance

 

What Viktor said is correct and should be obvious. The probability of an individual event is less important here than the probability of the outcome of a series of events. If you have to eat 10 times a day to stay alive, your chances of getting food poisoning in a given day are about 1/3. *That's* his point.

[Viktoriusiii]

I guess it is language. The overall probability does not rise with each meal you eat. The overall probability rises as you look forward and choose to look at your next 20 meals or your next 100 meals. But what good is that other than to say, “ I’ll probably puke once in the next 100 meals”. As you are actually playing and eating your next meal will always be 4%.

 

well it is language. The OVERALL probability rises with every meal that you want to eat. The probability for each individual food item stays at 4%. That is why I specified that I meant the overall probability and not the case by case probability.

[Morloc]

But what good is that other than to say, “ I’ll probably puke once in the next 100 meals”. As you are actually playing and eating your next meal will always be 4%.

 

Saying I have a 4% chance of food poisoning is rather arbitrary, and doesn't give me a feel for whether that number is "high" or "low". Having some knowledge of how many times I eat during a day allows me to determine if my likelihood to be poisoned is truly high or low (If I wanted to argue for changing the value for example).

 

To extrapolate...if I eat 10,000 times a day, I'm going to get sick quite a few times, so the 4% would be "high". If I eat 1 meal a day, then I'm going to get sick very infrequently, so 4% would be "low".

 

To be fair, we already have a rough idea of how often we need to eat, so the 4% is already a meaningful value, but if in a future alpha we were required to eat more or less often or if canned food was changed to have a percentage to make us sick, then we'd need to know both the odds of getting sick per instance of eating, as well as the frequency of needing to eat in order to talk sensibly about it.

 

 

-Morloc

[theFlu]

I guess it is language. The overall probability does not rise with each meal you eat. The overall probability rises as you look forward and choose to look at your next 20 meals or your next 100 meals. But what good is that other than to say, “ I’ll probably puke once in the next 100 meals”. As you are actually playing and eating your next meal will always be 4%.

 

Corn Bread has a Max Stamina of +4, and a food poisoning value of 4%. Yes, each individual piece has a 96% chance of giving you 4 Sta. Eating to gain 100 max sta requires 25 of them, and at that point you'll end up realizing that the Expected Value of eating Corn Bread is Negative... If you have something in your stomach already. "but 4%" doesn't make it any less useless as a food item. The maths do. The ones that predict the long term viability of the choice.

[Kalen]

Corn Bread has a Max Stamina of +4, and a food poisoning value of 4%. Yes, each individual piece has a 96% chance of giving you 4 Sta. Eating to gain 100 max sta requires 25 of them, and at that point you'll end up realizing that the Expected Value of eating Corn Bread is Negative... If you have something in your stomach already. "but 4%" doesn't make it any less useless as a food item. The maths do. The ones that predict the long term viability of the choice.

 

Which is why high end food like stews are so advantageous. I think a lot of people are playing like they did in previous alphas where you could live on low tier foods like baked potato and corn bread. Try to do that in A18 and you will get sick a lot.

[Xandyr78]

Which is why high end food like stews are so advantageous. I think a lot of people are playing like they did in previous alphas where you could live on low tier foods like baked potato and corn bread. Try to do that in A18 and you will get sick a lot.

 

^ This. I've not put any points yet into Master Chef, as I found a few recipes that I could manage shortly out of the gate in my first couple of days of exploration. That said, I've been cooking those recipes when I can, and I LOVE the way the mechanic currently works, because

 

A) Cooked meals (not just random pseudo-ingredients or side dishes like corn bread and baked potatoes) offer a significantly increased benefit from a satiation and stamina-restoration standpoint. As such, one needs to consume fewer of those items (often just a single serving) in order to maintain viability in the broken-down world.

 

B) This means that my canned food becomes an emergency-only backup plan (or in the case of things like chili-dogs, an ingredient). I've gotten dysentery exactly twice, and I just let it "run its course", so to speak. If I'm dealing with a situation where I am concerned that food poisoning would SERIOUSLY impact my quality of life (I'm away from home, max stamina is WAY low, etc), then I can pop a can of Sham, chili, chicken, lamb or beef...and reap lesser benefits rather than risk food poisoning.

 

C) This, and the knowledge that further expansion and recipes are coming to the cooking skill, makes me plan--actually plan--what I do with my foodstuffs. I don't just grab the first thing available to me in order to curb thirst or hunger. I plan out meals I can cook. I plan out which canned items I want to carry along in case of emergencies as I'm exploring. It gives me a reason to hold on to canned goods, either to use in better recipes, or to have a CYA backup food supply in my inventory as I explore.

 

This is a new point of challenge. New risk vs. reward. Personally, I enjoy it. Sure, it'd be nice if there were a way to cure it. Maybe TFP could tweak the vitamins to "bolster" digestion so that it speeds up the healing process of dysentery in a similar fashion to the way that antibiotics now work to remove infection...that way it's still not an insta-cure, but you're not wasting vitamins unnecessarily.

 

Just my two cents. I'm loving A18 on nearly every front.

[Kalen]

snip

 

Perfectly stated!

[Roland]

well it is language. The OVERALL probability rises with every meal that you want to eat. The probability for each individual food item stays at 4%. That is why I specified that I meant the overall probability and not the case by case probability.

 

I'm sorry if I misunderstood how you were applying the probabilities. Your view is good when you are planning to do some cooking and choosing the recipes you are going to make. But if you use that view to tell someone who just ate 5 bacon and eggs and are about to eat their 6th that they are foolish because they they have a 22% chance to puke now is wrong.

 

To say that the feature is bad because if you look at a series of eating 30 times and you have a 71% chance to puke at least once is misleading. You can make the feature look even worse by looking at a series of eating 100 times and saying you have a 98% chance of puking at least once.

 

The fact is that many people have eaten 99 times and not puked once and on their 100th meal the probability of puking is still 4% and not 98%.

[Viktoriusiii]

The fact is that many people have eaten 99 times and not puked once and on their 100th meal the probability of puking is still 4% and not 98%.

 

And equally as many people have eaten 99 times and puked once or more times and even though its only 4% some have still puked on their 100th time.

 

 

I will give you a real life example why pure/true randomness is a bad solution.

Back in the day, when MP3 players were super new, they had a brand new feature:

"Shuffle" or "play random".

But the creators got so much feedback from people claiming that they were getting the same 2,3,4,5 songs every time, that they took a long hard took at their code... but it was working as intended.

What really happened?

Well as the law of large numbers dictates, no matter how small, if it happens often enough it will happen.

So 100.000 customers having a purely random playlist, a couple hundret WILL have certain songs playing over and over and over.

 

So what did the company do? Did they deflect and say "bah you are all stuped its true random lolz!"

OR did they change the way their code works so that every song in and decreases with the amount you listened to (lateron the "favorite" feature influenced this) so that every song was played about equally.

Now nobody was complaining anymore.

 

True randomness feels far less like randomness because humans are pattern seekers.

This is why artificial randomness is the only one that we actually feel like is random.

Randomness in games is never good (not always bad, but never a positive) because humans are a) pattern seekers and b) personally biased. They will see the "punishment" far more often than the "reward".

[Boidster]

C'mon.... you're a math guy you know better.

 

100- ((1-chance)^num attempts)

 

So, 4% chance for 3 attempts

 

100-((1-.04)^3) = 11.5264

 

So if you eat 3 bacon and eggs with a 4% chance of getting sick, there is an 11.5264% chance that at least 1 of them will make you sick.

 

Of course each individual meal is only 4%.

 

This is exactly correct. Seriously, people need to stop confusing "independent trials" with "cumulative chance of at least P occurrences within N trials". The odds of getting at least one occurrence of result X in N trials is:

 

1 - ([odds of not-X] ^ N)

 

In this case the [odds of not-X] (not getting food poisoning) is 0.96. That is the (1-.04) term in Kalen's formula. Which is exactly correct. Each individual trial is only 4% chance, but if you commit to multiple trials, the odds of getting the bug at least once go up, even though each individual meal is only 4% likely to be the trigger.

 

Here: http://www.pstcc.edu/facstaff/jwlamb/Math1530/statsch4.5.pdf

[Boidster]

You can make the feature look even worse by looking at a series of eating 100 times and saying you have a 98% chance of puking at least once.

 

Stop underselling how bad it is - it's actually 98.313%! :-)

 

Lies, damned lies, and statistics...

 

As with all independent trials, in the long run exactly 4% of cooked meals will cause food poisoning. That's right, exactly, because statisticians say "long run" when they mean "infinity". But bummer for you if you get 4 of those in a row...at some time before the heat death of the universe, hopefully you go for a 100-meal span with zero pukes to "even it out".

 

Confusion over independent trials vs. probability of "at least one" across trials is the basis for those red/black and "hot numbers"/"cold numbers" displays next to roulette wheels in casinos. Gullibles gonna gull.

 

ETA: The above is not directed at you, Roland. Just general bloviating.

[Roland]

This is exactly correct. Seriously, people need to stop confusing "independent trials" with "cumulative chance of at least P occurrences within N trials". The odds of getting at least one occurrence of result X in N trials is:

 

1 - ([odds of not-X] ^ N)

 

In this case the [odds of not-X] (not getting food poisoning) is 0.96. That is the (1-.04) term in Kalen's formula. Which is exactly correct. Each individual trial is only 4% chance, but if you commit to multiple trials, the odds of getting the bug at least once go up, even though each individual meal is only 4% likely to be the trigger.

 

Here: http://www.pstcc.edu/facstaff/jwlamb/Math1530/statsch4.5.pdf

 

And if the game was about betting on whether people will puke or not during their next 20 meals then this stuff would matter beyond simply choosing the best recipes to cook. Instead what it does is freak out the foolish into thinking their very next meal is more likely to make them puke than the last one did and so they turn to eating only canned food.

 

But who knows? Maybe when Duke's casino opens that could be a mini game. Twenty Cornbreads Puking Roulette.

[Kalen]

But who knows? Maybe when Duke's casino opens that could be a mini game. Twenty Cornbreads Puking Roulette.

 

Then people would complain that vitamins are over powered.

[Roland]

Then people would complain that vitamins are over powered.

 

Not when the Duke catches them and they wake up in a new area with nothing but a can of chili, water, torch, and a LCB.

[theFlu]

And if the game was about betting on whether people will puke or not during their next 20 meals then this stuff would matter beyond simply choosing the best recipes to cook.

Isn't it? Every time you want to eat around a 100 Sta worth of food? "Will I wager on two stews or 10 charred meats"? That's exactly the minigame we're all involved.

[Roland]

ETA: The above is not directed at you, Roland. Just general bloviating.

 

Are you kidding me? That was your 791st post. If there was even just a 1% chance of at least one of your posts being directed at me then it stands to reason that this post was guaranteed to be shot across my bow.

[Roland]

Isn't it? Every time you want to eat around a 100 Sta worth of food? "Will I wager on two stews or 10 charred meats"? That's exactly the minigame we're all involved.

 

Not I. I just eat what I have available and deal with the results whatever they may be and by a wide wide wide margin the results are rewarding to the point that I would never stand around and stew about what might happen if I have to eat 6 times instead of 2 times. I just know that it is better to eat 2 times if possible.

 

Even better than eating 2 times is to eat once and get to playing and then after the buff goes away eat again and get to playing. But calculating future probabilities of a series of meals and then standing there watching the bar go up after each one is definitely not how I play the game. I eat vitamins if I've got them before eating but honestly puking isn't the worst result in the world. It creates new objectives and goals.

 

I sure hope that this all doesn't boil down once again to people trying to play efficiently...