Sometimes I go multiple turns getting about 4% on my gauge, and then the next turn I get around 40% (all against the same enemy). Sometimes I get a shadow pip on turn one and then only get 15% of my gauge on the next turn.
These are just some examples, but overall my experience while questing has been that my shadow gauge fills super inconsistently. I shouldn't be able to get 10 times as much filled in one turn as in another turn.
I heard that in PvP, the shadow gauge increase was made more consistent. I would like this to happen in PvE as well. It doesn't need to be as consistent as in PvP, but currently there is way too much variance in how much I gain each turn.
I was a little confused on the logic of the shadow gauge percentage itself, since it's not really telling you what's happening.
None of this is confirmed, but I am a programmer and from what the Devs have said previously, here is how I imagine it works.
A shadow pip is a float value (integer with some decimal points), we'll call it shadow_gain. If shadow_gain > 1, you earn a shadow pip.
Shadow_gain functions on a bell curve, so on average you will gain approximately 0.3 shadow pips (you gain a shadow pip approximately every 3.6 rounds). 0.3 is the mean point on a bell curve. We do not know the outerbounds of the bell curve, but we know it can be shifted based on shadow rating relative to your opponent.
You can look up all the fancy math behind bell curves, distribution, and statistics. But long story short, you can gain anywhere between 0% and 100% on any given round, depending on where the mean point is. This depends on your opponent.
You are most likely to gain approximately 0.3 shadow_gain per round, but some rounds you might get more or less than 0.3. It is unlikely for you to get <0.15 or >0.45 shadow_gain in a given round, but it can occur. Combine this with multiple opponents with varying shadow rating and you can see how easy it is to get 0.8 in one turn in one fight against one opponent and 0.1 in another.
Various enemies can have wildly different shadow rating too. The Bat, for example, earned something like 3x the shadow pips of your average player. It may be the result of KI mass-distributing shadow rating by enemy rank or a problem with shadow rating itself. It is easy to mass-distribute stats without testing, and KI has done this a lot this year. They over-tuned critical on most PvE enemies just this past week.
I agree pretty much with what Orzee said, and I believe that they might be using a bell curve. Or it could be some other distribution. The actual distribution is not exactly what I am concerned about.
Specifically, I would like them to modify the PvE parameters (for the distribution of shadow gain per round) so that the distribution is more concentrated around the mean (which is maybe supposed to be around 0.3 as you said).
I missed this earlier, but Orzee said "It is unlikely for you to get <0.15 or >0.45 shadow_gain in a given round, but it can occur." In my experience this is not the case. I gain too little and too much both pretty frequently, which is the reason for my post.
Of note, I saw on Twitter that Ratbeard said that they didn't make any changes to this chance. So it might be just that we are more sensitive to it now that there are values associated with the number?
Of note, I saw on Twitter that Ratbeard said that they didn't make any changes to this chance. So it might be just that we are more sensitive to it now that there are values associated with the number?
I always felt like it was too inconsistent, but now that I can actually see how much I am gaining in a given turn I can quantify the inconsistency.
