Help! I was robbed of my 30% striding! (part 87 of "Things don't work as advertised")

[Vanshilar]

MrCow gave a great idea on testing run speed in the following thread:

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...4&postcount=41

So I got around to testing run speed and how it works. These are some of my results. This testing was done in the last few days (2/19 to 2/21), so they are current as of Update 3 Patch 1.

Unlike testing attack speeds (which will often require some sort of sound/video capture such as Fraps for accurate results), it is easy to get very accurate run speed results fairly simply. Go to a location with a long straightaway, such as the entrance of House Kundarak as the example here. Type "/loc"; this gives you your x-y-z coordinates (the ox, oy, and oz numbers), as well as your current heading (h) in degrees. Note that the ox and oy coordinates "wrap around" to 0 once they reach 160. Turn your character so that your heading is at 90 (h90.0) for due east. Then start running, and type in "/loc" and start your stopwatch at the same time. Then once you're near the far wall, type in "/loc" and stop your stopwatch simultaneously. The difference in coordinates is how far you ran; your stopwatch recorded how long it took. Dividing the former by the latter gives you your run speed.

Doing this on a fighter, no speed boosts, yields the following data:
Trial Time(s) Distance Speed
1 14.48 102.2 7.058
2 13.99 98.7 7.055
3 14.30 100.8 7.049
4 14.35 100.8 7.024
5 14.14 99.4 7.030
Avg. 14.25 100.4 7.043
St.Dev. 0.19 1.4 0.015
%Error 1.34% 1.36% 0.22%

With this, the average running speed (the base running speed of a character, since no boosts were used) was 7.043 +- 0.015. Note that the percentage error of 0.22% for this value is much smaller than the percentage error of the time (1.34%) and distance (1.36%) measurements individually, since a longer time also tended to mean a longer distance, so their ratio (distance/time) can have a smaller error if there is a correlation between the two measurements (and there is, namely, if I measured a longer time, it's probably because I let the character run a bit farther). This is a very small amount of error -- consider that measuring attack speeds for example will often have errors of 1-2%, even with some specialized audio/video capture equipment -- and no specialized equipment is needed other than a stopwatch. Everyone's cell phone should have that, and hopefully everyone is capable of pressing two buttons simultaneously.

So far so good. Now, on testing this with my barbarian, I get:
Trial Time(s) Distance Speed
1 12.44 96.2 7.736
2 13.02 100.9 7.747
3 12.43 96.3 7.743
4 12.15 93.9 7.731
5 13.44 104.0 7.734
Avg. 12.70 98.2 7.738
St.Dev. 0.52 4.1 0.006
%Error 4.12% 4.13% 0.08%

An average speed of 7.738, divided by the original 7.043, is 1.0987 -- pretty close to the stated 10% barbarian run speed, within the 0.22% margin of error of the base speed test.

Since my main character is currently a barbarian or a character with a barbarian splash, most of my testing results will have this barbarian 10% added on to them.

So what I wanted to test was the actual measured speeds. For the sake of not posting too large of a wall of text, the results for different amounts of striding equipment equipped is below:

Speed Error %error %Base Test
7.043 0.015 0.216% 1.000 Base
7.738 0.006 0.084% 1.099 Barb
8.012 0.014 0.169% 1.138 Barb+5% striding
8.308 0.015 0.178% 1.180 Barb+10% striding
8.579 0.033 0.387% 1.218 Barb+15% striding
8.893 0.026 0.289% 1.263 Barb+20% striding
9.181 0.059 0.648% 1.303 Barb+25% striding
9.455 0.052 0.545% 1.342 Barb+30% striding

The speed is the distance (in the game's units) divided by the measured time (in seconds). The error is the standard deviation across the five measurements I took of each. %error is the percentage error, i.e. the standard deviation divided by the speed -- you can see that in all cases it's far less than 1%, so the measurements were very repeatable. And the %Base is the speed divided by the base running speed of 7.043. In every case during these tests, the lag was less than 120 ms whenever I mouseovered the lag button.

Testing with a 15% striding ring and 15% striding boots separately and together showed that it doesn't matter where the modifier is on your character, as long as it's equipped (as it should be).

Now the problem here should be obvious. Boots of striding are supposed to be giving 5% per level. Instead, they're only giving 4% per level. That's right, when I recently acquired some 30% striding boots, it turns out that they only give 24% striding. Another barb that uses the Anger's Step from Korthos can outrun my barb. Speaking of which, testing with exp retreat confirmed that they are still giving a 25% run speed bonus (which they should be, the spell description on an item is wrong but the effect icon's description is correct).

Further testing showed that the haste spell, rather than giving the advertised 40% bonus to run speed, is only giving 32%. However, the House P pendant (pendant of time) is correctly giving a 50% bonus (and it stacks with the barbarian's run speed), and barbarian sprint boost 1 is correctly giving a 35% boost to your running speed (and it stacks with the others).

So what to make of this? Currently, your 30% striding boots is just a permanent version of expeditious retreat; in fact, a caster casting it on you will make you (slightly) faster. Being hasted is about the speed at which you should normally be running with your 30% striding boots. And currently, a ranger using sprint boost (assuming it's the same as the barbarian one) will run faster than a hasted normal guy.

In fact, in testing, with two characters running side by side, a character with exp retreat did run about as fast as another with 30% striding boots on, and it is noticeably faster than with 25% striding boots, even though the two are supposed to be the same. And a hasted barbarian runs slower than someone using the house P pendant, even though the two are supposed to be the same.

Anyhow, I don't have access to a monk nor a rogue acrobat, but feel free to post your own testing results for those and anything else you think up here. I will also update this with further testing results as I do them. Special thanks go to Item of Orien for lending some time, haste, equipment, and willingness to watch a sweaty barbarian run around House Kundarak for several hours to do the character setup races.

Edit: For some background on running speed, you can check out:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Run_speed
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=220736

I've pretty much tested all the enhancement bonuses other than thief-acrobat showtime and shadow walk and they do not stack with each other (which is what it should be). I've also tested that the barb 10% boost and the barb sprint boost pretty much stacks with everything so far (which is also what it should be). A summary of my testing results:

Enhancement bonuses (only the highest one applies, tested that they don't stack with each other):
Striding 5%-30% item modifier: 4%-24% (not working correctly)
Longstrider: 15% (working correctly)
Expeditious Retreat: 25% (working correctly)
Haste: 32% (not working correctly)
House P Pendant of Time: 50% (working correctly)

Other bonuses (applies with highest of the above, and with each other):
Barb fast movement: 10% (working correctly)
Barb sprint boost I: 35% (working correctly)

Again, all these were testing using my barbarian (or with barbarian splash), so they have an extra 10% in the testing (and it's always possible, for example, that there may be something wrong with the barbarian fast movement that for example affects the striding).

[Velexia]

Hmmm, I did kind of feel like I was running a bit slow.... Turbine, please give us our 6% back, thanks ~_^

[BurningDownTheHouse]

This thread deserves a hearty +1.

[Shade]

Good test..

I always felt that sprint boost gave more then striders/haste.

[Giiros]

Your kidding me right? You went through all that trouble for what, 6%?

[systemstate]

Your kidding me right? You went through all that trouble for what, 6%?

Yes. That missing 6% of total run speed accounts for 20% of the total boost you should be getting. That's huge.

[dranreb]

D&D, whether online or PnP, is a game of numbers, and of precision. 6% is a lot. If the increase in speed is 24% instead of 30%, and they don't want to change it, then just make the item description say it's a 24% increase in speed. Why is that difficult?

And as for the OP doing "all that work", the mindset of many DDO players is analytical. That's why we are drawn to this type of game in the first place.

We shouldn't have to apologize for being nerds. We're not bad, just different. Be proud!

Excellent work, OP. +1.

[Vanshilar]

I've updated with longstrider numbers.

Your kidding me right? You went through all that trouble for what, 6%?

Whether or not 6% is important depends on the person. Consider if the yearly inflation rate were off by 6%. Consider if you had to pay an additional 6% sales tax. Or take home 6% less pay.

Another thing to consider is how much each person is interested in figuring out the underlying mechanics of a system. And, of course, whether or not you believe everything you're told. Such as the emails from Nigeria.

[budwise09]

+1 for the good science

[smatt]

DooOOOOoOOOoOOoOOOMMMMmmmmmm

[smatt]

+1 for the good science

Was it peer reviewed though???

No really, nice job to the OP on working out how to measure the rates of travel. In the end haste meakes me move faster.... That's all I care about....

[JayDubya]

good work. Well done.

[Maegin]

Very Nice.

[Zenako]

Which all just serves to validate all those people just using Warp Time for Egg hunts since that seemed so much faster than a haste. It seemed more than 10% and based on your numbers it is.

To the one asking about why? there are some quests where time is an important factor. If it takes you a longer to get to a fight, that means the fight might take enough longer that timed events can occur which make the fight more of a challenge. Knowing which are the best tools to use helps those situations.

On a more simple exercise, the 3 minute egg hunt. The speed difference ends up giving you an extra 10 seconds (roughly) to find eggs, and that could be the difference for some between level 4 and level 5 auras.

[M0NKEYB0Y]

+1 well done

[HumanJHawkins]

<Solid scientific method cut for brevity>

Enhancement bonuses (only the highest one applies, tested that they don't stack with each other):
Striding 5%-30% item modifier: 4%-24% (not working correctly)
Longstrider: 15% (working correctly)
Expeditious Retreat: 25% (working correctly)
Haste: 32% (not working correctly)
House P Pendant of Time: 50% (working correctly)

Other bonuses (applies with highest of the above, and with each other):
Barb fast movement: 10% (working correctly)
Barb sprint boost I: 35% (working correctly)

Again, all these were testing using my barbarian (or with barbarian splash), so they have an extra 10% in the testing (and it's always possible, for example, that there may be something wrong with the barbarian fast movement that for example affects the striding).

Did you bug report this, and send a PM to a couple of the QA people on the forums?

+1 rep. Nice find.

[Vanshilar]

To the one asking about why? there are some quests where time is an important factor. If it takes you a longer to get to a fight, that means the fight might take enough longer that timed events can occur which make the fight more of a challenge. Knowing which are the best tools to use helps those situations.

On another note, running 6% faster in some cases means you finish a quest that much faster; it also means there's less chance for, uh, getting harried, since the monsters have less of a chance of noticing or catching up to you to whack away. Depends on how you play =P

Did you bug report this, and send a PM to a couple of the QA people on the forums?

I sent a bug report before making my initial post, however, what QA people would I PM? Note that in my link, MrCow's original testing showed that haste was working properly half a year ago, so this bug was introduced sometime since then.

[HumanJHawkins]

<cut>I sent a bug report before making my initial post, however, what QA people would I PM?<cut>

You busted me... I had a name in mind but couldn't exactly remember, So I was lazy and posted anyway.

The guy I was thinking of is username "404error". He has a post about 10 down on the dev tracker, and occasionally scours the forums for bug reports.

[MeliCat]

dear OP, you are SUCH a nerd. LOVE IT. +1

[KKDragonLord]

DUDE Awesome testing! you are an inspiration for all of us!

well deserved +1 rep (i know how stressful testing can be)