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

[bbqzor]

Excellent post, and confirms what I had long suspected based on my own observations. This does take into account all visible phenomena I have observed on those topics. I am curious, were any tests done with monk speed at all, or the shadowwalk spell? If not may try when I get free (if I can ever log in again, DNS issues owning me atm). Ty for the post.

[Vanshilar]

So in chat a few days ago someone said that swim will affect your air speed, i.e. your speed while in midair. I also looked and ddowiki:

http://ddowiki.com/page/Swim

also says that "The Swim skill also affects how fast you fall through air."

Anyway, curious about this, I went to the top of House D and jumped down with a feather fall ring on, using the /loc command and more or less the method that I used in the OP. I alternated between using the bubble belt (+10 swim, underwater action) and not using it, which makes my swim score either 10 (without) or 20 (with). I used my barbarian (which has the 10% fast movement boost).

Without having done an exhaustive amount of testing, that is, only 1 or 2 trials each (since hopefully I've established the measurement error by now), the results that I got were:

Swim H_Dis/s V_Dis/s Condition
11 6.685 5.064 Barbarian with no speed boosts, no armor
21 6.649 5.037 Barbarian with no speed boosts, no armor
11 8.124 5.053 Barbarian with 30% striding, no armor
21 8.083 5.027 Barbarian with 30% striding, no armor

"Swim" is my swim score when I did the test. "H_Dis/s" is the distance traveled (in the game's internal units, seen by using the /loc command) divided by the time for the trial, i.e. the speed (distance/time). "V_Dis/s" is the vertical (falling) speed, taken the same way. Although I didn't do multiple runs of each condition, I would expect that the measurement error is around the same as in the original post, i.e. around 0.2-0.6% of the stated figures. These tests were done on 3/5/2010.

Anyway, as you can see, the speeds are pretty similar regardless of if your swim score were at 11 or 21. At this point, your question may be the same as mine, namely "maybe a difference of the swim score of 10 isn't enough to be measured" but then I tried swimming in the harbor and got:

Swim H_Dis/s Condition
10 5.807 Barbarian with no speed boosts, no armor
10 5.791 Barbarian with 30% striding, no armor
20 6.325 Barbarian with 30% striding, no armor

So it's pretty apparent that your swim skill does increase your swimming speed; an increase of the score of 10 increased your speed by around 0.526 (remember that previously I tested the normal running speed to be around 7.043, but you swim slower than you run). Given that your swim speed is noticeably increased with a higher swimming score, it seems odd then that it does not measurably increase your air speed.

So I thought the thing might mean that it changes how fast you fall down through the air; given that I was using feather fall, this might affect my (vertical) air speed. This would be sort of like the tumble skill then, except the tumble skill decreases how much damage you take given how fast you were falling (or maybe given how long you were in midair?), while swim may be how fast you accelerate as you fall. Given that it's rather hard to type /loc fast enough and time it to see how fast you're falling, I can only use your falling damage as a proxy (although yes I know it's affected by tumble). So I tried falling down from the top of House D without feather fall; for both with and without the bubble belt, I took 87 damage. I've read that DDO has some sort of "terminal velocity" thing, so just to check, I went to the Harbor and ran down that, but both with and without the bubble belt, I took 46 damage. My barb is now in the resort spa in Ataraxia massaging his sore feet.

So what gives? I'm not sure why people think that swim affects your air speed. Is there something that I'm missing?

[Roman]

+1 Rep Sir!

[mistahnice]

So what gives? I'm not sure why people think that swim affects your air speed. Is there something that I'm missing?

swim effects your speed with the spell fly, do note that there are only two ways to get it in the entire game.

[KKDragonLord]

So in chat a few days ago someone said that swim will affect your air speed, i.e. your speed while in midair.

Tried testing with the Fly spell from the Stealer of Souls common instance? (forgot whatsit called, reavers rest?)

[Backley]

Anyone want to buy some 30% Striders?

Thanks for the in-depth analysis. Thanks for promptly returning my borrowed items.

+1 Rep.

DDOWiki updated accordingly.

[Glenalth]

Tried testing with the Fly spell from the Stealer of Souls common instance? (forgot whatsit called, reavers rest?)

I know I've passed other characters that were flying when I was on a character that had a good swim speed in the Reaver raid.

[chester99]

I do enjoy what this game has become:

the rules are to be discovered.

they will change.

they are not as they are stated.

and those statements will change too.

rational decisions will become irrational.

irrational decsions will be rewarded.

very few will understand what happened.

the system is driven by incompetence or mallace.

hopefully not both.

probably both.

[Razic-Thule]

All i can think of is that the Swim skill effects how much longer you can hold your breath and so maybe that is where this air speed stuff comes from.

[victorey84]

I think the description of the effect of swim on "air speed" has mutated from one account to another. Hence the misunderstanding. What it affects is your -flying- speed. Afaik, you can only get the fly spell from the Stormreaver, in the raid and in the reaver's refuge. Horizontal "jumping" speed is purely runspeed.

Also, a few points come to mind regarding your runspeed tests. First, you're assuming that speed bonuses are additive. Most multiplier effects in DDO are actually multiplicative. Second, in some past runspeed testing thread that I found a while ago, barb speed bonus was mentioned to be working differently than all other speed bonuses. So, I would highly suggest testing with a non-barbarian before concluding.

For example, +10% of 30 is 33. That's awfully close to your 34 number. Granted, a quick calc shows that the same doesn't apply to lower striders. So that's not it either.

This weird stacking of barb speed bonus could also explain why it treats spells and items differently.

After comparing with non-barbs then you might be onto something with the striders.

(There's some peer review for you.)

[Vanshilar]

I finally got some time to do some more run speed testing.

Now that airships are released, it turns out that the values given when you use the "/loc" command are given in terms of meters. You can tell by going to the front of your airship, typing "/loc", going to the rear of your airship, typing "/loc" again, and the difference in the x coordinates will be the number of meters that is specified for your airship in the Airship Showroom (the internal size of the airships is much larger than the exterior size, but that's for another day). So this means that run speeds are actually in meters per second, or m/s.

This time I tested with a level 6 paladin with no run speed modifiers to get the base run speed. The testing methodology was the same as in the initial post, except that since the entrance to House Kundarak is now shortened, I used Lordsmarch Plaza instead. For testing the base run speed as well as the various setups, generally 3 trials were used (sometimes more), to see the measurement error as well. I also tested the various setups using an acrobat 2 / tempest 1 / barb splash.

The base run speed was tested to be 6.978 +- 0.009 m/s. This is pretty close to the original 7.043 +- 0.015 m/s that I tested before. The actual values are outside of the measurement error though. However, there are often other sources of error, such as network latency, computer hard drive seek time, etc., that can affect the results. So it likely just means that those factors contributed more to the variation between when I last tested it and now, than the measurement error, i.e., the measurement error is small relative to other sources of noise.

So it's likely that characters in DDO are set to a base run speed of about 7 m/s, or about 15.66 miles per hour. Effectively, everyone starts out able to run the four-minute mile.

Anyway, so this time, I also tested shadow walk, rogue acrobat II, rogue acrobat showtime, and a few other things. The testing results, incorporating what was also previously tested, is given below:

Actual	Stated	Bonus
4%	5%	5% striding (enhancement)
8%	10%	10% striding (enhancement)
12%	15%	15% striding (enhancement)
16%	20%	20% striding (enhancement)
20%	25%	25% striding (enhancement)
24%	30%	30% striding (enhancement)
32%	40%	Haste spell (enhancement)
15%	15%	Longstrider spell (enhancement)
25%	25%	Expeditious retreat spell (enhancement)
25%	25%	Showtime (rogue acrobat) ability (enhancement)
40%	N/A	Shadow Walk spell (enhancement)
50%	N/A	Phiarlan pendant (enhancement)
10%	10%	Barbarian fast movement
10%	10%	Rogue Acrobat II
35%	35%	Barbarian/Ranger sprint boost I

For the enhancement bonuses, only the highest one applies (they do not stack with each other). However, the remaining ones all stack with each other, along with the highest enhancement bonus. I did some spot checking between the enhancement bonuses to verify that they don't stack with each other. I've now also verified that some of the enhancement bonuses such as the haste spell give 4% per 5% that they're supposed to give, with a paladin (eliminating the problem with using a barb splash previously). I haven't tested monk movement speed yet because I don't have one.

The testing data is below. "%Base" is the testing results in multiples of the base run speed. "%Error" is the standard deviation of the results (with the same unit as %Base), and "Setup" is the setup that I used. So for example, barbarian was tested to run at 7.658 +- 0.016 m/s; this, divided by the base run speed, works out to 1.0974 +- 0.0023, which means it has a 10% boost. It's slightly out of the standard deviation (since the theoretical amount is 1.1000), but it should be expected that occasional test results will exceed the standard deviation since that only captures 68% of the variation.

Base run speed: 6.9784 m/s		
%Base	%Error	Setup
1.0000	0.0014	Paladin (base)
1.2520	0.0080	Paladin (base) + exp retreat
1.3241	0.0041	Paladin (base) + haste spell
1.0974	0.0023	Barb
1.1999	0.0023	Barb + acro2
1.3490	0.0055	Barb + acro2 + longstrider
1.4482	0.0028	Barb + acro2 + showtime
1.4444	0.0069	Barb + acro2 + 30% striding
1.6060	0.0083	Barb + acro2 + shadowwalk
1.8600	0.0025	Barb + acro2 + 30% striding + sprint boost 2

One interesting test result is that using the second tier of sprint boost gave a bit more speed than was expected (the theoretical amount is 1.84, from 10% barb + 10% acrobat 2 + 24% from 30% striding + 40% from sprint boost 2). I didn't analyze the results until after I respecced though, so I'll have to wait a few days to retest the sprint boosts more thoroughly.

I should also note that it turns out that if you jump while running (with or without featherfall), your horizontal speed will decrease. The build I used to test has a 20% base speed increase, so it normally runs at a speed of 1.2x base run speed. However, when jumping, both with and without featherfall, the horizontal speed decreased to 1.06x base run speed, or a decrease of around 12%. So basically, when running, you shouldn't jump too much (other than to get around obstacles) since that will end up slowing you down.

[slimkj]

Thanks for the interesting data and testing. I love as much run speed as possible so this is of interest, for example it'd always felt like Shadow Fade on my monk felt faster than haste when running to Desert chests but I figured it was perception bias because of the lack of distant scenery in that mode.

How does pure monk run speed stack up against a Barb Acrobat II out of interest? Assuming monk is faster base but a barb sprint boost on top of the 20% base increase would pull ahead whilst you have boosts available?

[Samadhi]

Stealth-nerf from a while ago - but yes I for one am still ****ed about it - thanks for the work on this OP - one thing I didn't know is that exp. retreat was unchanged, so that at least is good to know.

[ChaosEmperorDragon]

+1

This sort of misinformation and non-disclosure of game mechanics given to players by the company drives me mad and gives the product a shoddy image.

[Illiain]

Did you test this with medium/heavy armor or light/no armor? I know it won't effect the outcome. I've just always been curious if they penalize base speed when wearing armor.

[Oredigger]

+1

Very interesting information. Thanks for all your effort and for posting the results!

By the way, did you ever get any kind of resonse from the bug report?

[wiglin]

This is good to know. I thought for sure I was running slower then before. It would be nice to know why this was changed.

[Sydril]

+1

Exceptional Data.

[Esoel]

I just came up with a theory that could explain the behavior you are observing.
What if light encumbrance gives you a multiplicative (and not additive like the others) bonus to speed that does not stack with striding items?
That would explain the 1 in 5 % you lose on striding items, wouldn't it?
Well if you have time you can check base run speeds with medium and heavy encumbrance, that could shed some light. I'm too lazy sorry ;- )
Great job anyway, thanks for your time and HTH.

Esoel

[Aeolwind]

Could you look at Marshwalker effect next time you roll through? I'm just curious...

I'm also assuming that monk & barb fast movement effects are identical? (I've never played either to any extent other than 'omg I need the barb passive past life nao!')