There is no such thing as "Pool Stealing"

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Everything I said in my previous post is true, and can be proven mathematically, yet all you can provide as a counter argument is 'no'?



Playroom's blog post is full of nonsense that is not supported by any of the information found on reliable sites such as Wowpedia or El's Angling, or by a thorough Googling.. Namely "A higher fishing skill decreases the time it takes for a fish to bite your lure, making the first and most important contribution to your ‘cpm’." and "...separate the contest in two valid parts, one before a winner is declared and one after that. The difference between the two is that before a winner is found, the amount of active pools is almost double than that of the second case."



i'm going to continue to optimize my decision-making based on logical reasoning, keep on getting hats on my twinks, aaaaaaand you can keep on just....not believing me. what you think is really none of my business



i made this thread so that all the people who i know secretly think to themselves that pool stealing is clearly the most optimal strategy for the STV fishing contest can now, with a clear conscience, use this method to optimize their time while fishing for their hats, and not feel bad when other morons accuse them of unethical behavior
 
i'm going to continue to optimize my decision-making based on logical reasoning, keep on getting hats on my twinks, aaaaaaand you can keep on just....not believing me. what you think is really none of my business



i made this thread so that all the people who i know secretly think to themselves that pool stealing is clearly the most optimal strategy for the STV fishing contest can now, with a clear conscience, use this method to optimize their time while fishing for their hats, and not feel bad when other morons accuse them of unethical behavior

Pool stealing is the most optimal strategy, but it harms the retard who isn't pool stealing.
 
Pools spawn in small groups. At any one time there will be a number of active pools that have a chance to spawn within that group, and in multiple places within that group that they may spawn, even though a lesser number will be active. The following numbers are just an example. Let's say within one spawn group five pools can be active at any one time. They have a chance of spawning in twenty locations. If one of the five is drained, it will spawn in one of the other sixteen locations, including where you just fished from, within seconds. Those numbers are just an example and vary from spawn group to spawn group.



Now, the optimal strategy for all involved is to maximise casts and minimise travel time, especially since F2P can't fly. Travel time is a huge time sink. What you really want is to get five to ten people all fishing from their own pools to keep them spawning. Multiple people fishing from the same pool increases travel time and decreases cast time. It's not stealing, since the pool doesn't belong to anyone, but it's definitely not the most efficient strategy for maximising casts during the two hour period the pools are active.



Now, at the end of the competition phase, when you only need a few more fish to hit forty, fishing from the closest pools, even if someone is already fishing there, is the best way. However, if you fish at pools being used from the start, you will not be using the most time efficient method.
 
I'm with Yasueh on this one, and guess what, i'd rather coordinate pool fishing spots in raid and spread out and help each other (Yasueh's shaman water walking bot traveling across shores, if available DK follow) during this event than being selfish prick. Case in point with your famous cpm - Qui mage 15 weeks of pool fishing - nothing yet. My priest on Queldorei, first contest 2x fishing hat, my pally on AP, first contest 1x fishing hat. It's completely RNG based, so there's no need to rush it and mess with other players pools, you can "steal" thousands of them and make drama or you can take it easy and actually make some friends and earn respect along.



 
RNG is RNG pool stealing does exist in a way but not really.



Such as this...



when you fish in a pool it has a set loot:

Tasty fish, Keefer's 2nd then another Tasty fish.



so if you cast 1st then some one else jumps into the pool then they get the keefer's fish so they essentially stole your keefer's fish. If they had not stopped to cast their line then they would not have gotten it. (this has happened in the 19 twink guild i was in before guy starts fishing in a pool another guy(whom is apart of the same guild) comes in and casts in same pool friend gets junk guildie gets LFH). It happens my friend raged since he really did need it the other guy was not well geared.
 
I'm not convinced the pools have 3xtasty, 1xLFH, 1xkelp. It's more you cast, and RNG gives you tasty 95%, kelp/eel/other junk fish 4% and 1% rare fish, Those numbers are just an example and by no means accurate. You can get the LFH on your first cast, or not get it with your thousandth cast. Even if the odds say that you have a 99% chance to catch it in 1k casts, just because you have had 999 junk catches does not make you any closer to the LFH on the thousandth. So while junk guildie got the LFH, there is nothing to say he took your friend's LFH. He most likely would have gotten it on his next cast, and your friend raging didn't do anything but waste time and keep him further from his own LFH.
 
GMs have said that when you loot an mob, the server generates the items that are on it at that point, for the person who first does the looting, and they don't exist as items on the mob before that point..



It would make sense for pools to behave the same way, instead of having each one that's spawned contain a set of randomly generated items, waiting to be fished.



If each pool in the game world contained a set of items, then that would take up memory on the server. On the other hand if they are generated randomly at the point of looting, then it would take no memory, except that which is storing the location and spawn state of the pools themselves.



The LFH is randomly generated for the person who clicks the bobber when it splashes, and is not in the pool to be found by anyone who may fish it.
 
I can't imagine that "pool stealing" makes much of a difference for the individual's or everyone's casts-per-minute... not enough to merit this debate, imo.



Anyway, this thread is full of speculation, but is lacking in actual numbers. If it's really that important, show us the math that backs it up.



Personally, I'd say don't do it, cuz it's a douche-baggy thing to do. It isn't 'stealing' to sap a player as he's mining, and then taking the node for yourself, either, but not stealing doesn't mean you're not being a douche-bag.





MMO's are built around interactions with other players; you should always strive to be respected by the server community, and things like "pool stealing" whether or not it's actually stealing, whether or not it benefits the greater good, will earn you the reputation of being a douche-bag, and strip you of any respect you may have earned thus far.



Don't be a douche. Ever.
 
I don't know anyone that has posted on here that thinks to themselves " Yay some one is sharing my pool with me. I've made a new friend!! Boy I hope they get the LFH!! " . Or maybe there are people that do that? Not me and in that same note I won't just plop my ass down at someones pool and start fishing. I have seen many people fighting mobs , running from mobs etc then get a shot at fishing that node. Just to have some other person jump in and fish it too. What a let down huh? The end result is who has decent morals and wants to gain some sort of respect with the community or just be marked as someone who really doesn't care.

Also the idea on sharing " makes another pool spawn "is horribly wrong. Sure, another pool may spawn IN NORTHERN STV when you are at the beach by bootybay. Now what? I play on a pvp server and there isn't pool sharing. There's pool ass whoopins.
 
the point is fish your own pools and spend less time running around.



less time running = more time fishing.



i don't care though, i've got this sweet eye patch.
 
Guys seriously, look at the endpoints of the function:



5 miles of coast with 1 node/mile average and five fishermen.



If all fish one pool each, each fisher travels one mile to get to a node, then fishes 5 fish from it. Each fisherman gets 5 fish per (1 walking miles plus 5 cast times), or 1 fish per (0.2 walking miles plus 1 cast time).



If all are in a single pool ninjaing zerg, each gets 1 fish in one cast time, then the group travels a full mile to the next node to repeat. Each fisherman gets 1 fish per (1 walking mile plus 1 cast time).



To put this another way, either way you're walking a mile between nodes, but in one case all members of the group walk for one fish each, while in the other each person walks a mile for five fish.



Now understand that these points -- full resource partitioning and full ninjaing -- are endpoints of a monotonic function. A partial resource partition with ninjas running around being dicks is a middle point between full ninjaing and full partitioning. It is therefore, by definition of a continuous monotonic function, intermediate in efficiency between full ninjaing and full partitioning. Therefore, however much ninjaing is going on, a more globally efficient solution is to ninja less.



I get why this isn't obvious to ninjas, since you never see an all-ninja zerg running all up and down the coast. When one person decides to ninja from one other, you feel like you're walking less because you dismount and fish... and stop walking. But you actually are not saving walking (globally) because you're just hastening the time till your victim and you both walk again. Same amount of walk could have occurred if you had just rode on by, but you could have had 5 fish instead of 2.5. You didn't increase the amount of fish extracted, you just duplicated your victims walking and chanced a wasted cast. Good job bud.



Note also that spawns are faster in a cooperative system as well. Five people fishing five pools despawn 1 pool per five casts times five people, or one pool per unit cast time. Five people fishing one pool despawns the full pool in a single cast, for the same one pool per unit cast time. However, The partition sees five times as much coast area as the zerg, and therefore travels to an unoccupied pool a little more efficiently. This is to say nothing of wasted casts, which I will get to in a bit.



Ninjas seem to think ninjaing spawns the next pool faster. It doesn't. Best case scenario -- no travel time, no wasted casts -- you are still putting away one node per cast. If it's easier, think of the 5 partitioners as desynchronized by one cast time each. One fisher finishes a pool every unit cast time, spawning a new pool, where the ninjas leave 4 schools untouched while despawning pools at the same rate, 1/cast time. With no wasted casts and instant travel, it's at best the same efficiency as partitioning.



Now let's talk about wasted casts, which Yasueh mentioned and everyone seems to have ignored. When you ninja my pool, you have a 50% chance that there is an odd number of fish left in it. One of us is going to cast into the pool and not draw a fish out. No matter what way you cut it, that cast is 100% wasted time, which is wasted efficiency. Since you don't know the number of fish in a full pool and you certainly don't know the number of fish in a pool you're ninjaing from someone, you're inflicting a -0.25 fish penalty on your victim and a -0.25 fish penalty on yourself. Not only is that dickish to do to a stranger, it's also stupid to do for selfish reasons.



In summary, try following the logic in a numbered list:
  1. The function is monotonic. This is true because an individual's fish extraction rate is (my share of global spawn rate)/(cast time+travel time), travel time is the only variable. Global spawn rate is not variable, since it is defined to be constant per number of people fishing (i.e., one spawns when one despawns). All functions in the form 1/x are monotonic for positive input domain. If you were to quantify disappearing pools wasting casts, this would also scale upwards with X, turning this into 1/x^(something higher than 1), which is still a monotonic function.
  2. Max partitioning is more efficient than max ninjaing, because travel times scale from 0.1 to 1 fish-walking-unit and pool disappearing scales from 0 to (#Fishers - Actual#FishInPool)/(#Fishers). Note that that wasted cast value can be quite high when several people show up and cast into a pool with one fish, courtesy of an honest partitioner.
  3. By the Intermediate Value Theorem (wiki), any point between these endpoints on the ninjaing axis is also between them in efficiency value.
  4. Therefore, any number of ninjas is less globally efficient than no ninjas.
  5. ???
  6. QED

In other words, if you can't disprove monotonicity or the direction of the slope, you are flat out completely wrong, no matter how many scrub blogs with unsubstantiated crap you can point to.
 
Guys seriously, look at the endpoints of the function:



5 miles of coast with 1 node/mile average and five fishermen.



If all fish one pool each, each fisher travels one mile to get to a node, then fishes 5 fish from it. Each fisherman gets 5 fish per (1 walking miles plus 5 cast times), or 1 fish per (0.2 walking miles plus 1 cast time).



If all are in a single pool ninjaing zerg, each gets 1 fish in one cast time, then the group travels a full mile to the next node to repeat. Each fisherman gets 1 fish per (1 walking mile plus 1 cast time).



To put this another way, either way you're walking a mile between nodes, but in one case all members of the group walk for one fish each, while in the other each person walks a mile for five fish.



Now understand that these points -- full resource partitioning and full ninjaing -- are endpoints of a monotonic function. A partial resource partition with ninjas running around being dicks is a middle point between full ninjaing and full partitioning. It is therefore, by definition of a continuous monotonic function, intermediate in efficiency between full ninjaing and full partitioning. Therefore, however much ninjaing is going on, a more globally efficient solution is to ninja less.



I get why this isn't obvious to ninjas, since you never see an all-ninja zerg running all up and down the coast. When one person decides to ninja from one other, you feel like you're walking less because you dismount and fish... and stop walking. But you actually are not saving walking (globally) because you're just hastening the time till your victim and you both walk again. Same amount of walk could have occurred if you had just rode on by, but you could have had 5 fish instead of 2.5. You didn't increase the amount of fish extracted, you just duplicated your victims walking and chanced a wasted cast. Good job bud.



Note also that spawns are faster in a cooperative system as well. Five people fishing five pools despawn 1 pool per five casts times five people, or one pool per unit cast time. Five people fishing one pool despawns the full pool in a single cast, for the same one pool per unit cast time. However, The partition sees five times as much coast area as the zerg, and therefore travels to an unoccupied pool a little more efficiently. This is to say nothing of wasted casts, which I will get to in a bit.



Ninjas seem to think ninjaing spawns the next pool faster. It doesn't. Best case scenario -- no travel time, no wasted casts -- you are still putting away one node per cast. If it's easier, think of the 5 partitioners as desynchronized by one cast time each. One fisher finishes a pool every unit cast time, spawning a new pool, where the ninjas leave 4 schools untouched while despawning pools at the same rate, 1/cast time. With no wasted casts and instant travel, it's at best the same efficiency as partitioning.



Now let's talk about wasted casts, which Yasueh mentioned and everyone seems to have ignored. When you ninja my pool, you have a 50% chance that there is an odd number of fish left in it. One of us is going to cast into the pool and not draw a fish out. No matter what way you cut it, that cast is 100% wasted time, which is wasted efficiency. Since you don't know the number of fish in a full pool and you certainly don't know the number of fish in a pool you're ninjaing from someone, you're inflicting a -0.25 fish penalty on your victim and a -0.25 fish penalty on yourself. Not only is that dickish to do to a stranger, it's also stupid to do for selfish reasons.



In summary, try following the logic in a numbered list:
  1. The function is monotonic. This is true because an individual's fish extraction rate is (my share of global spawn rate)/(cast time+travel time), travel time is the only variable. Global spawn rate is not variable, since it is defined to be constant per number of people fishing (i.e., one spawns when one despawns). All functions in the form 1/x are monotonic for positive input domain. If you were to quantify disappearing pools wasting casts, this would also scale upwards with X, turning this into 1/x^(something higher than 1), which is still a monotonic function.
  2. Max partitioning is more efficient than max ninjaing, because travel times scale from 0.1 to 1 fish-walking-unit and pool disappearing scales from 0 to (#Fishers - Actual#FishInPool)/(#Fishers). Note that that wasted cast value can be quite high when several people show up and cast into a pool with one fish, courtesy of an honest partitioner.
  3. By the Intermediate Value Theorem (wiki), any point between these endpoints on the ninjaing axis is also between them in efficiency value.
  4. Therefore, any number of ninjas is less globally efficient than no ninjas.
  5. ???
  6. QED

In other words, if you can't disprove monotonicity or the direction of the slope, you are flat out completely wrong, no matter how many scrub blogs with unsubstantiated crap you can point to.

tl;dr Shft gets hats because he doesn't steal pools.
 
ninjaing does spawn pools faster. read the post that kale made earlier in the thread - it's a good one, and no one commented on it. you want to cast in a pool that you know has >1 casts in it, whether you're the ninja-er or the original pool fisher



i personally accomplish this by fishing with a small group of other players in a predetermined area. this way we can keep track of all of the spawns at all times, and if there is not a spawn within a 1 minimap range, we will both fish the same node until we know that there is a danger of there being <1 cast left in it, at which point someone gets up and moves to a different minimap vector in order to save time. you want us to believe that player X should instead be waiting in a different minimap vector while player Y just fishes out the pool - this is not the most optimal way to do it



like several people have pointed out, showing up to ninja someone's pool and fishing it out to completion is not the most efficient way to do things for the entire group. but you don't have to do it that way. there's nothing forcing either/any player to stick around to a pool's completion
 
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