@shifty189 if you want to use programming as example... sure.
If I am reviewing your code that has 1000 lines, and your code has a bug every 10 lines, should I assume your function that I have not checked yet to be perfect or that function with 100 lines will have at least one bug ?
What if user tells me game crashes when they try to run, do i dismiss them because I have no access to source code?

So if many Meg encounters out of 1000's I had were bugged why would I assume that one type of the meg is immune to bad code?
Following this what proof anybody has that Shrouded Ghost code is unlike any other meg code and has 0 bugs.

I like quoting Adam Savage from Mythbusters "I reject reality and substitute my own" And reality is that just like many many players if you hadn't got SG in first 1000's of encounters you are most likely won't get one. You can reject reality, and believe in fairly tales or you can simply see reality as is and ignore what seems to be yet another bug made by Rare just like many others (hitreg, winds disappearing, death on spawn, skelton ships not dropping anything after they sunk, random disconnect errors where whole crew of ship gets kicked out, etc etc)

Now who knows maybe Rare will look into this to see what is going on because "random" is one thing this SG is not. But just like with many other bugs in this game I would not hold my breath.

@jadescissors32 You could sail all day, every day and still not be guaranteed to eventually see one due to %'s...

No one is guaranteed to see it....let alone kill it too.

If (example numbers) every 1000th Meg is a Shrouded Ghost and you happen to kill #999 the 1000th could spawn on another server, in another region across the world a second later and you'd never know anything about it!

It isn't every 1000th (again, a random number chosen for example purposes) Meg an individual sees would be the Shrouded Ghost but globally, across all regions and servers.

It is pure RNG with the odds against everybody equally!

Playing the lottery every week also won't mean eventually you will definitely win the jackpot at some point.

Conversely, if you were to win the lottery one week it doesn't automatically mean you definitely won't win next week. Your odds are just as good (or not) as winning the first time.

@jadescissors32
i see no point to your comment here. this is nothing like the shape of the earth where some things can be deduced and proven. This is something totally different. Did you not see a SG because very very low odds or is it bugged? there is no way at all to tell. Aristotle had a few things he could use to speculate from and basic working of physics. Do you have any insider knowledge of SoT programming or even programming at all? do you know what frameworks SoT uses? (here is one you might know) do you even know what engine SoT uses?

Here is the crazy part. Computer science is nothing like physics. Each program makes its own rules and something that applies in one program may not apply to another.

again, unless RARE gives us more to go on all we have is our best guesses. Now don't misunderstand me, i do think after everything i have read about SG that its probably bugged. But in my programs i write things all the time that are so rare most of them will probably never be noticed or observed, even if someone spent 10,000 hours on some of them. Programmers do things like this a lot for reasons we can't really explain.

Fun fact, did you know MS Excel 97 had a flight sim in it? only a hand full of people ever found it, and it only took 2 keys to make it start.

@triheadedmonkey said in Shrouded Ghost:

IF there was a 'method' for spawning a guaranteed Shrouded Ghost, you can bet it would be on eBay by now.

If anyone is willing to do some maths for an approximate guess...

There was a Forum contest a while back to guess the number of Megs vanquished during a 24 hour period and one sometime after for how many Shrouded Ghosts were vanquished in a 24 hour period.

Megs in 24 hours came out as 7587 globally and Shrouded Ghosts came out as 11 globally.

I say approximate guess as the numbers are for Megs/Shrouded Ghosts DEFEATED and doesn't take into account any that were seen/spawned and not taken out.

The total megs likely also includes the Shrouded Ghosts though I can't be sure, so any %'s or probabilities determined will likely be skewed.

If those numbers were correct I would have seen many and got already few... Another reason to believe Shrouded is bugged.

@shifty189 said in Shrouded Ghost:

@jadescissors32
i respectfully disagree. The facts are that we have no real facts. everything you stated could simply be confirmation bios.

it would be unwise to assume there is a bug that is causing a problem. that would be twisting facts to suite a theories, the very thing you are trying to speak against.

Sure you can disagree, but observable data is still facts. Sometimes you don't need actual equation to predict results. If you did not know the shape of Earth: Who would you listen ?
Astronaut who spent 6 months on ISS tells you that he/she seen Earth being round with their own eyes,
Flat-earther who claims there is no proof of that.
Greek philosopher Aristotle did not have actual equation but figure it out Earth is not flat.

if you want to chase Shrouded ghost go ahead and have fun with it, but from what I know if you did not get one in first 1000 meg encounters you probably won't get one whatever the reasons behind it.
This makes to me that title and that commendation pointless and waste of code.
Personally unless that shrouded ghost crashes to my boat and hangs on to it like other bugged Megs did, for a half hour, I am not bothering with it.

@sammyr0cks said in Shrouded Ghost:

There is one fact proven here: conspiracy theorists occupy every corner of our lives.

That makes the corners fun

We need aluminum foil pirate hats. Not only to attract shrouded ghosts but also to protect us from 5g pirate radio and deflect the inter-dimensional insults sprayed over us.

@sammyr0cks said in Shrouded Ghost:

There is one fact proven here: conspiracy theorists occupy every corner of our lives.

the shrouded ghost isn't real lol

IF there was a 'method' for spawning a guaranteed Shrouded Ghost, you can bet it would be on eBay by now.

If anyone is willing to do some maths for an approximate guess...

There was a Forum contest a while back to guess the number of Megs vanquished during a 24 hour period and one sometime after for how many Shrouded Ghosts were vanquished in a 24 hour period.

Megs in 24 hours came out as 7587 globally and Shrouded Ghosts came out as 11 globally.

I say approximate guess as the numbers are for Megs/Shrouded Ghosts DEFEATED and doesn't take into account any that were seen/spawned and not taken out.

The total megs likely also includes the Shrouded Ghosts though I can't be sure, so any %'s or probabilities determined will likely be skewed.

There is one fact proven here: conspiracy theorists occupy every corner of our lives.

@jadescissors32
i respectfully disagree. The facts are that we have no real facts. everything you stated could simply be confirmation bios.

it would be unwise to assume there is a bug that is causing a problem. that would be twisting facts to suite a theories, the very thing you are trying to speak against.

@shifty189 We should not twist facts to suite theories, and the facts are:

• it seems new players are getting shrouded
• streamers that often change their accounts are getting shrouded ghost
• many old timers including Day One players have not seen one in 28mln miles and through couple thousands of meg encounters.
• SG supposed to be random encounter and we know difference between odds and probability.
• SoT has a lot of bugs that are not getting fixed
• There are a lot of bugs in normal Meg encounters.

@jadescissors32 said in Shrouded Ghost:

@shifty189 Yup or it could have a bug that if player has letter "a" in name tag it won't spawn at all either.

All we know is that its not 100 % random for sure because probability would have taken over.

So if its not random and not based on particular skill, its pointless.

I think this is a reach. it could be random and very VERY rare. something like every 100 hours in the game you would have a 0.001% chance of spawning, and that one time your number came up..... you were at an outpost.

@shifty189 Yup or it could have a bug that if player has letter "a" in name tag it won't spawn at all either.

All we know is that its not 100 % random for sure because probability would have taken over.

So if its not random and not based on particular skill, its pointless.

@shifty189 Right, so a theory which is based around the SG spawn being bugged because people "should" be running into it but aren't has no basis, because we have no hard stats on what should be the actual encounter rate.

This is essentially what I was responding to in my first post.

@d3adst1ck said in Shrouded Ghost:

@jadescissors32 said in Shrouded Ghost:

Shrouded ghost supposed to be the same way except individual odds are much lower. Still by sheer number you should be hitting Shrouded at some point.

We don't know the actual odds though, so no one may be able to get to close to the number to where you "should be" seeing one.

• Unlike the Kraken, we don't know the exact spawn conditions (this contributes to the odds).
• It has the same 1 in 5 chance to spawn on your boat
• Unlike the Kraken, there are 5 varieties and they have different weighted percent chance to spawn.

That is two different unknowns which contribute to megalodon spawns. We could be looking at 1:5000 chance or worse, in which case it would take thousands and thousands of trials to produce anything resembling an idea of what the actual spawn chance is for the Shrouded Ghost vs. something like the Kraken which is a much smaller sample.

to the best of my knowledge we don't know anything other than there is a SG in the game. for all we know its spawn rates could be totally unrelated to the spawn rates of other megs. this hole conversation is an exercise in speculation.

RARE COULD have made it so it only spawns if you have a bird with a banana costume on and the player base just hasn't figured that out yet.

@jadescissors32 said in Shrouded Ghost:

Shrouded ghost supposed to be the same way except individual odds are much lower. Still by sheer number you should be hitting Shrouded at some point.

We don't know the actual odds though, so no one may be able to get to close to the number to where you "should be" seeing one.

• Unlike the Kraken, we don't know the exact spawn conditions (this contributes to the odds).
• It has the same 1 in 5 chance to spawn on your boat
• Unlike the Kraken, there are 5 varieties and they have different weighted percent chance to spawn.

That is two different unknowns which contribute to megalodon spawns. We could be looking at 1:5000 chance or worse, in which case it would take thousands and thousands of trials to produce anything resembling an idea of what the actual spawn chance is for the Shrouded Ghost vs. something like the Kraken which is a much smaller sample.

@d3adst1ck said in Shrouded Ghost:

@jadescissors32 each encounter has the same low percent chance of being the white one. It doesn't change with more meg encounters.

More encounters dont change odds of each encounter, but more encounters mean you have more chances at those odds so overall "your" chance increases.
here take a simple Kraken.
When you are playing, and all events finish your odds are 1:5 to get Kraken (5 ships on the server you are playing)
The more you play the more times you get a chance at those odds, so the more you play the more likely you will encounter Kraken. Individual odds of encounter are not changed but since you play often, you slowly have more encounters with Kraken because you are more likely to be that 1 ship of 5.
Shrouded ghost supposed to be the same way except individual odds are much lower. Still by sheer number you should be hitting Shrouded at some point.

@d3adst1ck
BUT the more meg's you see increases the odds that you would have seen one. your are correct (as i said before) that each instance has the same low odds, but if you have 100,000,000 instances were a meg could have spawned you are more likely to have seen one than if you only had 100 instances. Each chance is the same low % but over time you can increase your odd of seeing one over the life of your time on the game.

What i'm really trying to say (just like with lottery) is if you play more you are more likely to see one. (but your odds each encounter are the same)

at this point i think we are dancing around the same point.

@shifty189 said in Shrouded Ghost:

Its kind of like saying "if you don't play the lottery you can't win" which is true and relevant here.

Playing the lottery more doesn't also increase your chances of winning, because each lottery draw is independent which is what happens here.

The only way your actual odds would increase is if a meg spawn changed the odds of what would spawn next.

@jadescissors32 each encounter has the same low percent chance of being the white one. It doesn't change with more meg encounters.

@d3adst1ck
Except : More miles sailed = more Megs encountered.
So whatever odds are with more megs encountered, there surely should be a Shrouded ghost in the bunch. if its not than why not.

@d3adst1ck
you are mostly correct. For each chance the server determines if to spawn a SG Meg it will always have the same %, but with miles sailed your chances will go up (assuming the normal rules for MEG's apply got SG). This is simple math, each instance has the same % but if you have more chances than me you would have a higher % chance to have at some point seen a SG.

statistical math tells us that IF things are truly RNG, the more chances you get to possibly spawn a meg (by whatever determines your chances) the higher your chances are of getting one, but each individual instance will have the same low % chance of getting a SG.

Its kind of like saying "if you don't play the lottery you can't win" which is true and relevant here.

The other problem is that RNG is never really random. most computer algorithms that determine RNG are based on clocks. there COULD be a chance that a specific time of day would give better odds than other times of day.

@jadescissors32 said in Shrouded Ghost:

So the problem with "completely rng" is that by sheer number of miles sailed people should have encountered one.

No it doesn't. Completely RNG means that it doesn't matter how many miles you sail, the randomness is always present. When determining which Meg to spawn, the game takes no consideration of any past megs you've encountered nor how many miles you've sailed. It just spawns one based on the percentage rates set by the developers so if the Shrouded Ghost only has a 0.0001% chance to spawn, it will always spawn at that rate and you cannot influence it in any way.

@sammyr0cks said in Shrouded Ghost:

I sailed with a guy who had this theory that if you stayed in a server long enough, and killed enough megs, eventually you would get the SG. He tried many times, never found it.

I was sailing with some other players one day, chasing a ship that had just finished a regular fort, and there it was. As the rational people have stated, it's completely rng.

So the problem with "completely rng" is that by sheer number of miles sailed people should have encountered one. My theory on this is that it may be rng but with so many SoT bugs its good chance shrouded ghost spawn is bugged too, and simply will not spawn for some people.
Since nobody can open ticket on this, it will not get fixed or looked at.