I'm collecting data on Faerie Caverns and would appreciate your input!

[feedmedimsum]

MODS: If this topic is not allowed, please let me know so I can take it down. :) 

Hi everyone! 

I'm interested in collecting your responses to Faerie Caverns in order to see if I can figure out some sort of pattern / construct some interesting models describing the activity. I understand that general consensus is that this activity is completely random, but I wasn't sure if it was random per day or random per individual. Obviously it would be very easy to program it either way, but as a graduate student in statistics (heh) I'm interested in collecting data and seeing what information I can glean from it. 

I have set up a Google Form but I don't want to post it yet in case this topic is not allowed. Basically, the Google Form just asks you to fill in your daily responses to Faerie Caverns. Also in the first page of the form, you can see the spreadsheet of responses (which no one except I can edit) which may help you figure out what way to go to get the prize. There is no personal information required to fill out the form -- I only ask that you respond honestly. 

Thank you all for your time!

feedmedimsum

UPDATE [06 DEC]: 

Here's the Google Form link: https://goo.gl/forms/6EopScwTA2nqElDe2

Your responses will be recorded in the following Google Spreadsheet (the same link is available for viewing when you click the link to the above form): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11QHTor73oxVOVWzJ7Pzt3dYz1CIIR4FUWtFu1mi6ifc/edit#gid=1576118637

My suggestions:

• Have a similar sheet set up for your own personal use to record your daily Faerie Caverns. Include:
  • Flower Side
  • Time (NST) 
• Do Faerie Caverns at roughly the same hour every day. For instance, if you do it at 3:15 PM today, do it between 3-4 PM on the subsequent days. 

Feel free to post thoughts/comments/findings! 

[GillyTook]

I haven't taken statistics (at all.  Sorry, I know, bad me!) but would it help if you had a group of us who would agree to use the same pattern every day?  It's been ages since I've gotten to the end, but say there are four segments until the "end" if you do not hit a dead end.  Have one group of X number of people go left each time, have a group with X people go left for all the paths except the final one, etc.  It seems like it might be able to predict patterns better if each day all of one group makes it to the end, versus one or two people in group A and one or two in group B making it.  

 

I kinda hope there is a pattern, though, it would be neat if it was something that could be predicted.

[balloongal247]

I always go to the left.  If they have enough people and are asking which choice you made at each step, then she could examine the statistics overall.  I prefer to always do the same pattern, because then anytime the prize is in that location, I get it.

[jaydeed]

I always do right. I get a prize every ten times, say?

[feedmedimsum]

On 12/6/2017 at 11:41 AM, GillyTook said:

I haven't taken statistics (at all.  Sorry, I know, bad me!) but would it help if you had a group of us who would agree to use the same pattern every day?  It's been ages since I've gotten to the end, but say there are four segments until the "end" if you do not hit a dead end.  Have one group of X number of people go left each time, have a group with X people go left for all the paths except the final one, etc.  It seems like it might be able to predict patterns better if each day all of one group makes it to the end, versus one or two people in group A and one or two in group B making it.  

 

I kinda hope there is a pattern, though, it would be neat if it was something that could be predicted.

Ah, I don't know if I would be able to get a large enough group to do something like this! I did just update the original post to include links to the forms if you'd like to check out what information I'm collecting. You should also take a look at the Google Spreadsheet of responses to see if that will help you guide responses. For example, if someone else recorded going left but not ending up with the prize, go right and see if you get further along or not. 

Here are some things I'm curious about (in no order) (and I'm probably spending way too much time on this rather than, well, my ACTUAL work...)

1. Does the pattern change for every user on the same day? 
   
   Judging from the responses I received from this day (just me and two of my friends) this does seem to be the case.  I would also recommend maybe setting up a similar spreadsheet on your own account to see if there are account-specific trends... 
    
2. Do the patterns of bright flowers give any indication of where you should go?
   
   Judging from the same responses as in (1) I would say that they are unrelated...

I'm also wondering if this is tailored so that it is account-specific (just thinking about how the Wraith Resurgence plot is unique for each user). If you're wondering why I was suspecting there could be a pattern, I was noticing that I should alternate between going L/R on each day, but I couldn't remember if I was going "against the flowers" or "with the flowers" and decided to try to keep track. I only recently started keeping track of my own responses two days ago and can show you what I have here:

Some ideas for patterns I'm thinking about. 

Monday: Flower - No Flower would have been the correct choice (or, perhaps as jaydeed says, maybe R-R-R would have been the right choice!)

Tuesday: No Flower - Flower - No Flower would have been correct, and it was here I was wondering if the pattern of "with" or "against" flowers was going to be in effect

Wednesday (today): I was planning on Flower - No Flower pattern (as in Monday) but it turns out that Flower - Flower would have gotten me where I needed to go... 

I saw a response on my form that following Flower didn't let them move past the first click but I noticed on my Google Spreadsheet that two responses were completed in the same hour and I wondered if, had the other person seen/followed the form, maybe they would have gotten as far as the other person... 

So now I'm curious to understand:

1. Does the pattern change every hour?
2. Is the pattern user-specific?
3. Is there a repetitive cycle where the patterns repeat?

Anyway... sorry for the long post, I'll update the original post with some of these thoughts. Really appreciate you guys taking a look at participating in this!

 

On 12/6/2017 at 12:20 PM, balloongal247 said:

I always go to the left.  If they have enough people and are asking which choice you made at each step, then she could examine the statistics overall.  I prefer to always do the same pattern, because then anytime the prize is in that location, I get it.

 

On 12/6/2017 at 3:32 PM, jaydeed said:

I always do right. I get a prize every ten times, say?

Do you guys keep track of how often this occurs/repeats? It would be interesting to know! It would also be interesting to know what the Bright Flower patterns are for those days that you do and do not get the prize. If you feel like keeping track of this information and reporting back after, let's say, you get the prize twice, it would be great! If you also feel like you want to fill the form, please do as well! 

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[jaydeed]

Willl try to remember and let you know. It is interesting.

[GillyTook]

How much do you suppose the time will matter?  I cannot always access neopets at the same point in the day.  

[jaydeed]

I don't think it matters, but there's no way of knowing. I was always curious if an item you open, like a goodie bag, has a pre-set prize or if the act of opening triggers a random generator that then awards the prize, taking into account some prizes are rare and can't be awarded as often to keep them valuable. Guess Neo has its mysteries :-)

[feedmedimsum]

10 hours ago, GillyTook said:

How much do you suppose the time will matter?  I cannot always access neopets at the same point in the day.  

If you can't, that's totally fine! I was curious about the time because I saw in my Google Forms response sheet that two responses recorded between 10-11 AM (in my current time zone, so that's 7-8 AM NST) looked like they could have yielded the same pattern. There was a response after noon (so between 9-10 AM NST) that started off at the same path as the responses recorded at 7-8 AM NST but did not make it past the first click, so that's why I was curious to see if the pattern changes every hour or if it's just unique for individuals. 

 

8 hours ago, jaydeed said:

I don't think it matters, but there's no way of knowing. I was always curious if an item you open, like a goodie bag, has a pre-set prize or if the act of opening triggers a random generator that then awards the prize, taking into account some prizes are rare and can't be awarded as often to keep them valuable. Guess Neo has its mysteries :-)

That is interesting! I guess I always assumed that it was going to be pre-set but I have no idea. It's super easy to make it random though so I wouldn't be surprised if it was random. For example, when you get to the prize, it could be that the game is generating a random number between like, 0 and 10,000,000, and if the number generated matches a certain number, it could yield a prize. So for super rare items it could be that only 1 or 2 numbers correspond to that which makes it a very slim chance of winning -- but the chance exists nonetheless!

I'm really curious about Faerie Caverns because there are visual patterns with the game that change so I just feel (lol, not very factual here) that there could be something behind it. Compared to something like, idk, Test Your Strength, where it's the same set-up every day and you just randomly get a high score once (I did score 61 the other day! It was exciting because I literally never get more than like 6/100 on that game, haha), Faerie Caverns just seems like there's a secret there waiting to be uncovered... 

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[balloongal247]

8 hours ago, jaydeed said:

I don't think it matters, but there's no way of knowing. I was always curious if an item you open, like a goodie bag, has a pre-set prize or if the act of opening triggers a random generator that then awards the prize, taking into account some prizes are rare and can't be awarded as often to keep them valuable. Guess Neo has its mysteries :-)

They've answered that in the editorial.  It's Schrodinger's Aisha.  The act of opening just requests from the list of possible items and probability values, etc.

@feedmedimsum, since you are new here, you may want to go read the forum guidelines 

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[feedmedimsum]

Hey everyone! Just wanted to post a small update and share some things with you guys. 

1. First of all, thank you so much to everyone who has been responding to the Google Form! It's been very interesting to look at your responses!
2. Thanks to the mods for keeping me in check about forum rules. Didn't mean to double post and will be mindful of that in the future.

I wanted to share my own personal spreadsheet to show you guys some interesting patterns that may be applicable to you and some observations:

• It seems that the side with the brighter flowers doesn't change from day to day or from user to user, although I did see one person say their brighter flowers were on the Left for one day, but all of the other responses don't reflect that. I'm starting to think there is no pattern between the location of the flowers and how to navigate through the caverns. 
• I do not believe that visiting Faerie Caverns at a particular time of day makes a difference. I was very bad at keeping track of the times I visited Faerie Caverns from day to day. I'm going to leave off this possibility for the time being but may revisit this possibility in the future. 
• I believe there is a pattern but I do not know if it is applicable for every user. 
• I highly encourage you to keep track of your daily visits to Faerie Caverns! Feel free to use the same setup as mine if you would like. 

Here is the personal Excel sheet I have been keeping (I missed Thursday, which would have been valuable!). I intend to keep this up for at least another 2 weeks, and I want to see if my suspicions are correct by seeing how many days I can win the Faerie Caverns prize. Note I had added a new column (Pattern) to see if there is a relationship between the flower side and the choice, but I no longer believe that is the case. I will still be filling out this column, though. 

First Click: 

• I believe that the choice alternates every day. I never was able to get past this first click before I got serious about collecting data. I suspect that had I done the game on Thursday, the first click to get me to the second stage would have been left. Tomorrow when I do Faerie Caverns, you bet I'm going to choose Left! 

Second Click:

• Not sure what the pattern for this is. It is not a R-L alternating pattern like in the first click, because it is was, my answer on Weds should have led me to the third click but it was not correct.  There may be a longer string of repeating patterns. More info must be collected. 

Third Click:

• Definitely needs more information to be collected. I screwed up Saturday, though. I meant to check for the alternating pattern, but if the answer from Friday's third click should have been Left, then Saturday's third click should have been Right. Today when I chose Right for the third click, I was accidentally basing it off of my wrong choice for Saturday by picking the opposite way. So that one was kind of lucky, but I did gain information. :) 

If you guys have come across anything interesting, please feel free to share! 

Hope you guys all had a good weekend!