AsianKid
Youngster
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- Aug 14, 2015
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Hot-N-Cold [EP. 2]: Scorn The Resilient Skorupis
How We Decide Between a Rock and a Hard Exoskeleton
Introduction:
Last time we left off discussing shiny chances and the illusory belief that they were rigged - at least for me. Now, I will be taking you through the recently concluded Skorupi Swarm that took place from May 13 to May 17. While the swarm came with mostly positive reactions, there were a few bumps in the volcanic caves of Cinnabar that left unprepared trainers tumbling over and grasping for another Ultra Ball.
But instead of throwing out a bunch of statistical hoopla that's confusing to interpret, I decided to tell the Skorupian Tale through a series of pictures. In order to do so, I used Tableau, a data visualization software, to help bring my Excel data points to life.
Data and Visuals
A few things to note when looking at the day-to-day breakdown. The Onix spawn was not fixed until the middle of Day 2, so the overall encounter % is a bit lower than what it actually should be. I also caught only 4 shinies (2 Gravelers and 2 Machokes) without Membership, which is quite fortunate on my end. With 48 hours of hunting, I averaged a little under 270 encounters per hour which equates to ~13.36 seconds per encounter.
These visuals focus more on the magnitude of the encounters. The treemap, heat map, and highlight table do not display Tier 1 encounters (Graveler and Machoke) as it messes with the scaling and, in general, would not be helpful to include. Tier 1s made up nearly 98% of the total encounters and are the reason the standard bar graph has a logarithmic scale; otherwise, the large values simply skew the graph.
Alright, so I did my best to copy the format that Lunatic/ArcticSun showed when releasing the spawn details for the NorthBell Event. I made the visual in Excel and used my best judgment to determine where each Pokémon lies on the scale. Oddly enough, Golem - despite being Tier 3 - seemed to have encounter rates similar to a Tier 2+. Skorupi had a Tier 3+ average time between encounters until Day 5 numbers hit, where I saw 3,751 encounters in 12 hours with no stinger in sight. Lastly, Magmar was doing everything in its power to avoid crossing paths with me. I only found one throughout the entire swarm, so my data makes it seem like Magmar is a Tier 5+.
The visuals above display how catch rates affected the costs related to each Skorupi. I baked into the model a standard Ultra Ball cost for simplicity's sake. As you can see, the costs associated with the "Battle Armor" Skorupis from Day 1 to part of Day 3 led to immense costs relative to the "Sniper" Skorupis following the adjustment. Note: If it looks blurry, click on the picture.
Conclusion
Personally, I didn't mind the extra difficulty and challenge that came with the initial Skorupis, but it did have the unfortunate effect of hurting the experiences of newer, less-affluent trainers. Though a case for complacency and lack of preparation can be made since that probably played a factor as well. It can be hard to balance the fun that comes with facing adversity and the desire for inclusiveness. Hard to appeal to all walks of PWO life, and can feel like a lose-lose situation when choosing the middle road. I like when things get tough because it forces me to think creatively about solutions and it gives me great satisfaction to win out, despite the odds. I've stuck around PWO for a reason, and there is no catch rate too low nor cost too high that I wouldn't endure seeking that feeling of satisfaction.
TL;DR: Git gud or get out > : D
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