Must be fixed

You make some very interesting (baseless) assumptions @kahree.

  1. I did not see where anyone addressed the fact that computer-generated RNG do not stack, yet I saw references to the overall outcome that clearly indicated stacking of the odds over successive pulls. I commented on that, which is what forums are all about. Clearly you don’t like or believe what @tkrasky said and just as clearly you wish to dismiss and/or discredit what s/he said.

  2. It does appear that you are alone in not understanding what I added to the topic. I’m sorry you aren’t getting it.

  3. Your assumption that my “gentleman pride” has in any way entered this is, well, baseless and quite wrong. Pride has absolutely nothing to do with a person not wanting to engage with someone who chooses to bypass civility.

  4. Refer to point No. 2 in that you seem to not understand where others do.

Your displayed attitude is neither civil nor is it productive; it is plainly combative. Obviously the moderator @Rook felt the same way. I have no desire to engage with anyone who feels the need to behave that way.

Please feel free to continue tossing baseless accusations around about me. I will feel just as free to ignore them and not give you the dignity of any sort of response from here on out.

To all in this thread, my apologies for engaging like this, and once again I thank you all who are dignified enough to behave well in forums.

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Thank you for your civil engagement on this point, @ElvenArcher. I think there’s a lot of confusion of your word “stacking”. This is not a term I’ve encountered in my doctoral studies in statistics. Could you please explain what you mean by it?

What I and, I think, others are calculating are odds of repeated runs with a “fair odds”. You flip a fair coin once, 50/50 odds. Flip it again, 50/50 odds. But what are the odds of getting tails both times? 0,5^2 or 25%. Three tails in a row? 0.5^3=12.5%. And so on. I haven’t read anyone’s post to suggest that the odds are not independent draws, though, only responding to people who seem to believe that, because they made 20 draws into a particular statistical distribution, a certain thing should have happened.

Are we just talking past each other, or is there something I’m not understanding about your point?

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I’m with @Kerridoc here, @ElvenArcher, and frankly with @kahree too, even if the latter’s bluntness offends you. I don’t think you have explained your stacking point very well at all, and frankly your last post hasn’t clarified things.

Huh? What references? Did you approve or disapprove? What point exactly are you trying to make, when it comes to stacking? Are you suggesting that in calculating the chances of pulls, we ought to stack? That would just be wrong, so you must be suggesting something else…

I’ve been left to assume that one of @Little_Infinity’s proffered explanations of your meaning is correct: that you are suggesting that stacking the odds would be a good thing for the devs to do, as a way of mitigating long runs of luck. This has not been at all clear from any of your posts.

If @Little_Infinity’s explanation is correct then I think we’d all benefit from you confirming it. If it’s not correct, then maybe you could explain what you were actually trying to say.

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As an aside: if players became guaranteed an outcome after enough tries, this game would really be P2W.

One of the hallmarks that I see over and over is that people are thrilled this game isn’t particularly P2W: that goes away the moment after any proposal that increases chances on successive rolls goes into play.

As of today there are people who get HOTM’s on free tokens (2 people in my alliance no less) and others that haven’t gotten Zeline in 60 rolls so far, and some have done more than that for Nat and others in the past.

I’m not saying SG is right in their implementation, but it’d effectively destroy what F2P gameplay there is here. That might be able to be ameliorated but I’m not entirely certain how.

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@Kerridoc, @Brobb,

Now that I’ve written and reviewed this… wow, it’s long. Grab your favorite drink and comfy chair before diving in.

No, “stacking” is not a classical term in statistics! LOL

I’ve run enterprise class UNIX systems professionally for 21 years and we have our own lingo. As example, an asterisk is commonly called a “splat” in my industry/country/part of the world because it resembles a bug that’s been smashed… i.e. gone splat. An exclamation point is a “bang”, a question mark is a “huh”… I’ll bore you no more with our terms! :slight_smile:
My apologies for spawning confusion: I guess I expected “stack(ing)” was a term others would figure out… maybe my industry’s slang is less globally understandable than I thought.

The easiest way to describe stacking as I’m using it, though this example is actually probability rather than true random, is the classic panel with evenly spaced pegs and a base with cups to catch the balls that are fed in through the top. Most will have seen this and how it yields a bell shape of filled cups over time. The key there is “over time.” 10 balls falling down to the cups will not produce stacking, whereas 1000 will.
Another is the coin flipping @Kerridoc mentioned. If we accept all the inconsistencies with mechanical flipping done by a human (thumbs, muscles, strength, physical and mental fatigue, human err, etc.), the numbers @Kerridoc gave are correct. Here too you don’t get true random output with 10 flips, but you do with many, many more.
Note that a mechanical device and environment can be constructed which will almost completely obliterate random from a coin flip and thus get consistent results.

Computers do not use mechanical methods of RNG, they use time (most typically) and complex algorithms that can only simulate random. To be absolutely blunt: random, generated from a computer of any sort is not actually random, it is merely complex enough to create the appearance of random.

On a UNIX system, there are 2 virtual devices required for RNG. If something goes wonky with one or both, the results are similarly wonky or even produce nothing. If those devices are destroyed and recreated with each RNG you actually get much more predictable results. The code that drives the RNG is also a factor in achieving the appearance of random, and there are more and less complex versions out there that produce better or worse randomization.

Android and iOS devices both run a version of UNIX, and though I can’t guarantee it because I don’t know those operating systems, I strongly suspect they both have the random and urandom virtual devices. Just how good is the RNG code in your device? In mine? Does the RNG happen on your phone or on the servers? How good is the RNG on the servers if that is where the magic happens (which is the most likely scenario)? Plain and simple, the poorer the code, the less random the output. The more powerful the operating system and hardware, the better the RNG code can be, with the converse also being true.

Finally, and most important to this discussion is that since a computerized RNG is not truly random, if each iteration of the RNG is 100% independent of all others, i.e. no “knowledge” of previous results, it has a much higher chance of returning recurrent results than a mechanical system. The random and urandom devices approach true random only with sufficient input. (cryptographic generators flood the virtual devices in order to create strings highly indecipherable without a key). It is extremely unlikely E&P does a similar flooding because it is more processor intensive than a single feed. There are what, thousands of concurrent users, and so thousands of calls to the code if it is done on the servers rather than on your mobile device. The developers must keep a game moving without bogging it down and so will likely only initiate one call to the RNG to return a result. E&P is not secure cryptography, it’s a game, so it doesn’t require that level of randomization.

Stacking, as I’m using the term, is simply the pattern of results that occur over many, many iterations of a randomizing system. A single run produces no stacking. 10 single runs produce no stacking.

I can professionally state that what @tkrasky described is indeed possible. It has a relatively low probability, but is fully possible if I’m right about the independent nature of the RNG used by E&P. Argue if you want, but I have 2 decades of experience and many, many conversations with the insanely brilliant minds at IBM to back it up.

Where you quoted me @Brobb, I was responding to @kahree saying no one had brought the concept of stacking in. I was trying to say that in this topic I saw people referencing stacking - the pattern returned from multiple runs of the RNG.

My preference, though clearly not in sync with @Brobb (which is totally OK), is to have some level of stacking to prevent the wild swings of output as described by @tkrasky. @Brobb doesn’t agree, but hey, let’s have a beer and talk our opinions until we’re absolutely positive neither of us can convince the other to change. :slight_smile:

And, @Brobb, with my background it is quite literally not possible to offend me. It simply can’t happen. I do, however, insist on civility for myself and I will not immerse myself in anything but. I’ve seen far, far too many places where it is absent and if left unchecked the result is always chaos and unmitigated anger. I’ll stick with civility.

Peace out y’all!

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Don’t entirely agree. It depends on what category of item you’re guaranteeing outcome for. If it’s gem pulls, then absolutely.
If it’s applied properly for ascension items, however, it would actually benefit time spent playing more than amount spent. This, I think is a good idea.

Let’s say you gently increase odd of rare ascension items given as Titan and Rare Quest rewards as the player’s ‘no rare reward’ streak lengthens, say. These types of outcomes cannot be influenced by spend. The more you play and more you are involved in defeating these, the higher your chances then become of getting those rare items over time if you go through a long ‘dry’ spell. (When you get your rare item, your ‘loss streak’ resets and you’re back to no boost to your odds.) It rewards more gameplay. This isn’t a bad thing, right?

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Thanks for taking the time to set down your reply. I think we’re clear now that @Little_Infinity had it right: you both think a mechanism for mitigating long runs of bad luck (and good luck?) would be worthwhile.

I think this is a terrible idea, but it’s not insane, and given that we all spend part of our day playing a particular mobile game and another part posting about it on a forum, it’s safe to bet that we have more in common than we do differences.

On the subject of random numbers, although I have never worked in a UNIX environment I have had some exposure to the vicissitudes of PRNGs. It’s not impossible that SG is using some 20th century technology, but it is unlikely that is responsible for what @tkrasky described. The first (and worst) RNG generation tool I learned was the Middle Square Method. (Did I just show my age?) It’s fatally flawed, worse than anything I’ve seen actually used for decades, but would work just fine for summonsing purposes.

So is what @tkrasky described “possible”, as you say? Yes, even with a ‘true’ RNG. How likely is it? It is incredibly unlikely, even with the worst possible RNG. In fact, to make the scenario believable (from the same number of attempts brother Alex draws zero 5* heroes, brother Brian draws 20) problems of serial correlation would have to be so pronounced that the ‘RNG’ in use would have to be something invented by the office intern, or possibly the office cleaner. Yes, it’s possible. But not very.

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 The  random() function 
 uses a nonlinear additive 
 feedback random number
 generator employing a 
 default table of size 31 
 long integers to  return
 successive  pseudo-
 random numbers in the 
 range from 0 to 
 RAND_MAX.  The period 
 of this random number 
 generator  is  very  
 large, approximately 
 16 * ((2^31) - 1).

The above is what the manpage for random says on a Linux system (I don’t know what “nonlinear additive feedback random number generator” is, but I though you might be interested). The underlying implementation is using either that, something very similar to that implemented in another programming language, or urandom.

I reject the the implication that the PRNGs of late 20 century were in any way unfit for games’ randomness needs!

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@Kahree May I edit your post so the whole quote shows? :slight_smile:

@Rook sure. It shows ok on desktop, no idea about mobile.

Ah, mobile cuts off most of it. With your kind permission, I will edit so mobile folks can read. :slight_smile:

NA few thoughts.

First, SG has consulted with some serious mathematicians about the RNG, so while it surely has flaws it is likely at least as good as any RNG you’d find in similar low-security settings.

Second, it’s not clear whether the random rolls are on the server or client, or some combination. The tile flow is clearly client side (I’ve lost internet but could finish a board); but the long check-back when getting loot, visions an Summons suggest that it’s a server-side roll. I expect the server RNG to be better than the ckients’.

Finally, we’re not seeing consecutive rolls from the RNG when people complain about bad luck. Particularly if the summons are server-side, a lot of other players took RNG output between one 10x pull and another. So I think bad luck cannot be attributed to a flawed RNG.

@Revelate I certainly wasn’t advocating odds rising to 100%, but I do think it useful to tweak the odds slightly. Those on light budgets should have some prospect of returns.

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Spending in this game suffers from severe diminishing returns.

With very few exceptions people reach 95% hero complete and then call it quits on spending… and they’re still not beating F2P players on titans and perhaps not in wars either.

Just not seeing the rationale for tweaking as it’s just going to skew it more in favor of the spenders (and I am admittedly one of them).

There are three elements to success in game play: equipment, luck, and skill. Luck is what it will be. Equipment (hero teams) can be obtained by a combination of work, luck and money. Skill cannot be bought. Watching my son play this game much better than me with weaker teams highlights this unbridgeable gap.

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It’s the second time in this thread when I’m not sure if you meant what you wrote or the opposite of it. You forgot a ‘not’ above?

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Oops, sorry, yes, NOT. Typing on my iPad is unreliable. Fixed in the original.

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Rook, did u see what happened with LOOT BOXES and micropayment in anothers games And the política acción of the some countris nos?
You have some benefit being a moderador ? becouse u play this Game but all Who post here inthe forum want alot of answer of SGG becouse its official forum.
Do you think alberich And aress its non OP?? becouse last link 7dd which did u passme its seys that they are ;).a+

fore me shuld be : Who buy gems buy lucky …
and that is the problema why Who spend real money . not all but if spenders dont have what they wont Will be not spend more . this is a world debating right now.

I’m not sure I follow you. I’m a fellow player who volunteers time here. What benefit are you talking about? :wink:

I didn’t understand the bit about political action and loot boxes.

I think Alberich and Ares are along a spectrum: some will always be at the top, and some will be at the bottom. Plenty of players have speculated on the Forum who goes where.

I think both spenders and freeplayers have a chance at high level cards. This semi-level playing field is one of the reasons I love this game.

Hope this answered your questions. :slight_smile:

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You’re confusing “Over powered” with “Best in their color/role”.

Ares and Alby are both very strong. But so is Hel. And so is Athena. And so is Zeline. So is Panther. So is Guinevere. So is Lianna. So is Joon. The list goes on.

But they arent over powered.

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