How "honest" do you feel the RNG in POE actually is?

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crunkatog wrote:

^

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crunkatog wrote:

They do use analytics to detect bots, most games do, to get a better idea of how many of their players are actually warm bodies in chairs as opposed to scripts.

Some do automate throttling. When 3.7 Legion content went to Standard, GGG specifically and explicitly said that Timeless COnflict instances would be subjected to diminishing returns: less loot after the first wave of mobs.

This shows that a) It's entirely within the company's capacity (and rights) to manipulate drop tables on the fly, per-instance, per-player, etc.

and b) that at least in this case, they are willing to be aboveboard and open about it.

So why does GGG care?

Two things bots do that warm bodies don't:

a) their efficiency remains constant over hours to days of runtime
b) they use macros to mimic player actions that are sometimes quite sophisticated, but are generally universally better than a player using the actions themselves.

Two things players do that bots don't:

a) They purchase mtx
b) They stream content and advertise for GGG for free.

So yes, it's conceivably within GGG's capacity, rights, and best interests to have SOME monitoring and control of drop tables that is automatic, silent, and granular. Not to punish cheapskates or reward whales, but to keep botting down to a dull roar.

There's no one pattern that identifies a character or account as "yep that's 100% a bot" so simply banning whom they think mIGHT be bots, won't work. But hosing a legit player who is target farming div cards, for instance, has very little negative repercussions for GGG, because of plausible deniability ('your luck sucked, take a day off and come back and try again') and the community's general intolerance of tinfoil-hat theory and victim whining.

Also, something to remember. If you play obsessively like a bot, and target farm without taking a piss break or whatever, then you probably look like a bot and you'll get pinched off at the watering hole.

Get up, go outside, get some fresh air, switch characters, do some other activity in PoE, whatever. Let the analytics hall monitors know you're a living, breathing, fatigable, error-prone, human. This may reset your "bad juju" and you'll come back to a blank slate of RNG. (NO guarantees - who knows how any company's particular stop-loss throttle algorithm works.)