My Thoughts about RNG Manipulation.

"

syrioforel wrote:

"

nGio wrote:

When I found my Soul Taker in Nemesis there were 0 being sold. 6 hours later there were 7. It happens like this with EVERY unique, and it's easy to see in small leagues. Etup talks about this happening constantly. You can cover your eyes and pretend that this isn't happening or try and deflect it with "tin foil" rhetoric, but you're talking about near statistical impossibilities occurring CONSTANTLY.

When Diablo Clones started spawning Blizzard said that they were spawned completely random using a RNG, and that players could have no effect in when and where they spawned. When people first started realizing that they in fact spawned on specific servers, the tin foil hat guys came out with their "nuh uh dude, that's not possible!". Those guys were nowhere to be found once it was common fact, but sometimes they surface in other games decades later, still trying to "be right" about RNG where they have failed in the past.

Say what you will, but companies lied about RNG even before games were based solely on economies. Games like PoE and D3 are basically a lot of economy simulator with a splash of hack n slash, so they have a lot more to gain by having some type of control over their game. You kind of have to look at games like this with an open mind, and not be so naive as to think that a game is centered around YOU. It makes us feel better at night thinking we are all getting a fair shake, and the next GG item is right around the corner, but it is just wishful thinking at it's best.

Really, if I saw good evidence written down somewhere that something was up, I would believe it. I'm perfectly willing to accept something is wrong if it can be proven with any reasonable degree of certainty.

Look at it from an outsider's perspective: the anecdotes that have been posted saying the RNG is broken aren't exactly compelling.

... but scattered anecdotes don't count. I'm not going to believe something based on "well etup says so" and "it happens all the time." And the truth is that RNG just does produce weird streaks and coincidences. I've had 3 exalts drop and they were all in act1 merciless. The first two of those happened within an hour of each other. Does that mean my RNG is skewed? On its own, no. Does it really look skewed? Hell yeah.

I also had a Lioneye's Glare drop early in my mapping cycle in Anarchy after making a joke to a friend about how it would be funny to get a Lioneye's Glare after getting some accuracy on my gloves.

I also had like 8 cast when damage takens drop before it got nerfed, and none sense. I also had two Berek's pass (or whichever the common one is) rings drop within an hour, and never since.

Things that have to be answered:

* Do these coincidences happen (yes)
* Do they happen with a proper RNG? (also yes; requires a model to compute against though)
* Do they happen more frequently in PoE than with a proper RNG (?)

And, yeah, those are really hard questions to answer properly.

Short story: You very well might be right, but it looks like quackery as it has been stated so far.

I've also managed to convince myself that physical D6's were broken because they'd always roll the same number over and over again (anyone ever play Settlers of Catan?). Except, of course, when I went and tested the things, they rolled typical RNG behavior. The human perception of random does not coincide with actual randomness.

Stupid toy example: Collisions happen a lot more than you might expect. If a D6 100 times, on average the most frequently rolled number will have shown up around 22 times, while the least frequently rolled # shows up only around 12 times (numbers determined by averaging over 100 such trials). That's enough of a discrepancy to perceive that the die might be weighted.

"

elesede wrote:

But the fact that ppl who, like me, an all time defender of GGG and their game, end up thinking something is wrong when in fact is willing to think the opposite should, atleast , retrieve some attention from the ppl in charge of this.

"

nGio wrote:

I have over 3k hours played, and I am just sharing my experiences. I too am a firm believer in proof and evidence, and I am not trying to convince you based on my experiences. While I do believe in random miracles happening on a daily basis, my points were showing near statistical impossibilities occurring constantly. Going from 0 Soul Takers to 7 in 6 hours. 2 Taryn's to 11 in 2 hours, etc, etc.

Like I said, using xyz in a small league Nemesis I can see clearly what is happening. The odds of something like this happening are possible, but not constantly, and not in such a small game. If this happened once or twice, I would chalk it up to "hah wow that's crazy man, 1 in a million". When we are talking about lottery items constantly dropping in clumps, after days and weeks of nothing, compounded with a year of seeing this pattern I have to question it. I am a pretty logical guy, and from what I've seen and experienced there is absolutely zero doubt in my mind that GGG can and has controlled to drop rates to some extent.

"

syrioforel wrote:

"

nGio wrote:

I have over 3k hours played, and I am just sharing my experiences. I too am a firm believer in proof and evidence, and I am not trying to convince you based on my experiences. While I do believe in random miracles happening on a daily basis, my points were showing near statistical impossibilities occurring constantly. Going from 0 Soul Takers to 7 in 6 hours. 2 Taryn's to 11 in 2 hours, etc, etc.

Like I said, using xyz in a small league Nemesis I can see clearly what is happening. The odds of something like this happening are possible, but not constantly, and not in such a small game. If this happened once or twice, I would chalk it up to "hah wow that's crazy man, 1 in a million". When we are talking about lottery items constantly dropping in clumps, after days and weeks of nothing, compounded with a year of seeing this pattern I have to question it. I am a pretty logical guy, and from what I've seen and experienced there is absolutely zero doubt in my mind that GGG can and has controlled to drop rates to some extent.

There's nothing wrong with sharing your experience on the matter.

Why not entertain the thought that uniques drop in clumps for a moment?

Suppose each player gets a separate RNG allocated to them when they log in. Suppose furthermore that the RNG is initialized based on some time-based seed, and by an oversight or bug large groups of players get the same seed. (Maybe the seed isn't computed using any data specific to the player. Some nonsense. Who cares? Let's just say it happens for now)

Then, you'd expect that large groups of players would be getting similar drops at the same time, relatively frequently. Basically, whenever I get a Soul Taker so do 15 other lucky fools.

Then, this would explain the behavior that you just described without anything sinister going on, right? It would just be an error on GGG's part, resulting from an (incredibly) naive way of computing drops. Maybe their drop system is a bit naive, then. Who knows?

(This, by the way, is one kind of bug that I might believe would happen, but I would hope GGG has better coding chops than this.)

"

evilcloud5 wrote:

Don't troll please.

Spoiler

desync

"

syrioforel wrote:

"

nGio wrote:

I have over 3k hours played, and I am just sharing my experiences. I too am a firm believer in proof and evidence, and I am not trying to convince you based on my experiences. While I do believe in random miracles happening on a daily basis, my points were showing near statistical impossibilities occurring constantly. Going from 0 Soul Takers to 7 in 6 hours. 2 Taryn's to 11 in 2 hours, etc, etc.

Like I said, using xyz in a small league Nemesis I can see clearly what is happening. The odds of something like this happening are possible, but not constantly, and not in such a small game. If this happened once or twice, I would chalk it up to "hah wow that's crazy man, 1 in a million". When we are talking about lottery items constantly dropping in clumps, after days and weeks of nothing, compounded with a year of seeing this pattern I have to question it. I am a pretty logical guy, and from what I've seen and experienced there is absolutely zero doubt in my mind that GGG can and has controlled to drop rates to some extent.

There's nothing wrong with sharing your experience on the matter.

Why not entertain the thought that uniques drop in clumps for a moment?

Suppose each player gets a separate RNG allocated to them when they log in. Suppose furthermore that the RNG is initialized based on some time-based seed, and by an oversight or bug large groups of players get the same seed. (Maybe the seed isn't computed using any data specific to the player. Some nonsense. Who cares? Let's just say it happens for now)

Then, you'd expect that large groups of players would be getting similar drops at the same time, relatively frequently. Basically, whenever I get a Soul Taker so do 15 other lucky fools.

Then, this would explain the behavior that you just described without anything sinister going on, right? It would just be an error on GGG's part, resulting from an (incredibly) naive way of computing drops. Maybe their drop system is a bit naive, then. Who knows?

(This, by the way, is one kind of bug that I might believe would happen, but I would hope GGG has better coding chops than this.)

"

nGio wrote:

This is one of the theories that I have had as well. While yes, GGG could be actually manually controlling drops, I would hope that this is more the case. Looking at it as a flawed drop system, which would be on par with game design flaws that have given us desync would be a more logical answer.

"

Thank you for being an intelligent human being, and at least taking my shared experiences as something that could actually be possible, as opposed to foaming at the mouth and attacking as so many forumers do. You are indeed a rare breed.