Crystal Outcomes Aren't Random - Here's Why
MATH WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS MATHY STUFF
Earlier this week I opened three four star crystals (at different times during the same day) and got Hyperion, Howard the Duck, and Howard the Duck. I found myself asking: What are the odds? Answer: very, very low.
In the past year Seatin has opened many five star featured crystals, and from almost all of them, gotten the featured. What are the odds of this happening? Very, very low.
But why? Kabam can't manipulate crystal outcomes. They have stated they don't in the past, so if they did do it, they would be committing fraud, which is pretty unlikely. So what's the deal? Why do these crystals, which are supposed to be random, seem so... so unrandom? The answer: Nothing is random.
If you flip a coin, it seems like it's random - a 50-50 shot of getting heads or tails. But if you knew enough about the coin's aerodynamics and the person flipping the coin and the atmospheric pressure and density you could, in theory, consistently predict whether the coin was going to land heads up or tails up. A coin flip isn't random - it only appears to be. In fact nothing is random at all. A lot of things seem random but everything could, at least in principle, be predicted with enough data.
For this reason, it is impossible that the crystal outcomes are random.
In statistics, when multiple similar things happen close to each other, those things are said to have recurred. Me pulling two Howards from three crystals? Howard the Duck recurred in the crystals. When something is random, or approaching random, things recur relatively often - but based on the number of bizarrely improbable recursive sequences occurring in the MCOC community, we can surmise that outcomes are recurring too often. This can be attributed to the inherent problems with so-called "random number generators".
If you Google "Random number generator" a handy little google plugin will pop up which enables you to set a minimum value and a maximum value, then generate a random number between those values. This generator works like most random number generators: by measuring atmospheric pressure. As covered before, nothing is every really random, but atmospheric pressure is pretty dang close because thousands of factors contribute to it: Humidity, temperature, altitude, people breathing, things moving, sound, and so forth. So what a typical random number generator will do is measure, to the smallest level possible, the atmospheric pressure, which will then be converted into a number within a range.
I'm not sure whether this happens server-side or client-side; it's possible that my phone contains a tiny atmospheric-pressure-measurer but if it does I don't know about it. But regardless, this could explain some recursive sequences. I pulled two Howards because I was alone in the same room both times; Seating gets all those five star featured champions becuase the pressure in his office is fairly constant.
Of course, I'm not saying that crystal outcomes are determined by atmospheric pressure sensors. But it is certain that Kabam's crystal outcome determining algorithm probably refers to something like atmospheric pressure - i.e., time of day, location, etc., to determine crystal outcomes, because it they tried to write a random number generator they would basically be doing the impossible. But that does mean one thing: Crystal outcomes can (probably) be replicated. If your friend pulls a 5* star-lord, maybe try opening your crystals in his house next time.
So what do you think: Was I spot on? Am I missing something? Am I a complete idiot who knows nothing about computers or statistics? Did anyone even read this super long post?
