**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.
Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.
Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.
Pulling the same champion over and over again
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Goodnight.
I don't just think the drops are random. I know they are random to within certain measurable limits. Once those measurable limits exceeded the limits of casual observation by two orders of magnitude, I stopped expending my time on something that would only convince people who would already be convinced by the data. What I've learned from studying randomness in games for quite a while is more data analysis doesn't convince more people. Beyond a critical threshold, more data analysis just compels people to hold onto their intuitive guesses even harder in opposition.
Some people say you would never know if the drops were broken unless you see the code. I know from experience that's not true. The people who think the drops are broken would not be convinced by the code. They would assert bugs could still exist outside the code, and in fact when all possible sources of software bugs are eliminated they will revert to claiming that the fundamental algorithms behind the random number generators cannot be "proven" to actually be random. Which is technically true, since randomness has no strict mathematical definition. You can't prove anything is "truly random" because there's no such thing as truly random: that phrase has no testable definition.
What would convince you otherwise?
Dr. Zola
The weird thing (weird to me anyway) about most claims about non-random drops is that they have to resort to stating that any results that don't match the theory are expected because the drops are still random enough that many situations won't match the theory. But then you can say anything about the drops. They are non-random except when they are.
I mention over-correlation. That's the case where one drop is more likely to be X than Y given that the prior drop (or some other past condition) is known. This is difficult to disprove because it requires a lot of data to reduce the margin for error, it is difficult to analyze from streamed openings (because when people open lots of crystals they tend to open them in batches of ten which blurs the result), and it is extremely time consuming to test alone. And every time I've mustered the energy to test it, the results always end up right on the margin of being just inside the margin of likelihood. If someone told me there was a bug somewhere, I would bet it was here, but I just can't prove it.
The actual specific drop is generated by the game servers when you decide to open the crystal. If you pop the crystal the drop is generated at that moment. If you choose to spin the crystal the drop is generated shortly after you put the crystal into the spinner. At that point whether you tap to stop or spin out the drop is already determined and won't change, not even if you force close the game.
There's two ways to tell that your drop is already generated even while the crystal is spinning. The first is that alliance mates can actually see what you got while your crystal is spinning because your drop shows up in alliance chat. The second is that if your drop is a first time drop of a champion of any rank for your roster the little "1" will show up on your profile to designate you have a new profile pic. So it's a done deal before the crystal actually stops: the visual animation is just generated to match the actual drop.
Dr. Zola
However, if I then post my openings and they are in no way remotely unusual, it is entirely fair to question that statement even though it is an "exaggeration." It was an exaggeration but it was intended to imply a general idea that isn't generally agreed to be true.
When someone says something is mathematically impossible on the forums, most of the time they are attempting to imply that something is so rare that seeing it is noteworthy and possibly suggests the game is not as random as the developers imply. When those two ideas aren't actually true, it is entirely fair to attack the original characterization of impossibility.
If I say that a champion as a 10% chance to crit, and the tohit roll is generated by PRNG, then the tohit roll is random, but the chance to crit isn't completely random: there's a 10% chance you crit and a 90% chance you don't crit, so the sequence of crits and non-crits itself wouldn't be considered random. Usually, in colloquial speech, when we say in this situation the chance to crit is random, we mean the roll is random, not the result.
So a crystal that has a 5% chance for 4* and 95% chance for 3* or 2* is obviously not random, since we're specifying in what way the results are not random. When we say the crystal is random, we mean the system generates random numbers and the results are statistically consistent with the result distribution.
I wouldn't ordinarily say that something is or is not "reliably random" because that has odd connotations. But if there was a provable statistical skew other than the explicitly stated ones, as mentioned above, I would instead say that the (colloquial) statement that the system generates every champion randomly outside of the obviously stated odds breakdown was false. Or more directly, that Kabam was either lying about the drop system or was blind to an obvious bug.
The magnitude of the "steering" isn't really relevant, except insofar as the smaller it is, the more difficult it would be to prove, to the point where very small steers would be impossible to prove with the information we have. But such a steer would also be illogical to deliberately put in the game, because by definition no one could ever be affected by it in a way anyone would notice.
Like someone else above I’ve pulled Nightcrawler three out of the last five 5* crystals.
The fact that it took a lot of discussion to answer my question is helpful. That suggests to me there may be a bit of wiggle room around “randomness.”
I think most players assume random means things are the same, equivalent “random,” across all facets of the game, at all times and for all players unless explicitly stated otherwise. That’s layman’s terminology, but deviations that aren’t explicitly disclosed would probably mean something different to many players.
Dr. Zola