A Note from Kander

@Feldon You are correct. Random in a computer is not random. Its possible for it to appear to be random, but such a claim, by my university professor in Computer Science, is nonsense.

A large enough ( such and such algorithm ) is possible to get a large enough spread of numbers, but its not random. The results will eventually show the same sequence of numbers.

There was an algorithm publish in Dr. Dobb's Journal about 1987/88, a serious magazine for programmers, that detailed such a set of pseudocode. We tried to implement such in Vax Pascal on a Dec Vax 11/730. The code didn't create the results we got by stepping through the pseudocode with several numbers over a period of 4 hours.

It would give the greatest amount of variance computer possible, but it still wasn't random. It would just appear to be random. Then you would see the same sequence of numbers.

One way around this is to have selection code.

If in x number of iterations, an expected result has not occured, it will occur under some criteria. One possible scenario, going by my reading of this thread, say as an example, after 100 results where one or two of those should be the ultra-rare, and it isn't, the next iteration will result in the ultra-rare.

Etcetera. Etcetera, etcetera, ( as a certain actor said in a movie named 'The King and I'.

Anyway. Better results can be added to code; however, of course, I have no clue how the calculations are done in any MMO.

Interesting. So the short story version is: computer generated random numbers are not actually purely random numbers. Which means there is a bias, and that bias might include streaking.

Thanks for clarification on that. I learned something cool. Yay

How does a Human do something "randomly"? Let's roll 2 dice:

• Muscles firing to rotate the hand and release the dice. Affected by electrical impulses, biological factors, skin regrowth, the fine ridges of fingerprints subtly affecting the held position, blood flow and heart beat, etc.
• Body position at time of throwing the dice, in relation to gravity, affected by hundreds of variables including what you ate that day, muscle tension, people around you, relative comfort, worn clothing, and hundreds of other variables.

Now imagine an Android rolls 2 dice:

• Body and hand position is preprogrammed to be exactly the same every time.
• Body and hand movements are preprogrammed to be exactly the same every time.
• Basically the only variables are outside influences like wind.

Computers have to have lots of entropy added to them to create something random, usually by reading things from the outside, like the current time/day, weather conditions, temperature, and then muxing all these together with mathematical formulas to try to minimize repetition.

I suppose this is at least partially related: One of my replies to the "The RNG and you…" thread.

I certainly don't claim to offer any insights (and my reply doesn't prove or disprove anything) but you can see the results of my 1,000 /random rolls in the linked reply.

I provide the numbers there if anyone wants to copy/paste or do whatever with the values. I didn't do any real analysis, but it does have a pretty graph!

It was just an interesting experiment.

Cheers,
Oradim

Yuppers. I'd never given a rng much thought because outside of games like this I don't personally utilize them. But Geroblue's explanation led me to ask the question "how does a computer generate a random event?", where upon I realized that it can't. With some elegant math, it can approximate or simulate one, but it cannot behave randomly.

This of course leads to all kinds of interesting questions about how these things are engineered and utilized in games like eq2.

Edit and P.S.

A little digging on the topic. Appears that currently, the closest we can get to having a computer produce close to pure random events is to map values to an actual random process from nature. That's a cool approach, but it still leaves plenty of room little data uglies to creep in.

If there were any malicious RNG code from Daybreak, you would also see similar mechanics on EQ1 but you don't.

I have literally bought the best tradable weapons (for SK/PAL 2HS, MNK/BST 2HB, RNG Bow TBL raid) on EQ1 from the past week because of how abundant the chase items are.

Another possibility that is not talked about here is population on EQ2 vs EQ1. Thousands of people are grinding on EQ1 but perhaps a fraction of that is doing so in EQ2 - leading to RNG being mismatched with pop - so I would agree with an adjustment (increase in rare loot even though drops will likely catch up in a few months).

You don't have the itemization for it in EQ2. There's a necklace with 195 resolve and a generic weapon with the same. Other than that you have red adorns in solo instances and outdoor named, I believe. None of these are tradeable either, hell the 195 pieces, at least the weapon, aren't even heirloom. Everything else in those boxes is sub-par from what you get doing the Sig line and/or a few random pieces from Solo/Heroic instances.

I spent around 5.25 million status, 2600 status currency, and 13k plat to get 29 rewards of 99% infusers or muted gear and the 195 resolve weapon. That's not including all the crates from overland POI quests, dropped quests, PQs, and whatever else offers those rewards. The weapon is nice but I would have given it to my Swashy except it's no-trade. Those numbers aren't bad but I have fairly decent "luck" with the RNG in EQ2.

That supposes that the RNG code was lifted from EQ1 when they designed EQ2, which we don't know since there's no visibility on the RNG.

I'm not sure how buying items on EQ1 relates to the RNG and itemization for this game (EQ2), but thanks for giving your blessing to the devs to increase drop rates.

Interesting that you mentioned this as i have somewhat noticed the following. When returning to EQ2 in 2015 it was always the case that the same player/accounts seemed to have more luck with RNG than other.
When they were items gated behind RNG than the same persons/accounts would not just get one but a couple and in the beginning of an expansion while other either got them later or never.

In ToT the mythical bows from the key quests are a good example as some player got 2,3,4 of them of them in the beginning while other never saw one. I got my bow very late in the expansion.

Last expansion the same player got a bunch of Essences of Chaos quickly while other never saw one. I started to receive them after the 17.12.19 playing on the moon........

Guess who were lucky to already receive Red Rune recipes from Overseer Missions and who doesn't.

This is obviously only for the player i know while others experience might be different.

OMG yes, to just about everything in this. Completely agree, and I, too, often use the "old gear" items on my main toons, because they still have uses and purposes, and remind me of glorious adventures to get them, even when they're just retired to house items. Collections are great; I just wish they'd give more along the lines of gear or (especially!) house items; even a "glassed-in tray of impaled bugs on pins" would be better than just a handful of sp (and for the love of mike, can't we actually get an official, not a third-party, list of what the collection rewards ARE?! What would that hurt?). LnLs are their own reward: bonuses to kill those targets, and spiffy house items!

Speaking of which, I ADORED the recipes we got with the Deepwater stuff; the Moving Water features are things we've been clamoring about for years, and the rest of the Building Blocks, etc. are just gorgeous, as is the prestige house. With the "latest and greatest" expac, apparently the house is nice, but the recipes leave much to be desired. :-/

What happened with this one? Was it just the stresses of splitting off into a new sub-studio while also trying to work on an expac at the same time? Was it putting the hater(s) of crafting and decorators in charge of such these days? In short, "what's up, devs"? :-/

Uwk

And even a clever human that's a pro at dice rolling can influence a lot of those variables, by taking into account the things that could influence a roll and adjusting for them. ;->

Uwk

I used a dice tower to select my "DM's Die of Death".

I rolled 2 d20s, separately, over 800 times each. One of them the 2 on one side came up slightly more often. I made that the 20 and went from there. :evilgrin:

Not a bell curve for either one. More of a jagged line that vaguely wasn't straight.

We're also mentally limiting what we want from the random events. Once a person has finished the signature quest, the question of "am I satisfied with my effort to loot ratio?" is nearly binary. But even if they used the most elegant RNG system in the world, if it produced lots of infusers, we'd still be u nhappy, especially if we can't make the infusers, which we expect to be able to make.

They're fond of saying "there are multiple ways you can get X."

Which i interpret as overt coersion to take actions you aren't willing to take, such as beg for weeks until you find a PUG that will take you and that PUG is generous in distributing loot. On some servers this may be a more friendly option than others. But there's a mismatch in expectations if developers think that all gamers and all servers behave the same.

The "options" should not be given weighted values. If I want to grind my way to a full set of Paixao, it shouldn't be so hard as to make me give up before I succeed. And currently, without that path, I"m not very good at helping anyone in a Heroic PUG. I haven't given up, but there's no way I can cover every daily that MAY give me an xbox and take out all the names in all 3 zones once a day, and do the PQ and do the live events.

I mean, good job giving us lots of content, honestly, it's appreciated. But do we have to trade off content for rewards? We're inching back to the 24/7 style of play that EQ1 was famous for and EQ2 once rewarded. I'm too old to do that again, frankly.

It's hard to enjoy something purely fun like a live event or redecorating the guild hall when you have this nagging feeling that you should be grinding to get needed adornments.

One of the simplest things that changed from POP/CD to Luclin, is that currency no longer buys you anything you want. If you were going to take away our adorns, then adorns should've been buyable with currency from either PQ or instances. Generally the currency is useless this expac.

Well, it may not be in EQ, but may be in EQ II.

They could always update the RNG code in EQ1.

EQ1 is Darkpaw's cash cow (with tens of thousands of player). If they want to manipulate RNG, it would be more profitable in EQ1.

Edit: On the flip side, I suppose EQ1's revenue is self-sustaining (high Krono & sub sales) and there would not be a need to fund the game with microtransactions.

There are plenty of microtransactions in most MMOs these days, including EQ II.

Every single time you roll those die, there is some wear and degradation of the sides which is going to influence the rolls that follow.

Unlikely as they were Zocchi's Gamescience dice. Lexan is part of their makeup. Those edges are still sharp to this day.

You have entered my universe Feldon *grins snarkily*. I love you!!!

The simple definition of entropy from physics is a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, which is often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system. It is also termed as a lack of order or predictability signaling the systems gradual decline into disorder or chaos!!!

I think we have already arrived at chaos and I don't believe that it was quite as gradual as we would have liked. All systems eventually devolve into chaos as entropy is always increasing.