Winter Festival and Fishy RNG

Comments

• ultramath

  ultramath#3953

  Member Posts: 143 Arc User

  December 2020

  I can commiserate, Matthias.
  
  But think about what would have to happen and be designed inside the game in order to "fudge" the RNG in general. I see ppl in chat bragging about how they literally CAN'T run out of boxes because they keep getting more than they opened. Maybe they are lying to seem cool? I don't know. But you said yourself that you know someone who had better RNG than you. How did that happen? Is there a behind-the-scenes tracking system or something that just screws some people over on RNG and not others?
  
  The thing about all random systems is that they aren't fair in the way that we like to believe how we deserve things at a certain rate of return. Everyone who has won a lottery has had an "unfair advantage after the fact", as their rate of return on their investment of buying lottery tickets was many orders of magnitude higher than everyone else's. And they did nothing special to "deserve" their advantage. It isn't "fair".
  
  So the best way to go about looking at random systems is that they aren't ever an "investment". Odds are not actually a "real thing" that can be accounted for. For example, I failed at a gathering task with an arcane node eight times in a row the day before yesterday. There is only a 0.0015% chance of that ever happening. And yet my chance of failing one more time after all that extraordinary bad luck was 25% just like it always is.
  
  Mathematically, the Law of Large Numbers requires LARGE NUMBERS in order to be observed, which it WILL BE -> after many many many iterations, depending on how many possible outcomes there can be for any random event. Have you bought millions of starlight parcels?

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• wintersmoke Member Posts: 1,641 Arc User

  December 2020

  ultramath#3953 said:

  I can commiserate, Matthias.
  
  But think about what would have to happen and be designed inside the game in order to "fudge" the RNG in general. I see ppl in chat bragging about how they literally CAN'T run out of boxes because they keep getting more than they opened. Maybe they are lying to seem cool? I don't know. But you said yourself that you know someone who had better RNG than you. How did that happen? Is there a behind-the-scenes tracking system or something that just screws some people over on RNG and not others?
  
  The thing about all random systems is that they aren't fair in the way that we like to believe how we deserve things at a certain rate of return. Everyone who has won a lottery has had an "unfair advantage after the fact", as their rate of return on their investment of buying lottery tickets was many orders of magnitude higher than everyone else's. And they did nothing special to "deserve" their advantage. It isn't "fair".
  
  So the best way to go about looking at random systems is that they aren't ever an "investment". Odds are not actually a "real thing" that can be accounted for. For example, I failed at a gathering task with an arcane node eight times in a row the day before yesterday. There is only a 0.0015% chance of that ever happening. And yet my chance of failing one more time after all that extraordinary bad luck was 25% just like it always is.
  
  Mathematically, the Law of Large Numbers requires LARGE NUMBERS in order to be observed, which it WILL BE -> after many many many iterations, depending on how many possible outcomes there can be for any random event. Have you bought millions of starlight parcels?

  Some accounts are "lucky" with multiple hits at the top end of RNG, and others never get there with thousands of tries.

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• ultramath

  ultramath#3953

  Member Posts: 143 Arc User

  December 2020

  wintersmoke said:

  
  Some accounts are "lucky" with multiple hits at the top end of RNG, and others never get there with thousands of tries.

  Exactly. That is what random is. "Random" doesn't mean "Equivalent". Some people will be very lucky, most people will be average, and some people will be very unlucky.... as long as there are enough players to make a "bell curve" distribution of the data. And as I noted above, just because you have been very unlucky on a streak of bad luck doesn't mean that your luck is about to change. You don't get to "earn" good luck by having a bunch of bad luck -- that's not how random works. If you have a 1% chance to get some awesome drop from a lockbox that you want, and you've opened 99 boxes already and still haven't gotten it, that doesn't mean that you're about to get it in the next couple of tries. It's still the very same 1% chance it was the first 99 times -- and every single time after that.
  
  Gambling is not an investment. Luck is not something you can earn or develop or deserve to have.

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• alphastream Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 209 Arc User

  January 2021

  It probably is just bad luck, but the drop rate for bags across all my toons has been far lower this year. In previous years, I almost couldn't run out. This year, I've been in gift parties of 10 gifts each... 8 times. I have a total of 6 bags. It's been really bad. Never had a year like this before.
  
  In speaking to Alliance members, they seem to have similarly lower drop rates. But, it could just be bad luck.

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• aslan3775 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 295 Arc User

  January 2021

  It is bad rng--I started out with that horrible rng, with a nearly 5 to 1 ratio of my gifts to bags in a 5 person party. On some days it seemed slightly better, but I quickly went through quite a few stars to "stay in the game". Then after the 'turn' of the Simril event, somehow i ended up gettting a few characters that were getting better than 2:1 return on their gifts (I gave 10 in a five person party, and received 8 or better bags). It always seems fishy to me. Maybe I should open them under the arch, or on one bridge or the other or in the small stall or all 20 bags or 30 bags in a row, or not use alphabet order to increase my bag ratio. I wish I had the answer on how to switch on the good rng. I don't. It's still rng.
  
  The real point Matthias makes is RNG--how does it work. I think the real answer is that it doesn't. It just plays on your emotions and makes you ecstatic if it goes your way (like getting a 13th level enchant on the first green pres ward) or makes you miserable when it doesn't (like watching all those polar bears flashing across the screen and all you get is the hamster reroll tokens).
  
  Somehow it isn't like table top D&D in that you can see your lousy rolls and blame the dice. Here all we can do is complain about the RNG and how it isn't transparent enough so it must be rigged.
  
  And it is rigged!!! my guildie just got his second mythic polar bear after only 30 keys and I have reroll tokens!!! It must be rigged!!! (said with a high degree of sarcasm mixed with quite a bit of jealousy)
  
  But I empathize with your bad rng. I wish there was a better system, but until we can open tens of thousands of bags, we won't get 'normal RNG'.
  
  All i can say is--try not to let the rng be too much of a part of the game if you have one of those accounts that seems to be on the 'bad rng list'. otherwise--good luck.

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• zimxero

  zimxero#8085

  Member Posts: 876 Arc User

  January 2021

  The only unrandom thing I noticed, was when opening a streak of starlight bags. Once a good reward was received, they would sometimes appear again in a flash afterward and then be replaced with a standard drop with another quick flash. I'm not sure they put a limit on the good rewards that could be obtained in a streak, but that is how it appeared. If true, the easy way to bypass it would be to switch characters after a decent reward is given, then come back again.

  0
• tchefi

  tchefi#6735

  Member Posts: 417 Arc User

  January 2021 edited January 2021

  It is the 4th winter fest i farm.
  
  Each time, I basically mostly sticked around with one unique party during all the event.
  
  We do "20 openings prep sessions" along the week 1 (i always have and keep some stocks of gifts from the previous year) and week 2 , switching between alts whenever one get the 20 or whenever we are dry of gifts.
  
  Once all of us have decided enough toons are done with 20 openings (personnally i usually don't go further than 18 toons, despite having 42, mostly because i already have 4 gond hammers, my main and probably my 2 others big toons too have all the comp and mounts the fest can drop [and i don't care about the potential AD they are worth as unbound], + i tend to believe my chances at unbound preserv wards are worse after 20 openings than before), we then open our stacks of gift package (from the blue coupon) on all our toons and then do some "funneling gifts sessions" during week 3.
  4 of us on their main/toon on which the gond hammer is desired, mostly afk, inviting the last one over and over as he scrolls through all his toons to give each and every gifts.
  
  Finally we do a "main session", in the last 2-3 days of the fest. Everyone on his main throwing their gifts in disorder and chaos.
  
  We don't bother counting how much gifts each of us provide as it's completely irrelevant for our method...
  The mindset is a loop : "the more i give, the more they drop, the more they can give me back, the more i drop".
  
  Last sunday we did our last funneling session, i was the one throwing my alt-army gifts. My alts produced more or less 500 potential gifts (bags+stars) for each of the 4 other players, so that's around 500x4 gifts my 4 friends will throw back at me the final session.
  Yesterday we funneled their alt-armies (tinier than mine), and I ended with 540 potential gifts (bags+stars) to throw back at them at the final session.
  
  The final session will start tomorrow with over 4000 gifts to throw within the party...
  Each winter i saw 4 to 6 BTC gond hammer droped within my group (though usually one of us get 2 and one get none), so this year, it's my cleric turn, my 4th toon, to try to get one. If she fail, it doesn't matter, i already droped an unbound one (but would rather give it away if one of us is unlucky and does'nt get any ^^).
  
  
  All that to say, regarding the topic :
  
  sticking with the same party and doing big sessions (sometime during 6hours of throwing gifts...) showed me that the odds are quite "fair" in getting stars or bags between the 5 participants. There are differences, but statistically understandable, and overall we got more or less the same amount of stars and bags for each alt-army being funneled.
  
  Each winter fest i see, or rather feel because it may very much be a biased belief as i never conducted a proper statistical survey on winter gifts, we always tended to get more stars and bags
  - in a low populated instance (<15), compared to crowded ones (>25)
  and/or
  - on instances where there is no other groups throwing gifts.

  Post edited by tchefi#6735 on January 2021

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