The problem with the loaded dice solution is then that it isn't a solution -- it is a crutch. The difference between a solution and a crutch is that with a solution the problem is solved, but with a crutch, the problem is worked around but remains. The RNG is like a leaking pipe and the loaded die crutch is a bucket placed under it instead of fixing the pipe. If they said that hey this is a short time measure because rewriting the RNG is a big procedure and will take time, that would be fine. But if this is their long time "solution"... well, it doesn't solve anything.
Wouldn't "solving RNG" mean changing the system? If the system is "roll 20", there is nothing you can do to improve it outside changing the rules or loading the dice. Or you can cheat without telling the player as many games do - not allowing to roll low many times in the row, forcing a good roll if it didn't happen in a while etc. I would rather get a system which works in the way it tells you to do, buy I won't argue that just rolling d20 is not a good system. It ain't good here, it ain't good in Kingmaker.
I think you're misunderstanding the situation. The problem with the RNG isn't just or mainly psychological. The problem is that the RNG is badly coded and gives clumped results. This is a common issue for badly written RNGs.
The problem with the loaded dice solution is then that it isn't a solution -- it is a crutch. The difference between a solution and a crutch is that with a solution the problem is solved, but with a crutch, the problem is worked around but remains. The RNG is like a leaking pipe and the loaded die crutch is a bucket placed under it instead of fixing the pipe. If they said that hey this is a short time measure because rewriting the RNG is a big procedure and will take time, that would be fine. But if this is their long time "solution"... well, it doesn't solve anything.
So no, Niara is not contradicting herself. And the people who complain about misses aren't just silly people with negative confirmation bias. This is Larian making a RNG-based game with a mediocre RNG code. And that might have been okay if this was a small indie game but it's far below AAA quality.
No, to the contrary it seems to me you are clearly yet another person who failed to read or understand what I wrote. How you even manage to concoct the mental exercise of this issue being Larian's ability to do math/code is beyond me, but please do attempt to explain the exact issue rather than conjure fanciful imagery.
I say this as a vocal critic of Larian, but clearly we ARE dealing with psychology -- on several levels. I predicted this uproar even before the latest live stream as many already felt let down by Larian's lackluster communication with the community and people have had time to build up unrealistic expectations.
Disagree vehemently with your portrayal of this aspect. You even contradict yourself, pointing at sine waves (clusters) of bad RNG as the issue - while dogmatically brushing off the optional loaded-dice (who breaks clusters) as a solution..
Because it IS a poor solution. The ideal design around a system that is perceived as "way to reliant on RNG and too unpredictable on its outcomes" is to tweak rules or the scenarios offered to give better predictability. Not to cheat behind the curtain lying to the player about the dice rolls. A classic example is a situation where a failure doesn't force a re-roll or reload of a previous save game, but creates an alternate and equally interesting outcome.
Re-read the entirety of my post please, because you obviously didn't read more than the opening paragraph. This is one of MANY "solutions", one of MANY "tweaks".
Past these many efforts, more than dealing with "way too unpredictable RNG and outcomes", we are dealing with the catering to the lowest common denominator of obsessive compulsive behavior coupled with a strong intolerance of any deviation from perceived perfection. "Snowflaky entitlement" issues if you will.
Let's take the situation with the dying illithid at the crash site near the Ravaged Beach to illustrate my point on their "layered RNG-system" alone:
You can kill the illithid from afar (knowing its mental powers and being informed the people are thralls). Opting to not do so and approaching, you have a DC 15 persuasion check to convince thralls to stand down. Fight vs. thrall commences with failure. Mid-fight, you get another DC 10 wisdom check vs. mind influences of the illithid. Success leads to thralls breaking free. You can now again kill the illithid (definitely knowing how dangerous it can be), or you can approach it. You get a DC 10 intelligence to (foolishly) lock minds with the illithid, if you "succeed" you get another DC 10 wisdom check to avoid being killed. Even when killed, you are rewarded with an exciting battle (and, should you win, more XP than otherwise I believe), at the cost of using one scroll of revivify.
This cracked me up, ngl. If people want changes, they're a stupid minority who's stupid and Larian will never listen. If people get chances, they're entitled snowflakes whom poor Larian had to give icecream to. Damned either way, i guess. People, obv. Not Larian.
Your example also leads to combat or cutscene death on failure, btw, no matter how many words are used to describe it. Should have rather gone with the Priestess Gut situation.
Not quite that simple, I'm afraid, Wormerine... If this were the Discworld, and you actually had a little imp in your computer case rolling an actual little d20 every time and telling the game what it rolled, then the RNG discussion wouldn't be a thing. Unfortunately, this is not the Discworld, and the way the game gets its d20 rolls is by way of a PRNG – a pseudo-random number generator, which is a combination of a few parts, but primarily a mathematical algorithm. It's not really 'random' at all. The better ones are complex algorithms, that also reseed themselves at rapid intervals, and utilise external sources of entropy to generate portions of their equations, those themselves sourcing from multiple different entropy intake pools, etc... it's more complicated than you might think... Larian's RNG is not sophisticated enough for the game it is running. A single user running a single client, can plot their rolls over the course of a suitable sample size (I used several batches of 200 rolls), and determine a visible pattern to the results – you can see with the naked eye that it is not truly random, and that's bad – even if the total sample delivers the correct expected deviation of results (it does; I'm not saying it doesn't!). There are a few threads that discuss this, though, and this is not the place for it here and now.
Originally Posted by Seraphael
Disagree vehemently with your portrayal of this aspect. You even contradict yourself, pointing at sine waves (clusters) of bad RNG as the issue - while dogmatically brushing off the optional loaded-dice (who breaks clusters) as a solution.
Hey Seraphael, thanks for speaking up.
What I wrote here was a synopsis of the stream, not a debate thesis. Nothing I said was incorrect; it was just a relation of what was said and the topics on which those things touched. If anything that I said was incorrect, I'll be more than happy to fix the synopsis, however, in this particular case, I do not believe that anything I said was incorrect.
Their statement of reasoning was exactly as I said it was, and I explained why it did not follow and made no sense. I acknowledged that it was a fix, but commented that it was not a good one, with a brief reference to one reason why. That is all. I spoke no untruths and misrepresented no-one.
I'll spoiler the rest, as it's not relevant to this thread, and this thread is not the place to have such a discussion.
There is indeed a portion of the community here who has debated long and hard about having more misses than they should in the game; it often leads to discussions about RNG, and there are several very informative threads on the matter that you may want to take a look at. If you've been paying attention, you'll be aware that I am deeply versed in all of the issues you bring up.
People were not asking for a system to be put in that in its own name actively insinuates that they, the player, are a cheater, as a band-aid resolution to Larian's own poorly written RNG algorithm. That is what Larian have decided to give us, however, and some people feel that it's quite a slap in the face, all told.
I'd like to point out that you inserted (and bolded) an extra word in there when answering back to something else I wrote:
Quote
"If you FEEL like failing a lot more in the video game",
Here's what I actually said, as you quoted above:
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If you're failing a lot more in the video game,
As Dexai mentioned, I'm not talking about people feeling like they're failing more in the video game because they remember misses more strongly. I'm talking about the actual tangible phenomena that is the fact that you DO fail more often, in more clustered groups, and also suffer more failing-against-odds in the video game because of the poorly written RNG. There is another thread elsewhere where this discussion is held in depth and I do explain why that is the case, how it comes to pass and I touch on why it then ends up having an amplified psychological impact as a result. I reference the testing I did in relation to this, admitting the places where my initial theory was incorrect, and how the results showed me what I then described instead.
I am not the sort of poster who is interested in winning arguments; I'm interested in improving my own understanding, and sharing that understanding with others if I can. I admit when I'm wrong, and I'm always happy to fix errors in my own understanding, and would much rather do so than to fight for a stance that is ultimately false (though I will admit, I am quite stubborn when I feel certain of my own reasoning).
Quote
Slamming Larian for not doing enough to combat RNG-issues, while also slamming them for the unintended consequences and inevitable departure from D&D rules is grossly unfair. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess.
I will most certainly slam this game and its developers for the many and varied imbalances and unintended, unforeseen consequences of their many and various flagrant departures from the ruleset, which show both an extreme shallowness of conception and foresight, and also an extremely tenuous grasp of the system which they have taken on to work with. I will definitely do that, and it is entirely justified.
I will also slam them for not only applying a kludge-job band-aid fix of a solution that just covers over a deeper underlying problem without fixing it, but doing so in a way that demeans, insults or belittles the players that do choose to use it. I will certainly do that, and that too would be fully justified.
If they would decide at some point to spend some of their AAA game budget dollars on acquiring a better, more naturalised RNG than the one they're using now, that would actually solve a large percentage, potentially the majority, of the “I'm frustrated by misses” complaints... In the mentioned other threads, I also explain why that is the case. This is not the place for that, however.
The problem with the loaded dice solution is then that it isn't a solution -- it is a crutch. The difference between a solution and a crutch is that with a solution the problem is solved, but with a crutch, the problem is worked around but remains. The RNG is like a leaking pipe and the loaded die crutch is a bucket placed under it instead of fixing the pipe. If they said that hey this is a short time measure because rewriting the RNG is a big procedure and will take time, that would be fine. But if this is their long time "solution"... well, it doesn't solve anything.
Wouldn't "solving RNG" mean changing the system? If the system is "roll 20", there is nothing you can do to improve it outside changing the rules or loading the dice. Or you can cheat without telling the player as many games do - not allowing to roll low many times in the row, forcing a good roll if it didn't happen in a while etc. I would rather get a system which works in the way it tells you to do, buy I won't argue that just rolling d20 is not a good system. It ain't good here, it ain't good in Kingmaker.
No. A RNG isn't like a die. It's not actually random. There's no way to just tell code to "roll a d20" or "draw a random number". The code is purely logical, it doesn't know what "random" means. So the coder needs to build a system to tell the program what random is and how to draw a "random" number. This is done through matemathical formulae which attempts to simulate randomness.
So RNGs arent truly random -- they're approximations of randomness. And differently coded RNGs will simulate randomness in different ways (with different math formulae).
Mathematically speaking if you roll a d20 an infinite amount of times each result should have a 1/20 chance of appearing. This is what the algorithms try to mimic. In the case of Larian's RNG, testing has shown that with a very large number of rolls, it does start to approximate this result. However, while doing this, each independent roll shows a likelihood of being similar to previous rolls -- something that you don't want from an RNG. This is what Niara meant by "appearing in a sine wave" and I by "clustered results". It means that youare going to see rows of similar rolls instead of random numbers.
This likely happened because when they wrote the RNG they only checked the long term result -- run the code a thousand times and see how many times each number comes up, and if it approximates to 1/20 to each number call it a success. But you also need to examine the spread of each number throughout the 1000 rolls to make sure they don't cluster together in a way that a good RNG shouldn't.
I can't be sure, but I really think the players complaining about missing just don't understand the game very well. That looks normal because nothing is really well explained at the moment, but seriously I had played hours and hours and I don't have the feeling that I missed more than in any other TB game I played.
On the other hand, I agree that loeaded dice is a solution, but it's an easy and uninterresting solution at all. It's just an option players could nearly be "ashamed" to use because it's like a cheat.
If players are missing, give them opportunities to increase their %to hit. This could lead to an increased tactical value, and an increased feeling of accomplishment for players. it could also smooth the learning of the mechanics, giving us more but smaller steps between "miss" and "control".
Just rework the highground and the backstab advantages. Give us a bonus to attack rolls that can stack with D&D's advantages and players would be able to increase their %to hit to a higher level, reducing by themselves the RNG of the D20.
The problem with the loaded dice solution is then that it isn't a solution -- it is a crutch. The difference between a solution and a crutch is that with a solution the problem is solved, but with a crutch, the problem is worked around but remains. The RNG is like a leaking pipe and the loaded die crutch is a bucket placed under it instead of fixing the pipe. If they said that hey this is a short time measure because rewriting the RNG is a big procedure and will take time, that would be fine. But if this is their long time "solution"... well, it doesn't solve anything.
Wouldn't "solving RNG" mean changing the system? If the system is "roll 20", there is nothing you can do to improve it outside changing the rules or loading the dice. Or you can cheat without telling the player as many games do - not allowing to roll low many times in the row, forcing a good roll if it didn't happen in a while etc. I would rather get a system which works in the way it tells you to do, buy I won't argue that just rolling d20 is not a good system. It ain't good here, it ain't good in Kingmaker.
No. A RNG isn't like a die. It's not actually random. There's no way to just tell code to "roll a d20" or "draw a random number". The code is purely logical, it doesn't know what "random" means. So the coder needs to build a system to tell the program what random is and how to draw a "random" number. This is done through matemathical formulae which attempts to simulate randomness.
So RNGs arent truly random -- they're approximations of randomness. And differently coded RNGs will simulate randomness in different ways (with different math formulae).
Mathematically speaking if you roll a d20 an infinite amount of times each result should have a 1/20 chance of appearing. This is what the algorithms try to mimic. In the case of Larian's RNG, testing has shown that with a very large number of rolls, it does start to approximate this result. However, while doing this, each independent roll shows a likelihood of being similar to previous rolls -- something that you don't want from an RNG. This is what Niara meant by "appearing in a sine wave" and I by "clustered results". It means that youare going to see rows of similar rolls instead of random numbers.
This likely happened because when they wrote the RNG they only checked the long term result -- run the code a thousand times and see how many times each number comes up, and if it approximates to 1/20 to each number call it a success. But you also need to examine the spread of each number throughout the 1000 rolls to make sure they don't cluster together in a way that a good RNG shouldn't.
Edit: ninja'd by Ninjara while I wrote
Do you have a link to discussion of the BG3 RNG with actual data?
Thank you, OP. Great summary, and agree with your comments.
Originally Posted by IrenicusBG3
A sloppy Pannel that matches a sloppy game. It lacks direction and vision, therefore is hard to be hopeful.
Originally Posted by Maximuuus
It looks like every Larian's developper add things they find cool in the game without thinking about it as a whole.
WTF about mushrooms ? WTF about torches ? WTF about flee that TP you to the camp ? WTF about sorting the very limited number of items in containers ?
Listening to him, it really looks like Swen doesn't know the game and its issues at all.
Originally Posted by Tuco
Well, that was a great summary and avividreminder of a lot of awkward moments and complaints going through my head during the vision. Congratulations for the solid work here.
On a side note reading it made me alternately burst out laughing and feeling more and more depressed and pessimistic about the game.
Someone else pointed it out in another thread, but just to reiterate: a big part of the issue here is that Larian not only is purposefully ignoring a lot of feedback, but it PRIDES itself about a large part of the junk they are pushing into the system.
A huge +1 to all these observations. You are right on.
Great job, Niara with compiling this synopsis as well as well reasoned arguments. Too bad noone from Larian will bother to read them. So much for listening to community feedback.
This cracked me up, ngl. If people want changes, they're a stupid minority who's stupid and Larian will never listen. If people get chances, they're entitled snowflakes whom poor Larian had to give icecream to. Damned either way, i guess. People, obv. Not Larian.
Your example also leads to combat or cutscene death on failure, btw, no matter how many words are used to describe it. Should have rather gone with the Priestess Gut situation.
Nice try portraying me as some Larian fanboi for attempting in vain to inject nuance to the clearly extremely negative bias some people, yourself included. I argued rather lengthily for my stance. You are free to disregard it, but unless you manage to explain why CODING is the issue as is claimed here, or why D&D rules or the implementation thereof (the ONE aspect the community is actually in full agreement wanting more of) should be change, then you're just another voice howling at the moon, aren't you?
You abusing the illithid example in support of portraying RNG as an "unbearable tyranny" (in particularly in BG3) shows your own extreme bias. By mentioning the risk of dying even behind so many contingencies as a negative RNG outcome, you in actuality manage to argue that there should be NO RISK OF EVER FAILING IN ANY GAME. Screw any suspense in combat! What planet are you from, and how hard did you hit your head on impact with planet Earth? This literally proves/validates what I said about unrealistic expectations, intolerance for the imperfect, and being an entitled snowflake. Thanks for involuntarily arguing my case and the comedy gold.
Originally Posted by Niara
Hey Seraphael, thanks for speaking up.
What I wrote here was a synopsis of the stream, not a debate thesis. Nothing I said was incorrect; it was just a relation of what was said and the topics on which those things touched. If anything that I said was incorrect, I'll be more than happy to fix the synopsis, however, in this particular case, I do not believe that anything I said was incorrect.
Hey Niara, thanks for being gracious. It's a deficit with all the rampant negativity on the boards right now, and the contrarian in me made me embrace the role of devil's advocate. I do agree with some other points you made though.
A synopsis is far as I know (I'm not a native English-speaker) a brief summary, and a summary should not include the author's opinion or argumentative strategy. It was the latter part I objected to. If you subscribe to the idea that opinions cannot possibly be incorrect because opinions are your own and infallible in their subjectivity, you are correct. However, I disagree with your spin on what Larian said, and I found your failure to acknowledge the many efforts Larian has actually done to address the issue as so severely lacking in perspective as to be almost fraudulent.
To be honest i have never seen such a..... hmmm no cant finde political correct words for it. It was a pure PR-Show that focused on effect rather then content. A show of self showering with Glory and Pride. The largest Patch in History with things like how to lit a torch.... and ladderclimbing animals (for comforts sake). And because they know they mess up DND rules they get WoTC on the show to give them an Approval for their nonsense. Hard to imagine there are people who didnt Facepalm on at least one occasion during the show.
And when sven mentions Flint from Dragonlance when its about Torches..... you please stop pretending knowledge of DnD? That joke was so obvious prepared that i doubt that you know much about Flint in REALITY and someone told you to mention it as it makes you "Cool" then. Tasselhof would have given you a proper stone slinged at your head for that terrible joke.
But on the bright side..... now we all know how COOL Larian is and awesome the Company and how LARGE the company is and what freaking Dream it is to work for them. This show makes Q&A sessions from other developers look soooo pathetic.
I must congrat the OP for a REALY good summary of what we had to watch and endure. + 1
P.S. can you please shapechange that guy back into a cow and teach that lore to Sven also? The cow was my personal Favorite in the show. She was cute and didnt mess up the Game at all. Need more of those at Larian!
Last edited by Baldurs-Gate-Fan; 19/02/2103:43 PM.
This cracked me up, ngl. If people want changes, they're a stupid minority who's stupid and Larian will never listen. If people get chances, they're entitled snowflakes whom poor Larian had to give icecream to. Damned either way, i guess. People, obv. Not Larian.
Your example also leads to combat or cutscene death on failure, btw, no matter how many words are used to describe it. Should have rather gone with the Priestess Gut situation.
Nice try portraying me as some Larian fanboi for attempting in vain to inject nuance to the clearly extremely negative bias some people, yourself included, have right now. I argued rather lengthily for my stance and why this is for lack of effort. So unless you manage to explain why CODING is the issue as is claimed here, or why D&D rules or the implementation thereof (the ONE aspect the community is actually in full agreement wanting more of) should be change, then you cracked up for no good reason at all. Didn't you?
You abusing the illithid example in support of portraying RNG as an "unbearable tyranny" (in particularly in BG3) shows your own extreme bias. By mentioning the risk of dying even behind so many contingencies as a negative RNG outcome, you in actuality manage to argue that there should be NO RISK OF EVER FAILING IN ANY GAME. Screw any suspense in combat! What planet are you from, and how hard did you hit your head on impact with planet Earth? This literally proofs/validates what I said about unrealistic expectations, intolerance for the imperfect, and being an entitled snowflake. Thanks for the involuntary comedy gold.
I couldn't follow along in the PFH because it was a technical disaster. They could have pre-recorded and edited a much shorter video rather than waste people's time.
There wasn't a live Q&A or any interaction, so not sure why it needed a huge scheduled stream if only to appear that they were being receptive.
I couldn't follow along in the PFH because it was a technical disaster. They could have pre-recorded and edited a much shorter video rather than waste people's time.
There wasn't a live Q&A or any interaction, so not sure why it needed a huge scheduled stream if only to appear that they were being receptive.
Good points. I can understand why they avoided a live Q&A because it would have been a PR disaster unless the questions were pre-vetted. How would they have responded to people questioning party control/movement, UI, inventory, combat, etc?
A synopsis is far as I know (I'm not a native English-speaker) a brief summary, and a summary should not include the author's opinion or argumentative strategy. It was the latter part I objected to. If you subscribe to the idea that opinions cannot possibly be incorrect because opinions are your own and infallible in their subjectivity, you are correct. However, I disagree with your spin on what Larian said, and I found your failure to acknowledge the many efforts Larian has actually done to address the issue as so severely lacking in perspective as to be almost fraudulent.
I do indeed have a stance, and it is currently a negative one, and I won't try to disguise or diminish that. A synopsis is indeed a summary, but I don't think it is required absolutely to be without commentary or opinion of the author - as long as the facts are factual and the opinions are clearly distinct as opinions. I feel that I did this; the facts are true, the opinions and side-commentary that I add is clearly my own opinion, and the two are distinct, or at least I felt they were distinct enough.
What efforts by Larian do you feel I did a disservice in not addressing?
Fantastic post, OP. That stream was an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions.
Every time there's an update, I regret more and more having paid for the game, and I kick myself for clearing Steam's 2 hour return policy threshold. My complaints, most of which you share, can't just be answered away by the ever-popular "It's early access!" response. There's a lack of vision and focus here that have little to do with how early in the process the game is. At this point, I'm actually hoping that this goes the way of Cyberpunk 2077 and that I can get a South Park style "We're sorry" apology refund because it ends up as a complete failure.
I don't want to fall to bits 'cos of excess existential thought.
[quote=Wormerine][quote=Dexai] This likely happened because when they wrote the RNG they only checked the long term result -- run the code a thousand times and see how many times each number comes up, and if it approximates to 1/20 to each number call it a success. But you also need to examine the spread of each number throughout the 1000 rolls to make sure they don't cluster together in a way that a good RNG shouldn't.
How the hell could they screw this up so badly? Are their devs more incompetent than others who have made d20 based video games or even the tiny teams making VTTs like Fantasy Grounds? People have been successfully simulating d20 rolls using computers for decades.
I've been busy lately and off the forum but I regrettably have to agree with Niarra as I did take time to watch Panel from hell 2 and can honestly say I wasn't impressed by anything other than the Cow before it became an accountant and arachnid druid form, not it's notable one skill of enwebb mind you, where is poison or enfeeble, or am I going offtrack and too much into my divinity memories? I have honestly spent two hours this morning catching up with posts so as much as I love Larian games and have done for years you guys stating you read the forums is as bad a lie as the patch needed for Divinity OS2 two years after release statement " we are working on a quick fix" , I of course refer to "the Cake is no longer a lie" which took three months if I remember correctly when it was a simple bit of coding, well that's what others said, hell I don't know I'm dyslexic so this post is probably all over the place, let alone pretending I can code, all I know is that it ruined my 120 hour playthrough as solo fighter as i honestly couldn't be **sed afterwards. Coincedently you obviously did read my post about that issue and took its title from what I stated about it, hell I can promote myself somewhat if Swen can for 2 hours ignoring telling us who his fellow Larian employees are and leaving me dumbfound as to who the American guy with a permanent smile was at all, christ his jaws must have ached afterwards, plus of course i can play the game and worked out i could go invisible and shove the hag off the platform as she always is (or was) the one on the left and then quickly kill the girl for extra xp within two scum saves. I guess what I am saying here is with scum saving the game is far too easy as it is and will be even more so with loaded die, we don't need loaded die we need more options just like Tuco said. In fact just take Tuco's posts and class them as me to cut this short and actually read your fans posts, not surmise.
Last edited by Seleniumcodec; 21/02/2110:07 AM.
We have a saying amongst PC users, Look after your PC ,and That's what I've done and I've maintained it for 20 years, this old PC has had 17 new Cards and 14 new Boards in it's time and it's still the same PC
Oh wow, that was blistering hehe. Somehow I didn't catch this thread yesterday, but yeah, this is pretty thorough right here, which shouldn't suprise since the OP's threads always are. I guess at least "Panel from Hell" is pretty aptly named, I wonder if they will ever do another?
They legit could have just streamed an armored Sven visiting the forums and reading off thread titles and that probably would have landed with more succesful entertainment value and respect for the stream.
I only hopped back in here real quick since the convo now is weighted with the loaded dice thing. I'm a big fan of dice games, especially A&A and D&D, and I can for sure say that if the general convo about a dice game becomes a convo about pRNG, that is terrible for the broader perception of the game.
I've been through a few permutations of what's happening right now on that front for more than a couple titles, and even if they do manage a hurry up fix, letting the RNG genie out the bottle does lasting dmg over time and questions about the loaded/unloaded dice will linger forever.
I'm surprised they would see it as a solutions to promo. One of the things I think people appreciate about D&D and other games based on dice is the transparency of the mechanics. The frustration and psychological fallout of adopting actual randomness is only offset if there is transparency and confidence in the RNG. Not that most people are going to look under the hood or even want to, but its the idea that the computer is following established rules and not smoke-and-mirroring stuff behind the scenes or arbitrarily breaking its own rules in favor of the player after trying to come off all legit and impartial.
If you never show the dice, then fine, everyone may just assume that the DM is trying to keep us happy by noodling around behind the DM screen and fudging things on the fly (ie the computer isn't really rolling random but just trying to make us think it is, like good enough for government work.) That's BG1.
With enough gibberlings getting chunked and a fast pace, you don't need to see the d20 rolling or believe what they say to have buy in. Since its an RTS action game at that point more-or-less. But the second you actually show dice rolling animations, and showcase it, which is the equivalent of handing the yatzee mug to a player or setting up a dice tower in full view of the gang TT, you really don't want any questions about rounded corners or trick D20s to even cross the mind. Having an easy mode that removes certain check rolls or adds extra bonuses is one thing, but you don't want the whole dice rolling scheme to become Liar's Dice in the players' mind.
I didn't even notice that part of the stream, I must have fast forwarded right through it, so this synopsis was helpful by highlighting that.
