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Originally Posted by mr_planescapist
I am still convinced that NOBODY at Larian played and finished BG2. NO WAY.
Ah well it was not long time ago that I tried to explain that every Larian player has tried play BG1 or BG2 is not true. That being said since they have also increased the number of developers to what almost 400?

The chance nobody has tried BG1 or BG2 is not true. Well that nobody has finished BG2 I can not prove it but chances are somebody has done that. I finished BG2 on highest difficulty level and yes it was super hard at least some fights had to loads like 10-20 times. Like the most difficult end fight and some Dragon fight.

The presentation could have been done better. However it was live feed.
We got the information at end of day we needed. There are not so many shows so I take it as rare entertainment.

While it could be improved a lot I do like BG3 though it could be more close to DD rules.

Personally I do not care about the optional loaded dice and I will not use it.

That you can throw a healing bottle now on a person that is dying without giving damage at same time and heal that companion will have big impact on my gameplay. Now I know that I certainly do need higher difficulty level then Normal, but they will create it for the release at least.

Listen I do like Dungeons Dragons very much. I know there are more people that have tried at least some version of Dungeons Dragons pen and paper then people that have played DOS2. Yes I have played Dungeons Dragons pen and paper and more then one version of it.

The Druid class? Sure want to try play Druid.

The torch thing... a minor thing, but nice it is easier to use. Better path finding in some areas is good. That they improve graphics slightly (this are for people that run on max settings) is a minor improvement for my entertainment.

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Originally Posted by Wormerine
Originally Posted by Dexai
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.

Solving RNG means fixing the algorithms currently providing random numbers generation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation). It does not mean to "throw out dices". It means however to really result a "thrown" D20 in a randomly generated number - and NOT clustering 1's and 2's and 3's.

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Sorry but prevent clustering doenst mean fixing the algorithms. Clustering is possible and in 100 or 1000 dice rolls it doenst hurt. The problem is that the ingame Combat has no 100 or 1000 rounds per fight.
Which means you looking for a "Pseudo" Random Generator like in E-Sport games like LoL in which you have Critchance on Items but the algorthims flattens the extreme values. So its nearly imposssible to crit 3 times in a row with maybe 30% Critchance but on the flipside you have no 4 or maybe 5 Hits without a crit. Its a more "realistic" approach for low Numbers.

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Clustering is possible, yes. I've literally managed to roll natural ones in a row in real life, and probably all tbt gamers have stories of how they rolled ridiculously low repeatedly to hilarious results. We've all played yahtzy (actually I haven't played yahtzy since I was like ten but if I remember the rules correctly it's a game about getting clusters right?) even if that is a d6 game so it's more likely to get similar results. Regardless -- with an infinite number of rolls it is unavoidable.

But it should not be the norm. If the clustering causes the results to form visible sine waves then the RNG is dissatisfactory.


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Its matter of combat size compared to sinus wave.
When i have 10 rounds, and every 2 hit crits its a sawtooth like wave but its "perfect".
A pseudo number generator which breaks up the clustering and make it less possible can be argued increase the frequence of the wave and you ar not stuck in luck or bad luck to long.

The problem is the game cant be balanced with a 50% positive and 50% negative sinus wave in mind when its possible to have 1 fight with 100% positive half wave and one fight with 100% negative half wave.

80%crit_Chance

IIIOIIIOIIIIIOIIIOIIIIIOIIIOIIIIIOIIIOII - good
OOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII - the start sucked
OOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII - fuck you i lost because shit random

And now the combat length is 10 rounds.

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Well unless Larian themselves explain that Loaded dice does not make it more far away from Core DD rules then I will not use that optional setting period.

I believe it makes the game easier then normal Core DD rules and I have already wished for harder challenge level then Normal that should be released. Please do not get me wrong. I have nothing against the idea they also release an Easy challenge level for those players that want it.

I have done sport bettings sometimes with big sums:
Discussion about real life, TV series or movies
It is offtopic, but if you doubt I can afford big sport bettings or that I like sports read the above discussion and join in it if you want it.

There is luck even in sport events sometimes.

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Originally Posted by Dexai
We've all played yahtzy (actually I haven't played yahtzy since I was like ten but if I remember the rules correctly it's a game about getting clusters right?)

Yeah, you wanted to get say 5 one dice in a row with in three rolls I think. There was also a straight and some other ones, been way way to long. Just remember my gram always waving her hands and saying, "Yahtzy!"

Thanks for the memory

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Originally Posted by Black_Elk
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 LOVE this idea. This is absolutely what Swen should do!!!

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Y'all need some healing?

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Originally Posted by arion
It was so boring, watch to the end only in the hope of a patch release, when it is possible read patch notes at last...without all this bla-bla. Even this did not happen.


There was very little of what I was interested in. I wanted to hear what bugs had been fixed and when the release of the patch and we didn't get that. Will have to admit that I liked the Druid addition.

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Originally Posted by McDoney
Originally Posted by Wormerine
Originally Posted by Dexai
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.

Solving RNG means fixing the algorithms currently providing random numbers generation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation). It does not mean to "throw out dices". It means however to really result a "thrown" D20 in a randomly generated number - and NOT clustering 1's and 2's and 3's.

Has anybody actually gone through the hard work of actually collecting data and proving that there is something wrong with the random number generator? I get that many people *feel* like it is broken, but humans (and I include myself here) are just awful at interpreting random data. Clusters are absolutely to be expected in real random data, and the human pattern recognition algorithm goes into over time to "prove there is a problem" when this happens at a frustrating moment in the game.

In any case, if there is a thread where somebody collected data and discussed it please link it, I would very much like to inspect this.

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Yes, dwig, people have. There are threads here where people discuss the data they've collected and the results, but they've been discussed to death to the point that they've gotten a bit hard to find now, because of the sheer volume of new threads that people create every day...

Clusters happening yes, that's normal. Even, predictable clusters that have a tangible mathematical impact on your overall success and failure results despite returning the correct sample distribution over the long run? Not so much. And I can use those terms because, yes, it's been tested, with data, because we all know that humans on their own are unreliable narrators without said data to back it up.

Here at least are some of the posts I've made on the subject, that I can find. I'm sure I've made one or two others, but they were made in threads where the topic came up, which were not necessarily the primary topic of the thread itself, and I'm struggling to find them now, despite trying. Others have posted more results similarly, but I simply cannot find them amidst the sea of other threads on this forum any more. Other testers had the stamina to do sample sizes of up to 500, and obtained similar results, I believe.

From: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=753155#Post753155 (Thread: Reducing Misses in Combat)
Regarding misses themselves:

The RNG that they use is a very poorly written one - you can even watch and observe the wave pattern that it goes in. People notice their misses a LOT more when they have a number of them clustered together, which is currently what will happen at the low ends of the wave... and having a visible wave like that also increases the percentage of times that you'll miss on an easy advantage, because, if you are in a low trough, you're far more likely to get two rolls under 5 for that advantage where you only needed 6 to hit.

At the risk of inciting Tuco, I'll also point out something else: Whether Larian admits it or not, there is already a subtle dice bias going on, and you can test it: Enemies on low HP (below 20%) and boss creatures (the 'head' of any fixed encounter, and named enemies) get a slightly fudged RNG. I checked 200 rolls in combat situations, and despite feeling like I was missing more often than felt good, the actual reality was that the numbers rolled on the dice themselves more or less (within an acceptable margin of variation), lined up with what one would expect of a standard distribution. What was strange, and outlying, however, was that boss creatures and creatures below 20% of their hp received an unacceptably large margin more of the misses than anything else - this doesn't mean that rolls against them were always low, but they were frequently, more frequently than acceptable margins, just low *enough*.

Compared to this, testing that I've done with a couple of other games that use an RNG to determine outcomes (NWN, NWN2 and Solasta), over the course of 200 rolls each on various early-game enemies, also displayed a more or less standard distribution of die results, but did not display the obvious wave motion of peaks and troughs, and (possibly as a result) did not leave me coming away with any points where the amount of misses felt unfair or annoying. They also didn't show the odd favouring towards nearly dead creatures and boss creatures.

I think if they used a better RNG algorithm, that would actually clear up many people's impression of missing a lot; there would be slightly fewer high advantage misses, which we always noticed badly, and individual misses would be less clustered up, which we also notice badly... so even if folks were missing more or less the same amount of times, the conscious awareness of it, and feeling of frustration surrounding it, would likely be lessened for many people.
Also:
[Though I can't be sure that something else isn't going on, these results are from another test I ran]
I performed 100 rolls against the necromancy book from Thay.... as large a sample size as I could stomach at the time.
I then took 100 more rolls against the book, but with Mystra's Bless on the rolling character.

What we would expect to see, with a fair RNG, would be a more or less even distribution of rolls across the 1-20 spectrum, and both sets of rolls being more or less indistinguishable from one another. To be clear, the results show the raw die roll - Bless and Mystra's bless affect only the modifiers, and supposedly should influence your 'roll target' as the game currently displays it. It should not affect the raw displayed roll.

So, When I started this experiment, I felt strongly that the base die roll was biased towards lower rolls for players for important checks like this book. The results, however, seem to prove me wrong: the unaltered roll, with no buffs, actually showed a good, even distribution of rolls over the course of the sample size. It's about dead on where you'd expect it to level out, more or less.

However, it's worth noting that as a result, over the course of 50 attempts at the book, my character succeeded only 2 times in total (!). Despite a fair distribution, we didn't meet the expected average for what is pitched by the game (and its base DCs) as a moderate-to-challenging save. This is an issue with Larian's design philosophy for checks and saves right now, which could be the subject of another thread. In short though: This is a check that they mean you to fail. They couldn't set a DC high enough that was still attainable, but also gave the desired abysmal success average they wanted, and so built a successive check, for which any failure at any point was an absolute and total failure, ensuring that short of dedicated save-scumming almost no-one will ever succeed this save, and those who try will just be in the same boat as those who don't. It's bad design, it's not interesting and it's not fun. No-one likes the DM who just throws you save after save Until you fail one, then to gleefully jump back to the failure dialogue they had intended to give you from the very start... this is what Larian does, and on more than one occasion.

The oddity came up here for the second set, using Mystra's Bless: the results were Heavily skewed. Over the full 100 roll sample, 40% of the rolls were in the very top 15-20 bracket, eleven 17s, nine 15s, and above expected average turn ours for 16, 18 and 20 as well.

So what's going on here? It cannot be that it's adding the Mystra bless bonus to our raw die roll – we never rolled over 20, and we got an extreme outlier of eight 2s, which, if it were adding the bless to the raw die roll, wouldn't line up unless we rolled 8 natural 1s... which is a sticker, because my character is a halfling; they'd need to be double 1s (there's a lot of evidence to suggest that Lucky isn't working correctly, but in these tests I received no natural 1s, in 200 rolls, so I can only conclude that in this test at least it was working. I've receive 1s before with my halfling, even on advantage rolls (which would require a quadruple 1), so there's still indication that it's buggy in some fashion). The final results also indicate that the modifiers were affecting the roll target, not the raw roll, as they do elsewhere, so it wasn't as though they were missing from where we'd expect to see them.

What we seem to be seeing here is that the character with the more favourable condition is actually getting a favoured roll on top of their buffs – an unseen bias on the die. That's not cool. It could be a bug, or something not applying correctly, but right now it looks suspicious.

Somewhere else, I cannot find where, I know that I explained why the predictable wave pattern of this game's RNG has a tangible impact on your actual success and failure rate, despite returning the expected distribution of results. I also noted that that does indeed have a knock-on psychological effect, and amplifes our tendency to notice and remember such things more. the basics of it are that with this RNG, you will still ultimately get the same average distribution of raw rolls, however, you are more likely to get multiple low rolls in succession, in clusters, than with a better RNG. This has the result of causing strings of misses or failures, which we remember more keenly than spaced out ones, but it also means that we have more liklihood of failures-against-all-odd, since we have a greater propensity to have our advantage rolls turn up double low results. If the clusters were occasional, sporadic or infrequent, that would be one thing, but they aren't: they're tangible, visible and regular; as a result, the strings of misses and misses-against-odds that we come up against also happen more tangibly and more regularly.

The peaks happen in this way too - but we don't remember strings of hits like we remember strings of misses, and we don't remember hitting against odds as pointedly as we remember missing against odds.


All of that said, I'd rather not turn the thread into another discussion on probability, experiences, and Larian's RNG; there have been a lot of them already, and it isn't the purpose of the thread.

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Originally Posted by Seleniumcodec
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Lol yes Larian gameplay in a nutshell. :P

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DOWN down ... DOWN down ... DOWN down ... download some new lyrics... please.

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Originally Posted by Niara
Somewhere else, I cannot find where, I know that I explained why the predictable wave pattern of this game's RNG has a tangible impact on your actual success and failure rate, despite returning the expected distribution of results. I also noted that that does indeed have a knock-on psychological effect, and amplifes our tendency to notice and remember such things more. the basics of it are that with this RNG, you will still ultimately get the same average distribution of raw rolls, however, you are more likely to get multiple low rolls in succession, in clusters, than with a better RNG. This has the result of causing strings of misses or failures, which we remember more keenly than spaced out ones, but it also means that we have more liklihood of failures-against-all-odd, since we have a greater propensity to have our advantage rolls turn up double low results. If the clusters were occasional, sporadic or infrequent, that would be one thing, but they aren't: they're tangible, visible and regular; as a result, the strings of misses and misses-against-odds that we come up against also happen more tangibly and more regularly

None of which matters when the dice rolling doesn't *feel* like D&D.

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I highly doubt Larian wrote their own RNG. They probably use default provided by standard C libraries or some other off-the-shelf solution. We are not talking about secure crypto solution here, just giving random enough 1-20 numbers, anything decently competent is enough. When asked for actual data and statistical analysis, all we get is more "but I can see pattern!" anecdotes. Please provide real numbers, not feelings, otherwise I call bullshit on your claims.

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Originally Posted by Bercon
I highly doubt Larian wrote their own RNG. They probably use default provided by standard C libraries or some other off-the-shelf solution. We are not talking about secure crypto solution here, just giving random enough 1-20 numbers, anything decently competent is enough. When asked for actual data and statistical analysis, all we get is more "but I can see pattern!" anecdotes. Please provide real numbers, not feelings, otherwise I call bullshit on your claims.

I dunno, if I wrote the RNG I'd use tables with certain interesting biases, the choice of which could be selected depending on the particular user or profile, just to wind people up. Fortunately I am not one of their game devs.


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Originally Posted by Bercon
I highly doubt Larian wrote their own RNG. They probably use default provided by standard C libraries or some other off-the-shelf solution. We are not talking about secure crypto solution here, just giving random enough 1-20 numbers, anything decently competent is enough. When asked for actual data and statistical analysis, all we get is more "but I can see pattern!" anecdotes. Please provide real numbers, not feelings, otherwise I call bullshit on your claims.

I also doubt they wrote their own. I suspect that you're right and that they did, indeed, use a stock free RNG. Other games which rely on utilising d20 RNG for the entire core backbone of their game use sophisticated RNGs that generally aren't free to acquire, but which use entropy and are really quite complex, to deliver as near to true randomness as they can realistically attain. Larian's does not, possibly, as you say, because they might have just used a free-off-the-shelf one instead.

I'd prefer it if you'd not be as abrasive as you are being, when you're talking to someone who played the game, felt there was an issue, and then, in response to that, sat down and took large statistical samples to see if something was indeed going on, parsed them, and then reported her findings - amongst which was noting that her initial impression was, in fact, mistaken and that the standard deviation was correct and as expected... but then also noting that a different and unexpected pattern emerged as a result of the samples... while the only effort you're putting in to the discussion is to accuse that person of 'bullshit'. You could at least be polite about it, if you're not prepared to put in effort of your own.

Regardless, you wanted my figures, sure, here they are:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tdyBoQNS_vwEGZGBgFRQex7b-Ma8S6P7zvEMK5wh9n4/edit?usp=sharing

I laid out my old numbers, and took 200 fresh numbers for BG3 using a character that wasn't a halfling (my previous rolls for BG3 were with a halfling and that did impact things; these numbers are fresh).

The left columns are the raw numbers as rolled, in the order they were rolled, for each game.
Beside that, is a small table showing the average result, the median result, and the roll count for each result, for each game.

Below that, are four charts that show a plotting of the results if mapped in the order they were rolled.
The three lowest charts, NWN, NWN2 and S:CotM, are almost indistinguishable from each other. The top chart is BG3. You can see the wave pattern.

Any Questions?

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Originally Posted by Niara
Originally Posted by Bercon
I highly doubt Larian wrote their own RNG. They probably use default provided by standard C libraries or some other off-the-shelf solution. We are not talking about secure crypto solution here, just giving random enough 1-20 numbers, anything decently competent is enough. When asked for actual data and statistical analysis, all we get is more "but I can see pattern!" anecdotes. Please provide real numbers, not feelings, otherwise I call bullshit on your claims.

I also doubt they wrote their own. I suspect that you're right and that they did, indeed, use a stock free RNG. Other games which rely on utilising d20 RNG for the entire core backbone of their game use sophisticated RNGs that generally aren't free to acquire, but which use entropy and are really quite complex, to deliver as near to true randomness as they can realistically attain. Larian's does not, possibly, as you say, because they might have just used a free-off-the-shelf one instead.

I'd prefer it if you'd not be as abrasive as you are being, when you're talking to someone who played the game, felt there was an issue, and then, in response to that, sat down and took large statistical samples to see if something was indeed going on, parsed them, and then reported her findings - amongst which was noting that her initial impression was, in fact, mistaken and that the standard deviation was correct and as expected... but then also noting that a different and unexpected pattern emerged as a result of the samples... while the only effort you're putting in to the discussion is to accuse that person of 'bullshit'. You could at least be polite about it, if you're not prepared to put in effort of your own.

Regardless, you wanted my figures, sure, here they are:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tdyBoQNS_vwEGZGBgFRQex7b-Ma8S6P7zvEMK5wh9n4/edit?usp=sharing

I laid out my old numbers, and took 200 fresh numbers for BG3 using a character that wasn't a halfling (my previous rolls for BG3 were with a halfling and that did impact things; these numbers are fresh).

The left columns are the raw numbers as rolled, in the order they were rolled, for each game.
Beside that, is a small table showing the average result, the median result, and the roll count for each result, for each game.

Below that, are four charts that show a plotting of the results if mapped in the order they were rolled.
The three lowest charts, NWN, NWN2 and S:CotM, are almost indistinguishable from each other. The top chart is BG3. You can see the wave pattern.

Any Questions?

Wow that is absolutely shocking! Just out of curiosity, have you ever done this for Fantasy Grounds or the die roller in D&D Beyond? I have my suspicions about FG...

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I haven't, no, sorry. Doing these tests has pretty much eaten up most of my stamina for die-rolling statistics... Even this post was mostly made out of frustration at being told I was making it up...

I'd generally expect simpler systems to use simpler, free to acquire RNGS, while systems for whom that d20 roll is the backbone of their game to fork out for more advanced ones that aren't free.

I should probably request that this all be branched off into its own thread, however, since this thread is meant to be for the synopsis of the stream, and for discussion of the stream, and potentially the contents of the upcoming patch... not another debate about RNGs and dice...

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