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Everything in the game is run by chance, but it seems to me that when 1 thing happens its much more likely to happen again in a short period of time. Such as magic or manu, someone could go on a string and succesfully cast/manu many times without fail, then again can fail like 10 times in a row even at the recommended level. Also same with harvesting, somwetimes you can go hours of harvesting and not a thing happens, and other times you get caverns/mn/bees 5 times in 5 minutes. And then we have tankel.... I suggest making the rolls more random but with the percentages in favor of lvl., and lvls over recomended lvl give more chance to not fail.

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That's due to the fact there is no physical dice. :P Random events are seeded by time, and are therefore called "pseudo-random". Nobody has ever yet written a true random number generator, without using an entropy pool or derivative.

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For the umpteenth time:

 

We cannot make it more random.

 

There is no pattern.

 

It's all in your head.

 

EDIT: CK, the number generator has nothing to do with it, for all practical purposes it's random.

Edited by Grum

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If you have a small sample size (10 magic/manu attempts or 5 min of harvesting) then the variation in the success rate is higher. If you use a large sample size, your success rate will come out closer to the average success rate.

 

Also, the chance of failing twice in a row is much higher if you just failed once. If your failure rate is 10% then the chance of getting two failures in a row out of two attempts is 1%. If you just failed previously before your two attempts however, it's 10% which is 10 times higher. You need to start measuring from an arbitrary point, you can't decide to start paying attention to your failure rate after you fail once.

 

If you do those those two things: use a larger sample size, and start measuring from an arbitrary point instead of a biased one, the numbers should be more sensible.

Edited by chintan

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Maybe its in my head as well but I've noticed that good and bad events seem to cluster.

 

Though thinking about how many events are being serviced at any particular time makes me lean in the direction of saying it is in my head. I don't know how many events that require random numbers are going on at any particular time though. If we're talking hundreds a second then it is certainly my imagination because no random number generator could be that bad.

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There's one thing you guys missed completely... There is only one random number generator, which is shared among everyone logged in. So, when you get stung by a bee twice with 5 seconds in between, in the meantime about 50 players has "rolled the dice" to attack some monster, and about 50 monsters have rolled the dice to attack the players back every second, 50 other players have rolled for harvesting, and so on. So, your two unlucky rolls in a role may easily be separated by 1000 other rolls with the same set of dice.

 

If there was something funny with the dice, you would have everyone getting cave walls collapsing at the same time.

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The unpredictable actions of the other players make the random numbers pretty much true random numbers for any given player. I did run some tests in the past to attempt to find the best random number generating method, and discovered that the server was already using the best way.

 

http://www.eternal-lands.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9412

 

What you are looking for is actually not true random numbers, but more pseudo-random and evenly distributed numbers. The best way to get that is to actually use a dumber random number generator and give every player their own individual entropy pool.

 

There is really no point in attempting to solve this "problem". People will always see patterns in chaos, and complain that the random numbers treated them unfairly.

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The pattern that people are seeing is perfectly normal for a random process, and is probably not caused by the random number generator being bad. If you've ever listened to the clicks of a Geiger counter ( http://www.geigercounters.com/Geiger.wav ) it will seem that the clicks tend to cluster, and there are times when there are fewer clicks and times when there are more clicks. During the whole time, the level of radioactivity doesn't change much (assuming the the substance doesn't decay much while you are measuring), so the expected rate at which events occur is constant.

 

Radioactive decay is caused by quantum mechanical randomness, which is a better random number generator than physical dice rolls, so this is definitely not due to the random number generator being bad.

 

This is appoximately what you would sound like if you were harvesting and made a click every time a random event occured (and you harvested really fast and at a constant rate). The only significant difference is that harvesting attempt are discrete, while radioactive decay is continuous.

Edited by chintan

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It does not really matter how the random number generator works until there is only one for the whole server and not one for every player (what i wont expect).

 

Because the "random" comes from the clicks of the players who are manufacturing/harvesting/alching/fighting and so on.

 

And the clicks of all players logged on, are *really* randon. The server could even choose the random numbers from a list containing values from 0 to 32767 and it will still be random.

 

Because no one can say which player will cause which event in the future.

 

Piper

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so if i make some odds like air-essences i have my private dice for several hours? :)

No. Read my post again. There is only one "set of dice".

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Maybe its in my head as well but I've noticed that good and bad events seem to cluster.

 

 

i have alwayes heard the saying 'bad luck comes in 3's' which ive found to be pretty much true in life.

 

and, besides, the bad always makes you appreciate the good even more :)

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Geez .. what is it with all the misguided proverbs about luck? :) Everyone treats it like it's something mysterious.

 

Bad luck does not always come in 3's. It often occurs in 1's or 2's or 4's.

Edited by chintan

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