Are the tile drops TRULY random?

Unknown

It seems that the NPC opponents get a LOT more repetitive cascade action, and 5-tile critical drops than players do. Have the devs come out and said, ever, that the tiled drops are truly random, or have they remained tight-lipped on the subject?

scottee

Yes, they've said they are completely random.

One of the programmers said they thought it was rigged too, and then went and looked into the code and it isn't.

Esheris

I've come to the conclusion about tile drops is that my skill is not as great as their luck.

BlackSheep101

I get lots of huge cascades and drops. The thing is, they're usually unnecessary and either happen at the very end of a match or while I'm firmly in control. When the computer gets a huge cascades, it's nearly always a Bad Thing(tm) and sticks in my memory. Then, occasionally, I open a round with three 5-way matches and down an opponent on turn one. It's great fun, but the round is over so quickly that it doesn't imprint nearly as strongly as losing the last match needed to get me to that final progression reward...

hurcules

Posted on Demiurge Studio's blog:

http://www.demiurgestudios.com/engineer ... -opponent/

Dayv

BlackSheep101 wrote:

I get lots of huge cascades and drops. The thing is, they're usually unnecessary and either happen at the very end of a match or while I'm firmly in control. When the computer gets a huge cascades, it's nearly always a Bad Thing(tm) and sticks in my memory. Then, occasionally, I open a round with three 5-way matches and down an opponent on turn one. It's great fun, but the round is over so quickly that it doesn't imprint nearly as strongly as losing the last match needed to get me to that final progression reward...

I think there's a reason we see more unnecessary cascades against weak opponents as well:

Players are risk-avoidant. We tend to avoid matches where we know we're going to need a bunch of lucky cascades to win, unless the rewards (like a legendary token or a ton of PvE points) significantly outweigh the costs (health packs, time wasted, lost PvP points). We will gladly take a match we know we have about a 0% chance of losing, but will almost never take one with only a 0.1% chance of winning -- the AI has no such choice.

We always have a chance of getting an amazing cascade, but our large proportion of easy fights makes us notice all the times we "waste" a cascade on those matches.

BlackSheep101

So I'm right, they really are coming when I don't need them!

But yeah, you're totally right, the vast majority of matches I play I have no chance of losing. It's the late pvp matches that are just so painful to lose.

Unknown

Honest to God, I complain as much as anyone about things that are broken, especially when it comes to MPQ, but SERIOUSLY.

I almost posted a few days ago, but couldn't figure out where to put the thoughts, so I decided against it. I'm now thinking this might be the place...

Running PvP, aiming for 3000 for the season and my second ever 10-pack.

I could have sworn that someone at D3 personally looked at my in-game data, read my posts, and thought, "Hey, you know what, this guy is still hanging in there after 700+ days of ups-and-downs, let's throw him a bone."

You simply could not believe the run I had. I was taking shots at 166s with wreckless abandon, just trying to get that last magical 200 or so points so I could put this PvP season to bed. Some of the cascades I got, they were otherwordly.

I was taking out TWO enemies inside of 3-4 moves. It was epic. Magical.

Here's the thing though. I was moving so quickly, and so disinterested in anything beyond, "Yes! 38 MORE points! Next! Yes! 42 more points! Next!" that I almost missed what was happening...

Today I contemplated pushing through 500+ points of intentional, unshielded losses to reach for 1700 in Simulator. First match, I got (embarrassingly ) trounced by an evenly matched opponent that I would usually Hulk-Bomb into dust. The cascades, the T-Us... it was fast, it was brutal, it was demoralizing...

My take-away? D3 personally screwed me today.

tl;dr: I realize how it feels sometimes (*cough* confirmation bias *cough*), but random truly is just random, and if we focused as intently on EVERY SINGLE VICTORY the way we tend as humans to on a couple bad losses, we'd see it.

DBC

Unknown

Personally I don't buy it.

For sure the AI doesn't play "smart". We've all seen the AI match it's own countdown tiles, strike/attack/protect tiles, etc. Fine.

And maaaaybe the tile drops are truly random, but also maybe not. Not that I don't trust the D3 blogpost but I don't buy that the code is that simple. Hundreds of thousands of LoC and such a simplistic tile generation algo that spans all game modes, Ultron, etc?

But for sure the initial board layout is weighted more often than not in favor of the AI. How many times have you fought FistBuster or BabyFistBuster (aka IF + boosted Cyke) only to be greeted with a board littered with black, red, and yellow/purple.

AND, I bet most of you are nodding your head when I say that when fighting against Loki there always seems to be more match-4 than usual, that when fighting JG there are more match-5 daring you to go ahead and do it, and when using PX (w/o a tile generator) the match-5 baits suddenly dry up.

Maybe it's not as simple or obvious but there is definitely something non-random at work.

OT: I find Loki vs. Loki the easiest way to win; there is ALWAYS enough match-4 that I let the AI take the bait.

OneLastGambit

I get some insane cascades... right after I have killed the AI last character and am waiting for the battle to finish at the end of a PVE event with 1 min to go.

DaveR4470

Point that people tend to miss in this discussion: while the tile drops are random, the board they drop into is very much not. It's been played on, i.e. tiles have been selectively and non-randomly removed. So you're inserting a random tile or tiles into a board that has a non-random distribution of tiles.

If I have a sack of 64 M&Ms of randomly distributed among colors, there's a certain statistical chance that I'd pull 6 brown M&Ms out in a row. If, however, I've been eating 3 red M&Ms or 3 green M&Ms for multiple iterations, my chances of pulling 6 browns out are significantly greater, EVEN if I'm putting 3 completely random M&Ms into the bag to replace the ones I've eaten.

Unknown

DaveR4470 wrote:

Point that people tend to miss in this discussion: while the tile drops are random, the board they drop into is very much not. It's been played on, i.e. tiles have been selectively and non-randomly removed. So you're inserting a random tile or tiles into a board that has a non-random distribution of tiles.

I'm surprised this hasn't been said more often. You've just played a match where all the red and green has been claimed, and there's mostly yellow on the board. Two yellow tiles fall from the sky and suddenly the computer just made an impossible 8-way yellow that clears the board and wouldn't you know it, the computer ends up with 5-way criticals out the wazoo, collects all this red and green that wasn't there before, and you're dead. So unfair.

Only you're playing with CMags, Loki, and X-Force, and the computer has been matching red and green 4-ways all game. You then got rid of the critical tiles and Surgical Striked (Struck?) all the red from the board. You match the last green tiles (because there weren't any yellow 5-ways ready), setting up the board for a cascade the likes of which have never been seen!

The last straw came for me the other week when I used Iron Fist's purple, and all the black landed in a huge block that left a massive hole that was filled entirely with red tiles! I got two impossible matches that I didn't really need, and I reflected that if it had happened against me as I was making my last hop to 1000, I'd be entirely convinced the game was programmed to turn on you when it mattered.

But it doesn't. It just feels that way.

Mawtful

Can we make this topic a banable offence? I thought we'd moved past the point where this was an issue.

Unknown

Mawtful wrote:

Can we make this topic a banable offence? I thought we'd moved past the point where this was an issue.

1. One should never make a customer asking a question that is genuine--which apparently other customers also have--a "banable" [sic] offense.

2. You have the ability to skip topics you have no interest in.

Unknown

hurcules wrote:

Posted on Demiurge Studio's blog:

http://www.demiurgestudios.com/engineer ... -opponent/

He wrote a good post. So the computer does not look for 5-way matches. That makes sense because I have seen it miss 5-L and make a 4-line instead, and am THANKFUL that has never been corrected.

I am also glad that although I rember drops screwing me more than when drops benefit me, that is simple human bias.

No one wants to play a game that is rigged. If it is rigged to beat you unfairly, you feel cheated and leave. If it is rigged so you beat it... you wander off relatively soon, looking for an honest challenge.

jredd

There are 2 kinds of cascades. the ones you can see coming (and take advantage of) and the totally random fall from the sky type cascades.

the ai team generally misses the obvious ones that you and i utilize, but even more often they are the beneficiary of the 'totally random, i need this tile/tiles to "randomly" fall in this order to get a massive cascade and end the match/generate insane amounts of AP'.

It's incredibly frustrating and anyone will have a hard time convincing me that there isn't times when the AI/code/game decides that you are going to lose and props up the ai team way more than is possible randomly.

Eddiemon

jredd wrote:

the ai team generally misses the obvious ones that you and i utilize, but even more often they are the beneficiary of the 'totally random, i need this tile/tiles to "randomly" fall in this order to get a massive cascade and end the match/generate insane amounts of AP'.

I only lose to the AI when it has cascades, lucky drops or boards that I can't control (Too much opponent colour, to few of a critical colour in my strategy). Without those events I roll my opponent. (Not counting PvE dodginess like two goons feeding Hood).

So it's natural to focus on how 'unfair' it is when you don't win, because you're supposed to win. The AI's only winning 'strategy' is to get a lucky board. That isn't to say that it can influence the board that will be dropped, but without a good board or bad play by the player it loses.

If I get a lucky board or a lucky drop, well it is generally wasted because I was going to win anyway. My mind places no value on it. (Ok so my poor mind believes in random number Kharma and so if I have a lucky board it means the AI is due so I actually resent them). If it is a fair board then I win. So the only boards that I resent that make me want to throw my device at the wall are those which are unfair because the AI actually wins one.

It's incredibly frustrating and anyone will have a hard time convincing me that there isn't times when the AI/code/game decides that you are going to lose and props up the ai team way more than is possible randomly.

I am curious as to what you think is impossible randomly. Implausible maybe, but those boards where it didn't get the extra drop and I won a hard fought battle I don't dwell on. Only the ones where I actually lost do I place any emotional value on.

The interesting thing about random is sometimes you have a string of unfortunate results, known as 'bad luck'. There doesn't need to be a conspiracy or code developed to add bad luck to randomness. I've had times when I have used up 9 health packs across 6 matches because my luck was bad and other times when I am using maybe one health pack every 5 matches.

It's frustrating and annoying and I accuse my tablet of cheating. But I win far more than my fair share of matches, so if it is cheating it's doing a terrible job of it.

I would like to see them change the random algorithm so that three tiles of the same colour cannot drop in sequence, but then would the AI win anywhere near enough matches?

jredd

Eddiemon wrote:

jredd wrote:

the ai team generally misses the obvious ones that you and i utilize, but even more often they are the beneficiary of the 'totally random, i need this tile/tiles to "randomly" fall in this order to get a massive cascade and end the match/generate insane amounts of AP'.

I only lose to the AI when it has cascades, lucky drops or boards that I can't control (Too much opponent colour, to few of a critical colour in my strategy). Without those events I roll my opponent. (Not counting PvE dodginess like two goons feeding Hood).

So it's natural to focus on how 'unfair' it is when you don't win, because you're supposed to win. The AI's only winning 'strategy' is to get a lucky board. That isn't to say that it can influence the board that will be dropped, but without a good board or bad play by the player it loses.

If I get a lucky board or a lucky drop, well it is generally wasted because I was going to win anyway. My mind places no value on it. (Ok so my poor mind believes in random number Kharma and so if I have a lucky board it means the AI is due so I actually resent them). If it is a fair board then I win. So the only boards that I resent that make me want to throw my device at the wall are those which are unfair because the AI actually wins one.

It's incredibly frustrating and anyone will have a hard time convincing me that there isn't times when the AI/code/game decides that you are going to lose and props up the ai team way more than is possible randomly.

I am curious as to what you think is impossible randomly. Implausible maybe, but those boards where it didn't get the extra drop and I won a hard fought battle I don't dwell on. Only the ones where I actually lost do I place any emotional value on.

The interesting thing about random is sometimes you have a string of unfortunate results, known as 'bad luck'. There doesn't need to be a conspiracy or code developed to add bad luck to randomness. I've had times when I have used up 9 health packs across 6 matches because my luck was bad and other times when I am using maybe one health pack every 5 matches.

It's frustrating and annoying and I accuse my tablet of cheating. But I win far more than my fair share of matches, so if it is cheating it's doing a terrible job of it.

I would like to see them change the random algorithm so that three tiles of the same colour cannot drop in sequence, but then would the AI win anywhere near enough matches?

implausible is probably a better word. but how many times have you been demolished in a winnable match in pvp that will (presumably) get you enough points to pass a progression? it happens all the time. as you say, matches you wouldn't lose without the ai getting some nice board luck.

tph_james

1. Whenever I faced loki team, match-4 and match-5 chances increased a lot obviously.. I tried to avoid matching them. However, I would still accidentally match 4 and 5 from random drops.
2. And about GSBW, she almost always able to collect 19 green, even I tried to deny her.
3. 2*magneto when I use him, his red countdown tiles are 80% chances to be at the edge of board, even though there are a lot of red tiles at the middle.
4. she-hulk, her green has very very low chance of destroying enemy strong colors.

These are just my personal opinions, i know i get some nice cascades too, but I experienced the above a lot which i can't get it off my mind.
I might be wrong because the boards are really RANDOM..

OneLastGambit

I think that here there is a problem which is inherent in most human beings - the inability to properly comprehend odds, in particular random chance.

See it seems implausible that the AI could get a ridiculous cascade which lasts forever just when it needs it the most. But the thing about random chance is that ALL things have an equal chance of occurring. So it's just as implausible for that to happen as it is to have a very uneventful game which only ever has match 3s.

So while it seems unfair that this happens it is actually just as likely as any other scenario in a game which supposedly uses random chance for it's tile drops.

The second issue is that we are only paying attention to when the random chance is not in our favour, because it annoys us and sticks in our minds. I'll wager money that the occurances of massive AI cascades at convenient times is probably very similar to the occurances of massive player cascades, they just don't stick in your mind because you let it go as soon as it happens.

Unknown

Mawtful wrote:

Can we make this topic a banable offence? I thought we'd moved past the point where this was an issue.

It will never be a non-issue. People will constantly need to be reminded that it's all in their heads, and new players will bring the issue up as soon as they see a problem. We will calmly explain that it's all been looked into, and the cycle will continue.