little bee
Well-Known Member
Well, I think it would be an interesting experiment to see, if the RNG in Elvenar could pass a statistical randomness test while looking only at a single city at a time (rather than averaging over all cities). But that was not my main point. My main point is that the RNG of a game creates the illusion of randomness while actually being predetermined. It is possible to implement it in such a way as to be practically random or it can be implemented in a way that prevents streaks of good or bad luck.While all of the above is accurate, it is also a bit of a red herring. No one implements their own pseudorandom algorithms (outside of very, very specific cases, and online gaming is definitely not one of them). Modern PRNG algorithms, while indeed deterministic, are indistinguishable from the true random for all practical purposes, including passing statistical randomness tests. The same PRNG algorithms are used in variety of fields where having a good source of randomness is crucial (e.g. various simulations), and they are definitely good enough even in those cases.
Which one is better depends on the situation and on your point of view. Some people like randomness and others don't. Personally I don't and it seems I am not alone. And I think that the randomness is particullary frustrating when applied to something like artifacts as they are extremly valuable in small and useless in large numbers. In the events they are always given as grand prices on a deterministic rotation. I think that system works well and I would like to see something similar for the artifacts in spire. That is why I suggested changing the RNG for the spire rewards to a form of hidden shuffle deck and thereby creating the illusion of randomness while actually giving everyone the same predetermined number of artifacts.
There are of course downsides to this suggestion. First of all, some people might like the randomness and not want to remove it. Secondly all probabilities in the spire come as multiples of 5% so it would need at least 20 weeks to go through a single cycle, which is a lot longer than the 6 weeks for which the phoenix artifacts have been announced. And finally, such a change could make the spire rewards become predictable. If the plan is to rotate between diffrent artifacts than it could allow some players to manipulate which artifacts they get by possibly skipping the spire for a week. But personally, I think it would be an improvement.