Oh, you were referring to the old Discover rule. The question is: Is it RNG manipulation or a mechanic that Discover cards used to favour class cards? I mean, it wasn't hidden information, everyone knew it. That's what made Stonehill Defender so good in Paladin. Removing the class bonus actually made Discover cards even more RNG heavy.
Isn't what we're discussing here whether Blizzard is manipulating RNG in secret?
From an AVID player, I (and most players) had NO CLUE that the Discover cards (not every Discover card, mind you) had different weights applied to class cards. But as I stated in my 1st post, the question posed was too general and I wouldn't consider weighted probabilities for Discover anything sinister by Blizzard. I'd agree it was more of a mechanic (poorly thought out btw) that would've influenced a players decision if they knew that instead of 10 class and 20 neutral cards there was actually 40 class and 20 neutral cards in the pile (so to speak). So I would consider this an aspect of "randomness", but semantics aside.
That said, as in my 1st post, NO Blizzard is NOT manipulating RNG as a balance mechanic. There is literally no benefit to the company financially or LOGICALLY to do so. Sometimes what seems like BS is just a coincidence and RNG is far easier to blame than skill.
As a poker player I understand perception bias. I also have a basic understanding of statistics.
Knowing that they can, I have a hard time trusting that they never influence RNG without full disclosure to us.
I would appreciate a clear statement from the Devs as to any case of manipulated RNG from cards or a statement that it never occurs.
I appreciate that you're not approaching this from a completely tinfoil hat perspective.
But I have to ask, what would be the purpose of manipulating RNG?
Who benefits if RNG is manipulated? Who loses? Why is one person being picked to win over another, because someone is always winning at the expense of someone else? Is any of this worth the effort of manipulating hundreds of thousands of games per day? Is any of it worth completely tanking the competitive integrity of a product they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in?
Conspiracy theories always sound intriguing until you start asking these types of questions. Then you realize, they're largely impractical and don't hold water.
It is called player engagement. Algorithims are developed to keep the maximum amount of players playing. Frustration plateaus are built in to inspire spending. If you do research into the term player engagement in F2P games, you will see that a ton of differing strategies are used with one goal in mind, keep as many players playing as possible and get them to spend as much as possible.
Activision has actually patented methods to influence matchmaking https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-wins-patent-that-uses-matchmaking-to-make-you-want-to-buy-stuff/ . Have you ever noticed that if there is a popular deck out there with some legendaries out there that you don't have that you will frequently que into that deck and he will get a nuts draw and curbstomp you? That is the type of thing that this patent refers to.
You will notice that the shills on this site will never outright deny this stuff is going on. They will bring up perception bias, call you a conspiracy theorist or demand proof. The reality is it is foolish to believe that there is any randomness in hearthstone, and once you know what is going on, you can game the system to reach the goal you have in mind.
This is a long video from 2012 that goes deeply into the hows and why's blizzard manipulated matchmaking in starcraft. Long story short, player engagement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4TjH2SdDOQ
It becomes extremely difficult not to assume rigging of sorts. Still there will be echo chamber pseudo-intellectuals who will keep defending Blizzard by assuming critics either such at the game or are uneducated in its workings. A conspiracy theory in itself.
Against my better judgment, I'll participate here. The OP appears to be a reasonable and well mannered individual, so I think they deserve such discussion in kind.
This is going to be long, so I'll try and make it organized and readable. But my TLDR: there isn't good evidence to support "hidden RNG manipulation", and I don't think it is happening in Hearthstone, though it would be very difficult and time consuming to prove that it is happening.
On why I don't think it is happening:
(1) There isn't any good evidence to support the claim that they are doing it. Almost everything everyone thinks is "evidence" is purely anecdotal. Also, if it is happening, wouldn't you also think there should be anecdotal accounts of "HS is rigged! Look at how good my RNG was in these game!" Yet you only hear the negative accounts. If behind-the-scenes winrate parity is occurring, there has to be accounts of both... but there aren't. And while 3nnu1 has tried to do better, it is still low quality "evidence". You'll notice that the three things 3nnu1 provided didn't mention Hearthstone at all, ever, nor digital CCGs / TCGs. Also notice that the second piece (first video) doesn't even mention Blizzard. And the last video is info that Blizzard allowed an employee of theirs to present on publicly, and the information there doesn't even go beyond what Blizzard has already said they are doing (trying to match on MMR, rank, or similar measures between players).
(2) As laadeedaa and 1xbenx1 both discussed, it doesn't really make sense to do so from the standpoint of Blizzard. While there are things in the game where probabilities aren't uniformally distributed (MMR matching, discovery finds, etc), those are also items Blizzard publicly provided before they went into effect. If they were doing other things "behind the scenes", it would ( A ) undermine the work of their own employees who develop cards, play-test, and balance, i.e., they are paying two different groups within the company to work on opposing goals, ( B ) it is a disincentive to purchasing more cards as the "nefarious algorithms" will make up for your poor card quality to pull you up towards 50% winrate anyway, while better cards won't help you climb above 50%, and ( C ) if such practices were ever actually exposes, it undermines the entire business endeavor because, like the OP said, they would stop playing. So the benefit of them doing so (selling a small percentage more of cards) doesn't justify the risk (loss of the entire business). Plus, the mechanism to get players to buy more cards is pretty apparent and has been around since MTG Alpha: card rarity correlating with quality / power (what would a highlander deck be without legendaries? on average, how useful are epics compared to rares and commons?).
(3) The game has been around quite a while. In that time, issues have arisen where the game wasn't operating as Blizzard said. The one that sticks out in my mind is the tri-class cards drop-rate issues; that was found out by the community and reported to Blizzard in a matter of hours. Yet here we are, over 6 years since the game started, and the community hasn't produced anything substantive about untold RNG manipulation in Hearthstone. Also, if it was occurring, such info would be a prime target for a disgruntled employee to leak to the public. But again, this hasn't happened. And for those who are like "prove it isn't", you can't prove the non-existence of something; it's logically impossible as you can't find evidence of something that doesn't exists, because then the evidence doesn't also exist, and you can't find it. But you can find of evidence of a thing that might exist... such as RNG rigging in Hearthstone.... but on that topic...
On why proving RNG is rigged would be very hard:
Someone mentioned the "play alot of games and record stuff in Excel" method. While technically doable, it is practically ridiculous. No one really has that time and patience for some side discussions around a hobby they have, involving work that isn't really around enjoying said hobby. Also, you need to setup an experiment to target a certain type of RNG manipulation. So the OP's anecdote around Conjurer's Calling would need alot of time and effort to collect the data on if the CC results are uniformally distributed or not. And such an experiment would only answer the CC result question. What about matching you versus similar MMR people, but against those with better collections? Well... how do you even do that experiment? How can you even know what their or your MMR is, or even what their collection is? So certain manipulations can't even be tested for without a gigantic amount of time, money, and manpower (like, federal grant levels of support). So I will say, for those who are like "do the experiment yourself"... really?!
Look, very few things are guaranteed in this world. Even new drugs approved by stringent Class III FDA guidelines, where the company involved was completely honest and open about everything, the positive result needed for approval could have been a type I error all along! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors for those who don't know what they are; I'm not trying to be condescending here, seriously) But still, we use such methods of trying to prove drugs work because they are far better and more effective in actually finding drugs that work than the "evidence" individuals in Hearthstone forums use to try and convince others that Hearthstone is rigged. Of course these are two entirely different levels of importance here, but I have to try and illustrate my thoughts somehow.
Inhale. After your sigh you might want to consider just that.
There isn't any good evidence to support the claim that they are doing it. Almost everything everyone thinks is "evidence" is purely anecdotal. Also, if it is happening, wouldn't you also think there should be anecdotal accounts of "HS is rigged! Look at how good my RNG was in these game!"
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that they are NOT doing it. And there's plenty of reasons why they are doing it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Inhale. After your sigh you might want to consider just that.
There isn't any good evidence to support the claim that they are doing it. Almost everything everyone thinks is "evidence" is purely anecdotal. Also, if it is happening, wouldn't you also think there should be anecdotal accounts of "HS is rigged! Look at how good my RNG was in these game!"
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that they are NOT doing it. And there's plenty of reasons why they are doing it.
And yet you couldn't even read point (3) where I explain why such statements are logically absurd.
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that they are NOT doing it. And there's plenty of reasons why they are doing it.
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that your mother is NOT a Nazi war criminal.... Do you see the fault in reasoning here?
possibility of his mother being nazi war criminal is lower than you win lottery 5 times in a row. But possibility of Blizzard rigging rng is atleast %50. Why? because it is proven that they can do it.
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that they are NOT doing it. And there's plenty of reasons why they are doing it.
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that your mother is NOT a Nazi war criminal.... Do you see the fault in reasoning here?
possibility of his mother being nazi war criminal is lower than you win lottery 5 times in a row. But possibility of Blizzard rigging rng is atleast %50. Why? because it is proven that they can do it.
And yet, notice your own word choices: "can do it" versus "are doing it". The fact the "card" game is digital is all that is needed for the possibility of hidden manipulation that is being discussed here to be occurring. Are you human Nimehte? Yes? Then you can be a criminal. I guess that's all we need then to throw you in jail, right?
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that they are NOT doing it. And there's plenty of reasons why they are doing it.
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that your mother is NOT a Nazi war criminal.... Do you see the fault in reasoning here?
possibility of his mother being nazi war criminal is lower than you win lottery 5 times in a row. But possibility of Blizzard rigging rng is atleast %50. Why? because it is proven that they can do it.
And yet, notice your own word choices: "can do it" versus "are doing it". The fact the "card" game is digital is all that is needed for the possibility of hidden manipulation that is being discussed here to be occurring. Are you human Nimehte? Yes? Then you can be a criminal. I guess that's all we need then to throw you in jail, right?
Reason why I call Blizzard worshippers claiming there is no manipulation pseudo-intellectuals. Since there is no independent confirmation of the goodness of Blizzard in the field over RNG - and matchup in order to get the desired winrate balance related to pack selling, we must assume the worst and cautious to draw conclusions that favor Blizzard.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Inhale. After your sigh you might want to consider just that.
There isn't any good evidence to support the claim that they are doing it. Almost everything everyone thinks is "evidence" is purely anecdotal. Also, if it is happening, wouldn't you also think there should be anecdotal accounts of "HS is rigged! Look at how good my RNG was in these game!"
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that they are NOT doing it. And there's plenty of reasons why they are doing it.
And yet you couldn't even read point (3) where I explain why such statements are logically absurd.
*sigh*
Nice try though.
You can say that it is logically absurd, I can say that your position is naive and ridiculous....where does that leave us. Question is, do you believe activision would do something like that in pursuit of profit, or do you think that they would not do it because of their integrity?
Inhale. After your sigh you might want to consider just that.
There isn't any good evidence to support the claim that they are doing it. Almost everything everyone thinks is "evidence" is purely anecdotal. Also, if it is happening, wouldn't you also think there should be anecdotal accounts of "HS is rigged! Look at how good my RNG was in these game!"
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that they are NOT doing it. And there's plenty of reasons why they are doing it.
And yet you couldn't even read point (3) where I explain why such statements are logically absurd.
*sigh*
Nice try though.
And for those who are like "prove it isn't", you can't prove the non-existence of something; it's logically impossible as you can't find evidence of something that doesn't exists, because then the evidence doesn't also exist, and you can't find it. But you can find of evidence of a thing that might exist... such as RNG rigging in Hearthstone.... but on that topic...
Inhale again.
Ever heard of Carl Popper? Phylosophy of mind. All swans are white. A trueism untill you see a black swann. Knowledge is always temporary. Thruth becomes untrue when you falsify it. The problem with Blizzard is that you can't fasify anything as they secure the data/ MMR/ RNG-mechanics from scrutiny. And if you can't falsify you must approach claims of thruth with scepticism.
Not finding evidence of something that doesn't seem to exist assumes that that something indeed doesn't exist. As I can't falsify your claim, it must be untrue. Only if and unless you can proof that what is not is not, your statements remains just hot air.
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that they are NOT doing it. And there's plenty of reasons why they are doing it.
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that your mother is NOT a Nazi war criminal.... Do you see the fault in reasoning here?
possibility of his mother being nazi war criminal is lower than you win lottery 5 times in a row. But possibility of Blizzard rigging rng is atleast %50. Why? because it is proven that they can do it.
And yet, notice your own word choices: "can do it" versus "are doing it". The fact the "card" game is digital is all that is needed for the possibility of hidden manipulation that is being discussed here to be occurring. Are you human Nimehte? Yes? Then you can be a criminal. I guess that's all we need then to throw you in jail, right?
If there is a crime and %50 chance that I am the one who committed the crime it would make me a suspect right? for the same reason it makes Blizzard a suspect and you guys here trying to repel that suspicion with some silly arguments instead of demanding blizzard to clear the suspicion.
Humanities tendency to see patterns that aren't there, believe in fate, supersititions, gods, etc is enough to make me question anyone who claims hearthstone runs algorithms against its players base in a shady way to maximise packs sales. I'm not saying the incentive for Blizzard isn't there, I'm just saying to my mind, it's outweighed by a humans natural capacity to see puppet strings when there are none. Chaos is frightening, if we can control the chaos or prove someone else is doing so, it is not so frightening.. it's often just wishful thinking.
Humanities tendency to see patterns that aren't there, believe in fate, supersititions, gods, etc is enough to make me question anyone who claims hearthstone runs algorithms against its players base in a shady way to maximise packs sales. I'm not saying the incentive for Blizzard isn't there, I'm just saying to my mind, it's outweighed by a humans natural capacity to see puppet strings when there are none. Chaos is frightening, if we can control the chaos or prove someone else is doing so, it is not so frightening.. it's often just wishful thinking.
And it is also a human tendency to be gullible.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Humanities tendency to see patterns that aren't there, believe in fate, supersititions, gods, etc is enough to make me question anyone who claims hearthstone runs algorithms against its players base in a shady way to maximise packs sales. I'm not saying the incentive for Blizzard isn't there, I'm just saying to my mind, it's outweighed by a humans natural capacity to see puppet strings when there are none. Chaos is frightening, if we can control the chaos or prove someone else is doing so, it is not so frightening.. it's often just wishful thinking.
And it is also a human tendency to be gullible.
Not arguing with that. My point depends on people's gullibility to their own often overly simplistic thoughts and tendency to jump to conclusions/cause-effect/divine influence/conspiracy etc.
This is, I believe, only the second time I've ever posted here. I've read a dozen threads on this topic, but have refrained from commenting because it seems so utterly hopeless trying to convince people of painfully-obvious facts. THERE IS NO RNG MANIPULATION OF THE KIND BEING DISCUSSED HERE. Period. Slice of pi did a great job of explaining the fundamental flaws in the conspiracy argument. I'll only add one more: lawsuits.
Blizzard/ Activision is a publicly-traded company worth somewhere in the vicinity of $20 BILLION. They have stated publicly that they do not adjust/ tamper with the RNG. Do you understand the risk they are taking if they are lying about this? Numerous institutional investors (mutual funds, etc.) have invested in the company. If it were revealed that they WERE manipulating the RNG, the stock price would crash and every one of those investors would be suing them for providing false information that artificially inflated the stock price. And, by the way, the SEC would be on these guys in a heartbeat. All it would take is one angry ex-employee whistle blower to inflict massive financial to the company. For absolutely no meaningful economic benefit.
I realize this description doesn't match with the picture of corporations pushed forth by dumb Hollywood movies, but the truth is they are incredibly cautious in real life. They have no interest in making Bubba lose once again to a Galakrond rogue.
in my opinion, there is definitely tampering with rng. There just isn't a way for certain things to happen statistically so often with discoveries, damage distribution, draw, and all the different ways this game is affected by randomness. I don't believe it's skewed from start to finish, but in a game with a card like zephyrs, where the card reads the board and offers a solution if available, one has to accept that the creators would be and have been using this idea in general game play. I think it is their intention to use it to make the game more fun, I would think that it has triggers maybe based on life totals, the state of the board, and many other likely factors, and that in general is with the idea that giving a chance for a comeback or other game enhancing opportunity will make the game more exciting and talked about whether from anger or elation. I get tired of the massive unlikeliness that a specific card would appear at a certain time again and again. But I have friends that feel the opposite and love it.
With all this opinion said, it could just be bias and paranoia, but it's what I think is happening.
From an AVID player, I (and most players) had NO CLUE that the Discover cards (not every Discover card, mind you) had different weights applied to class cards. But as I stated in my 1st post, the question posed was too general and I wouldn't consider weighted probabilities for Discover anything sinister by Blizzard. I'd agree it was more of a mechanic (poorly thought out btw) that would've influenced a players decision if they knew that instead of 10 class and 20 neutral cards there was actually 40 class and 20 neutral cards in the pile (so to speak). So I would consider this an aspect of "randomness", but semantics aside.
That said, as in my 1st post, NO Blizzard is NOT manipulating RNG as a balance mechanic. There is literally no benefit to the company financially or LOGICALLY to do so. Sometimes what seems like BS is just a coincidence and RNG is far easier to blame than skill.
It becomes extremely difficult not to assume rigging of sorts. Still there will be echo chamber pseudo-intellectuals who will keep defending Blizzard by assuming critics either such at the game or are uneducated in its workings. A conspiracy theory in itself.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
*sigh*
Against my better judgment, I'll participate here. The OP appears to be a reasonable and well mannered individual, so I think they deserve such discussion in kind.
This is going to be long, so I'll try and make it organized and readable. But my TLDR: there isn't good evidence to support "hidden RNG manipulation", and I don't think it is happening in Hearthstone, though it would be very difficult and time consuming to prove that it is happening.
On why I don't think it is happening:
(1) There isn't any good evidence to support the claim that they are doing it. Almost everything everyone thinks is "evidence" is purely anecdotal. Also, if it is happening, wouldn't you also think there should be anecdotal accounts of "HS is rigged! Look at how good my RNG was in these game!" Yet you only hear the negative accounts. If behind-the-scenes winrate parity is occurring, there has to be accounts of both... but there aren't. And while 3nnu1 has tried to do better, it is still low quality "evidence". You'll notice that the three things 3nnu1 provided didn't mention Hearthstone at all, ever, nor digital CCGs / TCGs. Also notice that the second piece (first video) doesn't even mention Blizzard. And the last video is info that Blizzard allowed an employee of theirs to present on publicly, and the information there doesn't even go beyond what Blizzard has already said they are doing (trying to match on MMR, rank, or similar measures between players).
(2) As laadeedaa and 1xbenx1 both discussed, it doesn't really make sense to do so from the standpoint of Blizzard. While there are things in the game where probabilities aren't uniformally distributed (MMR matching, discovery finds, etc), those are also items Blizzard publicly provided before they went into effect. If they were doing other things "behind the scenes", it would ( A ) undermine the work of their own employees who develop cards, play-test, and balance, i.e., they are paying two different groups within the company to work on opposing goals, ( B ) it is a disincentive to purchasing more cards as the "nefarious algorithms" will make up for your poor card quality to pull you up towards 50% winrate anyway, while better cards won't help you climb above 50%, and ( C ) if such practices were ever actually exposes, it undermines the entire business endeavor because, like the OP said, they would stop playing. So the benefit of them doing so (selling a small percentage more of cards) doesn't justify the risk (loss of the entire business). Plus, the mechanism to get players to buy more cards is pretty apparent and has been around since MTG Alpha: card rarity correlating with quality / power (what would a highlander deck be without legendaries? on average, how useful are epics compared to rares and commons?).
(3) The game has been around quite a while. In that time, issues have arisen where the game wasn't operating as Blizzard said. The one that sticks out in my mind is the tri-class cards drop-rate issues; that was found out by the community and reported to Blizzard in a matter of hours. Yet here we are, over 6 years since the game started, and the community hasn't produced anything substantive about untold RNG manipulation in Hearthstone. Also, if it was occurring, such info would be a prime target for a disgruntled employee to leak to the public. But again, this hasn't happened. And for those who are like "prove it isn't", you can't prove the non-existence of something; it's logically impossible as you can't find evidence of something that doesn't exists, because then the evidence doesn't also exist, and you can't find it. But you can find of evidence of a thing that might exist... such as RNG rigging in Hearthstone.... but on that topic...
On why proving RNG is rigged would be very hard:
Someone mentioned the "play alot of games and record stuff in Excel" method. While technically doable, it is practically ridiculous. No one really has that time and patience for some side discussions around a hobby they have, involving work that isn't really around enjoying said hobby. Also, you need to setup an experiment to target a certain type of RNG manipulation. So the OP's anecdote around Conjurer's Calling would need alot of time and effort to collect the data on if the CC results are uniformally distributed or not. And such an experiment would only answer the CC result question. What about matching you versus similar MMR people, but against those with better collections? Well... how do you even do that experiment? How can you even know what their or your MMR is, or even what their collection is? So certain manipulations can't even be tested for without a gigantic amount of time, money, and manpower (like, federal grant levels of support). So I will say, for those who are like "do the experiment yourself"... really?!
Look, very few things are guaranteed in this world. Even new drugs approved by stringent Class III FDA guidelines, where the company involved was completely honest and open about everything, the positive result needed for approval could have been a type I error all along! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors for those who don't know what they are; I'm not trying to be condescending here, seriously) But still, we use such methods of trying to prove drugs work because they are far better and more effective in actually finding drugs that work than the "evidence" individuals in Hearthstone forums use to try and convince others that Hearthstone is rigged. Of course these are two entirely different levels of importance here, but I have to try and illustrate my thoughts somehow.
Inhale. After your sigh you might want to consider just that.
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that they are NOT doing it. And there's plenty of reasons why they are doing it.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
And yet you couldn't even read point (3) where I explain why such statements are logically absurd.
*sigh*
Nice try though.
There isn't any evidence to support the claim that your mother is NOT a Nazi war criminal.... Do you see the fault in reasoning here?
possibility of his mother being nazi war criminal is lower than you win lottery 5 times in a row. But possibility of Blizzard rigging rng is atleast %50. Why? because it is proven that they can do it.
And yet, notice your own word choices: "can do it" versus "are doing it". The fact the "card" game is digital is all that is needed for the possibility of hidden manipulation that is being discussed here to be occurring. Are you human Nimehte? Yes? Then you can be a criminal. I guess that's all we need then to throw you in jail, right?
Reason why I call Blizzard worshippers claiming there is no manipulation pseudo-intellectuals. Since there is no independent confirmation of the goodness of Blizzard in the field over RNG - and matchup in order to get the desired winrate balance related to pack selling, we must assume the worst and cautious to draw conclusions that favor Blizzard.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
You can say that it is logically absurd, I can say that your position is naive and ridiculous....where does that leave us. Question is, do you believe activision would do something like that in pursuit of profit, or do you think that they would not do it because of their integrity?
this comment has been deleted.
Inhale again.
Ever heard of Carl Popper? Phylosophy of mind. All swans are white. A trueism untill you see a black swann. Knowledge is always temporary. Thruth becomes untrue when you falsify it. The problem with Blizzard is that you can't fasify anything as they secure the data/ MMR/ RNG-mechanics from scrutiny. And if you can't falsify you must approach claims of thruth with scepticism.
Not finding evidence of something that doesn't seem to exist assumes that that something indeed doesn't exist. As I can't falsify your claim, it must be untrue. Only if and unless you can proof that what is not is not, your statements remains just hot air.
You may exhale now.....nice try though.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
If there is a crime and %50 chance that I am the one who committed the crime it would make me a suspect right? for the same reason it makes Blizzard a suspect and you guys here trying to repel that suspicion with some silly arguments instead of demanding blizzard to clear the suspicion.
Humanities tendency to see patterns that aren't there, believe in fate, supersititions, gods, etc is enough to make me question anyone who claims hearthstone runs algorithms against its players base in a shady way to maximise packs sales. I'm not saying the incentive for Blizzard isn't there, I'm just saying to my mind, it's outweighed by a humans natural capacity to see puppet strings when there are none. Chaos is frightening, if we can control the chaos or prove someone else is doing so, it is not so frightening.. it's often just wishful thinking.
And it is also a human tendency to be gullible.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Not arguing with that. My point depends on people's gullibility to their own often overly simplistic thoughts and tendency to jump to conclusions/cause-effect/divine influence/conspiracy etc.
This is, I believe, only the second time I've ever posted here. I've read a dozen threads on this topic, but have refrained from commenting because it seems so utterly hopeless trying to convince people of painfully-obvious facts. THERE IS NO RNG MANIPULATION OF THE KIND BEING DISCUSSED HERE. Period. Slice of pi did a great job of explaining the fundamental flaws in the conspiracy argument. I'll only add one more: lawsuits.
Blizzard/ Activision is a publicly-traded company worth somewhere in the vicinity of $20 BILLION. They have stated publicly that they do not adjust/ tamper with the RNG. Do you understand the risk they are taking if they are lying about this? Numerous institutional investors (mutual funds, etc.) have invested in the company. If it were revealed that they WERE manipulating the RNG, the stock price would crash and every one of those investors would be suing them for providing false information that artificially inflated the stock price. And, by the way, the SEC would be on these guys in a heartbeat. All it would take is one angry ex-employee whistle blower to inflict massive financial to the company. For absolutely no meaningful economic benefit.
I realize this description doesn't match with the picture of corporations pushed forth by dumb Hollywood movies, but the truth is they are incredibly cautious in real life. They have no interest in making Bubba lose once again to a Galakrond rogue.
in my opinion, there is definitely tampering with rng. There just isn't a way for certain things to happen statistically so often with discoveries, damage distribution, draw, and all the different ways this game is affected by randomness. I don't believe it's skewed from start to finish, but in a game with a card like zephyrs, where the card reads the board and offers a solution if available, one has to accept that the creators would be and have been using this idea in general game play. I think it is their intention to use it to make the game more fun, I would think that it has triggers maybe based on life totals, the state of the board, and many other likely factors, and that in general is with the idea that giving a chance for a comeback or other game enhancing opportunity will make the game more exciting and talked about whether from anger or elation. I get tired of the massive unlikeliness that a specific card would appear at a certain time again and again. But I have friends that feel the opposite and love it.
With all this opinion said, it could just be bias and paranoia, but it's what I think is happening.
People tend to remember the times they get unlucky, not the times they get lucky. Basic psychology, not a conspiracy.
So now we have someone calling people pseudo-intellectuals while referencing philosophers.