Rigged Dice Distribution - An hypothesis.

[Alex]

Hello everyone. I am a lover of Catan, played the game since I was 14 years old, in the Netherlands with my family. I know that on Catan Universe I am just one of the many who have gotten incredibly frustrated by the dice distribution that appears to be so much against reality.

I have played/observed many games, chatted with many players and analyzed many distribution charts. In the end, I formulated a theory as of why is the dice distribution so seemingly unrealistic.

Let me start by quoting a developer:

Nguyên văn bởi Catan Universe CM:

The dice RNG does what it is supposed to do. It produces random numbers. We get feedback about changing RNG results (it’s getting worse or better) after every Update but the RNG hasn´t been touched in a veeeery long time.
This shows us, most Catanians do perceive the RNG to be changing when it fact it doesn´t. It has been the same and it works perfectly fine.
For a regular game with -let’s say 50 rolls - chances are quiet high to not even get close to a standard distribution. Or let’s put it in other words… the results might be all over the place. Seemingly favouring certain numbers over others despite them being less probable to get rolled. Now why is that the case? It´s because we do not use loaded dice.
We encourage everyone to do a small experiment at home. Just write down every roll for every player when playing with your friends or family at home sitting around the table. It’s very likely that someone gets lucky during the game and someone will have bad luck. Now would you think the person who is lucky used loaded dice? Or rigged the dice?
Also feel free to use https://www.random.org/dice/?num=2 and write down the 50 dice results. You might be get quite random results ;)

----------

This folk is a half-lie or a half-baked truth. Or rather, it's misleading information.
Anyone who knows a little about software development and computers in general, should know as a fact that perfect randomness is simply not achievable.
(here an interesting article about it
Stack Overflow [softwareengineering.stackexchange.com] ).
Mr. Developer's comment refers to one of those algorithms that emulate randomness, but it does not address how Catan Universe probably does not use one of those, or uses an adjusted algorithm.

So that was point 1: No true realistic random number generator exists.

And here's point 2: How did they adjust the algorithm?

Please understand that this is speculation, however, I tried to find a logical explanation as to why Catan Universe doesn't make an extra effort to address the dice problem.

The idea is: Catan Universe is a business. Much like any major social network, their business model expects to create a big community of users, who will then purchase items in-app over time, and provide a cash flow, which will then generate revenue.
Hear me out here, it's a business with the sole purpose of making money: they have not developed Catan because they are good samaritans and you like to play Catan with your friends so much.

Once you understand this, you will see how, from a business perspective, it would very natural and pertinent to the stable business plan, the goal of maximizing the total user count: a small community would simply be not profitable.

So how do you maximize the community? By making sure that everyone wins!
Here it's where it becomes delicate.

I have the dreadful suspect that there is some kind of hidden ranking list that records losses vs wins on any given player. For example. If the player loses 4 games and plays a firth game, the algorithm will make sure to favor him in that game, to not make him tired, to not make him wanna give up on the platform, to keep the adrenaline going.

That is how Catan Universe makes sure that nobody leaves (deletes their account)
That is how Catan Universe makes sure that even the worst players win now and then. That is how Catan Universe maintains the platform addictive, just like the slot machines in a casino: they always make you win a little to keep you going.
That is how Catan Universe meet its business requirement to keep a huge community of players.

But if all of this is true, how is a player advantaged vs others in a game? Many variables come into play. Please note that these variables only affect the optimal scenario in which other players don't interfere with the preset handicaps. NOTE: These observations apply only to the base game, although some of them might be present also in the expansions.

1 - Starting order: you will notice how sometimes the board is arranged horribly in favor of the first player, who in this case will be the advantaged player (AP).
2 - Dice distribution: what everyone is complaining about. The dice will favor the AP only.
2.1 - The AP cannot be kept blocked by the robber. AP will often roll 7 to unblock themselves.
2.2 - Game 90% stars with a 7 in the first round. Usually by the AP, easy way to block others and get a head start.
2.3 - 7 Often strikes players with more than 7 cards that are not the AP.
2.4 - 7 Often gets rolled in succession until the robber gets parked on a spot that will effectively block the players who are not the AP.
2.5 - 7 Often gets rolled after a knight card is played wasting the efforts of buying and using the dev card. This happens to everybody but the AP. (BTW the AP doesn't need a knight card: see point 2.1)
2.4 - Dices often roll numbers on which AP is settled. Often many times in a row, creating an irrecoverable gap.
3 - AI: bots act completely irrationally.
3.1 - on a 7 bots almost never rob the AP. It can happen that the bot robs the player who is winning, but that's just because the current leader happens to play better than the AP.
3.2 - bots tend to avoid trading with players who are not supposed to win.
3.3 - bots trade until the is at 2 points from the win (3 if I am not wrong in C&K) when it's already too late.
3.4 - bots trade easily more than 1-1.
4 - Development cards: development cards tend to advantage the players. You might have noticed more often than not, how you will pull a card that you don't need at all for your tactics.
4.1 - You will invest in dev cards but the very first card you pull from the deck is a victory point card (pulling a victory point card as the very first card is a complete disaster, some of you might understand). The probability of pulling a VP card as the very first card is 1/5. But the probability of that happening often is way lower than that... yet you are left with what you experience.)
4.2 - You will pull a road builder in a game on which it's completely useless.
5 - New player account: if the player is recently signed-up there's a good chance he will win in the first 5 games.


----------

Conclusion

These were my observations and speculations as on how Catan Universe keeps it's community and sustains its business model by predetermining an advantaged player for any one game. I have observed several methods, one of which is by messing with the RNG.

If you find this helpful please contribute by replying with what you have experienced. Also, if you think that some of my analyses were wrong please let me know.

[fearenough]

i gave you a award for being a total ♥♥♥♥ ther now that is name calling

[delphon]

I looked for the thread for people complaining that they win too much and its too easy and can't seem to find it... its a game, play/don't play

[fearenough]

yes but im not complaining that i lose 2 much look on the leader board for the only running c&k tournament stadte & ritter at this stage im 1st out of 472 players. Lol many days left so not think i will stay there. but im sure in that and in game they will be working on rng as will be in spot light for online world champs but not sway me from the facts the the rng has been bad and i dropped all the way down to one star and under 1000 elo on purpose just to see that i lost more against low elo than high elo the only thing that made me work back up was tournaments and knowing if hosting world champs they would have to improve rng. If they dont n rng plays up like it does at many times they will be seen by world as a joke. Hey i well know im not top shelf after 1000s of board games against 100s of players in a group with up to 50 players some times i know im in the top 85% not the very top shelf becouse when i i did make it up to the top board in the group a win was hard

[bstacy]

Y'all make me feel a bit better knowing the AI is biased; now we can roll knowing the type of outcome to look forward to. I played a classic Heart game that has a bad AL algorithm, noticed in a 4 player game that one was the AP and they others took the hits - and ganged up on the player. So strategy needs refining - find the achilles heel.

[fearenough]

true

[76561198820966766]

Nguyên văn bởi Alex:

Hello everyone. I am a lover of Catan, played the game since I was 14 years old, in the Netherlands with my family. I know that on Catan Universe I am just one of the many who have gotten incredibly frustrated by the dice distribution that appears to be so much against reality.

I have played/observed many games, chatted with many players and analyzed many distribution charts. In the end, I formulated a theory as of why is the dice distribution so seemingly unrealistic.

Let me start by quoting a developer:

Nguyên văn bởi Catan Universe CM:

The dice RNG does what it is supposed to do. It produces random numbers. We get feedback about changing RNG results (it’s getting worse or better) after every Update but the RNG hasn´t been touched in a veeeery long time.
This shows us, most Catanians do perceive the RNG to be changing when it fact it doesn´t. It has been the same and it works perfectly fine.
For a regular game with -let’s say 50 rolls - chances are quiet high to not even get close to a standard distribution. Or let’s put it in other words… the results might be all over the place. Seemingly favouring certain numbers over others despite them being less probable to get rolled. Now why is that the case? It´s because we do not use loaded dice.
We encourage everyone to do a small experiment at home. Just write down every roll for every player when playing with your friends or family at home sitting around the table. It’s very likely that someone gets lucky during the game and someone will have bad luck. Now would you think the person who is lucky used loaded dice? Or rigged the dice?
Also feel free to use {ĐƯỜNG DẪN BỊ XÓA}https://www.random.org/dice/?num=2 and write down the 50 dice results. You might be get quite random results ;)

----------

This folk is a half-lie or a half-spoken reality. Or rather, it's misleading information.
For everyone that knows a little about software development and computers in general, should know as a fact that perfect randomness is simply not achievable.
(here an interesting article about it
{ĐƯỜNG DẪN BỊ XÓA} Stack Overflow ).
Mr. Developer's comment refers to one of those algorithms that emulate randomness, but it does not address how Catan Universe probably does not use one of those, or uses an adjusted algorithm.

So that was point 1: No true realistic random number generator exists.

And here's point 2: How did they adjust the algorithm?

Please understand that this is speculation, however, I tried to find a logical explanation to why Catan Universe doesn't make an extra effort to address the dice problem.

The idea is: Catan Universe is a business. Much like any major social network, their business model expects to create a big community of users, who will then purchase items in-app over time, and provide a cash flow, which will then generate revenue.
Hear me clear here, it's a business with the sole purpose of making money: they don't develop Catan because you like to play Catan with your friends.
Once you understand this, you will see how, from a business perspective, it's very natural and pertinent to the business plan, the effort of maximizing the users' amount: a small community would simply be unsustainable.
So how do you maximize the community? By making sure that everyone wins!
Here it's where it becomes delicate.

I have the dreadful suspect that there is some kind of hidden ranking list that records losses vs wins on any given player. If the player loses for example 4 games, the algorithm will make sure to favor the player in the fifth game. That is how Catan Universe makes sure that nobody leaves (deletes their account) from the platform. That is how Catan Universe makes sure that even the worse player wins now and then. That's how Catan Universe maintains the platform addicting, just like the slot machines in a casino: you would turn away if you lost right away. Slot machines make you win a bit in the beginning, and then you're hooked. That's how Catan Universe meet its business requirement to keep a huge community of players.

But if all of this is true, how is a player advantaged vs others in a game? Many variables come into play. Please note that these variables only affect the optimal scenario in which other players don't interfere with the preset handicaps. NOTE: These observations apply only to the base game, although some of them might be present also in the expansions.

1 - Starting order: you will notice how sometimes the board is arranged horribly in favor of the first player, who in this case will be the advantaged player (AP).
2 - Dice distribution: what everyone is complaining about. The dice will favor the AP only.
2.1 - The AP cannot be kept blocked by the robber. AP will often roll 7 to unblock themselves.
2.2 - Game 90% stars with a 7 in the first round. Usually by the AP, easy way to block others and get a head start.
2.3 - 7 Often strikes players with more than 7 cards that are not the AP.
2.4 - 7 Often gets rolled in succession until the robber gets parked on a spot that will effectively block the players who are not the AP.
2.5 - 7 Often gets rolled after a knight card is played wasting the efforts of buying and using the dev card. This happens to everybody but the AP. (BTW the AP doesn't need a knight card: see point 2.1)
2.4 - Dices often roll numbers on which AP is settled. Often many times in a row, creating an irrecoverable gap.
3 - AI: bots act completely irrationally.
3.1 - on a 7 bots almost never rob the AP. It can happen that the bot robs the player who is winning, but that's just because the current leader happens to play better than the AP.
3.2 - bots tend to avoid trading with players who are not supposed to win.
3.3 - bots trade until the is at 2 points from the win (3 if I am not wrong in C&K) when it's already too late.
3.4 - bots trade easily more than 1-1.
4 - Development cards: development cards tend to advantage the players. You might have noticed more often than not, how you will pull a card that you don't need at all for your tactics.
4.1 - You will invest in dev cards but the very first card you pull from the deck is a victory point card (pulling a victory point card as the very first card is a complete disaster, some of you might understand). The probability of pulling a VP card as the very first card is 1/5. But the probability of that happening often is way lower than that... yet you are left with what you experience.)
4.2 - You will pull a road builder in a game on which it's completely useless.
5 - New player account: if the player is recently signed-up there's a good chance he will win in the first 5 games.


----------

Conclusion

These were my observations and speculations as on how Catan Universe keeps it's community and sustains its business model by predetermining an advantaged player for any one game. I have observed several methods, one of which is by messing with the RNG.

If you find this helpful please contribute by replying with what you have experienced. Also, if you think that some of my analyses were wrong please let me know.

Of course it’s rigged. They’ve already acknowledged that the dice rolls are generated not by RNG, but by their “algorithm “.

The game obviously picks winners and losers. Given the original settlement placement, one can predict nearly unfailingly, which rolls will be the most often rolled; and nine of ten games, it won’t favor the human player. Or, if it’s an online game against other humans, the dice will unfailingly favor the lower-ranked players.

[N o i r]

They actually stated publicly that they rng is fair.

The rest of your post is the usual kind of unsubstantiated allegations.

[Redboy]

I am not wading into the tech details as I have no idea - but I find the game to be barely playable right now and I am gunna go ahead and uninstall until I hear it's working better. Sucks as it's a great game but zero fun right now unless you have lots of online buddies. AI games don't really require you to be there at all and probably the only reason to be there is if you enjoy doing nothing much but get robber spammed for 30mins,

[Aerom]

Nguyên văn bởi Ice-Nine:

There's absolutely no evidence nor reason to believe that die rolls are being manipulated. Y'all are just really ignorant of the study of statistics. Let this dumb thread die already.

Stop trying to silence people. Even if the people are ignorant, it's better to have open discussion than to not be able to point out the truly corrupt things at all.

[Aerom]

Nguyên văn bởi N o i r:

They actually stated publicly that they rng is fair.

The rest of your post is the usual kind of unsubstantiated allegations.

Well of course they would say that their RNG is fair. I mean, I will give them the benefit of the doubt, but there is no reason to derive that a user's allegations are wrong because of one flimsy statement from the developer.

Edit: Nope. I no longer believe that the Catan Universe RNG is fair.

[Aerom]

Nguyên văn bởi Kawfeehaus:

All I know is that I just sat through a 4 player game where the 6 was rolled 3 times. The game before the 12 was rolled 8 times.

Twelve being rolled 8 times out of an average of 80 rolls is a one in one thousand.
6 only being rolled 3 times, on the other hand, is a one in 500.
one in 500 thousand odds combined are not a good public image for the developer. And if this stuff happens thousands of times, it's pretty likely that the game doesn't use a fair RNG.

[Aerom]

Nguyên văn bởi VitaminDiz:

I have had so many instances where all dice rolls favor AI. this last game, 8 was rolled 20 times, 7 was rolled 19, but 6 was only rolled 10. 102 rolls in this particular game. 9 was also only rolled 4 times. Those were my money spots. I lost with only 4 victory points. I've been playing Catan for nearly 20 years and have never been so mad at a game.

What the hell is up with one in 10 to the power of 26 odds? If all 7 billion humans played catan, each one would have to (on average) play 2*10^16 games to get odds like that.

[N o i r]

Nguyên văn bởi Aerom:

I mean, I will give them the benefit of the doubt, but there is no reason to derive that a user's allegations are wrong because of one flimsy statement from the developer.

Of course, there is no reason to trust a user's allegations either, especially in the absence of statistically significant evidence.

[Teddykrieger_Michel]

I LOVE the endless dice-roll-discussion. But pehaps it would be better starting a new discussion about this issue, then I haven´t to scroll so much.

[TomDute]

100% agree to this