Drawing a LOT of 0x modifier cards.

[ziffel]

My level 4 Scoundrel has, via perks, removed all her negative modifiers, with the exception of the 0x (no dmg) card which can't be removed. Guess what she drew twice in a row, and 3 out of 5 hands last mission? it's nuts. and it's happening on every mission it seems.

Do the modifier cards reshuffle after each draw? and she has 15 positive (or 0) cards, and only the one negative. And i swear she draws it twice every mission. sometimes more. all characters, including enemies, seem to draw it way more than it should be mathematically.

[Dr Snooze]

Sometimes that's just how the dice roll. Or the cards shuffle, in this case.

With the Scoundrel in particular, did you take the perk that removes the +0 cards? That will thin your deck considerably and make it more likely that you'll draw a null (or a crit).

[ziffel]

no, i didn't remove the 0 cards, only the -1, -2's. I understand probability, and randomness. but in this case we're talking 15 of 16 odds to get a 0 or better and she pulls the 0X (miss card) 3 times in 5 draws, and twice in a row.

I meant to stress that this is happening every mission for me, and that it feels like a bug, not just one time bad luck. I'd feel the same if i were getting 2X cards this often.

[ExperimentalGamer]

First, if you've slimmed down the scoundrel's deck, you have a 1/12 chance of drawing the null. A lot of her cards are rolling modifiers. Which since you draw again after pulling one, don't change your odds of pulling the null.

Second, what enemies are you fighting? Certain enemies are prone to cursing you, which puts extra nulls into your deck. (Conversely it's possible to get blessings, which are bonus crits.) In digital it can be easy to overlook that you're taking on a curse until you draw a string of them.

[ziffel]

EG, so far i've been just doing travel missions, and have been fighting basic mobs, like bandits, cultists, skeletons, hounds, etc. If curses are happening and adding nulls, then that makes more sense, but I haven't noticed it. i'm usually very aware of negative statuses, but i'll pay close attention to that going forward.

btw, my scoundrel deck is only trimmed on the negative side, so she has fifteen 0 or better cards, making it 15/16 or 94% chance of drawing anything but a null.

Not trying to be hostile, i want to be clear about that, but I'm saying that i understand mathematical probabilities and I wouldn't post this if I didn't think something was wrong. But, i am new to this game (and GH in general) and there may be things I don't understand yet. but I'll keep playing and if it keeps happening i'll keep ongoing stats. thanks for the reply.

[Syrris]

The deck reshuffles at the end of the turn when you draw your natural 2x or 0x card, which means that it is possible to get them multiple turns in a row, especially with a 'thin' draw deck.

2x/Bless and 0x/Curse cards are removed when drawn and don't cause a reshuffle.

[ziffel]

@Syrris, thanks for that info.

[ziffel]

Next mission: Scoundrel's first card drawn was X0 (null), then six straight 0's, no +cards the entire mission, even tho her deck is mostly comprised of those. Following mission she drew X0 (null) THREE STRAIGHT TIMES. This is only happening to her.

[Les White]

One time I drew 3 x2's in a row, so it's working as intended.

[Teensies_King]

One of the devs simulated 200,000 attacks both 1 per round and 5 per round. Results look pretty normal to me.

FF_James May 14, 2021 7:29am
"In case anyone's interested I just simulated 200,000 attack modifier draws using the exact some code we use in game.
- Basic player deck
- No advantage/disadvantage.
- Only one attack per round"

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/467319856740696074/842740312597463080/unknown.png

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/467319856740696074/842743069366419466/unknown.png

[Les White]

Originally posted by Teensies_King:

One of the devs simulated 200,000 attacks both 1 per round and 5 per round. Results look pretty normal to me.

FF_James May 14, 2021 7:29am
"In case anyone's interested I just simulated 200,000 attack modifier draws using the exact some code we use in game.
- Basic player deck
- No advantage/disadvantage.
- Only one attack per round"

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/467319856740696074/842740312597463080/unknown.png

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/467319856740696074/842743069366419466/unknown.png

Unfortunately, since this game contains an RNG, everyone will ignore this data and just fall back on their "lived experience," and we will continue to have these complaints weekly until the end of time.

[ziffel]

"Unfortunately, since this game contains an RNG, everyone will ignore this data and just fall back on their "lived experience," and we will continue to have these complaints weekly until the end of time."

You tell me what the mathematical odds are of drawing a 1 in 16 chance card three straight times, and then doing that twice in 3 missions. Bugs do exist in games, you know, and there are a lot of variables from user to user. This is an EA game and it's not just mindless noob "hurr durr game is borken" to bring up something that goes against staggering odds.

I keep repeating this, but some of you can't seem to grasp it. this is happening CONSISTENTLY TO ONE CHARACTER ONLY. But go ahead and make your snarky comments of superiority if it makes you feel better.

Typical steam comment thread. I should have known better.

[Les White]

Originally posted by Jeff-66:

"Unfortunately, since this game contains an RNG, everyone will ignore this data and just fall back on their "lived experience," and we will continue to have these complaints weekly until the end of time."

You tell me what the mathematical odds are of drawing a 1 in 16 chance card three straight times, and then doing that twice in 3 missions. Bugs do exist in games, you know, and there are a lot of variables from user to user. This is an EA game and it's not just mindless noob "hurr durr game is borken" to bring up something that goes against staggering odds.

I keep repeating this, but some of you can't seem to grasp it. this is happening CONSISTENTLY TO ONE CHARACTER ONLY. But go ahead and make your snarky comments of superiority if it makes you feel better.

Typical steam comment thread. I should have known better.

Did you even LOOK at what I replied to?

No, you didn't. Because you're absolutely convinced that a streak (which exists in EVERY RNG and is actually a hallmark of everything that is actually RANDOM) is indicative of a problem.

A 200,000 roll sample size is irrelevant, but you, with your 3 flip sample, you've got ALL the answers, don't you?

[Ulysse]

Its actually an interesting discussion. In part because it always pit the same arguments against each other. Someone get a weird string of "luck" and someone disprove it with a single test. Again and again game developers (across multiple games not this one specifically) have found problems with the randomization, Most of the time the are initially rejected following brief testing of an unrelated case (here we have a scoundrel that seem to attract bad luck yet the testing was done in a different condition (likely not during a real scenario)). Bugs are incredibly specific and will require targeted testing. I would suggest that you submit a bug report with the precise condition you are in if you are convinced or if you strongly suspect there is something amiss.

[pseudosphere]

Originally posted by Jeff-66:

You tell me what the mathematical odds are of drawing a 1 in 16 chance card three straight times, and then doing that twice in 3 missions.

tl;dr you're asking the wrong question and people generally misunderstand odds and probabilities as it pertains to real life

Long version:

This is a really common mistake that many (perhaps most, even) people make when understanding odds. You've probably heard about the "birthday problem." What are the odds that two specific people (say you and me) have the same birthday? It's quite low at 1/365 (excluding Feb 29 as a possibility to make the math simpler). If you have 24 people, you might think, "oh well, that's 12 sets of 2 people, so it must still be pretty low -- approximately 12/365 or around 3% (technically you should calculate 1-(364/365)^12, but the difference is negligible in this case). But if you have 24 people, the odds that there are 2 people out of the 24 that share the same birthday exceeds 50%. What happened? Well there's a ton more combinations in which this can happen, e.g. 1 person in the first pair shares a birthday with another person in the seventh pair, etc.

A similar thing is happening here. Although it is true that it is rather unlikely that what happened to you would happen on those exact 3 missions, it is incredibly likely that it happens during 3 consecutive missions at some point in time. Before computers were a thing, it was a fairly common assignment for teachers to ask students to record the results of a few hundred coin flips, and the easy way to tell that someone didn't actually do it and made up the results was if you didn't find long strings of 7-8 consecutive heads or 7-8 consecutive tails. People assume that it's extremely unlikely for that to happen, but over the course of a couple hundred coin flips, it's virtually guaranteed.

Another one that surprises most is the odds of winning one of the "large lotteries" more than once in the same decade. That's a long shot, basically impossible, right? Nope, it's also very likely that someone, somewhere will win twice. In reality, this isn't that different from "what are the odds that I win the lottery?" which is nearly zero, but "what are the odds that someone wins the lottery?" is usually pretty close to 100%.

As others have posted above with concrete, mathematical evidence, you are falling into the same trap and recognizing something as unusual when it happens, which in some sense, it is, but not recognizing that you actually should expect some number of such unusual things to happen at some point in time if you play enough.

[Macdallan]

The gambler's fallacy certainly plays a part in the perception of RNG being broken in some games. People mistakenly think that the odds change based on previous results but they don't. That's not how RNG works. Now if the RNG is programmed improperly you can end up with non random results. We did an exercise in one programming class when I was in University. We had to set up a RNG program in a way that would not properly produce random results, then fix the issue by setting up the function in a slightly different way, just to show how some very simple tweaks to a program can make or break what we were trying to code.

Originally posted by Jeff-66:

You tell me what the mathematical odds are of drawing a 1 in 16 chance card three straight times, and then doing that twice in 3 missions. Bugs do exist in games, you know, and there are a lot of variables from user to user. This is an EA game and it's not just mindless noob "hurr durr game is borken" to bring up something that goes against staggering odds.

A lot of people don't understand that a 1 in 16 chance each time a card is pulled means that every single time a card is picked from that pool of cards there's a 1 in 16 chance you'll get a specific card. Pulling a 0x card in one turn doesn't magically change the odds of that card being selected if all the same cards are back in the deck for the next card pull. Having that happen to the same character a couple times doesn't make me think there's a problem with the code, just really bad luck on the RNG. If it happened nearly every fight with that character then I would begin to suspect there is an issue with the code. Of course this is assuming there's only one 0x card in the deck.

Some people would say that the odds of pulling the same card out of 16 cards three times in a row (if the card pulled is put back in the deck) are 1/4096 (1/16 x 1/16 x 1/16) or roughly 0.0244%. Having that happen twice? By the statistics mathematics I've read up on that's calculated with 1/(0.000244 x 0.000244) which is 0.000000059536 or 0.0000059536%. Not great odds, but not impossible.