New Dice Algorithm / True dice rolls : SMG Studio

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Steve Clements

started a topic almost 8 years ago

Game does not use true dice roll probabilities. Many, many times I've had 97-99% chance to win and dont.

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Richard Nagel

said about 7 years ago

My stats as a Novice. Note that I mostly play offline games with the AI, as I have basically given up on online games due to the fact of not being credited for wins which would have increased my rank.

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SectaOne

said about 7 years ago

The Wilburn Howitzer account is fairly new. I made it immediately after the update that added spectator mode. The other two are a bit older but stll newer than the last dice algorithm change I know of. But I think all accounts roll with the same algorithm as that makes sense to me as a programmer and SMG says it is the case. the reason old accounts stats are not as skewed is because they have a large sample from before the change to the matrix dice.

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Justin Burt

said about 7 years ago

Hmmm, that’s messed up. Thanks for posting. Are all these accounts created recently? I wonder if it has something to do with newer accounts. Anybody else reading should post their stats just like SectaOne so we can see how pervasive this is.

SectaOne

said about 7 years ago

Here is my evidence

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Justin Burt

said about 7 years ago

Nah, that’s nonsense. Any account with a sufficiently large enough sample size comes out with roughly 15-17% statistic for any given roll probability. If everyone is biased away from rolling 1’s then everybody here above Novice should see a below 14% chance of rolling 1. Everybody reading can check and see that’s not the case. I have several friends that play, everyone has 16% even stats after a few dozen games including myself.

SectaOne

said about 7 years ago

All accounts roll fewer ones than they should. I've created a few new accounts and after a game or two they are beginner and before long master. Even after reaching grandmaster the skewed dice remain. Since most of those accounts games are not played at novice level it demonstrates that everyone has skewed rolls and while not accurate the game is balanced.

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Justin Burt

said about 7 years ago

Briand, That level of complexity is not needed to test what I’m talking about. It’s a simple biasing away from rolling 1’s for any user with a Novice rank, doesn’t matter who they are rolling against or in what scenario. Create a new account, play one game as a Novice, check stats — You will find roughly a 12% rolling of 1’s and roughly 17% rolls for every other number. Create any number of new accounts to test this and you will find that distribution bias every time (keep in mind probability still applies so you may not end up with those exact numbers but something close).

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Briand

said about 7 years ago

Have you been able to advance a player to beginner rank without the novice making all but one roll so that you can test dice rolls at the beginner level with a clean slate?

What happens when a novice rolls again a novice? The attacker wins most of the time? So it's all about offense for novices?

I boot novices anyway. And usually beginners. and if SMG would take a moment to program filtering I'd only host games for masters and grandmasters. But you know, your mom.

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Justin Burt

said about 7 years ago

FYI, the new algorithm has been programmed to explicitly give Novice users an unfair advantage by heavily biasing their rolls away from 1’s. I’ve investigated this thoroughly and it’s undeniable—create a new account, play a game, then check your stats, you can easily observe this yourself. It’s obviously a highly unethical attempt at keeping new players happy and encouraging them to buy the full game. I suggest you ban all Novice users from any games you create if you want a fair playing field. Please open a new ticket and complain to game creators. We need to hammer them until they decide to be truthful with their paying customers and undo this cheap marketing trick that ruins the game for everyone else!

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Wadim

said about 7 years ago

Well I had a game today, where 9 lost vs 1 twice. I mean the chances of this happening is somewhere in the ball park of 1:1000000. I don't think I'm that lucky. I don't get how it can be this hard to approximate true dice rolls. Any decent programmer can write an algorithm that can do it in less than an hour ;/

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Briand

said about 7 years ago

I am pretty sure SMG bought this from Hasbro. I got on board when it was only Hasbro. Or maybe they merged. I didn't really look into it; I just know the name changed at one point.

If it helps, I had a game where I had about 35 troops or so going up against 60. I rolled one by one, since the goal was to just beat him down as much as I could without going below 3 troops on my territory. He lost 3 and I lost about 27 to 30 or whatever it was before the timer ran out. I think you guys need to stop blaming Blitz so much. There's a case where it was ridiculous for me as the attacker to lose so much. And I did it roll by roll. So it can happen and it did to me.

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Aitch

said about 7 years ago

The dice is a primary issue - to the extent that it could make or break SMG...

As this is officially sponsored by Hasbro - they must have a substantial financial stake in the game

Either SMG paid Hasbro a lot of money for the franchise - or Hasbro didn't take any money up-front, opting instead to take a big slice of the ongoing revenue it generates...

This means that the game has to be successful and bring in the money!

The flawed Dice will significantly hamper the profitability of the game - which may force SMG and Hasbro to give up on it entirely...which would be bad news for everybody!

Richard Nagel

said about 7 years ago

Complaining or not, the current "probability matrix" is screwed. The dice need to be RANDOM, roll for roll. And, more proof that it is screwed, a copy 'n' paste of mine from earlier in this thread, along with a newer screenshot: It is statistically impossible to loose more troops than you have killed when your total win-to-loss ratio is 2:1 (or greater). THAT IS, unless that you are rolling more 1's (or other low numbers) than any other number. I have seen this on two different devices, as well as a buddy of mine (who's win-to-loss ratio is **WAY** higher than 2:1) telling me that it is EXACTLY the same on his. *NONE* of the other DOS/Windows/Android Risk and Risk-like games that I play (that can display these types of stats) exhibit this behavior. And, like I've posted before, EVEN DOS Risk, circa 1989... yeah, folks, even back in 1989 under DOS they got the PRNG right.

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SectaOne

said about 7 years ago

Yes the complaints will never stop but if SMG had a solid algorithm they could stand behind it. I don't get why they changed it to begin with and why they didn't test the (at the time) new algorithm more thoroughly before pulling the trigger. Every time they have to change it their credibility goes down, least until they can show they have it right. But since some people will always complain vocally even if there is nothing wrong it will be a long time before they can live this down. They need to act to fix the issue as soon as they can but must be careful not to act so quickly that they mess up again. So why not use the PRNG for each die at least until they can get a more accurate matrix?

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Briand

said about 7 years ago

A lot of complaining came as soon as they made a "new algorithm." People were complaining prior to that too. People are always going to complain because they don't realize that odds are not going to be consistent. It is possible for an army of 23 to lose against an army of 3. They want to complain unfair as soon as they get that one bad roll. All I know is when they first updated it, I was getting a lot of triple 1 rolls. They fixed that at least.