SMG Studio

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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Awesome. We'll wait 2 years or so and maybe get it. :)

 

 I prefer 5 min games, although 3 mins is usually enough to kill 5 players in one turn. The problem is less people seem to want to join 5 min games.

I believe Hasbro is the name of the company who had it before SMG. I don't know if they merged or if SMG just got the game from them but it was maybe a year ago when this happened.

 

 So I just wanted to show everyone that this game is clearly altering rolls in favor of GrandMasters. Here are the screenshots to prove it. 666 games and only 15% rolls on 1's!!!!! Obvious flaw in the SMG dice algorithm. I've had this account since before SMG changed the code and it was all 16% until they changed it. Now I'm rolling a lot more 6's, 5's and apparently 2's. Fix your code SMG! Grandmasters don't deserve an advantage over everyone else lol

There's one way to find out if it's offensive and defensive together. Make 2 accounts. Make one single roll on each, record the rolls for offensive/defensive, then check your dice stats to confirm. Anyone got time to confirm this? I'm curious if your stats are only what you roll (yours + defender), only your offense, your offense + your defense.

 

David, can you provide your data on these bad rolls?

 

For anyone who actually wants to check whether the dice algorithm is off, there is a fair amount of data out there in the form of recorded games on youtube.  For example https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsz1fgsud-bWjuf4PRr1KA.

I play risk just about every day and I don't think the algorithm is off.  I also record and review my games (but don't typically post to youtube).  I haven't noticed anything strange about the dice.  Sure, I lose battles I'm statistically favored to win, but that's how probability works.  What would truly be strange and questionable is if we didn't ever lose battles we were favored to win.  Humans are very good at noticing out of the ordinary things but not so good at noticing things that are as we would expect.  It's like how everyone has this idea that most drivers are idiots because they see a few dumb drivers each day.  But they don't remember all of the the good drivers, who are actually the vast majority.  The bad drivers stick out in our memory, but the good ones don't even though they're far more common.

My guess is all this complaining about "bad dice" is unintentional selective memory.  I bet if everyone complaining about bad dice would actually do some real number crunching and calculate the probabilities of their rolls using data from their games, they would discover that what happens in the game is very close to what would be expected from fair dice.

In future games try to pay specific attention to how often the dice behave more or less as you would expect.  In my experience it's the vast majority of the time.

Well said, Mark. It is true that the mind only remembers significant things. And of course the people coming to the forums are ones who were pissed that something they didn't expect happened. It doesn't mean the algorithm is off. However, there does seem to be some issue with 1's being rolled less often, as the recorded dice rolls on all 6 of my accounts show less % in 1's than others. This wasn't the case prior to the implementation of the new algorithm, which was over a year ago now. But I do remember my dice rolls way back in the day were 16% across the board. Now it's like 14% for 1's and 17% for all others evenly. Perhaps SMG did something to give defenders a little bit more boost. As slightly less 1's would give more favor ability to the tie winner (defender) but clearly not enough to offset the actual advantage to the attacker, which can be seen in every game you play. It is also possible that coincidence has happened to me but there have been others making the claim and I've made other test accounts to check it. It's still such a slight variation that it isn't enough to notice.

Now, when they did their last update there was a flaw in the blitz. Every blitz move made against a territory with 1 was always a loss of 1 to the attacker before taking the territory. It didn't take me long to figure that out. I complained and it was fixed within a day.That flaw was obvious. No clue how the dice could possibly be flawed like that but I'm sure this game is a mess of code anyway.

 

Ok no one really thinks its the random number generator per se. I have always maintained that whomever decided to use transition matrices for Blitz Mode, juiced the matrix elements so that more often than not, large armies are waylayed by much smaller ones a disproportionate amount of time beyond normal probabilities or expected values. Its not the dice algorithm, rather the human being that input the values into the matrix elements. We need to know the algorithm for that, not the Twister.

 

Having a background in Math (and having OCD lol) means I've meticulously recorded many games - and my conclusion is... the dice algo is complete bullshit!

Attacking should give a slight but clear advantage - but in SMG's opinion it should be the exact opposite lol

However, you can live with these crappy dice - because EVERYBODY has crappy dice haha... so ultimately it's still a level playing field

The bee in my bonnet - is the fact SMG aren't smart enough to realise how damaging this is to the popularity of the game... and how much money it's costing them

Almost every game I play, has someone "rage-quit" when they get a crazy roll (like losing 15 troops and killing only one!) - sure, this is bound to happen on the rare occasion.. but according to SMG, it should happen in every game, every other turn lol

Newbies won't continue playing the game - and they certainly won't pay for it, when this keeps happening!

The secret to any business is to give your customers what they want - which means dice rolls which they are happy with!

Briand, according to the in game stats, I roll a one 14% of the time.  It seems to me that could just be random noise, but if everyone is seeing this same deviation from the expected 16% maybe there is something there.  But I also notice when I add up all of my dice rolling percentages I only get 96%, so I'm not sure how reliable the in game stats are.  I haven't noticed the anything off about blitz rolls, but it's completely possible that I there is an issue and I just haven't picked up on it.  Either way, I don't see how giving everyone slightly fewer ones would skew the results toward either defender or attacker.

Aitch, as I said in my previous comment, I too record and review my games, and your experience is at odds with mine.  I definitely have seen things like 10 attacking 1 and losing, but it's pretty rare and it's nowhere near every other turn and nowhere near every game.  I've also seen people rage quit after losing a pivotal battle they were statistically favored to win, but again in my experience this is a rare occurrence.

Can you post your games to youtube and provide links so your claims can be verified?  If so, it'd be important to post all of your games and not just the ones where these events occur so we can get a true idea of their frequency.

Also, as several other people have pointed out, even if the in-game rolls don't replicate true dice rolls they are still fair if they treat everyone the same.  If we all have crap rolls or good rolls or anywhere in between, nobody has an advantage.  So why does it matter?

 Mark,

I won't go through the math to find the exact calculation but to illustrate the point, with 1's being less common, let's look at it as if 1's were never rolled. The defender wins on the tie. And normally this is a guaranteed win 1/6 or 16.6% of the time (roll a 6, you can't be beaten) If there is no 1's then the chances of an automatic defender win is 1/5 or 20%. Obviously 1's are still almost as common as the others so even slightly less barely matters but it would signal a flaw in the game since they made the new algorithm. And it also could be true that their roll recording is wrong. I honestly never really trusted that thing. And does it record both attacker and defender rolls? I'd love to dig into the code and see it but I'm a busy man so checking that isn't exctly a top priority. It's bad enough I play 2-3 games a day. More concern to me is if they make it easier for grandmasters to find each other and to crack down on the cheating. The dice are risky but that's the name of the game haha.

Also, I clarify, the dice issue I saw was after the last update and they fixed it after a day or less. I complained immediately and I think they knew about it pretty fast.