Somewhere in the code for Diablo 3, there's this line of code (I'm simplifying for brevity)
if(round(rnd()*2000 + 0.5) == 2000) then
make_legendary();
end if
That's really it, it all comes down to the rnd() -- the random -- function. That function returns a random number on the interval [0,1), and it's the same for all servers. And when I say same, I mean exactly and completely identical. It's not magic, we know completely and exactly how it works; there zero chance that it can behave differently.
Zero, exactly zero.
So the only way that there could be "loot servers" is if Blizzard programmed there to be loot servers. Why would they do that, what's their motive? What do they hope to achieve? Think about that, and whatever you come up with, I say can also be implemented more easily that will mathematically be the same without needing loot servers.
What we are are seeing here instead is the tendency of humans to remember better things that reinforce their beliefs and disremember things that run contrary to them in this case they can travel to some place of rainbows and unicorns where legendaries fall from the sky because, you know, the actual place of rainbows of unicorns was nerfed in 1.0.3.
All that for this; I wanted to ask you believers a question. After having read that, what was your reaction? Did you continue to believe that loot servers exist or did I make you realize there can be none and if you didn't change you mind why not and if so what was about what I typed that did?
Interested....
Can't help but post
Has your small brain even think this might be just a bug or something intended to work a certain way but works differently
+ you seem to have never worked in a big corporation to know how things work..
I'm going to mark your response up as righteous indignation
But as to the possibility of "something" creeping in? No, sorry, that was an aspect of my original post, nothing really can go wrong; it's too simple. And even if it were a bug it would manifest across all servers not just some and even if some programmer when out of their way to include the server identification as part of the seed which would be a poor idea and extra work to do it (give them some credit at doing a good job), it still would not affect the random distribution properties of rnd(). No, the only way this could happen was from intent and speaking of big corporations, this would mean a "loot server" project and a manager and reporting and it would have to go through QA which means money which means justification. What's the justification?
But you probably already thought of this yet you still want to think there's a way loot servers could exist, why?
1. From engineering point of view loot servers make sense and it is exactly how corporations use this kind of stuff (yes 99% of big corporations implement poor ideas welcome to the real world)
2. You overestimate blizzard . Most of the time they are just incompetent you don't have to look for other explanations really (ex : patch 1.0.3 , patch 1.0.4 , current PTR )
Sounds strawman to me. Are you saying big corporations make poor decisions, Blizzard is a big corporation which has made poor game design decisions, loots servers are a poor idea, therefore loot servers exist? But even if companies make ultimately bad decisions, for it to be accepted, initially, it had to be protrayed as good.
Put another way, what about the concept of loot servers appeal to you?
I'm going to mark you up as someone who wants to believe but is having trouble with the mechanics since you have enough knowlege about how rnd() is implemented. You allow for the possibility of loot server existance, though, because your knowledge is not complete. It's that impricise knowledge, however small, that admits the possibility.
No, you got me wrong there. I'm pretty sure that there are no loot servers, and I don't want to believe in them.
If we're going to lapse into computer-nerd speak between us computer-nerds, then yes I do know how pseudo-random algorithms work and the need of chosing a random seed, id mention in passing that /dev/random is a choice on modern Linux and Linux-like OSs, but lets take your example of id+time. How is that going to lead to 2000 being chosen more often for a population on some servers and not others? If your reaction is "I'd don't know, but maybe it could" I'd challenge you to think more deeply. We both know that even choosing seeds 1 and 2 will end up with wildly different sequences, and it centanly won't effect the probability distribution of rnd() which is the important thing when dealing with large populations making large number of random rolls.
Ok. Id + time was my example, and should hopefully lead to an algorithm that does not depend on servers. But I'm no expert in RNG implementation.
A sufficiently bad rng that uses the server ip as one of the seed values could lead to loot servers. It depends on the implementation of rng(). My argument is not that loot servers exist because "maybe it could." However the opposite argument, namely that they don't exist because it's unlikely is also not very convincing.
Blizzard would not implement rnd(), they'd use the system-supplied one which though pseudo-random, at least has uniform distribution.
I didn't say unlikely, I said impossible; or maybe so unlikely that it's near impossible is how you read it? Would you remain unconvinced unless we were to pour through the source code and see for ourselves? Heh, that's a pretty high bar you set if so.
Somewhere in the code for Diablo 3, there's this line of code (I'm simplifying for brevity)
if(round(rnd()*2000 + 0.5) == 2000) then
make_legendary();
end if
That's really it, it all comes down to the rnd() -- the random -- function. That function returns a random number on the interval [0,1), and it's the same for all servers. And when I say same, I mean exactly and completely identical. It's not magic, we know completely and exactly how it works; there zero chance that it can behave differently.
Zero, exactly zero.
So the only way that there could be "loot servers" is if Blizzard programmed there to be loot servers. Why would they do that, what's their motive? What do they hope to achieve? Think about that, and whatever you come up with, I say can also be implemented more easily that will mathematically be the same without needing loot servers.
What we are are seeing here instead is the tendency of humans to remember better things that reinforce their beliefs and disremember things that run contrary to them in this case they can travel to some place of rainbows and unicorns where legendaries fall from the sky because, you know, the actual place of rainbows of unicorns was nerfed in 1.0.3.
All that for this; I wanted to ask you believers a question. After having read that, what was your reaction? Did you continue to believe that loot servers exist or did I make you realize there can be none and if you didn't change you mind why not and if so what was about what I typed that did?
Interested....
Can't help but post
Has your small brain even think this might be just a bug or something intended to work a certain way but works differently
+ you seem to have never worked in a big corporation to know how things work..
I'm going to mark your response up as righteous indignation
But as to the possibility of "something" creeping in? No, sorry, that was an aspect of my original post, nothing really can go wrong; it's too simple. And even if it were a bug it would manifest across all servers not just some and even if some programmer when out of their way to include the server identification as part of the seed which would be a poor idea and extra work to do it (give them some credit at doing a good job), it still would not affect the random distribution properties of rnd(). No, the only way this could happen was from intent and speaking of big corporations, this would mean a "loot server" project and a manager and reporting and it would have to go through QA which means money which means justification. What's the justification?
But you probably already thought of this yet you still want to think there's a way loot servers could exist, why?
This is a very naive view of the random number generation on computers. A computer can not throw a dice, it has to determine the "random" number through some algorithm using, ideally, a seed that is as random as possible. This also means that if you use the same seed, you get the same sequence of random numbers.
So, in order to not get the same loot drops on every server, you have to make sure that the seeds are different. I don't know how Blizzard chooses the seeds. Ideally you would measure some random noise, but that's unlikely, since it would be too expensive. I would use a combination of drop time (in miliseconds) and player ids. The drop time is a reasonably random input, and the player id would make sure that drops at the same time don't create the same item.
Now, I think it is extremely unlikely, but not impossible that Blizzard screwed up here and created loot servers, or at a situation where a combination of server number and player id leads to higher legendary drop rates. I highly doubt that there are loot servers. But the rng() function is more complicated than you imply in your post.
I'm going to mark you up as someone who wants to believe but is having trouble with the mechanics since you have enough knowlege about how rnd() is implemented. You allow for the possibility of loot server existance, though, because your knowledge is not complete. It's that impricise knowledge, however small, that admits the possibility.
If we're going to lapse into computer-nerd speak between us computer-nerds, then yes I do know how pseudo-random algorithms work and the need of chosing a random seed, id mention in passing that /dev/random is a choice on modern Linux and Linux-like OSs, but lets take your example of id+time. How is that going to lead to 2000 being chosen more often for a population on some servers and not others? If your reaction is "I'd don't know, but maybe it could" I'd challenge you to think more deeply. We both know that even choosing seeds 1 and 2 will end up with wildly different sequences, and it centanly won't effect the probability distribution of rnd() which is the important thing when dealing with large populations making large number of random rolls.
Somewhere in the code for Diablo 3, there's this line of code (I'm simplifying for brevity)
if(round(rnd()*2000 + 0.5) == 2000) then
make_legendary();
end if
That's really it, it all comes down to the rnd() -- the random -- function. That function returns a random number on the interval [0,1), and it's the same for all servers. And when I say same, I mean exactly and completely identical. It's not magic, we know completely and exactly how it works; there zero chance that it can behave differently.
Zero, exactly zero.
So the only way that there could be "loot servers" is if Blizzard programmed there to be loot servers. Why would they do that, what's their motive? What do they hope to achieve? Think about that, and whatever you come up with, I say can also be implemented more easily that will mathematically be the same without needing loot servers.
What we are are seeing here instead is the tendency of humans to remember better things that reinforce their beliefs and disremember things that run contrary to them in this case they can travel to some place of rainbows and unicorns where legendaries fall from the sky because, you know, the actual place of rainbows of unicorns was nerfed in 1.0.3.
All that for this; I wanted to ask you believers a question. After having read that, what was your reaction? Did you continue to believe that loot servers exist or did I make you realize there can be none and if you didn't change you mind why not and if so what was about what I typed that did?
Looking at people who buyed legacy Nats at the RMAH I think a nerf is a problem, it is like buying a fast car and
than the manufacturer decides that you car is only allowed to drive with half speed.
It is a law problem imo in some regions, you cannot change properties of things backwise.
Or every customer is getting his money back, but this counts for the seller too that he will suffer no loss.
The only way to kick out old Nats is improving new one even more.
Well, legally they inform you when buying stuff that the properties of the items might change due to changes in the game...so they can pretty much nerf all they want..unfortunately.
Yes, because everyone reads TOS you know.
Doesn't matter if you read them or not, it's still there and therefore informed...if you don't care to read, it's up to you but it doesn't change the fact that they're free to use the nerfhammer any time willing.
An extreme (but possible) notion, it seems to me, is that the RMAH admits a line of argument that putting such language in the TOS is not legal. All it would take is a lost court case to have that notion enshrined in law. It would be such a change not only for Diablo 3 and Blizzard but for all games and gaming companies that they would not want to risk it.
Its their pixels, they can do whatever they want with em. And its purely legal for them to do so. You buying stuff on ah, mainly let you wear and use THEIR pixels but it will be theirs. And you will never own them,
Not necessarily; Sure it's what they say, it's what the terms of service say and it's how they want you to behave, but there's nothing stopping you from challenging it in court. The fact that there's real money associated with items makes the case for it easier.
Of course there were other reasons that old-Nat's got it's special pass.
Looking at people who buyed legacy Nats at the RMAH I think a nerf is a problem, it is like buying a fast car and
than the manufacturer decides that you car is only allowed to drive with half speed.
It is a law problem imo in some regions, you cannot change properties of things backwise.
Or every customer is getting his money back, but this counts for the seller too that he will suffer no loss.
The only way to kick out old Nats is improving new one even more.
Well, legally they inform you when buying stuff that the properties of the items might change due to changes in the game...so they can pretty much nerf all they want..unfortunately.
Yes, because everyone reads TOS you know.
Doesn't matter if you read them or not, it's still there and therefore informed...if you don't care to read, it's up to you but it doesn't change the fact that they're free to use the nerfhammer any time willing.
An extreme (but possible) notion, it seems to me, is that the RMAH admits a line of argument that putting such language in the TOS is not legal. All it would take is a lost court case to have that notion enshrined in law. It would be such a change not only for Diablo 3 and Blizzard but for all games and gaming companies that they would not want to risk it.
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Sounds strawman to me. Are you saying big corporations make poor decisions, Blizzard is a big corporation which has made poor game design decisions, loots servers are a poor idea, therefore loot servers exist? But even if companies make ultimately bad decisions, for it to be accepted, initially, it had to be protrayed as good.
Put another way, what about the concept of loot servers appeal to you?
Blizzard would not implement rnd(), they'd use the system-supplied one which though pseudo-random, at least has uniform distribution.
I didn't say unlikely, I said impossible; or maybe so unlikely that it's near impossible is how you read it? Would you remain unconvinced unless we were to pour through the source code and see for ourselves? Heh, that's a pretty high bar you set if so.
I'm going to mark your response up as righteous indignation
But as to the possibility of "something" creeping in? No, sorry, that was an aspect of my original post, nothing really can go wrong; it's too simple. And even if it were a bug it would manifest across all servers not just some and even if some programmer when out of their way to include the server identification as part of the seed which would be a poor idea and extra work to do it (give them some credit at doing a good job), it still would not affect the random distribution properties of rnd(). No, the only way this could happen was from intent and speaking of big corporations, this would mean a "loot server" project and a manager and reporting and it would have to go through QA which means money which means justification. What's the justification?
But you probably already thought of this yet you still want to think there's a way loot servers could exist, why?
I'm going to mark you up as someone who wants to believe but is having trouble with the mechanics since you have enough knowlege about how rnd() is implemented. You allow for the possibility of loot server existance, though, because your knowledge is not complete. It's that impricise knowledge, however small, that admits the possibility.
If we're going to lapse into computer-nerd speak between us computer-nerds, then yes I do know how pseudo-random algorithms work and the need of chosing a random seed, id mention in passing that /dev/random is a choice on modern Linux and Linux-like OSs, but lets take your example of id+time. How is that going to lead to 2000 being chosen more often for a population on some servers and not others? If your reaction is "I'd don't know, but maybe it could" I'd challenge you to think more deeply. We both know that even choosing seeds 1 and 2 will end up with wildly different sequences, and it centanly won't effect the probability distribution of rnd() which is the important thing when dealing with large populations making large number of random rolls.
Somewhere in the code for Diablo 3, there's this line of code (I'm simplifying for brevity)
if(round(rnd()*2000 + 0.5) == 2000) then
make_legendary();
end if
That's really it, it all comes down to the rnd() -- the random -- function. That function returns a random number on the interval [0,1), and it's the same for all servers. And when I say same, I mean exactly and completely identical. It's not magic, we know completely and exactly how it works; there zero chance that it can behave differently.
Zero, exactly zero.
So the only way that there could be "loot servers" is if Blizzard programmed there to be loot servers. Why would they do that, what's their motive? What do they hope to achieve? Think about that, and whatever you come up with, I say can also be implemented more easily that will mathematically be the same without needing loot servers.
What we are are seeing here instead is the tendency of humans to remember better things that reinforce their beliefs and disremember things that run contrary to them in this case they can travel to some place of rainbows and unicorns where legendaries fall from the sky because, you know, the actual place of rainbows of unicorns was nerfed in 1.0.3.
All that for this; I wanted to ask you believers a question. After having read that, what was your reaction? Did you continue to believe that loot servers exist or did I make you realize there can be none and if you didn't change you mind why not and if so what was about what I typed that did?
Interested....
Not necessarily; Sure it's what they say, it's what the terms of service say and it's how they want you to behave, but there's nothing stopping you from challenging it in court. The fact that there's real money associated with items makes the case for it easier.
Of course there were other reasons that old-Nat's got it's special pass.
An extreme (but possible) notion, it seems to me, is that the RMAH admits a line of argument that putting such language in the TOS is not legal. All it would take is a lost court case to have that notion enshrined in law. It would be such a change not only for Diablo 3 and Blizzard but for all games and gaming companies that they would not want to risk it.