wtf is wrong with the dice?

[edsdad]

Used to let the dice make me crazy.
Then I stopped giving a shit bout rank ,points and crap like that and started playing for the the love of the game.
Then it became fun again.
Motto of this story is"play for the fun of it"rest of that other other stuff means shit.

[Woodruff]

The sort of response that I just got from this Woodruff fellow is exactly the sort of response that I am referring to. It is condescending, flippant, unhelpful, rude

What? It possibly could be construed as condescending if you try really hard (there...THAT was condescending for you), but it certainly was not flippant, unhelpful or rude. I would suggest that you're reading things into it that are not there. However, as an exercise in showing you how flawed your own statement is, could you please show me which parts of my response to you were flippant, unhelpful or rude? Thanks!

and surely not what the folks who are running this site want to see from its moderators, or so I'd like to think.

Great...since I'm not a moderator, there's no problem!

An important point here to consider: for every one person who complains about a product or service, there are generally around 100 who feel the exact same way yet are not putting forth the time and effort to voice their feelings.

Another important point here to consider: LEARN STATISTICS AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF "RANDOM"!

(There, that was condescending, flippant, unhelpful and rude...do you feel better now?)

In addition, Woodruff, your reasoning is utterly flawed, but, as an old friend once said to me, "Don't bother trying to reason with an unreasonable person."

I'll bet he was talking about you, wasn't he! As for my "utterly flawed" reasoning...it isn't. You quite simply either don't understand statistics and the nature of random.

The sorts of extremely, EXTREMELY low probability outcomes that some of us are referring to are happening way too frequently.

YOUR reasoning is flawed, as it does not take into account the vast numbers of dice rolls that happen on this site in a VERY short period of time.

But that's ok...continue to do what you accuse me of doing, and you'll never have to worry about admitting that you're wrong. I'm sure you'll feel much better about yourself that way.

not that it's a surprise from what i have seen on these forum with the cc brown nosers.

I'm a CC brown noser? Ha! Now THAT is some funny stuff.

I am pretty sure you couldn't find very many people who would consider me a CC brown noser (certainly not amongst the admin or moderation teams). I am, however, someone who understands statistics, the nature of "random", and the nature of human perception.

well im done with this fucking site. sick of the dice, sick of the panzy asses that wont play freestyle. sick of everything

Is that a promise or a threat? Because I'm really hoping it's a promise. Do you keep promises?

(condescending, flippant, unhelpful and rude)

[40kguy]

The sort of response that I just got from this Woodruff fellow is exactly the sort of response that I am referring to. It is condescending, flippant, unhelpful, rude

What? It possibly could be construed as condescending if you try really hard (there...THAT was condescending for you), but it certainly was not flippant, unhelpful or rude. I would suggest that you're reading things into it that are not there. However, as an exercise in showing you how flawed your own statement is, could you please show me which parts of my response to you were flippant, unhelpful or rude? Thanks!

and surely not what the folks who are running this site want to see from its moderators, or so I'd like to think.

Great...since I'm not a moderator, there's no problem!

An important point here to consider: for every one person who complains about a product or service, there are generally around 100 who feel the exact same way yet are not putting forth the time and effort to voice their feelings.

Another important point here to consider: LEARN STATISTICS AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF "RANDOM"!

(There, that was condescending, flippant, unhelpful and rude...do you feel better now?)

In addition, Woodruff, your reasoning is utterly flawed, but, as an old friend once said to me, "Don't bother trying to reason with an unreasonable person."

I'll bet he was talking about you, wasn't he! As for my "utterly flawed" reasoning...it isn't. You quite simply either don't understand statistics and the nature of random.

The sorts of extremely, EXTREMELY low probability outcomes that some of us are referring to are happening way too frequently.

YOUR reasoning is flawed, as it does not take into account the vast numbers of dice rolls that happen on this site in a VERY short period of time.

But that's ok...continue to do what you accuse me of doing, and you'll never have to worry about admitting that you're wrong. I'm sure you'll feel much better about yourself that way.

not that it's a surprise from what i have seen on these forum with the cc brown nosers.

I'm a CC brown noser? Ha! Now THAT is some funny stuff.

I am pretty sure you couldn't find very many people who would consider me a CC brown noser (certainly not amongst the admin or moderation teams). I am, however, someone who understands statistics, the nature of "random", and the nature of human perception.

well im done with this fucking site. sick of the dice, sick of the panzy asses that wont play freestyle. sick of everything

Is that a promise or a threat? Because I'm really hoping it's a promise. Do you keep promises?

(condescending, flippant, unhelpful and rude)

seance you want me gone i wont leave

[natty dread]

seance you want me gone i wont leave

Kids say the darndest things.

[jpreno]

The sort of response that I just got from this Woodruff fellow is exactly the sort of response that I am referring to. It is condescending, flippant, unhelpful, rude, ...

I do have to say, I think you are out of line here. I think Woodruff has been trying very hard to be polite and explain things to you. In fact, I think you owe him an apology.

And a suggestion re randomness, and this is said time and time again on this site--you remember the strange things that happen once in a while, not the average things that happen over and over again. I have stated many times, in my short stay on these forums, all you have to do to prove it is make a hypothesis, and then measure it out in your next 10 games. If you always lose 12v1, then test it--state your hypothesis on a board, play 10 games, and count how many 12v1s you lose, versus how many you win. See if that comes up more times than you'd statistically expect. it is easy to prove. and you won't have to shout or swear.

[Tennisie]

The real problem that irks people is streakiness - the wild fluctuations in capricious luck that make it tough to know if your strategy is working. The effect on the psyche is this: a streak of wins is fun but a streak of losses when you're trying to follow a smart game strategy is just aggravating. To put it in concrete terms, a 10 troop army should reliably overcome a 1 troop army. I've investigated random.org and I'm confident the dice are random so what we really want to do is reduce the streakiness. The streakiness is mainly due to the dice compare method, where the attacker's and defender's highest dice are compared, then the second highest dice are compared, etc. This was lifted from the RISK board game and it was chosen for the board game because it requires only 5 dice no matter how many attacking and defending armies there are. However, there's no reason to limit CC's compare method to only 5 dice since the server could easily handle a larger number of dice for each attack.

This suggests some alternatives, one of which is to use the Axis and Allies game's method where one die is rolled for each attacking army and one for each defending army. This would require more dice rolls during each attack and have the effect of counterbalancing losing streaks with winning ones.

My recommendation is to add another selection to the Start A Game form: "Intensity Cubes" with the options "Classic" (current system of 3 attack dice and 2 defense dice) and "One Per Army" (Axis and Allies system). If you agree, help me petition lackattack to implement this option.

[Woodruff]

seance you want me gone i wont leave

If someone is holding a seance, then you're already gone.

[jpreno]

The real problem that irks people is streakiness - the wild fluctuations in capricious luck that make it tough to know if your strategy is working. The effect on the psyche is this: a streak of wins is fun but a streak of losses when you're trying to follow a smart game strategy is just aggravating. To put it in concrete terms, a 10 troop army should reliably overcome a 1 troop army. I've investigated random.org and I'm confident the dice are random so what we really want to do is reduce the streakiness. The streakiness is mainly due to the dice compare method, ...

My recommendation is to add another selection to the Start A Game form: "Intensity Cubes" with the options "Classic" (current system of 3 attack dice and 2 defense dice) and "One Per Army" (Axis and Allies system). If you agree, help me petition lackattack to implement this option.

I think you've hit the nail on the head (and thank you for not saying that the dice are random but the streaks are not).

[BIGMEANIE]

The real problem that irks people is streakiness - the wild fluctuations in capricious luck that make it tough to know if your strategy is working. The effect on the psyche is this: a streak of wins is fun but a streak of losses when you're trying to follow a smart game strategy is just aggravating. To put it in concrete terms, a 10 troop army should reliably overcome a 1 troop army. I've investigated random.org and I'm confident the dice are random so what we really want to do is reduce the streakiness. The streakiness is mainly due to the dice compare method, where the attacker's and defender's highest dice are compared, then the second highest dice are compared, etc. This was lifted from the RISK board game and it was chosen for the board game because it requires only 5 dice no matter how many attacking and defending armies there are. However, there's no reason to limit CC's compare method to only 5 dice since the server could easily handle a larger number of dice for each attack.

This suggests some alternatives, one of which is to use the Axis and Allies game's method where one die is rolled for each attacking army and one for each defending army. This would require more dice rolls during each attack and have the effect of counterbalancing losing streaks with winning ones.

My recommendation is to add another selection to the Start A Game form: "Intensity Cubes" with the options "Classic" (current system of 3 attack dice and 2 defense dice) and "One Per Army" (Axis and Allies system). If you agree, help me petition lackattack to implement this option.

where do i sign

[rogower]

Obviously those who will argue with such determination about the dice being "random" here on this site has not suffered a sufficient amount of "bad luck" for a long period of time that would seem very impossible.. I myself can handle bad random dice in games. Lose a few here.. and lose a few there. For months, it's been what I consider fair. These last two week though is a different story. In about 90% of my games, I have seen the impossible in everyday play in games. I can go on about how I lost 13 men only taking out 1 out of 2.. and then going to the next game and losing 11 men taking 2 out of 9... and moving onto a few turns later on another game (within a few minutes) having a 42 drop and losing it all taking out a total of 16 men. And this is my typical day for the last 2 weeks. But really.. what is the point when we get those who are so SURE that they are just random and will sit here and belittle those who are having a tough time, huh? Why not just let players vent their frustration and leave them alone? Or maybe you are all the type who would exploit those players to feel better about your own life?...

I would agree that the problems started about two weeks ago. I actually meant to post this exact point earlier but I forgot to do it.

[40kguy]

just lost 10 to 1

[radiojake]

just lost 10 to 1

Do you need a tissue?

[Hannibał]

later this week i lost 12v1.

My God...you're a prophet! Tell us your future-telling ways!

Who's gonna win the next Super Bowl?!

Being that everyones predicting that they will pick another scrub quarterback in this years draft, id be willing to bet the redskins. Its worked for us every other year so far

[jpreno]

just lost 10 to 1

So what? Stuff happens. Prove it by making your hypothesis in advance and then accurately measure ALL your outcomes. This is just an anecdote.

[musicalmaven]

i've read this entire post - all 5 pages (ok, maybe not every word - there is only so much any one person can take).
tennisie wrote that if you want to post an argument - bring hard data, anything else is just anecdotal.
true enough - question is how long is a good sample?
someone said write down your results over 10 games. that doesn't seem long enough - it could be a good day, or a bad day.
someone said that the dice are random -it is the streakiness that we see and complain about.
again - how long is a streak? a day, a week, a month?? how many games does it take to iron out the streak and have reasonably good data?

[Metsfanmax]

i've read this entire post - all 5 pages (ok, maybe not every word - there is only so much any one person can take).
tennisie wrote that if you want to post an argument - bring hard data, anything else is just anecdotal.
true enough - question is how long is a good sample?
someone said write down your results over 10 games. that doesn't seem long enough - it could be a good day, or a bad day.
someone said that the dice are random -it is the streakiness that we see and complain about.
again - how long is a streak? a day, a week, a month?? how many games does it take to iron out the streak and have reasonably good data?

A reasonable sample of data would be in the tens of thousands of rolls.

[jpreno]

... - question is how long is a good sample?
...

A reasonable sample of data would be in the tens of thousands of rolls.

Oh, I doubt you need that much. I'd be willing to put money on any test with reasonable odds that someone comes up with that covers 10 games. And I would also bet that 99% of the people who complain about the dice not being random would not even follow through on tallying data from a 10 game test.

[Metsfanmax]

... - question is how long is a good sample?
...

A reasonable sample of data would be in the tens of thousands of rolls.

Oh, I doubt you need that much. I'd be willing to put money on any test with reasonable odds that someone comes up with that covers 10 games. And I would also bet that 99% of the people who complain about the dice not being random would not even follow through on tallying data from a 10 game test.

In a given attack there are typically 5 rolls, and in a given turn you might make, say, 4 attacks. Let's say there's 10 rounds in the game and 4 players. Then there's 800 rolls per game, and so in 10 games you'd get pretty close to that number.

Edit: I realize that for an individual player to follow it with Dice Analyzer, you'd need more than 10 games to get in the tens of thousands.

[musicalmaven]

ok - it's been almost 24 hrs.
i don't buy 10 games. to me it is too short. i had a real good day today, even with some bitter disappointments in a couple of rolls. if we took yesterday's results, it would have been a bit weak, but not too bad. if we took the day before - it would have been lousy. if you took all 3 days it would be close to avg.
and i play more than 10 games a day.
i can tell you i am not a fan of the dice, and i haven't been for years. to me, there is definitely something rotten in denmark (or wherever c.c. is located).
i have been on the dice analyzer for 6 - 9 months, for over 2 months i have been below avg. in 5 of the 6 categories it lists (3 vs. 2, 3 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2, 2 vs. 1m 1 vs. 1 and 1 vs. 2) - and i now have now thrown 123,000 attacker dice against 63,000 defensive dice.
to me that's a significant and statistically good sample.
as i have pointed out in other forum posts - i have kept a record of all my results for 4 years.
my accumulative average has never been above average for those 4 years.
and why have i done this? because for my first year i felt i was always getting screwed by the dice - those improbable results everyone complains about - but i also knew that the human mind can be tricked - or it can deceive itself by emphasizing the negative.
i have told others to do the same thing in order to show whether or not their perception is accurate or just the result of the "victim mentality" as has been mentioned previously by another writer.
i guess i am the only one crazy enough to do this - but i think i have enough data to show that there is something to what so many are upset about.

[Metsfanmax]

Post the percentage of, say, 3v2's won for those 123,000 rolls.

[TalynStarburst]

rogower.. interesting. and nothing much has improved either.

Metsfanmax.. just because it says random doesn't necessary mean that it works that way, but believe what you want. it doesn't matter to me as i stick with my beliefs.

AndyDufresne.. I had my share of great dice and bad dice. normally i don't get bothered or pay too much attention until dice goes rotten in most of my games day after day. this only happens every now and then, but this time it's been pretty non-stop. i'll be calm when i'm freemium and wouldn't have to deal with the dice as much.. only wish there was a membership in between that can be purchased to play something like 10 games, but 4 will do.

natty_dread.. it is obvious that you are looking for an argument, which is why you are on here posting the way you do. it's the same tactic i use. how much time do you spend on here writing all of this out? my thoughts.. who cares?? i don't even care enough to read through what you put because there isn't anything you can write that can be convincing to me, nor is there much you can say that would be worth my time to put into. but copy and reply all you want.. you just may be disappointed that you won't get the reply you may expect and that your time would be wasted as i pointed out in my first post to anyone who thinks they can argue with me. i don't even care enough to really write down all the other reasons why i think the dice are fishy because i'm simply not here to try to convince anyone else.. just putting my 2 cents in if that.

[jefjef]

Why do people ignore the obvious. It's not the % of the rolls. It's the when. I can kill worthless terts all day long and those pad the stats. It's the 12th and 18th terts that don't die. The bonuses that don't break. The game winning attacks that are lopsided dice fails. The bonuses you have that never stand. The very important card you can't get AND the accounts that you hardly ever have good random against or the accounts that hardly ever have good random against you.

[Army of GOD]

I don't care for the flippant, condescending responses (e.g., "You don't understand probability," "Boo hoo, stop your whining," "Maybe the problem is with your strategy"). They are not helpful and are akin to the sorts of irritating responses that you often receive from customer service representatives who are refusing to acknowledge that the company they work for screwed up and refusing to fix the problem. The folks behind this game should encourage their moderators to tone it down. Don't forget that you have paying customers!

I am a relative newcomer to CC and a former math geek in high school. There is very clearly something wrong with the dice generator that CC is using. Surely the techies understand this. I'd like to think that this is a problem that will soon be fixed.

200,000-to-1 odds are fairly astronomical. Hell, 500-to-1 odds are fairly astronomical. Yet we are seeing these sorts of outcomes way more frequently than we should be. And, yes, this makes the game less enjoyable. The sort of person who is drawn to the game of Risk is exactly the sort of person who is going to get frustrated by the flawed dice generator that CC is using.

I am going to experiment with not using the auto assault feature. Maybe that will help.

You might be a former math geek in high school, but I'm a current math geek in college (who isn't a moderator at this site [for now, anyways <wink>]) and just imagine the sample size we have here. I don't feel like computing the numbers right now, and I'm sure someone has already done the numbers, but imagine how many rolls there are a day on this site. Something that has a 500-to-1 chance of happening is very likely to occur in LESS than a day. Random also means that you can flip a coin 200 times and get 200 heads. That has nothing to do with the coin and all about the randomness of it.

And on a personal note, I KNOW that the dice are even for me. Yea, I know that sometimes I'll lose a 7-1 (did earlier today to a teammate) but I also recall the times where I've won a 4v8, giving me the victory in a game.

And ok, let's assume the dice ARE rigged and aren't truly random. Doesn't that mean they aren't truly random for EVERYONE? If defenders really have a unfair advantage (an advantage greater than that in regular RISK!), doesn't that mean I should just defend more and attack less?

The logic used by the dice-haters is mind-bottling, as if my mind is in a bottle.

[natty dread]

natty_dread.. it is obvious that you are looking for an argument, which is why you are on here posting the way you do. it's the same tactic i use. how much time do you spend on here writing all of this out? my thoughts.. who cares?? i don't even care enough to read through what you put because there isn't anything you can write that can be convincing to me, nor is there much you can say that would be worth my time to put into. but copy and reply all you want.. you just may be disappointed that you won't get the reply you may expect and that your time would be wasted as i pointed out in my first post to anyone who thinks they can argue with me. i don't even care enough to really write down all the other reasons why i think the dice are fishy because i'm simply not here to try to convince anyone else.. just putting my 2 cents in if that.

What I'm reading is "I'm not playing with you anymore! Get out of my sandbox or I'll call mommy!"

[TalynStarburst]

good for you Natty, you can interpret as you want since it doesn't affect my life either way. but just to give you my interpret, what i'm reading from you is "we play by the rules in this sandbox. you either follow them or i'll go tell the principal on you" er.. you got something brown on your nose btw.

as far as logic. it's possible to win the lottery, but i'm sure that many will not believe me if i came on here and told you that. i wonder though.. if someone comes on here and says that they win the lottery 3 weeks in a row, will you reply to them "it's possible!"? sure.. it's possible, but chances are.. the person is lying of course. and if it is true, chances are the person is cheating the system somehow. but through your eyes.. you just see it being possible, shrug your shoulder and probably argue with those who say it isn't. or go tell the principal.

oh dear, i predict another worthless reply because you are not the type who thinks that you have to share your "opinion" to every post on here about those school rules. you only continue to prove me right about you getting off on trying to belittle those on here who disagree with the dice system. how much of my post are you going to break down this time? someone give this kid a whistle!