With two flips, there are 4 possibilities, all equally likely:
HH or TT - max streak length 2
HT or TH - max streak length 1
So averaging those equally likely outcomes, maximum streak length is 1.5.
With three flips, there are 8 possibilities, all equally likely:
HHH or TTT - max streak length 3
HHT, HTT, THH, or TTH - max streak length 2
HTH or THT - max streak length 1
So average max streak length is 2.
Pattern should be clear by now: it goes up in some kind of nonlinear manner. The longer the series, the longer you should expect the longest streak to be.
This isn’t that hard to work out on a middle school level. People should be able to determine the correct answer just by thinking, and maybe scribbling on some scratch paper. This kind of “spot the fake” test should be blatantly obvious. But too many people have almost zero mathematical curiosity and/or imagination.
And I think this is what is translating to the “It’s Rigged” crowd they think the actual random outcomes aren’t random at all and therefore rigged in some way because in their mind random has to be uniform distribution that never has streaks and they take their low sample size of a losing streak as proof.
Most people underestimate the amount of “clustering” that does occur in rng events. I have said this in an earlier post already. I am well aware that clustering is part of rng events and that most people underestimate the amount of it.
What about the recent lobby legends where i think it was eudora players who got zerus from their hero power 3 times in a row? Thats like 1 in over 100k odds for zerus specifically or 1 in over 2500 for any card 3 times in a row (if we go with 50 cards to pick from,i didnt actually count them but its in this ballpark).
And with zerus beeing a special card for eudora it is not unreasonable to go with 1/100k instead of the odds for any card 3 times in a row. With maybe 10 zerus outcomes seen in totall in lobby legends isnt this a bit odd?
Off course it could and will happen at times. But if you where to show such a sequence in other events to any scientist their first thought will certainly be that it is not completely random.
I still believe that hs rng clusters more then would be expected if it was “perfectly” random but that doesnt really have to do with the game beeing rigged. Its more that i believe the rng in hs is somewhat faulty.
Clustering is natural and does occur but sometimes its just way off.
My first thought as a scientist was how many games has that not happened in. Take a uranium 235 atom which has a 1 in 44,000,000,000,000,000! chance to decay each second. If we see 3 atoms decay in 3 seconds, do we think wow that’s certainly not completely random, or wonder how much uranium 235 there is.
In another of these posts, someone pointed out that hearthstone is built in Unity and likely uses the standard libraries.
They also apparently can’t code their way out of a paper bag and are pretty lazy, which is at least one good reason to be skeptical they could do rigging sophisticated enough to not be obvious from looking at aggregate data.
No, you’re falling for the same logical fallacy that people do when they see lottery numbers like 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 which is exactly what happened in Virginia. We see patterns and think “That’s odd! must be something to it…” but in reality, there’s nothing odd about it AT ALL. It has the same chance as any other number combination, we just see the pattern in this one instead of the pattern in other things.
You can’t look at the results and then determine it’s odd unless you’ve looked at all the other results and put those into your statistics at all.
There’s nothing odd about zerus x 3 just like there is nothing odd about zerus + any other 2 outcomes. It’s exactly the same, just like in the lottery example.
I’m on board for poor and lazy coding. How often does a card require an update because it’s not including some other cards in the game that it should be. Sometimes it’s just wild cards, but that doesn’t make it any better IMO.
When the Hunter DK came out it had all the current beasts. If memory serves, an entire expansion went by without any of the new beasts in his discover pool. Which just seems crazy to me. So I have no problem believing their code has flaws in it.
Their programmers are paid to make functioning code in as little time as possible. If someone can’t, I’m sure the next kid out of college can and also do it for less money. Same goes for whoever is responsible for testing the code and giving it the green light. Time is money.
How rare does an event have to be before you get suspicious ?
If you throw dice with someone,each with their own dice. And the other guys throws 100 times 6 in a row,do you still think it is just random?
There is a point where there is reasonable doubt i think we can all agree on that right ?.
And imo 3 times shifter in a row is past that point. Doubting the rng based on that event is reasonable,at least it is to me.
Edit:
Its different from the lotery situation. There is an enormous amount of loterys every day and the strange outcomes always make the news if only locally.
Now you can say that there is also an enormous amount of bg games which is true.
But here comes the crucial part:the strange outcomes in all those games we plebs play they do not make the news,they dont become public because they are not broadcasted.
So for analyzing this situation we can discard all those other games , because we do not know what is happening there. This is the difference with the lotery situation. (i hope someone actually understands what i mean here,its not a complicated concept but it is also not completely obvious for most people).
Their code has flaws, but this isn’t one of those; Hunter DK was specifically not updated, as they said it would not be.
Does the chance of the next card being a shifter changes after the first or second shifter? if not, how is this any different of any other outcome?
As Schyla said: It would be strange if it was a very improbable situation among the whole possible universe of outcomes. We can’t know if it’s strange or not per se without numbers on the other events.
Do you agree that there is a point where there is reasonable doubt about a sequence of events beeing random or not?
If the answer is no then we can end the discussion and agree to disagree. I am fine with that and wont try to convince people that there is such a point,no matter where it might be.
I also edited my post above to comment on the lotery situation and why that is different.
@below:
Maybe if i say it more straightforward. Experiments about which we have no data can be discarded when analyzing a situation.
You can not point to all the thousends of eudora outcomes every day to explain the odd outcome in ll because we have no way of knowing what is happening in all those situations (though in all fairness,noone did so. I am just making this argument beforehand incase someone points to it).
This is the difference with the lotery situation,where odd outcomes in all those loterys everyday almost always make the news somewhere. So those loterys we do have some data about. This contrary to all the games that everyone plays in bg every day.
Maybe every player got zerus from eudora that day,and maybe none did. we have no way to tell.
And when it comes to the odds. 1 in 125k or even 1 in 2500 if you go with any 3 in a row. (but since zerus is “special” for eudora i think it is fine to go with 1 in 125k) for me is past the point of reasonable doubt. This point is different for everyone , i do realize that and i do accept that as well.
Apparently a very poor example lol. I played a lot back then, so you would think I was aware of that. Maybe I just forgot. Thx for correcting me.
I still don’t have much faith in their coding though. Tons of bugs. I do realize that as new cards/mechanics are added it gets harder and harder to keep everything functioning perfectly. I’ve seen strange RNG results plenty of times since launch, have never once thought the RNG was biased for or against me though.
Yes, why you’d even ask this is beyond me. You are either incapable or unwilling to look at this properly, you keep quoting a 1/2500 chance as if there was only one game. How many games didn’t it happen in? You’ve discarded EVERY other game, not just the ones you have no data on.
You can see how RNG works in unity by reading the paper by George Marsaglia on xorshifting.
Or you can sit in the same spot saying but 1/2500… So strange.
No one is denying that there’s a point where one questions patterns, but most of us are saying we aren’t at that point after watching a few of our own games.
You can say that about any event, since they’re almost all equally unlikely. That’s the thing, every single specific outcome in game is as unlikely.
All you are doing is sowing the seeds for doubt while not accepting any responsibility for this doubt you are sowing. It’s extremely toxic and dangerous behavior.
If you really cared you would actually fashion a hypothesis and testing procedure.
Admittedly it’s been a decade since I’ve coded anything more complicated than an Excel spreadsheet (although I’ve made some darn complicated Excel spreadsheets), but is this even relevant? Unity would be for the client, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t RNG rolls occur on the server and merely be communicated to the client?
I will answer very straightforward: Events, yes. Event, no. And that’s all rigging believers do, cherrypick single events and discard the surrounding data, over and over again, thinking that if they cherrypick a thousand cherries someday they’ll convince me.