I go further then say there's a glitch in the dice throw. I've been playing here since 2021.
True randomness is no more, and only very distracted players will say otherwise.
I'm not premium player, so I can't actually see statistics of the game to give you game numbers/stats.
However, in one game i placed my two inicial settlements on 3,4,8 and 11. The dice kept giving 3s and 11s in many more throws than all other numbers. This is not random.
And, on top of this, often, the robber would come out after i used and trade my resources and ended up having less than 8 cards, which meant that i didn't loose any resource (apart from being pick by the other player placing the robber).
So I go further than to say there is a glitch in the dice, to say that the algorithm actually favours one player per game.
Like I said, i've been using Board Game Arena since 2021 and I can see this in other games too. 7 Wonders arquitects, for example. How often one player is "so lucky" to pick exactly the card they need in their turns? And, like I said, myself included...
I suspect is something to do with trying to make the game more addictive somehow? Only a suspicion on this.. but that the dice throw in Catan is no longer truly random, that is easy to see.
And that makes the game boring for those who have to sit and wait for the player with "all the luck" to reach the winning points..
Please, developers, make dice throw and cards shuffle random again
