Board Game Arena

Hello Makers and User of BGA!
I am playing a lot here, but slowly i am loosing the desire playing here. In nearly all games the algoryhtmus is advantaging a player, or it is not really random. In CATAN for example, you can bet, if you put the robber on a number, this number will be diced in one of the next three dices.
ot it is against all statistics that there will bed diced 5 times 3 in a row.
i am playing all days on the same level i guess, but there are days there i win nearly everything, and other days i can do what i want, but i loose all day.
Sorry, that is really frustrating. i want that the player who plays best win, or in games with lots of luck, that it is really random.
by the way, that is not only my impression, we are talking about this in the chat and many other players have the same impression.
To BGA: Please change this
To other players: Do you agree?
Sincerly Wallabie

Randomness does not mean that all games will have an nice even distribution of dice. Over large samples (tens of thousands of rolls), dice distribution will approach a normal curve - the larger your sample, the closer to normal you'll probably hit. In the small sample of a single game, multiple rolls that are the same are entirely plausible.

If you really believe this, start taking statistics. When you have a reasonable sample size (as mentioned) and if you then find the results are statistically significant in resulting in a non-normal distribution, feel free to report it to BGA.

Additionally, as has been pointed out, to get a random number, you call a random function. To "fix" the dice rolls requires a lot more programming. People argue that the dice favour particular players - to do so would involve creating some kind of AI that determines which player to favour in each game, then to figure out the optimal dice for them. Random number generators CAN be flawed, but most these days have been subject to (large-scale) testing and would be noticed by people beyond BGA if they weren't truly random. Additionally, a flawed RNG doesn't show "runs of whatever number is most inconvenient to me right now". That's just a perception bias.

Wallabie wrote: ↑23 May 2024, 11:01 if you put the robber on a number, this number will be diced in one of the next three dices.

This seems quite likely - if you roll a 4 you have > 20% to roll again in the next 3 rolls. If you roll a 7 you have a > 40% chance to roll another 7 in the next three rolls.

Why would there be a bias for this? Do you think there is an issue with the RNG or that this is intentional?

Also, people usually don't put the robber on a 2 or a 12...

So lets say someone put the robber on a 4. Unlikely but lets go with it.

There is a 6 in 36, or 1 in 6 chance of rolling a 4 on two dice.
This means there is a 1 in 216 chance of rolling a 4 three times in a row. That does seems unlikely... until you consider how many games of Catan are being played daily on BGA. For every 648 games of Catan being played, 3 of them have someone roll a 4 three times in a row, and there's probably over 5000 games of Catan being played on BGA each day.
If half of the people who roll a 4 three times in a row come on the forum to complain about the randomizer, that would be 11-12 posts every day even though the dice are behaving properly.

Now consider how often the robber is put on 6 or 8 and how more likely those numbers are to be rolled.

For further reading see this other thread on the topic: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... ilit=Catan

Wallabie wrote: ↑23 May 2024, 11:01
To other players: Do you agree?

Of course they don't. There are a small minority of conspiracy theorists like yourself who congregate around these ideas on certain games. The reasons (confirmation bias, outliers, conspiratorial thinking) are well understood. Nothing about the random number distributions on BGA (which all derive from a common function) show anything surprising or unusual.

@Wallabie: I suggest one thing.
In any game you want, at any time, you can try to guess the next roll. You can per example any time the robber is moved in catan decide to try to guess the next three rolls.
Then check if you are succesful or not, and write everything in an excel document (note all roll independantly, and the number you tried to guess).
Do that 100 times, and then share the results here.

But you need to decide to count the roll before the rolling happen. Seeing a robber occuring, forgetting that you note all roll, and see that you could have guessed should not count since you forget you count the rolls before that happen.


By doing that, you remove most biais, and you should see pretty fast that trying to guess roll often lead to not be succesfull. And your mind only focus on when you are right.

But like others said, for all three rolls, that can be up to 40%, which is close to half the time.