Research on RNG-mechanics

A lot of the challenges in the current abyss league are actually simple RNG lotteries. Since I am very frustrated with this league and the huge role RNG plays in POE in general I did some reading across this and other forums and found consequentially unequally distributed luck to be a somewhat common topic.

Aside from the popular discussion about "streamer's luck", there are 5 other categories of theories out on the internet about what factors might affect the average player's luck. The first two are obviously nonsense, but for completeness I will mention them:
- System gambling, assuming that RNG counts how often you have been unlucky and then finally rewards you with being lucky on your next attempt, so the trick was to find out how much bad luck you needed to pay for one use of good luck. Therefore you should waste cheap currency on idly trying something unimportant, and then hit the jackpot as soon as it would be your turn to be lucky. All I want to say about this is: If system gambling would actually work, there would be no casino left on the planet.
- Secret recipe theories, revolving around some locations or the presence of a boss (especially Kuduku or Kadaka) influencing RNG. This sort of superstition seems to automatically happen around every creative design element (if you are old enough you certainly remember the cow level craze in D1).

The 3 other, more interesting, theories are based on noticing that some players seem to be constantly getting lucky while others (like me) constantly have bad luck all the time. The explanation theories for that are:
- Determination theory, assuming that at the creation of your account, your "luck", meaning a certain influencial number for RNG calculation, is determined once and for all. Since computers simply can't roll RNG like a humand being can roll a dice, they need to have some numerical input - they usually take the time or username as a base for further calculations (google or watch youtube on how computer RNG works in general!). This theorie therefore assumes, that some account creation times or names just are defined as more lucky than others and that this luck factor sticks with you as long as your account exists, influencing all further RNG rolls.
- Bug theory, simply suspecting the RNG mechanics of the game to be as bugged as other aspects, so that you might experience bugged RNG rolls, drastically reducing your luck or improving someone else's luck.
- Pay to win theory, assuming your RNG is depending either from your total amount of purchases, or from purchasing the supporter pack for the current league, or from wearing expensive MTX or something like that. According to this theory, GGG wants to reward players for contributing respectively punish them for not contributing to the game financially.

Since GGG in general is very intransparent about some game mechanics, and I finally want to know how RNG actually works in POE and whether it is equal for everybody or not I ask all players of the current abyss league to answer this post and provide following informations about their luck in this league and in general:

- Time played (in hours) according to the "/played" command? I know this includes a lot of AFK (and percentage varying from player to player) but it still seems like the most precise tool to estimate your gaming time efforts. Suggestion to GGG: For better statistics, you should count only time spent in instances and not in hideouts or towns as "/played".
- Number of challenges completed?
- Number of exalted orbs dropped during abyss league (not traded for)?
- Number of self found Lich encounters (not traded for)?
- Did you complete the Ulaman kill self found (not traded for)?
- Did you complete the identify unique item while having two abyssal sockets challenge (self found, not traded for)?
- Number of opened clasped hands according to "encounters IV" challenge from self found, naturally, randomly spawning breaches (not traded for, no zana mod)?
- Did you complete the sextant mod challenge without trading for the required map runs?
- Did you complete the zana daily mission challenge without trading?
- Did you find all six trials of ascendancy yourself without trading?

- Did you ever, including all past leagues and standard, chance a unique item?
- Did you ever, including all past leagues and standard, six link an item without Vorici? If yes, did it take more than 1.500 fus?
- Did you ever, including all past leagues and standard, find (not buy) a mirror?
- Did you ever, including all past leagues and standard, find any easter egg content like fishing or albino rhoas?

- Did you buy any of the specifical abyss league supporter packs?
- What amount of money did you pay to GGG in total since you began to play POE?

If you didn't keep track on all of these questions just post those you can answer precisely, please don't provide estimated data.
I will aggregate all replies at the end of the abyss challenge league and see if we can make a significant statistic. Thank you for your contribution in my attempt to solve these fun-destroying questions once and for all. Also all other forms of feedback or participation in this research (like from people with better knowledge about RNG theory or about statistics) are welcome. It doesn't matter whether you post your data now or at the end of the league, the league has been running long enough now to be statistically useful and your successes will be compared to your time investment.
Most welcome, of course, would be a statement from GGG finally explaining how their RNG works, whether it is equal for all players and why there is so much RNG lottery content in the game at all.

My own data is as follows: 270 hours played, 23 challenges, 1 Ex, 4 Liches, no Ulaman, no unique, 80 hands, no sextant challenge (4 out of 6 mods, currently blocking half of my yellow maps with 31 active sextants!), yes to zana daily mission and trials, but both after about five long weeks. No unique item chanced, no six-linking without Vorici, no mirror and no easter eggs. No money ever paid to GGG, for reasons explained in my separate thread "Sell offline CD version" (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2086273).

You'll never get enough data to conclude anything. Last league I found zero exalts. This league so far I've found 6. You'd have to gather data from a much longer time period than a league to get any useful information. Plus you'd need data from thousands of players. You'd be lucky to get data from a hundred players here I think.

And “streamer rng” is nothing more than playing 16 hours a day. Word of their good luck travels far and wide but where are all the reports of their bad luck?

Don't waste your time.

There's no other way around, but knowing the RNG in use. Further, you can collect info about the certain RNG, and eventually find out how it exactly works, potential bugs/phenomenons, etc.
If it's custom, or heavily reworked official one - forget about it.

by mentioning the desired outcome (prove that ggg buffs drops for their supporters) you already failed. if you do research you don't spoil what this questionaire is for.

actually you failed twice, since there are mostly supporters in this forum :)

try reddit, sadly ggg this abyss as honest criticism and posts there, you may even get a dev response!

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cronus a écrit :

by mentioning the desired outcome (prove that ggg buffs drops for their supporters) you already failed. if you do research you don't spoil what this questionaire is for.

actually you failed twice, since there are mostly supporters in this forum :)

try reddit, sadly ggg this abyss as honest criticism and posts there, you may even get a dev response!

I had to explain why I was asking these questions to get people interested in participating. And by just asking for the support amount, I would already have given away that this particular theory was a POSSIBLE, not necessarily desired, outcome.

By mentioning all common theories I actually made the questionnaire far more fair and unbiasing, because otherwise everybody was tempted to consider the pay-to-win theory alone or at least in the first place. Perhaps a lot of players don't even KNOW about the determination or bug theory. And by the way, I do think these are also quite possible outcomes. That's why I am collecting data.

I'd love to see how you would have phrased a research on this question without asking that question...
If you ask for the payment, you have to mention the payment.

And most of all: I am asking for facts. I am not asking "do you FEEL lucky" (which actually really could get biased), I am asking for precise numbers to compare. It doesn't matter at all whether anybody gets what I want to know, because this doesn't change the numbers.

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HaraldMKutscher a écrit :

And most of all: I am asking for facts. I am not asking "do you FEEL lucky" (which actually really could get biased), I am asking for precise numbers to compare. It doesn't matter at all whether anybody gets what I want to know, because this doesn't change the numbers.

does the outcome matter?

poe mostly consists of players who hate pay to win.

you can divide the userbase into players with alot of time, no money and no ingame success and people with alot of money and no time+success cause, despite heavy rng, the ingame success linearily increases with time spent.

by having some ex employee or whatever blaming them that they give supporters an advantage ggg could only lose: non-supporters would be heavily disappointed cause they played the game under the assumption to have equal chances and those who supported would feel spoiled and betrayed cause they supported the game because it's "no pay to win".

there is no way ggg can pull this one, it would be lose/lose.

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cronus a écrit :

by having some ex employee or whatever blaming them that they give supporters an advantage ggg could only lose: non-supporters would be heavily disappointed cause they played the game under the assumption to have equal chances and those who supported would feel spoiled and betrayed cause they supported the game because it's "no pay to win".

there is no way ggg can pull this one, it would be lose/lose.

Are you referring to me or what? I've never worked for GGG and live in Europe, on the opposite side of the planet than GGG...

Just what is your problem with simply gathering data with a neutral mind and look what the results will be? Why do you want me to shut down this research before it has begun? Why are you so convinced that the result will prove the pay-to-win-theory? It could as well result in the complete opposite and clearly falsify it, or do you know something I don't know?

So, what could be the potential outcome of this research?

case a) Not enough people participate in the research. Then we wouldn't be able to say anything, in favour of fair RNG or against it.

case b) Players with high transaction volume are significantly more lucky than others. This would of course confirm RNG-manipulation according to the pay-to-win theory. If that really was the case, then it was certainly not my fault.

case c) Some players are significantly more lucky than others, but their luck doesn't correlate to their transaction volume. This would still mean the RNG of this game was unequal, but according to the determination or the bug theory, not the pay-to-win theory.

case d) Luck was about equal for all players, independent from financial support. If this was the result of my research, I would provide GGG with neutral evidence FOR their fairness and therefore I would do them a great service.

You are the one of us who harms GGG by trying to talk people out of participating - if you want to stop the research, you want to prevent all possible results, including the one that would confirm GGG's fairness.

Since you obviously question my motivation: I just want to know what is going on and why RNG seems to be so massively unequal. If the RNG really was pay-to-win, I think players should know. If your character or account really was doomed due to determination theory, I think you should know. If the RNG really was bugged, I think players would want it to be fixed and GGG would have a great interest in finding and fixing those bugs. Again I would do GGG a favour with confirming bugs, helping them to repair their product.
Different from your obsession with the pay-to-win theory I honstly have no expectation about the result. If I had to guess now I would bet either on determination or bug theory, because my standard character seems to be remarkably more lucky than my abyss character, but since this is no statistics, I just calmly wait for scientific results. Why don't you too?!

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HaraldMKutscher a écrit :

Are you referring to me or what? I've never worked for GGG and live in Europe, on the opposite side of the planet than GGG...

i didn't even think my reply could be interpreted in that way. i guess my english is too bad for this conversation. good luck with your work.

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cronus a écrit :

i didn't even think my reply could be interpreted in that way. i guess my english is too bad for this conversation. good luck with your work.

Thank you for your fairness.
I'm no english native speaker myself.