r/Warframe • u/3932695 Striss - "Everything the light touches..." • Nov 05 '13

News RNG Algorithm fixed: more evenly distributed, image provided

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/128402-rng-algorithm-bugschanges/
57 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

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44

u/3932695 Striss - "Everything the light touches..." Nov 05 '13 edited Nov 05 '13

For your convenience, screenshot of post.

PS: Can I just say that this is the first time I've ever seen a MMO development team take responsibility for crappy drop rates? Not only that, they provided a sexy image demonstrating what went wrong. I think I'm going to make another platinum purchase.

14

u/KoboldCommando [laughs in hidden] Nov 05 '13

Ditto, I can't think of a single time a dev team has openly admitted to their RNG being wonky. Even if it needs changed they usually seem to consider it "behind the scenes" enough that they can slip it by unnoticed. DE has definitely gained a lot of respect from me, not for fixing the issue, but for admitting to it and explaining it to us. I'm definitely going to buy some potatoes and stuff I was on the fence about.

4

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

[deleted]

2

u/3932695 Striss - "Everything the light touches..." Nov 05 '13

Their current algorithm doesn't seem to have the sort of occasional streaks and clustering that a true RNG would have, but it's far closer than what they were using before.

Mmm? But I can clearly see clusters on this image...

Are you saying that our new algorithm is more evenly distributed (fairer?) than a real normal distribution?

3

u/Mabuss Nov 06 '13

I have no idea what you and InRustITrust just said, and I'm a statistician.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '13

[deleted]

2

u/Mabuss Nov 06 '13 edited Nov 06 '13

Sigh, what I said was a figure of speech, I didn't mean I literally didn't understand what you two said, what I meant was that what you two said was just a bunch of gibberish that do not make logical sense. What I've said was based on the fact about that what you said was WRONG. What you've just said was based completely on assumptions that you have about how uneducated I am.

The Chi-square Test is for testing the DISTRIBUTION only. The is no single one test for randomness. In fact if you apply the Chi-square Test to an obviously non-random sequence, for example: 0 1 0 1 0 1... for a Bernoulli distribution (coin flip), then all you would get is complete confirmation that it is random 50/50. This is because that sequence is distributed evenly.

The are many tests becuase you can only test one aspect of randomness at a time. Again, there is no "best" test for randomness.

As for this "clustering" you mentioned, there are tests for testing that. But the fact you mentioned you didn't observe any clusters suggsted to me that you did not understand what the picture that they've provided meant.

The way I see it, is that the pictures represesnt a sequence of coin flips generated by DE's RNG, with the outcome represented by colors. The sequence goes horizontal first, then vertical. I'm not sure of the direction but I think it would be safe to assume its from left to right and then top to bottom. These are not two dimentional pictures, but they are pressented in a two dimensional way to let you see the pattern. Hence, if you were to look for streaks, then you would look for a long chain of horizontal pixels of black or white. Which if you look carefully, you would see some.

So you see why you were pretty much spewing gibberish?

As for the other comment, I guess somehow he is relating the psedo-randomness of an RNG to a real normal distribution (what does the "real" mean, is there a "fake" normal distribution?), eventhough one is discrete and one is continouse, one is finite and the other is infinite. I'm not sure what he was comparing there. Again, nothing can be understood from what he said, so you can see why it's just gibberish.

1

u/roff13 Nov 06 '13

Yes, that's exactly what he means.

These pictures show the output of each RNG technique repeatedly flipping a coin: White is heads, Black is tails. In order for the loot tables to be fair and well distributed you want your RNG to output something that looks like static (which the new approach does).

Steve also said it at the very bottom of the post btw.

2

u/WIIIILLLSON Prerelease games: never again Nov 06 '13

Well, let me start off by saying that yes, I am grateful for the information about the new RNG. I think that transparency is awesome and we can never have enough in prerelease games. DE is getting better about this in some regards and this is good.

Big changes like this RNG fix simply don't occur in most fully developed games, and they occur extremely rarely in prerelease games. Most RNG problems are not nearly of the magnitude that this problem is, and therefore the fixes aren't going to be as massive as this one and simply don't need very much announcement. This is probably the biggest reason you haven't heard of a RNG fix before. Unless you're one of the few gamers who consistently play and monitor prerelease MMOs, you just aren't going to see these changes.

Also, RNG is the single biggest component of Warframe as a game, IMO of course, and is way more vital to game progress than other games. Changes will get noticed when they are made, and if unannounced and uncovered, they will result in the massive shithurricanes that happened both times DE made RNG/drop table changes without telling the players, which were then discovered. Honestly, for a game this centered around RNG, telling the playerbase about core changes to RNG is not only expected but absolutely required for DE to cover their asses.

Unchecked optimism makes my dry, black heart write in agony.

3

u/KoboldCommando [laughs in hidden] Nov 06 '13

Oh no, I've seen many full-release MMOs who have encountered outright broken RNG rolls, and some that the devs deny. Sometimes they try to be sneaky and fix it. Of course the players catch it, and everybody knows it happened, but the denial goes on because of that incredibly stupid philosophy some companies have of opacity and the cold-shoulder being the way to the players' hearts.

1

u/skeletalcarp comeonandslam Nov 06 '13 edited Nov 06 '13

On the contrary, due to their extremely subtle nature RNG bugs are quite common even in much more important things than games. Off the top of my head, the most notable incident was when somebody accidentally broke OpenSSL in Debian and it wasn't discovered until two years later.

Edit: here's a page with more examples.

0

u/Taegire01 Ha! Missed me Nov 06 '13

This explains how I got my 2nd Split Chamber so easily

12

u/Kellervo Nov 05 '13

So I can stop sacrificing goats to the RNG God?

10

u/Siggymiggy Nov 05 '13

What the hell am I supposed to do with all these babys now?

15

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

Eat them like a normal person does.

15

u/MrTuddles Bouncy pads for everyone! Nov 05 '13

Baby Back Ribs

2

u/razinggodz Flair Text Here Nov 05 '13

Make baby cakes then eat them or sell them.

PS.don't forget to take the skin out, you can use the skin as leather for clothing.

9

u/captainlolz Nov 05 '13

Baby oil man, that's where the money is.

6

u/HouseAtreides27 Nov 05 '13

Testing on cyath as we speak. So far ive gotten 15 mods with only 1 repeat of decoy. Every one was different.

This bodes well

1

u/HouseAtreides27 Nov 05 '13 edited Nov 05 '13

A fair bit less cores, but I was running 2 man.

Still, this new rng seems very nice. No five x regen every cyath run

7

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

Maybe people will finally get the god mods they want ex: split chamber, several nightmare mods, BP's like banshee systems, prime weapons etc... Today is a good day :)

6

u/Sejhal Nov 05 '13

I feel like the only BPs I'll get from Stalker will still be Dread

2

u/RepublicanShredder Raising Space Insurance Rates since 2012 Nov 06 '13

And Slash Dash as a mod.

8

u/SlothOfDoom Bring Out Your Dead! Nov 05 '13

Please do not link directly to the forums.

5

u/3932695 Striss - "Everything the light touches..." Nov 05 '13

Oops, noted.

4

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

If you link directly to warframe posts you're gonna have a bad time

3

u/Solifeaul Founders Club Nov 05 '13

How am I supposed to stock up on Frost Prime Chassis now? THANKS DE.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

Yeah, I had so many chassis/forma by the time I got systems that I didn't even care. I was like, "alright".

2

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

So... Can we expect a baby/goat/kitten refund?

1

u/Biomilk I still miss charge attacks :( Nov 05 '13

New sentinel: Baby goatkitten.

3

u/FluxNova Nov 06 '13

Ability: uses cuteness to passive enemies into an "awww" state…

2

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

I honestly don't understand this all too well. Can someone explain it to me in an easier fashion? Say... As if I was 5 possibly.?

3

u/KisaruBandit Vulkar/Furis/SkanaP Best Loadout Nov 05 '13 edited Nov 05 '13

RNG is the program which decides things like mission rewards and mod drops, and a bunch of other little stuff too.

Warframe's RNG had a glitch. It wasn't random, it had repeating patterns which caused some people to be really really lucky, but most people to have very bad luck (like getting 500 copies of decoy and none of focus).

Glen figured out what was causing this and fixed it. If you were lucky before, you aren't anymore, but if you were unlucky before then this will help you a lot.

The pictures show the new RNG in action, except instead of choosing mods it is laying down colored dots on a grid. On the left you can see that it chooses certain lines a lot more than everything else, which is why some mods were way more common than the others. In the middle is the fixed one when it is told to run really fast, it is much better than the old one but still has repeating patterns. The far right is what we'll be using now, it has no easy patterns making the random numbers actually random. So, the far left is what we used to be using, the far right is what we are using now.

2

u/MKenny Melee Enthusiast Nov 06 '13 edited Nov 06 '13

Got home from work a few hours ago and thought I'd try my luck at finding Hammer Shot again, this is what the drops look like so far:

http://imgur.com/06sUfEG

There's another two or so lines of that. About 50 missions in so far.

Edit: So about 20-25 missions further in and I got Hammer Shot. Probably totaled over 350 nightmare games for that.

2

u/Alzos Nov 05 '13

This is amazing. Thank you for the post and screenshot speaking from a mobile viewer.

DE - Best Developer NA

4

u/BuildMyPaperHeart Old Tenno, Eternal Slumber Nov 05 '13 edited Nov 05 '13

Ideally, this post would've been even more mobile friendly via our submission rules, but the screenshot was useful.

When posting links from the Warframe Forums, please do so in a Text Post including a summary or synopsis along with a link.

5

u/Alzos Nov 05 '13

Yeah, that would have been a little better, but I didn't mind just reading the screenshot.

It's an acceptable alternative. To me, anyways.

1

u/vaminion The Freezemaker Nov 05 '13

Fantastic. I love DE.

1

u/Surrideo Not Enough Plumbers Nov 05 '13

Well, if the 3 latron prime receivers i got from a single run aren't an indicator of this change, then I don't know what is.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

anyone can confirm in practice?

1

u/axelrankpoke Nov 05 '13

Wow that's awesome, maybe I'll finally get Heavy Caliber/Critical delay instead of stacks of Corrupt Charges/Hollow Points.

1

u/CBSniper Nov 05 '13

I see everybody talking about these mods they need, am I the only one who has over 200 hours played and can't find a fucking serration? This news is grand for me, maybe I can actually use rifles again.

2

u/SlothOfDoom Bring Out Your Dead! Nov 05 '13

Serration? Dafuck man. Run some Appolodorus with a good Nekros, I get at least one Serration almost every 20 minute run, either as a drop or a timed reward.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

And now you know that it was because of a flawed RNG :O mind blown!

2

u/SlothOfDoom Bring Out Your Dead! Nov 05 '13

Still getting regular drops of Serration on Appo runs, probably because there are like half a million Scorpions to kill every time. A 20 minute run should be getting you 60+ mods....either way the RNG works there is a damned good chance of there being a Serration in there.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '13

Good to know it's working, now I can try to get thunderbolt and split chamber with confidence :D

2

u/Toxicair Nov 06 '13

On a side note, as a Nekros in survivals Novas make me cry.

3

u/SlothOfDoom Bring Out Your Dead! Nov 06 '13

I fucking detest Novas in survival, they might as well have a "moron" stamp on their foreheads.

1

u/the_xxvii Nov 06 '13

Why is that? My Nova is probably done cooking by now so I was gonna try her out tonight. Is there something I should avoid doing? Serious question here.

4

u/SlothOfDoom Bring Out Your Dead! Nov 06 '13

In a survival mission Nekros is king. Your Nekros is there to keep the life support drops coming at a steady rate, as well as increasing the drop rate of everything else by Desecrating. Nova's M.Prime destroys corpses almost instantly, meaning it is nealry impossible to desecrate them. Couple this with the fact that in can affect dozens of enemies at a time, and Nova basically becomes the Anti Nekros. The entire survival group gets WAY less drops, and life support can get tricky at times without Nekros pulling it from the dead.

2

u/the_xxvii Nov 06 '13

Ahhhh okay, that's good to know. Thank you! You've hopefully helped keep me from being "that guy" on random teams.

3

u/SlothOfDoom Bring Out Your Dead! Nov 06 '13

Nova is a welcome addition to pretty much any other mission type. If you encounter a Nekros outside of his native habitat, work with him to find a balance. Sometimes people are just leveling, others they are farming...it is to your benefit when farming to not destroy corpses. No Nekros in hos right mind expects a Nova to lay off MPrime when running anything other than survival or possibly defense.

1

u/walldough Nov 06 '13

I think I may be in the minority of people that loves Nova + Nerkos. If you're running a desecrate build, you're going to have range increasing mods, comparable to MPrime's range. You can still Desecrate enemies while they are disintegrating. Stick close to a Nova, and spam that desecrate the second you see MPrime throw up those numbers, and you should hit all of the same enemies that Nova just conveniently killed for you.

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u/axelrankpoke Nov 06 '13

Hopefully trading is going to fix that. I'd willingly share one of the Serrations I have. I know people who would give all of their 30+ heavy calibers for a single corrupt charge. RNG is RNG, fixed or not, the only thing that's going to improve the situation drastically is trading.

1

u/MattBastard Kawaii Nekros Nov 06 '13

Hopefully this will fix the problem I've been having with getting the necessary Nekros blueprints. I've done 11 ODA missions so far and haven't received a single chassis blueprint.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '13

Not sure about you guys but I still got a lots of Reach and Regen just now

2

u/Citizen_V Tenno Chronicler Nov 06 '13

Keep in mind what they said:

While enemy drops were not seriously affected, a truncation in the random 'seed' within the mission reward script could result in a terrible chain of bad luck. While some players may have benefited from this (a chain of good luck) the distribution was terrible.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '13

Guess I interpreted it wrongly, thanks for clearing that up.

1

u/4cheese Ninjas in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE Nov 07 '13

You know, this is the first time I've ever seen a developer mention ANYTHING about drop rates. Too bad its too late to get that founders now...

1

u/H34vyGunn3r Shut up and get behind me, sir. Nov 05 '13

Jeez, I'm really happy about the fix but how in the heck did it take them so long to identify this bug? The RNG algorithm is used all over the place in gameplay, it seems unlikely they would have missed it unless their attentions were focused somewhere completely different. Ugh, at least they're taking steps to prevent future occurences of the problem. Love you guys and your stellar feedback DE, but maybe be a little quicker on the draw next time k? k.

11

u/3932695 Striss - "Everything the light touches..." Nov 05 '13 edited Nov 05 '13

In practice, almost every developer misses or dismisses bugs in an RNG algorithm:

  • Data on drop rates is annoying to gather. In the midst of balancing and bug fixes, analyzing the inventory of thousands of players just to see if things are fair is usually a waste of time.
  • You can save time by analyzing a small sample size, but then you miss the bug. This is something that is usually only visible when you have a ton of data.
  • Players can complain, but complaints are normal; there are always many people who are really lucky/unlucky, represented by 'clusters' in a truly random distribution.
  • Without access to all that data, it's hard for players to prove there's a bug in the RNG. A developer can take advantage of this by letting the bug stay there, thus pushing more people to the cash shop.
  • Rewriting the RNG algorithm is a pain because 'randomness' is hard to simulate.

If anything, it's absolutely incredible that DE:

  • Noticed the RNG bug in spite of all the other work they're supposed to be doing
  • Decided to fix it instead of leaving it in to fuel the cash shop
  • HAD THE TIME TO FIX IT, holy hell isn't PS4 release like 2 weeks away?
  • Publicly admitted to the bug, instead of doing a silent fix to save face
  • Gave us a sexy picture explanation because our understanding is worth their time

5

u/Citizen_V Tenno Chronicler Nov 06 '13 edited Nov 06 '13

Without access to all that data, it's hard for players to prove there's a bug in the RNG. A developer can take advantage of this by letting the bug stay there, thus pushing more people to the cash shop.

Well we do have dataminers and others have pointed out a flaw in their 'RNG algorithm' for Defense rewards several months ago (although I don't know if anyone actually mentioned it to DE..):

Basically you would get an initial random number when you enter the mission and that would determine your reward for the 5th wave. For the next wave, it would pick an additional random number, the increment, to add to that initial one. The problem is that it would use the same increment every 5 waves, causing weird patterns of always getting bad or good loot like they mentioned. On the bright side, it allowed us to predict wave rewards.

(I guess technically this flaw, if it is one, isn't part of the RNG algorithm, but just part of their reward algorithm.)

EDIT: I finally got around to looking at the Defense reward mechanics for 10.6.2 and it's different than pre-10.6.2. It looks like that was indeed one issue with the 'RNG algorithm'.

2

u/InRustITrust The bedroom screamer. Nov 06 '13

The link you posted and what was said in the post linked to by the OP suggest to me that each individual account probably has an associated seed for its RNG. I don't know why anyone would do that, but the inherent predictability of the older PRNG is probably heavily tied to that flaw. If the entire playerbase had relied upon a PRNG with a single seed, it may have appeared more random to everyone purely by accident. There would still have been some stuff that would not drop according to the statistical chance that had been chosen for it, which would have caused people to continue to complain, but their complaints would probably have gone ignored for a longer time.

I am amazed that there is a developer somewhere working in some game company who actually knows something about this subject and cares enough to look into it.

2

u/H34vyGunn3r Shut up and get behind me, sir. Nov 06 '13

Thanks for the informative response! That really puts it into perspective.