New efforts!

[China Doll]

What's even funnier is playing my Plant/Kin in RV and having silly stalkers trying to sneak up on my while my creepers were down...I could see and root them even before they came out of hiding... Loved playing bait :).

[LaughingAlex]

We agreed it was a draw, then decided to explore what would happen in other circumstances.  Remember that back then, it wasn't yet known how accuracy even worked, much less how PvP would function.  Thought experiments about PvP in I3 were less informed than thought experiments about whether orcs would prefer Taco Bell over KFC.  If you didn't actually fight the fight, absolutely no one had a competent opinion on how the fight would actually turn out.  It wasn't until after Issue 3 was released that we even had a proper handle on how accuracy worked - because the big breakthrough happened during the "2004" Winter event which actually was delayed until mid-January 2005.  We have Stargazer and Pennelope to thank for that, because they had the presence of mind to test accuracy under the only controlled conditions possible at the time: by throwing snowballs at each other**.  They were the ones that discovered accuracy slotting was multiplicative, something that wouldn't be publicly known until I4, and not generally known until I rediscovered their work in I5.



** I should amplify.  Technically speaking, the arena offered a way to perform careful testing in theory, but in practice it did not for several reasons.  Most importantly, players *did* test accuracy in the arena - and all came to different, wrong conclusions.  Careful dedicated testing is not something every player can do.  Because of that, there were people who believed PvP combat mechanics worked in a more complex way than it actually did, and arena testing wasn't very well trusted.  Stargazer's accuracy testing *was* done carefully and accurately, and in an environment not loaded with preconceptions, which is why I trusted it.  And after I verified it, everyone else relatively quickly accepted or confirmed the theory.

Ahhhahhh, I see.  Kind of like what I did with my father and nephew on a game of risk.  It was originally a four-player game but I eliminated my sister after she lost almost her entire army to a random number god event attacking me.  But then as time went on it ended up between me and my father.  Since it was getting late we decided since it'd likely drag on I proposed a compromise: if dad eliminated my nephew we could see what kind of cards he'd get and if he'd wipe the floor with me.  And yeah, he very likely would have so I kind of just gave the game to him there.

A big issue with accuracy in city of heroes is luck is involved, and many players hate luck being involved to much.  Myself included, if I wasn't fighting with a 95% chance to-hit after accuracy and base to-hit+tohit buffs, I generally wasn't satisfied with my accuracy as I figure I could easily miss far more then normal otherwise.  And it was often my experience with to-hit.  So someone getting mad over missing all the time with the base to-hit being at 50%, it probably was not very fun.  Because it was not fun, they could easily let feelings get into any thoughts towards the results and complain or even exaggerate the problems in pvp 1.0/2.0.

[Inc42]

Mobility and kiting dose change the match even melee vs melee. You kite to create distance in order to get debuffs off, regen end, heal up, or in a case of the mace try to get the first strike again when engaging in order to be the first to get the stun, knockup. For example:

No Kiting:
The person who got the cc combo off will likely win (the only factor is if the tank engaged first, but the scrapper can catch up if they are very lucky with enough random crits)

With Kiting
A person will get the attack rotation off then back off before the opponent can recover from the cc duration. This is because (with the rules setup in this case) if the guy who imitated the attack will be vulnerable for themselves to be cc'ed. Why is that a bad thing because if I pointed out whoever started the fight will win? It is bad, because if the person who initiated the fight didn't withdraw before the opponent recovered, the opponent will cc them, then pull out, wait till BU is active again, then be the one to initiate the next go around. If the opponent is smart and will just attack while that person is cc'ed, that leaves dmg on the target while the target can't retaliate back. The variable that will determine who wins is whoever can keep getting first hits off till the other person is defeated.

Mobility is survival and if you can move, you won't die (or be less inclined to die than being stationary.) That is the reason no one use fly and uses SS and SJ in arena matches. You use fly you get hit with something that -fly, your stuck. You can combine that teleport to escape, but you cant sustain a fight in an arena match because you will get caught. In zones however, fly+TP is actually pretty funny. I had a Zone PvP zone toon (Electric/EM/Cold Blaster) with fly, TP, leadership and concealment. Fly around invis, you see a target, switch out to hover detoggle invis, while boost range is active pop BU+Aim you can get 2 Zapps off from 273 range for 681 dmg (no resistance calulated). If need be you can fly down to 113 range and hit the target with lightning bolt and TB (which is pretty funny) for over 1k dmg. As you drop to the ground cause of the end crash, pop a blue, click hibernate up, as soon as you get out of hibernate, use TP upwards, fly and invis, That idea was inspired by C&C Ion Cannon and it actually worked well.

You read the first sentence of my post and completely missed my point, let me rephrase that first sentence.

Mobility and kiting do not change anything for the purposes of this discussion. OBVIOUSLY they change everything in an actual PVP match, but for the discussion of scrapper vs tanker there is no reason to bring it up for all the reasons I mentioned in previous post.

[MM3squints]

You read the first sentence of my post and completely missed my point, let me rephrase that first sentence.

Mobility and kiting do not change anything for the purposes of this discussion. OBVIOUSLY they change everything in an actual PVP match, but for the discussion of scrapper vs tanker there is no reason to bring it up for all the reasons I mentioned in previous post.

It's really up to interpretation because the OP didn't listed it in the rules (only 4 were clearly listed) At the end, (s)he has an analysis on who would win if they are stationary and (s)he has an analysis on movement so both questioned are answered.

[Arcana]

It's really up to interpretation because the OP didn't listed it in the rules (only 4 were clearly listed) At the end, (s)he has an analysis on who would win if they are stationary and (s)he has an analysis on movement so both questioned are answered.

The discussion is useful either way, but I think the key question is: "the idea is not to set up an obvious winner, but instead to see if a scrapper's higher damage is enough to overcome a tank's higher defense."  Once you introduce combat tactics, you tend to lose the ability to answer that particular aspect of the question.  And actually I don't think we've generated a satisfying answer to that particular question, because "it depends."  An interesting extrapolation of the question would be, if both sides stood and fought and attempted to maximize offensive output, in how many different cases is it a win, a loss, or a draw for the scrapper.  My guess is that most of the time its a draw or a win for the scrapper with SO builds, and that reverses to being mostly a draw or a win for the tanker with high end builds.  But that's a guess.

[MM3squints]

The discussion is useful either way, but I think the key question is: "the idea is not to set up an obvious winner, but instead to see if a scrapper's higher damage is enough to overcome a tank's higher defense."  Once you introduce combat tactics, you tend to lose the ability to answer that particular aspect of the question.  And actually I don't think we've generated a satisfying answer to that particular question, because "it depends."  An interesting extrapolation of the question would be, if both sides stood and fought and attempted to maximize offensive output, in how many different cases is it a win, a loss, or a draw for the scrapper.  My guess is that most of the time its a draw or a win for the scrapper with SO builds, and that reverses to being mostly a draw or a win for the tanker with high end builds.  But that's a guess.

Only if we had a way to really test this out right now instead of just relying on mids and other mediums :P

[Arcana]

Only if we had a way to really test this out right now instead of just relying on mids and other mediums :P

Maybe one day someone will make a mybrute version of City of Heroes.

[Joshex]

Only if we had a way to really test this out right now instead of just relying on mids and other mediums :P

Maybe one day someone will make a mybrute version of City of Heroes.

Ok should be simple enough, I've been programming battle statistics recently, got the movements and status effects programmed into one doc. If I input CoH stat numbers from mids I should be able to do it, but not yet, still have to program all the defense types and res types. I know how, it just might take a few days/weeks (I AM TERRIBLE AT GAUGING TIME SO WHO KNOWS LOL).

though my stat system has qualities CoH doesn't, I can just zero those out to test the outcome.

[Arcana]

programmed into one doc

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.heyuguys.com%2Fimages%2F2014%2F04%2FInception-confused.jpg

[Joshex]

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.heyuguys.com%2Fimages%2F2014%2F04%2FInception-confused.jpg

lol, sorry typed that fast this morning, Document, The character movement triggers and status effect outcomes are written into one document. This way holds higher than tier 0 are hard-coded to disable movement ETC.

the actual hold calculation is written and will be in another document I'm calling HitAndDamage. (I know obvious file name, but that makes it easier to work with). this document is currently a work in progress, need to transfer a few math calculations into python 2.7 apl attached to proper triggers and a few if statements.

at the moment I'm too bored tired/bored and am stopped at:

Code Select Expand

######################################################
#calculate the hit and damage dealt to this character#
######################################################

def Didithit():
if

I'll add all the logic brick definitions later.

[Arcana]

A big issue with accuracy in city of heroes is luck is involved, and many players hate luck being involved to much.  Myself included, if I wasn't fighting with a 95% chance to-hit after accuracy and base to-hit+tohit buffs, I generally wasn't satisfied with my accuracy as I figure I could easily miss far more then normal otherwise.  And it was often my experience with to-hit.  So someone getting mad over missing all the time with the base to-hit being at 50%, it probably was not very fun.  Because it was not fun, they could easily let feelings get into any thoughts towards the results and complain or even exaggerate the problems in pvp 1.0/2.0.

I have often wondered if the hatred towards "randomness" was and is partially due to playing a game executed by a computer.  When the game is moderated by a human being and the player has to roll physical dice, that hatred morphs into irrational beliefs about the metaphyhsics of dice rolling.  But rarely if ever have I heard people say that they hate D&D because "it relies on luck."  I wonder if its because deep down they feel they are responsible for their own dice rolls, and therefore its more difficult to hate the source of the randomness.

[LaughingAlex]

I have often wondered if the hatred towards "randomness" was and is partially due to playing a game executed by a computer.  When the game is moderated by a human being and the player has to roll physical dice, that hatred morphs into irrational beliefs about the metaphyhsics of dice rolling.  But rarely if ever have I heard people say that they hate D&D because "it relies on luck."  I wonder if its because deep down they feel they are responsible for their own dice rolls, and therefore its more difficult to hate the source of the randomness.

People don't like losing when they knew they were going to win and a total luck role determins, say, a tornado hits their base when they were winning.  To them it's extremely unfair and often irritating, and removes the skill factor from the game.  Sometimes a person does everything right every time but still loses due to extreme randomness in a game with a win/lose condition.  This generally leads to an unwillingness to touch a game with randomness attached to it.

I could give an example, master of orion 2 is extremely unforgiving when it comes to randomness.  In fact, it can be so random as to just present you with an impossible situation in which the game gives you nothing but poor planets, and then one of your AI opponents gets a couple of ultra-rich normal gravity worlds.  They not only out-produce you but horribly out-expand you, and end up with 2-3 ships for every ship you have and out-tech you.

And being out-teched in master of orion 2 is horrible.  Imagine all your ships having hundreds of your best weapon doing ZERO damage and your enemy just automatically melting your ships.

Let me go even further with Master of Orion 3 with the tropical patch in a game where I got both out-expanded AND OUT TECHED.  The AI opponent had not only 2 planets for every planet I had, but was also ahead of me about 10 tech levels.  On top of that I had no combat techs for the tech level 20 range due to my playing klackons and having the lowest creativity score.  So in other words, even if I got to the 20s range my ships would be completely and hopelessly unable to do a single point of damage to his(his shields were far, far to powerful) and he started attacking me.  Automatic loss with zero chance to win.  After wasting my time for an hour.

All of this kind of bad gameplay can easily happen due to excessive randomness.  It's not fun to lose automatically before the game begins because it decided to give you an entirely unfair situatin randomly with zero solutions to any problems.  It's why no one in their right mind playing MOO2 will ever pick uncreative + repulsive, because then the game becomes entirely luck based.  You cannot trade technologies, so it's entirely possible your spies, the only way you'll ever get some technologies, will become your be-all-end-all.  If they due to bad luck never steal that critical missile or beam tech for you to survive, you could end up automatically losing the game right there.

Here is an example of a guy playing with that combination.  He loses the game.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0S2RZB6-uY

And he took the single most powerful pick pair; Unification/tolerant.  He still lost because of the death combination and even the elerians I think caught up to him technology wise.

An Edit: And if you watch the whole series you'll notice something his spies never steal, that is such a vital tech as to cause you to lose the game for not taking it.

[blacksly]

I have often wondered if the hatred towards "randomness" was and is partially due to playing a game executed by a computer.  When the game is moderated by a human being and the player has to roll physical dice, that hatred morphs into irrational beliefs about the metaphyhsics of dice rolling.  But rarely if ever have I heard people say that they hate D&D because "it relies on luck."  I wonder if its because deep down they feel they are responsible for their own dice rolls, and therefore its more difficult to hate the source of the randomness.

I think that it was more due to the fast nature of CoH power usage. With 95% accuracy, you assumed every attack would hit, and throw your controls and attacks appropriately. A Hold on one target, then three attacks on the next that will kill it, then switch to the next, etc. Once in a while you will be wrong and lose some time due to having to adjust for a miss, but in general you had a good idea of what was going to happen, and with fixed damage you generally knew who would go down in 2 attacks, or 3, or 4, and thus rarely wasted attacks.

With a 50% hit rate, since you really would be queuing up the next attack before you saw the result of the last attack, you would not know if the Sapper would be Held by that first attack, or if the attack upon the target that should kill it will do so, and unlike a 95% accuracy, you can't just say "I will play as if it will hit, and 5% of the time I'll have to reverse my targets due to a miss". So a lower hit rate would result in either time wasted if you wait for the results of the last attack before tabbing to the next target, or in wasted attacks as you overkill more targets, or in more targets surviving with a sliver of health. Even if you ended up with the same theoretical DPS, you would have either more wasted damage or more wasted time.

That's even more important with characters who depend a good deal on controls for their defenses, as the defensive difference between a hit and a miss was really big. So, I think that there was a good point to be made in favor of "as close to 100% as possible" accuracy, when trying to be efficient in actual gameplay, even if it may have resulted in a slight loss in theoretical DPS. A few players would analyze this, but a lot of other players would just feel how their characters played when their accuracies were lower, and while not being able to verbalize the reason, they would be able to feel that the lower-accuracy character played at a less effective level, and it would not necessarily be due to perceptual bias.

[Arcana]

People don't like losing when they knew they were going to win and a total luck role determins, say, a tornado hits their base when they were winning.  To them it's extremely unfair and often irritating, and removes the skill factor from the game.  Sometimes a person does everything right every time but still loses due to extreme randomness in a game with a win/lose condition.  This generally leads to an unwillingness to touch a game with randomness attached to it.

I could give an example, master of orion 2 is extremely unforgiving when it comes to randomness.  In fact, it can be so random as to just present you with an impossible situation in which the game gives you nothing but poor planets, and then one of your AI opponents gets a couple of ultra-rich normal gravity worlds.  They not only out-produce you but horribly out-expand you, and end up with 2-3 ships for every ship you have and out-tech you.

And being out-teched in master of orion 2 is horrible.  Imagine all your ships having hundreds of your best weapon doing ZERO damage and your enemy just automatically melting your ships.

Let me go even further with Master of Orion 3 with the tropical patch in a game where I got both out-expanded AND OUT TECHED.  The AI opponent had not only 2 planets for every planet I had, but was also ahead of me about 10 tech levels.  On top of that I had no combat techs for the tech level 20 range due to my playing klackons and having the lowest creativity score.  So in other words, even if I got to the 20s range my ships would be completely and hopelessly unable to do a single point of damage to his(his shields were far, far to powerful) and he started attacking me.  Automatic loss with zero chance to win.  After wasting my time for an hour.

All of this kind of bad gameplay can easily happen due to excessive randomness.  It's not fun to lose automatically before the game begins because it decided to give you an entirely unfair situatin randomly with zero solutions to any problems.  It's why no one in their right mind playing MOO2 will ever pick uncreative + repulsive, because then the game becomes entirely luck based.  You cannot trade technologies, so it's entirely possible your spies, the only way you'll ever get some technologies, will become your be-all-end-all.  If they due to bad luck never steal that critical missile or beam tech for you to survive, you could end up automatically losing the game right there.

Here is an example of a guy playing with that combination.  He loses the game.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0S2RZB6-uY

And he took the single most powerful pick pair; Unification/tolerant.  He still lost because of the death combination and even the elerians I think caught up to him technology wise.

An Edit: And if you watch the whole series you'll notice something his spies never steal, that is such a vital tech as to cause you to lose the game for not taking it.

Randomly presenting you with an unwinnable or unprofitable situation is not the same thing as people literally hating random number rolls to the point of believing the game is programmed to make them lose, which actually happens.

[LaughingAlex]

Randomly presenting you with an unwinnable or unprofitable situation is not the same thing as people literally hating random number rolls to the point of believing the game is programmed to make them lose, which actually happens.

Well, in the case of the random rolls you speak of, not everyone has the same luck.  See above and my sister losing about 20 armies attacking a territory of mine which only had 3 armies.  We even had a hillarious dice role where I rolled two ones and she rolls.....three ones.  People can get very unlucky and even have a mindset of being very unlucky at times and then some others the luck roles are just plain biased in their favor.

Master of Orion 2 with random events on also tends to throw negative random events against the player more than the AI, unless the player took the "lucky" racial pick.  I once lost a game to a random even of a space amoeba which came and ate an undefended planet when I had nothing but bad planets to begin with.  The undefended planet was my only good planet and my fleet was out of place, yeah.

[Arcana]

I think that it was more due to the fast nature of CoH power usage. With 95% accuracy, you assumed every attack would hit, and throw your controls and attacks appropriately. A Hold on one target, then three attacks on the next that will kill it, then switch to the next, etc. Once in a while you will be wrong and lose some time due to having to adjust for a miss, but in general you had a good idea of what was going to happen, and with fixed damage you generally knew who would go down in 2 attacks, or 3, or 4, and thus rarely wasted attacks.

With a 50% hit rate, since you really would be queuing up the next attack before you saw the result of the last attack, you would not know if the Sapper would be Held by that first attack, or if the attack upon the target that should kill it will do so, and unlike a 95% accuracy, you can't just say "I will play as if it will hit, and 5% of the time I'll have to reverse my targets due to a miss". So a lower hit rate would result in either time wasted if you wait for the results of the last attack before tabbing to the next target, or in wasted attacks as you overkill more targets, or in more targets surviving with a sliver of health. Even if you ended up with the same theoretical DPS, you would have either more wasted damage or more wasted time.

That's even more important with characters who depend a good deal on controls for their defenses, as the defensive difference between a hit and a miss was really big. So, I think that there was a good point to be made in favor of "as close to 100% as possible" accuracy, when trying to be efficient in actual gameplay, even if it may have resulted in a slight loss in theoretical DPS. A few players would analyze this, but a lot of other players would just feel how their characters played when their accuracies were lower, and while not being able to verbalize the reason, they would be able to feel that the lower-accuracy character played at a less effective level, and it would not necessarily be due to perceptual bias.

While its possible some players experienced this, I don't think the majority of players that expressed disgust at the RNG fall into this category.  Their own public protestations were inconsistent with this experience.  Often they would literally express their dislike for the RNG's effect on combat by claiming absolutely impossible things, like missing a hundred times in a row, or always missing a certain mez, or always missing after using inspirations. 

[Arcana]

Well, in the case of the random rolls you speak of, not everyone has the same luck.  See above and my sister losing about 20 armies attacking a territory of mine which only had 3 armies.  We even had a hillarious dice role where I rolled two ones and she rolls.....three ones.  People can get very unlucky and even have a mindset of being very unlucky at times and then some others the luck roles are just plain biased in their favor.

And then you quit the game or throw the dice out of the window or write a letter to Hasbro complaining about the game design.

No wait, that's what happens if RISK was an MMO.  When it happens in RISK, its hilarious and you keep playing (or you set the board on fire because you realize you're playing RISK, not because of the dice per se).

Its not news that people don't like to lose.  Its also not news that people always want a chance to win even when in losing situations, but don't want a chance to lose once they find themselves in a winning situation.  What's interesting is how that gets expressed by MMO players in ways vastly more extreme than in any other venue.  Some of that is possibly due to the fact that many MMO players are demonstrably psychotic (particularly ones that frequent message boards).  But randomness seems to be a particular magnet for venom out of proportion to general attitudes towards randomness in games and general levels of venom for everything else in MMOs.

[LaughingAlex]

And then you quit the game or throw the dice out of the window or write a letter to Hasbro complaining about the game design.

No wait, that's what happens if RISK was an MMO.  When it happens in RISK, its hilarious and you keep playing (or you set the board on fire because you realize you're playing RISK, not because of the dice per se).

Its not news that people don't like to lose.  Its also not news that people always want a chance to win even when in losing situations, but don't want a chance to lose once they find themselves in a winning situation.  What's interesting is how that gets expressed by MMO players in ways vastly more extreme than in any other venue.  Some of that is possibly due to the fact that many MMO players are demonstrably psychotic (particularly ones that frequent message boards).  But randomness seems to be a particular magnet for venom out of proportion to general attitudes towards randomness in games and general levels of venom for everything else in MMOs.

Honestly, I think it's more the mmorpg player mindset than most of the games anymore.  Many of them are munchkins, they aren't there to have fun but just make an overpowered character to feel powerful.  And they seem to have an especially high level of intolerance for risk.  That risk even includes the risk we are all familiar with of trying new things, even, which is why so many of them go straight for walkthroughs or build guides so they can have someone else do the work of making their character for them.  And I think that sometimes it's even to compensate for some RL issue they have.  In any case though, they don't just dislike losing but are just psychopaths about it.

[Twisted Toon]

People don't like losing when they knew they were going to win and a total luck role determins, say, a tornado hits their base when they were winning.  To them it's extremely unfair and often irritating, and removes the skill factor from the game.  Sometimes a person does everything right every time but still loses due to extreme randomness in a game with a win/lose condition.  This generally leads to an unwillingness to touch a game with randomness attached to it.

I could give an example, master of orion 2 is extremely unforgiving when it comes to randomness.  In fact, it can be so random as to just present you with an impossible situation in which the game gives you nothing but poor planets, and then one of your AI opponents gets a couple of ultra-rich normal gravity worlds.  They not only out-produce you but horribly out-expand you, and end up with 2-3 ships for every ship you have and out-tech you.

And being out-teched in master of orion 2 is horrible.  Imagine all your ships having hundreds of your best weapon doing ZERO damage and your enemy just automatically melting your ships.

Let me go even further with Master of Orion 3 with the tropical patch in a game where I got both out-expanded AND OUT TECHED.  The AI opponent had not only 2 planets for every planet I had, but was also ahead of me about 10 tech levels.  On top of that I had no combat techs for the tech level 20 range due to my playing klackons and having the lowest creativity score.  So in other words, even if I got to the 20s range my ships would be completely and hopelessly unable to do a single point of damage to his(his shields were far, far to powerful) and he started attacking me.  Automatic loss with zero chance to win.  After wasting my time for an hour.

All of this kind of bad gameplay can easily happen due to excessive randomness.  It's not fun to lose automatically before the game begins because it decided to give you an entirely unfair situatin randomly with zero solutions to any problems.  It's why no one in their right mind playing MOO2 will ever pick uncreative + repulsive, because then the game becomes entirely luck based.  You cannot trade technologies, so it's entirely possible your spies, the only way you'll ever get some technologies, will become your be-all-end-all.  If they due to bad luck never steal that critical missile or beam tech for you to survive, you could end up automatically losing the game right there.

Here is an example of a guy playing with that combination.  He loses the game.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0S2RZB6-uY

And he took the single most powerful pick pair; Unification/tolerant.  He still lost because of the death combination and even the elerians I think caught up to him technology wise.

An Edit: And if you watch the whole series you'll notice something his spies never steal, that is such a vital tech as to cause you to lose the game for not taking it.

I watched my brother lose a game of Squad Leader on his half of the first turn. Turn number one, my brother moves first. He moves a few units where they could fire at his opponents units. His opponent gets opportunity fire, wipes out enough of my brothers units to meet the victory conditions, and wins the game. My brother never played Squad Leader with him again.

[ivanhedgehog]

And then you quit the game or throw the dice out of the window or write a letter to Hasbro complaining about the game design.

No wait, that's what happens if RISK was an MMO.  When it happens in RISK, its hilarious and you keep playing (or you set the board on fire because you realize you're playing RISK, not because of the dice per se).

Its not news that people don't like to lose.  Its also not news that people always want a chance to win even when in losing situations, but don't want a chance to lose once they find themselves in a winning situation.  What's interesting is how that gets expressed by MMO players in ways vastly more extreme than in any other venue.  Some of that is possibly due to the fact that many MMO players are demonstrably psychotic (particularly ones that frequent message boards).  But randomness seems to be a particular magnet for venom out of proportion to general attitudes towards randomness in games and general levels of venom for everything else in MMOs.

one difference is that in a pen and paper game, if you somehow think the dice are rigged, you can just switch dice.( I do have a set of dice that roll all 6's)

in an mmo, you have to trust that the rng is properly implemented. programmers are people too, they do make mistakes. all it take is one oops and things dont quite work out the way they should. and the player has no way of knowing. of course, more often than not, there is no error(way more often than not). but it can and has happened. people on the forums like to say "rng is rng"...but then you tie it into that spaghetti code..and that is where errors can happen.