Quote: Originally Posted By dahsdebater on 4/19/2010
Ok colonels, I just designed an experiment you can't argue with because it uses random.org, your perfect mecca of randomness. I looked at my past few games and see that each team averages something near 30 shots per half. You always say the game is too complicated. So I set this up to be as simple as possible. Two teams, each gets 30 shots each in 2 halves. Every player is a 50% shooter, so each shot has a 50/50 chance of going in. Nobody takes any 3s. I used random.org's coin toss algorithm to simulate each shot. Heads it went in, tails it didn't. Can't get much simpler than that.
Team A, first half: 11 heads
Team B, first half: 18 heads
Team A, second half: 13 heads
Team B, second half: 21 heads
I was actually hoping there'd be a nice halftime swing since it would fit better in this thread. Didn't happen. Nevertheless, team B won this game by 30 points, 78-48, in spite of the fact that they were completely evenly matched. 30 point differential between two evenly matched teams? Uh oh, that can't be right. Random.org must be broken.
The fact is, the sample sizes we're dealing with are too small to expect incredibly consistent results. There's a very good chance that if you simulate that same game that team A will win by at least 12 or 14. That's a 40+ point swing between 2 games, which you of course would insist is absolutely ridiculous and indicative of a lack of true randomness. In reality, you don't need clustering to get disparate results over 30 or even 60 events.
Very nice experiment. I just don't trust WIS for a multitude of reasons (past problems in NBA, NFL, Racing sims, arrogant admins/customer service, lazy explanations, etc.) and to a degree that's poisoned my experience/viewpoint here. Despite all that, I still enjoy HD and the untimely bizarre results aren't enough to force me out. If I ever leave, it will probably be due to boredom, not because of anything the sim does/did to me, but I guess that's yet to be seen.
Rightly or wrongly, I'll always wonder about what's perceivably wrong with the HD sim...the prng...extra randomness....over-complexity....all of those...some of those...none of those...etc. Its really just a trust issue, and I'm not saying that WIS would purposely do something wrong with the sim or target certain people and screw them, that doesn't happen...it just doesn't seem to work properly all the time (i.e. the 50-9 second half, tied at halftime). I understand how randomness works and is supposed to work, and I know that NO game runs without randomness or an RNG of some sort.
The basis of my entire argument more or less is that I can't/don't trust WIS and that their game(s) work correctly all the time, given my past experiences with games/admins and responses. If I'm an ******* because of it, fine, I'm sorry, but when something presumably goes wrong, I will always err towards my anti-WIS stance and wonder what the hell's going on with the randomness/engine, and that's my biggest flaw in a nutshell. I don't and probably will never give WIS the benefit of the doubt, especially when the nonsense continues on the site...i.e. predicting another Cleveland-Portland final...but I guess God bless you guys for playing and accepting the game largely as is. I can never prove my side of the argument, its just all speculation on my part, but that's the reasoning. Some of the hows and whys of this game are a bit difficult to figure out because the game is overly/unnecessarily complex.
I'd just be rambling if I went on, so we'll leave it at that. Hopefully you all understand my stance and my reason(s) for it.