RNG Abuse

[Darros]

Well, it's more of the idea of "acceptable RNG manipulation" than simply RNG manipulation. RNG manipulation is basically anything. And "acceptable RNG manipulation" is hard to define, seeing on how everyone has different opinions of what is acceptable and what is not in terms of RNG manipulation.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Folgore Blue

[Hawk King]

If its mathematically plausible, RNG manipulation should not be a problem. Its the 1% crits, dodging several 70-80% hits, and consistently landing 30% hits that are the problems.

The only time manipulating LV ups should be acceptable, is to correct RN screwage. Manipulating LV ups for crazy blessings should always be frowned upon.

[MacLovin]

Bigger question.

Why do people complain about this, if someone wants to spend time RNGing for some shit, it shouldn't matter much.

Unless it's something shit ass crazy, like the thing about fe10 1-P.

Also, the 2 turn for fe8 Prologue is accepted, and so is the 5 turn for fe8 ch1.

And some strats for FE chapters rely on having either.

1-RNG abuse

2-Ridiculous team

3-Ridiculous luck

And, I can understand Colonel M and Paperblade and Cam and the people who've been in over 10 drafts and their points.

But putting Spanish INquisitions rule would be kind of...redundent.

Also, I suck at LTC-yet my units always seem to get blessed.......>_>

GOGO Lott with +5 to all averages!

Also, posting logs is a PITA sometimes.

Like for fe10...

Edited April 21, 2012 by Folgore Green

[Hawk King]

@ FG

What the hell makes you think im new to drafts? Im aware that people commonly ABUSE savestates to manipulate RNs in drafts. That is the freaking point of this thread!

And there is nothing special about a 5 turn clear of Ch 1 in fe8.

[CT075]

a) you're listed as participating in two drafts. that's not a very big number. come back when you have like 5, or like 3 completed even

b) reloading a state changes the rn string in no way shape or form

[BBM]

Reloading a state allows you to go back and alter the RN string without redoing the whole chapter though.

[Hawk King]

Banzai hosted a fe11 H5 draft that I participated in (and finished) but it wasnt logged because it was experimental.

Your "# of drafts participated in" criteria is really weak Cam, and its starting to get annoying.

I know the RN sequence doesnt change from reloading a state. That where "burning RNs" comes into play. If you dont think that save states make RNG abuse stupidly easy, youre crazy.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Hawk King

[CT075]

explain to me how observations without experience holds equal weight to observations with it. please.

i am dying to hear this.

so does it constitute abuse if i were to save my state in some way or other (be it with an actual state, an in-game save for games that support it, or copying my resume file), make attack A-B-C but then realize that C-A-B would have been better and thus reload it? you're being too hung up on the idea that manipulating the rng is inherently dishonest, which in many cases it isn't.

and nobody has actually given me a reason that we care that someone wins a competition that has nothing riding on it by turning the game off and back on again in some shape or form

[Sunwoo]

Following up on drafts =/= actually participating in them. There are some things that you can really only understand after actually playing in a draft.

[Hawk King]

Have you read anything i've said in this topic, or do you just search my name to see how drafts I've participated in?

Unless the example you gave involves landing a 1% crit or landing 2 20% hits then NO, its not abuse. Burning RNs before an action that results in a LV up is possible. Therefore through the power of savestates you can ABUSE the RNG to get +5 for every LV up.

As far as experience in using savestates goes, I have none because I dont use them. I play legally, on cartridges. Just because I dont use them though, it doesnt mean I dont know how they work.

As long as youre not abusing the RNG I see nothing wrong with using a save state.

[Sunwoo]

Have you read anything i've said in this topic, or do you just search my name to see how drafts I've participated in?

If that was directed at me, then my statement was not directed at you. It was just a general statement that happened to be posted after yours.

[Refa]

I propose that instead of allowing (but frowning upon) widespread RNG abuse, we limit it somewhere between 5-10%.What this means is if something has a chance of 5-10% (or greater) of happening, and you can prove it, RNG abuse is ok. If you don't want to do the calculations to prove the %s, you don't get to abuse.

I vote for said limit being held at 10%.

I will restart my playthrough of the FE 8 Promo Draft using this guideline (I don't think it affects any of my other playthroughs).

imagine i am rng abuser.

do you honestly think i would waste my time with this...waste of time?

Also you do know that there will be turns with unlikely things happening. It's called "unlikely" for a reason, not impossible. How stupid is this to ban such occurences? Say one of my units gets critblicked by an 8% hit chance at 5% critical. OH SHIT BETTER RESET IM RNG ABUSING. Just because something has a .0005% chance happening doesn't mean we should be like "Slap a penalty on the dude's cheating ass", because it's still something that can happen in the game (1 in 2000 chance).

way to make drafts not fun.

And also it's unfair for those who play on the real game instead of on an emulator since RNG abuse can be so much more time consuming. "Allowing" a certain level of RNG abuse is just a terrible idea.

Indeed, drafts shouldn't discourage legally buying the damn games. That's just stupid.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Refa

[CT075]

it's a lot more complicated than you make it sound

for example you have to reload your state every time something unfavorable happens - if even one RN is wrong, you throw it out and start over

this makes it fairly time consuming to, say, land a 30% crit at 85% hit then proc 4 different 50% growths on the resulting levelup. you make it sound like one can get perfect levelups every time by just loading a state and trying again; this is not true. excepting the usage of scripts (which I personally dislike, since that just turns things from fun to hardcore), it takes a long time to get a favorable outcome when you're relying on several things proc'ing

and i'm still waiting on the answer to my other question

[Hawk King]

Cam, I dont understand your other question because I do have experience in drafts. What exactly would change if I were in 1 or 100? What is it that i dont know about FE drafts?

And why do you need to assume a critical hit resulting in a LV up? Why do you always use extreme examples? What about having 100% accuracy to kill a boss with sigle digit HP left and LV up? It would be very easy to get 4 or more stat ups per LV.

[CT075]

that is not the question i'm referring to - nobody has really explained to me what is so sacred about this game that warrants making such a huge fuss over rng-abuse; i have nothing riding on these drafts, it means nothing to me if i have to buttfuck the rng to beat the score above me, nor do i really care if the guy who kicks my ass did it by resetting repeatedly

and your accusation of me using extreme examples can be flipped, fairly easily. why must you use the most ideal scenario as an example? how often do you get 100% hit on a boss, anyway? since when does anyone bother spending time getting the boss to that little health, etc.

either way

let me humor you, since you clearly have no idea how the RNG works

let me pull a random RN string out of my ass

why don't we say that the unit has 50% in all growths for the sake of discussion

the 18 and the 25 are burned for hit and crit respectively - the game doesn't give a flying fuck if you have 100% hit, it burns the damn thing anyway (this is an indisputable fact - i will go fucking find the assembly opcode with my debugger if i have to)

let's take each group of RN's six by six

78, 73, 45, 70, 68, 25 -> nope, there are three that wouldn't proc. throw it out

74, 45, 70, 68, 12, 01 -> still three

..., 74 -> nope

i'm not going to go through the rest but i don't want to type it out. feel free to check me if you like - the first 6-RN set that actually gives you +4 on a levelup is two more past that. that's five reloads right there. with an actually realistic growth spread, it would be even less likely

i will fucking write a python simulation to get you the average number of reloads in that ideal situation of yours if you insist on spewing nonsense

edit:

you seem to not realize that shit happens. is it impossible to get a mag-blessed unit? certainly not, and probability can go suck it. there are things you can't see from just watching the stats/logs/etc.

and either way- who the fuck cares? that is what you don't seem to get. you're hooked on this "rigging levelups" idea, to which I say "fuck off" because for the most part the best drafters actually don't - even with these "cheaters" that are supposedly crawling out of the woodwork, Horace is still at the top. Integ is still at the top, Bal, etc. you'd be surprised how little difference +2 in SKL can make

Edited April 21, 2012 by Camtech

[Refa]

that is not the question i'm referring to - nobody has really explained to me what is so sacred about this game that warrants making such a huge fuss over rng-abuse;

a sense of entitlement, i dunno, either or too much time on our hands. Or maybe both.

[Bluedoom]

@Cam: RNG manipulation to the extreme is quite annoying in drafts. Seeing the other player reset the fuck just to get certain procs and other stuff like that IS annoying in drafts and has an effect.

Of course, its certainly nothing to go whining over but it takes out the fun in drafts. I mean what's the point in playing a draft and knowing that the other player will abuse the fuck of the RNG? I might as well do a normal playthrough and go at my own pace without participating in a draft. I can use whatever units I like, and I can set my own rules too.

[CT075]

then why don't you

truthfully, i don't even have the energy to bother explaining myself anymore. what do i care if i lose? really? my sense of accomplishment is unblemished if someone beats me (whether they assfuck the rng or not); look at things objectively instead of relative to the constraints of that particular draft - is there nothing to be said about scoring your first run in a baseball game that your team ultimately loses anyway? if someone really assfucks the rng enough to completely upset things (and thus far, none of them have - aside from PKL's arguable one in FE8 and i trust him, all of the top placers did so legitimately; i run the goddamn records lest you forget), then you get to sit back and wonder how much free time he has on his hands to make sure that 1% crit procs all seven times

i play a draft for like two reasons- a) as friendly competition with horace/shin and b) to use a team that i would otherwise never think of using. no other reason. if those things don't appeal to you, don't play.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Camtech

[Hawk King]

Drafts are competitions. RNG abuse is seen by some as cheating. I dont care about records but competing against people with "unfair" advantages isnt fun, and it defeats the purpose of doing drafts. I personally dont have a problem with it but im pretty sure some people do. I was just simply trying to explain how having save states gives an advantage over players who play on cartridges.

You do know that causing a movement line to "redraw" itself diagonally to your character can tell you if a RN is above or below 50 right? All you need to do is find a sequence of RNs below 50, reset 1 time, and then get back to that sequence.

Im specifically refering to FE6-8 here btw...

[Sunwoo]

When I play drafts, I don't RNG abuse (unless it's like that Jaffar example I posted earlier in this thread). RNG abusing is for times when I play through the game on my own, on runs that I don't document on SF or anywhere else. Personally, I see drafts as a challenge: accomplish your objective, whether it is LTC or maximum EXP, with the team that you get, going through what the game throws at you. Nothing ridiculous.

[CT075]

Drafts are competitions. RNG abuse is seen by some as cheating. I dont care about records but competing against people with "unfair" advantages isnt fun, and it defeats the purpose of doing drafts. I personally dont have a problem with it but im pretty sure some people do. I was just simply trying to explain how having save states gives an advantage over players who play on cartridges.

You do know that causing a movement line to "redraw" itself diagonally to your character can tell you if a RN is above or below 50 right? All you need to do is find a sequence of RNs below 50, reset 1 time, and then get back to that sequence.

Im specifically refering to FE6-8 here btw...

maybe this is an indication that a change of approach is necessary

i don't care about the other people in a draft. i really don't. if i get last, i get last and i wear the damn ranking with pride. and your explanation is ass-backwards. the advantage of having savestates is that you can jump back to a midway point of your strategy and do things differently without risking a fuckup earlier in the strategy.

@ bold: don't talk to me about burning RN's you fucker i dissected half of the fucking game engine as a hacking project; and either way as i just showed you it can take a while to reach a desirable sequence. do you know how to redraw the arrow so only one RN is burned? since you play on a cartridge, i didn't think so. if you're burning rn's as you say, you're either burning singles (which takes forever since you have neither a script showing you the numbers, only a general guess of <50 and >50) or you're burning like 4 and risking skipping the sequence

not to mention that you're (once again) attacking the fact that my example is overly simplified. what if the growth is 30%? Okay, you find an RN under 50; now you have a 60% chance instead of 30%- yipee!

[Sunwoo]

I play on a cartridge, against people who almost always play using emulators and savestates. Take the FR draft for example. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one playing on an actual cartridge (except possibly Blue) since Horace, Cam, Green, and Doku have all posted screenshots. And I personally don't care that they do. Horace and Doku are awesome regardless of what they play on. And I trust Cam and Green as well. In other words, I don't care of my opponents play using emulators or what. I don't even care if lose. Drafts are fun, and they let me practice new styles of playing.

So what exactly are we complaining about anyway?

[Hawk King]

Cam, please dont get an attitude with me just because I dont know your life achievements.

And the answer is YES. I do know how to burn just 1#. I do it on a cartridge and it would be a hell of a lot easier with a save state because the there would be trial and error to fall back on.

Look kiddo, im done trying to explain this to you. If you really refuse to acknowledge the significant advantages playing on an emulator gives over playing on a cart this wont go anywhere. If turning a 30% growth into a 60% growth isnt beneficial to you then I really have nothing left to say.

[Refa]

i play a draft for like two reasons- a) as friendly competition with horace/shin and b) to use a team that i would otherwise never think of using. no other reason. if those things don't appeal to you, don't play.

with shin around, it's never just a friendly competition.

he'd kill fat shota sigurd in the blink of an eye, the fiend!

Edited April 21, 2012 by Refa

[Sunwoo]

If you really refuse to acknowledge the significant advantages playing on an emulator gives over playing on a cart this wont go anywhere. If turning a 30% growth into a 60% growth isnt beneficial to you then I really have nothing left to say.

As a person who plays on a cart, against a lot of competitors who do use an emulator, let me just say this: I don't feel like they have a particular advantage over me just because they play on an effing emulator while I'm stuck on a cartridge. Even with an emulator, not everyone's going to have the patience to do such a thing. Maybe a person who plays on a cart is crazy and bored enough to RNG abuse even though it's impractical. Skill is more important than RNG abusing.