> ..at least once a week, a developer would come to my office, and say "the random number generator is broken, we need to look at it."--It's because they hit a streak. [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhC0NaB6ock&t=2343s
He shares more details about game design choices in the video.
- X-Com 2 lies in favor of the playing when displaying a chance of hitting of 85% [ https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/jake-solomon-explains-t... ]
- Baldur's Gate 3 "Karmic Dice" will prevent streaks of very high or lows rolls
- Tetris games doesn't use Math.random for piece distribution. Most modern Tetris (like Tetris Effect) uses Fischer-Yates with 7 pieces (in the community we call 7-bag) or 14 pieces (it avoids repetition "at the seam" of a bag). The Tetris game I like the most (Tetris the Grand Master) uses a history system (the chance of receiving a recently distributed piece is heavily reduced; it's less predictable than 7-bag). IIRC even classic NES Tetris has a repetition avoidance system.
This had consequences on competitive play; they wouldn't even tell you how exactly the algorithm worked, so the only way to build a deck was lots and lots of simulations.
Cheaters, like in any game, tend to look for methods that maximize the combination of impact and plausible deniability. Marked sleeves, sleight of hand (pun very much intended) etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20872110 - Sep 2019 (41 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37107346 - Aug 2023 (16 comments)
Then you are not lying to the users, and your tooltips/docs etc. are correct as well.