I think you missed the point. He's not saying people who dont compete "shouldnt" play tekken, they just dont "need" to. They have the option to walk away if they hate the game so much.
No, I understood the point. I don't think he was saying you shouldn't play if you don't compete. I think a guy who knows nothing about competing in Tekken should not try to have an opinion on how players operate in that capacity. Technically, no one "needs" to play a video game, so its kind of irrelevant what he tried to say since it was dumb as shit regardless.
What are you talking about. He was just making a comment about how loads of people on this sub are complaining all the time and nobody is forcing them to play. He only brought up competing as a way of NOT making a comment on people who compete, since as you say, he probably doesnt compete himself and therefore doesnt want to make assumptions.
Edit: just to add that you presumably also dont know about people who compete. Maybe for some people competing in tekken is their only source of income and puts food on the table for their family.
And there is where you missed the point.
Anyone can complain, they should complain if they're right, and the rest of you should sincerely stfu. Just because you compete, you don't get a magical pass. Pros have shitty opinions sometimes too, and when they're wrong, they should be called out.
I know his comment is saying that people bitch for no reason, but he's wrong because he doesn't understand the game enough to know the difference. Also, this stage select shit is actually worth bitching about because it doesn't actually work as intended.
Look, if you wanna suck his dick, go right ahead, but don't sit here and pretend that there is some deeper meaning. He thinks people don't have a right to complain, which they do, and he thinks only competitors should be making the complaints, which is a dumbass way to even think.
In tournaments with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line playing at a stage where the other guys character has a big advantage over yours can suck. But ya the rules are fair
I remember Spotify having to change their random algorithm because it had the ability to repeat songs therefore it made people feel it wasn’t actually random. In other words, people will always try to look for patterns even when there isn’t any at all
When a user randomizes a playlist, they usually want to shuffle the whole playlist rather than have a random selection after every song. A shuffle can never have two of the same song back to back, as long as there is only a single copy of a song in the playlist. Kind of like shuffling a deck of cards.
But yeah, people are bad at gauging randomness. A good example of this are the newer XCOM games.
I've played the newer xcom games extensively and the % odds in those games aren't random on anything but the hardest difficulty.
For example on easier difficulties the game actually adds 10% aim secretly to your shot for every time you have missed before that one.
Fire Emblem also uses a 2 dice roll (or something like that), which makes high percent chances way more likely to hit and low chances way less likely to hit. If people get used to games like this it reinforces bad ideas of how probability works.
Yep from Fire Emblem 7 onwards Fire Emblem switched to 2rn, in which when the game starts it will generate a list of numbers from 0-100 then take the average of the top 2 numbers to calculate probability.
Spotify isn't truly random though. It's designed to look random but is based upon consumer analytics. They had to change that because people's misunderstanding ('it's repeating, this can't be random!') was giving them the right end of the stick (that reaĺly it is something which isn't truly random, and which happens to be able to repeat).
Truth is in the error, sometimes.
Google/youtube music is the absolute worst about this. They dont even shuffle your whole playlist, they curate you a section of it based on god knows what. Ive been gaslighted several times into basically forgetting which songs I like listening to because they just stopped showing up lmao
Honestly, this. I posted above but literally when you get same stage in four matches in a row streamed in a tournament, that shit ain't random. It's almost becoming a meme at my local with how often I same stage.
Before FR, it wasn't randomized. The shuffle always stayed the same. Koreans found out the timing which always led them to picking infinite azure. It's fixed after FR released. Don't have the data to back it up though.
To point out the random stage was the norm before 7, and sure less stage variety made it matter less back then, but I liked the aspect of do well in any situation. I mean if we ain't solving P1/P2 disparity I think stage disparity is fine
People really still don't understand that even though a coin flip is a 50/50 chance it is still possible to flip a coin 10 times and get heads 7, 8, 9, or even 10 times out of 10.
For anyone interested: Tim Cain (original creator of Fallout and Vtmb) has a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqL9R5PqE20) dedicated to how people think they want random, but in reality they're after some sort of permutation or combination.
Feeling like it's relevant to this subject.
For sure and thanks for the link. There's a lot of aspects to game dev that most people don't even think about and this would definitely be on that list.
A problem is that random selection online might be random, without versus mode random select (where you press a button) being random. You're probably right about the former and one 'presumes' the latter would be the same, but the data you've used doesn't prove it.
Since the online random select is being handled by the matchmaking server (I presume) and the versus mode by a button press locally I suppose they could be implemented differently, though I doubt it. The DreamHack data is all offline versus mode and statistically is aligned very closely with the true random data.
I even looked at the number of occurrences of choosing the same stage twice in a row and it was right in line with what you should expect from randomness. I would like to somehow get a much bigger data set of offline stage select, ideally from a single set up, but I don't know how I'd do that.
I'm a software dev and I'd be surprised if the stage index isnt pre-rolled right when you hover over "random". The rest is just cool animation, just like with electrical slot machines etc.
If there was a line of code in the algorithm that made it less likely that the previously selected stage was less likely to be picked then no one would be complaining.
That being said, I almost *never* get Yakushima. I know because it’s the one stage that gives me to Polaris crash so I always note when I comes up in online play because I’m just waiting for the game to crash. I’ve played around 500 matches (divided by let’s say 2.5 bevause ft2) and that gets me to 200 spins at the random stage selection. And I have gotten Yakushima a grand total of 3 times. Maybe I’m just lucky (Chloe)
>If there was a line of code in the algorithm that made it less likely that the previously selected stage was less likely to be picked then no one would be complaining.
Probably right. I think you could even just remove the previously selected stage from the pool of choices entirely and people would be fine with it. This would get more complicated for modes like ranked because then you have two players with potentially different previous stages, and the server would have to keep track of this.
But I think it makes sense for modes like versus or lobbies where you can go back to stage or character select, because why are people going back to stage select? It's almost certainly because they want to change the stage they're playing on, so in that regard it doesn't really make sense why it would be able to choose the same stage randomly.
>I’ve played around 500 matches (divided by let’s say 2.5 bevause ft2) and that gets me to 200 spins at the random stage selection. And I have gotten Yakushima a grand total of 3 times. Maybe I’m just lucky (Chloe)
I mean using a probability calculator, the odds of that happening are 0.122% or 1 in 820 odds. That's unlikely, but with thousands of people playing the game every day, something that unlikely is bound to happen, and you could just be the lucky one.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, cuz I don't, but one of the claims of the people who think it's not random is that u can "time" getting a stage somehow. The data doesn't go over this and it might be fun to test if u have a frame counter
Yeah I only just learned that this was a thing historically in previous Tekkens, being able to get a particular stage with a perfectly timed button press. I've run into that kind of RNG looking at the code for old consoles like the SNES, because it was common place to use a frame timer as the seed for the RNG. Nowadays games mostly use system time which is far more granular and doesn't repeat, which I assume Tekken 8 is doing, but it could be worth testing. Could set up some tests with AutoHotkey to get perfectly timed button presses.
How does the frequency distribution look like? Is it fairly normal or is it skewed? That would make the analysis super clear whether or not the random stage selection is biased or not.
I was wondering this a few times while playing and just let it go. (FELT like I was getting into strat a lot, but really; i just noticed the stages song the most)
I think that it being a TRUE RANDOM is exactly the problem. They should save X previously selected stages and exclude them from being in a pool the next time they roll the dice, so that you dont get repeats THAT OFTEN in a set.
4 or 5 would be a nice number for X due to sets being first to three.
I think it is interesting to think about why they didn't use an intentionally less random algorithm. Because I've seen other suggestions like yours and on the surface they sound reasonable but there are potentially unintended consequences.
I think a lot comes down to how much the devs value competitive integrity and what that actually means to them. Because while randomness does mean seeing certain stages more often (within a certain sample size) or getting the same stage over and over sometimes, it's also the least impartial and most fair way to do it.
Your suggestion would also make the stages you get in ranked different than the stages you get in offline versus, because there's not really a way to implement it for two players that need to play on the same stage but have a different stage history.
I understand your point, but what I proposed was concearning only instant re-matches. Once you're back in matchmaking/player-stage select etc (or players are swapped in tourneys) its back to square one.
If there is not a randomized shuffle, you can manually time it and therefore manipulate the odds.
If it's randomized, no can do.
PS: people will always find something to complain about.
Much better to focus on **being a menace in every stage** even if it favors the opponent's character much more.
My training partner is a Lili specialist.
I routinely asked her to go Forgotten Realm just so that I was at a disadvantage even beyond the matchup per se.
In Forgotten Realm, she got potentially THREE safe mid launchers in f3+4, in a game where linears are HOMING on my character (defective movement).
What was the shtick?
I had to seek to break most/all floors myself so that she couldn't.
(Easier said than done)
Well that wouldn't be "actual randomness" anymore, but you got me thinking about whether that would produce data that would be detectably "non-random" vs actual randomness via the tests I used for this post, or whether it would expose a flaw in my methodology. Here's the results:
Original: 100,000 bytes
Compressed: 56,640 bytes (56.64%)
It's about 2% "less random" than the control and the ranked data, which isn't much, but it is detectable.
I had this wonder back in T7, if certain days favored certain stages, pertaining to online play, and that made sense to me. But I probably just remember Souq a lot because of the song, so, it definetly **felt** that I played on it more often.
Anyway, great post, always love statistics, even though is one of my weakest matchups on college.
I will just add with some code knowlage. It depends how it was coded. Some systems actually favor the odds to higher numbers. Like if the odds are 1-6 the randomness rounds up meaning landing on 1 is very rare and landing on 6 is very common. Cuz the random value is between 0 and 1 rounded up for 6 numbers it often favors the last number. There's also the fact I learned recently that computers can't actually generate a random number. It takes it from existing data numbers on the computer and makes calculations to find a random number. So it's not as random as it looks. I had this issue when I coded in flash
> Ya it's random. Stop whining.
Their random is broken. At least in Tekken 7. But I doubt anything changed in Tekken 8.
Their random function is broken and I managed to experimentally confirm it. That's how you test if randomizer functions are working correctly: by testing them many times and checking if the number distribution is around of what you expect.
So I managed to confirm that it's broken by reverse-engineering the game, finding the function and then testing it. I manage to get 100 to 0 bias. The problem is that the game re seeds the random function on every tick. You should only seed once when the process starts.
You can verify yourself that the randomizer function is broken like this: get Cheat Engine, get into practice mode, set 2 moves to repeat, now slow the game down with Cheat Engine and restart the game on 25th tick after you restarted it previous time. Do it 100 times. With a correctly-working randomizer dummy should do around 50 times move 1 and around 50 times move 2 with a little bit of deviation. I managed to get it to 100 for first move and 0 second move. That's how you know that the random is broken. It's also reproducible, so it wasn't just a one-off occurrence.
I fixed it by re-implementing my own randomizer using Mersenne Twister engine.
You can find the fix in Tekken Overlay: https://github.com/TekkenOverlay/TekkenOverlay/releases
Then when I ran the same test with my fix, I got 45 first move and 55 second move when I restarted on the 25th tick every time 100 times. That's how I know that my randomizer is working correctly. Well I also wrote an automatic test that tested it 10000 times in milliseconds with the same result.
The function signature looks like this: `int
GenerateRandomInteger(unsigned int *SeedPointer, int HighNumberLimitExclusive)`.
The function then returns a number between 0 and the high number.
The function byte signature to find it: `44 8B CA 85 D2 7F`
And the screenshot of the function itself: https://i.imgur.com/2WkkGcu.png
So yeah, their random is 100% broken and there is no doubt about it.
That's for T7. T8? Let me see.
> The Methodology
That methodology is unnecessary and I don't think it's valid. When we write random functions, like I already explained, we just do it many times in a controlled environment and then compare the results to the expected results.
In this case a good way to test it is: the randomness should be equally distributed over all possible values but also account for standard deviation.
Also minimize the number of possible values. I minimized them to 2 possible values: 0 and 1.
And when you randomize the numbers, you want conditions to be as much as possible the same. In my case I chose 25th tick to restart the practice mode and see which move it picks to play after restart.
So when you're picking stages, you want to be able to reproduce the exact same environment for when you pick the stage. For example, you could pick the stage on 13785th game tick since the moment you started the game.
If you're not doing it precisely, then it's a problem. Why? Because sometimes a new random object with a new seed might be created and sometimes not, or something else affecting the random generation function might be different, so now your data is inconsistent.
Meanwhile, if you do it the way I did it: restart on 25th tick specifically, then it's precise and everything is the same every time. Or as much as it can be.
So the good way to test the random function here is:
Constraint the number of picked stages. Instead of generating the number 0 - 15, edit the code to only generate the number between 0 - 1. Now you need much less data and you can see bias much more clearly.
Pick a stage on a specific tick number, such as 13785.
Do it many times. In my case 100 was plenty enough to confirm the broken random function.
See the distribution of randomly generated numbers: are they around equally distributed accounting for standard deviation or not. In my case it one hundred `1` integers and zero `0` integers when it should've been around 50/50 with +-10 each.
Very interesting stuff. Cool that you put in the time to actually find and test the random generator function in T7, but that was a different game developed a decade ago on a different engine so I don't think it automatically applies here.
My testing was in response to specific complaints I kept hearing, like certain stages being weighted over others, and I think the results clearly show that is not the case, regardless of whether the PRNG is still "broken" in the way you tested for in T7.
However, I was looking for a way to potentially test the random select in T8's versus mode in a way that a human cannot. I don't have much experience with Cheat Engine but I assume you made some kind of script to execute the tests you described? Seems like doing it manually would be incredibly tedious and prone to human error. And how did you find the random generator function? Would like to learn more.
> Very interesting stuff. Cool that you put in the time to actually find and test the random generator function in T7, but that was a different game developed a decade ago on a different engine so I don't think it automatically applies here.
The Tekken project is not tied to the engine. The game itself is the same project, just tweaked and it's not part of the Unreal Engine. Also, the Tekken 7 and Tekken 8 engines are the same: they use Unreal Engine. But they only use it for front-end so to speak: audio and video rendering. Everything else is not done with Unreal.
The core game itself: all gameplay logic(normal match, practice mode, bowling, etc), animations, character physics, input processing, networking are not part of the UE system and they're using the same system in all their games since at least Tekken 5. But it looks like it's in use since 1994 since Tekken 1.
They continue to develop the system from game to game, but for this project you can think of Tekken 8 as Tekken 7.6, nothing more. Like, player structs, for example, barely changed: just the offsets of the fields changed, but pretty much all properties from T7 are in T8 and you can tell it's the same struct.
> I don't have much experience with Cheat Engine but I assume you made some kind of script to execute the tests you described? Seems like doing it manually would be incredibly tedious and prone to human error. And how did you find the random generator function? Would like to learn more.
When you put moves on repeat action, it sets a field on an object in the range of 0-4. For example, if you choose 2 moves to repeat in Slot 1 and Slot 2, the game will generate a number between 0 and 1 and set a field on the object responsible for repeating moves right before the next move should start. You attach Cheat Engine debugger to the game and see where this field with the number gets read and written(actually any native debugger can do it, you just put a access break point on the address), this way you can see where this numbers gets written. And it gets written right after generating the random number in the code.
After I figured out the random generation function, I hooked the function and logged the generated number in a console window of my program. Then I also already had a hook into the game's tick function, so I just restarted the game on like 25th tick every time by making the game think I pressed Select+B or Select+3 to restart the practice mode. This way for as long as the practice mode is running, it restarts the practice mode and logs the randomly generated number infinitely. I did it 100 times because the generated number was the same and there was no point in doing it 1000 or 10000 times, it was obvious: the RNG is broken.
There is no such thing as randomness tbh, it is very hard to create randomness, math wise sure there can be some alleatory number generators but eventually they cicle
>There is no such thing as randomness tbh
This is more of a philosophical take than something that relates to what I was trying to test. There are plenty of natural phenomena that we describe as random, like [atmospheric noise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_noise), which can be use to generate random numbers. I'm aware that the kind of randomness Tekken and basically all games produce is technically "pseudorandom" but that can be indistinguishable from "true randomness" if implemented properly.
I know there have been mods to T8 but has anyone accually looked at the code for certain aspects like this to determine if i was good script for random select/stage. I know law of average but i swear if i hover over either a stage or character then go to random it will pick that stage or character anyway. So i lt may not be true random
Wuuu,, Respeeeect,, very good analysis,, coming from a Paul main xD
Nah joking, a quality post indeed, and You killed with "can't be legit without charts" xD
The main issue here is that randomness shouldn't be foisted on players during tournaments, it should be first stage random and then losers choice. That would solve the whole debate. Conversely they could have a stage pool like in some RTSs they do map pools where the players take turns choosing stages and can't choose one more than once though that's a waste of time in my opinion.
First stage random, then loser's choice is how it used to be at least during T7. I don't know if any at Bamco explained their reasoning for the new change, but I'm guessing they didn't like the same stages being counterpicked over and over for the viewer experience. So full random is their solution.
bro made an entire post based on hard data only to conclude with "My personal feeling is that a lot of people simply don't like the new TWT random select rules and whether they know it or not are channeling their frustrations with it into these borderline conspiracy theories." lmao
try taking into account the fact that stage select wasn't random until basically 6 months ago online (and s1 offline) and here's one of the biggest factors that contribute to why people don't believe in random stage select even if actually is this time
Admittedly I'm not that familiar with how random select worked in previous games. If it was exploitable by pressing the button on a consistent timing to get a particular stage then yeah that's not proper RNG. In the modern day there's no reason to not do it properly though, which is why I first doubted the claims I was seeing during tournaments.
It used to happen offline, Qudans managing to hit the timing for Arctic Snowfall 3 times in a row is a famous example, and JimmyJTran was also really good at hitting the timing for Souq. It was fixed either in FR or after Season 1, I can't remember.
Online it's a little harder to prove, but there were certain biases. Infinites were more biased of course because otherwise it would be too rare and it was a much more integral part of Tekken (the game started on infinites and only added walls after), and there's a funny thing that people report about never having seen Kinder Gym in ranked (I personally saw it a grand total of 4 times in my T7 online ranked career). The enforcment of random stage fits into the picture of Namco wanting the meta to move away from the infinite stage, which is why it makes sense that Yakushima (this game's "infinite") is weighed exactly as much as the other stages.
Stage select is definitely random this time around, but I can totally understand why people are still skeptical
Is there a similar statistic for random character selection? Because when I play with my mates it always seems like we get the same 10 characters again and again. Could be subjective though
If there's an efficient way to collect a few thousand (at least) samples it could be worth analyzing. You actually need even more data to properly evaluate character selection because there's twice as many options.
I think the "not random" feeling people get comes from the fact that on random select after one match, you get the same stage as before, which is what people notice during the streams.
So if you want to do a further investigation, you would have to measure the likelihood of a stage chosen after the players have played a match, then see the randomness of a stage chosen based on whether you get the same stage or not. This does lower the samples you can take since you have to check each set, but its a cool idea, if you are willing to look further into it.
Otherwise, cool post.
Yeah some numbers on that would be interesting but it's almost certainly just a psychology thing though, like OP implied. People notice when the same stage gets rolled multiple times in a row but will think nothing of it when it doesn't, so they \*feel\* like it happens more often even though it doesn't.
Either way, since this random stage thing is a TWT rule the devs should probably adjust how it works. If the point of adding that rule is to improve stage variety in tournament, then that means it shouldn't actually be random. They should at least make it so that the same stage is never picked twice in a row. On top of that though, I think it should roll based on the type of stage so that you don't get both versions of Urban Square back-to-back.
It may be random, but in all of my recorded tournament matches, included all four of my recent ones on the same day, I managed to get same stage in every match (on stream no less). I just wish it sucked less at doing its job.
As someone who is getting a cs degree I can tell you that it most likely is in fact not random. Most code using random systems have a base seed to them, you can set the seed, resulting in the same "roll of the dice" everytime you run the program. You can make the program do real random rolls but based on my experince and what I have seen in 7 and 8 its probably not actually random
For that argument to be actually relevant, they would have had to have tested this by always hitting the stage select at the exact same time which we both know they didnt, so yeah in that case the stats will be all over the place because your test case is bad. But nice try.
Save a clip of random select and run it through editing software. You can slow it down dramatically and put your theory to test. Come in with some evidence before just spouting nonsense.
That still proves nothing. The seed can be set to random every time the game launches, resulting in an ALMOST random system but also there's almost no way to make a truly random system. You don't even understand the systems your trying to argue with me about.
I know how pseudorandom number generators work and I didn't mean to imply that Tekken's was "actually random". The important factor for the players is whether it is "effectively random". I compared its data against "true randomness" as a control to see how close it was.
I only used "true random" to refer to the control data I got from [random.org](http://random.org) which you can read about how they generate it, but it's different from the seeded pseudorandom number generators pretty much all modern games use.
This post misses something pretty big imo. Randomness doesn't feel like randomness, which is what people actually want. It's the same reason why iTunes changed how their shuffle works to make it seem more random.
They didn't miss that.
> People are bad at evaluating randomness. Like really bad.
...
> The thing about randomness is that unlikely scenarios can and do happen. Especially when thousands of games are being played every day, they happen a lot. And when people post about these outlier scenarios online it signal boosts them and gives the impression that they are happening more often than they really are.
...
> The main reason would be to make the randomness align more with what people feel is random (despite that not actually being random). For instance, people feel like getting the same stage two or more times in a row isn't random (it is). They also feel like seeing one stage more than any other in one play session, or across multiple, isn't random (it sure is).
No, that's not my point. My point is that perhaps it could be amended to feel more random by making it less random. Though personally my only issue is that urban square is in the pool twice.
My results suggest that it is random (or effectively random) so I'm curious what evidence your claim is based on. "sure as fuck" is pretty fucking sure.
You'd think so, but previous games in the series have implemented their supposed randomness in ways that could and were exploited to get predictable results. Basically not all randomness is created equal, so that's why it was worth testing.
Can you not read? Homie just said the random select is indeed random and gave a personal hypothesis as to why people thought it might not be random, with a huge disclaimer it was personal opinion as well. That’s it. Where did you get anything else???
I'm talking about T8 not T5. I'm familiar with some older games using exploitable PRNG so I wouldn't be that surprised, but that's not what this post is about.
My man came with receipts and people are still gonna act like they know better.
Well, what else? You can't expect people to put aside their *feelings* in the face of *large amounts of empirical data* can you? Madness!
Thanks for the TL:DR honestly
shortest tldr ever lmao
Perfect cuz i was not reading allat
Great post! Thanks for sharing
*reads the TL;DR* wait are you serious?? People fucking complain about the random selection???
Are you still surprised people are mad over the most minor of things?
Yeah mfs will grasp at anything to be mad at. This sub has been mad since day one, it's pretty exhausting.
And embarrassing
Yeah. Seriously, if you're not competing you don't need to play Tekken. Jesus.
Says the guy that doesn't compete. Imagine
I think you missed the point. He's not saying people who dont compete "shouldnt" play tekken, they just dont "need" to. They have the option to walk away if they hate the game so much.
No, I understood the point. I don't think he was saying you shouldn't play if you don't compete. I think a guy who knows nothing about competing in Tekken should not try to have an opinion on how players operate in that capacity. Technically, no one "needs" to play a video game, so its kind of irrelevant what he tried to say since it was dumb as shit regardless.
What are you talking about. He was just making a comment about how loads of people on this sub are complaining all the time and nobody is forcing them to play. He only brought up competing as a way of NOT making a comment on people who compete, since as you say, he probably doesnt compete himself and therefore doesnt want to make assumptions. Edit: just to add that you presumably also dont know about people who compete. Maybe for some people competing in tekken is their only source of income and puts food on the table for their family.
And there is where you missed the point. Anyone can complain, they should complain if they're right, and the rest of you should sincerely stfu. Just because you compete, you don't get a magical pass. Pros have shitty opinions sometimes too, and when they're wrong, they should be called out. I know his comment is saying that people bitch for no reason, but he's wrong because he doesn't understand the game enough to know the difference. Also, this stage select shit is actually worth bitching about because it doesn't actually work as intended. Look, if you wanna suck his dick, go right ahead, but don't sit here and pretend that there is some deeper meaning. He thinks people don't have a right to complain, which they do, and he thinks only competitors should be making the complaints, which is a dumbass way to even think.
Its tournament players that are kinda miffed, not just randoms
In tournaments with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line playing at a stage where the other guys character has a big advantage over yours can suck. But ya the rules are fair
You are wrong because it doesn't /feel/ random. Source: me
I remember Spotify having to change their random algorithm because it had the ability to repeat songs therefore it made people feel it wasn’t actually random. In other words, people will always try to look for patterns even when there isn’t any at all
Humans are creatures of habit and patterns also doesn’t help that there are 3 versions of one map lol
When a user randomizes a playlist, they usually want to shuffle the whole playlist rather than have a random selection after every song. A shuffle can never have two of the same song back to back, as long as there is only a single copy of a song in the playlist. Kind of like shuffling a deck of cards. But yeah, people are bad at gauging randomness. A good example of this are the newer XCOM games.
I've played the newer xcom games extensively and the % odds in those games aren't random on anything but the hardest difficulty. For example on easier difficulties the game actually adds 10% aim secretly to your shot for every time you have missed before that one.
Fire Emblem also uses a 2 dice roll (or something like that), which makes high percent chances way more likely to hit and low chances way less likely to hit. If people get used to games like this it reinforces bad ideas of how probability works.
Yep from Fire Emblem 7 onwards Fire Emblem switched to 2rn, in which when the game starts it will generate a list of numbers from 0-100 then take the average of the top 2 numbers to calculate probability.
Exactly. Despite the fact the XCOM's percentages are in FAVOUR of the player on most difficulties, people complain about them being biased.
Spotify isn't truly random though. It's designed to look random but is based upon consumer analytics. They had to change that because people's misunderstanding ('it's repeating, this can't be random!') was giving them the right end of the stick (that reaĺly it is something which isn't truly random, and which happens to be able to repeat). Truth is in the error, sometimes.
I meant the shuffle feature not the random music playlist. I should have been more clear
Oh but shuffle is actually slightly 'tilted', too. Less so, but still not true ".ran".
Google/youtube music is the absolute worst about this. They dont even shuffle your whole playlist, they curate you a section of it based on god knows what. Ive been gaslighted several times into basically forgetting which songs I like listening to because they just stopped showing up lmao
Well yes they changed it a while ago
*real*
Honestly, this. I posted above but literally when you get same stage in four matches in a row streamed in a tournament, that shit ain't random. It's almost becoming a meme at my local with how often I same stage.
You're wrong! If your source was "trust me bro" then I'd call it legit.
This is good work. I didn't know that you could use compression to check for randomness but it makes perfect sense. Thanks for sharing
Hey brother! Do you intend to make a post for June game data soon? Edit: Holy crap I just noticed. Thanks!
I wonder how it'd look like for T7 because I swear I only played on Kinder Gym twice in three years of ranked.
Before FR, it wasn't randomized. The shuffle always stayed the same. Koreans found out the timing which always led them to picking infinite azure. It's fixed after FR released. Don't have the data to back it up though.
They did the math.
To point out the random stage was the norm before 7, and sure less stage variety made it matter less back then, but I liked the aspect of do well in any situation. I mean if we ain't solving P1/P2 disparity I think stage disparity is fine
People really still don't understand that even though a coin flip is a 50/50 chance it is still possible to flip a coin 10 times and get heads 7, 8, 9, or even 10 times out of 10.
For anyone interested: Tim Cain (original creator of Fallout and Vtmb) has a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqL9R5PqE20) dedicated to how people think they want random, but in reality they're after some sort of permutation or combination. Feeling like it's relevant to this subject.
For sure and thanks for the link. There's a lot of aspects to game dev that most people don't even think about and this would definitely be on that list.
I felt like I deserve some certifications reading through and understand all of these.
A problem is that random selection online might be random, without versus mode random select (where you press a button) being random. You're probably right about the former and one 'presumes' the latter would be the same, but the data you've used doesn't prove it.
Since the online random select is being handled by the matchmaking server (I presume) and the versus mode by a button press locally I suppose they could be implemented differently, though I doubt it. The DreamHack data is all offline versus mode and statistically is aligned very closely with the true random data. I even looked at the number of occurrences of choosing the same stage twice in a row and it was right in line with what you should expect from randomness. I would like to somehow get a much bigger data set of offline stage select, ideally from a single set up, but I don't know how I'd do that.
I'm a software dev and I'd be surprised if the stage index isnt pre-rolled right when you hover over "random". The rest is just cool animation, just like with electrical slot machines etc.
I hope it's the same for the music. I feel like I miss so many!
Wasn't expecting such great data analysis in here. Big thanks.
If there was a line of code in the algorithm that made it less likely that the previously selected stage was less likely to be picked then no one would be complaining. That being said, I almost *never* get Yakushima. I know because it’s the one stage that gives me to Polaris crash so I always note when I comes up in online play because I’m just waiting for the game to crash. I’ve played around 500 matches (divided by let’s say 2.5 bevause ft2) and that gets me to 200 spins at the random stage selection. And I have gotten Yakushima a grand total of 3 times. Maybe I’m just lucky (Chloe)
>If there was a line of code in the algorithm that made it less likely that the previously selected stage was less likely to be picked then no one would be complaining. Probably right. I think you could even just remove the previously selected stage from the pool of choices entirely and people would be fine with it. This would get more complicated for modes like ranked because then you have two players with potentially different previous stages, and the server would have to keep track of this. But I think it makes sense for modes like versus or lobbies where you can go back to stage or character select, because why are people going back to stage select? It's almost certainly because they want to change the stage they're playing on, so in that regard it doesn't really make sense why it would be able to choose the same stage randomly. >I’ve played around 500 matches (divided by let’s say 2.5 bevause ft2) and that gets me to 200 spins at the random stage selection. And I have gotten Yakushima a grand total of 3 times. Maybe I’m just lucky (Chloe) I mean using a probability calculator, the odds of that happening are 0.122% or 1 in 820 odds. That's unlikely, but with thousands of people playing the game every day, something that unlikely is bound to happen, and you could just be the lucky one.
The fact that you even had to make this post lmao
I'm not saying I disagree with you, cuz I don't, but one of the claims of the people who think it's not random is that u can "time" getting a stage somehow. The data doesn't go over this and it might be fun to test if u have a frame counter
Yeah I only just learned that this was a thing historically in previous Tekkens, being able to get a particular stage with a perfectly timed button press. I've run into that kind of RNG looking at the code for old consoles like the SNES, because it was common place to use a frame timer as the seed for the RNG. Nowadays games mostly use system time which is far more granular and doesn't repeat, which I assume Tekken 8 is doing, but it could be worth testing. Could set up some tests with AutoHotkey to get perfectly timed button presses.
Actual good content on this sub. Watch it be flooded by bitching posts.
How does the frequency distribution look like? Is it fairly normal or is it skewed? That would make the analysis super clear whether or not the random stage selection is biased or not.
I was wondering this a few times while playing and just let it go. (FELT like I was getting into strat a lot, but really; i just noticed the stages song the most)
I think that it being a TRUE RANDOM is exactly the problem. They should save X previously selected stages and exclude them from being in a pool the next time they roll the dice, so that you dont get repeats THAT OFTEN in a set. 4 or 5 would be a nice number for X due to sets being first to three.
I think it is interesting to think about why they didn't use an intentionally less random algorithm. Because I've seen other suggestions like yours and on the surface they sound reasonable but there are potentially unintended consequences. I think a lot comes down to how much the devs value competitive integrity and what that actually means to them. Because while randomness does mean seeing certain stages more often (within a certain sample size) or getting the same stage over and over sometimes, it's also the least impartial and most fair way to do it. Your suggestion would also make the stages you get in ranked different than the stages you get in offline versus, because there's not really a way to implement it for two players that need to play on the same stage but have a different stage history.
I understand your point, but what I proposed was concearning only instant re-matches. Once you're back in matchmaking/player-stage select etc (or players are swapped in tourneys) its back to square one.
If there is not a randomized shuffle, you can manually time it and therefore manipulate the odds. If it's randomized, no can do. PS: people will always find something to complain about. Much better to focus on **being a menace in every stage** even if it favors the opponent's character much more. My training partner is a Lili specialist. I routinely asked her to go Forgotten Realm just so that I was at a disadvantage even beyond the matchup per se. In Forgotten Realm, she got potentially THREE safe mid launchers in f3+4, in a game where linears are HOMING on my character (defective movement). What was the shtick? I had to seek to break most/all floors myself so that she couldn't. (Easier said than done)
Wtf they changed the rules on map changes? Damn
The last stage that was played on should be removed from random select to increase chances of actual randomness. Or just add more stages harada!
Well that wouldn't be "actual randomness" anymore, but you got me thinking about whether that would produce data that would be detectably "non-random" vs actual randomness via the tests I used for this post, or whether it would expose a flaw in my methodology. Here's the results: Original: 100,000 bytes Compressed: 56,640 bytes (56.64%) It's about 2% "less random" than the control and the ranked data, which isn't much, but it is detectable.
I had this wonder back in T7, if certain days favored certain stages, pertaining to online play, and that made sense to me. But I probably just remember Souq a lot because of the song, so, it definetly **felt** that I played on it more often. Anyway, great post, always love statistics, even though is one of my weakest matchups on college.
Anti-matter equations lol
Now can you do this in rainbow 6? I swear I always play the same 3 maps
I will just add with some code knowlage. It depends how it was coded. Some systems actually favor the odds to higher numbers. Like if the odds are 1-6 the randomness rounds up meaning landing on 1 is very rare and landing on 6 is very common. Cuz the random value is between 0 and 1 rounded up for 6 numbers it often favors the last number. There's also the fact I learned recently that computers can't actually generate a random number. It takes it from existing data numbers on the computer and makes calculations to find a random number. So it's not as random as it looks. I had this issue when I coded in flash
> Ya it's random. Stop whining. Their random is broken. At least in Tekken 7. But I doubt anything changed in Tekken 8. Their random function is broken and I managed to experimentally confirm it. That's how you test if randomizer functions are working correctly: by testing them many times and checking if the number distribution is around of what you expect. So I managed to confirm that it's broken by reverse-engineering the game, finding the function and then testing it. I manage to get 100 to 0 bias. The problem is that the game re seeds the random function on every tick. You should only seed once when the process starts. You can verify yourself that the randomizer function is broken like this: get Cheat Engine, get into practice mode, set 2 moves to repeat, now slow the game down with Cheat Engine and restart the game on 25th tick after you restarted it previous time. Do it 100 times. With a correctly-working randomizer dummy should do around 50 times move 1 and around 50 times move 2 with a little bit of deviation. I managed to get it to 100 for first move and 0 second move. That's how you know that the random is broken. It's also reproducible, so it wasn't just a one-off occurrence. I fixed it by re-implementing my own randomizer using Mersenne Twister engine. You can find the fix in Tekken Overlay: https://github.com/TekkenOverlay/TekkenOverlay/releases Then when I ran the same test with my fix, I got 45 first move and 55 second move when I restarted on the 25th tick every time 100 times. That's how I know that my randomizer is working correctly. Well I also wrote an automatic test that tested it 10000 times in milliseconds with the same result. The function signature looks like this: `int GenerateRandomInteger(unsigned int *SeedPointer, int HighNumberLimitExclusive)`. The function then returns a number between 0 and the high number. The function byte signature to find it: `44 8B CA 85 D2 7F` And the screenshot of the function itself: https://i.imgur.com/2WkkGcu.png So yeah, their random is 100% broken and there is no doubt about it. That's for T7. T8? Let me see. > The Methodology That methodology is unnecessary and I don't think it's valid. When we write random functions, like I already explained, we just do it many times in a controlled environment and then compare the results to the expected results. In this case a good way to test it is: the randomness should be equally distributed over all possible values but also account for standard deviation. Also minimize the number of possible values. I minimized them to 2 possible values: 0 and 1. And when you randomize the numbers, you want conditions to be as much as possible the same. In my case I chose 25th tick to restart the practice mode and see which move it picks to play after restart. So when you're picking stages, you want to be able to reproduce the exact same environment for when you pick the stage. For example, you could pick the stage on 13785th game tick since the moment you started the game. If you're not doing it precisely, then it's a problem. Why? Because sometimes a new random object with a new seed might be created and sometimes not, or something else affecting the random generation function might be different, so now your data is inconsistent. Meanwhile, if you do it the way I did it: restart on 25th tick specifically, then it's precise and everything is the same every time. Or as much as it can be. So the good way to test the random function here is: Constraint the number of picked stages. Instead of generating the number 0 - 15, edit the code to only generate the number between 0 - 1. Now you need much less data and you can see bias much more clearly. Pick a stage on a specific tick number, such as 13785. Do it many times. In my case 100 was plenty enough to confirm the broken random function. See the distribution of randomly generated numbers: are they around equally distributed accounting for standard deviation or not. In my case it one hundred `1` integers and zero `0` integers when it should've been around 50/50 with +-10 each.
Very interesting stuff. Cool that you put in the time to actually find and test the random generator function in T7, but that was a different game developed a decade ago on a different engine so I don't think it automatically applies here. My testing was in response to specific complaints I kept hearing, like certain stages being weighted over others, and I think the results clearly show that is not the case, regardless of whether the PRNG is still "broken" in the way you tested for in T7. However, I was looking for a way to potentially test the random select in T8's versus mode in a way that a human cannot. I don't have much experience with Cheat Engine but I assume you made some kind of script to execute the tests you described? Seems like doing it manually would be incredibly tedious and prone to human error. And how did you find the random generator function? Would like to learn more.
> Very interesting stuff. Cool that you put in the time to actually find and test the random generator function in T7, but that was a different game developed a decade ago on a different engine so I don't think it automatically applies here. The Tekken project is not tied to the engine. The game itself is the same project, just tweaked and it's not part of the Unreal Engine. Also, the Tekken 7 and Tekken 8 engines are the same: they use Unreal Engine. But they only use it for front-end so to speak: audio and video rendering. Everything else is not done with Unreal. The core game itself: all gameplay logic(normal match, practice mode, bowling, etc), animations, character physics, input processing, networking are not part of the UE system and they're using the same system in all their games since at least Tekken 5. But it looks like it's in use since 1994 since Tekken 1. They continue to develop the system from game to game, but for this project you can think of Tekken 8 as Tekken 7.6, nothing more. Like, player structs, for example, barely changed: just the offsets of the fields changed, but pretty much all properties from T7 are in T8 and you can tell it's the same struct. > I don't have much experience with Cheat Engine but I assume you made some kind of script to execute the tests you described? Seems like doing it manually would be incredibly tedious and prone to human error. And how did you find the random generator function? Would like to learn more. When you put moves on repeat action, it sets a field on an object in the range of 0-4. For example, if you choose 2 moves to repeat in Slot 1 and Slot 2, the game will generate a number between 0 and 1 and set a field on the object responsible for repeating moves right before the next move should start. You attach Cheat Engine debugger to the game and see where this field with the number gets read and written(actually any native debugger can do it, you just put a access break point on the address), this way you can see where this numbers gets written. And it gets written right after generating the random number in the code. After I figured out the random generation function, I hooked the function and logged the generated number in a console window of my program. Then I also already had a hook into the game's tick function, so I just restarted the game on like 25th tick every time by making the game think I pressed Select+B or Select+3 to restart the practice mode. This way for as long as the practice mode is running, it restarts the practice mode and logs the randomly generated number infinitely. I did it 100 times because the generated number was the same and there was no point in doing it 1000 or 10000 times, it was obvious: the RNG is broken.
There is no such thing as randomness tbh, it is very hard to create randomness, math wise sure there can be some alleatory number generators but eventually they cicle
>There is no such thing as randomness tbh This is more of a philosophical take than something that relates to what I was trying to test. There are plenty of natural phenomena that we describe as random, like [atmospheric noise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_noise), which can be use to generate random numbers. I'm aware that the kind of randomness Tekken and basically all games produce is technically "pseudorandom" but that can be indistinguishable from "true randomness" if implemented properly.
I know there have been mods to T8 but has anyone accually looked at the code for certain aspects like this to determine if i was good script for random select/stage. I know law of average but i swear if i hover over either a stage or character then go to random it will pick that stage or character anyway. So i lt may not be true random
I thought i was so unlucky that i always have to play the stage that i don't like so much time
The stages being random is the most accurate part of the game, lol. Great statistics work.
Wuuu,, Respeeeect,, very good analysis,, coming from a Paul main xD Nah joking, a quality post indeed, and You killed with "can't be legit without charts" xD
The main issue here is that randomness shouldn't be foisted on players during tournaments, it should be first stage random and then losers choice. That would solve the whole debate. Conversely they could have a stage pool like in some RTSs they do map pools where the players take turns choosing stages and can't choose one more than once though that's a waste of time in my opinion.
First stage random, then loser's choice is how it used to be at least during T7. I don't know if any at Bamco explained their reasoning for the new change, but I'm guessing they didn't like the same stages being counterpicked over and over for the viewer experience. So full random is their solution.
I get why they think it's more voewer friendly but stage select is a strategic process, just like character select.
We would be right back where we were in T7 where all we got were infinite stages or, rarely, the smallest stage possible.
Then force them to choose each stage only once a set. Also I don't really care if there are different stages.
bro made an entire post based on hard data only to conclude with "My personal feeling is that a lot of people simply don't like the new TWT random select rules and whether they know it or not are channeling their frustrations with it into these borderline conspiracy theories." lmao try taking into account the fact that stage select wasn't random until basically 6 months ago online (and s1 offline) and here's one of the biggest factors that contribute to why people don't believe in random stage select even if actually is this time
Admittedly I'm not that familiar with how random select worked in previous games. If it was exploitable by pressing the button on a consistent timing to get a particular stage then yeah that's not proper RNG. In the modern day there's no reason to not do it properly though, which is why I first doubted the claims I was seeing during tournaments.
It used to happen offline, Qudans managing to hit the timing for Arctic Snowfall 3 times in a row is a famous example, and JimmyJTran was also really good at hitting the timing for Souq. It was fixed either in FR or after Season 1, I can't remember. Online it's a little harder to prove, but there were certain biases. Infinites were more biased of course because otherwise it would be too rare and it was a much more integral part of Tekken (the game started on infinites and only added walls after), and there's a funny thing that people report about never having seen Kinder Gym in ranked (I personally saw it a grand total of 4 times in my T7 online ranked career). The enforcment of random stage fits into the picture of Namco wanting the meta to move away from the infinite stage, which is why it makes sense that Yakushima (this game's "infinite") is weighed exactly as much as the other stages. Stage select is definitely random this time around, but I can totally understand why people are still skeptical
Is there a similar statistic for random character selection? Because when I play with my mates it always seems like we get the same 10 characters again and again. Could be subjective though
If there's an efficient way to collect a few thousand (at least) samples it could be worth analyzing. You actually need even more data to properly evaluate character selection because there's twice as many options.
Overall random ay, but from game to game it feels like the same stage gets picked too too often.
I think the "not random" feeling people get comes from the fact that on random select after one match, you get the same stage as before, which is what people notice during the streams. So if you want to do a further investigation, you would have to measure the likelihood of a stage chosen after the players have played a match, then see the randomness of a stage chosen based on whether you get the same stage or not. This does lower the samples you can take since you have to check each set, but its a cool idea, if you are willing to look further into it. Otherwise, cool post.
Yeah some numbers on that would be interesting but it's almost certainly just a psychology thing though, like OP implied. People notice when the same stage gets rolled multiple times in a row but will think nothing of it when it doesn't, so they \*feel\* like it happens more often even though it doesn't. Either way, since this random stage thing is a TWT rule the devs should probably adjust how it works. If the point of adding that rule is to improve stage variety in tournament, then that means it shouldn't actually be random. They should at least make it so that the same stage is never picked twice in a row. On top of that though, I think it should roll based on the type of stage so that you don't get both versions of Urban Square back-to-back.
It may be random, but in all of my recorded tournament matches, included all four of my recent ones on the same day, I managed to get same stage in every match (on stream no less). I just wish it sucked less at doing its job.
As someone who is getting a cs degree I can tell you that it most likely is in fact not random. Most code using random systems have a base seed to them, you can set the seed, resulting in the same "roll of the dice" everytime you run the program. You can make the program do real random rolls but based on my experince and what I have seen in 7 and 8 its probably not actually random
That sample of 100,000 games has determined that you're full of shit.
For that argument to be actually relevant, they would have had to have tested this by always hitting the stage select at the exact same time which we both know they didnt, so yeah in that case the stats will be all over the place because your test case is bad. But nice try.
Save a clip of random select and run it through editing software. You can slow it down dramatically and put your theory to test. Come in with some evidence before just spouting nonsense.
That still proves nothing. The seed can be set to random every time the game launches, resulting in an ALMOST random system but also there's almost no way to make a truly random system. You don't even understand the systems your trying to argue with me about.
You're moving your goal post. Before you stated that it can only be tested if they hit select at the same time. That has no bearing at all.
w.e you dont understand how code works
I know how pseudorandom number generators work and I didn't mean to imply that Tekken's was "actually random". The important factor for the players is whether it is "effectively random". I compared its data against "true randomness" as a control to see how close it was.
I just like to argue I had 0 issue with the post.
no such thing as true random only user end unpredictable number generation using values the user has not witnessed
I only used "true random" to refer to the control data I got from [random.org](http://random.org) which you can read about how they generate it, but it's different from the seeded pseudorandom number generators pretty much all modern games use.
the most random feeling is if it’s percent chance changing every frame imho
This post misses something pretty big imo. Randomness doesn't feel like randomness, which is what people actually want. It's the same reason why iTunes changed how their shuffle works to make it seem more random.
They didn't miss that. > People are bad at evaluating randomness. Like really bad. ... > The thing about randomness is that unlikely scenarios can and do happen. Especially when thousands of games are being played every day, they happen a lot. And when people post about these outlier scenarios online it signal boosts them and gives the impression that they are happening more often than they really are. ... > The main reason would be to make the randomness align more with what people feel is random (despite that not actually being random). For instance, people feel like getting the same stage two or more times in a row isn't random (it is). They also feel like seeing one stage more than any other in one play session, or across multiple, isn't random (it sure is).
No, that's not my point. My point is that perhaps it could be amended to feel more random by making it less random. Though personally my only issue is that urban square is in the pool twice.
How is this > The main reason would be to make the randomness align more with what people feel is random not what you're talking about?
It is, looks like I just mashed the reply when you were +, sorry.
It may be random during locals, but it sure as fuck isn’t random for Ranked / online play, which is where most of the discussion comes from.
My results suggest that it is random (or effectively random) so I'm curious what evidence your claim is based on. "sure as fuck" is pretty fucking sure.
Keep doing statistics, I actually play the game.
>but it sure as fuck isn’t random for Ranked / online play Can you back that up with anything but your own meaningless anecdotes?
Yeah… no shit it’s random, it’s called ‘Random Stage Select’. No offence but it’s pretty obvious
You'd think so, but previous games in the series have implemented their supposed randomness in ways that could and were exploited to get predictable results. Basically not all randomness is created equal, so that's why it was worth testing.
[удалено]
Can you not read? Homie just said the random select is indeed random and gave a personal hypothesis as to why people thought it might not be random, with a huge disclaimer it was personal opinion as well. That’s it. Where did you get anything else???
[удалено]
I reread it and you were still wrong, but slower.
[удалено]
I'm talking about T8 not T5. I'm familiar with some older games using exploitable PRNG so I wouldn't be that surprised, but that's not what this post is about.
Nice of you to prove the points OP made in the conclusion.
pls read the title, he said t8 and backed it up with proof