Token pulls predetermined

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Slarow
Slarow Posts: 204 Tile Toppler
edited April 2016 in MPQ Bugs and Technical Issues
Over the weekend, I picked up a 15 CP daily reward on my phone and purchased a classic token, which netted me a yellow miles cover. I put the game into the background and left it. A few hours later, I opened the game on my tablet, played a node in eots, and the default reward popped up again, giving me 15 CP. I have seen this before, that changes are not synced up to the server immediately, so if you swap device, it seems like a rollback. No biggie up till this point.

I used the CP to rebuy a classic token, and guess what popped up when I opened it?

Yellow miles cover.

Token pulls are not random when you pull them. They are pre determined. The exact mechanism that pre determines them is unknown, but the RNG doesn't spin on the server every time you pull, and the client already knows what exactly your next token will contain.
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  • Pongie
    Pongie Posts: 1,410 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I mentioned this on another thread that got confirmation from someone else too

    viewtopic.php?f=7&t=41119&start=20#p495836
    Pongie wrote:
    I have a theory that the token pulls are now predetermined on the server. When? I have no idea but it's probably the solution to the reroll bug. Why do I think this? Because an alliance mate of mine just recently opened 20 legendary tokens. Then those pulls were reverted back (multiple device syncing issues). He had screenshots of all his pull (they were really good) so he decided to log a call with d3 support. The reply he got was tough, they won't be reinstating any covers pulled. What more can you do in this case? Nothing, so he proceed to open them all again. Guess what? Each was exactly the same. Same order, same character and colour. Every, single, token.

    So if this is the case, there is now less benefits of hoarding tokens to open them later. Gone, are the chances of hoarding old tokens to increase the chances of pulling new release characters. The only benefit is if you want to delay having those pre determined covers. ie till you have ISO to champion them or perhaps you don't want to roster any 5* because of scaling.
    CrookedKnight wrote:
    I've also observed this. I bought a Thick as Thieves token when the event started, and pulled Colossus red. The next time I loaded the game, the cover was gone from my queue and I'd gotten the 200 HP back. Bought another one, Colossus red again. An hour later that cover was also reverted somehow. Since I'd just get another useless Colossus red, I just went on with my day. That night, after I'd gone on a CP spending binge, I figured I'd try again, to test if whatever mechanism kept repeating the same cover would be reset by pulling other tokens in between. Result: Colossus red.
  • Ludaa
    Ludaa Posts: 542
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    I have also had this happen. Pulled a classic with cp, got a red carnage, closed the game and walked away. Come back later, play an entire pve clear, and I notice I still have 20 cp. Same red carnage.
  • Killinstinct
    Killinstinct Posts: 99 Match Maker
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    Interesting.. but what about the guys who 'cheated' with LT''s (force closed the game when it wasn't a 5*). If this really was the case than that wouldn't help them right?
  • Slarow
    Slarow Posts: 204 Tile Toppler
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    Killinstinct wrote:
    Interesting.. but what about the guys who 'cheated' with LT''s (force closed the game when it wasn't a 5*). If this really was the case than that wouldn't help them right?
    It may be a recent change to combat that strategy.
  • Lee T
    Lee T Posts: 318
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    I'm surprised it didn't happen before. Many RNG system build a string of random number rather than calculating one each time it's needed. A roll back through sync problems would also roll back your position in the string of numbers, thus producing the me results.

    Since they said numerous time that server time is a most previous resource (e.g. when explaining why we can't check the whole ranking ladder and why PVP points aren't updated in real time) transmitting RNG string rather than checking each time you open a token seem like a quick way to diminish the number of server request.
  • Drift
    Drift Posts: 9
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    Can confirm this. Opened my ten pack and got five(!) Golds. Was very excited. Later switched to my iPad and (oh no) there's the unopened ten pack. I was pretty upset until I opened them and got exactly the same covers. About two weeks ago.
  • dan54321
    dan54321 Posts: 41 Just Dropped In
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    An alliance mate of mine had this happen to him, too (post-cheating fix). I thought that maybe the game was keeping track of what covers had been pulled in its local memory, and then syncing that to the server. I guess if it's going on across multiple devices, though, that makes my theory less convincing.

    If it really is pre-determined, they'll have to recalculate pre-determined rolls anytime the odds or contents of a cover pack change, won't they? Otherwise you'd spend cp on a New Legends pack and wind up getting 5* that weren't in those packs anymore, for example.
  • jackstar0
    jackstar0 Posts: 1,280 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Predetermined might not be the right way to explain this. Maybe randomly assigned and then locked when they are earned?

    Either way, doesn't seem to be much we can do about it and I cannot see how it affects anything other than people not being able to re-roll covers.
  • bbf2
    bbf2 Posts: 109 Tile Toppler
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    This is a good thing, prevents people with multiple devices from easily cheating.

    I wonder what happens if you are predetermined to get the third-most recent five star from a latest legends token, but then you wait to open it until after that five star has been removed from the pool. Will it know that? Or is there a chance that one of my old LL tokens that I'm hoarding will net me an OML?
  • Inarius
    Inarius Posts: 138 Tile Toppler
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    jackstar0 wrote:
    Predetermined might not be the right way to explain this. Maybe randomly assigned and then locked when they are earned?

    Either way, doesn't seem to be much we can do about it and I cannot see how it affects anything other than people not being able to re-roll covers.
    nah, it's predetermined alright

    A couple of days ago I accumulated 400 CP, so I decided to open 20 classic LT tokens. Now I did receive some covers here and there, nothing to really make a dif, hell I even drafted some chars I never had before.

    But, out of those 20, 5 where wolverine xforce greentile.png , 4 thing yellowtile.png and 3 nick fury yellowtile.png , chars I already had full covers of that particular cover.

    The first two xforce cover and 2 thing I brushed it off as sheer dumb luck, but what were the odds, that among ALL the legendary chars, among ALL the possible covers, I'd get the SAME exact covers, multiple times in a row, for what seem to be 3 specific chars.

    Coincidence? I think not, just like how when you go into battle with a team against 2 goons and 1 npc controlled char, you notice the board is starved of all the colors you need, so is the draft sequence.
  • babinro
    babinro Posts: 771 Critical Contributor
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    This is great news!

    Predetermined tokens means that people can't exploit the game to improve their odds. Why should a player care if the random roll was made at the time the token was added to their account vs a week later when it gets opened? It was still made randomly.

    If this impacts people saving tokens for future versions of the same event then that's unfortunate but still an acceptable drawback IMO.
  • turul
    turul Posts: 1,622 Chairperson of the Boards
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    People with very poor luck can now ask Customer Service to switch their "random seeds"!
  • getterwing
    getterwing Posts: 52
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    Slarow wrote:
    Killinstinct wrote:
    Interesting.. but what about the guys who 'cheated' with LT''s (force closed the game when it wasn't a 5*). If this really was the case than that wouldn't help them right?
    It may be a recent change to combat that strategy.


    I don't think so.

    Remember sometime last year when the app have a sync error with the server, so that people playing on multiple device would lose progress?

    At that time I open 3 or 4 normal and heroic token(there is a 3* from a normal token, so I remember the covers) on one device , and then opened them again on another device, and the covers I got are exactly the same.

    so these "Token pulls predetermined" are not implemented recently. It is at least 1 year old.
  • STOPTHIS
    STOPTHIS Posts: 781 Critical Contributor
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    Interesting, if true. While it's would be a good way to combat the rerollers, it kind of makes me frustrated when I pull nothing but 2* from heroic/event tokens. It makes me think I'm getting "locked" into **** pulls, rather than it just being the luck of the draw.
  • Dayv
    Dayv Posts: 4,449 Chairperson of the Boards
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    If true, there's an open question as to whether vault tokens work the same way. It would be a lot more complicated to manage, if so.
  • Darknes21
    Darknes21 Posts: 321 Mover and Shaker
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    It's not predetermined.....there was a cheat months back where if you open a token on one Device and if you didn't like it you would close the device and reopen the game on a different device and repick the token to get a different outcome or better reward.

    They fix the problem because people were repicking LT for 5*.

    Darknes21
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
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    DayvBang wrote:
    If true, there's an open question as to whether vault tokens work the same way. It would be a lot more complicated to manage, if so.

    Not necessarily. The random string doesn't dictate what your cover is, just what the random value is. Then the vault, when you press the button, takes that random value and converts it into the appropriate cover. Your device still has to allocate each reward its probability based on the number of remaining rewards.
  • abmoraz
    abmoraz Posts: 712 Critical Contributor
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    DayvBang wrote:
    If true, there's an open question as to whether vault tokens work the same way. It would be a lot more complicated to manage, if so.


    There is a concept in simulation design called "Repeatable Randomness". It is a way to get random inputs, but then to repeat those random inputs in the future if needed. It's used to see what effects changes to a simulation have to the final effect.

    For example:
    (Shamelessly stolen from a Mythbusters episode). Is one big snake queue for multiple check-outs faster than individual queues for each check-out register? The first simulation would have an individual queue and a random function would generate customers and shopping carts. This simulation would be run 10,000 times and the final numbers would give average wait time per customer.

    Then the simulation would be changed to the big queue and re-run. If we used a new random string of numbers to generate customers and carts, there is a chance that we'd hit a random section that would be very high or very low and wouldn't balance out the differences. This would give us skewed results. To prevent this, we would re-run the same 10,000 numbers as the first simulation. Therefore we got "random, yet repeatable"


    Since generating random numbers is one of the most costly things a CPU can do, this concept is used often in programming to reduce processor load. I believe this is what the Devs are using to prevent the cheat mentioned elsewhere in this thread. The random numbers for each draw type is pre-determined. They are still random, but it doesn't matter which device you pull from. Your first draw is going to be the first number in that list. The second, will be the second number, and so on. If you exit a device before it syncs with the server, then that list doesn't get updated to move to the next number.

    That begs the question: is it one big list for all token pulls, or is there a separate list for each type? The way to test the next time someone opens the game on a device and sees that their last token pull has rolled back... DO NOT OPEN IT. Play until you get another token of a different type, open that token, then go back to the original token and open it. If you get something different, then the random number list is one giant list for all tokens. If you get the same thing, then it is per type.

    If the random number list is per token, the next question is "Is the random number list just a list of numbers or is it a list of covers?" To test that, wait until you find a token roll back, note the cover you had drawn, wait for the draw pool to change (i.e.: a new cover is released for that draw pool that changes the rewards you can get) and see if you get something different. This would be easiest to do with the Taco Tokens. Note the position in the vault of the cover you received (i.e.: if you got the legendary token, that is in position #1. The star.pngstar.pngstar.pngstar.png cover for this week's Crash event, is in #2, the other star.pngstar.pngstar.pngstar.png is in #3, etc...). Wait for a mis-sync where you rolled back your draw again, then save the token until the vault changes. Once it changes, spend the token again and see if you get the cover in the same position in the vault, or if you get something entirely new (note: there is a 1 in 300 chance you'll draw the same cover any ways, so this might take a few attempts to verify).

    This will let us know if the number strings are per token event or whether the random list of numbers are re-calculated every time the rewards change.
  • CrookedKnight
    CrookedKnight Posts: 2,579 Chairperson of the Boards
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    As quoted above, I already did that -- pulled an event token, had it roll back, pulled legendary tokens and then pulled the event token again. It gave the same cover both times (Colossus red).
  • Virus_Type_V
    Virus_Type_V Posts: 117 Tile Toppler
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    Drift wrote:
    Can confirm this. Opened my ten pack and got five(!) Golds. Was very excited. Later switched to my iPad and (oh no) there's the unopened ten pack. I was pretty upset until I opened them and got exactly the same covers. About two weeks ago.


    I had the same thing happened... only got one gold (shethor), so I sorta got excited that I got to do it again... until I opened the exact same ****.

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