Escort Randomness

[Dracos]

I've not looked at the code, so it may truly just be random, but just raising as it seems odd.

I...very often, end up getting 3 or more of the same escort in a single run. This run I got 5 warriors out of 9. Assuming even chance of all 8, that's pretty outrageous (But hey, likely to happen once out of every hundred thousand or so runs). If it was a one off, I'd not notice, but it feels like as a single player I've just seen way too many "here are 4 alchemists" or "here are 4 or 5 thieves" in single runs.

Is it intentional that its trying to repeat the same escort a few times each run?

[HammyHamster]

I'm pretty sure the code is not as random as the wiki suggests.

The wiki says that the zones are Trollmire (3 levels), Scin caves (3 levels), Ruins of K (3), Norgols (3), Heart of G (3), Old forest (4), Daikara (4), Reknor (4) and Dreadfell (9) = 36 levels.

I've never seen an escort on Dread 9, rek 4, and Daik (3 = portal). that makes 33 levels.

My point is that at least half of all my escorts in every game appear in Dreadfell = 8/33 levels.
Either the code is intentional or the randomness is very messed up! I've never seen more than 2 in reknor and 3 spread among the trol, scin, runis, norg, hear and old forest. I think the wiki should be updated if it's intentionally programed that way.


The escort psuedo-randomness is what makes the first part fun and replayable imho. I get somewhat bored by the time I get to the East as it has absolutely no variance, no matter what the challenge level (except for more bosses and rares). So it'd be nice if the escorts were better randomized.

[Radon26]

dunno about the types of escort, but if location is the question, there is a line in the code that might be related.
for undead for example, its

Code: Select all

random_escort_possibilities = { {"tier1.1", 1, 2}, {"tier1.2", 1, 2}, {"daikara", 1, 2}, {"old-forest", 1, 4}, {"dreadfell", 1, 8}, {"reknor", 1, 2}, },

not sure if its "A and B" or "from A, to B", but its there.

[Tyren]

Temporal explorer and loremaster both have higher rarity compared to other escorts.

[Stuntofthelitter]

I believe there's a total of 20 places they could be, with Dreadfell being 8 of them. With 9 escorts isn't not uncommon at all for a significant number to be in Dreadfell.

As far as getting multiples of the same there's really nothing aside from randomness there.

[0player]

Yeah, in Dreadfell you can get escorts on every level but the ultimate one, but in pretty much any other zone there's about one or two levels on which you can get them.

[HammyHamster]

Looking at the code, it seems that many of the races get 0-2 escorts in early zone, 0-4 in old forest (including boss level!), 0-8 in dreadfell, 0-2 in dakaira, and 0-2 in reknor.


That's a pretty lazy interpretation of random variety. Something to be looked at in later patches, I'd think. No wonder escort addons are so popular!

[HousePet]

Sorry but how is that a lazy interpretation of random variety? And this thread was about escort types not locations...

[HammyHamster]

Yes, my bad for going off topic.


What I refer to is that 2 escorts (maybe, often it might be 1 or none) will be in the first 4 zones. And then it's just predictable dreadfell and the forest .....again.... This gets old fast. By the time you get to those two spots, it's no longer a novelty and fresh. Well, that's just the way I see it.

[HousePet]

Well having them appear in the other zones just makes them too hard.

[ibanix]

I...very often, end up getting 3 or more of the same escort in a single run.

Is it intentional that its trying to repeat the same escort a few times each run?

[Tyren]

Ever give up or lose before dreadfell? How often because you encounter bad escorts or fail? How often if there aren't many escorts? These decisions affect your conditional probability of getting an escort at some point.

[Fel]

Meh, I don't like that people still don't really understand what "random" means.

The problem is rarely a fault with the random number generator, there are some RNGs that will use system time (or even game time) but those are very old 2000 era games; it's just that people forget that random implies clustering and what they really want is random without repetition.

Of course, there are many different types of "random"; most of the time we're dealing with some kind of Gaussian generator (which is random noise with clusters), but Perlin noise will cluster and "trend" while still very much being "random". Heck, this entire text, despite having meaning to you, can still be considered "random"; meaning doesn't make something less random, it only hides the randomness of word choice, sentence structure, and anecdotes which can easily change when making the same post multiple times without consulting prior iterations. i.e. "Random"


That being said, there is a solution


I forget the exact name for the algorithm, but it is fairly simple really. You have a "bag" of possible values and every time one value is chosen you remove it from the bag. If you want to allow clusters, but limit their frequency you repeat the values a few times (say 3) and remove only one value each time. If you want to allow for previously removed values to still occur, you have a... stack (idk shift register? You put a value in and it pushes a value out (once full), it has a given length and will begin returning the old values once it is filled up) of old values that feed back into the bag of values. (say after 5 choices).

[GlassGo]

Very interesting Fel, I'm not a pogromist (language joke on programmers) but interested in what is randomness, even tried to read some scientific and popular articles about that. )

[Micbran]

Could just be confirmation bias as well, as in, you only remember the times you get an escort in Dreadfell, but tend to dismiss the other escort locations as "normal."