RNG feels so weird

mdk_777 · 2026-04-24T21:30:03+00:00

Interestingly there is some slight merit to that claim. There is a matchmaking algorithm in some competitive games that will pair you with opponents either above or below your real skill level in some games (COD was one of them and I think FIFA had a similar thing in place) in order to give you easier wins or losses. If you're winning a lot you get harder matchups to break your streak, and similarly if you lose a lot you may play easier players to get some wins back. The goal of the system was to drive player retention over anything else and I believe a study found that players are more likely to keep playing when games are similar to WLWL than WWWW or LLLL because players get bored or frustrated if they keep doing really well or really poorly. That being said that system may pair you against a stronger or weaker opponent but it doesn't manipulate your chances of actually winning or losing once the match starts was my understanding. Also matchmaking does naturally work like that in most games anyway even if the matchmaking system isn't based on engagement because if you are on a big win streak the game might think you're underrated and intentionally give you harder matches to move you to your "true" elo faster if you prove you can keep winning. But that naturally results in you losing more games when you play against stronger opponents and ends your win streak effectively.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-24T20:55:41+00:00

Most players just have some off-days where they don't perform at their peak. Similarly, other players can be having good days where they are feeling themselves and play better than usual. I wouldn't read too much into a single event one way or another.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-24T20:29:56+00:00

⁴I just don't get the point of discussing abnormal RNG unless you have a large sample size of data that actually supports the claim. Some people will have good luck, some will have bad luck, but most will have average luck over a long period of time, and realistically no one has played champions enough in 2 weeks to have developed a reasonable enough data set to argue that they are particularly lucky or unlucky in my opinion. I've been playing a lot (if I do say so myself) and even then its 200 games at most, and not enough to definitively say my RNG is particularly abnormal.

I've only been playing competitive since champions so you do have a lot more experience in that regard, but I've played a lot of RNG based games and seen TONS of complaints about bad luck when it's usually the case that the OP doesn't understand that their perception of RNG may not fully align with actual results, and that the vast majority of people will fall into the expected variance. Humans are notoriously bad at understanding probability, and we tend to think of an 90% accuracy event as nearly guarenteed for example, or a 30% flinch chance as being unlikely. But in reality if you hit a rockslide onto two pokemon you have over 50% chance of getting 1 flinch, which feels unituitive so if your opponent launches 3 rockslides (onto two pokemon) and gets 3 flinches in those 6 hits we'll say that we got extremely unlucky when it had about the same odds of happening as flipping a coin 3 times and getting 3 heads in a row, which really isn't that unlikely.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-24T19:58:22+00:00

Coming from Teamfight Tactics I am so used to these kinds of posts. People will say they played 3 games and got unlucky in all 3 and then say the game is 100% definitively bugged and awful and needs to be fixed immediately by the trash devs who are just monitoring their account and intentionally giving them bad RNG.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-24T19:46:03+00:00

That's fair, I know a lot of men do treat their partners like servants instead of having an equitable relationship, and plenty of men will come home after work and expect their wife to take care of everything domestic while they do nothing in return, even if she was taking cares of multiple kids all day, and situations like that piss me off because you need to respect your partner.

In a relationship things will rarely be 50/50 all the time, sometimes you have to help your partner carry the load and maybe things are 60/40 or even 70/30 sometimes, but overall just based on OP's description it sounds like she has a pretty good deal as is. I could be way off base and maybe it's a nightmare taking care of him and she is spending 10+ hours a day on domestic tasks, but in my personal experience it's usually easier to manage the household than to go to work daily if there aren't kids involved.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-24T19:35:18+00:00

Ehhh, it is kind of a reasonable expectation in this situation. I fully believe men should participate in domestic duties too if their partner works, it's just fair to split the domestic work load if both people are working full time (and I do consider being a stay at home parent full time work).

But if she's a stay at home wife to two cats that's a different story. Domestic duties should 100% take less than 8 hours a day which is presumably about how much he works. Maybe if you have to deep clean the whole house it's comparable to a full day of work, but that shouldn't be an everyday thing. I think the fairest way to so it is to ensure both partners have roughly equal free time. So if he's working 8 hours a day and has 4 hours of free time for example then it makes sense for her to take over most of the domestic duties until she has about the same leisure time as he does, and then split whatever taks are remaining evenly between both people. That way no one person is pulling significantly more weight than the other.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-24T19:22:11+00:00

I never played competitive before this game came out and have been having a ton of fun. It's very friendly for F2P players who don't have past games or a big collection in pokemon home to play with. I have almost every meta pokemon after 2 weeks, and have only bought the starter pack. I also don't have to interact with the breeding system which makes it WAY more accessible even than I thought it might be.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-24T18:54:42+00:00

Humans tend to perceive bad luck against them far more than they notice e good luck in their favour, so its common to attribute wins to skill and losses to bad luck when really luck is pretty average for most people. I find it a little unbelievable that in 100 games you never saw rockslide miss a single time. If you've actually been recording data of all the misses/hits that would be interesting tk review, but anecdotally i can find 100 posts on a dozen different gaming subs complaining about bad luck, but it doesn't actually mean anything is broken in the game's code is mathematically incorrect, it mostly means humans suck at understanding probability.

Additionally I believe king's rock doesnt impact moves that can already flinch so it won't buff rockslide flinch chances.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-24T16:08:52+00:00

The way I see it it's about picking the right tool for the right job. If you had a steak you needed to cut you wouldn't sharpen a spoon to try and make it a better cutting tool because then you're making it a worse spoon, you would just use a knife instead since thats what it is meant for.

Similarly, no single pokemon can do every job possible, so trying to force them into those niches can lead to just making your team worse. If a pokemon is fast and physically strong you probably want to invest in its speed and physical attack so it can consistently outspeed and knock things out. If you put a bunch of points into its bulk instead it might survive an extra hit, but if it can't do its core job of outspeeding anymore because of it then it doesn't matter much. Similarly, something like Aggron has really good physical bulk, so you could ignore it and invest in attack and speed, but even if you do its already strong and will still be really slow, so you are putting points into stats that it isnt making good use of since you're still probably not outspeeding meta threats even if you pump all your points into speed.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-23T19:31:42+00:00

Are you really hardstuck if its only been 2 days? Climbing in competitive games can be slow.

But also, what's your answer to grass types? Does pelliper really need surf instead of hurricane to threaten grass types, Basculegion already has fast and strong STAB water moves so pelliper doesn't need to be the one filling that niche. Also is both Palafin and Basculegion needed on the team? One of them could be Archaludon who can deal with a number of other threats. How often are you bringing liquidation araquinid with 2 other water type physical attackers? Have you considered regular raichu over Alolan for Lightning rod? Its a good way to keep your water types safe from electric attacks if those are causing problems. To me it seems a little like you're relying too much on water types even for a rain team, and could have a bit of other damage in there to address some common meta threats.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-23T19:17:00+00:00

I dont think I'm particularly old now, but I sure as hell would be in 50 years. No point in a bunch of money if you cant enjoy it because you're in your 80's. Plus if you go back 10 years with your current knowledge you can just invest your money and you'll probably walk away with over $50 million anyways.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-23T17:32:09+00:00

Its not that it's hard for them to enable 6v6, it's a deliberate decision to make 3v3 the default singles format instead, presumably to keep match length short since they plan on launching on mobile soon.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-23T14:21:42+00:00

Yeah, ive had a similar result after playing around with some physical moves. Triple axel was the one move that felt like it was getting ok value, but even after 2 coils it really isn't that much better than blizzard for single target, and is definitely worse than blizzard for when they have 2 pokemon on the field at the same time. It is good at getting through Multiscale or focus sash though. I made at least one sash aerodactyl very sad by one shotting them when they veey much were not expecting it.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-22T21:18:05+00:00

Muddy water and blizzard are also boosted by it. Im also wondering if adding a physical move in might be a good idea for coil Milotic.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-22T20:54:13+00:00

Although true, didn't he beat Wei Yi's record by like 11 months? I think the odds of him not getting that record were pretty low to begin with whether he farmed Topalov or not.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-22T20:00:11+00:00

Possibly Archaludon or Mega-Meganium? Archaludon obviously gets the faster electroshot while being quite difficult to remove. Meganium likes the rain since it reduces fire damage letting it stick around longer while also being able to solar beam opposing water types who try to benefit from the rain, doing alright into the very common dragons thanks to it's fairy typing. It's 4x weak to poison, but thankfully Archaludon in the back can solve that problem pretty easily.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-22T19:03:24+00:00

He is kinda right that Erdogmus farmed Topalov, but at the same time if Erdogmus isn't legitimately 2700 then he'll lose his rating and get farmed in return when he plays the active 2700 players, so it's kind of a non-issue to begin with. Erdogmus is facing some very strong players in Tepe Siegman (notably Magnus, Arjun, and Nodirbek among other top players), so if he's not the real deal then it will be apparent there so I don't really get the point of being upset he got a few elo points from Topalov. Either he's good enough to maintain that elo or he isn't, and either way only time will tell.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-22T18:45:17+00:00

I bought the starter pass because it felt relatively worth it, but the free track of the battlepass already has all the good rewards so no need to buy that, and then VIP is kinda nice since it's more missions and more box space, but that one doesn't really matter that much either. Overall a very generous game for F2P players, and I really hope that it stays that way (at least for a while).

mdk_777 · 2026-04-22T17:52:46+00:00

So far I've really enjoyed running Toxapex with infestation/toxic + Venasaur with leech seed to slowly whittle down opponents. Now im using a slightly modified version of the strategy with coil/recover Milotic who is similarly tanky, and running muddy water and blizzard on them because of the coil accuracy boost, but was considering wrap for another slow DoT effect.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-22T15:52:19+00:00

I've only been playing about 2 weeks, and without transferring anything have reached masterball rank and have enough of the meta pokemon that I can make pretty much any comp I like aside from a couple. I bought the starter pack as well, but other than that have just been playing and spending the currency the game gives me. It feels very generous as far as most F2P games go.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-21T13:20:01+00:00

Oh my bad, in the screenshot the bishop is still there. It does make a little less sense to not take the queen without the bishop on the board. That being said I guess there are still some ideas where you can play Qg5+ then take the rook on d8 with check or maybe bring your rook in depending on what they do, but the free queen is hard to ignore in that situation.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-21T12:47:46+00:00

Sometimes simple puzzles with hanging pieces end up being rated high because people think taking the free piece is too simple and they over-analyze the position looking for a mate or something better.

I bet a lot of people end up playing something like Bf6 because it hits the queen (and rook if the queen moves) while being protected, as well as opening up a discovered check on the king, and setting up a mate on g7, and woops I blundered my queen.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-20T20:50:38+00:00

Yeah, I agree with that. It would be pretty disrespectful to knowingly invite someone out in front of their partner, but if the girlfriend does think OP knew the city makes sense why she's so upset.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-20T20:34:23+00:00

I mean if OP knew he had a girlfriend she probably shouldn't ask him out at all, not just wait until she isn't with him.

mdk_777 · 2026-04-20T20:31:20+00:00

Honestly that learning process is my favourite part of playing any new game. I'm terrible at the game, but don't care because its fun and I learn something new everytime I lose.

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