Oh, Mister Marksman! What do you have said?
„I assure you that all our players are in the same in-game conditions.“
Hmm, and i assure you, that you aren‘t right. They are underthrown the coincidence, but this makes the players unequal. Lucky or unlucky, is there no difference? Am i gambling or playing? No difference? What is the matter with the efforts and the works of the players? Always the same?
It seems for me, you don`t know the rules of your own game.
Let`s have a look at it.
In games like Vikings, which are highly determined by coincidence, you
can use the normal distribution (or gaussian distribution) as an
useful instrument for describing the probability of events.
The distribution of probability gives you the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes. You can visualize it as a function, the probability density function.
Also called, because of her shape, bell curve.
See the following picture:
Probability dension function
µ expectation of the distribution, also called median, mean or expected value
σ standard deviation
σ2 variance of the distribution
The standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation of a set of values. A low standard deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to the mean or median of the set, while a high standard deviation indicates that the values are spread out over a wider range. The standard deviation is mathematically defined as the square root of variance. Variance shows the squared deviation of a random variable from its median.
It measures how far a set of numbers is spread out from their average value. That means, that more unexpected values are comprised by a high standard deviation than by a low standard deviation.
The unexpected gets normally, so to say. If the deviation has the value zero, there are no unexpected values and all values have the value of the median.
For further informations see the articles in Wikipedia.
What has this to do with Vikings?
In Vikings the coincidence plays a great role. The algorithms are programmed with a high standard deviation and a high variance. So normally extreme values for coincidences are not unusual. For instances see some forumposts like „Letter to Plarium about New Equipment Upgrades“, „Helheim Floor 10 Node 7“ and others.
A high variance is helpful for plarium but not for the players. It cancels their efforts and is a form of disrespect for them.
Therefore Plarium: Shorten the standard deviation!
Cut the bellcurve at 1 standard deviation!
Dont betray your players!
Respect the efforts of your players!
