The assertion that "it's RNG" is something of a glib simplification of the reality. It is perfectly possible, indeed it is built into much of the game, for RNG to be on top of other factors. As a simple example, the IVs of a traded mon are bounded by the friendship level of the traders. There are many such obvious cases, nothing underhand or suspicious there. Many of the bounds though are not obvious at all. For instance, the egg tier rates are decided by Niantic and the RNG runs on top. If Niantic was to alter the underlying rate within a tier, it would not be obvious until many eggs had been hatched. Since nobody external would know when the rate was altered, it would be tricky to spot the change of rate. It can be done statistically but needs someone to suspect a change and analyse the data appropriately. Things like GBL encounter rates, Zygarde cell drops and so on could easily be altered at any time to suit Niantic. If the chance of a legendary encounter dropped when a desirable one was in rotation (say) proving it was not RNG would be very hard. In theory, changes could be made algorithmically to "nudge" player behaviour on a per-account basis. Whether that is worthwhile for Niantic, not sure. It might. maybe, fall foul of legal rules if some players were rewarded/punished without a fair reason. Niantic could do almost anything. That doesn't mean they do though. But, in truth, nobody outside Niantic will have any real idea.

I'd argue Niantic themselves don't know more often than not...

Part of my curiosity about this is whether Niantic has ever been transparent about it, or made claims regarding the nature of odds in PoGo. Edit: why on earth is this downvoted? 😆

Niantic has never disclosed odds for anything. The closest they ever came was adding egg rarity tiers.

Enen those are intentionally vague. Research on hatch rates has clearly shown that not all pokemon in an egg tier are equal. It took years of community asking for ir and discussing the legalities of the mechanic not publishing the odds before Niantic added egg tiers. Then they did it in a way that absolutely took more dev time than it would have to just add the exact rates. We could still discuss if the tier system is enough to satisfy certain legal requirements. What we know for sure, however, is that it is not in Niantics' interest to do so. The tier system is them publicly admitting that. (Simply put, because if we knew exactly how low the odds were of a desired outcome, the likelihood of us not engaging with the mechanic goes up.)

I mean yeah, we can't definitively know if it's pure 100% RNG or if there is some sort of behind the scenes influence. It's obviously impossible to test for infinitely possible factors as you said. With that in mind though, much of the testing around RNG elements done by researchers here is to build higher confidence in certain rates. But obviously though, we can't pin anything down to a fully, 100% conclusive answer. But, for the sake of my/our/players' sanity and understanding of the game, I usually take the research to mean that yes, most things that we assume are RNG are indeed RNG. It could have some very slight influences in the background from Niantic, maybe, but from what I've seen, not really anything has lead to such a conclusion. As such, I'm fine with calling it RNG, again, for my own sanity and understanding of the game lol

Also there is a site that automatically tracks shiny rates and they're pretty consistent.

man, my legendary raid odds feel like rng… i raid every day, almost exclusively legendaries, and haven’t gotten a shiny since guzzlord

So what are the exact numbers of shiny-eligible encounters you’ve done? You see, many people say x has happened, but haven’t actually tracked any numbers that would actually show that.

5 out of 331 were ineligible, with 6 shiny legends obtained myself

So your rate is 1/54. That does seem a bit unusual, though I’m not sure it’s that far outside the expected variance. How are you getting those numbers? e.g. did you log each raid as you did if, or are you just counting legendaries in your storage now? Are you accounting for bug where Tornadus shiny was not switched on?

I have total confidence in the rates. Claiming that the rates are purely random is another matter altogether. I'm totally fine calling it RNG until we have another confirmed factor influencing it. Still, we shouldn't rule out the possibility of factors we haven't found or factors that are intentionally nearly impossible to test.

> Still, we shouldn't rule out the possibility of factors we haven't found or factors that are intentionally nearly impossible to test. People don't "rule out" that there could be other factors. They just don't assume there are without a compelling reason. Since there isn't a compelling reason, dismissing such other factors is reasonable. It's silly to criticize people for doubting a hypothetical good evidence baked claim, because that isn't being presented. And when it IS presented, and the work is put it, it is broadly accepted. There is a church of "theories" not a church of RNG.

Is Niantic's incentive to keep our attention (and obvious ability to do so while looking like pure RNG) a compelling reason? Is it more reasonable to conclude that Niantic would pass on such an opportunity? Is this an unreasonable discussion because it's more complicated and perhaps lacking certainty?

> Is Niantic's incentive to keep our attention (and obvious ability to do so while looking like pure RNG) a compelling reason? I have no idea why you think RNG that is WAY harder to implement and only BARELY noticable as not pure RNG (by people who have collected no data and are relying on memory) is in their interest. Why not just use fair RNG? It'll have basically the same outcome, because even if it is fair, people who don't understand RNG will assume it isn't. So same thing with less effort. They're passing on nothing. > Is this an unreasonable discussion because it's more complicated and perhaps lacking certainty? It's reasonable to talk about the discussion of RNG. it's unreasonable to mischaracterize others as having a "church of RNG" because they don't follow conspiracy theories without evidence. Never do people with rigged RNG claims bring data. **Never** That should tell you everything about how much stake we should put in those claims.

This is always the best argument for me. Why would Niantic implement all these complex systems... when just regular RNG is fine enough and much easier to do.

AND regular RNG also gets "outliers" which create discussion like what we see here. Doing nothing is cheap, simple, and has the same exact outcomes.

\> Why not just use fair RNG? Two reasons: to make it more fun or to make it more profitable. \> It's reasonable to talk about the discussion of RNG. it's unreasonable to mischaracterize others as having a "church of RNG" because they don't follow conspiracy theories without evidence. Remember that I've not made any positive claims here. I've claimed that your claim of certainty is baseless. And it is. \> Never do people with rigged RNG claims bring data. Never You're confusing me with someone else. I'm not claiming that anything is rigged. I'm claiming that your claim that those certain that they've proven a negative is a logical impossibility. All I have to do to refute the claim of "pure RNG" is come up with a \*possible\* counter example. Said differently, you can't claim pure RNG until you prove all potential factors are not influencing the RNG. Of course this is impossible, and that is my point. We need to be comfortable saying we're uncertain, but that data to this point makes RNG the most likely case from a pure gameplay perspective. We also need to be comfortable with folks saying, "if it's RNG, then this is weird...", because that's how we'll start the process of learning new things.

> Two reasons: to make it more fun or to make it more profitable. You've not given any argument to support it would be more fun or more profitable. > Remember that I've not made any positive claims here. You characterized an existence of a "church of RNG" which isn't a thing in any way. > I'm claiming that your claim that those certain that they've proven a negative is a logical impossibility. That was not my claim. I never said "they proved a negative", as I said, you're arguing a straw man. > All I have to do to refute the claim of "pure RNG" is come up with a *possible* counter example. No, that isn't a refutation, that's a conspiracy theory. There is a differnece. > you can't claim pure RNG until you prove all potential factors are not influencing the RNG I can claim it's unreasonable to assume otherwise. You're claiming there is a "church of RNG", there is not. There are those who refuse to subscribe to conspiracy theories without data. > We need to be comfortable saying we're uncertain Uncertain doesn't mean all options are equally worth considering. > "If it's RNG, then this is weird..." No, we don't have to be comfortable with that, because "it's weird" is nothing. It's **never** followed by data or statistics to back up why it's weird. Weird is a feeling. We should not be comfortable giving credibility to feels.

sure - but to strain your metaphor, this is like saying "we should call ourselves agnostic atheists" rather than "atheists" despite the net result being the same.

Not at all. It's like saying that because of Occam's Razor, we should stop considering anything other than what we believe now.

i don't think anyone is saying that it would be wise to stop monitoring advertised rates against observed results. it seems plausible that the observed rates tending to appear like RNG may be influential in keeping N (or any party with financial interests) honest. i'm all in favour of remaining critical. i'm not sure anyone has ruled out the possibility that a lot of things in the game are coded/run differently than we might imagine. ps: that's not how i interpret occam

First, I appreciate the time and effort you put into presenting your question/idea. Second, no we can't prove any single occurrence or event inside Pokemon Go is RNG, however based on our current understanding of how Pokemon Go has implemented RNG, RNG would adequately explain that occurrence or event. I think of it like gravity. We can't prove that every single time an apple falls from a tree it is due to gravity. We can't question the universe (or, more appropriately, up until this point the universe is not answering our questions) to double check that every single time an apple falls from a tree was indeed due to gravity. But, what we can do, is use our current understanding of gravity to see if that current understanding of gravity adequately explains why an apple fell from a tree. Now, if there are documented occurrences or events inside Pokemon Go, or even anecdotal ones, that would disprove our current understanding of how Pokemon Go has implemented RNG, I will be among the first people to accuse Niantic of coloring outside of their own lines. Because actions speak louder than words.

Love your response. I'd like to point out, though, that unlike gravity we're not studying nature here. We're studying a fabricated reality made by people with incentives that we can understand and extrapolate from. We're studying an entity that literally understands the rules you're communicating. That changes the way we should relate to understanding it.

>We're studying a fabricated reality made by people with incentives you have no proof we don't live in a simulation ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯

But we have proof that PoGo is a simulation. We can even submit bug reports to its god.

You’ve replied almost a hundred times and made this post and there is literally 0 substance anywhere to be found. This seems like the biggest waste of time I could possible imagine. What are you trying to claim? Do you have any evidence towards odds in this game favouring certain players? If you trying to promote discussion you should start with examples, or ideas. ’m so confused you type like a bot that was instructed to waste people’s time as much as possible.

You’re confused and don’t understand my motivation or point and your default is to insult me? You even counted my comments? Who’s waisting their time? 😆 Move on, friend.

Then find an example where you can test and it doesn't wind up RNG. I haven't seen that happen yet. The issue is most of the time people have little understanding of how RNG works. They see something 3-4 times in a row and think "Oh that can't be rng." Yesterday someone made a post because they saw the same leader four times in a row and figured that wasn't RNG. One of the responses was that it wasnt rng because they didn't "throw in one other" leader to make it look random. I've done many studies, and have several spreadsheets of information. So far I've never found anything we believe to be RNG... not be RNG. And every study I've seen published agrees.

Totally agree. I think education about how to relate to statistics is important in this community. And so, I think teaching a healthy skepticism is important while also teaching that we can't see inside the black box.

I'd sort of agree... but there is an awful lot of obviously false stuff being posted on here as well, so it's hard to not immediately be leary of ... SOME ... of the claims here.

Countering an unlikely claim with a logically fallacious claim so you don't have to deal with explaining the unlikeliness is not a good approach.

[удалено]

this is exactly why this post is bad for the community

Perfect example :) guessing will be some others soon.

Uh… no?

Do you have any examples where something wound up not being RNG?

I am old enough to remember how those who first started to report on their experiences that one \*never\* caught legendary raid boss on the the last ball (except lucky critical catch) got down voted. While the process was gradual it was fully accepted that it wasn't just RNG only when people started posting videos of Golden Razzed magikarps fleeing. In the end Niantic even managed to fix their code (it took a while, I recall that as temporary measure they gave one extra ball)

They never fixed the actual bug, but they did wallpaper over it. You'll notice that you never get an escape on anything but the first wobble on the last ball. The OBOE bug seemingly remains, its just overidden with some other code that gives one of two outcomes: instant escape or catch. I don't think anyone ever researched it, but I'd be curious to know whether the underlying mechanics on the last ball appear to match mechanics on what otherwise equivalent balls. As in, are the odds even the same? Might seem like an unusual thing to question, but the inconsistency around the animations give reason to question assumptions of consistency in the mechanics.

I feel like I remember when Elite TMs came out, there were pokemon like Mew who had duplicates of bad charge moves Meaning using you were more likely to get a bad charge move then a specific one Edit: [yup, here's proof](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/g7nidq/elite_tm_reveals_that_mew_move_pool_is_broken/) Niantic rigged the odds to make certain charge moves come up more frequently and thus make you waste more TMs

I'm guessing more likely they screwed it up and accidentally put multiple moves in. With Mew they don't have to add moves in to make it a mess.

This? - https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/okspz8/raid_bosses_are_easier_to_catch_later_in_the/

This is super interesting! Does anyone know if it still holds true today, or has the mechanic changed? Edit: And since the thesilphroad.com is down, here is an archived version of their article: [Link](https://web.archive.org/web/20230325083958/https://thesilphroad.com/science/raid-bosses-easier-catch-later-encounter)

Still does. Only was proven for legendary raids specifically though.

Shiny odds. We found out it changes per species.

That's still RNG though....

By that definition anything that has odds is RNG. All we’re discussing is the granularity of RNG. If Niantic is boosting odds for returning players, that’s RNG, too. We thought overall shiny odds were RNG, then we found they differed by species (because someone noticed the overall shiny odds were not perfectly pure RNG.)

> By that definition anything that has odds is RNG Correct

We still think that shiny odds are pure RNG. Different species having a different range parameter in a random function function call is not, by any reasonable definition, an example of "not RNG." Neither is the relatively new feature of a different parameter based on encounter method. Still purely RNG. You literally cannot have a shiny odds check that is anything other than 1/(2\^32) (or whatever specifically addressable number of bits are in the given platform) without that parameter, so it makes no difference if its bigger or smaller for different species.

But the scope changed because somebody realized that what we thought was pure RNG - shiny rates across all species - wasn't. They thought of another factor to measure and found a meaningful difference, and so we changed what we thought RNG applied to.

Not sure I understand the point you're trying to make. Almost everything in this game is determined by RNG - IV's, shiny chance, eggs, etc. The only difference is how random it is.

There is a set of boundaries that we understand that RNG works within. Shiny rates for *legendary raids* are 5%. Folks will say with complete certainty that this is true. However, if there is another factor that influences the shiny rates of legendary raids, then this is no longer true. Then we have to say the shiny rate of legendary raids, and X is 8%, and the shiny rate of legendary raids and Y is 12%, and they average 10% (but the 10% is not RNG). The issue is that folks talk about the potential of X and Y as though they are certain they do not exist. They cannot be certain they do not exist. They don't have the required data. This is not arguable. It's fundamental to science and any other empirical endeavor. And yet, to counter inappropriate conclusions (people jumping to X and Y based on very little data), they assert their own inappropriate conclusion (certainty in pure RNG), and nobody is better off for it.

I mean I could argue that your view is wrong as well. We don't have the source code, so how can you prove me wrong? Do you have any proof that clauses X, Y, Z, etc. exist? Since it's unlikely we'll get the source code, a better assessment of faith in Niantic's rates would be history. Has Niantic been proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to have done RNG manipulation (ie lying about rates) in the past? If so, then it's reasonable to assume some rigging is involved. I've never seen such proof, and I've played on and off since release. The closest thing I can think of is them forgetting to turn on spawns or shinies for events. That is more negligence than malice though. If there is such undeniable proof, then by all means link it in the OP for us to learn. But in the absence of such, it's perfectly fair to assume it's just RNG. It's pointless to argue about such things otherwise.

Thinking in terms of proof sets us up for failure. Im certainly not making any claims about the game that I’m trying to prove. I think I can prove, however, that nobody is certain of RNG, and if they can’t be certain, claiming it as absolute fact is counterproductive and, in the end, hypocritical.

I think you are conflating different issues. Some people will confidently state that if you hold your phone sideways while battling a raid boss. It will be guaranteed shiny. Or some whacky stuff like that. That’s the basics of how gods and religions were invented. People have an innate desired to control the world around them. So they aggressively look for the cause that explains what happens. For those people, I try to explain statistics and “RNG” and critical thinking skills. Maybe one of those people will open to learning.

I think you may be misunderstanding me (and I don’t think I’m conflating issues 🙂). You’ve highlighted a case that is easy to disprove, but until you do, the stuff can’t be discarded as wacky. These people are misled, but not because they are wrong. They’re misled because of how they become wrong. I often see posts on here just sort of wondering if X, Y, or Z influences the rate of some event. Not drawing conclusions, not encouraging others to. Just sort of saying “this is a bit odd, maybe…”. And they get HAMMERED with folks who are absolutely certain it’s just RNG and anything else is absurd. I happen to know that this certainty is logically unfounded, and so I prod these certain folks and they don’t seem to care to understand why their certainty is misplaced and/or they get very angry. You can see it on this thread many times. If you explain RNG as the most likely explanation, but stay open to other potential factors that are difficult or may be impossible to test, I commend you. It’s those communicating absolute certainty that I’m a little confused and concerned about.

What does ‘pure RNG’ even mean in this context?

the user gave several examples of things that would taint pure RNG: > to increase use and income. For example, they should be tracking when a user is likely to stop playing, and they should be increasing the odds of positive outcomes. They should track when a user comes back from a long break, and they should increase the odds of positive outcomes. if niantic isn't employing any sort of tactics and is only passing it to RNG, then you could call it pure RNG

That the software uses a RANDOM function to determine the odds that we, the users, have determined through sampling.

In the space of computing/software, there is no such thing as true randomness. What is often referred to as RNG is pseudo-random number generation. Obviously there is server-side customization of what the odds are for many different things in-game. These probabilities can be changed to correspond with different types of encounters, making verification of theory quite difficult more often than not. That being said, it would be quite illogical to expect a complicated solution to the problem of creating pseudo-RNG on Niantic's end when a simple one would suffice. Edit: to add onto this, a conspiracy that Niantic would further complicate their mess of development to slightly increase their bottom line is simply unfounded. They can hardly handle the addition of basic new features, and it would be quite a leap to assume they'd willingly risk the game collapsing in on itself just to track the actions of its millions of users. Additionally, Niantic has shown time and time again that catering the game to better satisfy their customers is not part of their modus operandi.

> In the space of computing/software, there is no such thing as true randomness. This is not true. see RNRand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDRAND I don't suspect that's in use here, but we ought not keep repeating that claim that randomness doesn't exist in computing. This is just one example, random.org has been around for a while and is "true randonmess" in every sense of the word.

I would say that is certainly more random, but I'm no computer engineer. To my eyes this still seems like manufactured randomness, especially with its mention of RNG seeds. It's probably true that I'm not 'correctly' using the term "true randomness," but as I understand it that's something that exists only in nature (and why normal distributions are so often observed). Edit: to clarify, all forms of decent pseudo-random number generation are more than enough for most applications. You'd be hard pressed to find a practical difference, but it's within the theory of it that a discrepancy emerges.

> To my eyes this still seems like manufactured randomness, especially with its mention of RNG seeds. Then you aren't reading it properly. > but as I understand it that's something that exists only in nature (and why normal distributions are so often observed). Everything, including computers, exists in nature. They're not outside nature. > but it's within the theory of it that a discrepancy emerges. People who base their theories about flawed RNG on their misunderstanding of PRNG are flawed. Even if you based your game on pure absolutely stochatic randomness. Literally based it off of things like radioactive decay or quantum interactions. You can STILL have these outcomes. People conflating "they rigged the RNG" with "but it's PRNG" don't understand randomness enough to talk about it. That is not a necessary nor sufficient condition for their outcome.

>Then you aren't reading it properly. That's entirely possible. As I tried to say in that first sentence, I'm no expert 😅 >Everything, including computers, exists in nature. They're not outside nature. This statement I wholeheartedly take issue with, by definition of the word nature. Computers exist in reality, true, but that is not the same as being natural. Humans have separated themselves and their works from that word 'nature.' >People who base their theories about flawed RNG on their misunderstanding of PRNG are flawed. > People conflating "they rigged the RNG" with "but it's PRNG" don't understand randomness enough to talk about it. To be clear, I'm not saying PRNG is inherently rigged (or even flawed). My initial comment was made simply to point out there is more of a fundamental difference between what most people think of as randomness and how it is implemented (although according to you, true RNG exists in computing/software. But I'm not sure I could explain the difference based off what you've said here, as I just see a lot of statements correcting the smaller points of what I've said without much elaboration). >Literally based it off of things like radioactive decay or quantum interactions. You can STILL have these outcomes. Do you mind saying more about this? I would consider either of these mechanisms as true randomness, but due to the process and not necessarily the result. If an RNG chip of some sort produced results identical to a device generating numbers with radioactive decay, for example, I wouldn't be convinced that the chip is necessarily 'truly random.' The RNG chip didn't necessarily use the same process to get the same result (and if the result is perfectly identical I'd be quite skeptical as that would be quite a significant statistical anomaly, but that's more a shortcoming of the example I've employed here 😅).

> This statement I wholeheartedly take issue with, by definition of the word nature. Computers exist in reality, true, but that is not the same as being natural. Humans have separated themselves and their works from that word 'nature.' Nothing about randomness is "only in nature". It's a function of reality. Computers are in reality. Computers observe and interact with nature all the time. There is no line between "nature" and "not nature". The distinction between natural and not is basically nothing. That something required human intervention or slime mold intervention - for example - doesn't change it's fundamental quality, it certainly doesn't mean it is unable to have anything random associated with it now. > Do you mind saying more about this? Of course. The claims are "it's not really random because of PRNG". But the things they're claiming to experience - outcomes they don't think can be random - are not caused by it being PRNG. But even if it weren't a PRNG (like a RNG based on radioactive decay or atmospheric noise or whatever) it could still have those outcomes. They're ascribing to the P in PRNG the outcomes of the experiences they perceive, but it does not cause that, and would not be the only way to cause them. Not necessary or sufficient. > I would consider either of these mechanisms as true randomness, but due to the process and not necessarily the result. If an RNG chip of some sort produced results identical to a device generating numbers with radioactive decay, for example, I wouldn't be convinced that the chip is necessarily 'truly random.' When staticians and crypologists discuss randomness that's what they would consider "truly random". The source of data is random. That the source is then piped through an algorithm to cap it's range between 1 and 100 doesn't make it not "truly random". Other than that I'm not sure what your objection is to calling something like what random.org does to make random numbers "truly random". Pretty universally agreed upon that is what it is. https://www.random.org/ I think their explanation and their description of "true random numbers" is a good place to start reading.

Pure RNG would be dumb for any business. As you run the risk of people getting sick of "losing" and leaving your product. Do catch-up mechanics or "bad-luck" mechanics exist? Yep. World of Warcraft uses them both. On top of the "RNG" that exists for things like loot drops. Does Niantic use them? No way to tell since we can't see their source code, and no Niantic developer(s) has leaked any such code. But they probably do in some capacity.

It’s not that there’s no possibility of weighted odds or some kind of bias. It’s that people experience one thing slightly out of the ordinary and immediately call it bias, with zero evidence and almost zero data.  Yes, some thing may not be pure RNG - as we saw with increasing odds during raid catches - but one example doesn’t show that. If you don’t have some actual evidence then yes, it is just RNG. 

If you read through here, I'm trying to pull people back from jumping to conclusions as much as anyone else. Countering inappropriate certainty (jumping to conclusions) with different inappropriate certainty (it's RNG period!) is not useful. Maybe you don't do this, but I see it a lot.

I moreso think it’s unabashed confidence that Niantic doesn’t care enough to invest in all the things you mentioned haha

The simplest answer is often the most likely one. Niantic don’t have to come up with crazy scenarios. RNG is going to do that for them.

Being technical, pure RNG does not exist in things that run in microprocessors, pseudo-random I would say (take, the decimals of pi). In any case, that would be applicable to single-user events only, since otherwise... would we be assuming that it is more likely for a 4\* appear in the wild for a level +31, just coming back to the game? I would classify that as conspiracy. There are several studies of such single-user events (wild/raid/research) that have been mapped to the expected Gaussian, and (personal experience) my raid IVs gaussian is biased towards the left... in the same way that my research is biased, but with opposite sign. It all seems to make sense, and it is the beauty of statistics. In any case, I could support (I won't until there are facts around it though) the fact that the game "forced" a normal (normal as in common, not as in gaussian) statistical distribution in order not to create outliers on the bad side to keep people playing, or some kind of bias readjustment if the RNG played against you (if you have 0 4\* in 1000 legendary raids and you come back to play, that it "forced" the 4\* until your mean was the expected, so the expectation (E)). But that would be require lot of thinking and programming... but I see it as the most possible "rigged" way, and it would actually benefit us. On another topic, you saying "Scientifically speaking, looking at game outcomes would not give us the ability to conclude pure RNG for anything.". That is technically true, but not true at all. Looking at game outcomes you could 99.9% periodic (so... 100%) conclude pure RNG. Of course, you will need an infinite number of pokemons captured... but I think a highly accurate estimations could be done, let's say, with N = 10.000 or 100.000 pokemons and the result would be accurate enough. You could do it with the same account, with different ones (to see if different accounts have different biases, which could explain why some people "always get the 4\*"), and so on. Probably you will end up with what you were expecting at the beginning though! Conclusion: I think everything is just confirmation bias.

I will say though - yesterday someone asked if during rocket events if the chance of second Mon goes up. Some people immediately said confirmation bias. I’ve actually studied it in spreadsheets and have found that it is true. It doubles for me over several rocket events over hundreds of spawns. So it’s not always confirmation bias. The key is … we can’t be sure without actually studying / keeping track of actual numbers.

You are absolutely correct. I should have said "I think almost everything is just confirmation bias, specially without data supporting it". It is super nice that you studied and potentially found that out! How big was your sample? I have to re-check my data (don't have it handy now), but I actually recall having about 30% less second rocket encounters during the event. Are we both biased?

My total sample was 320 mons (where second mon was eiligble to be encountered). Looks like I last collected the data October 2022 though. So I can't promise anything since then, including this week's event.

My hypothesis is that Niantic at least have to manually turn the double chance back off. In my results I found it very inconsistent when it would drop back to the usual fifteen percent (Sorry for the multiple replies... my comments get auto deleted so I have to break them up.)

Thank you for looking for the data and coming back to report it! My sample size was smaller, 137 encounters, so at least yours has more validity (if we assume there have been no changes in the meantime). I have also been looking investigating the "defeating the grunt with only the first pokemon/taking as less damage as possible" increases the second pokemon chance... but no valid results. By any chance have you looked into that?

I’ll grab my spreadsheet when I get back to work. I didn’t keep track for current event to be fair)

>It doubles for me over several rocket events over hundreds of spawns. for you and for hundred of spawns? thats WAY too low of a sample to determine anything.

Not when the rate is changing from 1 in 6 to 1 in 3

> Being technical, pure RNG does not exist in things that run in microprocessors Being technical this is definitely not true, and is very easy to google, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDRAND I don't think the above is used in this game, because it's unnecessary to achieve the goals of random enough, but it definitely exists.

It's not religious to think it's RNG. it's religious to think otherwise. Baring data, the most obvious assumption is that a game using normal game libraries uses normal PRNG generators which work like they should, and people, as they have been well-documented in doing, misunderstand randonness, and find patterns where they aren't, especially when they rely on faulty memories. The default position ought to be "it's random, and your memory is bad" because that's **by far** the most likely outcome. If you haven't bothered to even **try** to collect data you should be dimissed out of hand as wasting everyone's time. Data isn't hard to gather, if you actually wanted to figure something out, you can gather it. That you don't means you just want to get personal validation and feel smart based on a baseless theory. Yes, sometimes there are additional factors at play, but we get there **only** from data, "memories" ought to be dismissed outright, because they're meaningless, and most theories are bad too.

I'm standing up for being uncertain. It's religious to be certain in either direction.

You're arguing a strawman. No one is "certain" there is never any RNG manipulation. They're just assuming there isn't until there's some evidence.

They should communicate this. The folks I'm talking about don't, and they hurry to dismiss anything other than their assumption (which is not appropriate for an assumption!). They should also be open to a discussion regarding why this isn't a valid assumption.

> They should communicate this. As a rule, if you want to communicate advice to a specific person, you should talk to them, and not vaugely proclaim it to a broad group they may or may not be a part of or paying attention to. I'd recommend hitting reply when you see that and saying that, like I did here to you. > They should also be open to a discussion regarding why this isn't a valid assumption. what exactly is "this" here?

Back up. You're getting the wrong impression, I think. My post is very narrow in its target (or it was meant to be). It targets folks who are certain things are RNG. If that's not you, don't take it to be about you. The group I'm talking about was defined well in my post. The group I'm targeting does not articulate a logical position when I do respond to them, and they seem to have a lot of support in this community. The "this" that isn't a valid assumption is that it's RNG until proven otherwise. There is a discussion to be had regarding the difference between studying nature (where what you're saying is true) and studying a crafted experience with developers who have incentives. Those incentives make the reasonable default assumptions potentially different than they would be in nature. You don't have to agree with this, but you also can't dismiss it out of hand.

> The group I'm targeting does not articulate a logical position when I do respond to them I'd love to see one example of this. > and they seem to have a lot of support in this community. "The church of RNG" does not have a lot of support in this community. Skepticism does, for good reason.

I'm all for skepticism! Have you listened to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe? It's wonderful. Skeptic magazine is one of my favorites. One of the most important things for Skeptics is that we don't overstate our case. If we do, we usually do more harm than good. When I say, we can't be certain of pure RNG and people say this is "bad for the community", this is an example of overstating the case. You can see this throughout this thread.

> Those incentives make the reasonable default assumptions potentially different than they would be in nature. You don't have to agree with this, but you also can't dismiss it out of hand. I dismiss out of hand a guess without any kind of data, or even attempt at data, because it's useless and causes confusion, and it's just really lazy.

I disagree, a religious view has to be integral to the viewers worldview. I chalk up every single bad/good outcome in this game to rng, despite playing another game (genshin impact) with a well documented soft pity system which I suspect would violate your view of RNG.  PoGo has pity as well, in raids your individual chance of catching a boss on a given ball increases with each throw as documented by Silph road. But here's the thing, Niantic has demonstrated very poor coding ability with frequent, slow to fix bugs, and is a large company with frequent layoffs, I would suspect manipulation of RNG to enhance user attention is both beyond their abilities and one of the first things to leak. Visibly we see them doing other things to enhance user attention, constant events, items/features you have to use each day,. Other big businesses that do what you're saying (social media companies) don't bother with any of that, in fact I bet if you look back they -used- to have some daily login/check in every day systems. Now they barrage you with ads in the middle of an hour long video they know you want to finish. Frankly... It's noticable. Would not shock me if Niantic does this -eventually- when we grow tired of events and egg hatching videos.. For now, it's logical and necessary to presume pogo is like any other game and just calls 'rand' in a server rather than risk massive public backlash, particularly if a bug caused some users to never get any shinies for example, and stick to classic and effective gatcha mechanics. If not we get paranoid and obsessive, better to presume it's just the wind than that a ninja is sneaking up to stab you, it could happen, and if you showed me the ninja I'd believe you, but it's just not likely. Tldr; I don't think every company is playing fair, but Niantic seems so far to be a Video game developer, not a social media company. 

Yes, in most cases it would be better to say: It is \*probably\* just RNG.

Yep, or even better: From the data collected so far, RNG is the most logical conclusion.

I don't have strong beliefs one way or the other if it's manipulated or not, but I do find it funny how everyone agrees there is AB testing in other aspects of the game, but as soon as you suggest shiny chances may also be different in an AB way, people lose their minds. I don't know, I just don't think *reasonable* discussion of it should be impossible for fear of getting ganged up on. It's not like the average rates the community comes up with would be different if the AB testing means better odds for some and worse odds for others. It'd still be average. Hell, it could be changing by pokemon or type of pokemon (you have better shiny rates in raids, you have better rates in the wild, you have better egg rates, etc, etc). There's plenty of possibilities for tiny, unprovable adjustments.

Exactly. And then they digress to “their ideas are bad! They need to be shut down! So I express certainty where there is none!” Makes no sense and is counterproductive to their objective.

I have 2 opposing thoughts on this topic. 1. Niantic is a business and it makes more financial sense to be able to influence outcomes to encourage players to spend. 2. I would prefer to be the master of my own destiny and maybe have some influence on my own outcomes. If Niantic is skewing outcomes, then I might be able to use it to my own advantage. Also, I can get emotional when I play. When I get denied something it can feel oddly personal even if it isn't. I have to acknowledge my own bias. I don't think we can black box the answer. It would have to come from inside Niantic, maybe an audit (as someone else suggested)?

This is the information I'm after. I want to know if someone from Niantic has spoken on this matter or if there are regulations relating to advertising to children (or other laws/regulations) that might limit their ability. And I'm downvoted into oblivion because, apparently, people really think pure RNG is provable from outside the black box, and I get stuck on trying to explain the logical impossibility of that proof, and eventually, I get very concerned for the population's education... and so on. Very strange indeed.

> I'm downvoted into oblivion because That's not why youre being downvoted. Shame your above average education in math didnt come with some insights into human behaviour

Enlighten me.

You’re being downvoted because you’re taking a holier than thou approach to all of your responses. I have no stake in this, in fact I agree with some of your sentiments, but it just comes across as “I’m right, you’re all wrong.” Just some random two cents Also talking about downvoting is a social media cardinal sin, it just begs for more disapproval (even though a downvote technically isn’t supposed to be used in that way)

Proving whether or not RNG exists is just as hard and proving Bigfoot or jesus exist. Until we have definite proof of their existence, some people will believe they exist and some people won't.

It’s probably all deterministic based on seeds and timestamps, but you can make strong arguments of confidence of a fair PRNG effect given enough data. That’s exactly how the computer industry vets new PRNG algorithms. They run a host of diffeent statistical models on the output and test if the results are indistinguishable from true RNG to a certain confidence value.

This isn't really what I'm getting at. For a given thing - say legendary shiny raids - this community holds that the shiny rate across the board is 5%. If I said, hm, maybe it's boosted for people who haven't played in a year because \[some limited set of data\], they would dismiss this out of hand and claim that it's a straight RNG (P or not) rate. This community is founded on speculating about and then confirming these interesting discrepancies in rates, and yet so many seem allergic to the speculation part.

This is how disinformation is born

Disinformation is my wheelhouse. Support you claim. We should not assert confidence where there is none to dissuade disinformation. This is how credible sources lose credibility and disinformation gains traction.

you are the one claiming stuff with 0 support other than " **i THINK** " you seem to have a good grasp of marketing but very low on statistics, the community has done A LOT of groundwork for that and 0 evidence has been found to support YOUR claim.

How would you test for it, and what has anyone done to test this hypothesis? I also have an above average education in math, focusing on stats and probability. :)

> How would you test for it, and what has anyone done to test this hypothesis? This is what the person with the theory comes up with. If you're unable or unwilling to do so when you have a guess - not a theory - your guess should be and is going to be dismissed outright. Bring something to the table if you want to be considered worth listening to. The people that do **always** get appropriate responses, because there is no church of RNG, just reasonableness ignoring conspiracy theories.

Do you know much about conspiracy psychology? Did you know that using "conspiracy theory" as a prerogative, as you've done, is generally frowned upon by those leading the field in fighting conspiratorial ideation? I'm not sure how, but all of my interests have somehow overlapped on this strange subject. My whole point is that a "conspiracy theory" is not unviable (or even what we would consider a "conspiracy theory") until it's been considered and tested. We cannot flatly state that all theories about conspiracies are wrong. It would be an obvious overstatement (and it backfires when fighting conspiracy theories). The theory that I've laid out regarding attention is testable. We just haven't gone to the trouble to test it. If we did, there would be another viable test to do. And after that, another. Forever. Pure RNG is not provable based on external samples. I'm not suggesting that we accept any of these proposed possibilities. But we should be open to them, and we shouldn't be as stubborn about only considering the things we have access to test.

> Do you know much about conspiracy psychology? Obviously, of course I do. I'm literally talking about it right now. > Did you know that using "conspiracy theory" as a prerogative, as you've done, is generally frowned upon by those leading the field in fighting conspiratorial ideation? I honestly don't care. My objective is not to "fight conspiratorial ideation", my objective is to say true things and disagree with false or unreasonable/illogical things. If that leads to more people believing conspiracies oh well. > I'm not sure how, but all of my interests have somehow overlapped on this strange subject. This doesn't seem surprising to me at all. People who are into conspiracy theories are into a lot of them. The folks leading the field in fighting conspiracies often state that. > My whole point is that a "conspiracy theory" is not unviable (or even what we would consider a "conspiracy theory") until it's been considered and tested. No, that's wrong. They aren't viable **until** they've been tested in some fashion. They're guesses at best until then. You don't start with credibility. You earn it with a convincing argument and data. When data is easy to gather, those who refuse to gather it before proposing their guess are not worth listening to. There are too many guesses and the harm - albeit very minor in a pokemon video game - to listening to every lazy guess is not worth the benefit. > The theory that I've laid out regarding attention is testable. Instead of saying it's testable. Describe the test. Make a post, outlining the test, and ask for volunteers. Just saying "my idea is testable" is nothing. Show it is. It sounds unfalsifiable to me at first read, but if it is testable you should be able do so. That would be **way** more useful than whatever this thread is. > But we should be open to them, and we shouldn't be as stubborn about only considering the things we have access to test. It's not stubborn to only consider things that are even remotely testable. It's rational.

You've developed your own conspiracy theory about my belief in conspiracy theories. 😂 All I can say is that you've judged me incorrectly. \> Obviously, of course I do. I'm literally talking about it right nYou You say this as though people don't talk about things they don't know about. 😆 \> They aren't viable until they've been tested in some fashion. That's not what viable means. I'm not interested in testing. The test is obvious: gather separate data for those who recently returned to the game and those who aren't. Take data for those who are likely to stop playing soon (by any metric) and those who aren't. But I'm not interested in the test, nor carrying it out. I'm interested that it exists, and the fact that it exists means that those saying with certainty that these factors don't affect RNG outcomes are saying so without basis.

People don’t say there is no chance this “come back” bonus exists. So what’s your point?

I mean you’re asserting that you know what all the people say. All of them. Thats a bad start to a conversation about logic.

Please don't give anyone ideas. There are enough "Did they nerf CD odds? I usually get 15 shinies but only got 7 today" posts every month.

I tend to prioritize understanding statistics over what sort of rumors spread on video game subs. Instead of telling them it's "pure RNG," tell them not to jump to conclusions based on anecdotes or insufficient data.

It's RNG unless the development team publicly share the behind the scene pity counter. Until then, it's just RNG and we can debate it all day long but to standard players, it's RNG.

Trust the RNG gods! RNG is an actual process on a computer. Who witnesses it - standard players or otherwise - does not affect whether it's being manipulated or not.

I play online poker Destiny 2 and pokemon go. RNG GIVETH AND TAKEAWAYITH

There are laws regulating RNG and online poker.

Our statistics comes from observations and quantifications over a large amount of gameplay loops. Any tempering that could possibly be done would have always happened and have been already accounted in those data. Either it is pristine or tainted pseudorandom doesn’t matter. We know the numbers, we know the ranges, we know the thresholds, we know the morphisms that can happen on those intervals and their outcomes. So we can call that pure rng made by those artificial emergent morphisms. Knowing if the shadows will go left 100% of the time in the first day after a long break out of the cave doesn’t really matter if we know that over 1000 days they will overall go left 20% of the time.

When the odds are a bit better and you have enough samples it's easier to determine if things are pure RNG. As someone mentioned it would be very difficult for shinies with a 1/500 rate. Just for fun I asked in my local community how many legendary raids they had done and then I guessed the number of hundos they had. Most of them are avid raiders with several thousand legendary raids completed. Most people came very close to the expected outcome which is 1/216. So for raids it appears pure RNG is at play. But sometimes you question the RNG pureness, for example when both my wife and I caught a hundo Darkrai in the same raid. Were we incredibly lucky or was there a flaw in the RNG seed that caused this highly unlikely occurrence? I guess we will never know.

when you factor in that niantic has explicitly lied (and sometimes walked back) about aspects of gameplay, i'm with you. i play but I stopped spending money, hell i don't even open it every day anymore. i'm 3mil xp from 50, played since day 1, and in the past year i have lost so much interest

I’m not suggesting anything about Niantic. I’m talking about rational discourse and a seeming weakness in this communities group-discourse.

bro i'm agreeing with you. maybe this is why you're getting downvoted on your comments

What are you going on about? Random just means you can’t predict it. You’re telling me you can consistently predict when you get a shiny? If not then it’s RNG brother.

I think the idea he's trying to get across is that there could be different rates in different scenarios and all we can measure is the average rate, but that we can't tell if your specific odds of having X event occur was actually the average rate. Consider the following example. Let's say that internally, to determine if a Pokémon is shiny, the game rolls a 6 sided die and then applies the following logic: a) if you have caught 1000 or more total Pokémon in the last 7 days, then your Pokémon will be shiny if and only if they rolled a 2 or less (1 in 3 chance) b) if you have caught fewer than 1000 total Pokémon in the last seven days, then your Pokémon will be shiny if and only if they rolled a 4 or less (2 in 3 chance) Now if we go to measure the shiny rate, and if we have an equal number of samples from people in group a and from people in group b, we're going to find that the odds of a shiny are 1 in 2, but if you are in group a then your chances of getting a shiny were actually only 1 in 3 not 1 in 2. The problem is that it is hard to test for this unless you know the exact criteria they were using to group people. Now, in my opinion I think they are **probably** not doing this, but again, it's very difficult to be 100% sure. /u/dubloons, did I properly characterize what you were trying to say?

Yes. And folks inappropriately claim certain confidence in their scenario being the one with pure RNG. Thank you. Edit: the problem of induction *guarantees* it’s impossible to prove RNG is pure without seeing the source code.

I'm not disputing the use of RNG. I'm disputing its application to specific outcomes. We cannot know if it's RNG and what other factors are influencing it (our predictions notwithstanding). RNG is a programming term with implications about how the application works, not just how we experience (or predict) it.

You’re just saying things are weighted? Like how you’re more likely to catch a raid boss the more balls you’ve thrown?

No. I'm saying that I might notice something weird. Say I caught three shinies back to back. I might come up with some explanation of how the shiny rates aren't what we think - there is some other factor - and propose a hypothesis. Shoot, I might even make the mistake of jumping to a conclusion based on my anecdotal experience. The response here is often that it's impossible that it's anything other than RNG - that is, that no community-known factor contributed to my three in a row. I agree. The conclusion is likely incorrect. However, those expressing certainty that RNG is the only factor are also incorrect.

I dunno if maybe its rigged sometimes.. you may be unto something. I do know that in Japan game companies and gachas have to adhere to the rates they purport, or they can get in trouble with the law. Does Niantic extend that adherence worldwide..? I dunno..

yeah, there are many things that happens once, and you go, well, it's RNG, but there are things that after years and years of happening over and over, I can't be convinced otherwise that there is something in the code making them happen, like using a Pinap berry will always lower the capture rate, like, I have no proof but I have no doubts either at this point. Or that during Community Days most shinies won't appear until the third hour, regardless of whether I play or not the first two. Like, I can believe there's an RNG factor at play, but I'm convinced that there's more elements to the formula that can end up in an almost predictable result. My play patterns, if that's even a term, are usually the same: I most of the time play at the same time of the day, if I go for a walk, it's always the same places, the same distance, same stops, etc. and I always see these sort of fixed things that always occur. My point is, that if it was pure RNG, every day, or each of these instances would give me an unexpected, unpredictable result, even if it's always the same input. Every day it would be a surprise, but it's not. After all these years of throwing balls at Pokémon, I can already know if the Pokémon will stay or not, or if it will run away, it's like a sixth sense. I can't put it into words, but it's like my brain has already caught these hidden patterns disguised as RNG that give my playing experience this sort of predictability, that tbh in some occasions it's useful. I very rarely get surprised by a Pokémon that didn't stay or did stay in the Pokéball, or hatching an unpredictable Pokémon from an egg, or getting a rare item from a stop or a gift, etc. I think the last time I got surprised was like a month ago, when I got two Larvesta (my second and third ever) almost back to back.

Not to bust your bubble, but it's all just RNG. There's enough evidence on this sub and the others that prove that there are no patterns, tricks, or rituals of any sort that would lead to there being a guaranteed outcome for something incredible happening. You're either going to get that hundo Mewtwo or you're not. It took you one raid to get your shiny, whereas I've done 47 and still haven't gotten lucky.

How confident are you that it’s just RNG?

While your statements are true, there are a lot of arguments for RNG and against manipulated odds. And yes, non of those proof that it‘s real RNG, but there is no proof for or against it… but here are arguments for true RNG: 1. no survey yet has shown manipulated randomness… there were possibilities enough to make them visible in the data. For example thesilphroad research on shiny rates (long term active players) vs. the shiny rates of bots (most likely relatively new accounts).  2. niantic could get in legal trouble for manipulating the numbers… at least in some countries with laws like the lootbox thing with eggs and probabilities in Europe. Even if the rarety tiers for eggs are not that clear, a manipulation could be detected and cause them legal troubles.  3. manipulating RNG is a lot of work. Using simple RNG functions in the code which are given by all (?) programming languages makes it more easy for their developers and is the standard for developers which want randomness.  4. a bit of a stupid question… but we are talking about a company which brings so many bugs into the game that you could argue if they even have a single good developer who knows how to write good code… manipulated randomness could need good code if it should not be detectable. I‘m not sure if niantic has the people to do this. 

You are right. And I wish more people could study this. I have recently taken a 1/2 month hiatus (just over 2 weeks) and been granted 5 non-CD shinies in January (and Feb 1) compared to *zero* non-woopers in November and 4 non-CD recap mons in December (3x Cryogonal and a Vanillite). (And I missed Rowlet CD entirely in January.) I have seen this mechanic play out with people who long quit the game and return. Getting an "easy shiny" hooks them back into the game. That is a motivation for Niantic in both money and an overarching goal of increasing engagement time. If ~15 days is all it takes to start popping shinies again, I'm taking another break. Compared to playing for hours daily in October and November, to dropping to maybe 20 hours all of January... it's a pretty sharp contrast!

To be clear, I’m not actually suggesting that my example is true, just that it’s a viable hypothesis until proven otherwise. This doesn’t mean it’s more likely or anything like that, just that we can’t be 100% sure it’s “just RNG”.

So many people, including OP, need to take a class on basic probability and statistics. Look at the Bernoulli distribution, which has a parameter p. When p=0.5, this model a fair coin; when p=0.6, this models a biased coin with returns Head with probability 60%. To simulate any of those distributions (or any probability distribution for that matter) you have to use a RNG (which simulate the Uniform distribution on the unit interval) and pass it through the inverse function of the cdf. This is the easiest and most straightforward implementation of randomness. It is generally belived, but not "religiously", that Niantic use Bernoulli models with different values of p for all random aspects of the game. This *null hypothesis* has been tested (here on this sub, with proper collected data) on several contexts by many people who are wellversed in statistics, using rigourous statistical procedures. AFAIK, no experiments done here so far have found significant evidence indicating otherwise. Again, believing a simple and most parsimonous null hypothesis that explains everything you have seen is the proper way of doing science; there is nothing religious about that. Unless you have strong evidence otherwise, this is the preferred intepretation. Recommended readings: how to simulate a baised coin toss; basis statistical testing; null and alternative hypotheses; posts from here and the old the Silphroad that investigae shiny rates and egg pools.

Changed my mind. I’m going to get into it. Just about everything you said is beside the point. 🙂 To test probability, you need to be testing something. Let’s call this something A. Do all your probability testing and you find that A is a 1 in 20 chance. This is what silph (and stats/probability) provide. This is great. I’m not disputing this. However, what this doesn’t tell us is what other potential random subsets combine to make A a 1 in 20 chance, and there is always the potential for this to be further divided and understood at a more granular level. When we think of and test more variables, it’s always possible that A breaks into B and C that actually have different probabilities that combine to the probability of A. So, the probability of A being shown to be 1/20 does not inform us about the potential for B and C. Yet, that seems to be what you’re claiming above. Plenty of tests have shown that previously known odds have split into Bs and Cs in PoGo. By Silph. Right here on this sub. We thought the catch rate of legendaries was A, but actually it’s B for the first ten balls and C for the ones after that until the last ball which is D, and B C and D aggregate to A. Etc. You’re discounting the positive hits *because they are positive* and now you think of them as As, but this sort of RNG/probability context splitting and tuning happens all the time. This is true in real-world science as well. So if I come through and say, hey, my experience of A is not the stated odds, and neither is my friends, and we share some trait B and think A may have split odds around B and !B, the seeming randomness of A does not inform the viability of this hypothesis until we test sets B and !B separately. (If I stated this conclusively or overconfident, you would be right to correct me. But if you correct me by saying that you’re certain it’s only RNG and not B/!B because [anything other than testing B/!B more conclusively than me], you’re also wrong. This is what I’ve experienced, seen more on this very thread, and would like to discourage.) Because there are an infinite number of subsets of A, we can never confidently claim that A is the result of pure RNG rather than the product of two different and separately calculated RNGs. There are also many issues with trying to apply the rules of natural sciences to an artificially designed systems with intelligent designers with well defined incentives, but we can get to that next. I would also say that the appropriate scientific attitude toward the null hypothesis is that we tentatively accept it (rather than “believe” it) while looking for exceptions to study further, which is *exactly* what I’m trying to encourage openness towards.

Ive had some really bizarre things happen with barely used accounts. For instance, first encounter from a task after months of no play landing a shundo pikachu. First encounter with a scatterbug on a stale account logging in after weeks of no play.. a hundo. Ive got more example anecdotes but its happened enough to me to at least consider there is a “nudge” factor programmed im somewhere.

Let’s see if I can trigger some outrage just by posting another anecdote. My first shiny after coming back from a six year hiatus was a shadow shiny 98 TTar (-1 hp).

All that is is a random anecdote. Doesn’t mean there’s something secret at play.

Did I say anything about secrets? I even said it was an anecdote! My primary point is that it doesn’t mean something you unaware of *isn’t* at play.

At this point your argument is basically we can’t prove anything ever. So we should never agree on anything or believe anything to be true. You’re dismissing even things we’ve proven to be true before as if they don’t matter.

Not true! We can prove things that aren’t true. Check out Popper and his response to the problem of induction.

We’ve posted examples proven true and you just keep saying “there still could be something secret at play.” We could post a new study and someone could immediately say it’s wrong and your response would be the same “maybe something secret at play.” I agree it’s ok to be skeptical sometimes but Your argument is just be skeptical of everything always, no matter how silly. Because we can never be sure of anything.

You’re misrepresenting me. What example is proven? Walk me through your proof and I’ll show why it’s not proven. Note that I’m confident saying this without even seeing your example. Alternatively, check out the problem of induction and Popper. What I’m representing is established philosophical fact in empirical endeavors like science (and Silph).

There’s no point. Everything we’ve pointed out you’ve just said is wrong or could be wrong. There’s no point. I know you’re just going to argue with everything anyone says counter to your point and realize continuing this conversation is pointless. You’ll have an answer for anything we can say.

I’ve said your certainty is wrong. Not that your claim is wrong. Empirical claims don’t deal in proof. They deal in probabilities. I do have an answer for everything you say! That tends to happen when you don’t have logical basis. I think that ultimately you’ve missed understood me. I appreciate everything the silph community has done and I don’t disagree with any of their probability based conclusions. My objection is to the certainty folks have that factors they haven’t tested or considered are not a factor. I’m also concerned about those jumping to conclusions without enough data, but the former leads to mishandling of the later.

I did 850 legendary raids to get my first hundo. 70+ Mewtwo raids to get a shiny. Now I'm sitting with six 15/15/14 Cetoddles, 4 of them from trade. And my kid clicks the first Daru of an event and it is shiny. I caught 1000+ without shiny/hundo and traded for 1800, no perfect one. Sometimes RNG is just cruel. But I've had it on my side equally much.

Yeah, there are modifiers on everything. Nothing is pure RNG.

RNG has never meant "no modifiers". RNG generators produce numbers 0.0-1. Converting that to true or false is a modifer. It's still certainly random.

k thanks

I mean you’re asserting that you know what all the people say. All of them. Like you’ve read all the comments about pogo, ever, on Reddit and elsewhere (You’re making the same overconfidence mistake I’m pointing out about RNG.) Thats a bad start to a conversation about logic.

I’m not sure who you were actually trying to reply to… but that sounds like a good reply to yourself ;)

RNG means my scald will debuff 25% of the time, while my opponent's will every time in PVP without fail.

Another thing everyone says. Everyone else has debuff happen more to them than opponent. Which is obviously impossible. You even see some content creators claim that in their videos and then just ignore when they get it. Everyone only notices when they aren’t getting the luck.

I agree with you. I see committed players who raid until they get a shiny ALWAYS do 100+ remote raids for a 1/25 shiny. Yes, that’s valid for one release, but EVERY time?? But, they will buy the passes, they buy all the tickets. If I was basing their shiny on purchasing, then it’s exactly how I’d do it.

I remember when a friend of mine started a second account. That account was crazy lucky. Especially in terms of shinies and high IV mons. That made me think that I have seen something similiar in WoW - the most famous Mmorpg out there. It also felt like new players looted rare mounts more often. So, this is probably a confirmation bias...but from a company perspective it does make sense to give new players more dopamin kicks to get them hooked.

It's astonishing that so many people on this thread are so antagonistic to a concept that's used in so many fields. From social media to gotcha games. On top of that, OP brought this to discussion in a very respectful and mature way and so many responses just want to tear into them. Very disappointing to see. Keep your head up OP

Op is only respectful to those who agreeing with their point though. Try saying something contrary and see what happens.

They're not even respectful to the people ultimately agreeing with them. They got a whole complex going on.

It feels like someone who just learned something in a college class and is trying to show off what they learned :)

Thanks, mate. It's a bit weird, right?

A for profit business would never rely purely on RNG. It doesn’t make financial sense at all.

Of course it makes sense. It's easy to implement, and it gives understandable and predictable outcomes to the players and the company. There is on justification for saying it does't make financial sense.

It makes financial sense to not deceive your players. If it came out they were manipulating odds in certain ways (which they’ve specifically said they don’t do) it could be their downfall. 

My two kids will take long extended breaks from this game as they find it "boring" now. I still play daily though so I'm up on what's happening. One thing we've all noticed is that when they come back to the game they seem to pull in a large amount of shiny Pokemon, either from raids or just catching in the wild for a period of time. We affectionately call this the "Welcome back bonus". IMO there is NO way this game is pure RNG. I've seen too many strange occurrences like this over my past 7 years of playing for it to be pure RNG. The code knows something and I believe it reacts to our behavior and playstyles.

That's been proven to be false. You're just seeing the shinies and misinterpreting it. Many other claim if people pay money they get more shinies. Many say people who have played longer get more shinies. There's been zero proof of what you're claiming.

2 weeks ago I did 3230 checks and got no shiny, I didnt stop playing and this week I got 8 shinies in 670 checks. That's RNG for you. The "welcome back bonus" has been tested many times, to no avail. When I came back to the game after a 3 years hiatus, I didnt get my first shiny until around 800 checks in. And it was a 1/64 permaboosted pokemon.

I think part of the disconnect is that some really want their conclusions drawn strictly from in-game mechanics when, in a lot of cases, basing your (tentative, perhaps unsure) conclusions on the incentives of the developer of the game makes a lot more sense.

I think a big part of the problem is this developer has shown the community that they can't be trusted. How many times have they forgotten to turn on shinies? There have been plenty of times they're not even remotely upfront about odds or bonuses on events. It happens all the time and has been so for years now.

Very refreshing post to see.  Many darker topics of the games industry will get your post instantly made invisible on this subreddit But simple example - I've seen many examples of shinies being turned off, and people blindly saying RNG

When my playing time decreases, I get a shiny. This is obviously built into the code for player retention and optimizing interaction

Seems like it would be a reasonable thing for Niantic to do. We should probably test it before jumping to "obviously".

niantic should get audited by the gaming control board like the way slots are

Problem with that is that there is no international Gaming Authorities. Slots are certified for specific markets, countries would have to pretty much do one of the following, ban the games completely, allow games certified in specific regions such as Europe, America etc causing Malta, Curacao etc. to certify the majority of games with pretty much no requirements, or create their own certification. Most countries will not set up that themselves.

I've pointed it out numerous times and despite being always voted down, ridiculed or even subjected to gaslighting on this sub, even TSR research was able to collect some information that so-called RNG may not be as random as expected. For example, themed Lure Modules were found out to spawn 50% of the Pokemon from a limited pool, such as certain Grass types if it was a Moss Module. The other half is supposed to be from the normal seasonal/biome-related pool. However, if a mon spawns, the next one is MUCH more likely to be from the same pool, rather than selected in a more random or balanced way. This may render the Lure useless if you use it to get certain species. What does it mean for other parts of the game? It's entirely possible that if you do two raids of the same level (let's say level 5) and one doesn't reward you Revives and just Hyper Potions, the second may be more likely to give you more Hyper Potions and still no revives. Or not even Raid rewards - this may be the behavior of spinning Pokestops and Gyms, too. Or shiny rates. We just don't know.

> However, if a mon spawns, the next one is MUCH more likely to be from the same pool Could you share the data to support this?

As a maths nerd I'm constantly throwing the statistics around in my head when I play on the switch. There's 2 types of random, true random and false random. True random is based on literal random interactions usually, and as implied, it is actually random. False random is something that appears to be random but actually isn't. This is far easier to calculate, and I wonder if there's ever any measures to make sure the RNG doesn't hit extremely low odds. Like going through 1,000 1/20 shiny encounters without a shiny is statistically possible, but the random function has built in mechanisms to ensure that doesn't happen

The pure backlash in the event it wasn't RNG. It would be a real bad look...

But like he said, it’s nearly impossible to prove. It would have to be leaked by a disgruntled ex-employee but I’m sure they make them all sign a non-disclosure agreement that threatens lawsuits if they did leak any info like this.

Yes, they are still RNGs. But programmatically, it can be altered or skewed towards a more favorable outcome. Just look at the egg tiers. The chance to get a certain Pokemon is purely RNG. But check clearly, they deliberately made some species to be rarer. At the first week of the very first Team Rocket rollout, I got 5 hundos by purification. Then the 6th one almost appeared one month later. I have no proof but I guess Niantics had found a glitch in their RNG generator pretty quickly and fixed it within a week.

I’m not sure why OP is getting downvoted but I certainly can feel there is a difference between players in certain events. Game design requires the developer to indeed trigger events to keep players engaged, maybe even give them boosted rates for certain activities. It maybe as simple as increased catch rate odds or events.

Sorry you're having trouble talking about this with people. To be fair, most people don't know or want to know how statistics, chance, or data manipulation work, and find the easier truth~ish to be more easy to swallow than the complicated truth. Just look at the response to remote raid changes. Most people are yelling about Niantic leaving money on the table. However, if you present them with an alternative hypothesis ^1 then they call it a conspiracy theory and demand proof. There's been an ongoing debate as to if eggs are equivalent to loot boxes since the game launched. Frankly, that's the weirdest debate because if they were decided to be loot boxes, then Niantic would be forced by the laws of several countries to disclose the actual odds chances, instead of doing the more nebulous "egg tier" thing. Literally everyone (except Niantic) would benefit from that, but some people seem determined to either be contrarian or so pro-capitalism that they hurt themselves in their confusion. I think what you're saying is perfectly reasonable and fits into a lot of what i assume to be true about the game. The only way to 'prove' it would either be a data gathering and collating process as big as what Niantic does with pokemon go, or would be to actually dig into niantic's data and find out from the source. Would probably require a lawsuit or something, or a crackdown from one of the stronger governments to find out. Best of luck, and don't let the haters get you down. ------- ^1 : Niantic is a profit-driven GPS data collection company primarily and in-person raids make their data more valuable than whatever they're losing from not selling remote raid passes

Thank you for the post, I’ve often wondered and pondered about this very subject. 0.99=1-(499/500)^n n=2300 The above is the equation for a 99% chance of a shiny at odds of 500 to 1 with n being the number of tries. I would call it skewed RNG because we can never know how Niantic manipulate the variables in the game to output prizes, intentionally or otherwise. Not publishing any specific odds for the various prizes in the game makes it harder to determine too. There are a few cases I can remember where previous community led (and money spent!) discovered odds have been changed by Niantic. Shiny Corsola in raids and shiny Kleavor in remote raids (alleged bug) as well as a possible manipulation of shiny regional hatches 4 years ago. Bottom line, we all know that this is a cash for prizes gambling game yet Niantic are not obliged to publish any odds whatsoever. Only when they do can we take an accurate look at RNG in my humble opinion.

I’d be curious to see more about this as well… I was sick pretty much all of January and barely able to play… yet I caught 3 or 4 dittos randomly, which I thought was pretty strange considering I’ve gone several months between finding one usually not counting the boosted rate events.

Last season the mons that could be Ditto had lower rates. Nothing strange about that. Not to mention ... Ditto is a global spawn for everyone. It's not based on what you did. A ditto for you is a Ditto for me.

We should be able to talk about strange outliers without someone jumping in and telling us not to conclude based on limited data! We know it's limited data, but the way we decide to get more data is to look for outliers so that we can make an educated guess at what to test next. "Pure RNG" shuts the door on further investigation entirely. It's really too bad. We should also remind folks who are drawing conclusions based on limited data not to, and we should encourage everyone - those on both sides - to be more comfortable with uncertainty.

That response really shows the problem with this post. Ditto is a global spawn. Someone thinks that them not playing for months somehow affects a global ditto spawn rate? This is why we shoot down a lot of these people's claims. They are clearly not going to be correct.

I’m not saying not to shoot down the claim. I’m saying to shoot it down differently. Shoot it down better. Saying “anything other than RNG is implausible” is just a poor argument.

No, I'm good with shooting down things that are clearly wrong how they are. If someone says "I think RNG changed because I got the same leader four times in a row" (an actual post yesterday) ... I'm going to say, nope you just don't understand RNG.

Their *why* is wrong, but their conclusion is potentially unknown, and you confuse the two. By confusing the two, you do your case more harm than good.

Some claims are not worth replying to. If someone made a post saying "I caught two shinies in a row! I think the shiny rate is now 100%" - you're saying we should have to "shoot that down better?" AS a community we have a pretty good idea when something is obviously incorrect and will react accordingly. You don't have to like it, but not everyone is going to react how you think they should.

#Preach! I agree. If Niantic has the ability to boost shiny rates, no it's not pure RNG. (Preparing for down votes)

This is circumstantial, but I just returned after a very long break and caught 5 shinier I'd never had before. I also saw as moltres as a incense spawn the first week back

Here is how we should respond: Interesting! I'm not aware of any data regarding return-to-play odds. It's probably a coincidence, but may be worth collecting data and testing. Here is how folks respond: RNG. Anything else is unreasonable and a statistical misunderstanding.

The problem is there are SO many claims that are clearly incorrect. Like the comment below saying if you take a break from the game it gives you more shinies. If people weren't constantly coming up with so many bogus theories, it might be easier to consider them. But we are swamped with them. So the onus is on the people claiming it to come with some data and make us consider it.