Birlic said:There are two problems with your experiment:
1. it uses a different random number generator - unless the SoD server is hooked up to a TI calculator to get rand() results, which I doubt
2. it uses a uniform distribution
The outcome of a resist check in SoD is probably the result of a lot of filtering (by level, skill, specialization points) and that may change the distribution if not done carefully. I would suspect that's the cause for people getting many resists in a row. If it were simply the mean/expectation/"resist rate", we'd be getting much higher resist rates in experiments like jhessal's.
Yes you are right I think. Plus everyone talks about "resists in a row", which has no value unless you are the only player on the server. They are taking samples that look "in a row" to them, but ignores all of the countless randoms done by the server for other events happening simultaneously. People assume they own the random number generator, but they share it across the server.
Also, had you cast a fraction of a second earlier or later, it would have changed the outcome of the random generated but not necessarily the outcome (hit, resist, or partial resist). Your timing has an impact on the result.
Finally, if "random" is not being random, then its predictable and there aren't any posts here that properly predict an upcoming roll. Just because you suspect it might be a resist, doesn't mean it will be. Predictable is when you can look at previous results, and then in about 95% of your guesses or more you correctly guess the result. Its impressive if you can do that with "/rand 1 1000", and you are free to try.
The problem you will have is that timing is a factor in the random result, and it skews the answers, and it interferes with predictability.