@punkUser Want to make some money to fund another research project? Here's what you do:

1. Offer a service where players mail their dice to you.
2. Make it clear that they won't get these dice back.
3. You will run through a few thousand rolls with each die using your auto-roller.
4. You will then mail a report back to them with the results, maddeningly confirming or denying their suspicions or superstitions. Every once in a while someone's going to get a 5% or so clutch die and howl "I knew it!". I know I would.
5. The dice will be thrown out, or perhaps kept for research and demonstrations.
   • With enough winning and losing dice collected, you could even run a demonstration by playing around 6 games or so with them, to show off just how much of a difference they make over the course of a long tournament. Make a video! With a PSA message of "this is why we should share dice"!

Yes, you're wickedly preying on peoples' superstitions. But it's for science! And also a bunch of us would love to see how off our dice are, if only to condemn ourselves to the knowledge that our dice were pretty mundane and it really is just how we're flying.

More seriously, I also want to express my gratitude for the veracity of your methods. It would have been so easy to just throw together a bad experiment and write an article about it, like everyone does these days (how many articles have people shoved in my face extolling the virtues of coffee, wine, injecting Gogurt directly into your veins, etc, or lamenting the evils of some product, all based on severely flawed or faked studies). It's frick'n refreshing to see really solid results and feel like we can meaningfully discuss their implications!

I look forward to sharing dice from now on, if nothing else then to make both of us feel good about the results they're producing.

22 minutes ago, Wazat said:

@punkUser Want to make some money to fund another research project? Here's what you do:

Hah, you're definitely not the only one... a few folks who knew I was working on this project really wanted me to test their dice even after I told them I wouldn't send them back if I did

It would be fun, but unfortunately the servo I was using broke during some of the final testing of other dice. I'll be coming up with a workaround so that I can test some Gravity Dice and so on but I'm not sure I want the eat the expense of engineering a system robust enough to do many more millions of cycles. If I was doing it over again I'd probably try and come up with a way of doing it without servos as the forward/back stop/start cycles seem to just destroy even the best ones after a while. Unfortunately that would basically be a new project in and of itself at this point.

22 minutes ago, Wazat said:

With enough winning and losing dice collected, you could even run a demonstration by playing around 6 games or so with them, to show off just how much of a difference they make over the course of a long tournament. Make a video! With a PSA message of "this is why we should share dice"!

@Brunas incidentally suggested earlier that if people don't believe I should just find the most biased dice possible and go crush some tournament with them then see if people care

Kidding aside, I don't really have a horse in the race in terms of "convincing the community to care" or anything, though I've already gotten some amount of negative backlash about the suggestion that people should consider sharing dice at higher levels of competition. Realistically I just did a fun project to satisfy my own curiosity but the results were interesting enough that I thought others might enjoy reading through them too.

22 minutes ago, Wazat said:

More seriously, I also want to express my gratitude for the veracity of your methods. It would have been so easy to just throw together a bad experiment and write an article about it, like everyone does these days (how many articles have people shoved in my face extolling the virtues of coffee, wine, injecting Gogurt directly into your veins, etc, or lamenting the evils of some product, all based on severely flawed or faked studies). It's frick'n refreshing to see really solid results and feel like we can meaningfully discuss their implications!

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it! I definitely take some pride in being rigorous with stuff like this and supporting any claims I'm making, so it's nice to hear that is appreciated. Indeed I've read a lot of those kinds of articles as well, hence my somewhat troll-y thread title

Wow. Supreme effort. Thank you for posting, very interesting.

Shared with my local facebook group. We're already blaming our dice, now that we have proof. Lol.

51 minutes ago, Wazat said:

This is the attitude I see among at least some pro players in a lot of games

I don't know if "pro" is applicable to X-Wing. That denotes players who play for money or do it for a living. We don't have that, we have some established really good players.

51 minutes ago, Wazat said:

And I saw behavior at our last Regionals that left us flabbergasted, such as deliberately switching from assigned tables to get better matchups and maximize their MOV.

Huh? How does that happen?

1 hour ago, Wazat said:

    And   I saw behavior at our last Regionals that left us flabbergaste   d  ,  such as deliberately switching from assigned ta  b  les to get better matchups and maximize their MOV.  

This is...super duper obviously cheating. You should report this behavior if you ever see it!

BTW, I'm incorrectly using pro to identify a class of (often self-described) professional-skill players, not people playing for money. My use of the word comes from a decade or two ago when getting paid to play games was a silly and spurned idea. "Pro" players are under a lot of pressure to win and keep their ladder rankings, or win prizes, or live up to their ego. Not all of them cheat; in some communities cheating is very rare. In others, it's the norm. Once some players are known to be cheating, that puts a really heavy drive on other players to match the methods, so it can snowball if not caught and culled.

1 minute ago, Tlfj200 said:

I haven't really experiences this, honestly. Is there a story?

Our regionals were interesting. We got some out-of-state guys who badgered the TO constantly, and with time (mainly after the tournament ended) he started to figure out why they were keeping him so busy. They deliberately went to different tables to not face each other (telling the other players they'd gotten it wrong or that the TO had announced the matchups wrong), and to get good matchups to maximize their MOV. They convinced the TO they'd done it by accident and he had to do a lot of finagling in the application to get everything fixed after that (later he realized he should have given both players a loss). We suspect they deliberately badgered the TO to try to exhaust him and extract concessions from him on being in arc, to keep his eyes off bad behavior, etc -- keep him exhausted and he can't argue with you. One guy told the TO to come over and count his damage deck for him. Another pair of players (maybe the same that were manipulating MOV earlier) decided to roll off right from the get-go on the match before lunch, instead of actually fight each other; we suspect this was to avoid messing up each other's MOV, given the other shenanigans we saw. (I suspect MOV manipulation is actually a huge problem in smaller tournaments when players are motivated enough, and others just don't realize how much it's happening; we had amazing prizes at our regionals, plus a lot of casual players and only one TO, and this attracted the wrong people)

I forget the other crap they pulled; I wrote a post about it somewhere on the 1.0 wiki with a lot of the behavior but probably not all of it (TO didn't share everything, just what burned him up the most). Suffice it to say, the TO was pissed as **** at how much he'd let them get away with, simply because he'd been so tired and exasperated, and was so used to trusting players and being nice. He's been steeling himself against those methods in case we have that same group (or someone similar) returns, and we will also try having more TOs. He's now prepared to just throw people out for suspected unsportsmanlike behavior, despite threats of not being able to run regionals anymore if the players complain and tell a story to FFG (which was apparently a threat? I'm fuzzy on the details, it's been a while).

I've seen a lot of cheating in video games; it's amazing the lengths people will go to even when there's no prize. Replacing models on the client side is just one of many methods the "pro" players swore by in the days of Quake, since there wasn't any client-side asset validation. So if you replace the "invisible player" model (which is just a pair of eyes) with a giant yellow block, players aren't invisible now. Replace the standard player model with a giant model with spikes coming out of it, and any time the engine decides to render another player, you'll see where they are even through a wall (later engines stopped rendering players that were behind walls to try to cull this cheat). In Starcraft players would install cheats cleverly called "trainers", allowing them to have infinite money or full vision in multiplayer. I remember reading very spirited arguments in the message boards as a kid, and trying to understand why someone would argue that they should be allowed to run a program that cheats for them, because they need that competitive advantage, because surely other players are doing it.

Watching a streaming player's stream while playing against them to know exactly where they are is a favorite modern method. Some competitive ladder games are overrun with macro bots that play the game for you, because the players don't want to put in the work to climb the ladder, and they have their randomized allies and the macro bot do it for them (DOTA2 comes to mind). I remember in Quake (two decades ago) the community was brazened about their methods, and the excuse was always "All the other players are doing it!" or "If it helps you win why not do it? You're just cheating yourself if you don't use every possible advantage!".

And in high school I know people talked a lot about how to stack and shuffle their MTG decks to put the right cards at the top. That was over a decade ago; I wonder if they were actually doing what they discussed and practiced, and if they got caught. I've heard of people getting banned from MTG tournaments because they offered to share their prizes with their opponent if the opponent conceded and let them continue on to the finals. It's a pity we don't have harsher rules on that in X-Wing -- like I said, I think MOV manipulation is probably more common that people realize.

Damage decks are an interesting thing to consider in X-Wing, and it takes less effort than vetting your dice. If you can control which crits you're taking, you can have a major advantage. Nobody thinks to count your deck. If you just so happen to be missing... oh let's say one or both copies of Damaged Engine, that's only 1 or 2 of 33 cards; no one will notice. And Damaged Engine is terrifying for some ships; its absence may provide a strong advantage indeed. Or let's say you find Hull Breach to be particularly onerous for your high-hull Decimator or Ghost. Cards can go missing, it was an accident I swear.

I mention this because someone at regionals had sticky fingers, probably a Kylo player, and a lot of players (including me!) discovered they were missing multiple damage cards from their decks. I suspect the sticky fingers player did so by accident not malice, and some cards could have gone missing before regionals because it's so hard to track. No one thinks to check their deck. The player who demanded the TO walk over and count his deck for him accidentally revealed this snafu. Had people not started counting their decks to mock him or just out of caution, no one would have known. And it's entirely possible that some players were deliberately flying with certain cards missing, and only counted and announced their missing cards when everyone else was doing so: best way to fly under the radar. Was anyone actually deck-cheating? No idea. But it opened my eyes to just how easy it would be: I never thought to count their decks, and in fact I'd never thought to count my own until then. Now I count my deck on occasion just to make sure nothing has snuck away... but it'd be awkward to constantly count the opponent's deck in a tournament.

Add to that the different-sized mine tokens and maneuver templates (including FFG's own "advantage templates"), the looseness of dials in the dial upgrade kits (making it easy to purposely or accidentally adjust a maneuver), the opportunities to see what an opponent is dialing in if you pay attention or have a spotter buddy, myriad MOV manipulation opportunities, etc... X-Wing has many pressure points someone could attack if they wanted a competitive advantage. "Vetted Dice" (selected for better results) are just one more thing people could abuse to gain an unfair advantage, and it actually takes work. The apparent rarity of abuses is a testament either to the good nature of the community, or the community's unawareness of problems.

And despite all this? I suspect cheating and other unsportsmanlike conduct is still pretty rare. At least in my area, mainly based on the camaraderie of our community and sportsmanship of the people I know and play against. I think a few communities or players will be toxic, but most of us are in it for a good game.

32 minutes ago, Wazat said:

ens and maneuver templates (including FFG's own "advantage templates"), the looseness of dials in the dial upgrade kits (making it easy to purposely or accidentally adjust a maneuver),

that drives me crazy. I only use dial covers since 2.0. just easier for storage. but I got one dial specifically thats super lose. I put a little rubber gasket in there to help make it tighter because I would often put it down for a 2 hard, lift it and be a 3 sloop.

3 minutes ago, Wiredin said:

that drives me crazy. I only use dial covers since 2.0. just easier for storage. but I got one dial specifically thats super lose. I put a little rubber gasket in there to help make it tighter because I would often put it down for a 2 hard, lift it and be a 3 sloop.

Yea, I've been meaning to paint the insides of the newer dial covers (resistance, fo) because they're so maddeningly loose; hopefully a layer of paint will be enough. I just stopped using them because they were untrustworthy. The old Rebel, Empire, and Scum dials are fine, but the new faction dials require me to shove crap behind the dial to grip it. Reminds me of trying to keep ship numbers in the medium bases because they are all the built the wrong size. FFG needs to tighten up some of its design & manufacturing.

We may be lucky that the dice aren't much worse.

I really expected the results to be much more skewed, but maybe it’s just mine that are actually that bad.

@Wazat paint didn't help mine. all of mine are painted in and out. primed, painted, and cleared. didn't tighten it up enough. the little rubber gasket worked tho. I got them from the Lego store.

I tried sharing dice at my last trial. my mistake was that I actually still BROUGHT my own dice.

Almost all of my opponents gave me weird looks and said they preferred to use their own dice.

At the time, I didn't remember I had the tournament right to use the same dice, but even if it had occurred to me, it would've been the equivalent to escalation and turn an awkward moment into an awkward game.

Again...I guess my mistake was that I brought dice at all...

On the flip side, how do people feel if someone manages to filter out their dice that have a bias towards blanks?

48 minutes ago, Koing907 said:

On the flip side, how do people feel if someone manages to filter out their dice that have a bias towards blanks?

Did you adjust the "randomness" of your dice in any way? Then you have created a bias!

We have a guy locally that we joke with him about how his dice always roll 4 crits on 3 red dice. Many have shared his dice hoping for some of that specialness, turns out its just a visual event that everyone remembers when he rolled 3 crits on Range One 1.0 Vader and added another crit. I honestly don't think he's done that since. Perception is a powerful thing and we won't let him live that down!

4 hours ago, Wazat said:

(remember the guy who got in trouble for spinning dials at Worlds?

I am not familiar with it is their a link?

2 minutes ago, heckathornjeff said:

I am not familiar with it is their a link?

Link! (one of many, I just grabbed the first I found. Does someone have a better one?)

Assuming I remember right, what happened is Mike (one of our local guys!) set up a great block, and his opponent started nervously picking up his dials and fidgeting with them, eventually changing the dial from a game-ruining bump into a better maneuver. Mike was distracted with performing his maneuvers and didn't see this (didn't find out until after the match), but it was all caught on live stream and people watching rightfully lost their minds. No one could believe the brazened cheating; that kind of thing wasn't supposed to happen in x-wing.

Initially the guy got a slap on the wrist and Mike got no compensation; Mike lost that match and didn't recover his rankings after that. However, with additional assessment (and presumably a lot of pressure from the community), FFG later punished the cheating player with a loss, and gave Mike a full-expenses-paid invite to the next year's Worlds. They couldn't reinstate his position in the rankings -- too much had happened since then -- but they tried to make it right. As I understand it, he had fun just flying janky stuff for his free Worlds trip, and didn't focus on winning. He also laughed about how many "pity prizes" he got from his local buddies. I gave him an a-wing I'd painted green (poorly -- my skills have improved since then), as a way of saying "you're awesome for taking it so well!".

After the cheat he was upset at first, but doesn't seem to harbor ill will against the player (he got over it pretty quickly). Some of the guys who were there say they figure the guy just got nervous... those nerves got the better of him and he made a mistake. That's a lot more generous that I'd have been, but it's probably the right way to go. He was punished, his opponent eventually got compensated, and the punishment isn't a lifelong ban -- he can come back to playing, wiser and more honest. I like that.

Still, it sent shockwaves through the community. Cheating was something that's supposed to happen in other games; our community was supposed to be different. But just like those other games, when there's enough pressure to win, it will override some players' scruples and cause them to either use heat-of-the-moment or premeditated cheats.

Dial Spinning is easier to detect than "vetting" your dice for better odds, tinkering with your damage deck, MOV manipulation, etc. It's the one big, obvious incident we caught, and that a lot of people remember.

Also, the memes were fantastic. 3.2 Company (the podcast that recorded the cheating) even sold fidget spinners that said "Spin this, not dials". I still have one somewhere, I think.

8 hours ago, Tlfj200 said:

Out of curiosity, are you always up front about your biased dice before every tournament game?

I think the discrepancy here is, I suspect most of us actually expect the D8 to be near 1/8th chance per side. If we do have that assumption/expectation, then we would perceive you trying to bypass that as circumventing the rules and expectations of the game.

You have a different expectation - that everyone will actually go through and try and game their dice.

I'm firmly on the side that the dice are simply supposed to be random number generators, with a known expected set of values and probabilities. Thus, I consider any attempt to bypass that cheating.

Also, you and I (and now, likely, and hopefully, others) will be sharing a common dice pool. So now you'll have to focus on biasing your squad to lean into your biased dice.

(Also, we're going to try and push to make the shared dice pool a random selection too).

Yes, I am always up front about my dice.

I think an assumption about a significant number of players going through some sort of selection process to find (or at least attempt to find) dice that give better than average results is warranted, both because of how simple it is to visually inspect FFG's dice for defects and because of the well of online documentation of people dunking their dice into salt water solutions (and again, sure, this method is dubious at best. But the efficacy of the one technique is not as important as the fact that clearly people are making the effort to select for better dice).

My objection to being asked to participate in a shared pool is simple enough (and I hope this does not come across as too pithy or snide; I'm not trying to be): it isn't yet mandatory at most events, and so if I participate in a shared pool while someone else with positively biased dice plays with those at another table, I'm now at a disadvantage in terms of tournament placement (my individual game is fair, yes, but tournaments encompass more than just my individual game).

If shared pools were always enforced and/or if events began supplying all dice, that would be fine - but I do not see how it is fair to expect players to just arbitrarily accept a disadvantageous position. MOV does matter quite a bit.

8 hours ago, gennataos said:

@President Jyrgunkarrd - Are you a person people would know? Like, could we find your name in a tournament on List Fortress? Have you placed high in a Hyperspace Trial or above and can link us to that event? 

Ha, I wish. I am neither good enough to play at that level nor do I have the resources to trek out to major events.

I just play at local prize events on Vancouver Island (which is fine by me; as I understand it, most big events stopped offering prizes, and IMHO it just isn't worth it to go through a whole day worth of competitive X-Wing if there isn't a prize).

12 hours ago, Ysenhal said:

Building a list for advantage, by whatever method, is an intended part of the game.

Dice are part of the game mechanics, but are intended to provide a fair, random distribution. They don't always achieve this due to practical limitations. There is a rule allowing players to request use of shared components (including dice), and marshals / TOs to enforce use of shared components, which exists as a measure to counteract use of odd components. There is also a sanctioned dice app which produces more fair results.

There is also a clause under "unsporting conduct" which prohibits abusing the rules. Many players (and TOs) would regard deliberately selecting official dice which are biased due to a manufacturing defect to be an abuse of the rules. This could be compared with the rules for "margin of error", which acknowledges that some margin of error is allowable so that games can proceed at a reasonable pace, but forbids abusing this margin of error for advantage; by analogy, dice have a margin of error in their manufacturing process, but this should not be deliberately abused for advantage.

Hm. This is a fair point I hadn't fully considered (I would quibble a bit with it; the level of intent behind ship point costs is demonstrably hazy, for example, with mistakes clearly being made and then corrected).

But sure, I would concede to your argument that there is a social contract in place for building a list whereas the same contract doesn't exist for selecting dice. That still does leave the question hanging though about why one should eschew a practice that grants an advantage in competitive play when one knows fully well that other players will be doing it and there isn't currently a uniform safeguard against it (...this seems a bit like the issue of using an odds calculator when playing online poker. You're never supposed to do it, but everyone does because no venue has a means of protecting you from opponents who do this. So you either use one yourself to negate the disadvantage, or you have to accept that everyone else with be getting superhuman help while you fruitlessly abstain from the practice).

5 hours ago, Wazat said:

This has to be my favorite post in the whole thread.

This is the attitude I see among at least some pro players in a lot of games, though I'd honestly hoped X-Wing was different. (remember the guy who got in trouble for spinning dials at Worlds? We couldn't believe it. X-Wing is better than that! And I saw behavior at our last Regionals that left us flabbergasted, such as deliberately switching from assigned tables to get better matchups and maximize their MOV. Players obsessed with winning will justify anything). In Magic The Gathering people look for ways to stack their deck with the way they shuffle. Back in the days of Quake, people used to replace models and sounds so they could easily see opponents (even through walls sometimes) and gain a competitive advantage. I'm sure someone out there has a buddy standing behind his opponent and signaling to him which maneuvers they're dialing in.

When someone is more focused on winning than on winning fairly, everything they can get away with becomes fair game. But it's not fair, it's not honest, and it's not allowed.

The fact that the right dice can double the effectiveness of Heroic without any point cost investment, or have the same weight as a focus token on defense, shows just how much of a competitive advantage selected dice can offer. And you're arguing that you should be allowed to produce this advantage, and not share it with your opponent. Or in other words, you don't believe you should have to win only by the merits of your skill; you also need help from the dice that your opponent doesn't get. You can be better than that . There's no good reason to be relying on altered dice odds to help you win, and if you believe in yourself as a competent player, then a shared & fair dice pool should be something you embrace.

Players can make all the arguments and excuses they want, but stacking your dice to favor you is unsportsmanlike, if not outright cheating. Dice are a part of the game that is explicitly meant to be random, and you're trying to tweak that component's randomness to favor you. It's like using tricks to shuffle your MTG deck in your favor (e.g. by marking the sides of cards in some subtle way and learning to shuffle them into place). If you have a problem with the random component of the game, this is the wrong way to address that.

Shared Dice Pools are the correct way to fix this competitive advantage -- it puts you BACK on a level playing field so you struggle to cheat effectively. 

You have every right to opt out of playing the game. Refuse to share your dice and that's exactly what you're doing -- it's right there in the rules. Any TO worth their salt will inform you that you're sharing, or you're leaving.

Shared dice pool prevents your opponent from gaining an advantage you don't gain, and it prevents you from gaining an advantage over them. What exactly is the problem with fairness? If you're so upset that other players could be tweaking their dice, then that's all the more reason to embrace a shared pool, randomly choosing which player provides which color of dice.

This is pretty mean spirited.

You're comparing my selecting of dice with actually tampering with game components, lying to opponents, sleight of hand, harassing organizers, etc. Fair enough that the dice are supposed to be random... but they aren't. You seem to be saying that I'm a slimeball for going to a competitive gaming environment where I have a reasonable expectation that a substantial amount of players have gone through some selection process for their dice and therefore did the same?

I have no interest in WAAC attitudes; biasing my dice out of principle when my opposition is doing that seems less WAAC and more just trying to be competitive within the context of an event that demands competitive behaviour.

@punkUser - I painted my Hyperspace attack dice (where the hit, crits, and eyeballs were) because they were hard to read. Did I just mess up my dice?

11 minutes ago, President Jyrgunkarrd said:

This is pretty mean spirited.

You're comparing my selecting of dice with actually tampering with game components, lying to opponents, sleight of hand, harassing organizers, etc. Fair enough that the dice are supposed to be random... but they aren't. You seem to be saying that I'm a slimeball for going to a competitive gaming environment where I have a reasonable expectation that a substantial amount of players have gone through some selection process for their dice and therefore did the same?

I have no interest in WAAC attitudes; biasing my dice out of principle when my opposition is doing that seems less WAAC and more just trying to be competitive within the context of an event that demands competitive behaviour.

True, it was pretty mean-spirited, but I feel strongly about "competitive advantage" tricks taking over a game. I've heard the excuse "but everyone is doing it" all my life in competitive play. We should correct the problem, not embrace and exploit it.

Unsportsmanlike behavior isn't justified just because you suspect your opponent might be doing it -- look at the battle against doping in sports. Making the excuse just proliferates the problem, and it's still just an excuse. I'm sure as **** not impressed when someone saying everyone else was doing it -- no, you're doing it, and if other players start, chances are it was in response to you.

If you're genuinely worried other players are doping their dice, insist on a shared pool, because that sweeps the legs out from under the problem. Encourage your community to embrace the practice wholesale -- send them here to see for themselves why it's important. That's a far more fair and appropriate solution than joining the dopers, and you could be the one who starts the movement in your area.

BTW, I wonder if "Dice Doping" should be the term for this. It sounds more clear than "Dice Vetting". What does everyone think?

4 hours ago, Wazat said:

Yea, I've been meaning to paint the insides of the newer dial covers (resistance, fo) because they're so maddeningly loose; hopefully a layer of paint will be enough. I just stopped using them because they were untrustworthy. The old Rebel, Empire, and Scum dials are fine, but the new faction dials require me to shove crap behind the dial to grip it. Reminds me of trying to keep ship numbers in the medium bases because they are all the built the wrong size. FFG needs to tighten up some of its design & manufacturing.

We may be lucky that the dice aren't much worse.

Wrap tape around the axle of the dial holder. It will add more thickness than paint and last longer.

17 hours ago, Xeletor said:

Just because this reminds me of it, here's a great article on perception of randomness, it explains many fallacies like expecting some hits after a streak of blanks:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c08a/b58e5cdeaa040ac209ac6d66cd802d9c7492.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjOgMS69fTiAhWT7KYKHQT7AwgQFjAAegQIBhAB&usg=AOvVaw3oNM3b5C91fmG5G8h7Aorn

Finally got to giving this a look - this is actually pretty awesome. I've read quite a few articles on randomness but this one is more about trying to sort out *why* we have certain cognitive biases and heuristics. Very interesting read, thanks for linking!

38 minutes ago, President Jyrgunkarrd said:

I have no interest in WAAC attitudes; biasing my dice out of principle when my opposition is doing that seems less WAAC and more just trying to be competitive within the context of an event that demands competitive behaviour.

Curiously do you have any evidence that the majority of players are doing this by the way? I mean I know of several examples of people admitting to doing it or even being up front as you are (which is way better than doing it but trying to hide it), but from asking around I still get the impression that the vast majority do not. And even within those who do it's usually stuff on the level of "I rolled them 20 times and took the ones with the most crits", which is obviously meaningless, and certainly isn't even on the level of effort that you are describing with measuring, weighing or otherwise inspecting the physical attributes objectively.

Anyways I would still be surprised to find myself in the minority on considering this unsporting/cheating, but if people have evidence to the contrary I'd be interested. (Aside: I definitely found myself in the minority fighting back against normalizing advantage templates and abusing the space between the nubs, so maybe I'm just hopelessly naive ;)).

39 minutes ago, BlastyMcBlasterFace said:

@punkUser - I painted my Hyperspace attack dice (where the hit, crits, and eyeballs were) because they were hard to read. Did I just mess up my dice?

Nah, it shouldn't make much difference as long as you didn't get any paint on the flat part of the faces (and thus alter the outside geometry non-trivially). Indeed the data supports the notion that the center of gravity skew from the indented symbols and paint is probably not a significant factor in randomness of the dice at the levels we are talking about.

1 hour ago, punkUser said:

Curiously do you have any evidence that the majority of players are doing this by the way? I mean I know of several examples of people admitting to doing it or even being up front as you are (which is way better than doing it but trying to hide it), but from asking around I still get the impression that the vast majority do not. And even within those who do it's usually stuff on the level of "I rolled them 20 times and took the ones with the most crits", which is obviously meaningless, and certainly isn't even on the level of effort that you are describing with measuring, weighing or otherwise inspecting the physical attributes objectively.

Anyways I would still be surprised to find myself in the minority on considering this unsporting/cheating, but if people have evidence to the contrary I'd be interested. (Aside: I definitely found myself in the minority fighting back against normalizing advantage templates and abusing the space between the nubs, so maybe I'm just hopelessly naive ;)).

I've used the same 6 core set dice since I started playing and they seem to roll pretty good so I kept using them. 10/10 rigorous dice rigging by me

3 hours ago, punkUser said:

Curiously do you have any evidence that the majority of players are doing this by the way? I mean I know of several examples of people admitting to doing it or even being up front as you are (which is way better than doing it but trying to hide it), but from asking around I still get the impression that the vast majority do not. And even within those who do it's usually stuff on the level of "I rolled them 20 times and took the ones with the most crits", which is obviously meaningless, and certainly isn't even on the level of effort that you are describing with measuring, weighing or otherwise inspecting the physical attributes objectively.

Anyways I would still be surprised to find myself in the minority on considering this unsporting/cheating, but if people have evidence to the contrary I'd be interested. (Aside: I definitely found myself in the minority fighting back against normalizing advantage templates and abusing the space between the nubs, so maybe I'm just hopelessly naive ;)).

No, I don't have evidence that it this is majority-of-players behaviour... but in my mind it hardly needs to be. Even if it is only something like 1 in 10 players selecting for better dice, I don't see why it is incumbent on me to just accept that level of disadvantage.

If the community can successfully lobby for all events to supply the dice, fine and great, I'm on board. Until then, I'm not interested in lowering my chances at winning TT accessories that have a nice resale value (because of MOV impact) in an environment where some people share dice and some people don't.

Kudos for the creative work.

Some of the replies on here really do make me feel like I have a life though, guys it's a game and a hobby, no need to take it so seriously 🙂