Looting hoodoo and how it affects you

[Slink]

Hello all-

There have been numerous questions regarding 'loot hoodoo" in guild tab of late.

Many questions about diplomacy and it's effect on loot drops from chests.

Here we go:
:D

Long time ago in a DDO far far away there was a post on these here forums from a individual who had a problem.

A big problem.

This individual posted that at level 7-8, or somesuch, he had never found anything better than masterworks..... ever.
This post went neglected and forgotten for.... maybe a week.

The individual was not quite ready to give up yet.

He posted again.

There were numerous replies about how high charisma should open chest.
There were numerous replies about how a high diplomacy score and a succesful diplo upon chest before opening.
All kinds of voodoo..

Even disrobing your character and dance/sneak backwards around a chest 3 times became commonplace in some of the more popular loot runs.

I kid you not.

Then appeared the unnamed developer who stated in that post:

At character creation there is a luck based roll that takes place.
Apparently individual had rolled low, very low.

What does this mean today?

Let me go back once more.
Not long after, all the 'hoodoo-voodoo-that-we-do' around chests was dismissed by one fell swoop.
No longer could you use diplomacy on chests or NPCs for end rewards.

Gone.
No mention in release notes.
Nothing, just gone. :(

Fast forward to present day.
Some time about 1 1/2 yrs ago or so, the ability to use diplomacy on chests and NPC's reappered from out of nowhere.
(methinks the developers knew and got tired of their own shoddy lootz!)

Nowdays, you can use diplomacy on chests once again.
Whomever has the highest diplo should be the one doing this.

Personally, if given the time while on my cleric (39 unbuffed diplo btw), I will verify the chest has submitted to various rituals.

1. Approach chest carefully, but lovingly.(sometimes /beg helps)
2. target chest.
3. cast recitation, prayer, and magic circle against evil (noone wants evil loot dangit!)
4. your results may vary.

Bottom line is, it comes down to your roll on the chest.

Speculation or superstition?
You decide.

S.

[Mythal]

the character luck roll on creation is the most unimaginably ******** thing ever conceived of in an MMO.

leave it to turbine to come up with it.

a friend of mine constantly gets +2 tomes....in a week of regular farming/raiding if he doesnt get at least 5, its a bad week. he usually nets 8-10. vorpals and all manner of greater bane etc are commonplace for him, he vendors alot of it.

i have one character that rolled incredibly low - ive never seen a +1 or +2 to my name, never even seen a named item. its been a lvl 20 character for well on a month and has ransacked so many lvl 17+ quests its not funny. i simply dont loot chests anymore with that character, aside from shroud and anything i manditorily recieve some craft item or something out of. looting chests has simply become a waste of my time on him.

funny enough, that character is also one of my stronger, and can solo most quests/raids in the game. go figure. best farming char = never gonna get a **** anyway. (has a decently high diplo too since its a CHA based).

i stopped taking this game serious a long time ago though...its just too silly to. ;)

[clanqui]

Don't be bad.

[Mysterium]

the character luck roll on creation is the most unimaginably ******** thing ever conceived of in an MMO.

leave it to turbine to come up with it.

a friend of mine constantly gets +2 tomes....in a week of regular farming/raiding if he doesnt get at least 5, its a bad week. he usually nets 8-10. vorpals and all manner of greater bane etc are commonplace for him, he vendors alot of it.

i have one character that rolled incredibly low - ive never seen a +1 or +2 to my name, never even seen a named item. its been a lvl 20 character for well on a month and has ransacked so many lvl 17+ quests its not funny. i simply dont loot chests anymore with that character, aside from shroud and anything i manditorily recieve some craft item or something out of. looting chests has simply become a waste of my time on him.

funny enough, that character is also one of my stronger, and can solo most quests/raids in the game. go figure. best farming char = never gonna get a **** anyway. (has a decently high diplo too since its a CHA based).

i stopped taking this game serious a long time ago though...its just too silly to. ;)

Turbine didn't come up with this, it's actually fairly standard. You see, computers can't generate random numbers. They're computers. In order to simulate randomness, games use algorithms called "pseudorandom number generators" or PRNGs. PRNGs require a "seed" or a number to start with. Many primitive PRNGs use the processor time of the machine they are running on as a seed. This looks a little more random than using a static value, but it is still cycling at a static rate and therefore fairly predictable and exploitable. Using more than one seed can further mix things up. In many games, there is a static seed assigned to a character that feeds one part of the algorithm.

[Mythal]

Turbine didn't come up with this, it's actually fairly standard. You see, computers can't generate random numbers. They're computers. In order to simulate randomness, games use algorithms called "pseudorandom number generators" or PRNGs. PRNGs require a "seed" or a number to start with. Many primitive PRNGs use the processor time of the machine they are running on as a seed. This looks a little more random than using a static value, but it is still cycling at a static rate and therefore fairly predictable and exploitable. Using more than one seed can further mix things up. In many games, there is a static seed assigned to a character that feeds one part of the algorithm.
ohh rly?!

hehe, ya thanks im actually a game programmer...was for 6 years anyhow, but not working on anything currently.
however random numbers can easily, and in every single case scenario i know of in any other game - online or offline - are generated actually more psuedo randomly vis a vis: on the fly. not a set standard random seed thats stuck with your character forever. the thing that turbine does isnt either simply a seed, its a weighted value. its an entire seed-weight that completely scales whatever loot algorithm they use to totally unrealistic and imbalanced proportions. so that those who roll a good seed always get very good loot and those who roll a bad one get total junk loot. there is no randomness, there is no cycling.

doing it that way is the most ********, i reiterate, unimaginative solution ever to a problem that really isnt much of a problem in programming terms in the first place. i mean, it actually takes MORE programming hassle to create and store a permanent random seed/weight value to a character's data structure than it would to simply roll RANDOMLY everytime a person opened a chest. time stamp random seed ftw! hell, take the persons IP address and jarble it randomly and use that as the random seed. there's thousands of ways other online games have done it. it doesnt really matter how you do it but this way is so obviously rediculously over the top it deserves a darwin award.

and thats not speculation ;). random number generation coding is one of the more trivial things to do in games...

[LordMond]

In my groups, the proceedure is rather simple:

Let me loot first, as I am roughly 97% sure to get all the crappy stuff that the loot table has to offer.

[Mysterium]

ohh rly?!

hehe, ya thanks im actually a game programmer...was for 6 years anyhow, but not working on anything currently.
however random numbers can easily, and in every single case scenario i know of in any other game - online or offline - are generated actually more psuedo randomly vis a vis: on the fly. not a set standard random seed thats stuck with your character forever. the thing that turbine does isnt either simply a seed, its a weighted value. its an entire seed-weight that completely scales whatever loot algorithm they use to totally unrealistic and imbalanced proportions. so that those who roll a good seed always get very good loot and those who roll a bad one get total junk loot. there is no randomness, there is no cycling.

doing it that way is the most ********, i reiterate, unimaginative solution ever to a problem that really isnt much of a problem in programming terms in the first place. i mean, it actually takes MORE programming hassle to create and store a permanent random seed/weight value to a character's data structure than it would to simply roll RANDOMLY everytime a person opened a chest. time stamp random seed ftw! hell, take the persons IP address and jarble it randomly and use that as the random seed. there's thousands of ways other online games have done it. it doesnt really matter how you do it but this way is so obviously rediculously over the top it deserves a darwin award.

and thats not speculation ;). random number generation coding is one of the more trivial things to do in games...

There are a few points to address here.

One, I highly doubt that the static character based seed is the only one going into the algorithm. If it is, the algorithm is beyond anything I've seen based on the output data I've seen since September. More likely, there are several seeds plugging into each roll, of which the static seed is one. If the loot rolls are divided up into subtables, this could be used to push a player economy by weighting certain characters rolls toward certain types of loot needed by other characters. This has been done in quite a few games.

Two, you keep saying random. As a programmer, I'm sure you understand that there is no random where computers are concerned. Arguably, there is no random in the universe. If you parse your code anything like you parse your English, however, I can understand where you would be confused by this.

Three, PRNGs are most certainly not trivial. MMORPGs in particular can be completely broken by a bad PRNG. PRNGs deriving a single seed from processor time are very easily cracked by anyone with a mind and little bit of time to collect data. In an MMORPG, having your PRNG cracked is a very, very bad thing.

Four, unless a person has a dynamic IP, his IP address is going to be a static seed just like the one in question. It can't be "jarbled" randomly, because there is no random. Any pseudorandom modification of that value would have to be done by the PRNG, which rather obviously defeats the whole purpose.

[clanqui]

PRNG's are a red herring. Assuming any sort of changing seed or even a long enough return value, even a bad PRNG is random enough that any patterns perceived at the user level of an MMORPG are going to be a product of the users mind and not the PRNG. The ways that PRNG's are not truly random are in their tendency to have slightly correlated repeating patterns over very large numbers of iterations. As in tens or hundreds of thousands of iterations. Far more than a human can accurately asses in a series of die rolls in a game, where the pattern is being spread out in a series of different rolls, some visible and some hidden.

These things bother mathematicians and matter for cryptography. They are not relevant for MMO's.

[theweehours]

Don't know of any loot hoodoo that works, but our regular group has some fairly standard unwritten rules:

One of the guys is guaranteed to pull some type of docent at least 30 - 40%of the time. To honor the will of the loot tables, we send any docents that no one needs to him.

Never leave thieve's tools of any modifier in the chest. Send them to the guy that ran out of tools in a quest almost two years ago. It's a good reminder.

It's safe to leave bull dung components in the chest at any time because all of us have plenty to go around already.

[Black_Canary]

There are a few points to address here.

One, I highly doubt that the static character based seed is the only one going into the algorithm. If it is, the algorithm is beyond anything I've seen based on the output data I've seen since September. More likely, there are several seeds plugging into each roll, of which the static seed is one. If the loot rolls are divided up into subtables, this could be used to push a player economy by weighting certain characters rolls toward certain types of loot needed by other characters. This has been done in quite a few games.

Two, you keep saying random. As a programmer, I'm sure you understand that there is no random where computers are concerned. Arguably, there is no random in the universe. If you parse your code anything like you parse your English, however, I can understand where you would be confused by this.

Three, PRNGs are most certainly not trivial. MMORPGs in particular can be completely broken by a bad PRNG. PRNGs deriving a single seed from processor time are very easily cracked by anyone with a mind and little bit of time to collect data. In an MMORPG, having your PRNG cracked is a very, very bad thing.

Four, unless a person has a dynamic IP, his IP address is going to be a static seed just like the one in question. It can't be "jarbled" randomly, because there is no random. Any pseudorandom modification of that value would have to be done by the PRNG, which rather obviously defeats the whole purpose.

DUUUUUUDEE....

The only point you need to know apparently is this: There is a number generated, somehow, perhaps randomly, perhaps magically, and it is set for your character to determine how good your loot will be forever more.

It's not really paramount to the situation to worry about how they generate these supposedly random numbers. This isn't programming 1.


...What I would like to know is if the number gets regenerated when I true reincarnate?

But yeah, I too am hating the char luck roll concept. I probably wouldn't have even played the game if I knew about it when I started. :/

[clanqui]

When I hear these rumours come back to me in PUGs, I will find a way to make you all pay.

[Slink]

When I hear these rumours come back to me in PUGs, I will find a way to make you all pay.

ha :p

[Arlith]

If anyone needs basterd swords. I am the one to ask. That's all my caster pulls these days. Nothing better than hitting up end reward guy for ToD and pulling a +x vicious basterd sword of greater ooze bane while the guy next to me pulls a +5 WoP rapier (no rr), saying thats the third WoP rapier he has pulled this week. Makes me wanna find a bell tower somewhere.

[Slink]

If anyone needs basterd swords. I am the one to ask. That's all my caster pulls these days. Nothing better than hitting up end reward guy for ToD and pulling a +x vicious basterd sword of greater ooze bane while the guy next to me pulls a +5 WoP rapier (no rr), saying thats the third WoP rapier he has pulled this week. Makes me wanna find a bell tower somewhere.

Nah, dont get mad...

Just run with Varsh, you guys can compare drop rates on bastard swords :cool:

[LordMond]

bastard swords

The PC term is "illegitimate progeny bladed combat device".

[Mysterium]

PRNG's are a red herring. Assuming any sort of changing seed or even a long enough return value, even a bad PRNG is random enough that any patterns perceived at the user level of an MMORPG are going to be a product of the users mind and not the PRNG. The ways that PRNG's are not truly random are in their tendency to have slightly correlated repeating patterns over very large numbers of iterations. As in tens or hundreds of thousands of iterations. Far more than a human can accurately asses in a series of die rolls in a game, where the pattern is being spread out in a series of different rolls, some visible and some hidden.

These things bother mathematicians and matter for cryptography. They are not relevant for MMO's.

You're right. The code that determines whether or not you hit in combat, how much you hit for, whether or not you are hit and for how much, whether or not your spells go through, how long your spells last, what loot you pull out of a chest and such is not relevant. After all, there is no way that an end user could collect a large amount of data, which is largely reported clientside, and analyze it in order to determine a pattern. That would be a completely unprecedented situation in all of gaming.

You win. I withdraw my point that MMORPGs need to have a PRNG that is not predictable at the end user level. Forgive my ignorance.

[MsEricka]

Proven fact - Naked monk dancing and intimidating the chest by the tank seems to work in ensuring that no one gets raid loot.

[GreyRogue]

Ok, I've rolled a 1 on either my Spot Forum Post check or my Spot Joke check. I am a very devoted lurker of these boards and I can't remember ever seeing a dev post that said that characters have a "luck" value determined at creation. Anyone have a link (or am I just missing the funny here)?

[clanqui]

The DC was higher on Spot Joke because some people are posting serious and some people are posting funny. And some people are doing both.

Your spot post score is fine. ;)

[Slink]

Ok, I've rolled a 1 on either my Spot Forum Post check or my Spot Joke check. I am a very devoted lurker of these boards and I can't remember ever seeing a dev post that said that characters have a "luck" value determined at creation. Anyone have a link (or am I just missing the funny here)?

Oh no, everything in OP is FACT.
Finding that thread is likely impossible since the forum update, about a year ago, that wiped the forums of all old, negelcted threads, remember?

Now if you are a true believer, you might even speculate that wiping the forums then was an attempted form of 'silencing the past' as far as this topic is concerned.

/showtinfoildomepiece on

I'm no conspiracy theorist but I'm not that naive either!
Even the old character creation screen used to mention how 'halflings are luckier'

Remember way back Mr. jan'06, when all the cool stuff was rr halfling and all the halflings pulled the cool non-rr stuff?
Uhm, yah I do.

The 'individual's' post appeared somewhere around the time right after threnal nerf.

I know for certain that some characters are luckier than others.
Remember when the stone of good luck or a luckblade was highly desirable? uh huh.
"Wait, don't open the chest, I got a stone of good luck ANDDDDD a luckblade"
people just got outta that guys way
"whoa dude, lemme look at that luckblade!"

I tested this theory during a hardcore reroll session in rook's gambit.
I kept track of how much coin dropped from breakables in Euphonia's Challenge (remember that quest?).
I decided on a halfling wizzy that averaged nearly twice the coin.
First run thru tempest spine, 2 +1 tomes and a POPX. (Fall '06 just so you realize this was when tomes were not common even in the +1 flavor)

/showtinfoildomepiece off

Uh huh, yah.

S.

[LordMond]

Looks like a job for......


http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w117/katiefuchs/Television/mythbusters.jpg

[Tynien]

Jamie and his Stache of True Seeing will sort this out once and for all.

[Mythal]

There are a few points to address here.

One, I highly doubt that the static character based seed is the only one going into the algorithm. If it is, the algorithm is beyond anything I've seen based on the output data I've seen since September. More likely, there are several seeds plugging into each roll, of which the static seed is one. If the loot rolls are divided up into subtables, this could be used to push a player economy by weighting certain characters rolls toward certain types of loot needed by other characters. This has been done in quite a few games.

Two, you keep saying random. As a programmer, I'm sure you understand that there is no random where computers are concerned. Arguably, there is no random in the universe. If you parse your code anything like you parse your English, however, I can understand where you would be confused by this.

Three, PRNGs are most certainly not trivial. MMORPGs in particular can be completely broken by a bad PRNG. PRNGs deriving a single seed from processor time are very easily cracked by anyone with a mind and little bit of time to collect data. In an MMORPG, having your PRNG cracked is a very, very bad thing.

Four, unless a person has a dynamic IP, his IP address is going to be a static seed just like the one in question. It can't be "jarbled" randomly, because there is no random. Any pseudorandom modification of that value would have to be done by the PRNG, which rather obviously defeats the whole purpose.

when you start insulting other players because their experience ingame and/or knowledge of working game mechanics exceeds (or differs) from your own....well, thats when nobody gives a **** what you have to say anymore.

gj.

you failed.

the fact remains - certain characters have better loot than others:

* my 12sorc/6pal/2rog on sarlona which is a powerhouse soloer and farmer is a useless character for said purpose because he gets masterwork weapons out in vale chests. i havent played him in awhile and will no doubt delete him because of this. there is no point to play him as the only way i can get loot is if someone else drops it to me in the chests. its simply belittling to even quest with him. thanks turbine.

* my current TR'd monk has an average'ish loot experience and it doesnt seem to have changed at all due to TR'ing. same build (+pastlife), relatively same stats (+2 con), same skills.....same general loot: i get a named drop 1 in 1000 chests, and my general loot is mediocre to decent, nothing ever exceptional, nothing ever total junk either (like my mr masterwork on sarlona).

* i have 1 friend who pulls every named item out of every chest. when he was a newbie he got 12 bloodstones just walking through desert, and didnt even know what they were, just that they sold for alot. +2 tomes drop like candy for him. i have 2 other friends who are almost as good at it. i do not farm, generally, anything, without 1 of them present on their characters that get the good loot. when i need something, i 2-man it with them and i get what i want. on the flip side i can solo or fill a group and run the same quests 20 times and never even see the item i want (or any valuable item at all), and then i 2-man it with one of them and it will drop garaunteed within 3 runs, along with other generally valuable loot. this experience and testing has not yet failed.

* every character i have has unfailingly continued to get the same standard of loot throughout any quest/chest i open with them. i have quickly defined what characters get better loot than others, and often for that reason alone i will play them more often. tukw my 16sorc/2pal/2rog just ran 9 shroud farm runs yesterday before completing and got 0 shards. i have looted a generous 6 or 7 medium shards, but have never looted one single small or large shard on him in over 70 shroud runs since i capped him. i get them from friends or by trading people who get them. soon i might not be running with anyone but our 6-man shroud zerg team because i at least know then that we will be getting everyone the shards and materials we need but i can pretty much garauntee you it wont be me getting the small and large shards.

given the above information, you can draw your own conclusions.
i know what mine are and being an engineer i can rather easily reverse engineer the type of mechanism they have invented for loot generation. they are the worste imaginable in any MMO ive ever had any experience with - whether i programmed on them or simply played them.

mysterium, all your talk is just...mysterious. nice big words but, they dont hide the fact that you dont have any actual experience in the matter.

the loot system in ddo is total rubbish and needs to be completely rethought.
i dont think that is really anything that anyone would debate.

the whole diplomacy on chest stuff etc that slink loves to tell the groups he is in i believe to be nonsense but i tested it out all day yesterday just for shiggles....apparently no difference.
some people gotta get their kicks, hey ;)

[Slink]

the whole diplomacy on chest stuff etc that slink loves to tell the groups he is in i believe to be nonsense but i tested it out all day yesterday just for shiggles....apparently no difference.
some people gotta get their kicks, hey ;)

No no, this isnt about me now.
One Mr. Fenderover asked repeatedly upon different occasions about the whole 'diplo' thang.

I dont mention it in groups either, however:

I find it funnier than hell the amount of people I see, random pug or shroud raid, yellin over the mic about how they got a high diplo, etc etc.
Seriously funny.

This thread should be valued for it's entertainment value. ;)

[Mysterium]

when you start insulting other players because their experience ingame and/or knowledge of working game mechanics exceeds (or differs) from your own....well, thats when nobody gives a **** what you have to say anymore.

gj.

you failed.

the fact remains - certain characters have better loot than others:



Please go back and read the post you quoted. You will notice that it only mentions the DDO PRNG specifically to state that it is likely pulling multiple seed values. The rest of the post merely points out fallacies in your previous statements about PRNGs in general. If you are going to reply to my posts, I must ask that you read them first.

I apologize if "nice big words" are mysterious to you. If it helps, you may type "define:[string]" into the Google search bar to pull up definitions for most words, i.e. define:random.

[Xeriphim]

You can use all the gimmicks in the world . It doesn't change that loots completly random . So the use of all the voodoo etc is simply just Urban legends . You can do all the dances , diplomacy , high charisma tactics but in the end it won't save you from pulling that master crafted dagger .

[clanqui]

You can use all the gimmicks in the world . It doesn't change that loots completly random . So the use of all the voodoo etc is simply just Urban legends . You can do all the dances , diplomacy , high charisma tactics but in the end it won't save you from pulling that master crafted dagger .

Fishermen in the trobriand islands do not approve of this post. ;)

[LordMond]

I was in a TS Raid the other day and the raid leader, once we'd defeated the last boss, asked that the person with the highest Diplo open the chests. A debate ensued as to whetehr or not Diplomacy had any effect at all on loot. The raid leader swore that, when you used Diplo on a chest, the game would respond with a sound. A low-pitched sound meant that the Diplo had failed while a high pitched sound meant that it had worked.

Could well be an urban myth. I know that I can't conform or deny since I have yet to put a single skill point in Diplomacy on any of my toons. If I tried it on a chest, everything for everyone would turn into normal Hide Armor- not even Masterwork.

But just to advance the debate...has anyone actually tried that and gotten the different sounds?

[Mythal]

ive heard the low pitch thudding sound but i believe that to be simply a result of using the skill on a world object...

i am not sure ive ever heard the high pitch sound but one shroud raid we did it sounded like it...my diplo isnt very high, around 20'ish or so....no points in it...
there was people running around spamming spells and talking in group tho so this couldve simply been my imagination or hearing something else.

i do not believe using diplo works at all tho but im up for testing, as the devs in this game have no idea how their own game works obviously, which is apparent by looking at pretty much any log or post they make. dev team at turbine are all spread out and not organized and 1 person works on one thing that nobody else knows about and in the end only the dev that worked on a specific item even has a clue of its existence usually.
pretty insane way to do development but its more than obvious thats how theyre doing it. read any devs post here on forums and 90% of them are saying "i dont know about that feature, so-and-so worked on it, not me".....serious lol

[Strakeln]

At character creation there is a luck based roll that takes place.
Apparently individual had rolled low, very low.S.

I dunno, Slink... did this "bad loot luck flag" really happen for DDO? It sounds to me like you're mixing this up with the story from another game (there is a semi-famous case from some other game, if only I could remember the name of it).

[clanqui]

I dunno, Slink... did this "bad loot luck flag" really happen for DDO? It sounds to me like you're mixing this up with the story from another game (there is a semi-famous case from some other game, if only I could remember the name of it).

wi flag (http://asheron.wikia.com/wiki/Wi_Flag) in Asherons Call, and the issue didn't have anything to do with the PRNG.

[Strakeln]

wi flag (http://asheron.wikia.com/wiki/Wi_Flag) in Asherons Call, and the issue didn't have anything to do with the PRNG.

That's the one!

[Slink]

I dunno, Slink... did this "bad loot luck flag" really happen for DDO? It sounds to me like you're mixing this up with the story from another game (there is a semi-famous case from some other game, if only I could remember the name of it).

shhhh :D

[Cabronsisimo]

is this system still effective? looking at the dates of the posts. i have to agree this is ********, if in truth loot is determined from a number asigned at char creation. no wonder i still havent seen a single tome in 17 levels.

[steeldocparker]

is this system still effective? looking at the dates of the posts. i have to agree this is ********, if in truth loot is determined from a number asigned at char creation. no wonder i still havent seen a single tome in 17 levels.

good to know info thnx all - im in my first week of testing out ddo and seeing if i like it - so far so good . on the content of looting the naked dancing stuff is just lmao material :) who came up *** tht practical joke? engineers-huh i once heard no body cant screw it up any bettter thn thy do :) when playing an asian based game break out ur wallets and get ready for a backwards ride - i had an asian cpt for 10 years - so im not speaking from ignorance . i worked in ship yards for 12 years ie. engineers put a cabin( house) where there is no deck (floor) never made since to me . the goods ones r whn they put a walkway in the middle of an engine ) - yet good info to know -if my toon drops **** rt off the bat i make a new one and try again bad loot always sux in any game - im 38 not 13 :)

[TechNoFear]

Two, you keep saying random. As a programmer, I'm sure you understand that there is no random where computers are concerned. Arguably, there is no random in the universe.

There are many 'random' things in the universe.

I suggest some reading on TRNG devices (such as the UKs ERNIE series or SSL processor cards).

True Random Number Generators are based on random physical phenomenon such as radioactive decay rates, thermal noise or clock drift.