Star Citizen Lies, Ramblings, Jpegs, and Bullshit

[DemonInvestor]

Today's funnies...

Keep in mind, Benfords law isn't actually a law. Many distributions won't adhere to it and will still be real data.
wikipedia:
---
Criteria for distributions expected and not expected to obey Benford's law

A number of criteria – applicable particularly to accounting data – have been suggested where Benford's law can be expected to apply and not to apply.[55]

Distributions that can be expected to obey Benford's law

    When the mean is greater than the median and the skew is positive
    Numbers that result from mathematical combination of numbers: e.g. quantity × price
    Transaction level data: e.g. disbursements, sales

Distributions that would not be expected to obey Benford's law

    Where numbers are assigned sequentially: e.g. check numbers, invoice numbers
    Where numbers are influenced by human thought: e.g. prices set by psychological thresholds ($1.99)
    Accounts with a large number of firm-specific numbers: e.g. accounts set up to record $100 refunds
    Accounts with a built-in minimum or maximum
---

So while this is a first nice start to question said numbers, it's saddly not enough to actually claim that the provided data is true/false.

[dsmart]

Keep in mind, Benfords law isn't actually a law. Many distributions won't adhere to it and will still be real data.

That's not relevant. It is still widely used. And the 'law' is a mathematical term, not a legal one.

If you want, you can go read the rest of this from the real Goon accountants. Start from page 1026 to 1036

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3898069&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1026

[DemonInvestor]

That's not relevant. It is still widely used. And the 'law' is a mathematical term, not a legal one.

And i was using it in a mathematical context. It's no law - it's a random occurens within certain data sets, so common that people think it's reasonable to assume certain data sets should adhere to it, while there's absolutely no LAW (like in physical or mathemtical) in place to dictate than any single given data set should ahdere to it. Which is why in accounting it's only used as an indicator (among dozens) to get hints what to look out for specifically - as no accountant company in the world has time to do deeper checks on all accounts every year.

If you want, you can go read the rest of this from the real Goon accountants. Start from page 1026 to 1036

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3898069&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1026

Thanks for the link. I'll give it a look.

-edit-

Looked through it, most interesting thing were the Russian Re-Sellers, though there was saddly no exact source.

Other than that i still stand by my remark that even a false with the Benfords Law doesn't nessecitate that the numbers are nessecarily fudged.
It's important to have people understand that some things (like the Benford law, or even the law of large numbers) are just indicators in such cases and are in themselves not enough to judge data sets conclusively. There's a reason why accountants start taking deeper looks at accounts/transactions and especially reciepts and so on when they find something fishy by their standard screening.

But to concede a point, i also believe that CIG is fudging data.

[dsmart]

And i was using it in a mathematical context. It's no law - it's a random occurens within certain data sets, so common that people think it's reasonable to assume certain data sets should adhere to it, while there's absolutely no LAW (like in physical or mathemtical) in place to dictate than any single given data set should ahdere to it. Which is why in accounting it's only used as an indicator (among dozens) to get hints what to look out for specifically - as no accountant company in the world has time to do deeper checks on all accounts every year.

Please read this.

https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/physics/nature-of-science/law-hypothesis-theory

[DemonInvestor]

Please read this.

https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/physics/nature-of-science/law-hypothesis-theory

Derek i now what laws of mathematics are, i "saddly" took a year of maths before i switched towards economics. And just to show you how different perception is:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-mathematical-law-and-rule?share=1

But the criticism i an my maths professors had towards a lot of modern proposed laws is not limited towards the mentionend above (switch of meaning), but also upon the actual observational generalization. Laws are supposedly natural laws observed. The more exceptions i find towards said observation, the less likely someones generalized observation was right. There's an error, an unknown variable. But when someone can't even put his finger on when something's not applicable, it's a problem and i can hardly call his observation a gernalizable law, because i know you can't generalize it for some cases.
Now if someone finds for which cases something can and cannot be generalized it's no problem - you point out the limitations in your description of the observation and it becomes a specialized observation (law).
But please, never mind me being an jackass here and discussing with you (most likely from your view boneheadedly) the definition of laws. Let's focus on how CIG is seemingly fudging numbers.

Personally i'd sooner search for comparable companies and try to look at the behaviour of their customers. And look how the lack of spending attrition of users compares towards other games. From my unscientific observations (be it kickstarter trackers, steam early access reports, normal F2P games and such), CIG would need to have a truly unique userbase in it's attrition resistance, which i think is rather odd...

[dsmart]

I think you're going off-track, now I'm confused.

We were talking about this "Keep in mind, Benfords law isn't actually a law. Many distributions won't adhere to it and will still be real data."

I was pointing out that it's in fact a [mathematical] law, and that it's regularly used to detect fraud.

[dsmart]

So about that Spectrum post which recently appeared and attributed to CR. This key comment in his salty second post was probably glossed over:

We are on track to have over one million unique players this year

A backer came up with a script which seems to indicate that there are really only $600K backers (who put any money into the project).

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/iroclk/spectrum_account_registration_and_level_citizen/

NOTE:

It means that majority of funding comes from existing backers and concierge buying ships, not from new game sales. You can see how much backer count rises every day and how much funding rises per same day - new backers are insignificant value.

If we take 3000 as the average contribution level per concierge, that would amount for ~50% of the funding from concierge and leave everyone else with two to three ships smaller ships on average. Which sounds reasonable

See how that puts the "one million unique players" into perspective?

Meanwhile..

[DemonInvestor]

Nope... it won't take 10 to 20 years, it would take more :D
I mean the question really is how they track the player numbers, if they just track registered accounts, that's a long way from actual players. So no wonder there, given we had estimates that your average social network only has half the reported numbers, as 50% would be bots + double registrations and so on. But then again, just another lie for potential investors and so on.

[dsmart]

If you thought CR couldn't be any more, what's the word - dismissive? Well, he told the community that he's so busy that he can't answer their [important] questions. However, he will answer a SINGLE question. I swear I'm not making this shit up, here take a look...

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/50259/thread/ask-the-chairman/

[dsmart]

If you thought CR couldn't be any more, what's the word - dismissive? Well, he told the community that he's so busy that he can't answer their [important] questions. However, he will answer a SINGLE question. I swear I'm not making this shit up, here take a look...

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/50259/thread/ask-the-chairman/

"Tony’s goal (goal != promise) is to have elements of the Dynamic Universe start to come online next year, likely towards the back half of the year, where player’s actions can impact both the Dynamic Economy and other players."

Basically Star Citizen isn’t coming out by the end of 2021. So there’s that.

[wiser3754]

Doesn't ED have a dynamic economy since it's release all the way back in 2014?

[Judge_dolly_OG]

"Tony’s goal (goal != promise) is to have elements of the Dynamic Universe start to come online next year, likely towards the back half of the year, where player’s actions can impact both the Dynamic Economy and other players."

Basically Star Citizen isn’t coming out by the end of 2021. So there’s that.

Did anyone think it would?

[dsmart]

“We actually have a full universe simulation […] actually really it runs on one server and it you know simulates about 20 million AI agents and it simulates the AI agents in a very sort of high level manner […] it’s sort of simulating it more in the here’s the jobs, missions, here’s a market demand, here’s the things are happening okay yeah you’ve taken a mission to take these goods from planet a to Planet B all right” – Chris Roberts, 2015 @ 7:46

[Judge_dolly_OG]

“We actually have a full universe simulation […] actually really it runs on one server and it you know simulates about 20 million AI agents and it simulates the AI agents in a very sort of high level manner […] it’s sort of simulating it more in the here’s the jobs, missions, here’s a market demand, here’s the things are happening okay yeah you’ve taken a mission to take these goods from planet a to Planet B all right” – Chris Roberts, 2015 @ 7:46

What a liar, I am amazed at the brazeness of him spouting complete bullshit about what has been achieved.

[krylite]

Doesn't ED have a dynamic economy since it's release all the way back in 2014?

ED has kind of a simple dynamic and persistent commodities economy where prices can change per station based on amounts sold or bought over time. The rates of change may have been ramped up a bit since the last nerf changes to low temperature diamond mining and selling.

“We actually have a full universe simulation […] actually really it runs on one server and it you know simulates about 20 million AI agents and it simulates the AI agents in a very sort of high level manner […] it’s sort of simulating it more in the here’s the jobs, missions, here’s a market demand, here’s the things are happening okay yeah you’ve taken a mission to take these goods from planet a to Planet B all right” – Chris Roberts, 2015 @ 7:46

Also in part, I suspect in CRob trying to pretend to keep pace with ED as usual, at the time, which launched that year, where there are tens of thousands of missions possible, and  can be ongoing persistently for players among all the populated planets and stations as well as certain systems and stations having some demand missions based on their current socioeconomic state.