I'm writing this because I think it's an issue that underlies
a lot of the complaints we get about game balance-- the most
recent log about a Legacy being one of many things that
reminds me of it. Some of this is obvious to most people, but
I know from reading that I'm talking about some common
mistakes in places.

I haven't played for a while, but looking at the said log I believe people call that legacy overpowered not because it happens to work in this log but because it does too many nasty things to an opponent at once.
If a such thing is possible it may be a balance issue, though not necessary it actually is.


There was a study published about 25 years ago by Daniel
Kahneman (who won the Economics Nobel in 2002 for this and
related studies) about what basketball fans call the "hot
hand". (Logicians tend to call it the "Gambler's Fallacy".)
I ran across a layman's version of it in a Steven Jay Gould
essay about Joe DiMaggio a while back, and it's stuck with me.
(link)

Short version: You usually cannot watch more than 10 minutes
of broadcast basketball without an announcer crowing about
what player has the "hot hand". You see a guy make 4 shots in
a row, and everyone's trying to force that guy the ball, the
crowd boos if the coach takes him out, etc. Quoting Gould
here: "Everybody knows about 'hot hands'. The only problem is
that no such phenomenon exists." Basically, the chance
Dwyane Wade (or whoever) will hit a shot is statistically
unrelated to the chance they hit their previous shot. This
isn't merely a textbook theory-- some sad-ass interns got
stuck crunching every shot by every player for season after
season, and that's what the numbers say.

But, nevertheless, "hot hand" thing exists.
Regardless of what some sad-ass intern may try to prove.
And it is not necessary mystic (though, who knows, maybe mystic helps). Morale bonus, confidence, feeling an opponent's weakness, etc, greatly raises the hit rate.
Basketball shot is not a dice throw.
From my own experience I can tell, for example, that in european football (in a certain county it's called soccer) there are days when almost every hit ends with a goal and there are days when you miss all the time. Many experienced players feel such days before they actually know the final score.

There are such "mystic" things in chess team tournaments as well.
When one of team members gets a bad position or loses a game, the rest of his team get often into troubles as well.
Thus, there is "a rule" among experienced chess team players. If you have bad position, never surrender. Sit, walk, do nothing, don't move pieces, waste your time but don't resign as long as possible.

Yet people often interpret logs as if the unusual is commonplace, or else as if
they are studies rather than anecdotes.

This part made me chuckle.
They don't do that often, you just tend to remember the cases when they actually do.

your chance of dying to a Teleport is fairly
low, yet most people would guess higher, because they remember
the times it got them killed better than the times it landed
them on some random road.

Still, you end up in Whitecloaks way to often.
I don't know what is the reason, number of teleport rooms in that area or evil Nepenthe's code.
But I certainly find myself in Whitecloaks after a teleport more often than in any other area, not that I die there too often. And there are areas where I landed maybe once in several years.