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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Can you look at the healing scenario to understand because you don't seem to get it. All your skills have an affect on a fight, it's not about one skill being too strong. It's about all of them having a purpose and if one fails to serve that purpose because of rng, then you are at a disadvantage for reasons outside of your control.
1. Well this isn't true, as we discussed you can win the encounter and probably have in the past, just got unlucky this time. I chose this scenario because of how time sensitive it is. In a prolonged fight, rng isn't a big deal as things are able average out over time but in the tank scenario, you don't have that time for things to average out. If a few heals are missed, it's a failure.
2. Does that mean you think heals should have a chance to miss? That aside, all of those things can happen without rng elements and i also disagree to some extent when you think about how it actually plays.
When it comes to the healing example, if you miss a heal, what crazy thing do you do to compensate? Cast another heal. Maybe you need to use a cooldown but that means you are now at a disadvantage, not because someone screwed up and you needed to save them but because rng didn't like you for a moment.
Similar thing when it comes to a cc. Let's say you were saving a CC to counter an opponents ability, they use that ability and your cc fails, what do you do? Use another another ability if you have it or let the opponent do their action, either way, you are now at a disadvantage at no fault of your own.
That said, even if it is out of your control, things in games happen to you that are out of your control all the time - such as being stunned. You can't complain that you are against having things taken out of your hands in relation to an ability that takes things out of other players hands - that is just a weird argument to make.
Also, the post that I quoted, that the post in question was a specific reply to, had no mention of a healing scenario.
Since my post was a reply to that one specific quoted post, I have no idea what it is you mean by that.
Do you think heals would be better if there was an rng chance of failing and not healing there target?
However;
I can't remember, are all heals tab-based or are there (non-AOE) directed heals that are similar to ranged AC?
(I'm debating the philosophical v. practical aspects of this question).
Also -
There's a threshold here. In my mind, a team that's ready for content can clear that content outside the rare probability ranges of RNG miss%s. If something misses, they can recover and defeat the encounter. In your example, if a team wins or loses the encounter *only* because of a rare miss, they are pretty far over their skis for that particular encounter. Again, no problem with the ambition of that, as long as the raid team understands and accepts the risk for what it is.
@Noaani That isn't the question. Would healing be better with an RNG chance of failing?
@CROW3 I still feel like you are dodging the question, would that be better? Would having a chance to fail to heal improve the system since it would force you to adapt or would you prefer you not having to factor that in during a fight and instead focus on other aspects of the encounter?
If you truly believe RNG enhances the experience in a place it usually exists then why wouldn't you want it in a place where it's not as common but can create the same experience?
If i'm missing something then please explain it to me but i'd want more then a lore reason for why it doesn't work that way in a game you have played.
I specifically answered this in my last post.
Since all RNG in a game should be subject to opposed rolls, and all opposed rolls should be able to be influenced by both players, since it doesn't make sense to have a stat that increases the chance for a heal to not land on you, it doesn't make sense for heals to have RNG in terms of hit/miss.
I don't think you did.
Ok, people heal at different rates in our society. Some cures that work for some don't work for others and doctors vary in their skills so we will base some stats off that. Everyone has a stat that dictates how susceptible they are to heals. Maybe the old wise mage isn't as good at getting healed then the young, strong tank. You might also have a healing stat that dictates how good you are at identifying an injury so you can heal it. Your heal stat that dictates how good you are at healing goes against their stat that dictates how susceptible they are to healing. If your roll fails, you don't heal them.
Would you like that system where you could fail to heal someone?
No, because it still doesn't make sense.
As I said, all RNG in regards to failing should be opposed rolls. This means both players/characters should want the opposite thing to happen, not the same thing to happen.
It isn't an opposed roll if you both want the same thing to happen.
Now, if you have an undead race that takes damage from heals rather than getting healed, sure, add an opposed roll for them because they want the opposite thing to happen.
It's an opposed roll against the character's body, similar to an apposed role against an inanimate object, like a chest. Does your body do everything your consciousness tells it to? If you are tired, can you sprint a mile because you want to?
Heh - well, you feel the way you feel, man.
At a practical level, I'm not sure (to @Noaani's point) how a healing spell would mitigate that miss%, but I'm guessing we can determine that at some later point (whether it's a separate stat or built into some other stat e.g. Int or Wis).
EDIT: sorry i missed your question but i think that should be beside the point. All heals can fail, tab or aoe in my scenario.
I'm really sorry for being pushy, you have been really cool in this conversation but it comes off as you are settling. If i miss read that then i'm sorry but i'm asking if you think it would make for a better experience for healers to have to rng, not if you would be ok with it?
I'm not trying to say healers should have to suffer with rng since others do, i'm asking if it would be better if they did.
This is problematic for me and why I don't like rng, because people just scapegoat rng and not learn anything about what they could've done better. It breeds a playerbase that doesn't accept responsibility for their actions, and it makes everything annoying when it doesn't even need to be.
All good, @mcstackerson. We're all part of the same community, just with different perspectives. Though, I don't think I'm settling. I've been consistent in this thread and others ( @beaushinkle might say I've been stubborn
To your question about do I think healers would have a better experience?
I think it greatly depends upon the personality of the healer. Someone who is used to Vuhdo, and manages heals like a turret, probably not. To healers that approach healing the same way a competitive player approaches a 'fighting game' that is *only* subject to skill, probably not as much. But for those who know that being adept and skillful also includes the capacity to adapt to non-ideal conditions, yes - I think they would thrive under this system.
Make sense?
Hmm. If folks scapegoat such a small, I mean REALLY small, chance to miss as the macro reason that they aren't playing well, I would just find better players for my group/team/guild/elite mercenary company ( @Conrad
Noaani believes that it's completely impossible under any circumstance to balance the game an MMO to where worse players won't get stomped unless there's a %miss chance.
Dygz and Crow want for RNG to govern all in-game (and especially all combat functions), though Crow was willing to make an special exception for moving and jumping.
As Rae pointed out on page ~5, I think a lot of it comes down to dogmatic definitionalism. I don't think they're interested in discussing what makes a good game, or what they think would be fun. Rather, I think they have an extremely fringe, strict, hard-line stance about what an MMO is.
I think the idea goes, more or less, that without RNG being in combat, it isn't an RPG. Ashes wants to be an RPG. Therefore, Ashes needs to have RNG. Then, Dygz will link the Jeff Bard quote about RNG playing a role in combat for the 20th time and the conversation will repeat itself.
I think a lot of other folks point out that you can still have RNG in general without it showing up in specific places (like in some crowd control abilities, or in this case, in healing), and that some MMORPGs have done that already (like wow, gw2, and archeage).
At this point, Dygz just links the Jeff Bard quote again.
edit: requoting this because I think this is especially relevant
I think some folks see challenge as a dramatic storytelling device. Rather than seeing it as a puzzle to eventually be solved or a game to be beaten, they see it as a dynamic story waiting to be told or experienced. Failure or losing isn't 'wrong', it's just different and potentially even more interesting. Losing because a stun got resisted isn't 'bad', it's potentially an even better story than if everything worked all the time.
Folks like me see the content in the game as a challenge to be overcome, and the variance in the game as something that I need to optimize around in the same way that you try to play as close to game-theory-optimal as possible when you play poker. If we fail some PvE boss because of RNG even though we played perfectly, that's not 'some great story', it's just annoying. We'll just keep repeating it until we get the right RNG and then ask for that shit to be changed.
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So you're asking folks like Crow or Neurath if they think it would be "good" if heals could fail and you're getting told no on two levels. The first level is that "when your heal randomly fails, it could lead to an interesting, dramatic story. A low point in the hero's journey". The second level is "regardless of whether or not the game is more fun, it needs to be able to fail or else it would stop being a rpg and that's bad".
I would hope so, but it's just easier to blame the rng. That's human psychology. The problem is that sometimes it is actually the rng that was the main factor that caused them to lose, especially when an important stun misses. So there is legitimate doubt whether they lost due to results from their own actions or due to rng, just due to the presence of rng. And then you have to deal with them saying "You just got lucky", or some such things when the game could've just been designed better.
Edit: Oh yeah, and then you could agree to a rematch and legitimately lose to rng, and the guy will say "I told you so". That is the worst feeling I can think of in gaming.
😩Yes, I already said that. Again -
I assume you mean I'm one of the better not worse players right? XD
Govern is kind of an odd word to use for what a 1/1000ths chance of something happening. Even then, based on the discussion with @JustVine above, that could be reduced another 1/6th based on a glancing blow model. It'd be like saying I tried to drown you by flicking water at you in high wind.
I think you meant "yes on two levels."
It's an interesting conclusion that you've drawn for Dygz and I: the 'more dramatic storytelling.' Honestly, I think the presence of RNG is more indicative of real skill instead of everything coming down to RPS where things are just a little too neat. Good stories come from that, yes. But it's just more fun to adapt on the fly.
Maybe, but I don't deal with those people very long.
If their stun has a 30 second cooldown, and you did nothing but your life but press your stun every 30 seconds, you would expect to only see it fail once every ~33 hours. What is this player adapting to? It seems like their stun just works until they're put at disadvantage by the 1-in-60,000 chance that it doesn't.
Quick expectation setting real quick - do you think that in RNG-enabled environments, higher skill players win more often or less often? I absolutely agree that adapting to randomly-produced scenarios is a skill that players can have (see my conversation with @JamesSunderland). Would you agree that RNG also tends to flatten the curve or even the odds so-to-speak by making it so that worse players can win by getting luckier than their opponents? See this example if this doesn't click right away. For further evidence, Noaani argues that miss% is vital in order to make it so that lower skill players have a shot of winning against higher skill player, and I fully agree that making things miss is an effective tool to do so.
There are a lot of ways players can express skill in video games. I wrote about that in this essay. You can make it so that it's difficult to translate the information on your screen into figuring out which button you need to press next (and making it so that the upcoming information on your screen being random is part of this). You can test their physical dexterity by making them press complex sequences of keyboard buttons or making them press the buttons with very precise timings, etc.
You can test their game knowledge or their overall strategy (these tie in to figuring out which button to press).
I note that you didn't engage with any of the points about definitionalism, or that a game can be a RPG without having RNG CC's (like how WoW, archeage, and GW2 are RPG's despite not having RNG CC).
Agreed. We should definitely increase the probability from 1/60,000.
It depends on what you mean by 'higher-skill,' in my opinion a highly skilled player is able to adapt to change and still be successful. If I get to set the bar where I want, then yes, higher skilled players tend to win more often in 'RNG-enabled environments.'
On the whole, no. There will be outliers where 'worse' players can defeat 'better' players. But all things being equal (level, gear, stats, 1v1, arena, etc.) the higher skilled player is going to win the majority of the time.
Meh, there's nothing to really discuss there.
Did you happen to read through my example where I think I pretty convincingly show that this isn't the case? If someone has better reaction speed to recognize that a card is a club than someone else, then they can earn more points by slapping clubs and win a game (they're the better player), yet adding in RNG (in the form of the deck distribution) can cause them to lose from being unlucky.
Maybe we're talking about different stuff - I'm not attempting to claim that the better player will win <=50% of their matches. That would be absurd - how could anyone possibly call them better? I'm saying that by introducing randomness into a situation, the better player might go from winning 70% of the time to winning 65% of the time (because now they're sometimes losing because they get unlucky or their opponents get lucky). Or similarly, I'm saying that by removing randomness from a situation, the better player might go from winning 65% to winning 70% of the time (because now the better player is unable to get unlucky, and the worse player is unable to get lucky).
Because you happen to disagree and think that miss% in CC's is a strict requirement for a game to be considered a RPG (and so you consider WoW, GW2, and ArcheAge to not be MMORPGs since they fail this requirement)?
Or because we agree here and can move on?
hehe - I was just referencing your idea for a mercenary system.
Just read through your analogy. The problem is that it's not analogous to the discussion. In your example, the game really isn't just influenced by RNG it's entirely determined by RNG. It's a nice strawman though.
A more apt analogy would be that you're playing with the entire deck, every card you turn over the players slap to get it - the person who get's there first get's that card. Except, after the slap, the winner rolls a d100. If they roll a 1, they have to put the card back at the bottom of the deck, then it's the next turn. Once the entire deck has been depleted, each player counts their cards. Whoever has the most number of cards wins.
In all probability the faster player will win more games, but it's statistically possible for a slower player to win.
I still think RNG is an essential part of RPGs. Feel free to classify that into whatever 'agree' or 'disagree' bucket you'd prefer.
Sprint has a limited duration in game, but it is not RNG based.
I've been VERY clear for a VERY long time as to when I think RNG should come in to plan in an MMO combat system.
Just because you want me to say that heals should fail so that you can make some point about it, that doesn't mean that I will. I have been saying for a long time (longer than I have been posting on these forums, damn near a decade, honestly) that in combat RNG in an MMO should happen every time two characters/players want different things to happen, and there should always be a stat or skill that can be increased on both sides of the opposed roll.
If you want to argue against my stance on RNG in games, argue against that. Don't try and make my stance in to RNG fit in to the argument you want to make.
Clear?