Hey Dygz, every time you link that Jeffrey Bard quote, I say something like "Yes, RNG is always going to play a role, but it doesn't have to specifically play a role when determining whether or not a high-impact cc lands".
Much in the same way that RNG doesn't have to play a role in determining whether or not you trip when you move 10 feet forward. Speaking of which...
Do you, or do you not believe that the game would be better if there was a non-zero chance that a character should trip and fall under normal circumstances while walking or running?
Trying to figure out exactly where you want your game to land on the "how often should better players win" curve is a super important design decision. I think MMOs should make it so that the better player wins less often than your average racing game, fighting game, moba, fps, etc. Does this position surprise you?
I believe the best possible win rate in 1v1 scenarios for an MMORPG should be no higher than ~66,6%-70%
as win rates higher that are usually extreme detractors to player numbers(cosidering same level and gear but difference in skill level)
There is a reason why the vast majority of competitive games have systems Like MMR(far from perfect) to prevent such win ratios by limiting the skill level of opponents you can go against.
Hopefully you don't want the best player in the world, playing absolutely perfectly to only be able to go 70% against the absolute noobiest, most mistake making most awful player (I don't think this is your position).
I'm wondering what you're actually afraid of gameplay wise.
What makes you think I am afraid of anything? I mean, I could ask you the same thing - why are you so afraid of RNG?
If all hard CC has no RNG, then good players will just flock to all hard CC. This applies to anything without RNG, which is why I was using a single ability in the example above.
Making it all hard CC doesn't make it better or worse, it will still be the better players that make use of it, increasing the gap between them and the less good players.
Trying to figure out exactly where you want your game to land on the "how often should better players win" curve is a super important design decision. I think MMOs should make it so that the better player wins less often than your average racing game, fighting game, moba, fps, etc. Does this position surprise you?
I believe the best possible win rate in 1v1 scenarios for an MMORPG should be no higher than ~66,6%-70%
as win rates higher that are usually extreme detractors to player numbers(cosidering same level and gear but difference in skill level)
There is a reason why the vast majority of competitive games have systems Like MMR(far from perfect) to prevent such win ratios by limiting the skill level of opponents you can go against.
Indeed.
The thing with an MMR system is that even though they are far from perfect, they straight up aren't a think in an open world PvP game.
That balancing out needs to be done on the combat system level - there is no where else to do it.
Hopefully you don't want the best player in the world, playing absolutely perfectly to only be able to go 70% against the absolute noobiest, most mistake making most awful player (I don't think this is your position).
It's a really, really hard problem.
Haha! Those numbers are for average and for generalization, talking about the ultra extreme examples those win-rate numbers dramatically change.
RNG is always going to play a role in Ashes of Creation whether that be in PvP or PvE, but one way to mitigate that is through the action system. The action system is going to be far less sort of dependent on those you know dice rolls and there'll be far more in your own hands. They won't ever completely eliminate that but it's a way for us to sort of reward skilled play versus sort of tactical strategies type play.
---Jeffrey Bard
Is Jeffrey Bard still with the company? I get that it's possible that the design philosophy may still be present in the development, but I find it interesting that the crux of your argument is based on a quote from someone who isn't involved anymore.
Would your position change if a developer that is still involved stated something to the contrary?
Also, this isn't binary. We can have RNG involved in all aspects of the game without it being part of every single interaction like walking/running or even CC.
What makes you think I am afraid of anything? I mean, I could ask you the same thing - why are you so afraid of RNG?
I meant "afraid" in the "I fear the game will end up in a bad state" sense. Why am I so afraid of RNG: I think I detailed my thoughts pretty exhaustively here:
Edit: Honestly, this: "players like beau have less fun" is probably the most compelling argument in this thread. And is the place where you and I find the common ground to sort the salient from the semantics.
So WHY is it less fun?
I'm glad I went back and read through older stuff, because I missed this edit before.
For me personally, I find fun through three main avenues listed in order of importance: self-improvement, hanging out with friends, and winning. I've written a little about this in the abstract in http://beaushinkle.xyz/posts/intrinsic-fun
I'm probably a little abnormal for MMO players in that I don't especially care about artificial rewards (the game giving me gear, titles, prestige, etc), but those typically come with being really good at stuff, which naturally follows from heavily focusing on self improvement and winning, and having a crew of likeminded and similarly dedicated friends.
You may be horrified to learn that I skipped all of the dialogue and cutscenes in my ffxiv playthrough so I could get to the savage/extreme content asap. I had only a vague idea of what was going on with the plot, and then caught myself up on the lore/story by reading the wiki and watching the cutscenes in 2x speed on youtube. Efficiency, baby.
I don't expect for the genre to cater to me, and in fact, I think MMO's are in a really unenviable place where they have to cater to a bunch of people who want to play them in a whole bunch of different ways, which dilutes the focus.
To your question: Why do players like beau dislike it when high-impact stuns are resisted? It dillutes the self-improvement. Did I make the right play, but lost because I got unlucky? Did I make the wrong play but won because I got lucky? It puts a layer of random separation between cause and effect. Now I can't just tell that I played better than the other player by nature of me winning, I have to go back and check how relatively lucky we each got.
It hurts my ability to win. Since I'm generally the better player, I'm going to be the one getting hurt by variance. In a RNG-less environment, I'm typically winning, so my opponent only stands to gain by adding in luck. If they get bad luck, who cares! They were going to lose anyway. If they get good luck, now they just might win.
If all hard CC has no RNG, then good players will just flock to all hard CC. This applies to anything without RNG, which is why I was using a single ability in the example above.
Sure, and so now the top-player meta involves more people using hard-cc builds. Then, presumably, Intrepid notices that those are too powerful and tunes those down a bit. Now what?
Hey Dygz, every time you link that Jeffrey Bard quote, I say something like "Yes, RNG is always going to play a role, but it doesn't have to specifically play a role when determining whether or not a high-impact cc lands".
Much in the same way that RNG doesn't have to play a role in determining whether or not you trip when you move 10 feet forward. Speaking of which...
Do you, or do you not believe that the game would be better if there was a non-zero chance that a character should trip and fall under normal circumstances while walking or running?
Do you, or do you not believe that the game would be better if there was a non-zero chance that a character should trip and fall under normal circumstances while walking or running?
Is the claim that since the quote was "RNG is always going to play a role", that when interpreted literally, he must intend for RNG to apply to all aspects of combat?
Why then, is there no chance for your armor to fall off, your weapon to randomly break, or your player to randomly slip, I wonder. Surely if he was literal that would be the case, right?
Do you, or do you not believe that the game would be better if there was a non-zero chance that a character should trip and fall under normal circumstances while walking or running?
Sure, and so now the top-player meta involves more people using hard-cc builds. Then, presumably, Intrepid notices that those are too powerful and tunes those down a bit. Now what?
There are two ways to dumb them down in this situation.
One is to make the duration so short that they are of no use to anyone and may as well not exist (there is no middle ground or sweet spot here, because their distribution among players will be uneven tending towards the better players).
The other is to add an RNG component to them.
As to the rest of your points - I'm not overly keen on following random links on the internet. Make your point in the thread, if you can.
I'm gonna be the asshole and say no one else can post until @Dygz gives a clear and concise answer to @beaushinkle 's question... Feel free to do whatever you want though
Sure, and so now the top-player meta involves more people using hard-cc builds. Then, presumably, Intrepid notices that those are too powerful and tunes those down a bit. Now what?
There are two ways to dumb them down in this situation.
One is to make the duration so short that they are of no use to anyone and may as well not exist (there is no middle ground or sweet spot here, because their distribution among players will be uneven tending towards the better players).
The other is to add an RNG component to them.
As to the rest of your points - I'm not overly keen on following random links on the internet. Make your point in the thread, if you can.
As for there only being two ways: there are more ways. You can provide provide counterplay, like making it so that a player can give themselves a buff that makes them temporarily immune to a cc if they expect one is coming. You can give the cc a startup animation, and then keep increasing it so that you have to pay a higher and higher opportunity cost. You can make it cost more mana. You can give it a higher cooldown.
Also, you can find a sweetspot in stun duration, and players can potentially build to reduce the duration like they can in WoW.
I'm gonna be the asshole and say no one else can post until @Dygz gives a clear and concise answer to @beaushinkle 's question... Feel free to do whatever you want though
I don't mind if Dygz never answers! It's extremely telling that he refuses, and he has that freedom. I'm not going to let him keep bring up the same points that are answerable with my point about randomly falling, but if he wants to go in a different direction I'll let it drop.
As for there only being two ways: there are more ways. You can provide provide counterplay, like making it so that a player can give themselves a buff that makes them temporarily immune to a cc if they expect one is coming. You can give the cc a startup animation, and then keep increasing it so that you have to pay a higher and higher opportunity cost. You can make it cost more mana. You can give it a higher cooldown.
Also, you can find a sweetspot in stun duration, and players can potentially build to reduce the duration like they can in WoW.
Counter play only works with players with a fairly decent skill level - it is not an answer to this situation.
You can't find a sweet spot in duration when there are more good players with a hard CC with no RNG than there are less good players with them. There is literally no sweet spot there.
Counter play only works with players with a fairly decent skill level - it is not an answer to this situation.
Counter play works to a degree, right? They're worse, not totally incompetent. Also, you said there were two. There are more than two. Can I get a concession there?
You can't find a sweet spot in duration when there are more good players with a hard CC with no RNG than there are less good players with them. There is literally no sweet spot there.
I'm not sure I follow. If you reduce the duration, it hurts the players who play with the skill. If they abandon the skill for something else because now it's too bad, you nerfed it too much. If they still all use it, you didn't nerf it enough. So, you keep nerfing/buffing until you zero in on balance.
I feel like I must be missing something because this is pretty elementary iterative balance.
We don't have to make it so that the good players and the bad players are all playing the same build! We just have to make it so that the bad players feel like they have a shot against the good players.
I feel like I must be missing something because this is pretty elementary iterative balance.
What you are saying here (iterative balance, reduce duration until some players start dropping the skill and then unwinding just a little), only works if there is an even distribution of players across all skill levels and play styles with a given skill.
I already mentioned that this will not be the case for a hard CC with no RNG in a game with open world PvP.
I feel like I must be missing something because this is pretty elementary iterative balance.
What you are saying here (iterative balance, reduce duration until some players start dropping the skill and then unwinding just a little), only works if there is an even distribution of players across all skill levels and play styles with a given skill.
I already mentioned that this will not be the case for a hard CC with no RNG in a game with open world PvP.
I'm really confused about two things: why you think that that having an even distribution of players across all skill levels is required (why can't it be a bell curve?) for iterative balancing, and why you think turning a 1/1000 chance into a 0/1000 chance would be so impactful. Or do you have a different %fail in mind than Crow3?
I mostly agree with the OP. Your successes and failures should be in your own abilities, decision making, and understanding of the game. Not decided by RNG. Noaani seems like hes just arguing for the sake of it and i'm pretty sure Dygz is just a troll.
I feel like I must be missing something because this is pretty elementary iterative balance.
What you are saying here (iterative balance, reduce duration until some players start dropping the skill and then unwinding just a little), only works if there is an even distribution of players across all skill levels and play styles with a given skill.
I already mentioned that this will not be the case for a hard CC with no RNG in a game with open world PvP.
I'm really confused about two things: why you think that that having an even distribution of players across all skill levels is required (why can't it be a bell curve?) for iterative balancing, and why you think turning a 1/1000 chance into a 0/1000 chance would be so impactful. Or do you have a different %fail in mind than Crow3?
To your second point, I never said 1/1000. I wouldn't put any hard figure to it because as I have been saying all along (in this thread and in previous threads on the topic), this kind of thing should be player determined.
If I put a lot of effort in to boosting my CC resist and you don't do anything to increase your CC chance to land, I should have maybe a 50% or greater chance to resist your CC. Conversely, if I put no effort in to CC resist and you put a lot of effort in to making it land, you should hit 100% of the time.
As to your first question, iterative balancing requires some players drop an ability, not a lot of players.
Good players tend to all come to the understanding that an ability is shit all at the same time - that is why they are good, they work these things out.
Generally speaking, when you are balancing an ability using iterative balancing, entire segments of the
population drop the ability after one change.
I'm sure how you could see this would cause issues with iterative balancing of an ability that is not evenly distributed.
To your second point, I never said 1/1000. I wouldn't put any hard figure to it because as I have been saying all along (in this thread and in previous threads on the topic), this kind of thing should be player determined.
Sure, but once you're actually fighting, then the number is hard. Just so we're understanding each other correctly, what sort of numbers are you imagining in practice? 1/1000? 1/100? 1/10? 1/5?
Also maybe for some expectation setting, I'm talking about the sorts of abilities that are going to be used like 2-3 times in a combat which is why I keep saying "high impact ccs" and not "hard ccs". If it's a 1/100 thing, you might see the ability get used 300 times in 100 combats and get resisted a total of 3 times. That's not really something that has an appreciable impact on "making sure that worse players are winning against better players". In order to accomplish that, you'd have to make it happen significantly more often. I'm totally fine with abilities that do smaller effects and have much lower cooldowns having a chance to miss.
As to your first question, iterative balancing requires some players drop an ability, not a lot of players.
Why does it require this? As far as I'm aware, all it requires is that you nerf the ability until good players are still using it, but bad players are winning an acceptable amount.
I mostly agree with the OP. Your successes and failures should be in your own abilities, decision making, and understanding of the game. Not decided by RNG. Noaani seems like hes just arguing for the sake of it and i'm pretty sure Dygz is just a troll.
Noanni and Dygz just like to argue, sometimes without even having a point. But without them Ashes forums would be somewhat empty sooo all good I guess?
Why does it require this? As far as I'm aware, all it requires is that you nerf the ability until good players are still using it, but bad players are winning an acceptable amount.
This won't happen, because the appeal, the value of the ability is it's lack of RNG. That is the reason good players will be using it, and as long as it has that characteristic to it, those players will be using it for that purpose.
Even if it only has a 0.1 second duration, it means a good player can guarantee a CC will land on a player that has geared up as much as possible to resist CC (since soft CC are still subject to RNG here). That has intrinsic value to players that know how to use it.
That W/L ratio won't move until/unless that hard CC is given randomization.
I mostly agree with the OP. Your successes and failures should be in your own abilities, decision making, and understanding of the game. Not decided by RNG. Noaani seems like hes just arguing for the sake of it and i'm pretty sure Dygz is just a troll.
Noanni and Dygz just like to argue, sometimes without even having a point. But without them Ashes forums would be somewhat empty sooo all good I guess?
I never argue if I don't have a point.
If you don't have a point, there is nothing to argue about.
That W/L ratio won't move until/unless that hard CC is given randomization.
The W/L ratio will move every time the duration gets changed. Going from a 4.5 second stun to a 4.4 second stun might make the W/L ratio go from 73.1219214 to 73.1119214.
This won't happen, because the appeal, the value of the ability is it's lack of RNG.
Would you rather take a 6 second stun with a 1/1000 chance to fail or a 3 second stun with a 0/1000 chance to fail? What do you think the meta would be? If you took the 3-second stun, what about a 20-second stun with a 1/10000 chance to fail? You can totally tune these abilities through a number of parameters (cast time, counter play, duration, cooldown, manacost, build opportunity cost, etc) such that the win rate is where you want it to be. I honestly can't belive that I'm having to argue that this is possible to balance.
Comments
Much in the same way that RNG doesn't have to play a role in determining whether or not you trip when you move 10 feet forward. Speaking of which...
Do you, or do you not believe that the game would be better if there was a non-zero chance that a character should trip and fall under normal circumstances while walking or running?
Hopefully you don't want the best player in the world, playing absolutely perfectly to only be able to go 70% against the absolute noobiest, most mistake making most awful player (I don't think this is your position).
It's a really, really hard problem.
If all hard CC has no RNG, then good players will just flock to all hard CC. This applies to anything without RNG, which is why I was using a single ability in the example above.
Making it all hard CC doesn't make it better or worse, it will still be the better players that make use of it, increasing the gap between them and the less good players.
Indeed.
The thing with an MMR system is that even though they are far from perfect, they straight up aren't a think in an open world PvP game.
That balancing out needs to be done on the combat system level - there is no where else to do it.
Haha!
Aren't we all sinners?
Is Jeffrey Bard still with the company? I get that it's possible that the design philosophy may still be present in the development, but I find it interesting that the crux of your argument is based on a quote from someone who isn't involved anymore.
Would your position change if a developer that is still involved stated something to the contrary?
Also, this isn't binary. We can have RNG involved in all aspects of the game without it being part of every single interaction like walking/running or even CC.
And here:
http://beaushinkle.xyz/posts/randomness-is-lazy
Sure, and so now the top-player meta involves more people using hard-cc builds. Then, presumably, Intrepid notices that those are too powerful and tunes those down a bit. Now what?
Now that I answered your question,
Do you, or do you not believe that the game would be better if there was a non-zero chance that a character should trip and fall under normal circumstances while walking or running?
Is the claim that since the quote was "RNG is always going to play a role", that when interpreted literally, he must intend for RNG to apply to all aspects of combat?
Why then, is there no chance for your armor to fall off, your weapon to randomly break, or your player to randomly slip, I wonder. Surely if he was literal that would be the case, right?
Do you, or do you not believe that the game would be better if there was a non-zero chance that a character should trip and fall under normal circumstances while walking or running?
Even if you feel you answered the question, just answer it again.
It is either a two or three letter post.
One is to make the duration so short that they are of no use to anyone and may as well not exist (there is no middle ground or sweet spot here, because their distribution among players will be uneven tending towards the better players).
The other is to add an RNG component to them.
As to the rest of your points - I'm not overly keen on following random links on the internet. Make your point in the thread, if you can.
The link is hardly random - It's literally my website. You can check the source code here https://github.com/beaushinkle/blog
As for there only being two ways: there are more ways. You can provide provide counterplay, like making it so that a player can give themselves a buff that makes them temporarily immune to a cc if they expect one is coming. You can give the cc a startup animation, and then keep increasing it so that you have to pay a higher and higher opportunity cost. You can make it cost more mana. You can give it a higher cooldown.
Also, you can find a sweetspot in stun duration, and players can potentially build to reduce the duration like they can in WoW.
Counter play only works with players with a fairly decent skill level - it is not an answer to this situation.
You can't find a sweet spot in duration when there are more good players with a hard CC with no RNG than there are less good players with them. There is literally no sweet spot there.
I'm not sure I follow. If you reduce the duration, it hurts the players who play with the skill. If they abandon the skill for something else because now it's too bad, you nerfed it too much. If they still all use it, you didn't nerf it enough. So, you keep nerfing/buffing until you zero in on balance.
I feel like I must be missing something because this is pretty elementary iterative balance.
We don't have to make it so that the good players and the bad players are all playing the same build! We just have to make it so that the bad players feel like they have a shot against the good players.
I already mentioned that this will not be the case for a hard CC with no RNG in a game with open world PvP.
I'm really confused about two things: why you think that that having an even distribution of players across all skill levels is required (why can't it be a bell curve?) for iterative balancing, and why you think turning a 1/1000 chance into a 0/1000 chance would be so impactful. Or do you have a different %fail in mind than Crow3?
To your second point, I never said 1/1000. I wouldn't put any hard figure to it because as I have been saying all along (in this thread and in previous threads on the topic), this kind of thing should be player determined.
If I put a lot of effort in to boosting my CC resist and you don't do anything to increase your CC chance to land, I should have maybe a 50% or greater chance to resist your CC. Conversely, if I put no effort in to CC resist and you put a lot of effort in to making it land, you should hit 100% of the time.
As to your first question, iterative balancing requires some players drop an ability, not a lot of players.
Good players tend to all come to the understanding that an ability is shit all at the same time - that is why they are good, they work these things out.
Generally speaking, when you are balancing an ability using iterative balancing, entire segments of the
population drop the ability after one change.
I'm sure how you could see this would cause issues with iterative balancing of an ability that is not evenly distributed.
Also maybe for some expectation setting, I'm talking about the sorts of abilities that are going to be used like 2-3 times in a combat which is why I keep saying "high impact ccs" and not "hard ccs". If it's a 1/100 thing, you might see the ability get used 300 times in 100 combats and get resisted a total of 3 times. That's not really something that has an appreciable impact on "making sure that worse players are winning against better players". In order to accomplish that, you'd have to make it happen significantly more often. I'm totally fine with abilities that do smaller effects and have much lower cooldowns having a chance to miss.
Why does it require this? As far as I'm aware, all it requires is that you nerf the ability until good players are still using it, but bad players are winning an acceptable amount.
Noanni and Dygz just like to argue, sometimes without even having a point. But without them Ashes forums would be somewhat empty sooo all good I guess?
Even if it only has a 0.1 second duration, it means a good player can guarantee a CC will land on a player that has geared up as much as possible to resist CC (since soft CC are still subject to RNG here). That has intrinsic value to players that know how to use it.
That W/L ratio won't move until/unless that hard CC is given randomization.
I never argue if I don't have a point.
If you don't have a point, there is nothing to argue about.
The W/L ratio will move every time the duration gets changed. Going from a 4.5 second stun to a 4.4 second stun might make the W/L ratio go from 73.1219214 to 73.1119214.
Would you rather take a 6 second stun with a 1/1000 chance to fail or a 3 second stun with a 0/1000 chance to fail? What do you think the meta would be? If you took the 3-second stun, what about a 20-second stun with a 1/10000 chance to fail? You can totally tune these abilities through a number of parameters (cast time, counter play, duration, cooldown, manacost, build opportunity cost, etc) such that the win rate is where you want it to be. I honestly can't belive that I'm having to argue that this is possible to balance.