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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
It's less about lazyness and more about handholding players with poor mechanics.
Good player does not need lucky rolls to beat a player who isn't as good in execution. Slowly, but methodically they will generally win. Regardless of getting a lucky roll or not.
Same cannot be said about player who is less able in execution. No roll happens? well, they lose. Bad roll happens? they lose anyway, so what does it matter. But if good roll happens, when they gain a stat advantage to leverage and bridge the skill gap.
I thought this was gonna be a derail but now this thread is more like 'you speedrunning the last 3 months of forums' which is honestly really cool to watch.
I touched this subject more deeply previously in this thread and in the old RNG-CC thread, throwing ambiguous words around like "Lazy" or "Poor" "handholding"(this one particularly doesn't even make sense) when referring to the type of skill RNG provides is meaningless.
It is not a matter of "needing or not needing lucky rolls to beat someone", but a matter of the skill of adapting to the adversity of unpredictable outcomes. At this point i'm pretty much just repeating myself, if you wish to have a better viewpoint of this arguments you can read previous comments replying to Beaushinkle in this thread.
Aren't we all sinners?
When I say that randomness is "lazy", I mean a couple of things. First, think about a human flipping a coin. To the universe, the result of the coin flip is knowable as soon as the force is applied. The air molecules are where they are, and will apply air resistance, the coin has a weight, a velocity, and angular momentum. It'll hit a surface and bounce (to the universe) predictably. If you have all of the data you need, you could predict how it'll land. If you gave an AI a high speed camera, a room, a coin, and enough training time, it could learn to accurately predict which side the coin will land on before it settles.
Humans can't, and so to us, our best guess for how a coin will end up when someone flips it in a reasonable way is to assign a 50% probability that it lands on heads and a 50% probability it lands on tails. The physics is complicated, but the outcome is simple.
Trying to fully model the physics of a coinflip the way the universe does it would take way more engineering effort than modeling the outcome of a coinflip via calling . The same goes for thinking about any process vs result. Modeling exactly how tall a baby will eventually grow to be requires a ton of data and math about genetics and nutrition. Saying that height is normally distributed and plucking out a number is easy, relatively accurate, and lazy. That "lazy" part isn't necessarily bad! It just is what it is.
Applying randomness does two things: it moves the game from simulating the process to simulating the outcome (which is the aforementioned lazy part). It also moves control away from the player. A Magic: The Gathering player doesn't get to choose what order their deck is shuffled in. A hearthstone player doesn't get to choose which targets their arcane missle hits.
That second aspect means that there will always be a chance that you make the right play but lose, or make the wrong play but win, because of variance. This adds spectacle, excitement, and novelty to the game. It doesn't make the game worse, necessarily, but it does make the game worse competitively (if the point of competition is to figure out who the better player is). If the reason you're adding in variance is to create an underdog factor (which I think is what @wherediditrun means when they say "handholding") like what I wrote about in randomness-is-lazy, then I think that's a lazy way to do it. I outlined a handful of other ways to maintain fighting chances for the underdog while not removing control from the players.
Ultimately, games where chance are involved aren't necessarily worse games, they're just different. You introduce the skill of playing around randomness (which raises the skill cap), but at the cost of sometimes punishing good plays or rewarding bad plays. In my preference, I prefer to replace randomness with hidden information, but I know that's not everyone's ideal.
It's fine, i perfectly comprehend the concepts of "pseudo-randomness": Thing that we perceive as unpredictable without the necessary information resources to do predict, such as the coin flip example you gave or the dice rolling situation.(Normal Computer generated randomness fall under this category),
and "True-randomness": Things that are theorically unpredictable due to imeasurable variants or unreasonable amount of required information.(Such as Quantum Superposition probability)
I don't think the process in this case is relevant nor the focus(other than the %chance to be calculated), so therefore not something to be considered "lazy" or not in terms of process, as only the result is the important factor for the players adapatability skill to play out in the game. Yes it "moves control" away from the player, the control over the predictable result forcing the adaptability, It isn't about what cards the Magic player will get in their hand by their randomly shuffled deck, but how he can adapt and use it to its best potential.
I Definitely don't think it makes the game worse competitively, considering it this way would completely disregard the players adaptability skills which definitely plays a part in figuring out "who the better player is".
Btw i really dislike the "underdog factor" and consider it an actual detrimental handholding factor in competition.
Yes, in the end it's definitely a matter of opinion and preference of a type of skill over the other.
As one of the main pillars of game design in Ashes is "Risk vs Reward" i feel like i can kinda predict which type will be favored... But who knows, it is still a long way till the game comes out.
Aren't we all sinners?
This will be my last attempt at this, so I hope this works. In a game where you have a javelin ability that has a random chance to fail, there are a couple of things going on. There are roughly 4 ways it can play out:
In all cases, situation #1 will be the best and situation #4 will be the worst. Depending on how much adaptability is emphasized vs variance, situation #2 may be better than situation #3 (better to be lucky than good). It also may be extremely easy to react correctly, so good players basically never find themselves in situation #2 or #4 (like if you couldn't use another ability for 2.0 seconds after using javelin). We both agree that having to react to what the javelin does objectively increases the skill-cap and this is a good thing.
Do we also agree that by nature of the game taking the control out of our hands, that now the better player wins less often?
As a follow up, and this is the super important part, is there a way to make players have to react to whether or not javelin works (so that we can get the increased skill-cap) without introducing randomness?
For instance, say that instead of just having a javelin ability, you have a javelin and javelin-fake. To defend against the javelin, you can brace. To beat the brace, you can fake. To beat the fake, you can fake.
Javelin > brace-fake > javelin-fake > brace > javelin. The javelin and javelin-fake animations are indistinguishable until it's too late. Same with the brace and brace-fake. When you target someone with a javelin, the game can make their character play the brace-fake animation on your screen regardless of whether or not they pressed the button, that way the attacker never knows whether the defender is bracing or faking. Now, the attacker has to react to uncertainty in the same way that they would if it was random, but it's entirely player controlled and based on hidden information.
edit: to tie this back into tab vs action, none of what I wrote is hit-validation specific. That system would work just as well in with tab-targetting as it would with action targeting. To make @Dygz hopefully jazzed, you can tie in character stats to these mechanics. Characters that are better at resisting javelins could have a lower cooldown on brace, their brace could last longer, or they could have more charges, etc.
Regardless of the intention, that's one of inevitable results of RNG being in the game.
The said unpredictable variance offered is always in favor of the player who can hardly win without that variance happening, while it's wasted on player who can do without it.
It's a game system by design, offering lucky roll comeback mechanics to underperforming player. Hence handholding as a term fits perfectly. As only one side is forced to adapt and carry the burden of increased winning condition.
The "lazy" part comes in when RNG is thrown as a solution to lack of variance problem instead of providing multiple dimensions in which said variance could happen for players to take advantage and variance being not system manufactured phenomena "RNG gods" but player actions and adaptation.
Note, many games which focus on competitive aspect curtail RNG in their games. Either using something akin to standard distribution model for such things as accuracy, or reduction to mean average chance in case of crits (to prevent lucky streaks while keeping the total percentage value the same). From top of my head League of Legends and World of Tanks does this. I'm sure there are many more.
I'm not saying that it's all bad. Some RNG might even be desirable. Think of it like salt, too much and it spoils everything, but a bit can provide those ass clenching moments which while unfair are not too off-putting. Also chance on hit mechanics offers a window of proc system to build on top to expand player choice / mechanical execution capabilities.
Another argument is that ... some hand holding in game which is not finite, namely it's not about winning, is probably desirable. You can win so hard that no-one else will want to come back to play with you. And ratios are different, but if siblings playing games can be relied upon it's somewhat to 2:1 to keep going. This however is easier said than done because it's not easy to figure out what exactly is "winning" in game which provides multitude hierarchies for competition. I would argue that combat is still one of the most important aspects to get right.
It was a long post.
Those many games are not RPGs.
The focus of RPGs is for character build to be better than player attributes.
My Rogue character with maxed/stacked stats should have greater Dex than the average player's dex.
RNG also reflects that.
Different game genres have different rulesets.
There's nothing lazy about an RPG using RPG rules.
Aaaaand Time!
5d07h06m
New record!
Don't get me wrong. I was just admiring how succinct a response it was. It usually takes most people on the forum far longer than that to arrive to your conclusion.
I don't think so. An FPS is a combat simulator that is solely based on twitch skill. An RPG is not a medieval combat simulator solely based on twitch skill. Chivalry 2 is not an RPG, it's a medieval combat simulator. I wouldn't expect to encounter RNG for hit calculations in Chivalry 2, I would in Skyrim. And I will in Ashes.
Yeah, there's a difference, but the difference isn't because one is an RPG and the other is not. You can have FPS in RPGs. The difference also isn't because one is a combat simulator and the other is not, because all games where you fight someone else are combat simulators by definition. Actually, the real difference is action combat and the level of abstraction of combat, with mmo examples being New World or PlanetSide 2. Funny that you mention Skyrim, because it doesn't have rng for you to miss an attack.
The distinction that you should've mentioned is actually between action combat and tab target. Tab target is auto-aim, so missing is impossible. So a lot of tab target games abstract the concept of missing into a percentage chance. Since this game is 'hybrid combat', it's not clear what they plan to do with rng on missing attacks when the system is fully implemented, but my opinion is that it doesn't increase the skill or fun in a game that isn't already trivial.
Alright, i'll give it a last shot.
First of all, this first part is correct other than this statement "so good players basically never find themselves in situation #2 or #4" Its a statement that purely relies on not only the MS difference but the CC Chance, Skill Animation duration and the CC duration of the javelin aswell:
- if the Animation duration lasts less than the CC duration = basically all playerwould have higher chances react correctly(As even failling it becomes way less punishing and easier to react)
- if the Animation duration is the same as the CC duration = good players will not always react correctly
- if the Animation duration lasts more than the CC duration = even good players will have a hard time reacting correctly (As the opponents reaction will basically always come first)
(Considering the MS low enough for decent reaction)(As it becomes reactable for the opponent to act even if it applies)
(Considering chance to apply 50%, Higher or Lower chances to apply would completely change this dynamic
as it would make player more inclined to react to a certain outcome than the other)
As you can see, the RNG factor results alone would not make the good player "basically always" react correctly, but their chance to apply would certainly increase or decrease their odds or reacting correctly.
Once again disregarding the adaptability skill as something that doesn't makes someone a "better player".
Considering we have 2 very similarly skilled players, But Player A's adaptability skill is higher the player B's,
The answer for your question will rely on either Player A or Player B being the subject of the question.
Sadly we seem to disagree on this point.
Yes, certainly, but probably not really viably currently on an MMORPG...
Here, is where things get weird... "Fake skill animations"? Specific counter actions?
That is pushing a bit too far from MMORPG territory and into Fighting Games territory...
Not only in an design standpoint but in a MS dependency and Netcode limitation standpoint
(which are far more manageable in a limited setting like a 1v1 Fighting game).
As for the server always specifically showing a fake counter action when a skill is used to hide information,
that's a HUGE deterrent of player agency in the reaction side of things as it will always give the defender side
the advantage of the starting animation in their favor without even committing to one for the attacker side to guess additionaly. I don't think such a method would be good even in a limited Fighting game setting.
Aren't we all sinners?
When a player gets hit by Javelin they should have a short window to press the Jump/Dodge key to reduce the distance the player gets pulled. If the player being hit mistimes the window to press Jump/Dodge or doesn't even press these keys, then they get pulled the full distance of the ability. The player getting hit may lose some stamina/mana when correctly AND incorrectly timing these keys. The player who chose not to press these keys when hit do not lose stamina/mana.
I think this method allows the player who uses Javelin to still be mildly rewarded for using the ability while also rewarding the player who got hit to be able to react accordingly.
When players build towards CC resistance, if they correctly time being hit by Javelin they would increasingly reduce the distance being pulled and may even get a small dash away from the opponent when resistance is high enough. The more CC resistance you have, the further you get away from your opponent when reacting correctly.
Players who build towards better CC effectiveness would reduce the effectiveness of the opponent's getaway/dash and increase stamina/mana usage when they correctly time against your Javelin. The more effective you are with CC, the closer your opponent gets dragged and also lose more stamina/mana when they react correctly.
What do you guys think?
That was predicated by "It also may be extremely easy to react correctly", but yeah, I hear what you're saying. I'm fully aware that it's possible to design the skill in such a way that it's not easy to react correctly, just as it's easy to design it such that it is.
Right, so try to mentally separate out the two pieces. You gain skill cap via adaptability, but now people are able to win via getting lucky. If your game doesn't have variance, then the better player wins. If your game does have variance, then you can win by playing better (including by adapting better) or by getting sufficiently lucky or by your opponent getting sufficiently unlucky. It doesn't matter how good you are at Magic: The Gathering if you never draw any lands. It doesn't matter how good you are at poker if your opponent has a straight flush every hand.
The game design can try to downplay the impact of RNG so that single instances of bad luck don't determine fights, but that doesn't shift the direction of the trend, just the magnitude.
This stuff was in World of Warcraft in 2004. When a caster starts casting a spell, they would have an animation that signified they were casting (their hands would start glowing). A rogue could press their interrupt button (kick) and if they pressed it while the caster was casting, it would interrupt the spell and the caster would be unable to cast from that same school of magic for ~8 seconds. If the caster canceled their spell just before the rogue pressed their kick, the rogue would waste their kick and the caster could cast for free. If the rogue guessed the caster would fake, they just wouldn't kick. Tab target yomi in 2004. So long as the startup time for the javelin ability is at least ~1.5 seconds (90f), it's really reasonable to react to this kind of stuff in US/EU network conditions (WoW players have been kicking 1.5 second casts for literal decades).
Heh, no. Super Mario Bros has fighting, it is not a combat simulator. Insurgency is a combat simulator, an FPS, with no rolls behind combat. Skyrim is an RPG with rolls behind combat, and as your character gains skill your character gains modifiers for those rolls.
Also, just to be a PITA, both tab target and action combat are abstractions of combat by definition. Unless you’re playing with a live blade instead of a mouse? 😬
Ok… I agree that there is a greater degree of RNG in tab target than action combat, but there are still rolls behind attacks in AC. That’s because it’s an RPG where your character’s skills are developed by gaining levels instead an FPS where your twitch skills increase (as a player) of by practice. In an RPG, no matter how hard you practice your lvl 10 character will never beat a level 50 character.
On a concrete level, we would hopefully all agree that if the only thing you changed about some idealistic canonical RPG was that you made it so that crowd control abilities didn't have a random chance to miss, it wouldn't suddenly stop being a role-playing game. That would be ridiculous.
Instead, let's focus on the player-level, human, gameplay impact of a proposal like removing the %chance to miss crowd control abilities.
Yep, until here its correct.
Now this is a whole other deal, now we're talking about the possible impact of RNG and absolute total failures or success of extremely small chance of lucky or unlucky outcomes, where there is no room to adapt and fate is sealed, like a coinflip, a single instance. The more instances you get the rarer it is to deal with such outcomes even something like calling a coin flip 5 times in a row is a ~1,5% chance.
As Ashes is aiming for a TTK around 30-60 secs, using a conservative number like 6-12 CC skills used by each player in this duration, (using the basic 50% chance) the chance of one player to apply all their CC and for the other missing all of their is completely insane.
You understand that what you just described is an skill cancelation outplay and not an entirely new Fake skill created to bait a specific counter attack that could have another fake skill to act as that specific counter attack correct?
Aren't we all sinners?
This is to illustrate direction. You've been extremely hesitant to say that RNG can make the better player win less often, so I provided extreme examples that would be tough to argue with. RNG increases the skill cap (via adding the potential of making someone adapt) and decreases the impact of skill (via putting someone in an advantageous or disadvantageous situation randomly). It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing, it can be accruing advantages. One resisted stun can turn a 50:50 matchup into a 60:40 or 65:35 matchup. One missed stun when it's already down to the wire can absolutely decide a match, even in a high TTK game.
Yeah so imagine that you've already been fighting for 50 of those seconds and you're both down to <10% HP. They're casting a heal and you try to interrupt them. If it works, you win. It doesn't. Their heal goes off. You're low health too. They survive for a few more seconds until their CC is available and they use it. It works. They win.
There were a bunch of other either resisted or not resisted ccs and everything else that brought you to that point. Maybe the only reason that the fight was close in the first point is that you got lucky. Maybe the only reason it was close is that you got unlucky. Point is, when you add variance like this, it can absolutely matter. You have to design extremely carefully if you want to try to claim that because of the randomness better players win more often than worse players relative to if everything was consistent. I've honestly never seen it in a game with any real amount of depth.
Without being glib, is there a meaningful difference? Imagine that you can fake your javelin by pressing the hotkey again near the tail end of the cast, and fake brace by just not pressing it. Easy UX.
Yes, i've been extremely hesitant to say that "RNG can make the better player win less often" because our definitions of what makes a "better player" seems to differ.
Yes, there certainly is! As in one situation we are talking about a functionality of a skill(that of being able to be cancelled before it is finished)(which i suppose would have a CD penality to prevent abuse) and on the other we are talking about having a whole other fake skill and having it's whole purpose as to mimic a pre-existing one and on top of that i'm not even adding the "server always specifically showing a fake counter action when a skill is used to hide information" that you mentioned to the mix.
Aren't we all sinners?
I don’t think it’s an either / or endeavor. We can talk about games we love to play, while also understanding the underlying mechanics that make up that gameplay.
To your follow up point on CC, I’ll agree that the RNG % chance to miss in an RPG is an ‘idealist’ or ‘canonical’ perspective, if you’ll agree that skill isn’t a canonical component for hitting a target in an FPS.
And (again) you don’t have to remove RNG to focus on the ‘player-level, human, gameplay impact’ of say pvp in an RPG. They can mutually exist - and have - for quite some time.
Last point, just on framing your argument. Try avoiding the ‘we’d all agree’ false appeal to the masses, it blunts the confidence of what you’re trying to say. Stand behind your opinion as your opinion. 🤗
True, what I meant was that everything is an abstraction of combat, and that FPS and RPG are not mutually exclusive. Tab targeting (auto-aim) is a higher combat abstraction than having to manually aim attacks in combat.
Yeah and the point is, which I made in the original post that you replied to, is that adding rng doesn't automatically make a game (rpg or not) more fun or skillful. If anything, it introduces luck to make it less skillful, except in specific cases where the search space for the optimal move is very small and there is no skill involved in executing the move. Just because a game is an rpg doesn't mean that it automatically needs to have rng elements in combat. Skyrim has very low rng in combat (only critical hits), and probably no one would notice if they completely removed it. I think the confusion might stem from the acronyms having similar spellings? Idk but there is no correlation. It is more dependent on the abstraction level of combat as I mentioned.
This has nothing to do with rng in combat. Whether you roll a miss on one attack won't matter or change the outcome. Rpg is a very wide genre and not defined by rng, but instead mostly by character stats and progression. Having no rng does not diminish the importance of character progression because attack damage can be calculated without rng.
In what way do you think they differ? I believe that better players are able to adapt to random situations better than worse players. Similarly, I belive that slightly worse players can get slightly luckier than slightly better players and end up winning. Any disagreements there?
Maybe if I re-explain it, it'll seem less alien.
The two tanks are looking at each other. One of them presses their javelin button. It starts a 1.5 second long animation. If the javelin-thrower presses the javelin button again, the wind-up animation will finish, but they won't actually toss the javelin, and the ability won't go on cooldown. On the defender's screen, they see the start up animation for javelin toss, and their character begins the startup animation for brace. They can press their brace button, or not, but need to choose before the startup finishes. On the javelin thrower's screen, their target will do the start-up animation for brace regardless of whether or not they passed it.
If the defender pressed brace, it completes the brace animation. If the javelin thrower only pressed it once, it hurls the javelin. If javelin meets brace, the defender doesn't get pulled (or gets pulled less or whatever else you want to do). If the javelin thrower successfully baited the brace, they can just wait for it to be over and then the defender will be helpless.
I'm not actually sure what you're asking here
I have a strong feeling that I'm being misunderstood here. I didn't say that you needed to remove RNG to focus on pvp, I said that we should focus on the impact of removing RNG (rather than debating labels).
Respectfully, no thanks!
The point of the phrase is that I know what my opinion is, and I'm also hoping that it's one that we all agree with. I certainly believe that if the only thing you changed about some idealistic canonical RPG was that you made it so that crowd control abilities didn't have a random chance to miss, it wouldn't suddenly stop being a role-playing game. I also believe that the people I'm talking to believe that too, and so we have common ground. If that's incorrect, then that false assumption needs to be corrected immediately, because we can't even begin to have this conversation if anyone I'm talking to belives that cc's having a miss% is a hard, absolute requirement for a game to be a rpg.
Before I respond, I just want to explicitly set my tone. I find this conversation really enjoyable, so if there’s a choice to read anger v. amusement in my reply - err on the side of amusement.
I find this last bit of your response interesting, and I wonder if there’s a generational thing, or we’re just coming at this from way different angles. I’ll go back to the 70s when DnD arguably created the RPG genre. RPGs abstracted combat and all it’s lovely nuances using dice. I think I still have my bag of dice somewhere in my office, or maybe my attic. Everything, from encounters, to climbing a wall, to hitting a dude with a fireball was based on dice rolls - RNG.
The probability of failure represented in a dice roll is an abstraction of real-life ‘friction.’ You slipped on a step and missed your bus, you pinched your finger on a car door and that’s why you misdialed a conference call, or you mistook cell phone for a gun and shot someone unnecessarily. These are all hapless occurrences that impact someone’s intent.
Skills / proficiencies / feats / abilities etc mitigate the probability of dice rolls, but never negate them. So when I say your character gains skill by leveling and as such is better at hitting a target, this is what I’m talking about.
When CRPGs built out RPGs, they were built upon the same dice rolls as in PnP. When MMORPGs were built, they used the same dice rolls as CRPGs - they are just thousands of rolls happening simultaneously using RNG as stand ins for dice. The big difference in RPG combat v. FPS is that in an RPG your character’s level, gear, and skills mitigate the probabilities unlike an FPS (which is built on more of a Galaga model) that depends on your reflexes as a player.
So yeah when we’re talking RPGs - RNG may not ‘define’ the genre, but it’s pretty damn fundamental to the game’s core.
It's not just about making a fun game and then trying to choose a label for it.
Backgammon and chess are both fun games but if you take the dice out of backgammon it's no longer backgammon.
Some game devs could make a new game that is a Fighter with RPG elements and choose not to have RNG.
They probably would call it a Fighter instead of an RPG. Or come up with some new label, similar to MMO Throne War Simulator.
Steven states he was wants to put the RPG back into MMORPG, so you should expect that to come with RNG.
Especially since Jeffrey stated: "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."