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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
Nope, no disagreement there.
The thing is, when you talk about "RNG making the better player win less often" it seems that you are referring to the same player win rate in an RNG-less setting compared against an RNG setting, as in the RNG-less setting the "better player" will not face this type of variance as there is no adversity to adapt to and will very rarely lose and can even reach crazy win rates like 95-100% even when the skill gap isn't very big and even using reasonable high amount of instances to get the data from like 100 matches.
Yeah, in that case RNG will make "the guy who is a better player in an RNG-less setting win less often in an RNG Setting". Even tho if his adaptability skill is good aswell, he will win the vast majority of the time against the "not as good player" in the RNG setting.
And because the context is an MMORPG, character building skill might prove to be a great ally to the "better player". Let's say the "better player in an RNG-less setting" decides to drastically invest in CC% resist/CC duration reduction and very little to no CC% chance to apply, gets little to no CC skills in his build and invest in higher Damage skills because he is very confident in his mechanical skill, something like this could dramatically increase his win rate by using the game systems pushing himself into a less-RNG-affected playstyle by personal choice, and the opposite would also be possible. Without RNG such dynamic wouldn't be a possibility.
Btw, when you say "impact of skill" what exactly do you mean? You seem to not consider the adaptability skill as part of this impact but only a "skill cap riser", so i really don't know if what we consider to make the "better player" is compatible.
Aren't we all sinners?
Assume that all CC have 10 'tiers' of effectiveness, and start at 5. Raising the tier offensively is hard. Raising it defensively is less hard. Generalizing...
Blind: 5 or 10s depending on strength
Flash Blind: 1s
Snare: 2.5 or 5s
Defense Down: 10 or 15s depending on Strength
Knockdown: 2s
Poison: 15-20s.
Every 'Tier' of Resistance drops duration by 20%. Every 'Tier' of 'Overwhelm' counteracts this (or adds 20% if no resistance).
The question is ofc, why '60% chance of resisting Blind' is better than '2-4s of blind from your build'.
The answer given is basically 'adapt to being blinded or not'. Which is possibly more dynamic than 'the offensive player adapting around the fact that their blind does not last long on this particular opponent'.
Obviously I don't see it, but honestly I just felt like putting this in a more concrete form.
For me it's basically just not zero. I'm content to let the devs work out the actual computations.
Yeah to give concrete examples, maybe someone who would beat someone in a no-rng setting 95% of the time might only be able to beat them 90% of the time if there is RNG. Even though they're able to adapt to the added RNG better than their noobier opponent, sometimes their noobier opponent can luck their way into a victory. The added vector of skill (adaptability) doesn't always offset the new random chance that the game can deal you a bad hand.
As another, probably more relevant example, consider two evenly-matched opponents that go, say, 55:45 in a RNG-less environment. When you add in RNG, they could trend even closer to something like 52:48 or 51:49.
If you make it so that the randomness never produces bad outcomes for either player and only different outcomes, like an ability that grants equally good but different buffs to a player, then now you're able to make that player adapt to randomness without dealing them a bad hand and you raise the skill cap without harming the skill impact.
Character building skill quickly trends to 0 because of the spread of information on the internet. Since we can inspect other player's builds, since there's money to be made on top players advertising their builds on twitch and youtube, etc, all of the top players will be playing the builds that give them the statistically highest effectiveness. The hidden secret over-powered build is basically a myth after the game has been out for a decent amount of time.
Maybe an example would help - say that we're playing the following game. We shuffle a deck of spades, hearts, and clubs. Azherae draws the top card and lays it on the table. If it's a spade, I get a point. If it's a heart, you get a point. If it's a club, whoever slaps it first gets a point.
If you're better at adapting to the randomness of it being a club, then you're in a good spot, but only if there's a fair amount of spades, hearts, and clubs. If the deck is guaranteed to be an equal amount of spades and hearts, then whoever slaps the most clubs wins. But! If there can randomly be more spades than hearts, then maybe I can be worse at slapping clubs but still win.
You can introduce a mechanic that increases the skill cap (how good you can possibly be at the game) that simultaneously decreases the skill impact (the probability that the player who played better wins).
In a vacuum, where all other variables are equal, and two characters are squared off directly. Then yes, more often than not the most experienced players is going to win. Is this blatantly false, no. Because an inexperienced level 50 will wipe the floor with a veteran level 10. A more inexperienced player with a level 50 in Tier 10 gear will destroy a veteran level 50 in Tier 2 gear.
It seems to me like you want to create a false mutually exclusive relationship between player skill and the presence of RNG. And that's fine - we just disagree. I just seem them being able to exist alongside each other in a way that character skills mitigate the non-zero presence of RNG. Fortunately, so does IS.
Going back to TT v. AC either of these systems can sit on top of the RPG foundation and work just fine.
I can't tell if you're being purposefully obtuse or if you're just using definitions differently than me. The characters don't play themselves. Novices might keyboard turn or not press their buttons. Novice table-top players might not flank or forget to use their character abilities. "The play matters" seems like an unarguable objective truth.
Imagine grinding hundreds of hours to make "The Best Anti CC Build" known to everyone playing, only for it to sometimes not work because the game said so. My efforts towards getting the gear, speccing my attributes/skills properly, and my skills as a player all feels invalidated because I lost an important competitive combat interaction. All of this happened because my build that was supposed to be "The Best Anti CC Build" just wasn't "The Best" at that random moment.
I would feel like I didn't earn that loss and I would assume that the winning player felt like they didn't earn that win. Both parties may feel like the results are trivialized because the game caused that outcome, not from the players themselves.
Now as a competitive player I might get mad at whoever created the build, may question my own abilities as a competitive player, and may even try to make my own Best Anti CC Build as a result. All of this continuing a cycle of grinding just to feel disappointed and frustrated because of an uncontrollable variable that is inherently built into the game's system/mechanics.
I'm not saying RNG based CC isn't fun and dramatic, I'm saying that RNG based CC is not healthy and good for a competitive environment, regardless of the genre. If anyone says that "RNG based CC IS healthy and good for a competitive environment" they better have a good answer besides "RNG is inherent to the genre", "RNG shows player skill in adaptability" or "I'm not a competitive player so I don't care".
That is a key aspect of RPGs.
If being competitive means that much to you, play a MOBA or an MMOFPS.
They are always obtuse. It's required to be so when one is as deeply committed to ranger as possible as they are. If you aren't obtuse you can't make your point(arrow) go long and far. Just part of getting used to CROW3
(I say that in all sincerity)
As CROW3 pointed out.
Hm... ok. Edit: Reading this a fourth time, I think I hear what you're saying. I feel the love.
No, I don't think so. I think how you play your character matters, I think your characters skills, abilities, equipment, and statistics have a greater impact on the overall success of a character in an RPG. We can probably go six or sevens rounds (beer not boxing) on what that proportion might be, and what exceptions are relevant (cause there are always edge cases).
Where I think we really disagree (and still enjoy talking about) is the overall role RNG has within an RPG combat system. I get that folks don't want RNG in combat. All the myriad examples are totally clear. However, what I hear is "I want complete certainty that my (the payer) skill can overcome a combat situation." I also hear that if there isn't complete certainty that it would make a competitive match unacceptable.
I've played and coached sports most of my life, and spent a good portion of my adult years in one form of martial arts or another. There's a lot of skill on both sides of the field for any one game. But neither team has a certain outcome because of their skill or time on the pitch. There is always entropy on the field. The ball bounces weird, or comes off the laces randomly, or the weather's impactful, or - you get the idea. It shapes wins and losses ALL the time. Does is suck when it happens, of course. But it's there. I think that's why I'm totally fine accepting it's part of a game as well - especially in an RPG. I'm ok with uncertainty, knowing that over the long run it balances out on the side of skills, stats, & mitigation - and in those random moments it reflects a reality that I've long accepted as 'that's life.'
It is binary. Your character does not play itself. When you play melee and your hands are off the keyboard and a monster 30 yards away shoots you, your character does not run up to start doing battle, like a zergling would in starcraft. It will continue to shoot you until you die or choose to play.
Awesome! This is where I was trying to get to! I also am totally okay with RNG having an impact. I'm okay with having to adapt to a myriad of conditions out of my control and have also played sports for most of my life. I can appreciate competition in both hectic and sterile environments.
I am in no way claiming that I want complete certainty for player skill to overcome combat situations. Sometimes you're outmatched! Sometimes you've got the wrong build for a situation, or you're on the wrong side of a 1v3, or any number of things. Those are completely all okay!
I wanted to talk specifically about removing the chance that high-impact crowd control abilities have a percentage chance to straight-up fail and replacing that with some other mechanic. Not about removing RNG in general, not about creating some sort of slippery slope, just about removing variance from high-impact cc.
Cool. I think we're hearing each other better now.
That said, I'm going to be a pain in the ass for your point above.
Edit: Fencing example: if an attack just misses, you immediately adapt to adjust your next attack or retreat to buy time and regroup. If you get attached to the miss, you've lost.
I don't need or want to play certain games competitively, but I'm factoring in the competitive aspects being implemented into AoC. One of AoC's biggest contributing gameplay experiences are from large scale Siege Wars which is a competitive PvP experience that can determine the outcome of a Node System's level progression.
A world changing game event that causes the player to lose their house, farm, raids/dungeon locations etc. all happened because someone randomly couldn't perform/resist a game winning CC even though they had a 95% chance to do so.
You don't have to/need to be competitive in AoC to understand that RNG, especially from CC, can have major consequences to the game. It may create a fun and dramatic story for the journey, but I don't think it would be a fair and desirable one.
Yeah it was just a joke about obtuse trajectory angles. >.> Glad the love landed.
I'm going to challenge this a bit - if the last move before a node is lost is that a CC failed to hit, there were a number of other failures based on non-RNG dynamics that led up to that node being lost. If it were my freehold lost, I'm not going to blame a missed CC for the node being taken.
Sure! Hopefully you won't mind if I'm a pain in return. If you want to advocate that any action can randomly fail, why stop there? Sometimes when you try to mount up, it randomly doesn't work. Sometimes when you try to backpedal, you randomly trip and fall. Sometimes when you dismount, you randomly tumble off. Sometimes when you drink your potion, you randomly drop it and it breaks. Sometimes when you repair your armor, it randomly damages it more instead. Sometimes when you try to turn in a quest, you randomly fail your internal diplomacy check and the NPC gets pissed and you fail it and have to do it again.
Maybe all of those sound dope to you and I need to come up with even more annoying, player-unfriendly ones. If you don't want all of those, then you're admitting that you don't want everything governed by randomness. Maybe you'd like, for instance, guarentees about being able to walk without random chances of falling down (unlike real life).
I'm saying that I'd like specific guarentees about high-impact abilities like crowd controls.
I'm very curious about what you consider a "high-impact cc" to be!
As i believe it to be a very important parameter:
is it simple a Hard-CC(CC that locks all caracter action other than CC breakers) no matter the duration relative to TTK and other variables(CD,Dmg,range,cast time and etc)
or
or the duration of the Hard-CC relative to TTK and other variables(CD,Dmg,range,cast time and etc) matter when you consider it a high-impact cc.
Aren't we all sinners?
Love it. I'll take all of those over a tokenistic nod to RNG, that exempts a certain set of somehow sacred abilities.
Rng environmental factors are not a factor in a lot of sports. For example, in table tennis you switch sides after every round, and the environment is static. Video games are close to table tennis in that sense. Computers are deterministic and there is very little rng in how computers work.
However, technically video games can have more rng than table tennis when networking is involved. If someone likes rng in video games, then I expect that they would also not mind lag. Sometimes packets don't make it to or from the server due to rng, which causes lag spikes and creates unexpected results from what you see on the screen and what the server sees.
Most people want to eliminate this lag, similar to how professional sports spend a lot resources leveling playing fields (literally) and growing grass uniformly to avoid as much rng as possible. However, some people seem to want to place clumps of dirt on the pitch and play on uneven grass, even though it reduces player agency in determining the outcome of the match and results in a worse experience for the players, all in order to preserve some sense of nostalgia for when they had to play on a crappy pitch.
True but the whole battle's outcome is also created from other small RNG based game mechanics and scenarios that could snowball into entirely different small outcomes if one particular small event did/didn't happen by chance.
You could possibly have the same exact sequence of battles and events, but if you tweaked just one number in any one of those sequences/battles, it could change the entire outcome of the war.
And this is the key point. I was wondering if bringing it up with this argument would cause any shift, but I'm glad to see that it doesn't. It's really helpful for clarification of where one can reach a compromise and where one can't.
So there you have it, @beaushinkle.
"I will take randomly dropping and breaking a healing potion if it is required to preserve RNG."
It's mostly about how many times you can use the ability during a normal engagement, and how much the play centers around that ability.
To use a WoW example, when you play against Mage teams in WoW, you play around the cooldown of their Dragon's Breath ability. They can blink into melee range of someone, and then land a dragon's breath which is a short-range non-targetted cone. That person will be disoriented for long enough for the mage to guarantee a polymorph on them, meaning that their teammate will have to stop the mage somehow. To make the set-up better, whoever is capable of interrupting the mage should also be stunned at the same time by the mage's teammate. This means that the defending team, knowing this is all about to go down need to make it as hard as possible for them to execute this flawlessly, or know who needs to use their CC-breaker to interrupt the chain (because if they both use it, they're wasting defensives). The mage team can set this up every ~30-45 seconds.
I would call the Dragon's Breath high-impact. If the mage team set this all up and then the dragon's breath got resisted and they lost, it would feel super dumb.
Goodness.
Hah, it's worse than that. "I will take randomly losing control of my character and falling on my face when I'm running through the wild if it's required to preserve RNG". I honestly don't actually believe it, and think talk is cheap
Always believe what consumers tell you they want.
No matter what it sounds like, no matter how many things you believe you can see that they can't possibly want, that would result from it.
Verify for yourself, but always believe them.
Or, they have a really tough time imagining how unfun it would be to play a MMO for actual years of game time, randomly falling, inexplicably failing quests, etc.