Misses, resists and other combat RNG

What are people's thought on the topic of RNG in combat?

1) My impression is that there will be no RNG misses or resists of damaging attacks. Same goes for effects from attacks like DoTs, CC or debuffs. If someone sends it your way, and you don't have a specific effect that keeps from landing, it's going to stick. You may be able to reduce the damage with resists/armor stats, but it won't just be completely nullified. I bring that up because after the mage preview I've been seeing a lot of comparisons to systems where you just stack resists to a specific element to not get hit by it.

2) RNG blocks, dodges or parries. My understanding is that the default level of evade/block/parry will be 0%. I don't think we've seen anything official related to this from the Devs other than active block showcased in the tank preview. There are a lot of options .Tank and rogue are the most likely classes to have something like this. Either as a passive X% chance to block/evade damage, or as an active buff that gives an X% chance. But since all classes could have rogue/tank/other

#1: IMO for a modern MMO, RNG missing/resists are not needed. It's just too huge of a benefit for an attack to completely miss, especially in a cooldown based system.

For #2, I'm also not a fan of anything passive. But a moderate-to-long-cooldown RNG-based defensive buff would be ok (Ex: gain 30% evade chance for the next 5 seconds). Even better would be a cooldown based buff that negates the next attack against you. I'm more interested in having active block or iframes incorporated into the dodge roll

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Comments

Ludullu

I personally like rng in both of those. But rng based on the stat difference between the attacker and defender. And people would be able to make builds that address those differences. A mage has high WIS stat that lets them resist majority of poisons? Boost your INT in response and get a buff that boosts poison effect chance.

Stuff like that. And the same applies to physical interactions as well. Perfect blocks and dodges should still be in the game, but they gotta be real tight, so that they're a real skill check (well, of course as long as the ping is accounted for).

Azherae

Hate it, but I think Ashes is pretty dead set on it.

I can manage when it's not binary, i.e. Random chance for shorter duration CC instead of CC misses, or random chance to deal lower damage (I'm more ok with it for crits and damage in longer TTK games).

But that's just a matter of 'coinflips and dicerolls' vs 'statistics'. The sweet spot in an MMO is probably the point where the 'streak of bad' is enough of an outlier that it won't usually ruin a gameplan, but I find this to be harder to reach in PvP situations.

Songcaller

I love the devs idea of input rng but I'm not a fan of output rng.

Mag7spy

I kind of enjoy rng in combat though it makes it hard to do proper combo set up. Granted the goal is to try to stun and blow someone up with as much dmg as possible.

In a game with large fights and many players there should be ways to control the effects of cc on you and the chance. Normally I'll say it needs to be balanced for it so that you can have less cc around but make the current cc more reliable over rng.

But I'm unsure the correct decision until i see more of the game and how their goals will work out.

Maybe a mix of some non rng cc and some cc that is rng.

Solvryn

I don’t mind reductions, but passive RNG is garbage. Perfect block/Dodge Roll/ Evade is the way to go.

Noaani

RNG is fine imo, as long as the systems behind it are fairly open.

Having a log of the rolls the combat system takes, along with a list of modifiers (basically the same info you have in tabletop D&D), then all is well.

Going to attack someone and missing can be frustrating. Seeing that you rolled a 1 vs their roll of 100 though, that makes it a little easier to digest.

tautau

I'm fine with RNG.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of using a RNG is people often (or should I say 'usually') misunderstanding statistics. This leads to complaining and whining which is unpleasant. But there are lots of unpleasant reactions from the player base and it is unrealistic to expect that not to happen.

So use the RNGs but, as Noaani just said, let the systems behind it be fairly open.

Ace1234

I hate rng for anything other than mixing up how situations are presented to the player to create a dynamic experience. Put the power in the player's hands and let rng naturally occur from the nuances of human limitations and skill differences.

Songcaller

We could moved around attacks in a1 rather than having rng which was very good. I hope the devs iterate on that aspect and maintain the dynamics. Input rng is fine but output rng sucks.

Fantmx

I am fine with rng being part of the equation however as character skill increases rng should decrease.

Noaani

Fantmx wrote: »

I am fine with rng being part of the equation however as character skill increases rng should decrease.

I sort of agree with this, but most games do this as a matter of course.

An example is that as your character progresses, their chance to hit would go up. New abilities and gear would just naturally increase it. As your chance to hit goes up, your reliance on RNG naturally goes down.

daveywavey

I hate RNG. It just feels like they haven't been able to design a fully working system when they have to resort to RNG. It's just sloppy. Lots of modern board-games are moving away from dice for that very reason.

Lodrig

Basic attacks should absolutely have a chance to hit/miss driven by character stats and appropriate environmental conditions. Ranged attacks in particular need a distance component so that retreating is an at least partial defense. Basic attacks are going to be numerous enough that hits and misses would rapidly average out and act as a defacto damage reduction for the target which is appropriate if they have created conditions for misses via stats or battlefield tactics.

Mana consuming abilities be they AOE's or singularly targeted probably should NOT miss or have an RNG component in their damage or debuff effects as the expenditure of limited resources should give reliability for the user and the nature of such abilities many complex effects can not be averaged out easily.

BaSkA_9x2

I am not a fan of RNG in combat. Something I dislike is having different damage dealt by the same player to the same target using the same skill or basic attack. In other words, very simplified just to make a point, taking no dodges/misses/resists/etc. into account: if a player yielding a sword with 100 attack attacks a target (another player or mob) that has 10 armor, I want the damage to be 90 every time I hit it, I wouldn't like to hit 82, then 94, then 87, then a 90.

I can think of reasons to add RNG to this, but I would like to play an MMO where damage is the result of a mathematical calculation, no matter how complex or simple it may be, no need for a damage range (RNG) there.

Fantmx

Noaani wrote: »

Fantmx wrote: »

I am fine with rng being part of the equation however as character skill increases rng should decrease.

I sort of agree with this, but most games do this as a matter of course.

An example is that as your character progresses, their chance to hit would go up. New abilities and gear would just naturally increase it. As your chance to hit goes up, your reliance on RNG naturally goes down.

Exactly, a natural progression of skill. As you become more adept with swordplay and combat you should have more control and less randomness.

It also provides a feel of increasing power and gives players another goal to strive for.

Ace1234

Here is an interesting vid that for the most part sums up my feelings on the topic.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dwI5b-wRLic&t=229s&pp=ygUMR210dGsgcmFuZG9t

Noaani

Fantmx wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Fantmx wrote: »

I am fine with rng being part of the equation however as character skill increases rng should decrease.

I sort of agree with this, but most games do this as a matter of course.

An example is that as your character progresses, their chance to hit would go up. New abilities and gear would just naturally increase it. As your chance to hit goes up, your reliance on RNG naturally goes down.

Exactly, a natural progression of skill. As you become more adept with swordplay and combat you should have more control and less randomness.

It also provides a feel of increasing power and gives players another goal to strive for.

To me, games do an ok job of this naturally, as outlined above.

The thing to remember, at least imo, is that the adverse of this also applies. As your opponents get better, that RNG creeps back in.

This is where opposed rolls in MMOs come in. My chance to hit rolled against your chance to dodge, block or avoid.

Sure, I've put all that time and effort in to increasing my chance to hit, but you have put that same amount of time in to increasing your chance to prevent me from hitting.

What I will say is that games with this mechanic do also need non-RNG components to the system.

In most games, this is things like added damage in the case of the attacker, and mitigation in the case of the defender.

Vaknar

In case you missed it, be sure to check out the Dev Discussion we did on RNG a year ago: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/52481/dev-discussion-41-rng/p1

Quite a few interesting opinions on the topic can be found there, as well!

Fantmx

I definitely agree it should be a combination of RNG and non-RNG

Spif

Lodrig wrote: »

Basic attacks should absolutely have a chance to hit/miss driven by character stats and appropriate environmental conditions. Ranged attacks in particular need a distance component so that retreating is an at least partial defense. Basic attacks are going to be numerous enough that hits and misses would rapidly average out and act as a defacto damage reduction for the target which is appropriate if they have created conditions for misses via stats or battlefield tactics.

I don't think missing should be more prevalent for longer ranged attacks just so that retreating can be more successful. If the attacks are numerous enough that it rapidly averages out, this in essence becomes:

Ranged attacks do less damage the further away you are from your target, due to misses. And I don't like that at all. It means ranged will always have to try to be as close as possible to deal full damage.

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