Crowd control should not be based on RNG

i just dont like the idea where you pray that your CC actually hits or not, and im not talking about balancing right now, this is about CC. Not what class has it or not, but if it should be guaranteed hit or not.

if its guaranteed = skills matter more than RNG
if its not (like it is now in alpha) = if you have bad luck you will die to the on who has better luck.

toughts?

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Noaani

JustVine wrote: »

It's called marketing mate.

No, it's called genres.

RNG: Random Number Generator. The game decides for you whether your answer is correct.

This is a seperate concept from.
Random Chance: There was a chance of something working but it didn't for various reasons. The machine isn't required to be involved here.

Yes, these are different concepts.

However, you are making it sound like RNG is all about randomness.

It is not.

If I have a nuke that deals 500 - 550 damage, the random aspect of that is 50. The ability and my gear make up 500.

In terms of a CC's chance to hit, the effect of the RNG in that would likely be even less than that 10%.

Games that lean into action combat use Random chance via class design and situational spacing relative to those tools. Rock Paper Scissors.

Most MMO's with PvP have a RPS based system. This is nothing at all to do with action combat games.

I can agree with you that something needs to happen to prevent stale rotations however you are setting up a false premise from the very beginning of this post. It's an option between two design sets. RNG mechanics are not the one and only way.

It may not be the only way, but I have yet to see a combat system that would be acceptable in an MMORPG that both avoids rotations and has no RNG.

In fact, the game that has the least reliance on rotations of all that I have played also has the most randomness in it's combat.

Not only have I not seen a combat system that doesn't have random elements get away from there being a theoretical best rotation, but I can't even see how that is possible. While it may well be that you don't know what classes you will come up against in an open world MMO, if there is no randomness, you will very quickly fall in to using the same rotation - or at the very least you will have a combat opener you always use, a few combos to use during combat, and perhaps a closer or two if your build has such things. Basically, while you may not fall in to an exact rotation, without randomization you will fall in to a few basic combos.

Add in randomness to the game in a decent way, and you can't just mindlessly bash out combos. If you are in a fight with someone and you have a combo you like using that debuffs your target for cold damage, and then you follow that with a massive cold nuke with a long cooldown. if you have an effect that has a chance to lower the cooldown of an ability at random and your nuke triggers it and so is available without the debuff being up - you'd be stupid to not use it.

Expand that out to every ability, with any of them having a chance to reset their cooldown, and all of a sudden you simply can't just run the same rotation, or the same combos. You have to always evaluate what you have available and what is coming up to be available soon, and make a decision on every ability on the fly.

If you take any one game that has rotations (other than rotations used to build combat resources - a mechanic I despise) and add in a simple RNG chance of cooldown reset, and you instantly kill any possibility of rotations being effective.

That is just one RNG element - but that is the power that randomness can have in a game, and why the idea that it shouldn't be in an MMO just doesn't hold.

Dygz

JustVine wrote: »

RPS vs RNG. I think both can exist in tandem but it'd be unwise not to listen to lessons learned in fighting game design if you want a high skill combat system with nuance and.skill mattering.

RPGs typically have Rock Paper Scissors and RNG because RPGS were designed for teams; not 1v1 PvP.
PvPers who play MMORPGs typically get pissed off by RPS because they say it's not fair for 1v1 combat, so they start whining for class nerfs.

By high skill, I assume you mean high player twitch skills - but that is unlikely to be an RPG because in an RPG, the character skills are intended to trump player twitch skills. Player skill in an RPG is mostly about building your character; not player twitch skills.
ARPGS attempt to add in player twitch skills as a feature, but if player twitch skills are the priority over character skills and there is no RNG...that's not really an RPG.

Ashes aims to have both Tab Target and Action combat, so it is a great idea to take a look at combat from a variety of games that include combat; not just RPGs. But, Ashes combat still needs some RNG because it is an RPG.
Which is why Jeff stated that there will always be RNG in Ashes combat but the RNG can be significantly mitigated with Action Combat skills...if they can get hybrid combat to work.

JustVine

You are controlling definitions of a bunch of things here creating a series of false positives in this discussion.

Noaani wrote: »

JustVine wrote: »

It's called marketing mate.

No, it's called genres.

Quite frankly.... You don't get to decide the definition of fighting games 'yourself' guv. For Honor won a peoples choice award for best fighting game of the year. Absolver was nominated for two fighting game awards one of them in the same year as For Honor's victory.

And even if I humor your false positives.

Noaani wrote: »

In the context of the discussion, we were talking about fighting games. Games where you enter a ring and fight against a single opponent, three times.

Absolver has a mode where you can do exactly that. Are you one of those people who consider Smash Bros to not be a fighting game?

The point of mentioning any of this, is RPS is sufficient, RNG is not required.

Noaani wrote: »

It may not be the only way, but I have yet to see a combat system that would be acceptable in an MMORPG that both avoids rotations and has no RNG.

...

Not only have I not seen a combat system that doesn't have random elements get away from there being a theoretical best rotation, but I can't even see how that is possible. While it may well be that you don't know what classes you will come up against in an open world MMO, if there is no randomness, you will very quickly fall in to using the same rotation - or at the very least you will have a combat opener you always use, a few combos to use during combat, and perhaps a closer or two if your build has such things. Basically, while you may not fall in to an exact rotation, without randomization you will fall in to a few basic combos.

You have repeatably ignored examples via your personal definitions. If the game is going to have action combat, it makes sense to take lessons from action games. Just because your definition of what an mmorpg 'must' include RNG doesn't mean 'it's the only definition that works.' Your failure of imagination is no reason to dismiss those who can. It's how masterpieces get made.

Tritri

JustVine wrote: »

It got brought up because Dreoh pointed out that pvp as a concept was perfected by fighting games. If you want a game with serious combat there are lessons to be learned from the genre. Fighting games like GGXrd, Soul Calibur, Injustice all have systems for 'more casual play.'

To be honest, fighting games have an history of being particularly bad at introducing mechanics for casual play. The companies always try to promote their next fighting game by saying "yeah, this time, truly, anybody can play the game and everyone will start at the same level and casual will have all their chances against more hardcore gamers". Who believes that ? They always fail with these mechanics that are often just bad at high level and really don't help lower level player beat higher level ones.... because that's how competitive games works. If you are better, you should win more (note the more, not necessary all the time). If not, the game isn't competitive (which if fine aswell, not all games need to be competitive).

Fighting games that are able to grasp the attention of casual audience do it by being fun to play and fun to watch at lower level. But they always fail at teaching people what the games are about truly, most of the time because people don't really want to learn anyway.

Now, about RNG, here is what I think.

Randomness is and will always be part of games, it's even part of real life sports. There is always a bit of luck to everything.
Now there is acceptable RNG and less accepetable ones in a PvP environnement.
In competitive fighting games for example, even if they try to minimize the randomness, there are characters that are based around some randomness (Faust/Zappa/Kliff from Guilty Gear series, The Hero in Smash Bros, Shingo in King of Fighters, Dan in Street Fighter 5, Dummy chars in SoulCalibur/Tekken,...) and people still play them in highly competitive tournament, the characters aren't weak or overpowered just because of their randomness.
In a lot of FPS you have some randomness in the spray patterns of some of your weapons, some games more than others... you can control it a bit, but it's still random
In RTS you also have randomness in the way some units will move in a terrain when multiple units are being moved. You can prevent it, but sometimes shit happens.

For MMOs, I can think of some RNG that don't bother me, like RNG on defensive mechanics such as dodging or blocking (yeah the tank blocked your stun, well maybe next time try to land it from the back on chose a better target). And also some RNG that I don't like, for example, in Dark Age of Camelot, you have 5% chance for any spells to be resisted in PvP, which is ok when doing masse aoe spells since you know some of your targets will resist and you can account for it, but is infuriating on single target spells where you can have 3 resists back to back when trying to finish off your target.

So having my long cooldown last resort crowd control that would change the outcome of my fight being "resisted" just BECAUSE, will anger me a bit
Having it blocked because I threw it on a target that had a reasonable chance of blocking it, well, it sux, but it won't bother me, even if I'll die because of it

Azherae

It's fine if Ashes wants to be more casual.

It's fine if Ashes wants to be Tab Target with the associated RNG stats.

If Ashes went 'hardcore skill heavy competitive' for PvP, it would be likely be less popular.

But the main thing those Action games don't have, is the persistent world and other things to do.

If you took For Honor or Absolver and added Artisan Skills, Freeholds, Nodes, Taverns, Raid PvE (oh wait they already sorta have this one), then more people would play them because those people would have other things to do and could move to something else every time they are frustrated by the combat.

Why do we know this? BDO and GW2. BDO is somehow popular despite having only just added sorta-raid PvE. A massive amount of BDO players never even fight. As in literally 'don't level up even to the level where PvP turns on, and can faceroll the story by making a lot of money, buying overpowered gear off the Market, and bursting down enemies from horseback in a style where the horse does all the attacking.

GW2 has been clearly explained by Dreoh multiple times.

As for the point that fighting games have RNG characters, those are almost always 'crit designed'. The ability never fails. It has a baseline effectiveness and sometimes does more than you were relying on it for. Even Faust's craziness is 'I will use this ability that will almost certainly help me in this position where I am safe to do so'. You choose to use it, sometimes it 'crits'. Also, you can't argue 'well some fighting games have some characters that have RNG' as if this means 'all fighting games have RNG, it's just part of gaming'. Designers choose whether or not to make it part of gaming.

This thread is about 'the success of CC being based on RNG'.

It's not necessary (or even friendly, to casual players) to make abilities RNG in a game that adds 'Action Combat' and has specifically already implied that Hard CC will be skillshots.

Intrepid has a relatively clearly provided design vision involving Action Combat, Skillshots, and specific rewards for those skillshots. If you want them to take out the Action Combat, fine. People who are supportive of it will keep trying to suggest ways to make sure it is good, and Definitionalists will argue 'if you made it that way then it wouldn't be an RPG'.

I personally don't care if Ashes 'is an RPG' or not. If removing RNG based CC makes a game 'not an RPG', then so be it. If removing RNG makes a game 'not an RPG' I'll let the makers of the Legend of Zelda know, and we can move on to 'whatever people want to call Ashes based on that'.

MMO Open World Action Combat Simulator? I'll take it. Whatever.

Rip out the Hybrid Combat and go back to Tab Target with RNG? I'll take that too.

Labels are a convenient thing humans use to gather people into their tribes during disagreements and minimize critical thinking. An obvious tactic to use when you already have authority/power over something... or think you do.

Keyb1nd_

Guli wrote: »

i just dont like the idea where you pray that your CC actually hits or not, and im not talking about balancing right now, this is about CC. Not what class has it or not, but if it should be guaranteed hit or not.

if its guaranteed = skills matter more than RNG
if its not (like it is now in alpha) = if you have bad luck you will die to the on who has better luck.

toughts?

Making CC's be a guaranteed hit and giving players a way to break CC's, kind of like WOW's pvp trinket will make the pvp gameplay much more fun. There is already a lot of reactive gameplay around target switching, crits, etc..

Arena Esports in mmorgps, especially WOW play a lot around trading CC's and Cooldowns in order to open up a kill window on an opponent and CC's play a huge part in that. Personally I think they should not be RNG.

McClouddfck5

Guli wrote: »

i just dont like the idea where you pray that your CC actually hits or not, and im not talking about balancing right now, this is about CC. Not what class has it or not, but if it should be guaranteed hit or not.

if its guaranteed = skills matter more than RNG
if its not (like it is now in alpha) = if you have bad luck you will die to the on who has better luck.

toughts?

pls make it not rng

Dygz

Azherae wrote: »

I personally don't care if Ashes 'is an RPG' or not. If removing RNG based CC makes a game 'not an RPG', then so be it. If removing RNG makes a game 'not an RPG' I'll let the makers of the Legend of Zelda know, and we can move on to 'whatever people want to call Ashes based on that'.

MMO Open World Action Combat Simulator? I'll take it. Whatever.

You don't care if Ashes is an RPG, but I care.
And Steven cares.
Lots of people signed up for Ashes because it's an RPG rather than an action combat simulator.

SongRune

Dygz wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I personally don't care if Ashes 'is an RPG' or not. If removing RNG based CC makes a game 'not an RPG', then so be it. If removing RNG makes a game 'not an RPG' I'll let the makers of the Legend of Zelda know, and we can move on to 'whatever people want to call Ashes based on that'.

MMO Open World Action Combat Simulator? I'll take it. Whatever.

You don't care if Ashes is an RPG, but I care.
And Steven cares.
Lots of people signed up for Ashes because it's an RPG rather than an action combat simulator.

And lots of people signed up for Ashes because it offered Hybrid Combat and got their attention using an Action Combat Battle Royale style game. What's your point?

Dygz

The hybrid combat system has RNG, so what's your point?
Notice, though, that Ashes does not bill itself as an Massively Multiplayer Hybrid Combat Game.

APOC had RNG.

Dreoh

Dygz wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I personally don't care if Ashes 'is an RPG' or not. If removing RNG based CC makes a game 'not an RPG', then so be it. If removing RNG makes a game 'not an RPG' I'll let the makers of the Legend of Zelda know, and we can move on to 'whatever people want to call Ashes based on that'.

MMO Open World Action Combat Simulator? I'll take it. Whatever.

You don't care if Ashes is an RPG, but I care.
And Steven cares.
Lots of people signed up for Ashes because it's an RPG rather than an action combat simulator.

That was such a bad takeaway and exactly what I would have expected your response to be lmao.

"Putting a label on things is limiting to those things"

And you actually, unironically responded with

"Fuck you, I'm putting this label on it, and it can only have things associated to this label"

It's actually hilarious. You're so afraid of innovation and change for the better.

truelyyy

Dygz wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I personally don't care if Ashes 'is an RPG' or not. If removing RNG based CC makes a game 'not an RPG', then so be it. If removing RNG makes a game 'not an RPG' I'll let the makers of the Legend of Zelda know, and we can move on to 'whatever people want to call Ashes based on that'.

MMO Open World Action Combat Simulator? I'll take it. Whatever.

You don't care if Ashes is an RPG, but I care.
And Steven cares.
Lots of people signed up for Ashes because it's an RPG rather than an action combat simulator.

You don't have to have RnG on CC to have RnG in the game. Having all elements of the game having RnG I would argue doesn't work well in practice. I'd also argue RPG core is more about stats than necessarily having lots of RnG for making interesting builds. There's probably a reason why all the big MMORPGs dont have RnG on CC skills. In practice it sounds nice to have a cool build that combats CC but in reality when your CC keeps failing and you end up dying it's frustrating.

Nepoke

I gave the discussion some more thought during the day and here is my final say on the matter:

So dodge is a defensive stat you build to mitigate damage and abilities. It's historically modeled as an all-or-nothing sort of event because that's what it intuitively is. You dodge the attack so you should take no damage right? Well I've already explained why this is frustrating and how dodge could be replaced by a percentage reduction to damage (and CC too I suppose.) What I now want to show is how applying this all-or-nothing behavior to other stats is silly, and why nothing should behave like this.

Consider the old tried and true Fire Resistance. Since the beginning of time, it has always been modeled as a flat reduction to damage. If the dragon breath attack deals 100 fire damage and you have 50% fire resistance, you take 50 damage every time. Works and is intuitive.
Now think if for some reason we wanted to change fire resistance to be similar to dodge. Let's also imagine that a player has 100 hp. Now, as long as you have anything less than 100% fire resistance, there is a chance of just instantly dying without anything you can do to change it. How would you feel if you brought out maxed out fire resistance gear and had 99% fire resistance, and the dragon just instantly annihilates you. Was it that your fault? Did you just need to build more fire resistance? I say no. Clearly someone who prepares for the encounter properly shouldn't have to leave the outcome up to luck. With 99% fire resistance you should take only 1 damage and beat the encounter every time.

Now back to dodge and miss chance. While again, dodge seems more intuitive as an all-or-nothing mechanic, the same frustration as dying to the dragon breath is still there. Build full evasion and you're still going to be hit with stuns from low accuracy people at key moments. On the other hand, build full accuracy with 99.9% hit chance, and you're still going to whiff game deciding hits because the law of large numbers doesn't care how much you prepared. Nor does the 1 hp boss monster you miss 3 times in a row before you die to it.

Converting dodge into a flat, predictable outcome removes frustration, while keeping stat building just as relevant. Evasion can be a flat reduction of damage and CC, while accuracy can be the counter stat to counter the reduction. You could still build a high evasion tank that is extremely difficult to kill without accuracy, but would die fast to someone that has built to counter you.

I certainly don't want pvp to be about hoping my most important moves don't arbitrarily miss while my opponents don't, even when I have the better build and better skills.

CROW3

@Nepoke - I'm curious how you played dodgeball as a kid.

Dreoh

CROW3 wrote: »

@Nepoke - I'm curious how you played dodgeball as a kid.

What in the world does that have to do with the argument at all?

Are you implying there's randomness to dodgeball? Because there's actually not lmao.

It'd be one thing if you said Kickball where maybe wind-factor could be considered RNG

Nepoke

@CROW3 Imagine Neo with a bionic arm and a Robocop targeting HUD.

CROW3

Nepoke wrote: »

@CROW3 Imagine Neo with a bionic arm and a Robocop targeting HUD.

hahahaha - love it.

Dreoh wrote: »

What in the world does that have to do with the argument at all? Are you implying there's randomness to dodgeball? Because there's actually not lmao. It'd be one thing if you said Kickball where maybe wind-factor could be considered RNG

Lol, no. It goes back to a conversation he and I had earlier in the thread that he's alluding to above. Basically, that a dodge doesn't result in a miss, but a hit with greatly reduced damage (what is usually referred to as a glancing blow). I just had this amusing picture of what that would look like on a dodgeball court.

There is randomness in dodgeball though (as there is in all sports - and combat btw).

Nerror

I want RNG to be a part of combat, including CC and evasion/block chances in Ashes of Creation. It's very much a personal preference, partly because it increases unpredictability and chaos. It stops the game from being almost entirely twitch skill based on firing off a rehearsed combo, and adds more quick thinking and adaptability skills. To my mind this increases the skill ceiling. Twitch skills will still be very important obviously. RNG won't change that. It also better fits the genre. Character skills, stats and passives all have to matter in an RPG. It should not only be about which player is better at twitch skills. There are other games for that.

Fodderplay puts it pretty well IMO.

fodderplay wrote: »

+RNG = Build the OP/meta class with a +skill or template. Based on your opponents +skill or template, you may miss, have -dmg%, have -crit%, or a -debuff% (etc.). This creates strategy.

Challenging and more involved.

-RNG = Build the OP/meta class with a +skill or template. Farm your opponent because they have no defence to your 100% hit rate. Then all it comes down to is who clicked first and/or who has a greater latency.

Not challenging and less involved.

Then there are some very real technical limitations we have to deal with. 500 players battling in close proximity over a single point in a castle siege, all with different server ping etc. will for sure cause some desyncing and culling issues. You can't have a purely twitch skill based CC defense system if you can't even see the attack coming on your screen due to technical issues, even though your character might see it coming (if it was real).

As with all things, the devil is in the details. I don't think anyone would seriously advocate for a 50/50 chance of resisting a CC. But I think rolling that natural 1 should be a thing. Shit happens sometimes. And I think a character should be able to spec into CC resistance, either in the form of straight up resisting it, or at least only get reduced effect or duration. Spec'ing into that should obviously come at a cost of something else. This fits the genre perfectly too.

I think Tritri has a good point about differentiating the types of CC in terms of being resisted. So I'll just be lazy and say: Ditto what Tritri writes below.

Tritri wrote: »

Now, about RNG, here is what I think.

Randomness is and will always be part of games, it's even part of real life sports. There is always a bit of luck to everything.
Now there is acceptable RNG and less accepetable ones in a PvP environnement.
In competitive fighting games for example, even if they try to minimize the randomness, there are characters that are based around some randomness (Faust/Zappa/Kliff from Guilty Gear series, The Hero in Smash Bros, Shingo in King of Fighters, Dan in Street Fighter 5, Dummy chars in SoulCalibur/Tekken,...) and people still play them in highly competitive tournament, the characters aren't weak or overpowered just because of their randomness.
In a lot of FPS you have some randomness in the spray patterns of some of your weapons, some games more than others... you can control it a bit, but it's still random
In RTS you also have randomness in the way some units will move in a terrain when multiple units are being moved. You can prevent it, but sometimes shit happens.

For MMOs, I can think of some RNG that don't bother me, like RNG on defensive mechanics such as dodging or blocking (yeah the tank blocked your stun, well maybe next time try to land it from the back on chose a better target). And also some RNG that I don't like, for example, in Dark Age of Camelot, you have 5% chance for any spells to be resisted in PvP, which is ok when doing masse aoe spells since you know some of your targets will resist and you can account for it, but is infuriating on single target spells where you can have 3 resists back to back when trying to finish off your target.

So having my long cooldown last resort crowd control that would change the outcome of my fight being "resisted" just BECAUSE, will anger me a bit
Having it blocked because I threw it on a target that had a reasonable chance of blocking it, well, it sux, but it won't bother me, even if I'll die because of it

Nepoke

@Cr

CROW3 wrote: »

There is randomness in dodgeball though (as there is in all sports - and combat btw).

This is true, but I'd like to make a distinction between randomness from human behavior and randomness from a system. Keeping with the analogy, while you could say it's "random" if my opponent decides to dodge left or right and if my hands slip while throwing the ball, these all are things I can work on to get better. With enough practice I won't slip anymore, and I can get better at reading the opponent. But my opponent can get better at reading me, and this is where the fun comes in. I wouldn't personally consider the matches being decided by luck, even though you could argue that the result can be modeled as a chance to hit or miss.

The other kind of bad random would be if the ball would just for some reason change directions during flight. Even if I had the ability to choose a better ball that does that less often, I would still feel cheated every time, no matter how infrequent it is.

I do like me some dodgeball though.

Dreoh

CROW3 wrote: »

Nepoke wrote: »

@CROW3 Imagine Neo with a bionic arm and a Robocop targeting HUD.

hahahaha - love it.

Dreoh wrote: »

What in the world does that have to do with the argument at all? Are you implying there's randomness to dodgeball? Because there's actually not lmao. It'd be one thing if you said Kickball where maybe wind-factor could be considered RNG

Lol, no. It goes back to a conversation he and I had earlier in the thread that he's alluding to above. Basically, that a dodge doesn't result in a miss, but a hit with greatly reduced damage (what is usually referred to as a glancing blow). I just had this amusing picture of what that would look like on a dodgeball court.

There is randomness in dodgeball though (as there is in all sports - and combat btw).

Oh my bad lol

Though I disagree that there is any RNG in dodgeball, as everything is determined by what the players actions are. But I'm also a Determinist in real life so that might play into that.

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