Josh Sawyer on Miss and Hit

[J.E. Sawyer]

I first noticed (in games like LoL, for example) that the HP bloat wasn't addressed, but that turned out to not really be the biggest issue for me.

Personally, HP values seem to be the least troublesome thing as they mostly serve a pacing purpose. More than keeping HP values in IE ranges, I think it's important to keep the overall combat pacing in IE ranges. I.e., it should take roughly the same amount of time to defeat enemies and complete combat encounters in PE as in the IE games. If we're not on 6 second rounds (we aren't), attacks and actions will likely happen more often than they do at low-level D&D (more comparable to mid-level D&D to start), which suggests that starting HP values will likely be higher. From my perspective, to paraphrase the late, great Aaliyah, HP ain't nothin' but a number.

 

As the variabilities for these weapons started to decrease, it became more important to find a "stronger" weapon to increase the base damage than it did to increase my character's skill with the use of the same equipment. I think this becomes mainly the biggest of the problems for me.

This is understandable, but I don't believe that the system we're currently using de-emphasizes the character relative to his or her gear. You still really want to hit, not miss. Building a character around 50% min damage is not really a viable long-term strategy. You still have to roll to hit; the consequences of a miss in this system are just less punitive than in most editions of A/D&D. A character's accuracy with his or her weapons and his or her defenses still play a large role in their overall combat efficacy. Gear will contribute to that, but as previously discussed, it's a mix of character and gear, not all about the gear.

 

I also realized that I was missing the "frustration" of early level combat but at the same time, there was a more linear approach that I should be taking towards combat. If my variances fall within a certain range, my character can only approach a smaller subset of combat situations at any time. I know the average damages that I can produce at any time and the combat situations I put myself in must fall within the appropriate risk/reward scenarios. As these variance ranges of probability decrease, my options of "viable" combat scenarios decrease. Dodging enemies allows you to sometimes risk fighting enemies at a higher-level than you, even though the the risks are high. Yet the rewards for such a fight are also high

Yes, that is a consequence of normalizing ranges, so again this comes back to asking players the question, "How much chaos do you like?" In many cases, this is a personal preference. I have, for instance, seen people request elements like the fabled Ars Magica/Rolemaster botches and crits of old, which were wild and crazy.

 

I would thus propose that you consider increasing the "chaos" of your probability-conflict resolutions, but either tier them based on skill, or utilize thresholds.

The most appealing suggestion I've seen so far is to maintain the idea of "glancing" hits but have more extreme outliers for full misses. That sort of a change makes the most sense to me as a threshold pushed out from your chance to hit, i.e. if you miss your attack roll by more than 50%, that's not a glancing blow, but a full miss. If your chance to hit is extraordinarily high, your chance of "really" missing is pretty low. If a bunch of scrubs attack an enemy with high defenses, they may "actually" miss much more often, with glancing blows being common and a few full hits in the mix.

 

I also have a few comments about the considerations that you have made here about XCOM and player's reaction to RNG. I will approach the RNG first. I, like you have already explained, have sometimes found it difficult to clarify concepts of probability to people who look at such problems from a different perspective than I. It thus seems to me that the problem isn't probability per se when it comes to conflict resolution, but the perspective in which it's framed for the players. I wonder if changing the terminology might help players better accept this. Changing "Chance to Hit" to "Chance to Miss" for example, would be an interesting experiment to try with your testers. See if changing how the probabilities are described to them changes the way they see the situation.

That's certainly a possibility, but the first step for me is to ensure that the way the mechanics work in game produce enjoyable gameplay. Terminology tweaks can come later if we stay with a given system.

 

And finally about XCOM. One of the issues I have with you using XCOM as the go-to for RNG failure is because of the way that their RNG works. They used pre-seeded RNG that meant meta-gaming was part of the game with a saved seed at the start of the game. Your RNG would never change every time you reloaded. It’s basically allowing the player to know the dice rolls for the next few rolls. The probability values change completely when you have a priori knowledge of those rolls (see the Monty Hall problem for an example of this).

Yes. It's a bizarre meta-example because it's deterministic chaos. The behavior following a failure is certainly made very odd because of what they're trying to prevent, but often it's the reaction to the failure itself that is telling: many players simply don't understand how probability works. Without seeding, non-Ironman players would still reload, but they'd try the same action again instead of switching to something different.

[morrow1nd]

At some point high level melee characters shouldn't even take ( or really small amount of ) stamina damage.

 

Parry, Block, Dodge should really be in game.

 

So might we say that '' A very old man whos about to die can still shoot a throwing dagger and hit a running Orlan monk or can he still hit that Orlan monk with a warhammer when he is running around him while chuckling maniacly ? ''.. Somekind of miss system should be in PE, Mr Josh

 

Please dont make the game heavily gear dependant which will be needed to implement new system

 

I'm %100 sure that you guys will make an epic game but please dont underestimate the critics of your fans when implementing '' the new stuff ''

 

And i really appreciate ( probably others too ) your fast and explanatory answers about the conficts of fans on different subjects

Edited January 3, 2013 by morrow1nd

[Gfted1]

Now you cant miss? Undoubtedly being implemented to stomp out degenerative missing. It gets worse every day.

 

IMO hit&miss in real time is not a Devil of Degeneracy to make war with.

I've never suggested it was degenerate gameplay and I'm not sure why you would jump to that conclusion.

 

Eh, it was just a smart ass throw away response based on the myriad of other mechanical changes you are making to ensure people cant "degeneratively" do this or that. Healing in the field? Nope. Resurrection? Nope. Resting? Sure, just travel (also see healing). Abilities use? Cooldowns. Inventory? Inaccessible deep stash (see resting). And thats just what we know so far.

 

Im sure somewhere in there is "fun" but I just cant see the forest for the trees.

[Hormalakh]

The most appealing suggestion I've seen so far is to maintain the idea of "glancing" hits but have more extreme outliers for full misses. That sort of a change makes the most sense to me as a threshold pushed out from your chance to hit, i.e. if you miss your attack roll by more than 50%, that's not a glancing blow, but a full miss. If your chance to hit is extraordinarily high, your chance of "really" missing is pretty low. If a bunch of scrubs attack an enemy with high defenses, they may "actually" miss much more often, with glancing blows being common and a few full hits in the mix.

I would actually be very happy with this. I think that it's the beginning of striking a good balance.

[J.E. Sawyer]

How did people arrive at the conclusion that this system makes you more dependent on gear than A/D&D in the IE games?

[Hormalakh]

An 80% chance to hit means that 1 out of 15 times (6.7%) a player will miss every shot for the next three shots.

An 80% chance to hit is a 20% chance to miss; IIRC, three consecutive misses is (.2)^3 = 0.008, or 0.8%.

My mistake, yes. It's 0.8%. Edited previous comment.

 

How did people arrive at the conclusion that this system makes you more dependent on gear than A/D&D in the IE games?

 

You know this might be a mistake on my part. Looking at the DoTA/LoL games, those games really are dependent on gear (very little character customization) and so I might have jumped to a mistaken conclusion there. Obviously the DnD 4e games wouldn't be affected this way. As long as the absolute difference between a hit and a glancing blow from a weapon is significant enough that character skill matters, this really shouldn't be a problem.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Hormalakh

[SunBroSolaire]

edit: eh, never mind. don't want to derail the topic further.

Edited January 3, 2013 by SunBroSolaire

[Solviulnir the Soulbinder]

Not being able to miss sounds kind of hmmm, nonelastic.

BGs were a bit over the top in this regard... but really? Are the new mechanics so freaking restrictive that they can't actually allow for any misses whatsoever?

 

What about an old feeble halfling mage with a heavy longbow? Will he always hit his target (with minimal damage, but still)? No matter the distance? Or enemy's armor?

I'd like to play a stealthy character. I'm guessing it will be half as much fun now (compared to IE) to see my char attempting to assassinate an opponent.

 

Also, how come suddenly the all or nothing logic is a gamebreaker? I fail to see the point here.

[Shadenuat]

The most appealing suggestion I've seen so far is to maintain the idea of "glancing" hits but have more extreme outliers for full misses.

This has more sense than always-hit mechanic although with that way of thinking you could probably just scale damage percent by percent depending on to-hit roll? (kinda makes me wonder why they always make separated damage tables from hit tables, if only for easier rolling in real life)

[BobbinThreadbare]

An 80% chance to hit means that "only" 4 out of 5 (or 80 out of 100, etc.) attacks will connect and hit. I'm pretty sure that >95% of the potential players are able to do such simple math.... (but maybe I am wrong). ^^

I can't count the number of times I've seen players make a complaint in the vein that their XCOM units had 90% chance to hit and missed three times in a row. "Impossible!"

Isn't the real problem here that you generally only get 1 shot per turn in XCOM and combat is very deadly?

 

If players were getting 5 attacks per turn, they wouldn't mind missing 3 90% chance shots in a row as much.

 

IE games always had more survivability than XCOM, so I think this is far less likely to be a problem.

[Gumbercules]

The most appealing suggestion I've seen so far is to maintain the idea of "glancing" hits but have more extreme outliers for full misses. That sort of a change makes the most sense to me as a threshold pushed out from your chance to hit, i.e. if you miss your attack roll by more than 50%, that's not a glancing blow, but a full miss. If your chance to hit is extraordinarily high, your chance of "really" missing is pretty low. If a bunch of scrubs attack an enemy with high defenses, they may "actually" miss much more often, with glancing blows being common and a few full hits in the mix.

 

I just wanted to add that I really like this idea as a compromise that keeps some of the strengths of the old system as well as your proposed changes.

[Sylvius the Mad]

All-or-nothing results tend to produce large spikes in conflict resolution. On the extreme end, you have traditional AD&D spells like Disintegrate that either annihilate the target completely or... do nothing. More typically you have the standard to-hit roll that either results in normal damage or absolutely nothing. Because the gulf between success and failure results is so large, random chance has a very large impact how the conflict works out. This system normalizes the results. Our goal is to make your choice of tactic ultimately more important than the results of the die roll (though the die rolls still matter). If we're only implementing mechanics that are proven to be fun in RPGs, I'm not sure why we're talking about D&D's THAC0/BAB system. Players generally dislike the all-or-nothing results of those mechanics, which is why you saw a move away from it in 4E.

4E, a system people didn't like.

 

First, the tactics were always important as they impacted the probabilities. The outcomes weren't always predictable, but that's a positive feature of the RNG, not a drawback. As long as the mechanics are understood by the players, they should know the range of possible outcomes and not be surprised at all when the outcome falls within that range.

 

But the randomness makes for better story-telling. One of my favourite gaming moments arose from encountering the Demonknight at the end of Durlag's Tower when I stumbled into the room without having rested and was low on spells. With a 4 mage party, I needed spells, so I didn't have many tactical options. In desperation, I had Viconia cast Hold Monster at the Demonknight, knowing the spell would almost certainly be resisted.

 

It wasn't. I Held the Demonknight, and promptly pincushioned it to death with arrow and dart attacks. That was amazing, and it was amazing because it was extremely unlikely to work.

 

Having wide ranges of possible outcomes (randomness) allows for high-risk high-reward tactics to succeed, albeit rarely. Normalising the outcomes, thought, eliminates high-risk tactics by causing them always to fail. If my enemy cannot miss, then he cannot miss three times in a row when I only have 1 hp left, but if he can miss then that outcome remains possible, and encounters remain exciting right up until the moment when I succeed or fail.

 

Normalising the outcomes makes combat less exciting.

I think you're overestimating the fun of dodging and missing. I don't think most players find it particularly enjoyable, and it's exacerbated/amplified in games like the new XCOM where players are constantly in stunned disbelief at the RNG.

Players can only be confused by the system if they don't understand it. Document the mechanics, and this problem goes away.

[rjshae]

The degenerate case where the "always hit" mechanic makes less and less sense is when the defender becomes exceedingly small. If you're fighting, say, a tiny but powerful sprite that is moving around rapidly, then logically you'd have a decent chance of a clean miss. Said tiny sprite may only have a single health point, meaning a single swat could take it down. If you're wielding a powerful weapon with a decent magical modifier, then the sprite goes down pretty quickly even if you keep missing.

[morrow1nd]

At some point high level melee characters shouldn't even take ( or really small amount of ) stamina damage.

 

Parry, Block, Dodge should really be in game.

 

So might we say that '' A very old man whos about to die can still shoot a throwing dagger and hit a running Orlan monk or can he still hit that Orlan monk with a warhammer when he is running around him while chuckling maniacly ? ''.. Somekind of miss system should be in PE, Mr Josh

 

Please dont make the game heavily gear dependant which will be needed to implement new system

 

I'm %100 sure that you guys will make an epic game but please dont underestimate the critics of your fans when implementing '' the new stuff ''

 

And i really appreciate ( probably others too ) your fast and explanatory answers about the conficts of fans on different subjects

 

Sorry for the edit.. Me and grammar not really good friends

 

Edit from beyond : OOPS!

Edited January 3, 2013 by morrow1nd

[J.E. Sawyer]

Eh, it was just a smart ass throw away response based on the myriad of other mechanical changes you are making to ensure people cant "degeneratively" do this or that.

Gameplay degeneration isn't a pejorative commentary on players using it. When I write about gameplay degeneration, what I mean is that both the intended gameplay styles (from a design perspective) and the players' desired gameplay styles effectively go out the window because the system rewards some other method(s) of gameplay. It's not a gamer's fault for making use of an obvious loophole or method of min-maxing, but it is our responsibility (as designers) to try to align fun design intention with actually fun gameplay.

 

If we design a system that rewards resting every 5', the gamer isn't at fault for using it. We put it in there! If we design a system that rewards savescumming, we (the designers) are the ones to blame. If we design an inventory system that rewards traveling back and forth to haul load after to load of loot out like precious grains of sand, again, we're the ones that built the system.

 

My job is to give the player interesting challenges to overcome and a variety of tools to overcome those challenges. If their solutions to the challenges involve mentally un-engaging rote tasks or exploiting loopholes, I believe that most players don't like that. I believe most players would rather have us think about and eliminate loopholes and present challenges that allow them to overcome challenges in a "stand up" fashion.

 

Another example is kiting, which has been brought up a number of times and is a pernicious problem in a lot of games. The steps we take to solve kiting issues will not be made to slap the hands of gamers we think are doing something "bad". If we allow and effectively reward kiting, then kiting becomes the low-bar for overcoming combat challenges, but it will be our fault for letting it happen.

 

All of this stuff is really separate from the hit-miss/RNG conversation, which is really about normalizing randomness a step more than D&D does -- that's all.

[Hormalakh]

I also realized that I was missing the "frustration" of early level combat but at the same time, there was a more linear approach that I should be taking towards combat. If my variances fall within a certain range, my character can only approach a smaller subset of combat situations at any time. I know the average damages that I can produce at any time and the combat situations I put myself in must fall within the appropriate risk/reward scenarios. As these variance ranges of probability decrease, my options of "viable" combat scenarios decrease. Dodging enemies allows you to sometimes risk fighting enemies at a higher-level than you, even though the the risks are high. Yet the rewards for such a fight are also high

Yes, that is a consequence of normalizing ranges, so again this comes back to asking players the question, "How much chaos do you like?" In many cases, this is a personal preference. I have, for instance, seen people request elements like the fabled Ars Magica/Rolemaster botches and crits of old, which were wild and crazy.

 

I have been thinking about this and I think the answer to the question lies somewhere near "enough chaos to give the player the illusion of choices in combat." If the chaos is sufficiently interesting to make gauging combat scenarios and whether a party should engage or not an interesting choice, then I think the job is done. There should be times where players should not be absolutely sure whether they can take on an enemy or not. Doing so makes players feel that the game is less linear than it would otherwise be.

[morrow1nd]

How about a long clear wall of text explaining the advantages and disadvantages with detalied mathematical examples of this new system ? Instead of getting more paranoid whenever Mr. Josh replies a post

Edited January 3, 2013 by morrow1nd

[J.E. Sawyer]

4E, a system people didn't like.

Do you think that miss effects on dailies were one of the things that people didn't like? I don't think that's accurate.

 

First, the tactics were always important as they impacted the probabilities. The outcomes weren't always predictable, but that's a positive feature of the RNG, not a drawback. As long as the mechanics are understood by the players, they should know the range of possible outcomes and not be surprised at all when the outcome falls within that range.

As Homalakh and I have already stated, what players "should" understand and what they actually understand are not the same thing. If people actually understood probability, casinos would shut their doors tomorrow.

 

Players can only be confused by the system if they don't understand it. Document the mechanics, and this problem goes away.

It doesn't.

[J.E. Sawyer]

How about a long clear wall of text explaining the advantages and disadvantages with detalied mathematical examples of this new system ? Instead of getting more paranoid whenever Mr. Josh replies a post

The really brief version is to imagine a normal attack in AD&D, but if you miss, you inflict half minimum damage. Math and values can get shoved all over the place, but that's the fundamental mechanic. Whether you like the concept is separate from how well it works in practice (which really comes down to math/value specifics).

[SunBroSolaire]

I wonder how much the PE crew is regretting that open, transparent development initiative right now

[morrow1nd]

How about a long clear wall of text explaining the advantages and disadvantages with detalied mathematical examples of this new system ? Instead of getting more paranoid whenever Mr. Josh replies a post

The really brief version is to imagine a normal attack in AD&D, but if you miss, you inflict half minimum damage. Math and values can get shoved all over the place, but that's the fundamental mechanic. Whether you like the concept is separate from how well it works in practice (which really comes down to math/value specifics).

 

And this means a good geared lvl 2 fighter can tear up a lvl 8 decent geared fighter with his mighty minimum damage. Yup..Get ready to grind guys!!

 

PE: Eternal Grindfest! >=)

 

Edit: Sorry i'm really looking from a narrow POV . And that was just a misunderstanding... right ?

 

hmm.. so if minimum damage doesnt scale that much does that mean problem solved or .. ?

Edited January 3, 2013 by morrow1nd

[J.E. Sawyer]

And this means a good geared lvl 2 fighter can tear up a lvl 8 decent geared fighter with his mighty minimum damage. Yup..Get ready to grind guys!!

 

PE: Eternal Grindfest! >=)

 

Edit: Sorry i'm really looking from a narrow POV . And that was just a misunderstanding... right ?

If you assume that the 8th level fighter stands there like a doofus doing absolutely nothing, sure. I don't know how you think you're going to outpace the damage/health of the other fighter while doing sub-magic missile damage before armor comes into play.

[Hormalakh]

I wonder how much the PE crew is regretting that open, transparent development initiative right now

Why would they? A lot of people have voiced this concern. Apart from a few overly sensitive types I see this thread as nothing but win for Obsidian. They're making the game they wanted to and getting feedback from their players. We make comments on what we've seen in the past and they consider it. It's much better than a producer telling them what to do and there being no reasoned discussion about it.

 

I live in America though and believe that the best ideas come from the reasoned discussion and evaluation of ideas. I don't think Obsidian is the type to be overly sensitive about what their varied gaming demographic says. It's pre-production afterall.

[Tigranes]

Extending on my earlier post, I still struggle to understand exactly what is being solved or improved in a tactical sense. If in practice (e.g. after DT) miss damage is so low as to be undesirable, then there's not a big difference, you're still trying not to 'miss'. What does it matter that I do 2 damage every turn if this guy has HP of 100 and is attacking me at a much higher rate? If miss damage is significant enough, then that opens up, encourage, grinding miss-hits to take down a troublesome opponent; doesn't this devalue dodging, buffing, etc. as a way of improving your chances and giving combat tactical variety? Or is it simply a matter of mathematically finding a magic zone?

 

What is the improvement - that combat is now less dependent on chance? Well, you still have a chance of missing, the same as before - it's just that the costs of the game of chance are now partially mitigated (difference between 3 & 10, as opposed to 0 & 10 damage). Is this really a tactical improvement? Isn't it just making two outcomes - miss and hit - less different (both qualitatively & quantitatively), so that your tactical choices and conditions are made more similar?

[SunBroSolaire]

Hormalakh: I hope you're right, I just can see getting worn out by the way every little design decision is instantly criticized into oblivion when it isn't exactly the same as Baldur's Gate. I also really hope they aren't taking all of the fan advice too seriously, because 90% of it is seriously ill advised imho.

Edited January 3, 2013 by SunBroSolaire