Josh Sawyer on Miss and Hit

[Sensuki]

I would just like to point out that there is a way to normalize % to hit values a bit better, using a pseudo-random distribution system, rather than a pure PRNG.

http://www.dota2wiki...om_distribution - examples here

 

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.

 

I think this is a good way to go about it, one of the most important things to me is the 'feel' - pacing, timing, animation style, but hopefully with increased smoothness (I always bumped the FPS of BG up to 40, not because it increased the game speed but so it didn't look choppy).

 

 

Then it would seem like a lot of misses would be completely negated by DT, or am I misunderstanding damage threshold?

Many misses would likely be reduced to fractional Stamina damage and, by association, even smaller Health damage (we do track the fractions). Currently, our DT system has the same minimum 20% system as F:NV (excepting Crushing weapons, which currently do minimum 40%). Decent armor would turn that 3 Damage into 0.6 Stamina damage and 0.15 Health damage. Ten "missed" blows would result in 6 points of Stamina damage and 1.5 points of Health damage.

 

That seems fine to me. I'm okay with the change in the system under the hood. The Health and Damage systems aren't the same, so the weapon attack systems don't need to be the same either. Those numbers there against a high HP enemy are pretty miserable in terms of damage, and you'd really wished you'd hit some of those attacks, so I'd say that's fairly punishing, but like when he's got absolutely crap all hit points left, you only need to hit him and he goes down (which is fair I guess).

 

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.

 

That sounds pretty good to me. You could also do the same with really good hits (50% above the target number) if you wanted to (edit: read your posts on Something Awful which clarified that for me.)

 

What would you do regarding special effects such as Fear, Sleep, Hold, Slow etc ? Would you follow a similar system or something different ?

 

There's quite a few ways they could be done, I was just wondering how homogeneous the systems will be.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Sensuki

[rjshae]

It's not, actually, go back a few pages I did the math using the critical hit chances for average damage. DnD had a higher average (BG and so forth) then PE did but lower hit chances with glances had it winning out slightly. Critical hits are however still worse then DnD's with only 1.5 dmg boost even at max. Jist of it was 21/20 for the 2 first hits, 20/20 for the PE variant. Dropped off for the last 2 hits in a turn on DnD side, kept up for PE due to glancing blows. Avg dmg a turn for DnD over time was about 64, PE was 70-ish (again, due to glancing blows, not critical hits).

Adding in damage absorption in PE makes that +50% critical hit damage more effective. Suppose you have a base 2-8 damage, giving a 3-12 critical hit damage. A -4 damage absorption means the maximum normal damage is 4, whilst the critical hit damage is 8 and there is a greater chance of inflicting damage with a critical hit.

[Adhin]

I know but higher damage is higher damage. Doesn't matter if your reducing that by % or by static damage values. a consistent, always, 36 crit dmg is worse then 34-48. And your example still leaves a few crits that're the same dmg as a normal hit. It should not be just random base dmg +50%. It'll lead to a lot of critical hits that aren't critical hits, at that point they might as well just lower the crit chance if you want that to happen. It's a critical hit, it's supposed to be powerful in relation to a normal hit. Not having a mildly better range. That's all I've been saying, and they're current setup ensures a critical hit is always a benefit to you.

 

Again, critical hit is 'already' a random chance at better damage. It doesn't need to be a random chance to have a random chance to do better damage. That's like playing black jack to find out if you get to play black jack, it's just a tad stupid.

[Tychoxi]

but... I liked missing and critically missing too

[HansKrSG]

Just to add, I am scared how many people blindly trust Obsidian. Obsidian =/= the people that made All the IE games, just some of them that are specifically working on this project.

I hope they (The developers) are mindfull of the promise of bringing back the IE feel to this game, when they are thinking of straying away from design concepts that was a part of these games.

Personally, I backed this more for Obsidian (and specifically Avellone, Cain, and Sawyer) than I did out of nostalgia for the IE games. If I didn't trust them to make a good game, I wouldn't have given them my money. As far as sticking to the IE formula, they said they would try to capture the feel, not exactly replicate the entire D&D system. D&D is complete balls in real time crpgs, frankly I'm shocked so many people are defending it.

 

I don't want them to remake the D&D system, and it should be said that the IE games are as good adaptions of the D&D system as the Online game (hint: not a good one), but I did like how it worked mechanically. I have had much more fun with the combat in the IE games than most any other game, but it seems many did not like this part of the games.

[HansKrSG]

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.

 

A snip here, could pick up others.

 

Seems many of your answers on this says that many players do not read, do not understand probability, and I am inclined to agree. What I don't agree to is that you seem to make this game for these kind of players. That is one of the things I hate the most about games, is when they cater to people with no real interest in the mechanics of the system. Or "dumbing it down" as it were. I thought that this would be one of the systems that would be catering to people that do care about the system, and do take the time to read and understand how things work?

Edited January 7, 2013 by HansKrSG

[Failion]

The system they are using has the potential to be great. Dungeon and dragons game mechanics ultimately ended up very goofy and unbalanced as hell. Especially when things get into high levels. Sure, to hit or miss you can say is "realistic" but in video games it can lead to one dimensional combat. How you succeed in dungeon crawlers like wizardry and dnd usually determined by your fighters to hit and whether your spells hit. There are better and more tactical mechanics we can put in video games games then what we seen.

[WorstUsernameEver]

The system they are using has the potential to be great. Dungeon and dragons game mechanics ultimately ended up very goofy and unbalanced as hell. Especially when things get into high levels. Sure, to hit or miss you can say is "realistic" but in video games it can lead to one dimensional combat. How you succeed in dungeon crawlers like wizardry and dnd usually determined by your fighters to hit and whether your spells hit. There are better and more tactical mechanics we can put in video games games then what we seen.

 

I don't think that's a fair representation of either high-level D&D or Wizardry's combat.

[Helm]

The system they are using has the potential to be great. Dungeon and dragons game mechanics ultimately ended up very goofy and unbalanced as hell.

The D&D system is slightly unbalanced and a bit "goofy", sure, but the IE games still have some of the best game mechanics to date. It was not just the story, setting and atmosphere that made these games great, the mechanics also played a huge role.

 

Especially when things get into high levels. Sure, to hit or miss you can say is "realistic" but in video games it can lead to one dimensional combat. How you succeed in dungeon crawlers like wizardry and dnd usually determined by your fighters to hit and whether your spells hit.

Missing basically only means that you will do less damage. If you only have an 80% chance to hit, then you will only do about 80% of the damage that you would theoretically induce if 100% of your attacks would hit.

Without the "miss-hit" mechanic you would do more damage, so the overall damage would have to be reduced to compensate this. In the end the outcome would be almost the same, the mechanics would just be "dumbed down". Anyway, if your fundamental strategy and tactics are flawed, then you will of course have problems. In that case you should probably think about decreasing the difficulty instead of blaming it on the RNG.

 

Btw in the IE games there were ways to increase your chance of hitting an enemy, just as there were ways to decrease the chance of getting hit.

 

There are better and more tactical mechanics we can put in video games games then what we seen.

like?

Edited January 7, 2013 by Helm

[Fearabbit]

like?

"The system they are using has the potential to be great. [...] There are better and more tactical mechanics we can put in video games games then what we seen."

Yeah, what could he be talking about...

 

I like being able to dodge, since I like to play rogues. But just looking at it from a mathematical point of view, the glancing system has advantages especially in the early levels.

But anyway, the system with BOTH glancing and missing seems pretty much perfect for me. You can miss, not hit the enemy right or deliver a good hit. Seems realistic and interesting to me. And that way my rogue is happy, especially if there's a special ability that further increases the chance of dodging.

[Lephys]

^ Yeah, I was thinking maybe keep the "Max roll + (value)" system, and just make the "50%" variable instead of a fixed value. In the event you can only crit at a roll of 20 (as we're using the d20 system for example's sake), you'd maybe do max + 10%? 10 is just an example number. But, that way, as you went up, your crits would get better (a roll of 20 always being the highest number... it would be 20% whenever 19 got you a crit, and 30% whenever 18 got you a crit, and so on). Balancing would tweak the percentage to a good one, but, assuming that character build is directly related to your crit range (as in, the higher your THAC0, the lower the roll you need to crit), you could build a character with oodles of finesse who produces critical hits on a more regular basis, but they wouldn't get too ridiculous.

 

Although, with the crit frequency increasing like that, it might even be better to start at Max + 50% at a roll of 20, and decrease the bonus damage percentage as you go down (i.e. 19 would produce 140% damage, 18 would be 130%, etc.). The reduction in percentage would probably need to be less than 10, or would need to shrink as you went, so you wouldn't end up with just 100% max damage (which can be obtained in normal hits) on crits. Unless they were SO frequent that you're basically just always getting good hits. Anywho, play-testing and balancing would, again, get the math right, but I think that method might balance itself the best whilst still producing a varied "Finesse" system, so to speak.

 

OR, another option would be to always start with max weapon damage as the base, and have the bonus damage be random. Of course, if the maximum possible bonus (+50%, in the previous examples, as the starting maximum) increased as you went, you'd pretty much have to refrain from increasing the actual range of critical rolls on the to-hit roll, as opposed to the system above where it grows as your THAC0 (or similar to-hit basis) improves. Or, you could shrink the range of randomness as you went, so that when 14s are giving you crits, your range is, say, +20-30% damage. That way, you're not consistently doing +50% damage 6-times more often than with a crit only on a roll of 20, BUT, you're also not doing possibly only max + 5% or 10% each time. *shrug*

 

EDIT: Gah... I missed the entirety of page 12 of this thread. I'm so blond.

 

On the note of missing, I think the "always max possible damage roll + bonus, for crits versus crit damage that's actually sometimes less than your maximum regular damage roll (12 when your weapon damage is 6-12)" situation is a perfect example of chance playing too great a role in things, which is specifically what Josh is trying to avoid. That being said, I think removing full-misses altogether goes beyond bringing the effects of chance in-check. Tips the scale a bit in the opposite direction, so to speak. I fully support misses being streamlined with the same thinking that they're using with criticals.

 

Another very good point about misses was the example of them being the defender's responsibiliy, and not just something that can randomly occur on every attack roll. Taking that out, alone, eliminates a lot of the ridiculous miss-fest fuel. It seems that the "always at least a glancing blow" system is best for the attack-roll system, by itself, but maybe the defense aspect of combat could still produce full-misses in a much more meaningful and less-plentiful manner.

Edited January 8, 2013 by Lephys

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I think I'm a bit lost, has the proposed system been amended since the initial description on page 1 of this thread?

[Somna]

I think I'm a bit lost, has the proposed system been amended since the initial description on page 1 of this thread?

 

Yes.

 

They're considering having it so that if you don't hit, you glance unless you missed by a LOT...then you actually miss.

 

And then throwing in the possibility of moving that hit range up and down based on various potential abilities.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I think I'm a bit lost, has the proposed system been amended since the initial description on page 1 of this thread?

 

Yes.

 

They're considering having it so that if you don't hit, you glance unless you missed by a LOT...then you actually miss.

 

And then throwing in the possibility of moving that hit range up and down based on various potential abilities.

 

Thank you.

 

I could see that working. You Critical when x(the roll) is y above AC, Hit when x is (AC+(y-1)) to AC, Graze when x is (AC-1) to (AC-(y-1), and Miss when X is (AC-y).

[Adhin]

I think it would be interesting to keep crits max + 50% and then have an extended range due to talents or items that add a maximum range increase. One way to look at that would be, at base, 50-50% critical dmg (going off max base dmg value of course). Then with talents or special magical item properties the max range could be extended so it ends up more like 50-100% or something like that. Ultimately, compared to DnD, 50% is much lower DT or otherwise though so 10-50% seems like a rather low bar for critical hits. Makes sense in comparison to glancing blows being incorporated though.

[Ieo]

Another very good point about misses was the example of them being the defender's responsibiliy, and not just something that can randomly occur on every attack roll. Taking that out, alone, eliminates a lot of the ridiculous miss-fest fuel. It seems that the "always at least a glancing blow" system is best for the attack-roll system, by itself, but maybe the defense aspect of combat could still produce full-misses in a much more meaningful and less-plentiful manner.

Right, so I personally favor a defense-roll system instead of attack-to-hit-roll, with intervening environmental factors if necessary.

 

Taking into account your suggestion upstream (found the quote, heh) and further comparison to the other system I enjoy.... it could look like this, without any "miss" concept or mechanic:

 

Attacker attacks, no roll for hit, roll for damage (percent critical chance, double damage).

 

Defender rolls on his defense stats (dodge, parry, block separated, and then mitigation for attack type)--

• Avoidance (full dodge, parry, block) = stamina damage
  
• Partial avoidance (partial parry, block) = stamina + smaller fractional health damage
  
• Hit (minus any mitigation bonuses against full damage) = stamina and regular health damage, doubled if the attack damage roll was a critical (maybe less stam damage but more health damage, to make the system more parallel with an avoidance/mit system, I dunno)
  

Environmental factors (slow, blind, etc.) against the attacker will increase the defender's stats proportionally by percent. Likewise, environmental factors against the defender will decrease stats proportionally (Slow) or completely (Hold Person).

 

Then ranged (tricky) and spells (resistance stat or mitigations dependent on something like CON).

 

The whole "miss" mechanic is my least favorite thing in the old and proposed systems, but I'll get over it. A defense-based system feels much more natural and realistic to me. Regardless, it seems Josh being the D&D expert and all that will keep PE combat rolls in the D&D frame of mind, but the new system will still be better by taming the RNG a bit compared to the old IE games and D&D in general. I'd like to see character skill matter more than sheer luck for a "hit," anyway. The RNG still applies in many other things.

[Failion]

like?

"The system they are using has the potential to be great. [...] There are better and more tactical mechanics we can put in video games games then what we seen."

Yeah, what could he be talking about...

 

I like being able to dodge, since I like to play rogues. But just looking at it from a mathematical point of view, the glancing system has advantages especially in the early levels.

But anyway, the system with BOTH glancing and missing seems pretty much perfect for me. You can miss, not hit the enemy right or deliver a good hit. Seems realistic and interesting to me. And that way my rogue is happy, especially if there's a special ability that further increases the chance of dodging.

 

I'm just saying the infinity engine games are not these amazing tactical games because of dnd mechanics. They are nothing special. Basically you can cheese through every encounter by buffing your to hit to outrageous levels and stomping everything into the ground. if they try out a system where attacks always hit they can perhaps more easily design a system where enemy encounters that stay challenging throughout the whole game unlike DnD.

[anubite]

As for critical hits, I don't necessarily think they need to do more damage to be useful. PE could simply have a system where critical hits with weapon-based attacks inflict bleed. Critical hits with spells have varying effects. Fire burns, ice freezes, lightning stuns, wind knocks back, earth reduces armor for a brief duration, et cetera - effects on a crit is probably easier to balance, more interesting, and just as satisfying, compared to just doing more damage. Specific spells can even have specific effects on a crit, like a "Petrify" spell, when it crits, turns the target to stone and makes them extremely vulnerable to shattering.

Edited January 8, 2013 by anubite

[rjshae]

Is the puny damage crisis averted now? Or did I "miss" something?

[Valorian]

Systems where the to-hit roll is separate from an enemy's defense rating roll, or inexistent, are just plain bad and nonsensical.

 

It doesn't make sense because your ability to hit is directly affected by your enemy's ability to avoid the hit and vice versa.

They're not detached processes.

[Sensuki]

The RNG still applies in many other things.

 

As I said before, they could use a PRD situation to 'tame' the PRNG.

For example, Slardar's Bash has a 25% probability to Stun the target. On the first attack, however, it will only have an ~8.5% probability to bash; this is its PRD constant C. Each subsequent attack without a bash increases this probability by 8.5%. So on the second attack, the chance is 17%, on the third it is 25.5%, etc. After a bash procs, the probability resets to 8.5% for the next attack. These probabilities average out so that, over a moderate period of time, Bash will proc very nearly 25% of the time.

 

http://www.dota2wiki...om_distribution

http://www.playdota....read.php?t=7993

 

The Warcraft 3 / Dota version actually has an error in the math that causes values after 30% to deviate to much less % chance than listed though, but that's because the game was tailored to ladder play, where the highest % chance of anything in the stock game is 25%.

Edited January 8, 2013 by Sensuki

[Ieo]

The RNG still applies in many other things.

 

As I said before, they could use a PRD situation to 'tame' the PRNG.

For example, Slardar's Bash has a 25% probability to Stun the target. On the first attack, however, it will only have an ~8.5% probability to bash; this is its PRD constant C. Each subsequent attack without a bash increases this probability by 8.5%. So on the second attack, the chance is 17%, on the third it is 25.5%, etc. After a bash procs, the probability resets to 8.5% for the next attack. These probabilities average out so that, over a moderate period of time, Bash will proc very nearly 25% of the time.

 

http://www.dota2wiki...om_distribution

http://www.playdota....read.php?t=7993

 

The Warcraft 3 / Dota version actually has an error in the math that causes values after 30% to deviate to much less % chance than listed though, but that's because the game was tailored to ladder play, where the highest % chance of anything in the stock game is 25%.

Missed that. Interesting. Sounds like an ingenious way to coax the Law of Large Numbers down to human-understood levels in smaller time frames and sample sizes (and, of course, something only a CRPG can do properly). Let's make use of that computing power.

 

I just realized something about my example above. I completely forgot about the "unconscious" bit once stamina runs out, which means losing stamina via defender avoidance doesn't make sense on its face. Oops! The only thing I can think of right now is to have avoidance 'damage' values fall below regen values just enough that the defender experiences attrition but according to probability, cannot avoid so many actual hits in succession that he'd fall unconscious purely from avoidance.

 

Or something.

[Osvir]

A simplified way to look at something~

 

Player Turn: Attack

Enemy Turn: Block

Enemy Turn: Attack

Player Turn: Dodge (Critical Miss by enemy)

Player Turn: Attack (% chance to get a Critical Hit)

Enemy Turn: Critically Hit (RIP)

 

Some extras to take into consideration (Attack Speed, Abilities, Player Skill/Control):

* How does attack speed work?

* Does abilities pile up on turns? Or do they interrupt the current action/animation?

Example:

Player: Attack, Click Ability

Enemy: Block

Player: Ability Used

Enemy: Attack, Click Ability

Player: Block

Enemy: Ability Used

Player: Attack

Enemy: Block

Enemy: Attack

etc. etc.

* Player skill? Can I simply just move the character somewhere else, or will the action "finish" first? (I click the character to go somewhere, but will the current "fight" action/animation finish before he/she does?)

Edited January 8, 2013 by Osvir

[Adhin]

I don't think having a defensive roll vs an attacker roll matters to be honest. The only difference is which sides rolling unless BOTH sides do a roll in which case that's... just awkward and a bit pointless. 1 point would no longer = 5% at that point. The only main reason 'attackers' roll in DnD is because its that persons turn, they have the die, or they're the ones rolling. So they, ultimately, do 'all' the rolling. They roll to attack, roll there damage, even roll to see if they beat someones Spell Resistance. It keeps it simple in PnP terms.

[Osvir]

That depends on how Obsidian does it. In Baldur's Gate we have hardly much control over the "General Brawling"-phase. It's just bashing mindlessly at each other, and we control the abilities and positioning.

 

To stay simplified, Baldur's Gate could've done without the "Auto-Attacking" and just simply been ability-based entirely. The "General Brawling" is just visual filler in Baldur's Gate. Part of the entertainment, serves little function in actually playing the game. The general fighting in Baldur's Gate is something you just observe, which is what this "Glancing" and "Hitting" feels very very much like.

 

Visuallizing/Imagining what that could be (in Baldur's Gate-terms) I get a picture of 1 on 1, 2 Gladiators that are facing each other, fighting on equal grounds and bashing at each other. One of them might use one of the abilities and bash their shields, knocking back the other one which in turn activates "Berserk" in the knocked back one, and he uses the ability "Charge" to get back into the fight again and deal some damage before returning back to the "General Brawling".