Josh Sawyer on Miss and Hit

[Kissamies]

I don't like it at all. Maybe if the glancing blows were stamina damage only and just in melee, it might be OK, but I still wouldn't like it.

[Helm]

Making new X-Com an example was kinda dumb because in TB you do see effect of every miss.

I really had no problem with the missing in X-Com, I actually liked it because it improved the game by forcing you to make wiser tactical and strategical decisions. If you could not miss in the game, then it would have made many of the mechanics absolutely redundant... in other words, it would have dumbed the game down and made it way too easy.

 

It is basically rather similar with a RTwP game like Baldur's Gate. You try to improve the stats of your chars so they don't miss or don't miss as often and you accomplish this by making wise strategical decisions.

 

Btw, in Fallout you could miss too... and sometimes it hurt too. You had to make wise tactical and strategical decisions in order to reduce the chance of missing and improve your chance of surviving in case you did miss. I never heard anybody say that it was a bad mechanic.

 

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.

And I'm perplexed by Josh's comment.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Helm

[Undecaf]

Making new X-Com an example was kinda dumb because in TB you do see effect of every miss.

I really had no problem with the missing in X-Com, I actually liked it because it improved the game by forcing you to make wiser tactical and strategical decisions. If you could not miss in the game, then it would have made many of the mechanics absolutely redundant... in other words, it would have dumbed the game down and made it way too easy.

 

Agreed. Uneventful would be the word I'd use rather than "too easy" (they could've overcome the easiness). I found it much more satisfying that when I missed, I had to adjust my gameplay accordingly and when my shots hit, they did their job and made me feel good about succeeding rather than slowly wearing the enemies down through "mitigation" when allways hitting.

 

I don't really get this "no fail" mindset. Doesn't occasional failure enhance the eventual success?

[J.E. Sawyer]

I thought it was an interessting mechanic in the IE-Engine games. It was fun trying to improve your characters stats in order to improve your THAC0. It also gave you the feeling of becoming a powerful warrior to see your ability to hit the enemy rise.

 

Kind of sad, that Sawyer wants to remove this. *sigh*

Except that's not what I'm proposing at all.

 

Additionally, your AD&D powerful warriors typically became more powerful because they did more damage per attack and had more attacks per round. Low-level AD&D consisted of whiffing once per round. By mid-to-high levels, front line characters are hitting almost constantly, for huge amounts of damage, and many times per round. I.e. the "missing" mechanic is most pronounced at low levels, when people generally hate the feeling of combat. In the most-liked level ranges of AD&D, missing is typically the exception, not the rule -- and it stays that way for a long time.

[Sacred_Path]

am I missing something, or why doesn't your armor's damage threshold figure in somewhere?

[J.E. Sawyer]

I really had no problem with the missing in X-Com, I actually liked it because it improved the game by forcing you to make wiser tactical and strategical decisions. If you could not miss in the game, then it would have made many of the mechanics absolutely redundant... in other words, it would have dumbed the game down and made it way too easy.

This is actually the opposite of what it did. In the new XCOM, if you have a 95% chance to shoot and do 7 damage against a target with 5 health vs. throwing a frag grenade doing a reliable 3 damage, there's no real question that shooting is the tactically wise thing to do. If you miss, you didn't make a tactical error; the game randomly decided that you weren't going to hit. Similarly, it is not uncommon in XCOM to have three or four characters on Overwatch, trigger an enemy to run in front of them, and have every character miss their reaction shots. If you're playing in Ironman, you just live with the consequences, but you didn't make a tactical error. What people outside of Ironman do is reload and pick a different action because the tactically "smart" action has been pre-seeded to fail.

[J.E. Sawyer]

am I missing something, or why doesn't your armor's damage threshold figure in somewhere?

DT is applied to the damage done. So if the hypothetical longsword doing 6-12 damage has a miss result, it does 3 damage, which is then compared to DT.

[SunBroSolaire]

am I missing something, or why doesn't your armor's damage threshold figure in somewhere?

DT is applied to the damage done. So if the hypothetical longsword doing 6-12 damage has a miss result, it does 3 damage, which is then compared to DT.

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

Edited January 3, 2013 by SunBroSolaire

[J.E. Sawyer]

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.

And I'm perplexed by Josh's comment.

Many players (like many people) don't understand how probability works. There was a lot of complaining about XCOM's RNG including "field tests" to chart expected results to actual results. Unsurprisingly, the RNG was working pretty much as a RNG should. I heard the same complaints on IWD, IWD2, and NWN2, even from QA. After arguing with about seven testers about the probability of seeing a "near 120" result on 20d6, I pulled in Andy Woo, who has a master's degree from MIT focusing in probabilistic combinatorics, and they still argued with him.

 

Love of RNG systems has always been perplexing to me because most players don't understand them very well. Many players see an 80% chance to hit, choose to attack, miss, and think that the world has been turned on its head. Not all, mind you, but many.

[J.E. Sawyer]

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.

[Undecaf]

Does all this apply to ranged combatants too? That everyone is omniaccurate and if nothing else (if not having proper enough equipement or skill), slowly wearing the opponents down with fractional damage?

Edited January 3, 2013 by Undecaf

[Shadenuat]

New X-Com is very troubled game; guys took X-Com lethality and inserted it in combat with number of characters three times less, AND added nex-gen "misery" windows-cutscenes so players could see perfectly how every plan on theirs fails because of statistical (mis)calculations. Fallout Tactics had percentages and instant deaths too, and few characters, but was much more fun to play; and you still could completely miss or blow someones head with a shotgun.

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

Edited January 3, 2013 by Shadenuat

[rjshae]

Hopefully the game will allow a Concealment-type effect to cause a complete miss during melee. I.e. such as when the defender is invisible, the attacker is blinded, either is fighting in pitch darkness, or there is a magical blur/displacement effect.

[lolaldanee]

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.

 

well, how about this:

this sounds pretty cool for stamina actually, because constantly dodging takes its toll on stamina, but for health it's just wrong somehow

why not have the always-to-be-inflicted damage only apply to stamina? this way you would have your less random system where every attack counts, but not the odd side effect of people dying though having been missed 20 times in a row

if the system was to work like this, skills like parry could then e.g. increase the amount of stamina damage you take when being missed, but increase the chance of beeing missed -> trading health damage for stamina damage

would love to hear your opinion on this

Edited January 3, 2013 by lolaldanee

[Nonek]

In all honesty, not being able to miss at all seems silly. I can see it working in a game sense, but the concept just doesn't appeal at all.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Nonek

[Osvir]

"It doesn't make sense" a general reply to that (seen that pop up over here and there).

 

No Armor! Only Sword+Shield vs Sword+Shield in examples.

 

It makes perfect sense! I use energy to strike, the enemy uses their energy to block = Player looses some Stamina for striking, Enemy looses some Stamina (no health loss). The enemy might dodge most of the attack, and takes the Player sword to the shoulder (which glances, maybe chops off some skin), which would do some slight Health damage as well.

 

If I instead get a full hit, the enemy looses both energy and their vitality = Player looses some Stamina for striking, Enemy looses Stamina+Health

 

If the enemy dodges the attack entirely, they should lose Stamina, but as the energy the Player directed entirely missed, the Player should also lose some Stamina (A Critical Miss).

 

I hope that Critical Misses are still in the game, for enjoyment and for that extra layer of tension. I think "Stamina" and "Health" needs to be defined, because if you're chopping at the enemies Stamina mechanically and primarily, you are kind of always missing.

 

It's not abstract or vague or dumb or surreal or whatever, it makes sense:

 

1. I attack

2. The enemy "dodges"

3. Stamina damage

 

You missed the attack (physically) but you still did some damage. Stamina, Energy, Fatigue call it whatever you will. Mortality is something else.

 

@Nonek: Stamina!

Edited January 3, 2013 by Osvir

[Helm]

If you miss, you didn't make a tactical error; the game randomly decided that you weren't going to hit. Similarly, it is not uncommon in XCOM to have three or four characters on Overwatch, trigger an enemy to run in front of them, and have every character miss their reaction shots. If you're playing in Ironman, you just live with the consequences, but you didn't make a tactical error. What people outside of Ironman do is reload and pick a different action because the tactically "smart" action has been pre-seeded to fail.

Of course missing is not a tactical error, you miss even if your tactical and strategical planning is flawless (obviously). That is what is supposed to happen.

 

But like I said, this forces you to improve your tactical and strategical planning in order to cope better with the consequences of missing. There are many ways to do this in X-Com, I don't think I need to list them though.

[Nonek]

I understand the concept Osvir, I just don't particularly like it, it seems for want of a better word too gamey. I might be wrong however, but there will have to be different methods for missile and surprise attacks surely, an utterly ignorant target will not be defending himself with stamina.

[Helm]

Many players (like many people) don't understand how probability works. There was a lot of complaining about XCOM's RNG including "field tests" to chart expected results to actual results. Unsurprisingly, the RNG was working pretty much as a RNG should. I heard the same complaints on IWD, IWD2, and NWN2, even from QA. After arguing with about seven testers about the probability of seeing a "near 120" result on 20d6, I pulled in Andy Woo, who has a master's degree from MIT focusing in probabilistic combinatorics, and they still argued with him.

 

Love of RNG systems has always been perplexing to me because most players don't understand them very well. Many players see an 80% chance to hit, choose to attack, miss, and think that the world has been turned on its head. Not all, mind you, but many.

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 understand what you are trying to say and I agree that this can be extremely annoying for e.g. magic spells that had such a low chance of hitting that you don't even bother to memorize them. But for regular sword attacks...? If only 80% of your attacks connect and hit, then all it really means is that you do about 80% of the potential damage that you would do if 100% of your attacks connected (which really is not that dramatic as a miss with a single magic spell).

 

And yes, missing is annoying, it sucks and I hate it. The fun is improving your stats to reduce the chance of it even happenening, and that is where the fun comes in imo.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Helm

[J.E. Sawyer]

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.

[Hormalakh]

Long post. I've bolded the important bits. Sorry!

 

Thanks Josh for taking the time to have this conversation with us. I've been thinking about this since yesterday and I finally got a chance to experience the game mechanic you are proposing in a game or two. A few things struck me and I think I'm better able to articulate my concerns.

 

I firstly realized that, as you had pointed out, the question here can become one of variability over random conflict resolution and how to make this interesting for the player. It seems to me (and I could be mistaken) that you believe limiting this range might be beneficial for the game in some way. For example, instead of so-called "chaotic" ranges in probability, we tone down the chaos. I considered this aspect in certain games and tried to evaluate them in the context of cRPGs and what I find to be interesting about them. 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.

 

I should firstly restate that I am speaking strictly about melee combat here. I think different systems can utilize slightly different "ranges" in probablity distributions, but what worries me the most is the lack of "chaos" when it comes to melee combat. When I considered melee combat in probability-based conflict resolution, I realized quickly that conflict resolution more immediately became less reliant on the skill of my character and more reliant on the loot/equipment I was carrying. 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.

 

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.

 

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. One possibility is to utilize poisson distributions and other non-normalized distributions to show character skill. What this does is allows a character to use the same long sword they got in Chapter 1 as a viable weapon, but because the skill in the character has increased, the probability ranges of the weapon has changed. This makes the character the actual weapon and the long sword the tool. I have a previous post here that tries to further explain this.

 

------------------------------------------------

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.

 

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). The probability of a 6-side die rolling a 1 is 1/6. But in X-COM, meta-gaming meant that the probability of rolling a 1 is either a 0 or 100%. This was meant to fight against the degenerate game-reload, but the issue is the player mentality when it comes to risk/reward structure. Like I’ve said before, a high risk/resource action is more likely to initiate player reloading if a roll is bad (disintegrate save-or-die), but a low resource action that is being performed several tens of times is less likely to initiate player reloading for a few bad rolls. In my most recent experience with Arcanum which had quite brutal critical fails, the thought of gaming the system didn’t cross my mind because I would have to save/load so frequently as to make it frighteningly boring.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Hormalakh

[J.E. Sawyer]

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!"

[TRX850]

Ok, I've been reading some of these posts and something just occurred to me. (I won't comment on the mechanics. You guys are doing a fine job already).

 

But remember when you first played BG or IWD and your first encounter consisted of ten rounds of "swishing" while you and your enemy flailed hopelessly around each other with your starting weapons?

 

Perhaps one side-effect of what we're discussing here is the sound of the "swish-and-miss" that annoys players.

 

Mechanics aside, I wonder just how much player enjoyment would be restored if the "swish-and-miss" was replaced with a "clang-and-miss" sound effect? (or thud, or grunt etc.)

 

You'd get the sense that you were actually competent enough to physically strike your opponent, regardless of damage output. But the occasional "swish-and-miss" should remain though, to cover all outcomes.

[Hormalakh]

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!"

 

An 80% chance to hit means you miss 1 out of 5 times (20%) for the next shot.

 

An 80% chance to hit means that 1 out of 125 times (0.8%) a player will miss every shot for the next three shots.

 

Players don't realize that each shot is an independent event however, and the second line "makes more sense" to them, where in fact, after each shot, they need to realize that their probability has once again "changed back" to 20%. Probability is hard for some.

 

[h/t: rjshae]

Edited January 3, 2013 by Hormalakh

[rjshae]

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%.