bigdogchris said:A fizzle is a caster's way of missing just like a melee character missing when swinging. You wouldn't ask them to not include melee character missing, would you? As melee, you need to practice to increase your skill in order to hit ever increasingly difficult monsters just as a caster needs to practice to increase skills to cast ever increasingly difficult spells.
I don't speak for the person you quoted, but, I would very much love to exclude melee characters from missing, yes.
Casting/Melee skill can exist independent of fizzling and missing. Giving them an alternative function is simple.
This is actually a really interesting discussion. I like the idea of fizzles, but have never really had to deal with them as I mained a paladin in EQ1. Unpredictability is important to challenge, as we are pretty good at learning. However, I absolutely see the issues that you are describing and can completely understand how frustrating it would be to try and cast your well timed heal just to have it fizzle and then everyone dies. I would like to take a different angle on the discussion to perhaps offer up a new way to attack the problem.
Decreased impact through regularity: One possible way to address the problem of annoying "RNG" is through reptition. If you cast 1000 spells per second and have a 50% fizzle rate, nobody will care even slightly that the fizzle mechanic is a thing. If fizzles have a 1% chance then everyone will get used to not fizzling, so when you eventually fizzle, it will often be both surprising and devastating. I actually think one way to help the issue of fizzles may be to increase the rate of fizzles. Since game balance is an iterative process, if the fizzle rate is increased, then the game will be balanced around it. If everyone fizzles 20% of the time, then fizzles won't be the devastating occurances that they would be at 1% chance. Despite all that, higher fizzle rates may not produce compelling gameplay.
Psuedo-RNG: This is a means by which streaks can be avoided. In true RNG your 10% chance will occasionally hit 3+ times in a row, producing devastating effects, especially when it comes to fizzles or the like. Psuedo-RNG is a technique used in game balancing where successes increase the chance of failure and vice versa. For example, if you are have at 90% psuedo-RNG success rate, then succeeding will increase the likelyhood of failure by 1% and failing will increase the likelihood of success by 9%. This makes it much less likely to get multiple fails in a row and puts a hard cap on the number of successive fails you can have.
These concepts definitely could change the balance of how fizzling is experienced and its impact on gameplay, but they don't aim to address some of the underlying issues many have with the mechanic. I will say that I would be completely happy with a game that entirely removes fizzling once mastery has been achieved. Perhaps one could put a +Evocation skill bonus on an epic class quest item to remove the last remnants of fizzling instead of having it be from AAs.
I guess my position is that high rates of fizzling can be balanced and no fizzling at all would work too, but low chances of fizzling seems like the worst spot to be in.
Liav said:I don't speak for the person you quoted, but, I would very much love to exclude melee characters from missing, yes.
Casting/Melee skill can exist independent of fizzling and missing. Giving them an alternative function is simple.
Just so I understand you, you want the game to be made so you never miss a melee swing and always hit?
I'm for keeping spell fizzles and melee misses because it more accurately represents real-world scenarios. I know we can't look at magic as a real-world scenario, but we can look at how martial weapons were used in Medieval fightight. A quick Google search led me to a site where the different fighting styles are spelled out from historical documents. In this link, the author describes two-handed swordplay, and how the best fighters looked to avoid being hit, whether it was through ducking, dodging or side-stepping, while blocking was a means to an end of setting up a counter attack. So basically, unless your opponent was a complete and utter novice, even the most seasoned sword fighter would miss once or twice in a 20-30 second battle simply because your opponent would react to your attacks.
When it comes to magic, I think I may have a real-world scenario that would mimic fizzling: Free-throw shooting in basketball. Like non-melee magic users, a free-throw shot happens outside of the battle (when the play is stopped), giving the shooter an uncontested shot (as would a wizard standing in the back of a fight). However, the top-ranked free-throw shooters in NBA history average only 90 percent accuracy for these uncontested shots. Why? When they're in the gym at practice, they can hit 100 in a row without batting an eye. Because once you get into a battle, other things start happening that are beyond the simple mechanics of throwing the ball into a hoop: Pressure of being put on the spot, especially when the victory is on the line; physical issues that arrived from the battle itself, from a drop of sweat rolling into the shooter's eye to exhaustion, to jamming a middle finger; or mental distractions outside of the game (maybe he was up all night because his baby daughter was fussy or his dog died -- all the money, talent and fame in the world doesn't protect you from having emotions). I like to think that an ivory-tower wizard who knows his spellbook up one side and down the other can still mess up in battle because they've never used their magic outside of a controlled environment.
bigdogchris said:Just so I understand you, you want the game to be made so you never miss a melee swing and always hit?
That is accurate, yes.
RNG is not a requirement for a combat system. It is but one of several methods of reducing character potential to allow it to be made up for in stats.
For instance, Slashing skill could reduce your damage until it is capped, and even then it can reduce your damage when you're debuffed. It could also reduce your critical hit chance with Slashing weapons until it is capped, which can also be debuffed.
Missing, fizzling, and otherwise adding dice rolls into gameplay are not required in any way, and there are plenty of games/MMOs that I can cite that don't rely on this mechanic.
Edit:
I reject appeals to reality as a basis for the inclusion of mechanics. It's not a good enough justification on its own, to me.
Fizzles I can understand in some sense, though I would rather "You lose concentration and fail at your casting attempt", much like melee misses should be hits for extremely low or no damage , unless the mob dodges.
I can stand 3' from something and hit it with my eyes closed, how do you "miss" with a 3 foot sword?
The only support I can give them is in the terms themselves, that they are much more noticable in a busy chat window than just "You do 0 damage", which then we are really just talking semantics, and not really change in design.
Fulton said:Fizzles I can understand in some sense, though I would rather "You lose concentration and fail at your casting attempt", much like melee misses should be hits for extremely low or no damage , unless the mob dodges.
I can stand 3' from something and hit it with my eyes closed, how do you "miss" with a 3 foot sword?
The only support I can give them is in the terms themselves, that they are much more noticable in a busy chat window than just "You do 0 damage", which then we are really just talking semantics, and not really change in design.
Why have the mechanic at all though? =/
antonius said:I like fizzle, i like evasions, i like this kind of stuff. Makes it more realistic...the better you get, the less you miss and fizzle. Should be that you get better and more skilled as a mage, just like you miss less as a melee.
Is realism a good enough reason to include a mechanic? Dice roll evasions aren't really that realistic, anyway. Realism would be an action combat game where you physically move your character to avoid attacks. Even more realistic would be a virtual reality game where you control you character's physical body movements with your own.
Once again I go back to the idea that I posted in another thread about Red Dead Redemption and pooping horses that some poor animator somewhere actually had to work on.
As someone that practices swordplay, you don't just miss your target, that is not something that happens. The opponent parries/dodges (things already existsing in games like these). Now also consider that what you fight in fantasy games are basically gigantic in many instances.
So yes, I would like to have hit for melee taken away. A random mechanic which cannot be played around is not fun, dodge is more fun for many games include basically a "You cannot dodge when flanked" mechanic, meaning that your positioning is something that can rid you of that.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Liav said:antonius said:I like fizzle, i like evasions, i like this kind of stuff. Makes it more realistic...the better you get, the less you miss and fizzle. Should be that you get better and more skilled as a mage, just like you miss less as a melee.
Is realism a good enough reason to include a mechanic?
In my opinion: no.
If it's not fun, I don't care how realistic it is.
And frankly nothing about fizzle is fun.
I see two ways of it working:
A) Fizzle mechanic is a baked-in part of combat. There will always be fizzles.
B) Fizzle mechanic is tied to some stat. Max out that stat, and fizzles go away.
With A) you are guaranteeing something completely not fun happens with regularity. Might be "realistic", isn't fun at all.
With B) everyone will make sure that one stat is maxxed... so what is the point of even having a fizzle mechanic?
It adds nothing in terms of fun, adds a lot in terms of frustration, and adds more code complication with increases the chance of bugs. I see absolutely no reason to even have it.
--Gray
In general, I agree with the common theme of "If it isn't fun, why put it in the game?" However, I do think there needs to be variation in combat or it becomes dull. If I hit ever time for full damage, then that isn't fun either because at some point given equal hp & dps, the winner is the one that attacks first. Those are RTS mechanics btw, well if you include Rock-Paper-Scissors on top.
Anyway, I don't like fizzles at all and I agree nothing sucks more than winding up a fireball only to have it fizzle and waste mana. I would rather always cast my spell and have the chance that some amount of damage is deflected or resisted. So yeah, I may not get complete damage from my spell, but I don't feel like I'm wasting time either. I believe melee combat should work in a similar fashion because seeing a string of "miss, miss, miss" is as frustrating as "fizzle, fizzle, fizzle".
I really don't want to see "(0) damage" messages either, so I would like there to be a max pct (80-90%?) of deflected or resisted damage so that it always feels like I'm doing *something*. I think this keeps the needed randomness of combat and also keeps me from having frustrating strings of literally doing no damage.
My 2 cents
In all honesty, even in EQ I found the fact that I hit for such wildly different numbers with each individual hit to be kind of arbitrary. It doesn't add anything to the game for me if I hit for 15 followed by 10, or if I just hit once for 25.
Players and NPCs utilizing short duration buffs in combat and things like that can add enough variance without necessitating the dice rolls. For instance, if I pull a mob and it casts a 30 second duration 50% damage buff, maybe I have a defensive short duration buff that I can reciprocate with to even it out.
It puts the control in the player's hands as opposed to the winds of fate.
Example A:
Skill: Fire Imbued Strike
Melee attack that strikes the enemy for 150% weapon damage. Grants you a buff that causes every third auto attack swing to cause 25 points of additional Fire damage.
Example B:
Skill: Fire Imbued Strike
Melee attack that strikes the enemy for 150% weapon damage. Grants you a 33% chance to cause 25 points of additional Fire damage on an auto attack.
Example A is my preference. Why would someone prefer B to A? The same applies to missing, fizzling, etc.
Liav said:In all honesty, even in EQ I found the fact that I hit for such wildly different numbers with each individual hit to be kind of arbitrary. It doesn't add anything to the game for me if I hit for 15 followed by 10, or if I just hit once for 25.
Players and NPCs utilizing short duration buffs in combat and things like that can add enough variance without necessitating the dice rolls. For instance, if I pull a mob and it casts a 30 second duration 50% damage buff, maybe I have a defensive short duration buff that I can reciprocate with to even it out.
It puts the control in the player's hands as opposed to the winds of fate.
Not to be pedantic, but if your NPCs are using short duration buffs, what drives that decision? Likely RNG in the AI that decides to put that buff/debuff up. If it's a fixed pattern in the AI, you know what to expect once you learn an AI and it becomes less interesting over time.
I understand what you're getting at and I don't completely disagree with what you're asking. Having a dynamic/reactive combat system is a fun thing to play. As a game programmer, I can tell you it's a good bit of programming work, design tuning and artist animations to get each AI to feel fun and still be balanced. Given a large budget and a lot of time, it's certainly doable. I get the feeling VR is not sitting on a lot of resources and are doing what they can to get this game out.
Like I said, I hate fizzles too, but I feel there is a need for some RNG just to add variation and as a lazy game programmer, the easiest tool in the box to use is RNG.
-- The Lazy Programmer ;)
Liav said:Example A:
Skill: Fire Imbued Strike
Melee attack that strikes the enemy for 150% weapon damage. Grants you a buff that causes every third auto attack swing to cause 25 points of additional Fire damage.
Example B:
Skill: Fire Imbued Strike
Melee attack that strikes the enemy for 150% weapon damage. Grants you a 33% chance to cause 25 points of additional Fire damage on an auto attack.
Example A is my preference. Why would someone prefer B to A? The same applies to missing, fizzling, etc.
Because you edited your reply, I'll go ahead and answer your example. It's completely subjective, *but* IMO your example A is boring and predictable and the damage may as well have been 8 damage every auto attack for N seconds. In example B) I have a chance of getting the same joy I get from a crit streak. It's 33% on EVERY auto attack so if I get lucky, I can see a string of extra 25 damage hits and feel like a badass. If I see a string of normal hits, I don't necessarily feel bad because I just didn't get lucky. It's *not* the same as seeing a miss/fizzle for 0 damage go by.
jimmay said:Not to be pedantic, but if your NPCs are using short duration buffs, what drives that decision? Likely RNG in the AI that decides to put that buff/debuff up. If it's a fixed pattern in the AI, you know what to expect once you learn an AI and it becomes less interesting over time.
I understand what you're getting at and I don't completely disagree with what you're asking. Having a dynamic/reactive combat system is a fun thing to play. As a game programmer, I can tell you it's a good bit of programming work, design tuning and artist animations to get each AI to feel fun and still be balanced. Given a large budget and a lot of time, it's certainly doable. I get the feeling VR is not sitting on a lot of resources and are doing what they can to get this game out.
Like I said, I hate fizzles too, but I feel there is a need for some RNG just to add variation and as a lazy game programmer, the easiest tool in the box to use is RNG.
-- The Lazy Programmer ;)
Hmm, I see your point. However, let's say a given mob has a toolset of 3 short duration buffs they can use. While RNG or a static pattern may influence the order they're casted in, when they're casted, if they're casted at all, etc., it at least gives you something to react to. I don't see the value in maintaining unpredictability from encounter to encounter unless it is specifically something that engages the end user in some way through reaction/correction.
I'm glad you mentioned the development complexity component of RNG. I'm aware of how useful it is to reducing complexity, and I can see that value for sure. However, I believe we're in agreement when I say that things like missing and fizzling are arbitrary when it comes to development.
Pantheon will likely exist with a system of both avoidance and mitigation, the same as EQ does. Eliminating the avoidance (random) component and giving mitigation a larger role should have a neutral impact on the complexity of combat.
jimmay said:Because you edited your reply, I'll go ahead and answer your example. It's completely subjective, *but* IMO your example A is boring and predictable and the damage may as well have been 8 damage every auto attack for N seconds. In example B) I have a chance of getting the same joy I get from a crit streak. It's 33% on EVERY auto attack so if I get lucky, I can see a string of extra 25 damage hits and feel like a badass. If I see a string of normal hits, I don't necessarily feel bad because I just didn't get lucky. It's *not* the same as seeing a miss/fizzle for 0 damage go by.
Right, I guess that's the crux of the issue. It's entirely subjective. I value being able to influence the outcome of a fight only through my own actions. I prefer to mitigate every lucky element that I possibly can, because I take no enjoy in reaping the benefits of things outside of my control.
What you find boring, I find compelling. Different strokes.
Liav said:In all honesty, even in EQ I found the fact that I hit for such wildly different numbers with each individual hit to be kind of arbitrary. It doesn't add anything to the game for me if I hit for 15 followed by 10, or if I just hit once for 25.
Players and NPCs utilizing short duration buffs in combat and things like that can add enough variance without necessitating the dice rolls. For instance, if I pull a mob and it casts a 30 second duration 50% damage buff, maybe I have a defensive short duration buff that I can reciprocate with to even it out.
I have actually seen a lot of merit in many of the arguments you've posed thus far. However, this is where I can't say I agree at all. I think there actually is some natural appeal to things we can't exactly put our finger on. If you do 10, 13, 21, 18, and 15 damage using the same attack, then you can fairly easily say "I do about 16ish damage each time". You then move on to a new mob and do 8, 9, 11, 6, and 7 damage, then you can say "I do about 8 damage each time". However, you're probably not going to track those numbers exactly from kill to kill. This allows some room for mystery (until it's analyzed through statistics) and makes it much more difficult to definitively reverse engineer mechanics and perform accurate cost-benefit trades. Basically, it makes the game easier overall by means of analysis.
I have an analogy that is not great, but gives the idea of how the mystery of RNG and chance can by itself create great appeal. Take someone gambling at a roulette table or slot machine. If you removed RNG from the game and just had them slap 10 cents on the table every time, nobody would ever play. I'm not saying this directly relates, but it at least demonstrates that many of us are suckers for chance in many cases.
I think a crucial argument (which I tried to make earlier) is the balance of success and failure. Extending my analogy, if you made a slot machine where 99.9% of the time you won 1$, but 0.1% of the time you lost $1000, then that game would be TERRIBLE! If you fizzle 1% of the time, then it's going to be terrible when you do. I would implore the developers to avoid the nasty low (approx 0.1-5%) end negative effect range. Loss aversion (I believe this has come up in another thread) is an important thing to use in game development and it seems like fizzles are an example of how it can go wrong.
I don't really find gambling to be analogous at all so as to be worth comparing to RNG in combat.
Basically I consider combat to be a different sphere than basically the entirety of the rest of the game. I'm not necessarily objected to RNG as a whole, but when it comes to combat performance, I personally don't like it to play a role.
I'll never agree that RNG should play a significant role in combat. It is what it is. I understand the psychological argument, and it makes sense, but I think it makes more sense in the context of things like loot (random loot tables out of a pool of static loot, like most games) as opposed to combat.
Beefcake said:I like the idea of fizzles. It adds the excite an UH-OH factor to combat, because you know it will happen at the worst moment. Same with missing in Melee combat. It makes the game still challenging, no matter how good your player skill is.
If the game isn't challenging you, regardless of skill level, then the developers failed.
Having a 1/1000 chance to fizzle isn't challenging. It's just a gimmick that will occasionally punish you for no good reason.
Liav said:Beefcake said:I like the idea of fizzles. It adds the excite an UH-OH factor to combat, because you know it will happen at the worst moment. Same with missing in Melee combat. It makes the game still challenging, no matter how good your player skill is.
Having a 1/1000 chance to fizzle isn't challenging. It's just a gimmick that will occasionally punish you for no good reason.
Reminds me marriage. Yet I am still foolish enough to do it.
I like some chance in life.
You know as it was explained in the DnD players guide years ago, a Miss isnt always a miss, Maybe you hit the ogre with your sword but his armor deflected it and you did no damage, or your foot slipped just as you swung ( I mean you are in the heat of battle). All that, the chaos of battle is what is represented by the RNG, the fizzle and misses that your character must deal with, not sure of how much I added to the conversation but I always found that explanation a reasonable motive for adding RNG into battle in a RPG
Sevens said:You know as it was explained in the DnD players guide years ago, a Miss isnt always a miss, Maybe you hit the ogre with your sword but his armor deflected it and you did no damage, or your foot slipped just as you swung ( I mean you are in the heat of battle). All that, the chaos of battle is what is represented by the RNG, the fizzle and misses that your character must deal with, not sure of how much I added to the conversation but I always found that explanation a reasonable motive for adding RNG into battle in a RPG
Right, but allowing RNG to automate it to simulate "chaos" is only one of several ways to do it.
I can just as easily have a button that I can press on a cooldown that causes the enemy to miss attacks for a duration. The same effect is achieved, the difference is that it actually engages the player. We already have disciplines in EQ that serve that function. Furious Discipline is an example of that, 100% riposte chance for a duration.
One engages the player, and even positively rewards you for intelligent ability usage. The other does not.