Liav said: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.
I have no problems with that, I dont really have a huge opinion on fizzles and melee misses....just saying the RNG was added in the PnP to simulate chaos and that was brought over into the MMOs. If there is a better way to do it, great. As long as it doesnt turn the game into a button mashingfest. I would rather have combat be about strategy than rotations
Sevens said:I have no problems with that, I dont really have a huge opinion on fizzles and melee misses....just saying the RNG was added in the PnP to simulate chaos and that was brought over into the MMOs. If there is a better way to do it, great. As long as it doesnt turn the game into a button mashingfest. I would rather have combat be about strategy than rotations
Yeah, removing fizzles and misses wouldn't affect that at all, fortunately.
Youmu said: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
Hi Youmu,
If I may counter your point about swordplay, you're talking about practicing swordplay in a controlled environment. I've seen swordplay up close, and I know it takes an incredible amount of skill and endurance, even for one battle, so I'm not dismissing your point. But when you're done for the day, you get to go home, take a nice shower, eat a hearty meal, undwind, and sleep in a nice, warm bed. If you took your swordplay into a real war, where you'd be on the road for months during a campaign in adverse conditions, you may find your skills diminish due to exhaustion, lack of nutrition, injury and facing the elements non-stop.
This just gave me an idea, especially since the topic has to do with improving upon EQ's mechanic: What if your miss/fizzle rate is impoved/diminished with the character's conditions. I'm not sure how many variables VR is going to put on an individual, but if a character is hungry, thirsty, low on mana, in the wrong mana-color area, tired, or some other variable, maybe that hinders how your character performs in battle. That way, the miss/fizzle mechanic still is in the game, but it's not as arbitrary as "oops, it just happened for no reason." How does that sound?
Cool thought on overall endurance affecting combat skills.
Aside from that though, the RNG may not be the most elegant mechanic, but it removes more of the predictability that inevitably leads to people sleepwalking thru patterns of key presses. If you know you will hit, you know exactly how hard you'll hit, exactly how hard you will be hit, or even that activating skill XYZ will produce precisely result 123, where are the dynamics? Where's the fear at the end of that fight where you and the mob have roughly the same HPs remaining, and you know if you can just get a couple of lucky shots in you'll live, but if you get a couple of crappy misses or it gets those lucky hits, you're screwed? What, other than RNG replaces that?
@Feyshtey
Disagree completely. Your premise is that RNG is the only way to remove predictability from combat. I've already stated that RNG is not necessary for unpredictability.
Vanguard didn't have a fizzle mechanic, and missing wasn't really relevant past level 10. We didn't sleepwalk through patterns of key presses. Instead, the game was demanding in other ways to compensate.
Liav said:@Feyshtey
Disagree completely. Your premise is that RNG is the only way to remove predictability from combat. I've already stated that RNG is not necessary for unpredictability.
Vanguard didn't have a fizzle mechanic, and missing wasn't really relevant past level 10. We didn't sleepwalk through patterns of key presses. Instead, the game was demanding in other ways to compensate.
In what ways? Randomly generating the timing for mob actions that required response?
Feyshtey said:Liav said:@Feyshtey
Disagree completely. Your premise is that RNG is the only way to remove predictability from combat. I've already stated that RNG is not necessary for unpredictability.
Vanguard didn't have a fizzle mechanic, and missing wasn't really relevant past level 10. We didn't sleepwalk through patterns of key presses. Instead, the game was demanding in other ways to compensate.
In what ways? Randomly generating the timing for mob actions that required response?
Perhaps I should rephrase. I don't think that fizzling added challenge to EQ at all, so Vanguard really didn't need to compensate for it.
Instead, it was just a massive annoyance that penalized you with varying consistency. I guess Vanguard was just a less annoying game, then.
Instead of adding unpredictablility through random rolls it can be done through the increase of complexity, yes something might theoretically be 100% predictable but if the pattern is complex enough you will never see that predictability. Also we humans ourselves are not predictable, we make descisions and those, even when encountered with the same thing, are not always the same. Look at something like a Bullet-Hell game, saying you can sleepwalk through that because it is predictable would be insanity or chess, where there is a set move for every pattern on the board, good luck remembering that.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
I didn't play much melee in EQ1, I was mainly a caster all the time. I don't remember fizzles ever being that much of a problem when casting a spell that I had maxxed out skill in. Yeah, I remember occasionally getting them, but it was at most 1 time per fight in a normal group, usually not even that many. On a rare occasion I'd get a double fizzle, but those were pretty rare. Assuming there is a similar fail chance as before, then I don't see a problem with fizzles. Also remember, you fizzle when you attempt to cast the spell, you don't cast the spell, spend 4 seconds casting it then fizzle.
There were only 2 drawbacks to fizzles, the waste of 0.5 seconds (which is about all you lost to it), and a slight bit of mana.
I don't think I like the chess example, basically the AI would always make the same decisions for the same mob, and eventually you'd learn how to beat it's actions assuming you always performed the same actions. Without some randomness, it does just become a repetitive combat when facing the same opponents. In PvP, this may work well because people will always eventually do something different against each other, but with an AI that has no way to make different decisions, it wouldn't work well.
@kelenin
You just described raiding in pretty much every game ever. If you make your content challenging enough, you don't need to rely on cheap tricks like RNG.
I've seen plenty of raids with very predictable scripts that took weeks or months to beat due to circumstances aside from RNG. There's no reason that can't be applied to normal enemies on a more microscopic scale.
You make it sounds like understanding a process guarantees a perfect outcome every time. People screw up all the time, even on tasks they're very familiar with.
Liav said:Chess is a great example of the argument I've been trying to put into words. Thanks for that.
Completely predictable game with no random elements. People are flawed enough to ensure inconsistency.
And being that people are flawed, doesn't it translate that our in-game avatar can be as well? Isnt there a chance that no matter how much you've mastered a particular skill in your real life that you can make a mistake? Fail to execute exactly as you normally would? Produce either unintentional benefits or consequences? The most disciplined and adept in the most difficult fields make mistakes. Why is it not acceptable that a game introduce that possibility as well?
The answer is that you want to have the sense that you're fully in control. It's more realistic (and yes, nerve-wracking and frustrating) when you know that fate might just throw a wrench into the works. I personally like that, and feel it adds a sense of danger. Yeah, you can gradually speed up the encounter, throw in dozens of skills the mobs might randomly initiate against you, or any number of other things to make the encounter more difficult. But you can't reproduce a sense of fate that way.
Those raids aren't usually beaten because everyone master's the script, it's because over time they get good enough gear to survive it, because it gives them better chances agains the RNG monster. Knowing the script definitely helps, and not making mistakes can certainly mean the difference between life or death. But it doesn't take most people months to master the script of a raid encounter.
Feyshtey said:Liav said:Chess is a great example of the argument I've been trying to put into words. Thanks for that.
Completely predictable game with no random elements. People are flawed enough to ensure inconsistency.
And being that people are flawed, doesn't it translate that our in-game avatar can be as well? Isnt there a chance that no matter how much you've mastered a particular skill in your real life that you can make a mistake? Fail to execute exactly as you normally would? Produce either unintentional benefits or consequences? The most disciplined and adept in the most difficult fields make mistakes. Why is it not acceptable that a game introduce that possibility as well?
The answer is that you want to have the sense that you're fully in control. It's more realistic (and yes, nerve-wracking and frustrating) when you know that fate might just throw a wrench into the works. I personally like that, and feel it adds a sense of danger. Yeah, you can gradually speed up the encounter, throw in dozens of skills the mobs might randomly initiate against you, or any number of other things to make the encounter more difficult. But you can't reproduce a sense of fate that way.
kelenin said:Those raids aren't usually beaten because everyone master's the script, it's because over time they get good enough gear to survive it, because it gives them better chances agains the RNG monster. Knowing the script definitely helps, and not making mistakes can certainly mean the difference between life or death. But it doesn't take most people months to master the script of a raid encounter.
That is absolutely untrue. As a matter of fact, the opposite is usually true. Gear plays a role, but gear alone can't carry you through heavily scripted raids with fail conditions.
If you're talking about early EQ, sure. That entire era is about showing up with enough MR and auto attacking loot pinatas. However, most modern MMOs are a ton more involved than that. By modern, I mean from World of Warcraft era and forward.
Liav said:I've said it at least a dozen times in a dozen threads. I don't consider realism a valid justification to include a mechanic on its own.
I agree, but I also think theres more to fizzles then realism.
It keeps an element of unsurety in your casting. Regular attacks can miss, spells always hit but are sometimes resisted or fizzle
BeaverBiscuit said:I agree, but I also think theres more to fizzles then realism.
It keeps an element of unsurety in your casting. Regular attacks can miss, spells always hit but are sometimes resisted or fizzle
Why is an element of unsurety in casting desirable?
Why do regular attacks need to miss? Also, spells don't "always hit". Fizzling stops your cast before it even begins. Resists are a separate, equally unnecessary system.
Liav said:BeaverBiscuit said:I agree, but I also think theres more to fizzles then realism.
It keeps an element of unsurety in your casting. Regular attacks can miss, spells always hit but are sometimes resisted or fizzle
Why is an element of unsurety in casting desirable?
Why do regular attacks need to miss? Also, spells don't "always hit". Fizzling stops your cast before it even begins. Resists are a separate, equally unnecessary system.
Because occasionally chaos and unpredictability makes life better.
Liav said:kelenin said:Those raids aren't usually beaten because everyone master's the script, it's because over time they get good enough gear to survive it, because it gives them better chances agains the RNG monster. Knowing the script definitely helps, and not making mistakes can certainly mean the difference between life or death. But it doesn't take most people months to master the script of a raid encounter.
That is absolutely untrue. As a matter of fact, the opposite is usually true. Gear plays a role, but gear alone can't carry you through heavily scripted raids with fail conditions.
If you're talking about early EQ, sure. That entire era is about showing up with enough MR and auto attacking loot pinatas. However, most modern MMOs are a ton more involved than that. By modern, I mean from World of Warcraft era and forward.
So a raid mob scripted to do the exact same thing all the time, do the exact same damage all of the time and never deviate it would be a difficult mob to defeat? I fail to see that. Regardless of how complex a script is, it would then become nothing but following a pattern and I may as well go play Tic-Tac-Toe.
RNG is required to make things interesting, to add an element of surprise or suspense and a feeling of danger to an encounter. Without it people would just always do the same things over and over again to defeat mobs or encounters. Yes, occasionally they'd screw up and lose, but otherwise it would just be a cake walk of mindless droning over the keyboard doing the same thing over and over again.
If I was up against a computer that never used an RNG to play chess, then I would just do the same exact moves over and over again to beat it, and that would get boring quick. And while some may say that remembering the moves would be difficult, if it was important as raiding is to people, they would record it or whatever and be able to reproduce it easily within a short period of time.
I'm not saying fizzling or missing should be one of them, although having them in doesn't bother me. Just saying removing RNG altogether would be a mindless game.
Beefcake said:Because occasionally chaos and unpredictability makes life better.
That isn't a justification for chaos and unpredictability in this particular instance.
Maybe every time you try to log into your character, there's a 50% chance you'll enter the world or you're character will get deleted. Chaos and unpredictability for all!
Liav said:Beefcake said:Because occasionally chaos and unpredictability makes life better.
That isn't a justification for chaos and unpredictability in this particular instance.
Maybe every time you try to log into your character, there's a 50% chance you'll enter the world or you're character will get deleted. Chaos and unpredictability for all!
if you play the current Daybreak Games MMOs, there is at least a 5% chance this may happen.
Liav said:Beefcake said:Because occasionally chaos and unpredictability makes life better.
That isn't a justification for chaos and unpredictability in this particular instance.
Maybe every time you try to log into your character, there's a 50% chance you'll enter the world or you're character will get deleted. Chaos and unpredictability for all!
While it's definitely doable. Something like this example is probably why he used the word occasionally.
kelenin said:So a raid mob scripted to do the exact same thing all the time, do the exact same damage all of the time and never deviate it would be a difficult mob to defeat? I fail to see that. Regardless of how complex a script is, it would then become nothing but following a pattern and I may as well go play Tic-Tac-Toe.
RNG is required to make things interesting, to add an element of surprise or suspense and a feeling of danger to an encounter. Without it people would just always do the same things over and over again to defeat mobs or encounters. Yes, occasionally they'd screw up and lose, but otherwise it would just be a cake walk of mindless droning over the keyboard doing the same thing over and over again.
If I was up against a computer that never used an RNG to play chess, then I would just do the same exact moves over and over again to beat it, and that would get boring quick. And while some may say that remembering the moves would be difficult, if it was important as raiding is to people, they would record it or whatever and be able to reproduce it easily within a short period of time.
Have you raided since 2004? Yes, scripted encounters that are essentially challenging puzzles do indeed take a long time, and are often difficult to defeat. You can assert that they aren't, but you'd be wrong.