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!
You seem very unhappy with RNG and like to shoot down everyone else as not-justifiable, but you have not put a strong argument about why it's so terrible to have in that would "justify" it in our minds, either.
Mod Edit: Removed last line of text as it is against forum guidelines.
Beefcake said:You seem very unhappy with RNG and like to shoot down everyone else as not-justifiable, but you have not put a strong argument about why it's so terrible to have in that would "justify" it in our minds, either.
At this point, I can only assume you are just trolling us.
I haven't offered an objective argument against RNG because there isn't one. I think it's a shitty, lazy method of making fights "interesting".
If people aren't swayed then that's fine. I've given my two cents, so I'm done here.
Mod Edit: Remove last line of text as it was redundant once the original text was also removed.
I remember fizzling as a wizard, and I remember resists (Velious was bad for that at first) so it did make me pay attention, change the strategy a bit, by levelling my casting spells up..paying attention to when I was resisted...I would cast again. I don't give up, and it gave a bit of a challenge. I still plan to play a caster, most likely wizard, and I expect the same challenges when I go to cast a nuke or a root...sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. I don't need a guaranteed hit...that would make me fall asleep. :D
The argument of getting through the newest scripted raid is not because of getting better but because of gear makes little sense. If the better gear is from that very raid and you need the better gear for to beat it, how would you then do it if it wasn't skill.
Tic-tac-toe as well as chess are both perfect information games, yes. But the complexity of tic-tac-toe to chess is gigantic, if now it is so easy why are we all not chess masters? It isn't easy just because there is the possibility to know everything, if you are not a freaking computer there is no real way to memorize everything in game such as chess. Heck, people loose in tic-tac-toe still. Another thing, you are playing with other people, they are not predictable, how the tank is going to move the mob or who the healer prioritizes heal is not something you will know, atleast not with 100% certainty or 100% accuracy. Thirdly, we are talking about eliminating 1 maybe 2 (fizzling and melee hit chanse) here, not ALL randomness in the game, acting like taking away fizzles would make everything 100% predictable and scripted is overexagguration to say the least.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Youmu said:The argument of getting through the newest scripted raid is not because of getting better but because of gear makes little sense. If the better gear is from that very raid and you need the better gear for to beat it, how would you then do it if it wasn't skill.
Tic-tac-toe as well as chess are both perfect information games, yes. But the complexity of tic-tac-toe to chess is gigantic, if now it is so easy why are we all not chess masters? It isn't easy just because there is the possibility to know everything, if you are not a freaking computer there is no real way to memorize everything in game such as chess. Heck, people loose in tic-tac-toe still. Another thing, you are playing with other people, they are not predictable, how the tank is going to move the mob or who the healer prioritizes heal is not something you will know, atleast not with 100% certainty or 100% accuracy. Thirdly, we are talking about eliminating 1 maybe 2 (fizzling and melee hit chanse) here, not ALL randomness in the game, acting like taking away fizzles would make everything 100% predictable and scripted is overexagguration to say the least.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
I don't think anyone has said removing fizzles or misses would be game breaking in any way. But the argument was made that RNG in fights should be removed and chess was used as an example. Many people who would like to see fizzles and misses stay aren't vehement about it, they ultimately don't seem to care if it does get removed. At least that's the way it seems to me reading the posts. They just seem to feel it adds a level of excitement to the game, without making a major sway in the overall outcome of battles.
I like fizzles, but I think a truely experienced caster should fizzle rarely, in a good fight maybe fizzle 1 or 2 times tops. If they're not that skilled at the magic they're using, then maybe a little more. Since I didn't play melee much in EQ, I don't want to comment on miss rates or accuracy. I'll leave that to others.
Things like this add subtle complexities to the game, which I appreciate.
The argument I keep hearing is that fizzles add "excitement" and "fun". My argument against this is that it is not fun for it is only negative, you are not happy about getting a fizzle or missing an important ability, on the contrary, even more so if it results in something like the tank dying for you could not get the heal of in time or the fizzle took the last of your mana. The "excitement" can be done in other ways, many suggestions have been posted here. Instead of arguing and shooting down eachothers ideas we should ALL come up with alternate ways of doing things, this was a post about improving, not reasons to not change anything. Nothing is perfect and trying to improve is a noble thing.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Well there were some old timers like myself that played through Velious etc when it was brand new, found a way to work around the fizzles (by levelling our casting skills up) and other ways to lessen the resists. (armor etc) That was part of the game, the learning curve..and another mini challenge to overcome to make our characters better. There's no argument here..that I see, unless it happens to be your insistance that all of those things should be removed...any sort of resistance or thing that might stand in the way of your becoming better and more skilled should be removed, is what I am hearing? Nobody said it was "exciting" there's a difference between "exciting" and building your character to be the best it can be according to your own efforts. I personally don't like things handed to me...don't like exclamation marks over npc heads...don't like walking two steps and getting a pat on the head and a cookie for achieving nothing at all. :P
In other words I don't want an automated game where I don't have to make an effort to improve my skills, tactics..and game knowledge. :)
Cana
Everyone gets max skill in short order, so this would virtually eliminate fizzling. It would end up being just one more way of sanitizing combat. Nothing should be completely predictable. If you do away with fizzles, the next step is to do away with resists. Then to do away with misses, and so on and so forth.
Fizzles are fine as they worked in EQ.
I've always enjoyed thinking about the roots of the fizzle mechanic and I am able to happily justify its existence. In our universe, there are certain features or observables which are intimately bound to an inescapable probability. Usually, these probabilities are distributed about two properties, i.e. the most well known Heisenberg's uncertainty principle where the more you know about a particle's position, the less you know about its momentum (or energy), and visa vera. In this same sense, I think there is great opportunity to improve upon the fizzle mechanic by having it bound to its own uncertainty principle.
In addition to having a diminishing probability with skill level, I propose the following formula:
sigma(Fizzle)*sigma(MaxDamage)*(CurrentSkill/MaxSkill) >= k.
where sigma(Fizzle) is the uncertainty in cast success rate, sigma(MaxDamage) is the uncertainty in maximum damage and (CurrentSkill/MaxSkill) is a scaling quantity which contains information about the casters proficiency. When the caster is at max level, the (CurrentSkill/MaxSkill) factor goes to 1, meaning that the caster's skill no longer affects the probabilities of casting and damage which is nice in the sense that a player can still reduce the chances of fizzling with practice. However, once max proficiency is met, the unavoidable uncertainty still exists but is less severe. Now here's the cool thing, a player can choose distribute the probabilities as they see fit, potentially through modifications of the living codex. (k is some tunable constant)
If a player wants to play a high risk, high reward strategy, then he would reduce the uncertainty in that spells maximum damage, which would, in turn, increase the uncertainty in his fizzle rates. If a player wants to be more consistent they can choose to modify the spell in such a way that the probability of fizzling is really low which means the uncertainty in max damage increases resulting in a decreased chance of achieving damage scores at or near maximum.
Uncertainty is an inescapable and beautiful quality of our physical universe. I would expect that any manipulation of any form of energy, be it arcane or otherwise, would definitely come with its own uncertainties. In this sense, I think the concept of fizzling is easier to digest if we don't think of it as some lazy coding tossed in to artificially make combat more interesting. We should think of it as a natural property within the universe of Pantheon.
This really gets into the risk reward aspect of combat. In EQ, your newest spells were the riskiest to use, and intelligently so. Often if you were in a tight spot, you wouldn't even attempt to use your newest big mana nuke if such a nuke has a high chance of fizzling reducing your already twindling mana pool. That's the kind of situation I want to see remain in combat. That's one more decision that made combat interesting and compelling.
The more you reduce the number of variables, the more sanitized, predictable and boring combat becomes. That is the nature of MMO combat in 2016. For all the cool animations, flashy fast pace movement and highly tactile feeling attacks offered in a game like Black Desert, it literally put me to sleep by forcing me to circle around and execute the same combinations over and over with very predictable results. I fell asleep every night that I played it. Yet, to this day I find myself playing into the wee hours of the morning when I log onto P99, completely losing track of the time and oblivious to my need for sleep. There is something to that variability that is simple, elegant and yet compelling.
More on the notion of being a master : In EQ you had skills associated with different spheres of magic and combat. You started out at 0 or 1, and the more you used a particular skill the more skill you gained (with level caps). I remember distinctly what it was like to neglect a skill for dozens of levels, and then try to use it in combat. Fizzle/Miss was happening far more than hits. And that is exactly as it should be.
If you havent used a skill, there's no reason you should be good at it.
Now, I still think fizzles add flavor that would be difficult to replace in other ways. But in this simple character maturation equation, do the people opposed to fizzles think that as you level you should just inherently get better at everything available to your class? Or should you be required to use a skill to improve in it? I reallly hope its not the former. If its the latter and fizzle/miss is out of the question, what should the consequence be if you have neglected a skill? You always successfully hit?
Translate this line of reasoning to a myriad of other skills that may be in the game. Climbing. Is it impossible to fall if you try to climb something that you are simply grossly unskilled to climb? Is it impossible to piss off an NPC that you try to beg from or negotiate with? Is it impossible to drown no matter how weak your swimming skill?
I don't think that leveling on its own should be good enough for skills to progress, I'm all for having them separate.
The repercussions of neglected skills are already outlined in the OP. Undercapped skills potentially lead to fizzles, capped skills don't. If people can cap their skills in "short order", then make it more difficult by requiring quest progression to lead to skill ups. There are a number of potential solutions here.
Maybe undercapped skills cause you to do less damage with spells of a given skill line until it is capped.
I don't know. Giving players an outlet to bypass RNG-based mechanics is all I'm asking for, not that they are eliminated entirely. If you take what should be an extremely long length of time to cap your skills, you shouldn't still be fizzling or missing, is my point.
Dullahan said:I think characters should lose skills in spell schools and weapon types when they don't use them, and subsequently fizzle and miss more often.
Vanguard had this for melee skills, but not casting. However, it hardly impacted gameplay at all.
I wouldn't mind seeing it again as long as it had a more meaningful long term impact on gameplay, and as long as the game is itemized to support it. Rogues will in all likelihood be forced into using daggers, for instance, so it would impact them less than, say, a Ranger who may use a variety of weapon types.
However, in the spirit of the thread, I'd only like this if capping a weapon skill allowed you to circumvent RNG.
Here's a thought.
Let's say the level cap is 50 and your maximum skill in a casting/melee skill is 250. When you reach 250 skill, a mini "epic" quest opens up in a school associated with the various casting skills and weapon types. So at level 50/250 skill, I go to the Piercing school and do a relatively long, difficult quest to achieve mastery in a skill that results in a 0% chance to miss/fizzle.
As you can see, I don't care how it gets achieved. In my ideal world, it'd be like EQOA where missing/fizzling never existed at all from level 1 all the way through. I'm willing to compromise, however.
Syntro said:...
sigma(Fizzle)*sigma(MaxDamage)*(CurrentSkill/MaxSkill) >= k.
...
I am really fond of this idea and I would love to see it implemented in a game! However, as fun as it would be, it would equally taxing to develop. If we take even the simplest example possible of a fireball spell, then by adjusting your k factor you are trading off fizzling for raw damage value. But, as a result, you are impacting (successful) cast rate, mana use rate, reliability, along with your damage value. What would be the correct approach to developing your sigma functions? How do you put a value on all of these separate variables?
Perhaps you just embrace the fact that reliability is not quantifiable and ignore it. Also, cast rate and damage value can be combined to dps. So in the end you *could* just say that as long as DPS and Mana used per time both increase proportionally with k, then you're good and do some minor tweaking of the functions to balance those two. But even in this case, balancing is not set by equations, but by feel, which is tough to do for each individual ability. On the other hand, if you extend this concept to heals, then reliability is hugely important in many cases. You can no longer ignore reliability in this realm, so you need to toss that factor into the balancing.
I would suggest considering an alternative, where instead of an ambitious continuous function, you instead just deal with two discrete options. You can regularly cast your spells or you can "overcharge" them. This would function in a similar manner with fizzling being traded off for some other desired factor (dps, effect duration, etc.), but would not be subject to falling down the rabbit hole of the complexity inherent in continuous functions. I'm not saying this is great, because it doesn't nearly provide the appeal of your original suggestion and still almost doubles your balancing work, but I didn't want to come in saying "I like it" and then follow up purely with issues.
I wonder if Liav would be satisfied with this mechanic, as RNG can be removed, or it can be embraced for benefit. I could certainly believe lore/world-wise that even the most practiced spellcaster could push themselves to the point where they fail on occasion.
I wouldn't be satisfied with a mechanic like that for a pretty simple reason.
1. It's either mpossible to balance (an outright superior choice would emerge through gameplay trivially).
OR
2. It's balanced well enough that having a choice in the first place is negligible.
This could apply to numerous mechanics, though, but it's important to realize the finite nature of the development process. Would it be worth spending the time, money, and other resources on such a system if the outcome is likely to fall in line with the above two possibilities? I guess that is highly subjective, just like finding beauty as opposed to existential horror in the inherently uncertain universe we live in.
"Because physics" isn't good enough for me. I'd call it a naturalistic fallacy but I'm not sure if that's exactly accurate or not.
Youmu said:The argument I keep hearing is that fizzles add "excitement" and "fun". My argument against this is that it is not fun for it is only negative, you are not happy about getting a fizzle or missing an important ability, on the contrary, even more so if it results in something like the tank dying for you could not get the heal of in time or the fizzle took the last of your mana. The "excitement" can be done in other ways, many suggestions have been posted here. Instead of arguing and shooting down eachothers ideas we should ALL come up with alternate ways of doing things, this was a post about improving, not reasons to not change anything. Nothing is perfect and trying to improve is a noble thing.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Couldn't disagree more. You need RISK in order to have risk-vs-reward and sometimes that risk is the unfair, immutable laws of unpredictability. You need there to be risk always. As well, the science of intermittent reinforcement is powerful.
I've been online gaming since long before EQ launched. I was there throughall of it.
The complete destruction of EQ started with arguments like this.
And it's one of those situations where you don't realize it's ruining the game until it's too late.
Mod Edit: Removed text labeling everyone in this conversation as it is not productive nor does it add any value to the conversation, it only stands to incite unrest and start arguments over opinions. Please refrain from labeling the entire community in future posts.
Liav said: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.
I have. Had mods that I was required to download by the raiding guild to tell me exactly what to do when. It killed control freak guilds for me as well as scripted content. Should be more to it than instructions from a mod and gear score IMO
This thread isn't about mods, BeaverBiscuit. That has nothing to do with the post you replied to.
Mod Edit: Removed last lines that referred to a line of text that was removed from the post you were referring to and the remark about mod duties as back seat moderation is an offense within itself. I will always see reports and read threads, so please limit yourself to those avenues and I will do the rest.
Liav said:This thread isn't about mods, BeaverBiscuit. That has nothing to do with my post.
It has everything to do with your post. Scripted encounters are much easier to write instructional mods for. Instructional mods become required commodities for high end guilds, whether its a mod in game or even managed outside of the game box, like a clock that tells you, or the speaker in the teamspeak, what to do when.
And high end guilds are what's gonna be fighting challenging puzzlebox scripted bosses.
I feel like a new thread has to be started for where this discussion has gone. It's no longer about the merits of the fizzle mechanic, which has produced some decent discussion here. This is now just about RNG wholesale. Pantheon will involve RNG to some extent and thus will sit somewhere on the greyscale of RNG dependant games. It may come in ways you like and it may not. The OP suggested that the fizzling mechanic be "fixed" and by that meant "removed". Pantheon could be a great MMO that relies heavily on RNG or it could be a great MMO that doesn't (those are the only two options, right?).
Many games are built around the simplicity provided by random number generation. A game of cards will involve shuffling the deck and drawing (RNG) and I would hope that everyone can agree that some card games are fun. Other games either don't involve chance inherently or try to negate the impact of chance wherever possible. Even the prime example of RNG-free gaming (chess) involves flipping a coin to determine who goes first! I think we should all just sit back and accept that this is not an argument won by logic and examples, but purely a matter of preference. There will be people who say that war (the card game entirely based on chance) is terrible, because it's entirely based on chance. There are others who will say that tic-tac-toe is terrible because everything plays out the same way every time.
I'm going to cast my vote in the pro-RNG camp and leave it at that. I think explaining one's views and inquiring as to other's opinions is useful, but not trying to convince someone else of something so fundamental.
BeaverBiscuit said:It has everything to do with your post. Scripted encounters are much easier to write instructional mods for. Instructional mods become required commodities for high end guilds, whether its a mod in game or even managed outside of the game box, like a clock that tells you, or the speaker in the teamspeak, what to do when.
And high end guilds are what's gonna be fighting challenging puzzlebox scripted bosses.
If you think Pantheon won't have scripted encounters, I have some bad news for you.
Even so, this topic is so derailed that I think we can just call it a wrap.
