Liav said:Pyde said:Fizzles........ "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Just my 2 cents
Yes, massive font posts with one liners are very compelling.
Wow Liav... Angry much ! Just wanted to cast my vote in a I'm happy about fizzles kind of way. ( Used little font size this time )
Lets say every melee has a base set of skills and can use these without any RNG being involved, but for each weapon type you have a few (3-5) weapon specific attacks that have a greater impact but also have a RNG involved. So you can hack away all day with your uber axe of slaying, when you try to do a "special" axe attack it checks your skill in that weapon type. Just a spit ball idea here. I also like Liav's idea of a specialized weapon type, just as casters can specialize melees should be able to also.
Ainadak said: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?
Liav said:"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.
Liav said: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.
Scripting does have something to do with fizzling since the argument for fizzling is that it helps fights to not feel the same, and scripting makes fights feel the same. Scripting (as in boring scripting) is an example as to why you want uncertainty to be in fights.. The example was taken too far I suppose but I wouldn't say the thread is unsavable if anyone has a new 2 cents.
Also AI will apparantly be put in; Check this forum post (complete with VR involvement) out: NPC's Just Standing Around
Now it really has de-railed=) Sorry everyone!
Sevens said:Lets say every melee has a base set of skills and can use these without any RNG being involved, but for each weapon type you have a few (3-5) weapon specific attacks that have a greater impact but also have a RNG involved. So you can hack away all day with your uber axe of slaying, when you try to do a "special" axe attack it checks your skill in that weapon type. Just a spit ball idea here. I also like Liav's idea of a specialized weapon type, just as casters can specialize melees should be able to also.
If your skill is capped when it runs the check, returning a guaranteed hit, I'd be find with that. That's probably the only circumstance though.
I'm sure for all the complaining I do there will be plenty of mechanics I hate, but plenty that I love too, in Pantheon. RNG in combat falls into the category of things I hate, but will deal with regardless.
BeaverBiscuit said:Scripting does have something to do with fizzling since the argument for fizzling is that it helps fights to not feel the same, and scripting makes fights feel the same. Scripting (as in boring scripting) is an example as to why you want uncertainty to be in fights.. The example was taken too far I suppose but I wouldn't say the thread is unsavable if anyone has a new 2 cents.
Also AI will apparantly be put in; Check this forum post (complete with VR involvement) out: NPC's Just Standing Around
Now it really has de-railed=) Sorry everyone!
My raid career disagrees. Having your tank get randomly one shot by a bad luck quad hit is not fun to me. Yelling at healers to learn to play and cure curses when people die is fun to me.
When I die because I didn't react fast enough, I find that more compelling than when I die randomly to bad luck. If I die because I fell off a cliff, I'm an idiot and I don't need a dice roll to determine the outcome of that.
It all comes down to preference. I like having control over my actions as much as possible, even if it means that I have to point to myself to blame every time something goes wrong. It's a learning experience that drives improvement. There is nothing to learn from a dice roll. All you can do is hope it doesn't happen again.
I agree, there is nothing more annoying than a mechanic where a single random number dictates success or failure. Like your example where the tank gets one shot by a raid mob and there is nothing that can be done about it, simply because RNG decided against him. I hope we don't ever get events or encounters like that as well, as long as the characters are properly geared and skilled. When RNG removes all skill from the success or failure of some event, that is not fun at all. Trust me, I'm well aware of this, I'm currently playing ArcheAge.
But that's a long way from a fizzle. A fizzle will not have that kind of impact, and a skillful player will recognize that it may happen, and will be able to handle it when it does.
The only way to "handle" is a fizzle is to recast the same spell you already casted, except you lost mana and time for no good reason. Even worse is if you hardly have any mana to begin with and it puts you below the minimum to cast it, and a tank dies because of it. That's equally bad as them getting one shot by RNG, to me.
You can't plan around a 1/100 or 1/1000 chance. It just happens, and the consequences are either meaningless or devastating.
Liav said:It all comes down to preference. I like having control over my actions as much as possible, even if it means that I have to point to myself to blame every time something goes wrong. It's a learning experience that drives improvement. There is nothing to learn from a dice roll. All you can do is hope it doesn't happen again.
Eh I get what you're saying. But dice/card games are a thing that tons of people enjoy. Dice are a huge part of DnD which Pantheon will be taking a lot from (as EQ did).
No RNG makes things repetative, and another way of looking at it is that you never have anything new and unique to deal with, and no potential somewhat unforseeable punishment/risk/reward for your actions. Do you really want to know for sure you will get a particular rare drop from the 100th rare spawn you kill, every time?
Yea in many cases RNG is too much. Most people don't want a chance their weapon will break when they roll a 1, nor a chance they will insta kill a raid boss when they roll a 20.
I like the mid point where RNG provides you with unique situations that you must handle properly. Things go wrong and you gotta make them right again...Or maybe you follow up with some luck.
All that said, player skill is a form of RNG and can certainly make for a lot of unpredictability, particularly in raids.
At some point you need to remember this is entire genre at its core an RPG and the R doesnt stand for Raid. it's not a raid/dps simulator, (although the MMO crowd these days apparently can't tell the differnece.) Your CHARACTER who you are playing randomly messes up sometimes, hence fizzling, just like a human does in the "real world" as had been stated like 40 times in this thread. Why is the action of casting a spell considered something which is automatic and would never fail? do you have enough experience casting spells to tell me you would always cast a spell when you wanted to with no miscues? Has it been dry everytime you have farted ever?
when you are trying to cast a spell that is above your level of skill, it makes sense that sometimes you would mess up. When you are casting a spell in the heat of battle, it makes sense that sometimes varying factors would make that spell misfire.
If you want to treat the game as a bunch of numbers and math so you can be in the top 1% of whatever, that's fine, but please don't argue that we should be removing things like RnG from fantasy RPG's because RPG's have been built off of those mechanics for decades. You are NOT the person in the game, you are ROLE playing ANOTHER character, who like you, makes mistakes. That's what an RPG is. An RPG without RnG is an action game.
OneForAll said:Has it been dry everytime you have farted ever?
Well said!
The RNG should always come into play except in rare occasions. Even with an AA it should only guarantee your next 1 or 2 cast.
If your tank was one shotted, why were you unprepared and at that Boss without a backup tank... sounds like asking for the game to cover for a rookie move.
Liav! Before you give up responding, can you respond to my follow up reply?
Wellspring said:I think the only logical most appropriate way to resolve this dilemma is via a Poll a roll of the dice.
With skill-ups being fairly passive what ultimately happens is players drifts upwards with little input from themselves, folk get obsessed by that last tiny percentage of misses and if it's all just RNG they get mad.
Syntro said:Liav! Before you give up responding, can you respond to my follow up reply?
Okay.
Syntro said:Hey Liav, I'm not trying to be snide here, but how then do you justify characters walking on the ground? How do you justify the existence of colors in the game? How do you justify the existence of life, planets, and stars in Pantheon?
The justification is really as simple as: physics. We need to have a game framed in an existence similar to ours so that we can relate and feel connected to it. High fantasy games are still a derivative of our own world and there is really no way around that statement. Gravity, the electromagnetic spectrum and the rest of what is core to our universe still gets translated into these virtual worlds (the fun comes in when they start bending these rules). Why not use the same reasoning as to why you are ok with gravity in Pantheon to justify fizzleing? Or do you have a different justification for gravity in Pantheon other than what sentiment I've laid out here? Manipulating energy inherently comes with uncertainty - and done.
To put it simply, you're 100% correct in your assertion that uncertainty is an inescapable part of reality that is intrinsically tied to every little thing.
However, those base level elements of the universe slip beneath the consideration of how we live our lives on a daily basis. A good example is that, while it's possible that the entirety of existence could cease for reasons we simply can't comprehend yet, it's not something that people think about. It's not practical. We don't go to bed at night pondering if the sun will rise the next morning, unless we're having an existential moment or take some mind bending drugs. Even so, that's not a day to day thing for 99.9% of people.
For instance, it's simple for someone to analyze human existence and come to the conclusion that doesn't "exist" outside of particles bumping into eachother on a fundamental level. This is the reasoning of edgy teenagers who discover nihilism and like to pretend that "nothing matters". They might even be correct in an objective sense, but they eventually mature into realizing that the "why" isn't as important as what "is" for the purposes of day to day living. So, to draw a parallel between all of that and my argument, it simply boils down to practicality. Plenty of other video games exist that try to capture the narrative of unfathomable realities inhospitable to human life. Pantheon is not one of those games, even though it's high fantasy, a lot of its base level components are relatable to us. I just don't necessarily think that fizzling, and missing are important components of that relatability.
EQ2, Vanguard, EQOA, WoW, etc. have existed without fizzling, and it was to their benefit, in my opinion. EQOA did without any avoidance based system for melee, it was all mitigation based, and everything was fine. While one can argue that EQOA failed "as a game", it wasn't due to something as arbitrary as missing in combat.
TL;DR: Fizzling and missing in melee don't depart from our expectations of reality enough for it to be a consideration. The negatives of fizzling and missing are unique. The positives of fizzling and missing are not unique. We can do better.
And that's all for me, I think.
Orsenfelt said:For what it's worth, I think the actual issue is that a skill + RNG system with a base minimum (like EQ) is far too broad and clunky. It doesn't offer enough information or control. The basic premise works, you start off crap at something, you bash skulls in and hey presto - once you're a top tier warrior badass you're pretty good at bashing skulls when you swing for them. Why did that swing not connect though? 'Reasons' alone is probably not a good enough answer anymore - which is what RNG amounts to.With skill-ups being fairly passive what ultimately happens is players drifts upwards with little input from themselves, folk get obsessed by that last tiny percentage of misses and if it's all just RNG they get mad.
One potential solution I would like to see is to bring in an element of control from the beginning. Make me pay attention. Fighting is dirty, there's limbs coming off and all sorts. I don't see why that has to change in a high fantasy RPG. I don't want an action RPG but I would like to have to react to my enemy in more ways than just the standard can-we-kill-it-before-it-kills-us kind of way.I feel like there's often a disconnect between the player and the character. EQ skill systems explain it all away by saying the player just focuses on game mechanics whilst the character is the actual master at kicking peoples teeth out, you don't have to worry about that.So what I would do is basically raise the miss/fizzle rate if you're not doing the things required to better kick your enemys face. If you just stand there like a simpleton swinging your axe, you should miss more or less depending on whats going on around you. Higher level characters would miss less but the characters missing the least would be those reacting properly to the physical realities of the fight.If I'm a little gnome wizard being charged at by a gigantic dragon who's just bitten my buddies head off, why am I just as capable of successfully casting a spell as I would be at any other time? Likewise if I'm tired, if I am cold (climate system weyhey!), if I've just climbed up a mountain to get here.. etc etc.None of it has to be major. I'd even hide all references to things like that from the interface. There's so many little stats that could be tracked in the background you could reduce the RNG aspect to nearly nothing and players would - and it's probably my inner Enchanter speaking here - more or less sense when a fight was going well for reasons that they can actually control. I'm sure most people have been in groups in various games that just feel right. Players paying attention, knowing their class, working efficiently, killing like absolute pros. The games don't recognise that though, the mechanics don't react. Imagine if it did.Rather than just "RNG bro, sux."
A game I played called Project Zomboid had a system like this. If you were too close to zombies your character got scared and your accuracy went down. If you were tired, hungry, thirsty, in pain,etc bad things also happened to your chances of succeeding in various activities. Personally I think it's a good system and forced you to manage the various emotions of your character, however it is very hard to implement. I don't want to know how many people would complain about getting way too stressed out and fizzling every other spell just because they happened to be too close to the spectre.