Is game balance pointless in MMORPGs?

[Taboo]

ah the Icosahedron automatic failure.

 

5% chance

[Black Zot]

2 hours ago, fitzsimmons said:

Haven't read any significant portion of the thread but I think it'd be funny, if after rolling a 1, you do damage to yourself or a teammate.  If I'm holding a pistol, sword or whatever, I could see a scenario where I'd accidentally shoot or chop myself or a teammate.

 

On a 1 in 20 chance?  Nobody sane would let someone that inept handle a weapon at all.

[Lines]

5 minutes ago, Black Zot said:

On a 1 in 20 chance?  Nobody sane would let someone that inept handle a weapon at all.

 

Find me a sane person around here.

[FoulVileTerror]

You called, @Lines?

 

 . . . oh.  Wait.  Sorry.

 

You said "person."  

 

My mistake.  Carry on!

[Rathulfr]

6 minutes ago, Lines said:

 

Find me a sane person around here.

[Hew]

1 hour ago, Black Zot said:

 

On a 1 in 20 chance?  Nobody sane would let someone that inept handle a weapon at all.

Yeah, but you have to roll 1 in 20 twice consecutively. Thats a 1 in 20 chance!

 

[Luminara]

14 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Regardless of my other feelings on randomness in the game, I think it would do us all a grave disservice to remove the foundational fact of rolling a 1 on a 20 sided die is a fumble.

 

I'm going to have to check the "Disagree" box and circle "Emphatic".

 

It's a mechanic that makes sense and is practical in tabletop games, where a human mind can create tension, drama or comedy to make a failed hit check worthwhile in some manner.  In a video game, as a control and balance mechanic, it's bad.  It might be better if it were, in some way, similar to tabletop implementation, creating unusual and interesting situations, but the version we have is contrary to good game design.  It discourages the use of powers with longer animations and/or recharge times, it's not evenly applied to all powers (because some powers can't be reasonably believed to miss, like AoEs with persistent effects) and it punishes players more than it helps them.  It doesn't even really improve balance or developer control over power design, it merely gives a false sense of security when creating powers or trying to balance effects.

 

If we had a better implementation of missed hit checks, if we actually had some kind of fumble mechanic, it would be less inappropriate for a video game.  If, for example, failing the hit roll meant a second roll was made, and an effect determined from a table (10% damage dealt due to a glancing blow, nearby enemy hit instead, complete reversal resulting in the damage/effect affecting the player character, etc.), it wouldn't be such an objectionable mechanic.  But missing with an attack, followed by a forced hit by the streak breaker, and having the next attack miss again?  That's not dramatic or comedic, and the only tension it creates is that resulting from annoyance.  Missing when one is using mixed single-target and AoE attacks is even worse because it can lead to a series of misses (AoEs aren't affected by the streak breaker), and it's not merely annoying, it's completely ludicrous and beyond maddening.

 

Missing would even be tolerable if it were only applicable to foes with Defense buffs or ToHit debuffs.  It would be acceptable if it had some additional impact beyond simply causing us to grit our teeth and press the next key in our attack chain.  It wouldn't be nearly as frustrating if it, at least, allowed the overwhelming additional Accuracy many of us are sporting to scale that 5% down to 3%. or 2.5%, or it scaled hit chance with animation and recharge times so using those powers with slow animations and recharge times didn't feel like a waste.  There are numerous ways to balance attacks without any of them involving a 5% chance to miss, or a streaky streak breaker, or players beating their heads on their keyboards in frustration.  Slapping a 5% guarantee miss rate on the majority of powers, though, is unimaginative, and, I'm sorry to say this because I have boundless respect for what Cryptic accomplished when they designed the engine (really, a lot of what they created for the game is just mind blowing when you consider it, things like gravity, momentum and friction mechanics which mimic real world physics), lazy.

 

If I had my way, I'd rip the hit check mechanic out and rebuild it from the ground up so there was no guarantee of failure, only a guarantee of something occurring, for good or ill.

 

And with that, I've got to get back to missing with Blazing Arrow, then Fistful of Arrows, then Stunning Shot (this, with a set designed to be "more accurate" than any other set, is so unbalanced, it makes the Leaning Tower of Pisa look straight), so I can finish this mission and sweep up the hair I've pulled out.

[Black Zot]

13 hours ago, Hew said:

Yeah, but you have to roll 1 in 20 twice consecutively. Thats a 1 in 20 chance!

 

 

1 in 400, you mean.  And that still makes friendly fire absurdly common compared to what you'd see among anyone with proper training.  An army so inept it has a 1 in 400 chance of offing its own people by mistake on any given shot would lose badly against a competent enemy.  This is why fumble rules don't work - to implement them without destroying versimilitude, you have to bury them under so many layers of consecutive bad rolls it becomes unwieldy. 

Edited September 24, 2020 by Black Zot

[jubakumbi]

3 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

It's a mechanic that makes sense and is practical in tabletop games, where a human mind can create tension, drama or comedy to make a failed hit check worthwhile in some manner.  In a video game, as a control and balance mechanic, it's bad.  It might be better if it were, in some way, similar to tabletop implementation, creating unusual and interesting situations, but the version we have is contrary to good game design.  It discourages the use of powers with longer animations and/or recharge times, it's not evenly applied to all powers (because some powers can't be reasonably believed to miss, like AoEs with persistent effects) and it punishes players more than it helps them.  It doesn't even really improve balance or developer control over power design, it merely gives a false sense of security when creating powers or trying to balance effects.

Could not disagree  more.

The 'misses' and 'long animations' do, IMO, create tension, drama and comedy, all of which are subjective, not objective.

Missing at the wrong time means you have to scramble and use a backup plan, inspiration, w/e, and that makes it fun and exciting, to me.

It's not bad game design, it's just a choice - cannot please all of the people all of the time.

 

I think the streak-breakers in RNG engines is the worst thing to ever infect them, personally.

 

I totally agree actually injecting real fumbles and spell failures to add that would be awesome.

[Haijinx]

On the fumble hurting team-mates idea...

 

How crazy would COH be if Friendly Fire was a thing? 

[Omega-202]

4 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

On the fumble hurting team-mates idea...

 

How crazy would COH be if Friendly Fire was a thing? 

Two immediate outcomes I see: 

- lower power teams would stop using AoEs for fear of hurting each other;

- higher power teams would build to be more independent and the trend of splitting up in missions would accelerate. 

 

Basically, it would be regressive, harming the lowest performers and having a negligible effect on the highest performers.

[Haijinx]

5 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

Two immediate outcomes I see: 

- lower power teams would stop using AoEs for fear of hurting each other;

- higher power teams would build to be more independent and the trend of splitting up in missions would accelerate. 

 

Basically, it would be regressive, harming the lowest performers and having a negligible effect on the highest performers.

I wonder if Melee would become much rarer.  

 

Since Blasters usually do Ranged AOE.   

 

Tankers could presumably be built to survive in the Friendly Fire Maelstrom.   Would Stone Armor/Granite become much more popular?

[Luminara]

29 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

Missing at the wrong time means you have to scramble and use a backup plan, inspiration, w/e, and that makes it fun and exciting, to me.

A petless mastermind slotted with SOs can face-roll through the game without a backup plan.  Critters are going to be defeated, regardless of missed hit checks, and debt is such a meaningless penalty that it's become nothing more than another badge to acquire (when debt is even applied).  Having a mechanic enforcing an arbitrarily assigned failure rate doesn't change any of that, or lead to sudden shifts in the flow of the battle which put the player on the defensive, it just makes us wait for the queued power to finish animating so we can queue up another power and hope we're not forced to sit through another long animation with no reward for the time we're investing.

[jubakumbi]

6 minutes ago, Luminara said:

.... no reward for the time we're investing.

I don't see time playing games as an investment in anything more than sanity.

The reward, to me, is playing the game, the drops in the game are just not the reason I play.

 

 

Having random failures in games is Fun IMO.

I realize you do not agree.

No worries, Fun is subjective.

Edited September 24, 2020 by jubakumbi
speeling

[ClawsandEffect]

To address Luminara's post. 

 

We actually HAVE a "natural 1" and "natural 20" mechanic in place already. 

 

If your defense is softcapped versus a normal enemy they have a 5% chance to hit you. To translate that to D&D terminology, they have to roll a natural 20 to hit you at all. 

 

If your to-hit is 95% (it won't go higher), then the only way you can miss is on a natural 1. 

[Luminara]

10 minutes ago, ClawsandEffect said:

To address Luminara's post. 

 

We actually HAVE a "natural 1" and "natural 20" mechanic in place already. 

 

If your defense is softcapped versus a normal enemy they have a 5% chance to hit you. To translate that to D&D terminology, they have to roll a natural 20 to hit you at all. 

 

If your to-hit is 95% (it won't go higher), then the only way you can miss is on a natural 1. 

 

I'm aware of how the hit check mechanic functions.  It was one of the things I covered in my guides on the original forums.  My post wasn't a request to have the nature of hit rolls explained, but to point out how poor they are at creating or enforcing balance, regardless of which balance is in question.

 

Also, we miss on 20 in this game, when our hit checks are 95.01-100, not on 1.  The hit check mechanic is numerically reversed from the tabletop standard.

[FoulVileTerror]

eh . . . uh, not in most Percentile systems.  This game works exactly the same way.   1 being best, 100 being worst.  Dark Heresy and all the spin-offs springs to mind immediately as a system which uses that.

[Luminara]

9 minutes ago, FoulVileTerror said:

eh . . . uh, not in most Percentile systems.  This game works exactly the same way.   1 being best, 100 being worst.  Dark Heresy and all the spin-offs springs to mind immediately as a system which uses that.

 

The D20 standard.  I apologize for not being more precise.

[ClawsandEffect]

46 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Also, we miss on 20 in this game, when our hit checks are 95.01-100, not on 1.  The hit check mechanic is numerically reversed from the tabletop standard.

 The chance is identical either way if your character is at both extremes on defense and accuracy.  A 1 in 20 chance to hit or be hit.  Saying it isn't the same thing because the miss happens above 95% instead of on 1 is nothing but semantics. 

 

I don't want to see a "fumble" mechanic added into the game though. That only exists in tabletop games to add a storytelling element to what actually happens and it's up to the GM to define that. There's no way to do that in an MMO because there is no human there to determine when a simple miss is called for and when a catastrophic accident is. 

Edited September 24, 2020 by ClawsandEffect

[Luminara]

24 minutes ago, ClawsandEffect said:

Saying it isn't the same thing because the miss happens above 95% instead of on 1 is nothing but semantics.

 

I didn't say it didn't function in the same manner.  I pointed out that the numbers were reversed from D&D.

 

Semantics?  Yes.  But if you're going to skim a post and respond to the opening line(s) instead of reading the content, you're not really asking for any other kind of response.

 

I suppose I could say, "Read the post." instead.

 

No, better yet, I'll include the relevant section right here.

 

11 hours ago, Luminara said:

Missing would even be tolerable if it were only applicable to foes with Defense buffs or ToHit debuffs.  It would be acceptable if it had some additional impact beyond simply causing us to grit our teeth and press the next key in our attack chain.  It wouldn't be nearly as frustrating if it, at least, allowed the overwhelming additional Accuracy many of us are sporting to scale that 5% down to 3%. or 2.5%, or it scaled hit chance with animation and recharge times so using those powers with slow animations and recharge times didn't feel like a waste.  There are numerous ways to balance attacks without any of them involving a 5% chance to miss, or a streaky streak breaker, or players beating their heads on their keyboards in frustration.  Slapping a 5% guarantee miss rate on the majority of powers, though, is unimaginative, and, I'm sorry to say this because I have boundless respect for what Cryptic accomplished when they designed the engine (really, a lot of what they created for the game is just mind blowing when you consider it, things like gravity, momentum and friction mechanics which mimic real world physics), lazy.

 

Can we move it along, now?  I know I'm starting to sound like a monumental prick, so it's probably best if we just stop and find something else to talk about.

[ClawsandEffect]

I'm actually okay with a 5% guaranteed miss rate on powers, mostly because as far as I can tell the overwhelming majority of enemies in the game are playing by the same rules. The only ones that break it are particularly challenging enemies that are meant to be taken on in groups. 

 

I wasn't there when the game was designed, but I suspect the original developers probably played D&D or were at least familiar with the system. I could easily see them taking the "natural 1" mechanic and translating it to their to-hit system. 

[Doomguide2005]

On 9/23/2020 at 5:42 PM, Black Zot said:

 

On a 1 in 20 chance?  Nobody sane would let someone that inept handle a weapon at all.

Exactly.  Could it happen, sure but no where remotely that often.

 

Then again this is a computer based game engine it can likely handle a 5% chance as easily as a 0.00000000001% chance 😜.

[SableShrike]

On 9/24/2020 at 1:40 AM, Hew said:

Yeah, but you have to roll 1 in 20 twice consecutively. Thats a 1 in 20 chance!

 

“So you’re saying I’ve got a chance!” ~ Lloyd Christmas
 

 

 

I’ve talked about this with a few peeps ingame, but what has truly screwed balance up in this game are IO sets.

 

With the advent of IO sets, we suddenly were given the ability to negate any class’ specific weakness provided we threw enough Influence into set boni.

 

Then came Purple sets, then Attuned IOs, then ATOs...

 

The problem with this is that 90% of the game is still balanced around post-ED Single Origins.  Those and HamiOs are what the game was balanced around for YEARS.
 

The first Terra Volta respec used to be a brutal fight to the death that your team (many needing to respec) could often fail.

 

I can now solo that entire Trial on pretty much any AT if tricked out enough.

 

The Abandoned Sewer and Eden Trials were similar feats of heroic strength; now they’re a joke.

 

Power sets cannot account for that level of power creep.  Incarnate powers don’t account for it either, as you are too low to have them on the aforementioned Trials.

 

It’s the IO sets.  It’s always been the IO sets.

 

The IO sets have removed any niche an AT had except for very low level content.  Past level 25 or so, people start having enough set boni to Leeroy Jenkins, and triumph, through everything but iTrials.

 

At that point teaming is optional.  You need no backup for non-iTrial stuff.  You never learn the weakness of your AT (because sets eliminated it), and you never have to really play as a team. Not like we used to on only SOs and HamiOs.

 

I’ve tried to determine if this’s just me being an old fart remembering the past with rose-tinted glasses.  But I really don’t think that’s the case.

 

Now how to fix the mess that set IOs have brought us, I have no clue.  No way in hell will people give up set IOs now.  I myself use them, in part because I feel I have to to keep up with the other Undebtables.

 

Set IOs have so vastly moved the bar for what’s OP, and I feel like we’ve never really addressed their negative impact on the community.

 

We used to really need each other, and now your teammates are optional.  That's not good for a social MMO.

 

And to misquote Syndrome, “When everyone’s Superman...!  No one will be.”

Edited September 26, 2020 by SableShrike

[Lines]

2 minutes ago, SableShrike said:

The Abandoned Sewer and Eden Trials were similar feats of heroic strength; now they’re a joke.

Just gonna throw in, the Abandoned Sewer can absolutely kick my ass sometimes.

 

It's also my favourite trial in the game, partly for that reason.

[SableShrike]

1 minute ago, Lines said:

Just gonna throw in, the Abandoned Sewer can absolutely kick my ass sometimes.

 

It's also my favourite trial in the game, partly for that reason.

Yeah, I love that one!  I ran it many times before IOs and only ever beat it once!

Edited September 26, 2020 by SableShrike
I spell badly.