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General discussionMidweek Sale: games with permadeath up to 85% off(25 posts)(25 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted November 10, 2021
Get ready to test your skills in games every move counts. The latest Midweek Sale on GOG.COM is dedicated to games featuring permadeath mechanics. Play titles like Battle Brothers (-10%), EVERSPACE™ (-85%), and StarCrawlers (-75%) before the sale ends on 13th November 2021, 2 PM UTC.

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Posted November 11, 2021
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idbeholdME: There is no "gitting gud" when all you can do is play the odds. You can just maximize the chances but that doesn't prevent the RNG from eventually fucking you anyway.
I agree. I was talking about the kind of gamers who tend to dismiss any complaints about unfair difficulty, no matter how well argued, with a derisive "git gut" and proceed to tell you how you're a n00b and they beat the game with their eyes closed and using an electric toothbrush for a controller.
Posted November 11, 2021
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idbeholdME: There is no "gitting gud" when all you can do is play the odds. You can just maximize the chances but that doesn't prevent the RNG from eventually fucking you anyway.
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Breja: I agree. I was talking about the kind of gamers who tend to dismiss any complaints about unfair difficulty, no matter how well argued, with a derisive "git gut" and proceed to tell you how you're a n00b and they beat the game with their eyes closed and using an electric toothbrush for a controller.
The "git gud" remark is not really any kind of advice. If one is a veteran of any game and somebody else asks for help or even complaints about some aspect of it, most probably that person can give some solid tips, and not a stuck-up anwser like "just git gud".
Posted November 11, 2021
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pazZzurro: I happen to agree. While I still like XCom:EU, the RNG in that game is absolute bs. The computer is clearly cheating you throught the game - just tell me I have 20% chance of hitting an enemy, that way I might try a different tactic. Don't tease me with 90% chance and then never allow me to hit the enemy.
Except the game code was disassembled and it's not cheating. It's also been statistically analyzed. Humans are garbage about understanding what randomness means (otherwise nobody would buy lottery tickets), and focus on the outliers only. So if you have 90% chance to hit and miss twice in a row, you're screaming "CHEATING!" when in fact it's not even that unlikely relatively speaking, but that's all you notice. Emotionally, you expect your guys to hit and the enemy to miss, and it seems "wrong" when that doesn't happen. Some games fake randomness to disallow things like a 90% hit chance from missing twice in a row in order to appease players, which may be a good idea from a rage-quit perspective, however it does reinforce the wrong idea of how randomness works.

Also, you can absolutely "gid gud" by learning to use better tactics. They won't always work, but in the long run you will be much better off. Your mistakes are your own more often than not, such as relying on that 90% chance to hit with no backup plan.
Posted November 12, 2021
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eric5h5: Except the game code was disassembled and it's not cheating. It's also been statistically analyzed. Humans are garbage about understanding what randomness means (otherwise nobody would buy lottery tickets), and focus on the outliers only. So if you have 90% chance to hit and miss twice in a row, you're screaming "CHEATING!" when in fact it's not even that unlikely relatively speaking, but that's all you notice. Emotionally, you expect your guys to hit and the enemy to miss, and it seems "wrong" when that doesn't happen. Some games fake randomness to disallow things like a 90% hit chance from missing twice in a row in order to appease players, which may be a good idea from a rage-quit perspective, however it does reinforce the wrong idea of how randomness works.

Also, you can absolutely "gid gud" by learning to use better tactics. They won't always work, but in the long run you will be much better off. Your mistakes are your own more often than not, such as relying on that 90% chance to hit with no backup plan.
Sorry, I'm still not convinced. On both accounts.
Firstly, you can't "git gud" in a game, where you are not in control of your actions. You can make the best of the situation, but that is not the same. For me there simply is no correlation whasover between getting good and games that are based on chance as opposed to your skill.

Secondly, it's all well and good to be a math wizard and make some experiments. Unfortunetly these do not provide definitive anwsers wheter the game is really fair to the player. There is a lot of stuff to consider in that game.
Save scumming is not an option during the mission itself - the game has already decided on all outcomes, at least a few turn's ahead. I know - I tested that myself. If you did not hit an enemy standing behind that cover in 2 turns time, then even reloading and playing those 2 turns again won't change that outcome. XCom doesn't want you to make that shot, it made all the calculations beforehand.That in itself might sound fair... except it's not. On the one hand - save scumming bad. On the other - where is my free-will, why the game fates all my mission outcomes?

But that's not all. It's not just 2 or 3 shots missed in a row. Some articles point out that the game is indeed fair and it's the players memory that's faulty, cause they only remember the missed shots. But why is that? Because you have to consider how much is at stake on those 3 missed shots.
You still can win the mission alright, but at what cost? You are constantly losing funds, half of your squad is smothered (and new ones take very long to train again), or for every mission you won, you lost at least 2 others somewhere else on the globe. While the game relentlessy throws stronger aliens at you. In other words - you are overwhelmed, slowly spiralling towards destruction, and to top it all - you missed "a couple of sure shots". Unlucky? Yes. Unfair? Also yes. The penalties in XCom:EU are much to punishing, considering how many factors are out of the players hands.

Despite all I said, I still like the game a lot. Even bought it a second time. But no one is gonna convince me that the game is fair. Especially since the computer knows his own calculations, and can plan ahead to screw me, while the only thing I can do is risk it.

Thridly, you said "Humans are garbage about understanding what randomness means". The first article you quoted writes "Computers are terrible at generating randomness". Which is it then?
Posted November 12, 2021
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pazZzurro: Sorry, I'm still not convinced. On both accounts.
Um. That just means you didn't bother to read the article, since the code is right there; it's factual and it's reality. The game is not cheating and it's simply not possible to argue about it since the actual code the game is actually running is, again: Right. There. I'm human too and susceptible to the "not fair!" reaction, but at least I can acknowledge where it's coming from and move past it, instead of ascribing malicious intent to simple math code that objectively has no such bias.

As for "which is it," you should really read past the first sentence, because everything is explained. Including the bit where save scumming doesn't work because the game uses a PRNG seed. I'm not going to explain that since the article already does so; read it first before you try to argue about anything. As the conclusion says, "When you miss 3 90% shots in a row, you just got unlucky, the game is not cheating you out of your kills." The end. It's fairly basic math.
Posted November 12, 2021
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eric5h5: ...
Ooh thanks for those two links, I'm definitely going to have a read later. I also tickled me the amount of times I read that people doubted the randomness of the game. Partly because it would be extra work to code it otherwise, and partly because from my own hours upon hours in the game it seemed appropriately rare to miss those 95% to hit shots.
Posted November 12, 2021
It's actually not that uncommon for games to cheat the RNG in favor of the player, which I guess reduces "the game is unfair" rages, but also reinforces the incorrect perception of how randomness "should" work. If you're used to games that do this kind of manipulation, I can see how games like XCOM would seem "unfair" even though the opposite is true.
Posted November 12, 2021
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eric5h5: Um.
Im not a mathmatician or a programmer so this first article does nothing for me (and it's not "basic" math). I can acknowledge that someone made an experiment and proved or disproved something. All the more power to them.
The point is - I don't have to get it. I'm still having a negative experience with the game. The programmers say "It's fair! We can show you the numbers...". The players say "We don't care. It's badly designed". The latter group is correct; a game is made for people to enjoy, not for computers to test their RNG skills. And before someone accuses me of anything - I'm not asking to nerf the game, just to make it more transparent to the player. Give him more options, more feedback, and punish him less for the mistakes, which are out of his control anyway.

You also ignored the most important portion of my reply - the game punishes you severly for it's own RNG failures. I played a lot of similar games, and missed a couple of crucial 80-90% shots. The penalty was sometimes harsh, but not the likes of X-Com:EU . Even the old X-Com's were a lot more forgiving. To put it bluntly - you really can't allow yourself to miss too many shots, or your'e screwed. If not right away, then a few missions later (and missing shots/critical hits from your opponent will keep happening).

I'm also not the single person on the planet to complain about this. Actually a lot of people did find this frustrating, and XCom 2, I would say, is easier than the first one. So either Firaxis acknowledged their shortcomings and designed a better mechanic/code, or the just gave in after hearing a lot of negative feedback from gamers. Either way, the results are similar.
Posted November 12, 2021
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pazZzurro: Im not a mathmatician or a programmer so this first article does nothing for me (and it's not "basic" math). I can acknowledge that someone made an experiment and proved or disproved something.
It's not "an experiment," it's the actual code the game is running. If you don't know what code is I don't really know what else to tell you. And yes it's basic math; it's just a few simple multiplication, addition, and subtraction operations. I don't know how you get any more basic than that. (Well, and a couple of bitwise operations, which are are no doubt unfamiliar to non-programmers, but are very basic math.) The game is objectively not cheating, end of story. If you're now going to shift the goalposts to "well, but it's not fun," then I don't know if there's any point continuing, although I will say I don't agree at all. I find it more fun when I know the game's not cheating, since as I mentioned above games often do cheat, but only in favor of the player, not against them. So it's more satisfying to win knowing that I did so by playing halfway decently, instead of the game just letting me win because I'd throw a tantrum otherwise.
Posted November 12, 2021
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eric5h5: It's not "an experiment," it's the actual code the game is running. If you don't know what code is I don't really know what else to tell you. And yes it's basic math; it's just a few simple multiplication, addition, and subtraction operations. I don't know how you get any more basic than that. (Well, and a couple of bitwise operations, which are are no doubt unfamiliar to non-programmers, but are very basic math.) The game is objectively not cheating, end of story. If you're now going to shift the goalposts to "well, but it's not fun," then I don't know if there's any point continuing, although I will say I don't agree at all. I find it more fun when I know the game's not cheating, since as I mentioned above games often do cheat, but only in favor of the player, not against them. So it's more satisfying to win knowing that I did so by playing halfway decently, instead of the game just letting me win because I'd throw a tantrum otherwise.
Truly, there is no point in continuing this discussion, because beyond those articles that you showed me, you have no arguments to contradict anything I said so far.
You simply called me out on the word "cheating" that I used, and try to prove to me, that this is not true in regards to the game. I could go back on that word and simply choose to call the game "unfair", but why should I? You yourself mix those two words in one of your statements (and they do not mean the same thing).

Perhaps you can prove, with the source code, that the game's RNG is not cheating, but it does not prove that the overall game is fair towards the player. Because, as I mentioned already, there are a lot of factors which attribute to fairness, and bad luck and/or cheating at RNG is only one of them. A couple of missed 80-90% shots don't make a game outright flawed (no, really, I mean like - in a logical sense), it's the broader picture we have to look upon. A thing which you choose to ignore, as you can't disprove it with math.
And I didn't even mention yet how the game gives false choices to the player. Not on missions but on the base-building portion...

And again you mention some sort of a tantrum or rage-quiting. No one ever said anything like that. I even admitted that I happen to like the game, but for me it is not a difficult concept to like something and still consider it has huge flaws.
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Community
General discussionMidweek Sale: games with permadeath up to 85% off(25 posts)(25 posts)
(25 posts)