Replacing standard RNGs

[Twilkitri]

Here's the deal. Giving things a percentage chance of succeeding is generally broken to some degree. There's an enemy you need to kill and all your units have 50% chance of hitting it, you attack it with four people and they all miss and now you've failed through no fault of your own. That this can happen is untenable, yet it normally can. Why exactly are standard RNG methods used so much?

A more interesting question is: What could be used instead?

The least different option is to use a chit system. By which I mean, for example: Instead of a six-sided dice, you have six chits, one with each number, and whereever a d6 roll is called for you draw a chit and use the number. When you run out, you replace them. This, presuming that you ultimately draw an amount of chits that's a multiple of the number of them, enforces the chance of each number coming up overall. It does not however work well with throwing multiple dice at the same time (impossible to get three 6s, for instance) and consequently you need to keep a seperate container for each multiple. Fortunately! the games we are mostly talking about here are computerised, which removes the clunkiness associated with that, and furthermore allows the use of large numbers of chits (say d100) which isn't really feasible in real life.

Furthermore, provided that one has the ability to view the current set of unused chits, one can implement better plans in situations in which the probabilities are known. If you've only got a 6 left and for a specific success you need to roll a 1, you know not to even bother for a lucky shot as you might elsewise. Similarly if you need to roll a 1 and you've got a 1 and a 2 left you will be a lot happier about doing so.

This method is (debatably) better in certain cases. But it still ends up relying on randomness. How can we nix randomness altogether?


If I look at the specific case of hitting an enemy in FE, two options come to mind.
The first of these retains the current hit chance, but instead of rolling to beat it, it uses it in a manner like FE9's fixed growths mode. That is, say we have a character with 90% hit on an enemy, and this is the first attack round of the map... the hit counter will run up to 90 from the character's hit rate, and the character will miss, and the enemy will do whatever. On the next turn, the character attacks again, the hit counter adds another 90 and is now 180, so the character hits and 100 drains from the hit counter, leaving it on 80.

Theoretically, it could be better for a hit counter in this manner to work for the whole of the team, as opposed to each member individually. Otherwise, barely anyone would hit on their first rounds etc (assuming that balance was introduced along with the system). Of course it would have to be possible to view the current state of the hit counter, whether team-wide or individual.


The other option is to make all hits hit all the time. This would require evasion to be completely renovated. As it stands it is arguably overpowered anyway. There are several ways of going about this, but they're not really relevant to the point at hand so I'll just throw one out there: Take evasion as a concrete damage lessener adjunct to defence and resistance. The best way of going about this I feel, so as not to devalue it completely, would be to have attack power have both defence-guarded component and evade-guarded component. So for example, Swords would have a low amount of damage blocked by evade and a high amount of damage blocked by defence, and Axes would have a high amount of damage blocked by evade and a low amount blocked by defence.

The puzzle segments in a couple of the GBA Super Robot Wars games take the basics of this tack to make the puzzles workable, although they don't give people with evasion any credit for losing it.



So: Do other people consider reliance on RNGs any sort of problem, and if so, what sort of ideas for excising them do you have?

[Clear Tranquil]

Is this just a FE thing or could it be anything with a random gamble system like Tifa or Setzer's slots etc?

[Twilkitri]

I didn't know that their slots were random? That's just a timing thing, isn't it?

In any case, it's intended for anything random jah, especially since the first thing I brought up isn't exactly FE-related.

[Meeplelard]

Setzer's slots are both timing and random.  The timing is key to getting abilities, but the game rigs them against you sometimes (in the case of 7 Flush and Chocobop, it'll always rig it FOR you, by spinning the wheel about 4 more pictures longer til it hits the next symbol; only case this doesn't land on a Chocobo or Diamond for respective attacks is if you pick the value that's 4 away from the 7 on the 3rd Reel, IIRC.)

Tifa's is entirely timing, no randomness involved.  Cait Sith's, however, works similar to Setzer's, though how similar I can't say.

[Clear Tranquil]

Thanks.

Well for me with Tifa I'm assuming that the player has managed to score hit or yeah! I suppose it saves headaches just by going with that.

As a Lucia fan I wouldn't mind some sort of system being drawn up for her but I'm concerned about bringing this up in case I'm hung, drawn and quartered >_>

[Grefter]

Hmmm?  As in Lunar 2 Lucia?  She isn't random, she reacts to what is happening in the fights in game to what she will do.  Oh sure the reactions are almost universally stupid, but it isn't random IIRC.

[Talaysen]

Hmmm?  As in Lunar 2 Lucia?  She isn't random, she reacts to what is happening in the fights in game to what she will do.  Oh sure the reactions are almost universally stupid, but it isn't random IIRC.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant Lucia, I assume.  Tarot is semi-random.  Actually, the cards are likely all fixed, but you can't see what you're picking.  Initial order could be random, but it doesn't matter at all since you can't see them anyways, unless you're really good at counting cards spinning that fast.

[BaconForTheSoul]

RNGs are used because variance is fun.  People get bored if the exact same thing/pattern happens every time.

Poker- Odds for every step of every hand are well known, but if things always followed the odds, the game would be pretty stupid.  (I've missed 2 flush draws in a row, I KNOW that I get this one mwa ha.)  Also winning back to back hands when you're a 4:1 dog keeps idiots playing like idiots.

Sports- If there was no randomness on any given night, the better team would always win.  Mind you, this is people, not RNGs, but a .500 team in the NBA won 13 games in a row, which is still considered a huge probability fluke.

Video Games- The numbers you discussed if I figured it right would mean someone with 67% chance to crit could NEVER crit 3 times in a row.  Just seems wrong on so many levels.  (67% chance turns into 34% chance, which would turn into 1% or 0% dependong on rounding.)

Other video game examples could include an MMORPG.  If there wasn't variations in crits/misses then dueling would be insanely boring.  An underdog being able to proc a 25% crit 3 times in a row and win a duel makes for more dynamic dueling.  Yes, it screws the better player every now and then, but life isn't always fair is it?  (Yes dueling does get boring if you can't ever lose.  Pre-expansion wow had a good holy priest so rigged that NO ONE could beat them.  It got boring for those 2-3 priests.)

Dunno, it's fun to think about, but in reality RNG systems make things more interesting.  If you did truly wish to ditch RNGs then the system that FE9 apparently implemented works.  Although what do you do on a miss?  90% chance to hit is missed... are you then 190 - 100, which is 90 again?

[Twilkitri]

RNGs are used because variance is fun.  People get bored if the exact same thing/pattern happens every time.

There seem to fair amount of people that don't agree, considering the past complaints about random things. I find myself wondering why you think the same thing will happen every time.

If I take the former FE example (the accumulating counter), say you attack Frank with Steve and miss, and then you attack Colin with Bob and hit. Then the next time you play the level you attack Colin with Bob and miss, and you attack Frank with Steve and hit. Different things are happening, and this should cascade through the level because Frank is going to die earlier than he did last time and Bob isn't etc.

The exact same thing will happen every time IF you make exactly the same moves every time. This is hardly something that someone couldn't objectively want in an srpg. A perfect strategy should work perfectly.

A regular RPG has so much more action that a person probably wouldn't even notice that things were happening the same if they even manage to do everything exactly the same in the first place.

Poker- Odds for every step of every hand are well known, but if things always followed the odds, the game would be pretty stupid.  (I've missed 2 flush draws in a row, I KNOW that I get this one mwa ha.)  Also winning back to back hands when you're a 4:1 dog keeps idiots playing like idiots.

Sports- If there was no randomness on any given night, the better team would always win.  Mind you, this is people, not RNGs, but a .500 team in the NBA won 13 games in a row, which is still considered a huge probability fluke.

There's a difference between these and video games. If you lose, you don't have to start over until you get it right.

To be frank I have no idea why people actually bet money on Poker considering that they're effectively completely at the mercy of the heart of the cards anyway. In some situations hands can be won without ever having to actually win in actuality by bluffing everyone else into folding, but this is surely not the majority of the time.

Video Games- The numbers you discussed if I figured it right would mean someone with 67% chance to crit could NEVER crit 3 times in a row.  Just seems wrong on so many levels.  (67% chance turns into 34% chance, which would turn into 1% or 0% dependong on rounding.)

No, they couldn't. Personally I consider this far more than made up for by knowing exactly when they're going to be able to critical. A character with a 67% growth rate in FE9 fixed growth mode couldn't ever get three consecutive ups from it either (growth bonuses nonwithstanding) and FE9 LACKS the counter-is-viewable aspect, and some people prefer it regardless.

It might seem a bit weird if you take the 67 to be a percentage. In the modified system, it isn't, it just looks like one. FEGBA hit rates look like percentages but they aren't.

Other video game examples could include an MMORPG.  If there wasn't variations in crits/misses then dueling would be insanely boring.

You appear to be implying that it isn't already.

An underdog being able to proc a 25% crit 3 times in a row and win a duel makes for more dynamic dueling.  Yes, it screws the better player every now and then, but life isn't always fair is it?  (Yes dueling does get boring if you can't ever lose.  Pre-expansion wow had a good holy priest so rigged that NO ONE could beat them.  It got boring for those 2-3 priests.)

As before: If you lose, you don't have to start over until you get it right.

Dunno, it's fun to think about, but in reality RNG systems make things more interesting.  If you did truly wish to ditch RNGs then the system that FE9 apparently implemented works.  Although what do you do on a miss?  90% chance to hit is missed... are you then 190 - 100, which is 90 again?

If they miss, then nothing is subtracted. So if the counter is on 45 and you attack with someone with 20 hit, then it'll go up to 65. Or am I misunderstanding the question?

[Yakumo]

I think the thing he was saying wasn't that the same thing was going to happen every time, but that you already knew exactly what was going to happen.  That takes a lot away, in my opinion.  If you knew exactly when you were going to miss or get a crit or get hit in an FE game, then you just make sure that the next time you're fighting an enemy, it's one that someone else can kill, or one that you normally couldn't kill since you know you're critting, or one that's weak enough not to matter if they hit you or not.  Suddenly the game becomes less tactics and taking risks for rewards, and more of a puzzle where you're deciding who can afford to take which hits and who attacks when so you don't get a string of misses on usually accurate people when you can't afford it.  If you know what's going to happen, and you aren't retarded, you will never lose in FE, the challenge is out the window.  Which takes some of the excitement away from the game.  What's the point of playing if you can't ever lose?

On another note, take a look at the combat in PS3.  It's a slightly more simplistic version than what you're talking about, but it is combat with most of the randomness taken out.  You never miss, you never get critical hits, same for the enemies.  You just trade shots, and heal once in a while.  Most people seem to find this combat system very boring, it's one of the things I hear the most complaints about from the game.  Now, I realize it's not exactly the same as what you're saying, but when you get down to the basics, it's comparable.  In both cases, you know what's going to happen, just one includes more possible outcomes that could be occuring.  Either way, the player already knows the outcome before they begin, for the most part, which kinda defeats the point of playing the game in the first place.  I know people don't like PS3 combat, and I would expect the same logic to be applied to the system you're suggesting as well.

People complain about randomness, yes, but people will complain about anything.

[BaconForTheSoul]

Haven't played FE9 sadly, but if I get what you're saying about it...

If person A misses a 95% attack, won't that mean you're pretty much guranteed to connect on the next swing with anyone?

Assuming triangles the same.  A level 20 sword user misses against an axe user despite 95% accuracy.  Can you now just bring in a level 5 Lance user to attack the same axe user knowing that the generator says you have to hit?

Also, very few hands in poker actually see the river.  It also changes based on 2,6,9 people at a table and also the game type/stakes, but in the end, less than 25% of hands actually see a showdown in any real caliber game.  As for why would anyone play it... why would anyone play it IF there was no randomness?  It'd become a pointless game.  That's somewhat off topic though

[Grefter]

While that system could be abusable in the way you specify Chapin, that could easilly be part of what would make the system unique.  I would say a system with the layers of randomness that FE has would only be improved with a way to game the system.

Randomness is fine in and of itself, what you need is more control over the factors.  My biggest beef with FE is that you can only move then attack and then you have the result and the effects of them that happen all stacked up after it beyond anything you can control and you can easilly move yourself into a position where low odds in either favour can fuck you up.

(There is nothing like the FUCK YOU! you want to scream at the universe where you place someone frail in a position where they will get attacked once, take the hit, set the enemy up to be taken out by an attack next turn while blocking off further attacks, you know standard bottleknecking strategy, then the fucker crits on a stupidly low chance killing the enemy you didn't want dead and then they proceed to get kek zerged to death or hey they might counter or dodge the first one as well then get crit or whoever knows what the fuck next, you end up with far more numbers to juggle in your head than it is worth to ponder for intruguing tactical situations).

This stuff is easy fixed though, the best tactics games made use time units systems.  Jagged Alliance, X-Com, Silent Storm.  You can do multiple things on your turn and have far more control over your situation.  Yeah attacks are still random, but you have a greater level of control over it.

[Twilkitri]

Suddenly the game becomes less tactics and taking risks for rewards, and more of a puzzle where you're deciding who can afford to take which hits and who attacks when so you don't get a string of misses on usually accurate people when you can't afford it.

Tactics isn't tactics if you have better information o_o?

Taking risks for rewards is one thing, taking risks because there's no other option is completely different. Using Devil Axe is risk for reward. Attacking some dodgy guy because you need to kill him to beat the level is not.

If you know what's going to happen, and you aren't retarded, you will never lose in FE, the challenge is out the window.

Of course, the things I brought up couldn't just be slotted straight into the game and done. Rebalancing and so forth would need to happen as well.
FE has challenge as things currently stand? If you're willing to sacrifice your rankings, not really. And I'm reasonably certain that having better knowledge of how your battles are going to proceed isn't enough to break the game if you're going for score.

Actual example: SRWD/J puzzles, which remove all randomness by effectively fixing all hit rates everywhere at 100% (and all critical rates at 0% and so forth). Of course they don't tell you how much damage an attack is going to do because SRW sucks like that, but. You beat the last 3 puzzles of each game without any help. Then tell me that removing randomness removes challenge. Somewhat different situation from FE sure, but in that case all we need to do is move FE towards those lines which isn't a bad thing at all considering how generally repetitive it is currently.

What's the point of playing if you can't ever lose?

...now, I may be in the minority and not know it. But I generally play to see what happens next, not in anticipation of the next time I lose. Often I do stupid things and get punished for it by having to replay segments, which is all well and good. I should not have to get punished for no reason.

On another note, take a look at the combat in PS3.  It's a slightly more simplistic version than what you're talking about, but it is combat with most of the randomness taken out.  You never miss, you never get critical hits, same for the enemies.

...you don't? Wow, I never noticed that. My observation skills are awesome.
I'm assuming you mean Phantasy Star 3 here and for the rest of the paragraph. Kill me if you don't.

You just trade shots, and heal once in a while. Most people seem to find this combat system very boring, it's one of the things I hear the most complaints about from the game.

...this is exactly the same as a system WITH missing and criticalling, except missing means slightly increased time between healing and criticalling means slightly decreased (relatively). Misses and criticals are not what change up a battle system at all.

Now, I realize it's not exactly the same as what you're saying, but when you get down to the basics, it's comparable. In both cases, you know what's going to happen, just one includes more possible outcomes that could be occuring. Either way, the player already knows the outcome before they begin, for the most part, which kinda defeats the point of playing the game in the first place.

In PS3, I can apparently tell that if I get Rhys to attack enemy A that he will hit. Okay. Do I know how much damage he's going to do? Do I know how much HP the enemy is currently on? But mostly, do I know what the enemy is going to do afterwards?
Presumably in PS3 it's random. In our theoretical FE mod it would be governed by an AI with no random component, but still the player shouldn't be able to have a full handle on it. Some things would be obvious, and if the AI was good it would be set up to take the hit counter into account so people would be able to second-guess it by that, but still. The outcome is only guaranteed for a small portion of the whole.
What if, to steal Grefter's example from later down, you put a person you know isn't going to be hit once in a bottleneck, and the AI through either completely mad skills or just lucky arbitration attacks it with a unit that your bottleneck unit can kill instead of the full HP unit you expected it to, and then it attacks with the other and kills your bottlenecker? You can't know. The outcome is fixed, but you have no way of knowing what it's going to be nonetheless.

Also yeah as I said the point why people play games apparently differs.

I know people don't like PS3 combat, and I would expect the same logic to be applied to the system you're suggesting as well.

Well, I personally don't remember having any particular problem with PS3 combat (vaguely remember the combat INTERFACE being somewhat annoying, but that's not the same deal). It was somewhat ugly >_>? But as far as I remember, it's just stock standard RPG combat. Which apparently has fixed rates that I didn't notice, which is close enough to stock standard anyway.

Haven't played FE9 sadly, but if I get what you're saying about it...

If person A misses a 95% attack, won't that mean you're pretty much guranteed to connect on the next swing with anyone?

Assuming triangles the same.  A level 20 sword user misses against an axe user despite 95% accuracy.  Can you now just bring in a level 5 Lance user to attack the same axe user knowing that the generator says you have to hit?

Yes. Is this a problem?
Presumably, your level 20 sword user is a lot more powerful than your level 5 lance user, so you're losing out in the trade. Or are you levelling your lancer? You're still wasting the turn of your probably far superior sword user.
You must also remember that the enemies can do exactly the same thing if they're smart enough.
[edit]Rereading, I'm thinking it's possible you might be misconstruing what I was saying about FE9. Just in case: this style of thing is only used in FE9 on fixed growth mode and then only for character growth, not for the sort of thing I'm looking at using it here.

Also, very few hands in poker actually see the river.  It also changes based on 2,6,9 people at a table and also the game type/stakes, but in the end, less than 25% of hands actually see a showdown in any real caliber game.  As for why would anyone play it... why would anyone play it IF there was no randomness?  It'd become a pointless game.  That's somewhat off topic though

Um
okay
apparently I'm thinking of a different style of poker...
In any case, please note, I said:

To be frank I have no idea why people actually bet money on Poker

Playing it is something else altogether. I have no problem with randomness in sequenceless settings where reasonable.

Randomness is fine in and of itself, what you need is more control over the factors.  My biggest beef with FE is that you can only move then attack and then you have the result and the effects of them that happen all stacked up after it beyond anything you can control and you can easilly move yourself into a position where low odds in either favour can fuck you up.

How could a linear unit-turn system retain randomness and yet avoid that, I wonder. Unfortunately the only thing I can think of at the moment is some sort of system whereby you get a limited number of tokens per turn/per map?/per game!? that you can spend to take back a move. But I'm not an ideas man, so I'd assume that there must be some much better methods than that... just, things also have to not be abusable. And it seems that having a mechanism to ameliorate bad luck and have it not abusable at the same time in that sort of setting is not an easy ask.

This stuff is easy fixed though, the best tactics games made use time units systems.  Jagged Alliance, X-Com, Silent Storm.  You can do multiple things on your turn and have far more control over your situation.  Yeah attacks are still random, but you have a greater level of control over it.

I wanted to play X-Com years back, but I never had the oppurtunity per se. I should probably play it sometime, but for now I'm content to read the LP of it. Speaking of which, OK really needs to do some more >_>

In any case I... don't really see being able to do more things on your turns as really that wide-range a solution, I'm afraid. If something untoward happens early in a phase in FE, you can generally deal with it outside of edge cases... it's when bad things happen towards the end of your turn and there are few moves left that are generally the problem with the player's phase side of things, and I'd assume that the same holds true for X-Com/etc; all the extra things you can do on your turn don't mean much if you've already done them. And then there's things happening on the enemy phase and I have no idea whether X-Com even USES player/enemy phases but assuming it does, I'm not seeing units being able to do more than one thing saving them while they're not currently active either.

It does deal with some situations. But not all (or most?) of them...

[Yakumo]

Suddenly the game becomes less tactics and taking risks for rewards, and more of a puzzle where you're deciding who can afford to take which hits and who attacks when so you don't get a string of misses on usually accurate people when you can't afford it.

Tactics isn't tactics if you have better information o_o?

It's not just better information, it's ALL the information.  If you know exactly what's going to happen, it's moved from tactics to a puzzle game.  Maybe just a point of view thing, but eh.

If you know what's going to happen, and you aren't retarded, you will never lose in FE, the challenge is out the window.

Of course, the things I brought up couldn't just be slotted straight into the game and done. Rebalancing and so forth would need to happen as well.
FE has challenge as things currently stand? If you're willing to sacrifice your rankings, not really. And I'm reasonably certain that having better knowledge of how your battles are going to proceed isn't enough to break the game if you're going for score.

Actual example: SRWD/J puzzles, which remove all randomness by effectively fixing all hit rates everywhere at 100% (and all critical rates at 0% and so forth). Of course they don't tell you how much damage an attack is going to do because SRW sucks like that, but. You beat the last 3 puzzles of each game without any help. Then tell me that removing randomness removes challenge. Somewhat different situation from FE sure, but in that case all we need to do is move FE towards those lines which isn't a bad thing at all considering how generally repetitive it is currently.

What's the point of playing if you can't ever lose?

...now, I may be in the minority and not know it. But I generally play to see what happens next, not in anticipation of the next time I lose. Often I do stupid things and get punished for it by having to replay segments, which is all well and good. I should not have to get punished for no reason.

In my opinion, if you already know the result of everything you're going to do, you may as well be watching a movie instead of playing a game, it takes the part that makes it a game almost completely out, or at best makes it a puzzle game, which I guess is fine if that's what you want to play.  If occasionally having to redo something because of bad luck is the price I pay for that, well, so be it.  It happens now and again, but usually in a FE or SRW, if I have to reset it was usually mostly my fault, not the RNG.  Most of the time you can afford one or two things to go against you before you're screwed.  If you can't, you shouldn't be putting people in that position anyway.

On another note, take a look at the combat in PS3.  It's a slightly more simplistic version than what you're talking about, but it is combat with most of the randomness taken out.  You never miss, you never get critical hits, same for the enemies.

...you don't? Wow, I never noticed that. My observation skills are awesome.
I'm assuming you mean Phantasy Star 3 here and for the rest of the paragraph. Kill me if you don't.

You just trade shots, and heal once in a while. Most people seem to find this combat system very boring, it's one of the things I hear the most complaints about from the game.

...this is exactly the same as a system WITH missing and criticalling, except missing means slightly increased time between healing and criticalling means slightly decreased (relatively). Misses and criticals are not what change up a battle system at all.

Now, I realize it's not exactly the same as what you're saying, but when you get down to the basics, it's comparable. In both cases, you know what's going to happen, just one includes more possible outcomes that could be occuring. Either way, the player already knows the outcome before they begin, for the most part, which kinda defeats the point of playing the game in the first place.

In PS3, I can apparently tell that if I get Rhys to attack enemy A that he will hit. Okay. Do I know how much damage he's going to do? Do I know how much HP the enemy is currently on? But mostly, do I know what the enemy is going to do afterwards?
Presumably in PS3 it's random. In our theoretical FE mod it would be governed by an AI with no random component, but still the player shouldn't be able to have a full handle on it. Some things would be obvious, and if the AI was good it would be set up to take the hit counter into account so people would be able to second-guess it by that, but still. The outcome is only guaranteed for a small portion of the whole.

Actually, yes, you know how much damage he's going to do within a few points(the variance really is pretty tiny), and after like two fights you know how much HP a given enemy has, or at least close enough to know how many hits it takes to kill it.  And the enemy attacks are very heavily weighted to the front couple people in the party, so while you don't know EXACTLY who is going to get hit, you have a pretty good idea.  And I thought the randomness of WHEN misses and criticals happen was what you were talking about when you made this topic in the first place?  Maybe I totally misunderstood what you were saying, then, but I thought that was the point.  Now, misses and crits have less effect in an old turn-based RPG, but the basic idea is the same.  An enemy getting a lucky crit right when you were trying to heal can still screw you up, there just isn't permadeath involved so you don't have to start from scratch.  Maybe that's what you should be trying to change, make it so that sort of thing doesn't screw you permanently instead of trying to remove it entirely, since apparently it only bothers you when it can force you to restart or lose a character or something?

What if, to steal Grefter's example from later down, you put a person you know isn't going to be hit once in a bottleneck, and the AI through either completely mad skills or just lucky arbitration attacks it with a unit that your bottleneck unit can kill instead of the full HP unit you expected it to, and then it attacks with the other and kills your bottlenecker? You can't know. The outcome is fixed, but you have no way of knowing what it's going to be nonetheless.

The way you were talking, it was the attacker who determined if they were going to hit or not, wasn't it?  So if that high HP enemy was going to miss, he's still going to miss if the first one dies.  So, unless you have a lot of enemies in range and only one of them has their 'hit gauge' low enough to miss, that isn't an issue.  And if they do, you're just asking to have a reset if you put that character in there, and should either pick another or give up the bottleneck.  You know if you do get attacked whether they're going to hit you or miss you, and if the AI is at all smart(which granted, in FEs I've played it isn't, but hypothetically) you know it'll do whatever it can to kill your character.  So you still know what's going to happen, and you know that you can't afford to try to bottleneck that point with that character.  Still no randomness involved unless the AI is random, and that leads to more headaches.

[Meeplelard]

Hmmm?  As in Lunar 2 Lucia?  She isn't random, she reacts to what is happening in the fights in game to what she will do.  Oh sure the reactions are almost universally stupid, but it isn't random IIRC.

Lucia's actions are based on a variety of things.  One of them is point in the plot, for example.  I'm sure everyone has noticed how fail Lucia is early on when she does nothing but cast a defensive spell or defend each turn.  Around Missing Link, she'll actually start attacking on a consistent basis.  She heals if someone is in critical, favoring herself above all else (and I think her HP% Threshold is lower than what other characters are.)  After a point, I believe she starts doing the same with Hiro, where she prioritizes on him.

So yeah, she is pretty reactionary.  Its actual set AI that changes throughout the course of the game, and not total randomness.  There is some randomness involved, mind (I know there are time she's cast Atomic Fire/Napalm Shot when there were multiple enemies on the screen, which is when she USUALLY casts Plasma Rain, IIRC), but that could also be an AI fart.

[VySaika]

Not going to really sink myself into this one, but I will note that Yakko has a line here that basically sums up my feelings on the issue.

It's not just better information, it's ALL the information.  If you know exactly what's going to happen, it's moved from tactics to a puzzle game.  Maybe just a point of view thing, but eh.

Also having all the information like this would lead to being able to formulate One Perfect Strategy for each stage, with no need to ever deviate from it. Sure, you COULD try a different tactic for the hell of it, but why would you when you KNOW that this one will work 100% perfectly? Part of the fun of replaying tactics games for me is to do things differently the second time. But I think that a chunk of the fun of finding new ways to beat a stage is that feeling that maybe you haven't found the best one yet, if that makes any sense.

Then again, maybe I'm just too much of a DnD player to trust my fate to anything but random varience. <_<

[Grefter]

Big difference between X-Com and FE (well all SRPGs really) is a larger reliance (and even availability!) of using cover and interrupts simulating suppressive fire and stuff.  It really is a completely different kind of tactical situation and a much richer and deeper one.  But even something like the ability to move -> attack -> Move changes the dynamics of a FE unit a lot (see Cavalry).

Actually this would probably be why I liked Front Mission 4 becuase it has some of these elements.

[Twilkitri]

It's not just better information, it's ALL the information.  If you know exactly what's going to happen, it's moved from tactics to a puzzle game.  Maybe just a point of view thing, but eh.

That's the thing, though. You DON'T know exactly what's going to happen in a general sense. You only know exactly what's going to happen in several battles on your turn, depending on how far you think ahead...

...hum, one of the reasons I suck so much at chess is because I can't really think further ahead than my next move. If you could envision your entire team's current turn accounting for the changes in all the counters and so forth then I am freakishly jealous.

In my opinion, if you already know the result of everything you're going to do, you may as well be watching a movie instead of playing a game, it takes the part that makes it a game almost completely out, or at best makes it a puzzle game, which I guess is fine if that's what you want to play.

Define result. I know what the result of the battle I make Steve have will be. I don't know what the result of moving him there in general will be with regards to how the opponents react. I could say roughly the same thing for chess. Or is chess a puzzle?

Having this information requires MORE thinking than the current system. Example: Enemy John can be killed by one of Gary, Clark, or Brandon, but they all have 80% hit and the counter is currently on 10. So you have to figure out who you should waste the turn of, or go to look at a different area of the map and come back to it afterwards. Old system it's effectively just throw one of them at him, and another if you're unlucky (and another if you're unlucky AGAIN). Still have to decide the best character to do it with, but it's still only choosing one character instead of two.

FE8 is already a movie as opposed to a game because you don't need to think at all to play it ._.

If occasionally having to redo something because of bad luck is the price I pay for that, well, so be it.  It happens now and again, but usually in a FE or SRW, if I have to reset it was usually mostly my fault, not the RNG.

Yes, my lack of skill causes considerably more resets than bad luck does. But I'm not seeing how this excuses it. I am however seeing my lack of skill continue to cause a considerable amount of resets if the counter system was in place.

Most of the time you can afford one or two things to go against you before you're screwed.  If you can't, you shouldn't be putting people in that position anyway.

I can think of several situations where you don't really have a choice about putting people in that position. Most of them in SRW, although the newer games are somewhat better about it.

Actually, yes, you know how much damage he's going to do within a few points(the variance really is pretty tiny), and after like two fights you know how much HP a given enemy has, or at least close enough to know how many hits it takes to kill it. And the enemy attacks are very heavily weighted to the front couple people in the party, so while you don't know EXACTLY who is going to get hit, you have a pretty good idea. And I thought the randomness of WHEN misses and criticals happen was what you were talking about when you made this topic in the first place? Maybe I totally misunderstood what you were saying, then, but I thought that was the point.

All randomness was the aim, excepting where it's used solely for aesthetics and such. I only used examples with hit/etc because those were the only ones I had thought of at the time? also the post would have gotten overly long.

I don't tend to remember how much damage people were doing to enemies for very long (fastforwarding most battles in PS3 and not even paying attention to how much damage they were doing doesn't really help in its regard, either). It's all well and good to say that character X kills enemy A with two attacks that do 50 damage, but can you kill it with one attack from character X and then one attack from character Y that does 3 damage? Without some sort of HP indicator or such, you can't know until you've tried...

Now, misses and crits have less effect in an old turn-based RPG, but the basic idea is the same.  An enemy getting a lucky crit right when you were trying to heal can still screw you up, there just isn't permadeath involved so you don't have to start from scratch.  Maybe that's what you should be trying to change, make it so that sort of thing doesn't screw you permanently instead of trying to remove it entirely, since apparently it only bothers you when it can force you to restart or lose a character or something?

I've given some thought to how the permadeath system can be improved in the past actually. In effect the best I could come up with was alter it from permanent death to being unusable for several chapters, or to replace dead characters with lower-statted supportless generics of the same class.

But, even if either of those were in place I would still reset (normally. Exceptions may exist if I really don't care for the character and really don't feeling like a do-over, but in that case I'd just let them die with the normal system anyway).

The way you were talking, it was the attacker who determined if they were going to hit or not, wasn't it?  So if that high HP enemy was going to miss, he's still going to miss if the first one dies.  So, unless you have a lot of enemies in range and only one of them has their 'hit gauge' low enough to miss, that isn't an issue.

Actually I've been assuming the hit counters are per-side, not per-unit. Per-unit has... problems.

Also having all the information like this would lead to being able to formulate One Perfect Strategy for each stage, with no need to ever deviate from it. Sure, you COULD try a different tactic for the hell of it, but why would you when you KNOW that this one will work 100% perfectly? Part of the fun of replaying tactics games for me is to do things differently the second time. But I think that a chunk of the fun of finding new ways to beat a stage is that feeling that maybe you haven't found the best one yet, if that makes any sense.

Sorry, Gate. But

"Sure, you COULD try a different tactic for the hell of it, but why would you when you KNOW that this one will work 100% perfectly?"
and
"Part of the fun of replaying tactics games for me is to do things differently the second time. "

completely contradict each other. If you try different tactics for the fun of doing things differently the second time then that is EXACTLY why you would try a different tactic.
Furthermore, you can remember an exact set of moves for an entire chapter?

"Also having all the information like this would lead to being able to formulate One Perfect Strategy for each stage, with no need to ever deviate from it."
"But I think that a chunk of the fun of finding new ways to beat a stage is that feeling that maybe you haven't found the best one yet, if that makes any sense."

What makes the first one perfect? Since when is just beating the level perfect? Can you beat it in less turns? Use less weapon uses? Can using different characters change things up? Can doing something differently here improve the One 'Perfect' Strategy for the following levels because your characters are different afterwards?
Theoretically you can _already_ make a One Perfect Guaranteed Strategy for FEGBA given the RNG consistency. Why doesn't someone make that and everyone just use that? Because it would be stupidly boring?

[Yakumo]

I actually could visualize my entire team's movement based on your system, and most certainly would.  Anyone could do it if they wanted to take a little time and make some notes, some people could just do it in their head, but the point is, if you know what's going to happen with every attack you make and every attack your opponent makes there's no reason not to use that information to make everything go perfectly.

I'll admit that I was reading and responding based on per-unit hit counters, as that's how I read that stuff, but doing it per side creates an entirely new set of headaches.  All of a sudden you have the perfect antidote for axemen with horrible skill: waste a turn you were going to miss anyway, and make sure they only swing when they're going to hit.  Now your strongest units will almost never miss, which is part of the balance for them getting that strength in the first place, and the units with decent hit stats but low attack will be used to inflate the hit counter for the heavy hitters.  So, in getting rid of randomness, you've now destroyed unit balance. 

If you don't like permadeath, why not the SRW system?  Take a minor resource hit and get the character back on the next map?  Seems balanced enough to me.  *shrug*

[Grefter]

It is a bad thing if you have to work the system to maximise unit power though?  If you game the system with units so weak that you don't even care if they miss the Axemen either need to be really exceptionally strong to boot.

It would be a quirky system, but having luck variables that can be manipulated by the player is not an inherently bad concept.  See Vagrant Story and RISK.  That is exactly what that is with directly weighable consequences for using it (and setting to go with it to boot), you can use it to your advantage in either direction.

I wouldn't suggest a system like this for like every game ever made, but for some games?  As a unique system?  It is pretty nice.  It is minimising random bullshit chance while empowering the player with it and rewarding good strategic play.  I fail to see how this is possibly a bad thing at all.

[Twilkitri]

I'll admit that I was reading and responding based on per-unit hit counters, as that's how I read that stuff, but doing it per side creates an entirely new set of headaches.  All of a sudden you have the perfect antidote for axemen with horrible skill: waste a turn you were going to miss anyway, and make sure they only swing when they're going to hit.  Now your strongest units will almost never miss, which is part of the balance for them getting that strength in the first place, and the units with decent hit stats but low attack will be used to inflate the hit counter for the heavy hitters.  So, in getting rid of randomness, you've now destroyed unit balance.

First off I will just note that I stated earlier

Of course, the things I brought up couldn't just be slotted straight into the game and done. Rebalancing and so forth would need to happen as well.

Axemen have trouble hitting in modern FE anyway? I'm not seeing it.

You could lever the system into getting them to guaranteedly hit one of the cupful of enemies they're somewhat iffy at normally, sure. At this point I believe it fair to remind you that the enemies can do exactly the same thing.

It would also be interesting to see how things fare later on when all your high-hit-low-power people are all seriously deficient on levels.

You do bring up an interesting idea though; have a unit with absurdly powerful attack and a sub-5 hit counter (which may be hard to manage given that I was using the counters still based on hit rate in general, but they could be constant depending on the character or weapon or something instead. For that matter I never gave much thought to people that have hit of over 100...).

As it stands though, I don't believe axemen in FE have enough power to make it worth wasting attacks anyway.

If you don't like permadeath, why not the SRW system?  Take a minor resource hit and get the character back on the next map?  Seems balanced enough to me.  *shrug*

In case I gave off the wrong impression, I do like permadeath. It could do with being toned down a bit in some way however. On the other hand SRW's penalties I DO have a beef with. "Mess up and we'll charge you the cost of a low-end EN upgrade! feaaaaaaaar". Not to mention that units tend to already be somewhat overpowered in modern SRWs anyway without much in the way of upgrades. Granted that's better than earlier SRWs where units can still fail at life despite masses of upgrades which they don't really give you the money for -_-

[Yakumo]

If you do like permadeath, then why are you complaining about when it happens, and saying that you'll have to keep redoing sections because of it?  Am I totally misunderstanding what your whole problem is here?  I'm getting totally confused.  Could you restate exactly what it is that bothers you, then?  Is it just the fact that things aren't totally under your control?  In that case I think we've basically already gone through it and decided it was just a difference in what we liked to see out of our games, so there's no point continuing the debate, as I'm not likely to change your mind there and I'm not going to bother helping you 'fix' something I like to see, no offense.

[Twilkitri]

I have every right to complain when it happens through no fault of my own, and I can't see where I've complained at all about having to reset when it has been my fault.

This thread was not about FE in the first place -_- the whole deal was to attempt to think of ways in which games could function given that they weren't allowed to use random numbers. Instead we've pretty much gotten bogged down over one example.

[Grefter]

I am confused Yakko.  I do not understand this strong desire for so many random elements and things outside of the player's control in a strategy/tactics game.  Absolutely all of the best ones I can think of that offer the deepest tactical options have many ways to miminise the random chances (as opposed to the FE style that we are stuck on where your only option is to avoid them completely, it is a binary choice as opposed to one that is on a scale of chance).

What is it about this that is so appealling?  It is still going to have a random element to it, so it is going to be just as varied game by game as anything else, it just lets a good player well get the benefits for being good.

[Yakumo]

I'm not saying everything should be randomized, but I just don't enjoy games where everything is under your control, either.  You have to strike a balance.  I personally don't understand why you would want to remove ALL random effects from a game, unless you want it to be a puzzle game.