you are welcome. character limit.
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Didn’t mean to be that harsh sorry. I like the idea, but In the grand scheme of thing, that’s the kind of thing I’d expect modders to come up with, not a dev team that probably already has a lot on their plate.
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Don’t worry about it. I was just kidding. It was a totally fair point and not a harsh shoot down at all, haha. It would be more work than it was worth for the devs so I agree with making it a low priority or leaving it out all together. 
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All advices are valuable and ppl here on forums have some really cool ideas. To the point when I feel truly sorry for devs: they have to deal with a legend of original X-com while trying to bring some of their own fresh ideas to the turn-based games. It’s definitely not a piece of cake.
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Right now the firing seems to work for me, statistically it’s rolling for each shot fired and each individual shot has a 50% chance of hitting. It’s not firing for the group as a whole and applying a percentage to how many shots in the group hit. That’s not how game statistics work, it’s not on a curve like that.
I would like to see accuracy modifiers come into play, stances, etc to increase your ability to hit.
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there was a great lecture on randomness in games by sid meier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY7aRJE-oOY
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That’s a really good video. The part about random chance is around about 20 minutes in. 
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It’s a very good talk and it’s interesting to think about how a lot of the pandering for probability-deficient players tends to irritate hard core XCOM gamers (I personally abhor aim assist and the first thing I did in FiraXcom was to ini edit it out). Similarly, the introduction of pseudo-random tech trees isn’t unusual in Paradox Games.
It’s actually mildly annoying to have it as a recurrent theme that players think RNG and AI are cheating against them, but then I’ve seen players going through so much bullshit to justify their failures that I have to side with him (had players firmly believing that Riot Games staff were taking controls of bots in PvE games to make the players lose, slow their progression and force them to buy Riot points with cash).
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I feel as though the soldiers of New Jericho have less accuracy than the freshest recruits on the depot. The shots literally don’t hold 12 MoA.
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Hmm, you say that but Xcom had it’s harder Classic mode and the even harder more after that and in both of them the aim assist was already turned off.
I also turned off Xcom’s aim assist thinking it would be better but honestly this talk is right. If I see 75% I expect to land that shot damn near every time, hahaha. I think Xcom’s solution of giving a hidden boost worked really well as it made the success rate about what players expected rather than what random chance would throw them. An alternative option would simply to make the soldiers aim better so that they had 85% chances to hit instead of 75%. Basically adding the same bonus but without it being hidden.
I think you’re right in saying that compensating for poor luck with flat bonuses can make the experience less challenging and therefore less fulfilling for hardcore fans but at the same time having the game entirely based on luck and chance opens up the possibility of unwinnable games, or ‘cheapshot’ moments where a player loses their best squad/equipment/ etc due to a series of flukes.
Games with random chance really need some sort of balancing that makes the percentages accurate. Otherwise 60% shots might miss 50% of the time or 80% shots might miss twice in a row and leave your guys vulnerable when it’s least convenient. And of course, if a 60% shot misses 50% of the time the player is left questioning the game and it’s fairness because it’s clearly not a 60% chance to hit, at least not for them.
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Yeah, it was actually XCOM 2 that had various degrees of aim assist in all but impossible mode.
I’m biased here, working with numbers and percentages all day probably helps me to expect failure even with high odds and coping with it reasonably well (Although I still remember missing four 96% shots in a row and being very salty about it).
For hardcore players, it’s all about playing the odds, avoid taking this uncertain 60% shot and create a more favorable situation by doing something else. Having guaranteed damage as a backup plan if this 99% shot fails and so on. I’m ok with losing a battle on a stroke of bad luck as long as I can still hope to win the war. Clusterfucks can also create memorable moments.
While I understand the logic behind statistical bias, and that developers having to account for it is a necessary evil, I wish it was possible to educate “gamers question the fairness of an RNG system” instead of dumbing it down.
On a totally unrelated note, I love discourse telling me “maybe you should stop replying to that guy and pay attention to what others have written”
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Oh yeah, I mean I would play that way but there’s two things stopping me. Firstly your soldiers start with 65 aim in the Xcom games, so You’ll never get higher than that unless you’re a space or two away and flanking them. Secondly, I’m too much of a perfectionist and I just cant’ stand one of my best soldiers meeting their end because of some longshot crit by an alien with 10% chance to hit and 5% crit chance, despite them being behind full cover and at full health. (yes I installed a mod so that the alien hit chance and crit chance were visible whenever they took a shot.) 
I don’t think it’s an issue of education, I think that RNG based systems are naturally unfair. if one person can land four or five 75% chance hits in a row while another misses four or five 75% chance to hit shots then one person has clearly had a major advantage over the other.
It’s not unfair in the sense that it cheats. It’s just unfair due to it’s unpredictability. The best kind of RNG is a false RNG where 3/4 75% chance to hit shots land the hit. Even if it’s taken from a sample pool of 8/12 or even 16. So at most you could miss the first 4 in a row but then the next 12 would be guaranteed.
Statistical bias is an interesting idea because statistics are inherently inductive, as opposed to deductive. Meaning that they can’t be without bias because they can only me measured by observation. The more you observe it the more rounded the number becomes until after 10000 iterations you could comfortably give an average result. That being said though, if the numbers are entirely random you might end up with an average a good few numbers off of someone else’s average, and the most common number to come up would likely be different.
So that’s why I think the only fair RNG based games are games that manipulate the RNG to be consistent.
Also that’s pretty funny, haha. I haven’t gotten that message but that’s probably because I’m writing responses to pretty much anything that catches my eye.
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Yeah, the sniper rifle should have a different method of aiming, seeing as it fires one shot only.
And I have to wonder, how do the crabman aim? Because they hit my men all the time, but realistically, they being bigger with so many appendages, present a bigger target (aka, fill the red circle totally) from farther away than smaller a human would.
I do wonder also, what use is aiming for a bodypart if the shots still land randomly in a circle? So say, you were aiming for the arm, but the circle encompasses the torso and head too, so some shots would hit those instead… which is IMHO too random. In this case I feel we should give rifles (Not gatling) the option to fire single shots for targeted shots instead of bursts.
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The sniper rifle already has a smaller spread circle, no?
And where to aim is determined by where the probability density is highest, which in all likelyhood is at the middle of the centre – that’s what you point at what you’re trying to hit, because that’s how you’ll be most likely to hit it.
Or perhaps you should rather consider what happens when (not if, because you can’t count on it, unless you’re absolutely desperate) all shots are inaccurate, and make sure they at least hit something, other than thin air
And in the larger picture, consider what happens when you fail that battle you’re in, and need to retreat. How can you recover? For me, playing such a game without having to make these considerations feels absolutely pointless.
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The sniper’s circle is fine. It’s everyone else that’s pretty obscene. TBH, I think it’d make more sense as an oblong ellipse, with a circle being where the first round will go, and the ellipse moving at the angle rounds will naturally tend towards as the burst continues.
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An RNG system is inherently fair because either player starts from the same position of having exactly the same chance for any given event to happen. With a 75% hit chance shot to hit the chance is 75% for anyone making that 75% shot. Likewise, either player starts with exactly the same chance for four 75% shots to miss in a row (0.39%). If that 0.39% event happens then the player that it happens to has been unlucky, and they might get a personal sensation of ‘that was unfair’ but it is a false perception on the player’s part. Mathematically the system itself works on a constant percentage, it isn’t unfair.
To use the coin analogy. If two players are betting on the outcome of a coin toss, they play for 4 rounds where player 1 calls ‘heads’, and player 2 calls ‘tails’ and bet £1 on the result of each round where the coin will be tossed in the air. If that coin then happens to land head side up four rounds in a row (a 6.25% chance) it doesn’t mean that the bet being made was unfair. It just means that player 2 was unlucky over those 4 tosses of the coin. And certainly if I was player 1 in that situation, I wouldn’t be accepting player 2’s argument that to ‘balance things up’ he should now get two goes to toss the coin and win if either of those coins landed tails side up over the next 4 tosses. That would be that unfair system.
Regards Xcom2 - When I saw how they were manipulating numbers with their false hit percentages I was actually appalled. Even though there are mods available to correct this, I really don’t think that as a player you should have to mod a game in order to make the values being displayed on screen be the actually values that are being calculated, and I find it patronising that a game thinks that it needs to give me some kind of boost in order to mitigate bad luck. The whole point of percentages is that you play them in knowledge that you can succeed or fail.
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other than half the time, hes not either… id say its literally 50/50 if he will even do damage at a decently ranged shot (and by decently ranged i mean a few large buildings away, you know where youd actually use a sniper in a realistic situation) even with 90% of the targeting circle (red) over the body he still doesnt hit often as he should.
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not sure if youve ever shot a rifle that is capable of burst fire or just rapid semi auto fire… but your first two shots should be pretty accurate so long as you are a pretty accurate marksman; like any trained soldier should be, in this case realism would be more inline with the “fun” side than the current implementation of the aiming system lol.
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Not quite. As mentioned above it uses a Bell Curve to decide where the bullets fall. This means that shots are most likely to fall on the rim of the yellow circle. Center shots are extremely unlikely. This is why I feel the targeting system is off, because you very rarely hit what you’re actually targeting, you’ll hit around it instead.
I would disagree. What is ‘fair’? I would say that ‘fair’ is when players have the same ability to succeed as each other, or, in a non-competitive situation, where the player has the ability to succeed against the computer.
The reason a completely RNG system is inherently unfair is because it can create situations in which one player has many options and where their choices work out despite the unlikelihood while another player has little options and none of their plans work out despite the likelihood.
For example, there’s already a lot of talk about balancing the number of enemies that spawn and the number of crates that spawn, right? Well leaving them totally random as they are now would be a better form of ‘fair’ to you, wouldn’t it? Despite that meaning that one person might have to fight 15 aliens with no extra supplies while another might only have to fight 6 with half the map covered in supplies.
Raw RNG is simply not fair. That’s why it needs developers to put in fail-safes like making sure there are some resource chest spawns and not too many enemy spawns.
Your analogy is flawed because in this situation the players are betting on a random result. There’s an understanding that the competition is nothing but luck and that it could go either way. In Phoenix point though there’s strategy. High cover, low cover, weapon types, action points, etc. All these different mechanics that are rendered entirely useless if the RNG happens to throw up unlikely results.
Therefore, one player playing skillfully might lose while another player playing badly might win. Which is really the furthest from ideal when playing a game.
I actually agree here. As I said earlier, I wouldn’t want a ‘flat’ hidden bonus that makes the chances higher. What I’d want is a system that will always definitely make one out of every four 75% chance to hit shots fail. With the only exception being if less than the sample size is fired. So, like I said earlier, say you take 16 as the sample size. A player would hit 12 of those and miss 4 with a 75% chance. They could miss 4 in a row and then be guaranteed 8 hits, but that’s really unlikely. Most likely the misses would be spread fairly evenly within the sample size. With this kind of system it would still be possible for players to fluff shots and put themselves in bad situations by relying on luck, but at the same time it won’t consistently screw them over. Similarly, a lucky player will be able to get the occasional 20%-30% shot but won’t be able to happen consistently, giving them an easy long range win.
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Unless you’re in a purely luck driven system, players will never have the same ‘ability’ to win. They will only have the same possibilities, how a given player performs in relation to those possibilities is the part which you would class as ability.
There’s a difference between fairness and balance. If an range of 6-15 aliens (and weapons etc) on the map at the start of a battle means that some players have too small a chance of every succeeding, whereas other players have no challenge, then that element of the game requires balancing. It may be that the range needs to be shortened to 9-12 aliens. The system is still fair however, because every player has the same chance of encountering any given number of aliens at the start of a battle, and over time the number of aliens being encountered will trend towards the norm.
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