Quite interesting discussion, but you know what guys? When I pressed ‘fire’ for the first time in Backers Build One I was in shock how good it is comparing fo FXOMs. And I saw gloryfication of ballistic system in many comments… And now this topic shows up. [What the hell] - was my first thought. If devs will try this out it would be nice, but damn, I’m really fine with the current functionality.
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That…is actually really cool. I’d like to have that 'cause I always wondered what kind of odds they were taking against me.
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Both Firaxcom had mods to show enemy chances to hit, but I understand Firaxis’ choice not to display them natively. You just have to look at the post you quoted. People can’t stand losing soldiers at full health and in full cover and equate low odds of it happening with no chance of it happening at all.
If you don’t want you soldier to get shot, you break line of sight. This is an actual 0% chance to get hit 
If your base soldiers have 65% aim, you don’t take a shot unless you’re in elevated position or have close range bonus, or you use guaranteed damage consumables (grenades)
similarly, I’m quite happy with the reticule targeting of PP (minus potential alpha bugs) but I expect it to turn too much into "I put the small circle on a body part therefore I HAVE to hit said body part)
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If a player of XCOM, or Phoenix point, never wants their soldiers to get shot and gets really angry when it happens, they are playing the wrong franchises. Word to the devs - you will never please these players no matter what you implement.
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I don’t get annoyed if my soldiers just get shot. It happens, that’s fine. What I do get annoyed at is when a soldier has full health, is behind full cover and far away from the enemy, but he gets insta-killed by a sectoid (or equivalent rubbish enemy) who scores a crit as well as hitting with such a minuscule chance. Especially if it’s right after a soldier of mine misses a 90% chance to hit shot.
I’m not saying enemies shouldn’t be able to land these shots, there should just be measures in place to prevent these fluke moments that can destroy your best character despite perfect tactical game-play. Simply because when bad luck screws you over the game just isn’t fun, it feels like it’s cheating and it’s not a fair game instead.
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That’s war for you. Expect casualties. You can never entirely mitigate risk … only manage it. Wen you score an unlikely shot, critical and kill the enemy, you don’t go on forums complaining the game was cheating. It’s fair because it can happen to either side. And we need the risk of death to be present to feel the tension.
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It looks like the “dealing with the raw RNG” vs “tweaking the results to please the player” (or realistic vs fun) problem.
I hope to see Phoenix Point work - and advertise - as “true RNG” game, including ballistics, hit chances, game events, mutations etc. However that doesn’t mean we can’t have some safety nets to avoid the most extreme cases that may be received as unfair and cheating, like the dreaded one-hit deaths.
The FiraXCOM has the “stabilize critically wounded soldier” option instead of instakill. The Darkest Dungeon has “At Death’s Door” status that allows to heal the character with 0 HP. Some shooters like Borderlands have “Fight for your life” and “Second wind” sequence which gives the player last chance to rescue before dying.
Perhaps PP could borrow some of it - I imagine that one-shot-kill of a soldier with full health behind a cover (as in the given example) should result in 1 HP with Bleed and Unconscious. You have one turn to stabilize the unfortunate guy and then you have to guard him or carry him to the extraction zone, as the enemies could still abduct or target him.
This way:
- you can prevent the unavoidable low chance insta-kill and give the player some control how to deal with the situation;
- I would not call this cheating in favor of player as the unconscious soldier cannot be insta-healed, still can die and now requires squad’s help until end of the mission;
- and this is very much realistic “exhausting the enemy” scenario, because the wounded soldiers need to be first-aided, carried out of the fight, evacuated to the hospital, get the medical treatment, which uses much more resources and manpower that just a body bags for the dead.
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Its so funny how people don’t understand randomness, especially randomness in computers and I’m not talking about OP but rather about those saying 50% chance can mean 0% and 100% hits too… well, its not true. also, saying that chances are not showing on small samples is not true… c’mon, instead of writing this, you could just try it at home, get a freaking dice and tell me if you can random roll 6 10 times in a row… you cant. computers on the other hand do this all the time. If you don’t have a dice try the coin. you will only get 10 heads in a row extremely rarely, normally, even on small sample size it will be around 50%. and again, before you answer, try it… the problem is that choosing randomly between 1 and 2 and choosing a number below or above 50 randomly from 100 is not the same. while the first case will give you roughly 50% 1 or 2, the second will give you total random bull. the higher the pool the bigger the spread will be. to get a close to random you need to use the minimum possible pool. like for 75% use random(4) etc but its better if you dont even use random this way. bell curve and random(100) is the worse way on a computer to make up random. instead you should have base values and random multipliers that give deviations as its more logical and gives a far more fun experience (also, can easily account for multiple deviation lie weapon accuracy, soldier skill, aiming aids, useful range and so on and so on and so on). Im programming similar things and made up a little graph of how to do it: https://i.imgur.com/muUdGBW.jpg its far more sophisticated and easy to program. Still not realistic but at least logical.
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If you want to disprove basic mathematics and statistics, would you care to explain us where is the flaw? Empirical evidence isn’t really helping.
For the record, rolling a 6 ten times in a row is a one in 60 million, so telling someone “sit at home and try it … you can’t” isn’t exactly a valid argument. For the record, my biggest stroke of bad luck was missing 4 shots at 96% (roughly one in 400000 IIRC), that’s a different order of magnitude.
As far as improbable rolls, I once rolled an absurd sequence in Necromunda. Consider that almost every roll was a 1 in 6 chances and you’ll be close enough (shot → weapon jam → weapon explodes → wounds user → user falls from platform on top of other gang member → other gang member is wounded → user dies in AAR, bystander dies in AAR). Yup, those are crazy odds, and there is a reason why I still remember it almost 20 years later.
Since it’s impossible to roll 10*6 on a dice, with a mere 1 in 60M odds, you just proved that it is impossible to win the lottery too btw (looks like odds of winning the american lottery are in the 1 in 175M range). Of course, if there was evidence that some people won the powerball, it would be a bit of a contradiction wouldn’t it?
As far as computer generated RNG, rolling from a smaller sample and weight the result is a simple waste of code. Bear in mind that games like FiraXcom had their RNG dissected in great details, by mathematicians and programmers alike (sorry I CBA to dig out the studies atm) and the conclusions were “yes XCOM’s RNG is fair and, although there are imperfections that would not pass in stricter environments like casinos, these imperfections cannot be perceived by the human mind outside of a technical analysis of the generator”
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nStfflz5zKQ&t=113s so much about xcom’s fair rng 
and this isnt a one fo a million event, i can reproduce it in at least 1 out of 5 restart… (switch on subs)
“As far as computer generated RNG, rolling from a smaller sample and weight the result is a simple waste of code.” nope, it isnt. again, try it. empirical evidence is the only way to really prove or disprove theories… thats why they are THEORIES!!! No matter how much you believe in them until they are proven.
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Oh, so you’re one of ‘those’ people. Not a believer in the theory of evolution, or gravitational theory either?
In fact, demanding irrefutable evidence for anything is impossible because even if you’re shown that evidence there’s no objective way to prove that what your eyes see is the truth. Since you’re viewing the world from a subjective point of view, everything you see, hear or otherwise sense is simply your experience of that thing.
@kingius This isn’t war, this is a game. War is horrible. This is supposed to be fun.
@kompan This is the idea I’m trying to get across. I don’t want the game to cheat for the player, or to avoid penalties altogether, just for it to give you an extra chance in extremely unlucky circumstances. Personally I would like to see something built into the game rules like critical hits being impossible if the opponent is in high cover, covering the direction the fire is coming from. That way even if they get hit it’s unlucky enough but there’s a guaranteed benefit to getting behind full cover, not just a percentage luck based advantage over low cover. It’s trying to mix tactical gameplay with RNG and making sure that the tactical can win even if RNG is throwing a bit of a tantrum.
@Vathar Good counter arguments, I agree.
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It’s a small scale war simulation against an opponent with superior numbers and technology. You play catchup initially and through science and battlefield experience can later gain the advantage. Anyone who plays these franchises and doesn’t get that means they’ll acrue casualties along the way is quite frankly an idiot. The devs will never please people that want everything to go their way, even chance, becauae that’s not what is being simulated here. Risk cannot be mitigated in combat , only managed. If the game allowed elimination of risk entirely, quite frankly, it would be crap.
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For shot accuracy probably the best thing the devs could do is simply roll 2d100s and average the result. It would pull most shots toward the 50% line and make outlying percentages much rarer to get. While this does change the probabilities of what is actually going to happen away from what is reported on screen it means that shots above 50% are much more likely to connect while shots below 50% are much less likely. I’ve read elsewhere that in other games that is done to please the player base because humans are essentially not rational but emotinal beings and go more on how something feels not how it is. I read similar types of arguments (from emotion) being made in this thread where people have had an emotional reaction (“its not fair! its not fair!”) and then justifed it to themselves rationally afterwards. Another way is to roll 11d10 and minus 10. The devs could implement this in the background silently. It wouldn’t entirely mitigate the risks but it would make it less likely. I still think these people would complain about the next thing they didn’t like “Why does the enemy have a bigger gun than me? It’s not fair!” and they can’t actually be pleased in the long run (so appeasing them is largely a waste of time), but I thought I would at least make a constructive suggestion while I’m here.
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You don’t disprove probabilities by providing an edge case or any individual story. By their very definition, probabilities account for the existence of improbable rolls. If anything you proved that RNG is capable of generating such extreme outcomes.
I’ll be honest and flat out tell you that I don’t believe you can reproduce absurdly low outcomes once in five, but feel free to own up to the burden of proof. Bear in mind that your proof would be a lot more interesting if it looked like this, or this.
I also apologize for sounding pedantic to the other readers of this forum, but you’re making the same mistake flat earthers, anti-vaxxers and the like do : confusing theory and hypothesis. They get mixed up fairly often in common language but they’re entirely different. However, that is of limited relevance to this forum, suffice to say that a hypothesis is a starting point and a theory is a final result. A theory doesn’t need proving (but it can be refuted, its validity extended or reduced based on new findings)
Judging by your history of posting, you seem to be one of those players who have a bone to pick with FiraXCom and won’t ever shut up about how awful the game is. At this stage, maybe you should take a breath and bear in mind that, as far as we can tell, PP will share a lot of features with it. Julian has stated on many occasions that he likes Firaxis’ take on his game and it’s quite obvious that even early alpha borrows heavily from it. I appreciate that Snapshot seems to be improving on perceived flaws and getting the best of both OGXCom and FiraXcom (the hybrid TU system is a good example) but if you think FiraXCom is such a terrible game, maybe you should sit down and rethink your interest in PP.
I would actually hate this option. Yeah you’d almost never miss a probable shot, but your chances of scoring a desperate, low odd hits would also plumet. The only thing I’m asking regarding percentages is that they are WYSIWYG. You want to add aim assist to lower difficulty? Feel free but show the adjusted probability.
I’m ok with high cover giving crit. protection, but it has to apply to allies and enemies alike. Options like “death’s door” are worth considering, and are infinitely preferable to percentage adjustment as far as I’m concerned.
I’d prefer to have a game that retains the ability to fuck things up on occasion and instakill my soldiers and I know you disagree about it, but that’s really just a design choice and disagreeing about this is fine. The one point I’d make about death’s door is that Darkest Dungeon needs it as there are enemies that can consistently take heroes from full health to 0 in a swing. It’s not a 1% crit chance but a somewhat frequent occurrence. A giant whacking you on the head with a club can really hurt you! Having PP soldiers that always hit “death’s door” would require a balance shift.
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I’ve got an old Dragon magazine article called something like How heavy is my giant where the author tries to calculate how heavy a real giant (and giants made of various materials for massive golems, etc) would be in reality. The results are quite scarey and no RPG or tactical system I know of is remotely close to reality here. All giant creatures would inflict massive damage on a human opponent. A hit by a giant to the head with a club would likely crush the skull of a person. I think you are right in that games should model one hit kills. Instead of scaling into ‘sacks of hitpoints’ it would be much better if ‘skill’ was increasing instead (i.e. dodging, blocking, parrying). I know all the arguments that hitpoints are not muscle mass (etc) but think these are basically copouts, even when Gary Gygax made them, as the dice represent luck (not hitpoints).
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You may want to look at Hard West if you like luck as a survival mechanic. I got it when I was in need of a tacitcal turn based shooter fix and I have to give it props for experimenting with alternative concepts.
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Right, well calling people idiots certainly isn’t
Secondly, I actually completed the Xcom games multiple times without losing a single soldier. So it’s not only possible but actually not that hard to achieve if you play well. It mostly relied on using explosives and guaranteed damage in any situation where a member of my squad was in danger. And lots of overwatch… So much overwatch, haha.
You say that risk should be able to be managed. Well, risk isn’t very well managed when your soldier dies no matter where you put them. If you put them behind a brick wall, the enemy has a 10% chance to hit, they do hit, crit and kill your guy, it’s not exactly risk management.
Honestly, I think this will be less of an issue in phoenix point anyway. As you say, taking larger number pools and rolling the percentage chance multiple times gives a more average dispersal of shots. So the fact that Phoenix point already does that for bursts of 6-12 bullets, not including sniper, means that even if your guy is hit behind cover for a crit it would only do 3-5 damage or so. The amount one bullet would do. Unless all bullets hit… But you’re talking negligible chances there so that’s fine.
My main issue, and why I started this thread, was because shots rarely seemed to land where I was aiming. Of course, it was then revealed that the system was designed for shots to land around the exterior of the yellow circle. So it would be better if some shots were guaranteed to land in the yellow circle. The chance of all shots falling in the red zone or, conversely, landing in the yellow zone is actually fairly high, since they’re just 50% each. This means that you can have wildly inaccurate bursts and very accurate bursts entirely by random. This forces players to move really close to enemies in order to make sure the red zone targets things as well. It essentially gave assault rifles the range of a shotgun, and people handled it like one too.
Finally, I do think it would be an issue if the enemies have better equipment than your soldiers. Not only are you already outnumbered but if your enemies have better weapons, better accuracy, etc. Then it would simply make the game unbalanced. It would be acceptable if you were playing on the hardest difficulty, but for normal mode the enemies should evolve about the same pace as your soldiers.
If it’s a waste of time to try to appease fans then why do you think this forum exists? Why bother giving feedback at all?
Absolutely. I wouldn’t expect the game to skew things in the players favour. It’s just giving more space for tactical gameplay.
I would also put in the exception when it comes to breakable cover, or shooting through cover. If the enemy can shoot through your cover then it’s not really high cover, so a crit should still be possible, though definitely less likely, since they can’t see what they’re aiming at. The difference between a tall wooden box and a concrete pillar, for example.
Yeah, it’s fine for people to have differing opinions. I actually wouldn’t mind insta-killing my soldiers if it was on a tactical basis. You know, I move a poorly armoured soldier way up, an enemy flanks and insta kills him. That’s totally fair, because it was a poor tactical decision. The issue I have is when you make perfect tactical decisions but the game still screws you. Similarly bosses should definitely be able to insta kill you. At least until you cripple one of their weapons. Then it should be survivable but still harsh. With all disabled it should still be able to do the same damage as a normal mook, maybe about 6 (before armour).
Deaths Door worked for Darkest Dungeon because of the stress system and because healing wasn’t limited. I suppose you could do something with willpower and maybe have a medic character with a basic willpower powered healing abillity, rather than med-kits. I just remember fighting bosses and having all my team reduced to death’s door, only for my healer to group heal 2 hp to everyone, bringing them back. Basically fought the whole fight going in and out, trying to combat the stress loss and deal damage, rather than trying to heal people more than a few hit points.
I think the ‘bleed out’ from the Xcom games is a good example. Three turns is fair, if a little generous. Two turns would be fair but difficult. One turn would be a bit too harsh I think. Since you often split up soldiers to get flanking positions your medic might be more than a turn away from your downed soldier. Two turns would probably let them get there but it might be difficult. Three turns they’ll likely get there and can take decent cover on the way.
Maybe enemies could execute your bleeding guys too. So you have to defend them while your medic tries to get to them in time.
Yep, and thank goodness, hahaha. Honestly, too much realism ruins games. It’s a balance between immersion and emulation. To immerse a player, get them involved, invested, but also have suspension of disbelief is the ideal. Emulation of reality has it’s place in some games, like Gran Turismo for example, but in other games it can just ruin the experience. PP is a tactical turn based game. So already we’re not in real-time, so it’s not realistic. That’s for the good of the game though. Hit points are necessary for a game like PP, so that the tactical aspect can be emphasised. I mean, if we were to use your system, where soldiers increase in their ability to dodge, parry, block, aim, etc. Then rookies would die all the time from one stray bullet, since they don’t have any good skills yet. Then toward the end of the game, your guys would be practically untouchable. Or still flimsy. There’s no in-between because they either get hit and die or don’t get hit. With hit points you have a buffer, a resource that you have to manage. You can risk putting your soldier out closer because he can probably survive a hit while behind small cover, which could let you take out a couple of aliens. Or maybe put this soldier out front to be a better target than your guy with one hit point left. Meaning aliens will shoot at the guy who has health to spare, leaving you with both troops alive, hopefully.
The closest to your idea that I’d agree with is the bosses doing lots of damage and insta-killing. They’re supposed to be scary and deadly. The limb crippling system in PP is there to be used to disable enemies. Slow down the boss so you can stay out of range or remove it’s weapons so that it doesn’t insta-kill.
Hard West is a good game. I thought it did have HP, but it’s been a while since I played it… I do remember it being a lot harder than Xcom.
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It does have HP but IIRC, you also had a pool of luck that would fluctuate when using skills and getting shot, and you would mostly get grazing hits as long as you had luck remaining and could only receive critical hits when your luck ran out.
(Note that it’s probably not super accurate as I haven’t played it in ages but that’s the general idea)
I also liked how some wild west tropes were implemented, like ricocheting shots over metal surfaces, which was actually super powerful.
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Ah yeah, I remember that now. Yeah, that worked quite well.
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Duskmare: Lifting part of a sentence from one post and then inserting them with a part of a sentence from a different post is being deceptive, not clever. I suggest to you that the forums are for people to express their opinions, and if others agree or disagree, they can say so… and that’s exactly what people are doing. I suggest that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of many things, not just Phoenix point and Xcom, based on what you are putting forward and the question you are asking. Yours is an emotional response (paraphrasing: it’s not fair! not everything went my way!) rationalised after the fact and not based on logic. The franchises are fair - the rules apply to both sides, but because you don’t get the results you want, your sense of entitlement is up. You feel that its not you that should change… its the game. So no I don’t think you understand what fairness is, or what chance is, or how the concrete rules interact with chance to produce unpredictability and what it means to manage but not mitigate risk. I suggest that to change the game for people like you means that the devs will never stop making changes, each time for the worse of the overall play experience for everyone else… because there’ll always be something that does not go your way, i.e. something to complain about.
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