The solution to the great TTK/Damage Model/Armor Debate.

@amurka I know what RNG means. What I assumed, and probably should not have, is that you would take into account the reason people tend to not like "RNG" and extrapolate how that is relevant here. But instead I have to deal with you reducing this conversation to whether I know what a acronym stands for.

RNG can be bad if such a generator makes the game so random that the player ends up being a bystander. This is the only extent to which RNG is a derogatory statement. Virtually no system is 100% deterministic from the viewpoint of the player, even if the individual mechanics are. So there is nothing wrong with a discrete RNG mechanic so long as such a device does not so greatly remove the player from the process that it ends up being a slot machine.

Variation to weapon damage does not make the game so random as to eliminate the player from the results, primarily.

@amurka This had got nothing to do with "me" vs "everyone else" except in your imagination.

You didn't say this? You basically tried to pidgeonhole everyone into just "two camps" and then you say...

@suspensionsystem said in The solution to the great TTK/Damage Model/Armor Debate.:

I am here to tell you all that both of these camps are wrong when it comes to how they would like to see the devs achieve their goals. There is a third option that everyone is ignoring because everyone here is debating this subject within the confines of the existing model, which to be honest is problem that just about every game has.

So basically... since (to you) everyone was in those two camps, and you literally said "Both these camps are wrong"... (I.E. You said everyone is wrong) That's not my imagination.

I might have agreed with you if you'd said the "inherent RNG in all games" was things like the way a gun kicks every time you fire (you can't know in advance, unless the game has a really dumbed down [vertical only] recoil) But they examples you keep picking are totally separate from randomness.

last edited by AMURKA

@cyoce Because they are the same thing from the decision making process of the player. Its that simple. It doesnt matter if the damage was random or if you have to make a decision about whether an enemy was defending B or C without actually knowing. In either case you are making decisions with incomplete data, which means its not totally under your control.

Weapons with variable damage still require you to alter their use based on what you know might happen. Not what you KNOW will happen.

You still do this same thing with a deterministic weapon. If you know one weapon can kill in two hits ALWAYS, and another in 1 ALWAYS. You still have to make a probabilistic decision on which set of advantages you want to risk mitigate.

last edited by SuspensionSystem

@amurka Because there are like 3-5 or something threads on here right now all about the same thing. So I started a new one with a different suggestion than was being made elsewhere. But that hardly makes this a me vs everyone thing. You are mistaking my generalization about the conversation here for something more than it is.

@suspensionsystem Sure the decision-making process is the same from a meta level, but if you get "screwed by bad luck" in a deterministic system, the person who made the unlikely decision and won the engagement made a better decision (outplayed). This isn't the case with RNG. In a deterministic game, the probabilities a player has to account for are determined by enemy players' decisions, not the random number generator's.

@suspensionsystem You're absolulely right. I don't know if I've ever been more wrong! Your genius idea is exactly what this game needs! It's the solution to all our problems. I can't wait to see it implemented! Hopefully the gameplay will be something like THIS!
0_1536861983107_Hit Percentage.jpg

last edited by AMURKA

@cyoce I am sorry but this is simply factually incorrect. It does not matter if the individual mechanics or the total result were somewhat random. Random is random. There is bad luck regardless. The fact that you dont know exactly how many shots will kill is no different than not knowing exactly how many enemies will defend a certain side of a map. It only becomes a problem when the randomness is so great that the play may as well pull a lever and wait for the outcome. In other words, a slot machine.

Variable damage simply alters the qualities of the guns. Players still make decisions about their use and what is not a good idea to do, since you know what "might" happen. If yo know that it might take 7 hits to kill with a 9mm, a smart player "might" shoot till the target drops, while a dumb player "might" bank on the average result.

People make this same sort of decision IRL. Nobody calls it RNG.

You'd think at some point this guy would have the thought "I wonder why no FPS has ever used this RNG damage system before...hmmm?" And hopefully come to the conclusion all the FPS devs in history came to: "Because it's trash".

last edited by AMURKA

@amurka Yeah your the one taking things personally not me. I never said you had to agree. Please stop wasting my time with this childish deflection BS.

@suspensionsystem said in The solution to the great TTK/Damage Model/Armor Debate.:

@amurka Yeah your the one taking things personally not me. I never said you had to agree. Please stop wasting my time with this childish deflection BS.

It only took you 2 pages to call people who disagree with you "children". Congrats you're better than average!

@amurka Well for two reasons really.

1: there are games that have done this.

2: It doesnt really matter if they have or have not. Having been done or having not been done has got jack to do with it being good or bad.

@amurka Because it took you less than 1 post to make this about something it isnt. And I just called you one, not anyone else here.

@amurka I not going to give you a list of games that have variations in game output that the player doesnt totally control. There are dozens upon dozens. Take your pick.

@suspensionsystem please do not label your opinions as facts. While it may feel random, and be effectively random in terms of the player's decision process, it's not actually random. Not knowing what something is doesn't make that something random. It's unknown.

From a top-down perspective of a deterministic game, nothing is random. The outcome of the match is a direct function of the players' actions.

@suspensionsystem said in The solution to the great TTK/Damage Model/Armor Debate.:

@amurka I not going to give you a list of games that have variations in game output that the player doesnt totally control. There are dozens upon dozens. Take your pick.

Ah yes, the 'ol "Some people say!" Fox News trick... where they get to say "Everyone is saying it!" without ever having to provide a single shred of proof.

Again.... citations please. If there are "dozens upon dozens" of these games, it shouldn't be too hard for you to just TYPE one...

Oh, and you're already trying to change the subject. It's not "variations in game output" we were discussing. It was "randomization of gun damage output in FPS games" Don't try to move the goalposts.

last edited by AMURKA

@cyoce I am not. This really is not a matter opinion. It is a matter of fact that unless the game is tic-tac-toe, the end result of a game is NEVER 100# deterministic. It does not matter if the specific mechanics were. Because once a game becomes complex enough, no player is making perfect decisions, but is really making probabilistic ones. The game environment itself, can be viewed as a RNG mechanic on the whole.

And besides all this, read what I said about how the player uses variable weapon damage.

@suspensionsystem Assuming something is random for the purpose of an assessment does not make the assessment random itself. That decision isn't random. Therefore, the players' actions are not random. They act like the outcome is random because they are working from incomplete information, but the outcome is still deterministic; they just don't know what it will be.