Missing almost every shot

[Bearsuit]

Can anyone explain why in the world my guys miss so often? I have 75-80% chance to hit while crouching with my AR and Sniper characters... and I hit probably 10% of the time. Is this some kind of unintended issue? Any sort of community patch to fix this?

It's unbelievably aggravating.

[Gillsing]

That sounds impossible. How large is your sample size? Ten shots? A hundred? Anyone can be unlucky in short term, but over time it should even out to become representative for your actual chances to hit.

Except for breaking down weapons with Weaponsmithing to get weapon mods. For that activity there is an actual bug that makes weapon mods only half as likely as the numbers say, because there's always an extra 50% chance of getting junk weapon parts.

[Bearsuit]

So I'm 9 hours in, and this has been a consistent issue. It would seem as if all the hit %s I see are more like half of what is displayed. Pills just missed 6 shots in a row at 81% chance to hit (the battle I am currently in as I type).

When I posted this yesterday, Cold-Eye was missing about 90% of his shots over a course of probably 50 attempts - and I never attempted shots under 50% (most were 70%+). I'm finding myself constantly cursing at the game.

It's not just combat, its skill checks too. I tried to brute force a door in AG with a 70% or so chance to pass the check, I failed 6 times in a row and then Angela suffered a broken hand. So I attempted to lockpick (67% chance I think it was), failed 3 times and then broke the lock (5% critical failure, really?). Attempted to repair the lock (70% chance or so) - had to attempt it 4 times. The same lockpick skill check failed 4-5 more times before once again breaking the lock. Came back around later with a higher brute force check (80%?) and broke Angela's hand again. Came back again later and after 3 attempts broke it down. I don't remember the exact numbers but I really felt like I was smashing my head against the keyboard.

It feels as if the 5% critical failure is more likely to succeed than my skill checks passing.

But yeah, the combat %s are even more aggravating because I'm taking all this additional damage because of ridiculous misses and wasting my health kits.

I'm not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the game or anything, I really enjoy it. But I need to understand why these numbers just don't seem to work as displayed. I just read another topic where people were discussing the weak rand() codes that just don't work as intended. Dunno if that's true or not.

[Bearsuit]

After submitting that response... Pills next 4 shots were 2 hit 2 miss at 70%+. So she is 2 for 10 shots above 70% chance to hit so far this battle. And Angela is 1 for 4 melee attacks at 70%. Slick is 0 for 6 on melee attacks at 70%+. Rose 2 for 6 on pistol shots at 80%+.

So all together 5 of 26 successful attacks with everything over 70% for those characters. Cold Eye and Bear have actually gotten a decent amount of hits this time, so I didn't pay attention to their misses (still not adding up to what I would expect though).

[Gillsing]

Originally posted by InABearsuit:

It would seem as if all the hit %s I see are more like half of what is displayed.

Well, 50% seems a lot better than 10%. What targets are your Rangers trying to hit when this occurs?

I've personally never experienced a weak randomiser, and I have a hard time imagining that it would lead to more failures, given my understanding of how most randomisers work: Take a huge 'random' number and divide it by another huge number determined by your intended max result, and then the remainder becomes the result.

Or something like that? Kind of like using a timer on a watch and randomly press the stop button and use the hundreds part as a roll of 1-100. Point is that the actual random result of 1-100 relies on only a small part of the huge random numbers, so even for a weak random number generator you should get varied results. The weakness is usually shown in the form of repeating sequences/patterns rather than results being biased in one direction (high or low).

Buggy coding could result in more failures though, in case the game is actually rolling twice and requires successes on both rolls for a hit. That's the kind of bug that could slip by in case most players boost their combat skills quickly to get 90-100% chance to hit, since then they would get at least 81-100%, which is close enough that they might not think that anything is wrong.

Is it the Director's Cut you're playing? That's the one I'm playing, and I haven't noticed the kind of bad luck you seem to have, and my Rangers have had pretty low weapon skills for a long time. And while I play only custom Rangers I seriously doubt that the default squad is marred with some kind of 'special bad luck'.

[Bearsuit]

Yeah I am playing the Directors Cut. I may have written it weird, but I meant that like if I see "70%" it's hitting more like at a "35%" chance. Most of what I am targeting right now are the infected pod persons (clearing out the infestations after AG) and the occasional bandit types. It really shouldn't be anything tricky like you'd expect at higher levels.

I have read some responses elsewhere about how the RNG coding was done poorly - but it could also be bad luck? Haha really bad luck, I guess. I mean I'll accept it as it is, but I thought maybe there might be some kind of community patch like a lot of games seem to have.

[Gillsing]

Originally posted by InABearsuit:

I may have written it weird, but I meant that like if I see "70%" it's hitting more like at a "35%" chance.

Yup. 35% would be 50% of 70%, whereas your initial 10%... Well, I misread that, and thought it was 10% of 75-80%, which would've been 7.5-8%. But I guess it was 10% instead of 75-80%.

The early killer bunnies are quite hard to hit, but that should be visible when you're trying to hit them, so it would be obvious that there's an extra chance to miss. Pod people and raiders should indeed have no particular defences to keep them from being hit by attacks. So I'm not sure what could be going on in your game other than unbelievably bad luck.

[Cursed Life]

Similar situation here: my melee dude has always 75-80% to hit but it feels like is 50%

[Johnny Casey]

This is exactly why chance based success rate is just not a good mechanic. It only exists to frustrate the players, especially if the game is turn-based, where every single action and its failure is critical. I want the games to be "You've failed because you were doing something wrong." game, not "You've failed because you were unlucky." kinda game.

Making a mechanic to be work with chance based system is one of the easiest way to make one for the developers, and that is why we are still rolling a dice in videogames, like how people did with board games in late 70s.

These old CRPG style BS should really be changed.

[Gillsing]

According to some statistics, real life police officers have 18-20% accuracy in actual gun fights. So maybe it's a good thing that we've got some virtual dice to roll?

[Johnny Casey]

Originally posted by Gillsing:

According to some statistics, real life police officers have 18-20% accuracy in actual gun fights. So maybe it's a good thing that we've got some virtual dice to roll?

If I ever had to shoot a firearm in virtual world, I would like to do it all by myself, not with the help of dice rolls.

[Gillsing]

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

If I ever had to shoot a firearm in virtual world, I would like to do it all by myself, not with the help of dice rolls.

There are games for that. Other games. Don't let the camping sniper head-shot you when you arrive.

[Johnny Casey]

Originally posted by Gillsing:

There are games for that. Other games. Don't let the camping sniper head-shot you when you arrive.

Gotta wonder what makes you think that I don't know that.

What I'm trying to state is, this game mechanic is old, and nothing good can comes out of it. It just makes the players frustrated. It saddens me that some people believe this mechanic is one of the aspect that which completes what CRPG really is.

[Gillsing]

My understanding is that you think it's "disgusting" that there are games for people who don't want to fire their characters' weapons all by themselves. Which is a position that I find ridiculous. Hence my ridicule.

Though it now seems that you edited that word out.

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

Making a mechanic to be work with chance based system is one of the easiest way to make one for the developers, and that is why we are still rolling a dice in videogames, like how people did with board games in late 70s.

Some people have suggested hard skill requirements for skill checks, which would be slightly easier. But others don't like that. They want to have a chance to succeed rather than be completely blocked. Ever heard of gambling? Lots of people enjoy it.

And many people who like turn-based RPGs are extremely opposed to 'twitch' games. A lot of people complained about the matrix parts in Shadowrun Returns: Hong Kong because it relied on the player's manoeuvring skill rather than the character's Decking skill. Many people playing RPGs want their character's skills to determine success, not the player skill. That's part of roleplaying: You play a role that might be worse than you are at stuff. Or better. Usually better. Usually.

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

This is exactly why chance based success rate is just not a good mechanic. It only exists to frustrate the players ...

It's not to frustrate you. You're supposed to enjoy it. And if you don't... why are you even here?

[Johnny Casey]

Originally posted by Gillsing:

Some people have suggested hard skill requirements for skill checks, which would be slightly easier. But others don't like that. They want to have a chance to succeed rather than be completely blocked. Ever heard of gambling? Lots of people enjoy it.

That's not what I meant. I want the game to give the players a full control of the outcome for - in this case - combat.

You hit the target because your aim was true, not because you were lucky.
You missed the target because your aim was sloppy, not because you were unlucky.
You scored a critical because you hit the target's weak spot, not because you were lucky.

It's always supposed to be you doing something, not the game doing that for you. This is how all the games should be, or at least, the games that I want should be.

Originally posted by Gillsing:

Many people playing RPGs want their character's skills to determine success, not the player skill. That's part of roleplaying: You play a role that might be worse than you are at stuff. Or better. Usually better. Usually.

It's still role playing. You're playing as someone else with just a little bit more control of him/her. The game doesn't necessarily have to restrict the player's ability, just to give the players role playing experience.

[Revolucas]

Short-term chances only provide varying degrees that something might occur. Percentages are averages based on infinity. Rolling a 1d6 is a 1/6 chance to land on a single number of your choosing but you could literally roll that die millions of times and never come to close to a 1/6 chance that it turns up. That is because randomness has an uneven distribution.

Each roll is independent. It's not brought up here, but it is in several other threads about chance: Saying there is a 15^30 to 1 chance you will miss 30 consecutive 85% shots in a row is wrong. That is a called the 'Gambler's Fallacy' - You have a 85% shot each time. Streaks are very common in randomness because of the uneven distribution and to calculate the probability of streaks you need to use a special formula, like Fibonacci-n step number.

https://sinepost.wordpress.com/category/mathematics/probability/probability-in-game-design/
https://sinepost.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/randomness-vs-canniness/

When people complain about randomness in a game not seeming right what they really want is the game to be less random. True randomness and pseudo-randomness have an uneven distribution. Some games incorporate things like a "shuffle bag", so say exists a bag with 3 slots, where only one slot is a success. The slot order is mixed up randomly but the results are finite, representing a more accurate 1/3 chance to succeed and 2 chances for failure. If you were to pull from the bag 3 times, you would miss twice but the distribution of randomness is more even.

It's still role playing. You're playing as someone else with just a little bit more control of him/her. The game doesn't necessarily have to restrict the player's ability, just to give the players role playing experience.

This is why the RPG tag in Steam is so cluttered with games that aren't technically RPGs and why people have to start calling games like Wasteland 2 a cRPG. It's a specific genre of RPG that is supposed to mimic the days of playing games with pen, paper and dice. Random chance mechanics are just simplified risk vs reward.

Character progression, in the form of statistical enhancement or ability, should be a requirement to label something as a RPG -- not the ability to play a role of a character in a story driven game.