RNG

[InfinityBall]

Is it just me or do others seem to succeed with quests at 40% more often than 70%? Something seems broken to fail such good odds almost every single time.

[JoebyKaeby]

Humans are really bad a randomness, and usually the most random systems feel very much NOT random to us. If something "feels" random to you, likely that's because it has a roughly even distribution, so that every outcome is more or less equally likely to happen - but in reality that's very much not random. Your brain often seeks out the appearance of patterns when there are none just to make sense of what's happening, in the same way it finds the shapes of animals in clouds.

[do0t ﺕ]

Annecdotally, 40% has "hit" more compared to 60% of late (small sample). It's like chasing a flush... sometimes it works, sometimes not. :)

[Mountain Man]

Originally posted by LoG WordSlice:

I'm starting to feel like maybe OTHER games rig the randomness in your favour and now you feel like Armello is a harsh, unfair and rigged game in comparison.

From what I've read, Firaxis rigged the XCOM games so that if the player missed a certain number of times in a row, the game would quietly tip the odds in the player's favor until they got a hit, and then it would reset. Of course despite this consolation, the game is still quite adept at kicking the player's teeth in.

[LastSide]

Its all chance.

Its is possible for someone to have 3 Fight to win against someone of 7 Fight.

What you can do is manipulate the dice with burning cards, equipment and Magic.
This boardgame is a prime example of what is an Ameritrash boardgame.

In most Ameritrash boardgames you cant control what happens.
Wits, is what increases your hand size. In my experience this, and Spirit, is what decides most games.
Higher Wit, with any character, wins games.

[Rhedd]

Originally posted by LastSide:

Its all chance.

Its is possible for someone to have 3 Fight to win against someone of 7 Fight.

What you can do is manipulate the dice with burning cards, equipment and Magic.
This boardgame is a prime example of what is an Ameritrash boardgame.

In most Ameritrash boardgames you cant control what happens.
Wits, is what increases your hand size. In my experience this, and Spirit, is what decides most games.
Higher Wit, with any character, wins games.

Unfairly harsh assessment, in my opinion. I've played boardgames that are so random that you end up making very few meaningful choices (Talisman, anyone?) and this is not one of those.

People who demean randomness and say it ruins games because it takes control from the players are stupid on two levels; First, in that any game more advanced than chess is going to have SOME randomness, so it clearly doesn't ruin games in general, and secondly, because planning for the unknown and compensating for surprise are very important player (human) skills in any situation.

Saying everything should go as planned and you should only fail by specific misake is fine, I suppose. Go play chess. A game with a finite number of possible games which quickly devolves into memorizing patterns of proper counters to your opponent's textbook moves. Sorry, but I'm personally very glad not ALL games are like that.

TLDR: "Ameritrash" is an elitist and stupid label to slap on games, and particularly inappropriate for this one.

[Kletian999]

Yeah. The designers are Australian.

[JoebyKaeby]

Originally posted by LastSide:

Its all chance.

Its is possible for someone to have 3 Fight to win against someone of 7 Fight.

What you can do is manipulate the dice with burning cards, equipment and Magic.

This much of your comment is dead on, and yes, Wit is the most important statistic. The attack on the game as being too "American" when the dev team is Australian is a little bizzare, and not the most intelligent thing I've ever seen.

But yes, the dice are random, and can be cruel, but you have equipment, spell and trickery effects, and buring cards to eliminate that randomness. As a general rule, you'll be better off with 5 dice placed on the board by pre-planed effects than just rolling 10 dice.

[WordSlice]

Originally posted by Kletian999:

Yeah. The designers are Australian.

Struth matey.

[Mahasuchi]

I've won games with low wits, have been stuck with trash cards with high wits and I have had a dicepool of 7 or more reduced to less than half of its potential thanks to bad rolls. The randomness in this game can be very relative. I don't hate the game for it, though, even if I can't "save scum" like X-COM. At least Armello keeps me creative in my tactics.

[Mountain Man]

Originally posted by Astranon:

@Mountain Man, Really? it looked to me as if XCom 2 was programmed so that the first hit against an enemy would aways miss, for example. The only way I would see a change is by attacking in a different order.

If you were reloading an XCOM save to repeat your test then you'll always get the same result because the random seed is baked into the save file to prevent "save scumming". But by taking a different action, fyou change the seed and will get a different result.

[Mahasuchi]

Originally posted by Mountain Man:

Originally posted by Astranon:

@Mountain Man, Really? it looked to me as if XCom 2 was programmed so that the first hit against an enemy would aways miss, for example. The only way I would see a change is by attacking in a different order.

If you were reloading an XCOM save to repeat your test then you'll always get the same result because the random seed is baked into the save file to prevent "save scumming". But by taking a different action, fyou change the seed and will get a different result.

Not always. There's a toggle in the first X-COM when you create a game that rerolls the results whenever you reload allowing you to save scum if you want or not. I would imagine the second game kept the option.

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by Mountain Man:

If you were reloading an XCOM save to repeat your test then you'll always get the same result because the random seed is baked into the save file to prevent "save scumming". But by taking a different action, fyou change the seed and will get a different result.

That technique can help with save scumming. AoW3 handles it like that and saves the rolls, so reloading gives the same allways. That means, that the player can get the information, that the next attack will hit allways, because the game rolled a 1 % chance as success. After that might be somthing like a miss on everything below 80 %.

With a bit testing, the player can at least get a few optimal actions out of the rolls, by changing up the order of actions. I never have played XCOM but in AoW3 one could for example, if the first two rolls are good, use somthing like the attack of the frostlings, to freeze an enemy unit, with the knowledge, the next few are bad, one can follow up with a cheap unit going melee, to use those up and so on.

Playing the same battle the same way often ends up with the same result with such saved rolles. Depending on how many rolls get saved. Like 100 rolls could be to few for the bigger battles, but enough for fights between a few units, that have passive effects on hits, that need rolls too.