RNG and Very Hard Mode

[What The Egad]

There's something very odd about how RNG works in this game. I'm not sure the values presented when you're attacking an enemy are accurate. I haven't tested this, but I'd love to get an actual value of how many times I attacked within a game divided into how many of those attacks were 1) weak hits, 2) regular hits, 3) critical hits, and 4) misses. Furthermore, divide the enemy attacks into the same values. Would one arrive at a set of percentages accurately depicting whatever value you were given at any point in the game during combat?

This is also a question I believe is pertinent for Very Hard Mode. Does my chance to hit, crit, or miss increase or decrease depending on what mode I'm playing the game?

My basic assumption is that the RNG values are off if the game's difficulty does not adjust the RNG. Before you even start the game, you're told that the higher the game's difficulty is, the more tact is involved. I disagree. RNG is--by definition--random. It's unreliable.

I maxed out my character's rifle skill, first and foremost because of how unreliable RNG was. Full Auto was often more generous than any other ability offered by the other guns simply because it offered me a single attack with more dice rolls. Even then I experienced particular times when every bullet missed.

I suppose I noticed this a bit more doing the APEX Rising and Dragonfall missions simply because the amount of enemies you deal with are so numerous that their dice rolls supersede your own. Moreover, since you have to divide your team within those two missions, your RNG is hurt even more! The point being here is that I found higher tactics really had next-to-nothing to do with my performance in these missions--it was all a matter of luck.

My question then is whether or not it would have been more worthwhile to play on Easy or Normal mode to achieve a more reliable RNG and whether or not Very Hard Mode has its difficulty dependent on how lucky you are versus how lucky the enemy is when rolling dice.

[UnwiseTrout]

Easy and Normal mode will always be easier than Hard mode. It would stand to reason that one of the simplest ways to make the differences tangible would be to increase the enemies chance to hit and decrease your chances to do the same.

So yes, it would have been more worthwhile to play on an easier difficulty than Hard to achieve a more reliable RNG.

[What The Egad]

Originally posted by UnwiseTrout:

Easy and Normal mode will always be easier than Hard mode. It would stand to reason that one of the simplest ways to make the differences tangible would be to increase the enemies chance to hit and decrease your chances to do the same.

So yes, it would have been more worthwhile to play on an easier difficulty than Hard to achieve a more reliable RNG.

That's what I mean. Unreliability really shouldn't have anything to do with difficulty. It should deal more with how much health enemies have, how strong their attacks are, etc. It shouldn't be relegated to how often you're actually able to hit them with your weapons and vice versa.

[Zadok]

I suggest you do not ever save. It circumvents the RNG capriciousness - you need to rely on solid tactics. And Autosaves...

Mind if you switch weapons the changed toHit% may not immediately update! Sometimes it displays the toHit% of an attack you no longer intend to make. Patience helps - just don't go for those hasty clicks.
Although I am not 100% sure whether that's the only bug regarding the displayed toHit% the RNG works just fine and you can win based on tactics.

[What The Egad]

Originally posted by Zadok:

I suggest you do not ever save. It circumvents the RNG capriciousness - you need to rely on solid tactics. And Autosaves...

Mind if you switch weapons the changed toHit% may not immediately update! Sometimes it displays the toHit% of an attack you no longer intend to make. Patience helps - just don't go for those hasty clicks.
Although I am not 100% sure whether that's the only bug regarding the displayed toHit% the RNG works just fine and you can win based on tactics.

So the values you're given are bugged?

[Zadok]

Originally posted by Cheeseknife:

So the values you're given are bugged?

Not generally, no. If you select "Aimed Shot" and check an opponent you'll have +15% toHit. Let's say that's 93%. Now if you select a normal shot again it may display the 93% still. Just hover different targets (or the same one repeatedly) and it displays the correct 78%. Same can happen when checking out different spells.
Don't be hasty and double check if the toHit does not change upon selecting a different attack - easy enough. Also the error corrects itself after the shot. Thus it has nothing to do with a long series of misses. It is just that one shot displaying the toHit for the wrong attack after changing attacks, only if you shoot immediately.
Since I didn't test too much I can't tell you why or when it happens exactly, "sometimes" anyway. If you know your toHit should change (e.g. changing to Full Auto from normal fire) and it doesn't you ought to realize the error, right?

Mind Sunzi already told us 500 b.c. that we cannot make an enemy vulnerable - we can only make ourselves invulnerable. That's the basic idea and it works.
I played through on Very Hard w/o manual saves. Sure: you can get very unlucky. It does however not take outstanding luck but rather good tactics to win any given fight. It may not be everybody's preferred playstyle to aim for safety 1st. Nor does everybody enjoy playing fights repeatedly, just to figure them out. Therefor Easy / Normal may be more enjoyable, depending on what it is you want. In any case that challenge can be met.

Actually I contemplated writing a walkthrough to compliment my build guide. Then again the guide was a lot of work, still has flaws and this game's community is too small to expect a lot of feedback. At this point I shy away from the effort of writing a walkthrough. If you have questions regarding any given fight however I can give you details.

[UnwiseTrout]

Originally posted by Cheeseknife:

That's what I mean. Unreliability really shouldn't have anything to do with difficulty. It should deal more with how much health enemies have, how strong their attacks are, etc. It shouldn't be relegated to how often you're actually able to hit them with your weapons and vice versa.

Giving the player less opportunities to reduce the enemy's health and giving the enemies more opportunities to reduce the players health sounds an awful lot like increasing the health of enemies and increasing the damage of their attacks.

At a certain point it just comes down to personal preference, I'd rather have to hit an unarmored guard *once* with a burst fire from an assault rifle to put them down than have to plow round after round into their dense spongy body while they hit me with a pistol that leaves cannon ball sized holes in my party. If I miss a lot, then I need to flank or use chems or spells, there's no boost I can give myself from tactical items to (directly) increase my damage but by increasing my accuracy or turns I can give myself an edge even on the harder difficulties.

[What The Egad]

Originally posted by UnwiseTrout:

Originally posted by Cheeseknife:

That's what I mean. Unreliability really shouldn't have anything to do with difficulty. It should deal more with how much health enemies have, how strong their attacks are, etc. It shouldn't be relegated to how often you're actually able to hit them with your weapons and vice versa.

Giving the player less opportunities to reduce the enemy's health and giving the enemies more opportunities to reduce the players health sounds an awful lot like increasing the health of enemies and increasing the damage of their attacks.

At a certain point it just comes down to personal preference, I'd rather have to hit an unarmored guard *once* with a burst fire from an assault rifle to put them down than have to plow round after round into their dense spongy body while they hit me with a pistol that leaves cannon ball sized holes in my party. If I miss a lot, then I need to flank or use chems or spells, there's no boost I can give myself from tactical items to (directly) increase my damage but by increasing my accuracy or turns I can give myself an edge even on the harder difficulties.

No, if I have a 50% chance to hit an enemy who has 100HP, that doesn't mean that the 100HP is somehow more or less than its actual value. The incentive in this case is to beat the odds in whatever way I can. Now, if the enemy had increasing health as difficulty increases, then I'd have more of an incentive to reduce armor, set that enemy on fire, or stun.

My point being here is that there's no tactics involed in dice-rolling save rolling as many times as you can until you get the numbers you want/need to actually do the things you want to do successfully. The weakest enemies in the game have the potential to become the strongest if, for whatever reason, RNG is not in your favor.

This is why missions like APEX Rising and Dragonfall are so frustrating. You can't afford to lose to bad RNG when you're on a timer. Every round is crucial in those moments.

[Zadok]

Originally posted by Cheeseknife:

This is why missions like APEX Rising and Dragonfall are so frustrating. You can't afford to lose to bad RNG when you're on a timer. Every round is crucial in those moments.

There: you just identified the core issue. It is hard. That is all.
Due to it every hit or miss counts. Every single miss frustrates - even more a whole series of misses. I know. I've been there.

Thing is: just because you didn't come up with a solution so far, a tactical approach that does not need luck, that doesn't mean there is none. Be happy there is luck involved, because in every other scenario you'd simply lose w/o any chance to hide the fact you've got no solution. The only reason you can potentially win, despite lacking tactics, is because an RNG is forgiving. Let's face it: you don't deserve the win yet. It's not the RNG's fault.

[What The Egad]

Originally posted by Zadok:

Originally posted by Cheeseknife:

This is why missions like APEX Rising and Dragonfall are so frustrating. You can't afford to lose to bad RNG when you're on a timer. Every round is crucial in those moments.

There: you just identified the core issue. It is hard. That is all.
Due to it every hit or miss counts. Every single miss frustrates - even more a whole series of misses. I know. I've been there.

Thing is: just because you didn't come up with a solution so far, a tactical approach that does not need luck, that doesn't mean there is none. Be happy there is luck involved, because in every other scenario you'd simply lose w/o any chance to hide the fact you've got no solution. The only reason you can potentially win, despite lacking tactics, is because an RNG is forgiving. Let's face it: you don't deserve the win yet. It's not the RNG's fault.

There's no difficulty involved in scenario that you win or lose based on pure luck. RNG isn't forgiving nor is it neccesarily relentless. It simply means that no matter how well you plan your attack, you can potentially go an entire round without actually hitting anything.

When I think of game difficutly, I actually think of scenarios where the mobs are stronger and deadlier than you are. not simply luckier at rolling dice.

What I'm saying is that, on Very Hard mode, this was my experience. Several times I'd actually down maybe one or two enemies in one round and then spend the next two or three trying to kill one last enemy. I had to reload these particular missions several times before the odds were finally in my favor and I was able to win. My tactics didn't really chance all that much either.

I think I should also point out that in both of these missions, the enemies vastly outnumber you, which means the odds are further in their favor because they get more dice rolls than you do. This is especially true on Dragonfall since two of your party are essentially down every few turns due to the event's mechanics.

[UnwiseTrout]

Originally posted by Cheeseknife:

No, if I have a 50% chance to hit an enemy who has 100HP, that doesn't mean that the 100HP is somehow more or less than its actual value. The incentive in this case is to beat the odds in whatever way I can. Now, if the enemy had increasing health as difficulty increases, then I'd have more of an incentive to reduce armor, set that enemy on fire, or stun.

My point being here is that there's no tactics involed in dice-rolling save rolling as many times as you can until you get the numbers you want/need to actually do the things you want to do successfully. The weakest enemies in the game have the potential to become the strongest if, for whatever reason, RNG is not in your favor.

This is why missions like APEX Rising and Dragonfall are so frustrating. You can't afford to lose to bad RNG when you're on a timer. Every round is crucial in those moments.

Again, it's really coming down to semantics at this point. Taken on an isolated individual action a percentage to hit doesn't translate into reduced or increased HP, but over the course of a combat or a game, having a greater chance to hit does mean you increase your average damage overall per action verses having a smaller potential when your chances to hit are reduced. If you're dealing with enemies with greater HP then you're still looking for those good numbers to pop up. Either way you're dealing with your chances of success being modified by a dice roll with you either needing to roll high on your to hit or high on your damage.

To use a different set of games as a comparison, look at Morrowind and Oblivion/Skyrim. In Morrowind you swung your sword and "hit" the enemy, but you still had an invisible dice roll to see if you actually hit them and dealt damage. People complained about that because the mechanical feedback wasn't matching the visual feedback. So in Oblivion/Skyrim every swing of the sword connects with the enemy, but they have to have larger HP pools to keep the challenge at a stable level. This means that on harder difficulty levels you have to pound away at a Thalmor over and over again to kill them, which can sometimes bring us back to the Morrowind problem "I'm hitting them but they're not being affected."

Either method, having difficulty be represented in a lower chance to sucessfully hit or needing more successful hits overall has their problems, but look at it this way, given the system that Dragonfall uses, your chance to hit will eventually rise and "max out" even, and as I mentioned, you can use your items to increase it further when needed. Your damage per hit is much more static so you as a player are much more likely to feel your character's progression as you increase your chance to hit rather than the smaller incremental increase in damage.

Also there's no such thing as the RNG "not being in your favor", it's random, if you look at too small of a sample size it's going to be skewed one way or another.

Also also, the Apex mission really sucks when it's your first time through it and you've been rocking as a decker/rigger.

[What The Egad]

Originally posted by UnwiseTrout:

Originally posted by Cheeseknife:

No, if I have a 50% chance to hit an enemy who has 100HP, that doesn't mean that the 100HP is somehow more or less than its actual value. The incentive in this case is to beat the odds in whatever way I can. Now, if the enemy had increasing health as difficulty increases, then I'd have more of an incentive to reduce armor, set that enemy on fire, or stun.

My point being here is that there's no tactics involed in dice-rolling save rolling as many times as you can until you get the numbers you want/need to actually do the things you want to do successfully. The weakest enemies in the game have the potential to become the strongest if, for whatever reason, RNG is not in your favor.

This is why missions like APEX Rising and Dragonfall are so frustrating. You can't afford to lose to bad RNG when you're on a timer. Every round is crucial in those moments.

Again, it's really coming down to semantics at this point. Taken on an isolated individual action a percentage to hit doesn't translate into reduced or increased HP, but over the course of a combat or a game, having a greater chance to hit does mean you increase your average damage overall per action verses having a smaller potential when your chances to hit are reduced. If you're dealing with enemies with greater HP then you're still looking for those good numbers to pop up. Either way you're dealing with your chances of success being modified by a dice roll with you either needing to roll high on your to hit or high on your damage.

...

Also there's no such thing as the RNG "not being in your favor", it's random, if you look at too small of a sample size it's going to be skewed one way or another.

Also also, the Apex mission really sucks when it's your first time through it and you've been rocking as a decker/rigger.

I've also looked at it from this perspective. On the APEX Mission and Dragonfall, the timer isn't subject to RNG. This means that you have to make every round count or you fail. This means that if you run into a slough of bad RNG then you've failed no matter what you did. In other words, regardless as to whether or not your characters died or were incapacitated, your potential for failure was dictated by whether or not you got lucky within a limited timeframe.

Point being here is that you can circumvent any bad luck in other portions of the game simply because you have no turn limit. There's no "enrage timer". Dragonfall, in particular, gives you an extremely mandatory turn limit before you lose. The fact that you're essentially down two party members in the meantime further cripples you.

RNG is technically in your favor when you get the rolls you want. It's not like I'm saying RNG is actively working in my favor like there's some program invested in giving me an easy playthrough. But if a particular outcome I desire is achieved because the RNG values lined up with those desires quite nicely, then that's a favorable position. That's all it means.

[UnwiseTrout]

Wait, how are you down two party members? You've got to have one person jacked in, yeah, but then you just have to have one person run to each station and hit the switches as needed, right? (It's been a while since I played it last) I remember I got through it by jamming cram up the noses of my runners and letting them get *a lot* done in each turn. Part of getting the job done on the harder difficulties is maximizing your action economy.

It's a tough fight, no doubt about it, but you should be pulling out all the stops to ensure your survival.

[What The Egad]

Originally posted by UnwiseTrout:

Wait, how are you down two party members? You've got to have one person jacked in, yeah, but then you just have to have one person run to each station and hit the switches as needed, right? (It's been a while since I played it last) I remember I got through it by jamming cram up the noses of my runners and letting them get *a lot* done in each turn. Part of getting the job done on the harder difficulties is maximizing your action economy.

It's a tough fight, no doubt about it, but you should be pulling out all the stops to ensure your survival.

There's two panels and two canisters in the room that you interact with to slow the panacea down. The way I figured was that two party memebers need to constantly be going back and forth from clicking the panels to then clicking the canisters. The objectives aren't quite clear at first, but this was the gist of what I understood had to be done in order to ensure the virus was not completely uploaded into the dragon.

I was able to do complete the mission by assigning Diedrich and Eiger to the canisters while using my character and Glory to hack away at everything else. My character was an Adept and I'd boosted Glory's melee capabilities and in every mission I'd done up until that point I'd found both of them to be the most reliable people in my party to actually hit anything and hit it effectively.

[Clockwork]

I can understand your point of view about RNGesus being harsh (ever had a heads or tails game where you always get the wrong face ?). That's why I tend to buff myself as much as possible (thank you Dietrich) to minimize the lack of luck.

Otherwise, I find it better to use your 4 members to quickly kill enemies on the last mission. That'll make Audran come out faster. And it'll also mean more firepower to take him out quickly.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=848212335
Although I was messing aroung in that screenshot. I left every other guys alive on purpose because I just wanted to kill Audran first, making things harder.

[UnwiseTrout]

Yeah, Glory is an incredibly useful character, especially on the harder difficulties, letting her dash up and slash people out of cover is really handy.