RNG discussions

[skaudus]

Yeah, the non-combat feats thread was a little derailed, but I did enjoy the subject, so here's another thread to continue.


I also like RNG in combat because it's a soft way to make the game more replayable. Better or worse rolls force me to adapt on the fly, which is great for testing my mettle as a player. This only works if the system has enough crutches to actually be able to beat the randomness. Since the rolls *are* different every time, it makes no two fights the exact same.

I am not a fan of rolling dice. I am a fan of making sure the dice rolls don't have to matter.

[skaudus]

Battle for Wesnoth is an amazing example where RNG is implemented precisely for that purpose. The game even shows you stats after every battle to show you how "lucky" you were, based on average rolls, and how much you deviated (for instance, by quicksaving). Given a large enough sample size, luck really does pale in comparison to tactics.

[Pink Eye]

Continuing from last thread:
>So in essence, if I am understanding it correctly, you're saying that your answer to the question "why do you prefer RNG-based combat to combat that's as deterministic as the non-combat route?" is "because I can use strategic positioning and consumable spam to make it relatively less deterministic," whereas of course such options don't really exist in the same way in a diplomatic route?

Precisely. If combat is more determinstic, it'd be boring. Besides, Colony Ship already is kind of determinstic. The enemy AI will always make the same moves. In contrast, Knights of the Chalice's (My favorite game of all time!) AI is very fun to play against. Because every play it makes is different in each consecutive run. In example this fight against fire elementals:
https://youtu.be/UG66wk081jY

[Pink Eye]

RNG in speech doesn't make sense at all anyways. You're not engaging in any tactical fight against the enemy.

[skaudus]

>Precisely. If combat is more determinstic, it'd be boring. Besides, Colony Ship already is kind of determinstic. The enemy AI will always make the same moves.

Bingo. Sneak in Colony Ship is also deterministic, but it is also influenced by a lot more factors (armour, takedown rating, noise, feats, sneak skill, gadgets), which means that if you run two different characters, you will likely have to employ different strategies. Doing the same run with the same character will yield the exact same result each time, which would get boring after a while.

[PirateMouse]

Perhaps, although I'd argue that with a random element in play, there's always potential for even your best tactics to fail to save you. Enough 1s in the right place and 100s in the other can lay the best-laid plans to waste, even though I'll agree that it's possible to more or less beat John Doe 100 percent of the time (but really, is that particularly impressive?).

Perhaps, though, the argument being made behind the argument, if only by implication, is that non-combat routes should be developed more, in order to make them as complex and therefore as tactical as the the combat route. Not, obviously, in this game—that ship (forgive me) has already sailed, and asking the devs to go back and completely redo whole systems in their current game would be ludicrous.

However, perhaps it's something to consider for future games. Or then again, perhaps not. I don't know the answers, or even that there particularly are any answers; I'm just throwing out thoughts here.

[PirateMouse]

Originally posted by Pink Eye:

RNG in speech doesn't make sense at all anyways. You're not engaging in any tactical fight against the enemy.

Aren't you, though? Diplomacy is often really just warfare that uses words rather than weapons. In reality, at least, it can be extremely tactical.

[Pink Eye]

I really like Skaudus's opening post, "I am not a fan of rolling dice. I am a fan of making sure the dice rolls don't have to matter." - that's my thought too.

[skaudus]

Vince did mention a while back that he brainstormed a way for a much, much more complex dialogue system. However, even conceptually, that is such a grand thing to implement. I can't think of any dialogue system in any game that would have the same level of depth as a run-of-the-mill turn-based combat system.

You'd need to write so many variables and so many lines. You can only push the limits of text-based stuff so far.


Actually, I do know of two surprisingly in-depth text quest systems that employ RNG to some extent.

The first is Space Rangers 2's text quests, but that game has so many mechanics it's a wonder it actually came out great (Three Stooges' Syndrome from the Simpsons). Still, something like the Prison quest is tons of fun.

The second is A Legionary's Life, a very old-school looking game that emulates the journey of a Legionary in the pre-Marian Roman army. Its skill checks are RNG based below a threshold, but it's extremely linear compared to anything ITS will likely be doing.

[Pink Eye]

Speaking of which. Any of you played Disco Elysium? This is related, trust me. Anyways, I haven't. But heard that game is pretty good with its speech based systems.

[skaudus]

Originally posted by Pink Eye:

Speaking of which. Any of you played Disco Elysium? This is related, trust me. Anyways, I haven't. But heard that game is pretty good with its speech based systems.

Played for about a quarter of the game, couldn't finish it for unrelated reasons. Always wanted to go back to it, and it reminds me of Colony Ship in many ways. I can't speak much of its system, but superficially at least it felt very similar to CS.

[Pink Eye]

I think the coolest thing I heard about Disco Elysium is that a speech failure is actually pretty entertaining because it opens up whole another chain of events. Instead of it being an auto game over.

[skaudus]

Originally posted by Pink Eye:

I think the coolest thing I heard about Disco Elysium is that a speech failure is actually pretty entertaining because it opens up whole another chain of events. Instead of it being an auto game over.

Ah, definitely. In the first act there is a particularly hilarious check, starting at 0:18.
https://youtu.be/JxWIjlGKwZA?t=18

Age of Decadence actually had some very interesting failure paths for the main quest, which ended up leading to exciting situations you could not otherwise have gotten to.

For instance, in the Maadoran Assassins' Guild path, if you don't find a way out of Levir's lair by yourself, he lets you go in exchange for a favour. Later on, he commissions you to betray your guild and you get to assassinate your guildmaster and lord Gaelius at the same time (you even get an achievement for it).

Another example is in the Ganezzar Thieves' Guild path, where if you don't kill Faelan and let yourself fall under his spell, Meru recruits you to lead all of the Aurelian forces into an ambush.


I really trust Vince to come up with the wackiest ♥♥♥♥ if given enough time and resources. It's the perfect writing blend, with just enough absurd but in-character humour to spice things up. By comparison, Disco Elysium went a little too pedal-to-the-metal.

[Patroklos]

Disco Elysium is amazing. That said, the strength is in the writing and the way that progression is intimately linked to role playing, and the fact that failure of a roll isn't always bad. Sometimes, failing a roll is the more amusing outcome. In a few cases, passing a roll locks you out of something that failing would enable. Some of the best lines are the results of failed rolls. Like "Would you like to have ♥♥♥♥ with me?" If failure weren't sometimes more interesting than success, the random dice rolls on skill checks would just mean save scumming or frustration. As it was, I usually ended up reloading most rolls between 30 and 70 percent, not to make sure I passed, but because I wanted to see both outcomes.

[Vince]

As mentioned previously, the combat system has a lot of variables, so RNG is merely a modifier not the main factor. The dialogue system (like all such systems) is very simple in comparison. Rolling for success makes little sense there (it might makes sense in games where diplomacy is flavor on the side, i.e. you play a capable fighter who fancies himself a diplomat but can easily defeat the enemies if diplomacy fails).

The only way to make it work is to design a tactical dialogue system with many variables, as many as in a good combat system. Then you'd 'attack' with your arguments trying to breach your opponent's defenses (the reason why not), weaken the resolve, increase doubts, etc. It could be a fun system but the major downside is that it would eliminate all written lines of dialogues because the system would require more options at any give time than any writer could account for.

[PirateMouse]

Originally posted by Vince:

the major downside is that it would eliminate all written lines of dialogues because the system would require more options at any give time than any writer could account for.

A good point, but what if the writing simply didn't try to account for every single moment but rather certain "milestones" in the argument? So you go through a few rounds of argumentation, and then the dialog kicks back in as we see your character making a reasoned argument (with dialog), and we see how Bob responds to your character's reasoning at that point. And then maybe it's back to a few more rounds of argumentation mechanics before the next bit of dialog kicks in.

As I recall, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI had a fairly interesting diplomacy mechanic. Granted, the dialog was essentially nothing in it, and I'm not arguing for adopting a mechanic quite like theirs per se, but there is certainly precedent at least for the concept of complicated and tactical diplomacy systems.