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Roll of the dice (xcom and that)

Started by MojoJojo, November 02, 2020, 02:55:31 PM

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MojoJojo

Over in the US election thread:

Quote from: Zetetic on November 02, 2020, 10:44:51 AM
No, lower difficulties in XCOM: EU onwards include hidden modifiers, including the streak-based ones I've described.

I pretty sure I can dig out the relevant bit of code, since it's implemented in UnrealScript.

(Mods can expose or remove these of course, but I suspect relatively few streamers playing with modded XCOM games are playing at difficulties where it matters.)
I suspect that an "advantage"-type system like you describe doesn't really manage that, and the streak-based (and other context-sensitive things like how big your current squad) modifiers might well be a more satisfying solution for people playing at lower difficulties.
Quote from: MojoJojo on November 02, 2020, 10:51:26 AM
Quote from: Zetetic on November 02, 2020, 10:44:51 AM
No, lower difficulties in XCOM: EU onwards include hidden modifiers, including the streak based ones I've described.

Ah, well, that's a terrible bit of game design.

Quote from: Zetetic on November 02, 2020, 10:52:48 AM
Why do you think this?

I believe the actual chance-to-hit is always at least as high as the displayed chance, if that matters.

I think it's a neater solution to modifying difficulty than just flat health/aim bonuses. (But then part of me really likes the idea of genuine luck modifiers in certain types of games, and trying to think about what good/fun implementations of fiddling probability distributions accordingly look like.)

My initial "terrible" comment was a bit knee jerk. I think I dislike the idea of a game that shows you something but is actually lying. I would have no problem with this if it was displayed and made clear to the player. Although I guess the idea in Xcom is to reduce player frustration, and showing the bonuses they are getting probably doesn't help that.

A more elaborate argument would be that it doesn't teach the player how to play. As well as encouraging humans poor intuitive understanding of odds, certain tactics will work better because of the hidden bonuses. For example, having all your people taking crappy low chance to hit shots is much better with the hidden modifiers because by the time you get to the last soldier they'll actually have a good chance. And at some level a new player will internalise the success they have with that tactic. But if they then move up a difficulty level they'll find it doesn't work as well and there is no indication as to why.

(I looked it up. In Xcom EU, the hidden bonuses only kick when your squad is 4 or less in number. In Xcom 2, you get hidden bonuses all the time at all difficulties except the highest, and additional bonuses if your squad is 4 or less. I'd forgotten the streamer I was watching was playing the Long War mod, which probably gets rid of the hidden bonuses).

I think this all comes down to single dice rolls in Xcom being very high impact, and this can be very frustrating to players. Those high impact dice rolls are what make Xcom rewarding though, so the developers have tried to relieve players frustrations by quietly cheating for them.

Probably worth mentioning Into the Breach. It has very little dice rolling - in general, you know exactly what and how much damage units will take every time you make an action. The exception is when a city is damaged -cities are effectively your overall health points. When something hits a city, there is a small chance that it won't take any damage. Players don't mind unlikely things happening if they are good things.

bgmnts

Yeah older rpgs used to use the DandD d20 system but there was never any visual indicators to represent it. It could get frustrating.

earl_sleek

Quote from: MojoJojo on November 02, 2020, 02:55:31 PM
My initial "terrible" comment was a bit knee jerk. I think I dislike the idea of a game that shows you something but is actually lying. I would have no problem with this if it was displayed and made clear to the player. Although I guess the idea in Xcom is to reduce player frustration, and showing the bonuses they are getting probably doesn't help that.

Ars Technica reprinted a chapter from Sid Meier's memoirs earlier this year where he discusses how players of Civilization Revolution were getting frustrated because they didn't understand probability:

Quote
But we thought maybe it would help if we showed the players their odds before the fighting started, so they could understand that there were real numbers behind these unlikely battles, and not just a vindictive, petty AI.

We were wrong. Not only were they unimpressed by the long-odds evidence, they fought back even harder on the short-odds information they could now see.

"Sid, the game is messed up. I had this battle with a Barbarian, right? The odds were three to one—and I lost!"

"Well, yes," I would agree. "Sometimes that's going to happen."

"No, no, you don't understand. Three is big. One is small. I had the big number."

"Sure," I'd say, quite reasonably given the circumstances. "But look over here. This other time, you had the tiny little one, and the other guy had the big gigantic three, and you beat him."

"That's different! I had clever tactics, a solid strategy, clean living, and a healthy diet—there are a lot of complex variables to take into account, you know."

It didn't matter how many different ways this conversation played out, I couldn't convince our testers that it made sense for them to lose a three-to-one battle roughly one-fourth of the time. Past certain odds, people expected to win no matter what but also to occasionally prevail if they were the underdog in the same situation.

People are happier if things happen the way they expect them to, not the way the world really works.

Zetetic

Quote from: MojoJojo on November 02, 2020, 02:55:31 PM
For example, having all your people taking crappy low chance to hit shots is much better with the hidden modifiers because by the time you get to the last soldier they'll actually have a good chance.
A slightly better chance - the bonuses aren't huge.

Quoteencouraging humans poor intuitive understanding of odds,
Maybe. I think more generously, there's also an issue with a disconnect between a lot of probabilistic mechanics, particularly ones that involve repeated actions, and what they represent. XCOM exacerbates this with how it compresses and expands time, and how the order and dependency of actions in the game don't really resemble what they're modelling.

QuoteAnd at some level a new player will internalise the success they have with that tactic. But if they then move up a difficulty level they'll find it doesn't work as well and there is no indication as to why.
In practice, I think XCOM's difficulty levels are quite well balanced to allow utterly inexperienced players to engage with the game in such a way that they can learn its systems and what tactics work within those systems. The nudges to probability are quite small - and people are generally quite surprised when they discover them.

I actually dislike some of the health-based stuff far more, because it changes the character of the game considerably between difficulty levels.

Quote(I looked it up. In Xcom EU, the hidden bonuses only kick when your squad is 4 or less in number.
I think it's more complicated than that, with additional bonuses kicking in when you've suffered injuries for small squads on Easy mode.

Zetetic

I wonder how well fuzzy descriptions might work in these sorts of games, rather than numerical odds or percentages. Bet that would annoy the hell out of the right sort of people.

And then you could have that altered by perception and luck-type stats in some cases. (The second is something I've long wanted to try to mod into XCOM 2 - have soldiers have an entirely hidden luck stat that alters all their rolls.)

evilcommiedictator

I've read it a few times, but the detail is here:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/secret-dice-rolls-xcom-enemy-within
QuoteAs well as giving a break to players who really can't stand firing over aliens' heads, the designer also explained how certain shot chances are not what they seem. There is, in effect, a secret "luck" modifier that can overide the shot chance displayed on screen.

"On Normal and Easy modes, there's a bad streak breaker," says Gupta. "It's stronger on easy. On Easy, it's very hard to actually lose soldiers, and the fewer soldiers you have the stronger this effect becomes, so if you start losing it builds to compensate. Of course, the aliens themselves have weaker stats on Easy and Normal too, and on Classic or higher difficulty settings this effect doesn't exist. Believe me though, on Easy, if you miss three times in a row you're not going to miss your fourth shot. It can be a 1% chance to hit and you're not going to miss that shot."

Humans have issues with probability and outcomes - roll a dice once, you roll a 6. 1/6 chance. Roll it again, for a 6, another 1/6 chance. The probably though of considering those two events together is 1/36.

In theory, over a long time frame, you will hit 70% shots 70% of the time. That doesn't preclude missing three in a row, because at the third miss, it's still just a 30% chance to miss, however all three in a row missing is 2.7%

(See Also: election modelling - models are only as good as their inputs, and they're estimates to begin with, to give what smart people think is how a population will behave.)

MojoJojo

Quote from: Zetetic on November 02, 2020, 05:32:39 PM
I wonder how well fuzzy descriptions might work in these sorts of games, rather than numerical odds or percentages. Bet that would annoy the hell out of the right sort of people.

And then you could have that altered by perception and luck-type stats in some cases. (The second is something I've long wanted to try to mod into XCOM 2 - have soldiers have an entirely hidden luck stat that alters all their rolls.)

I remember in the early 00s the idea of hiding the specifics of your game mechanics was something developers talked about in interviews. It seems to have been forgotten now as an idea, probably because the internet/streamers will share the details no matter how well you hide them.

Slay the Spire has a few examples. Every card reward that doesn't offer a rare card increases the chance that a future reward will offer a rare card. It's sort of important in reducing the luck in runs (as it reduces the variance in how many rare cards you'll be offered), but it does make a difference in how you choose your path and you're only going to know about it off the internet. It also means the artefact that that "Triples the chance you are offered a rare card" actually does something more complicated.

I think the fact it's never stated when rares are offered makes this a lot less offensive than Xcom's lying.

Quote from: evilcommiedictator on November 02, 2020, 11:58:08 PM
I've read it a few times, but the detail is here:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/secret-dice-rolls-xcom-enemy-within will behave.)

That's Enemy Within - I think it's clear they messed around with it and it's different in every version, although broadly the same. One thing that's occurred to me is that these hidden mechanics allow the developers to fine tune difficulty/gameplay in a quick manner. With visible changes you have to let your testers learn and adjust to changes before you can assess their affect, but with hidden changes you can get feedback straight away.

evilcommiedictator

I can't find specifically what you mean, but it looks similar to the above xcom 1 mechanic, with more detail on xcom 2 here
https://www.giantbomb.com/xcom-2/3030-49817/forums/xcom-2-is-un-fair-1792143/
and Jake Solomon talking about it here
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/266891/Jake_Solomon_explains_the_careful_use_of_randomness_in_XCOM_2.php
Quote"The fact is, we're trying to entertain players," said Solomon. "So how do you deal with a player who's missed an 85 percent shot? Emotionally, they're probably strained. We don't want the players missing multiple 85 percent shots, because then the game starts to feel punitive. That number boils down to a very simple thing on the UI, but our experience tells us that players have invested a lot of emotion in it."

So how did Firaxis make sure XCOM 2 wouldn't unduly batter the psychologies of their player base? Well, the calculations that go into each shot aren't as heartless as you might think. "There's actually a number of things that tweak that number in the player's favor at the lower difficulty settings," said Solomon. "That 85 percent isn't actually 85 percent. Behind the scenes, we wanted to match the player's psychological feeling about that number." That 85 percent, according to Solomon, is often closer to 95 percent.

Although, you could just spend 200+ hours playing Long War 1 & 2 where that crap is removed too :)

Zetetic

Quote from: MojoJojo on November 03, 2020, 11:12:14 AM
I remember in the early 00s the idea of hiding the specifics of your game mechanics was something developers talked about in interviews. It seems to have been forgotten now as an idea, probably because the internet/streamers will share the details no matter how well you hide them.

And yet most people don't really understand the XCOM fiddles and it doesn't present a problem for their enjoyment of the game - quite the opposite. (Although in this case because the fiddles are specifically about providing a more forgiving experience, it's less relevant to streamers presenting as skilled anyway.)

That you can reduce this stuff, inevitably, to algorithms seems to be miss the point. You can decompile Hidden Agenda, for example, if you like, but the control of information available to the player is a fundamental part of the game - looking into the workings changes the game, for better or worse

Which is not to say that it's not interesting why some people are so upset by hidden information, particularly in cases like XCOM where it pretends to be very transparent. The different aims and expectations are fascinating.


Zetetic

Think that the iteration/balance point is interesting. Clearly one of the problems with balancing XCOM is that you're dealing with fairly small damage/health/mobility pools with discrete units - it's very easy to break the game feel by fiddling with these, while tweaks to the probability stuff is a lot more granular.