KickStarter Chaos Reborn - remake of Julian Gollop classic

[Niektory]

Spoiler

4: 1 / 46656 = 0.002143%
5: 6 / 46656 = 0.012860%
6: 21 / 46656 = 0.045010%
7: 56 / 46656 = 0.120027%
8: 133 / 46656 = 0.285065%
9: 282 / 46656 = 0.604424%
10: 536 / 46656 = 1.148834%
11: 926 / 46656 = 1.984739%
12: 1489 / 46656 = 3.191444%
13: 2216 / 46656 = 4.749657%
14: 3071 / 46656 = 6.582219%
15: 3986 / 46656 = 8.543381%
16: 4824 / 46656 = 10.339506%
17: 5426 / 46656 = 11.629801%
18: 5696 / 46656 = 12.208505%
19: 5470 / 46656 = 11.724108%
20: 4770 / 46656 = 10.223765%
21: 3686 / 46656 = 7.900377%
22: 2435 / 46656 = 5.219050%
23: 1220 / 46656 = 2.614883%
24: 406 / 46656 = 0.870199%

4 or higher: 46656 / 46656 = 100.000000%
5 or higher: 46655 / 46656 = 99.997857%
6 or higher: 46649 / 46656 = 99.984997%
7 or higher: 46628 / 46656 = 99.939986%
8 or higher: 46572 / 46656 = 99.819959%
9 or higher: 46439 / 46656 = 99.534894%
10 or higher: 46157 / 46656 = 98.930470%
11 or higher: 45621 / 46656 = 97.781636%
12 or higher: 44695 / 46656 = 95.796896%
13 or higher: 43206 / 46656 = 92.605453%
14 or higher: 40990 / 46656 = 87.855796%
15 or higher: 37919 / 46656 = 81.273577%
16 or higher: 33933 / 46656 = 72.730195%
17 or higher: 29109 / 46656 = 62.390689%
18 or higher: 23683 / 46656 = 50.760888%
19 or higher: 17987 / 46656 = 38.552383%
20 or higher: 12517 / 46656 = 26.828275%
21 or higher: 7747 / 46656 = 16.604510%
22 or higher: 4061 / 46656 = 8.704132%
23 or higher: 1626 / 46656 = 3.485082%
24 or higher: 406 / 46656 = 0.870199%

 

[Yeesh]

I didn't mean to imply I know the science of probability in any detail. I know there are several types, and that standard probability is the number of times you're getting a certain result divided by the total number of outcomes. But I was actually not talking about that, I was saying that psychologically, for most people it seems, a 70% chance of success seems like almost guaranteed success due to the relatively high probability of it, where in fact, the probability of failure is just as real. Perhaps people (including myself) have been spoiled by games employing success-centric pseudo-randomness, where the probability of success increases with each failed try. Hence the number of raging reviews saying the game cheats/ is unfair /is rage-inducing (the latter can be true occasionally). I'm not sure I explained myself clearly enough but fuck it.

I don't really follow your point. I've an interest and I looked at the game, but sure I was put off by reviews complaining of its heavily random mechanics. But it never occurred to me to question whether the people making that complaint somehow failed to understand the basic nature of probability.

Yes, 70% might feel disproportionally more like a sure thing than 65% than it really is, and yes most of us have on occasion fallen prey to the classic gambler's fallacy (this time it was heads, so next time it's more likely to be tails!). But how could you possibly connect these universal gotchas with one specific game without noticing that they're present in thousands of others? In computer terms, my understanding is that pseudo-randomness is more about the way a processor simulates a random choice, rather than some purposefully programmed hidden bonus given to players to help them succeed more often than the displayed percentages imply. Even though there might be such bonuses in some games, they certainly aren't there in the majority of the hundreds and thousands of other games in which folks experience probability rolls of one sort or another.

So when people complain about too much randomness in this particular game, I don't understand how you can deflect that by saying Well this game has REAL randomness and those people are all just spoiled by FAKE randomness in all the other games they're used to.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

So when people complain about too much randomness in this particular game, I don't understand how you can deflect that by saying Well this game has REAL randomness and those people are all just spoiled by FAKE randomness in all the other games they're used to.

I don't understand what you mean by "too much randomness". This game simply has randomness, whereas all other games seem to have pseudo-randomness and are thus (possibly) less rage-inducing. From my own experience of course. I didn't do any actual research, nor do I know for certain what actual randomness algorithm is used in most of the games I've played.

 

[tuluse]

In computer terms, my understanding is that pseudo-randomness is more about the way a processor simulates a random choice, rather than some purposefully programmed hidden bonus given to players to help them succeed more often than the displayed percentages imply. Even though there might be such bonuses in some games, they certainly aren't there in the majority of the hundreds and thousands of other games in which folks experience probability rolls of one sort or another.

It's actually very common, and it's not just cheating up (which is very common the listed percentage is simply lower than what's actually calculated) but that each failure increases the chance of success. You can see people meta game this in nuX-Com where if you miss a high percentage chance you should take a low percentage high impact action next to get a better result.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

that each failure increases the chance of success.

Yes, that's what I was talking about when I said success-centric, I just didn't have the chance to elaborate. For example, Dota also has that mechanic.

 

[Lucky]

I haven't played the multiplayer for this, but the campaign was rather boring to me from the start. I wasn't sure at first what to pin this on, but what clinched it for me was a battle about halfway on the first campaign map that I went in with a paladin and a giant in my retinue, while the other wizard started with nobody. From start to finish in that match I failed to cast a single spell no matter how much I buffed it and every illusion I cast was immediately sniffed out and dispelled. Meanwhile, the enemy summoned rats that proceed to one-shot my elevated paladin and giant and my remaining turns consisted of them moving up to my wizard, who still fails to cast a single spell, and one-shot him too.

Despite losing that badly I didn't care at all because it didn't feel like I had any part in my loss or needed to improve somewhere, nor did my loss feel like a setback, which got confirmed even more when I retried with the same strategy and stomped them. he same applied for the rest of the campaign until I eventually got too bored to continue and stopped. My impression of it is that in the campaign there's no incentive to care about whether you win or lose because each match feels the same, set apart only the occasional weird battle due to the odds involved, and the story is practically nonexistent. Against a human player I can see it being fun because of the stakes involved in each action and using the the odds to fuck with each other, but I wouldn't recommend getting this if you're only in it for the singleplayer. Granted, I haven't played it with the patch that removes the odds.

 

[Irenaeus]

It's mainly a multiplayer game, the single player is an after thought.

 

[Yeesh]

I don't understand what you mean by "too much randomness". This game simply has randomness, whereas all other games seem to have pseudo-randomness and are thus (possibly) less rage-inducing. From my own experience of course. I didn't do any actual research, nor do I know for certain what actual randomness algorithm is used in most of the games I've played.

You're seriously saying "all other games" have fake probabilities that under-estimate players chances of success to make them feel better? And therefor this one game confounds people simply by showing relatively accurate percentages, which people are so unused to that rate the game negatively for it?

It's actually very common, and it's not just cheating up (which is very common the listed percentage is simply lower than what's actually calculated) but that each failure increases the chance of success. You can see people meta game this in nuX-Com where if you miss a high percentage chance you should take a low percentage high impact action next to get a better result.

If you say this is so in the new X-Com, I can't pretend I know better. But I've seen plenty of games played at very high levels in the esteemed Codex LP section, and I can't remember this mechanism coming up in any games, let alone SO many games that one game which DOESN'T artificially inflate your success chances behind the scenes should stand out as a crazy and infuriating outlier .

 

[7h30n]

I don't understand what you mean by "too much randomness". This game simply has randomness, whereas all other games seem to have pseudo-randomness and are thus (possibly) less rage-inducing. From my own experience of course. I didn't do any actual research, nor do I know for certain what actual randomness algorithm is used in most of the games I've played.

You're seriously saying "all other games" have fake probabilities that under-estimate players chances of success to make them feel better? And therefor this one game confounds people simply by showing relatively accurate percentages, which people are so unused to that rate the game negatively for it?

It's actually very common, and it's not just cheating up (which is very common the listed percentage is simply lower than what's actually calculated) but that each failure increases the chance of success. You can see people meta game this in nuX-Com where if you miss a high percentage chance you should take a low percentage high impact action next to get a better result.

If you say this is so in the new X-Com, I can't pretend I know better. But I've seen plenty of games played at very high levels in the esteemed Codex LP section, and I can't remember this mechanism coming up in any games, let alone SO many games that one game which DOESN'T artificially inflate your success chances behind the scenes should stand out as a crazy and infuriating outlier .

I can vouch for at least Warcraft 3, Dota2, nuXCom (this was a particularly egregious case) do stuff like this. There are also various game development articles on randomness mechanisms which behave similarly. If I remember correctly, I've read that Uncharted series and Last of Us use such mechanisms in their random systems, which I find a bit odd since I didn't expect those games to have much randomness. As far as I can tell, it is very common practice for game randomness to be done this way. I believe you can also find articles about techniques on how to hide this fact from the player, so you don't get cases like nuXCom.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

I failed to cast a single spell no matter how much I buffed it and every illusion I cast was immediately sniffed out and dispelled. Meanwhile, the enemy summoned rats that proceed to one-shot my elevated paladin and giant and my remaining turns consisted of them moving up to my wizard, who still fails to cast a single spell, and one-shot him too

Exaggeration. There were ways to win that fight.

 

[Lucky]

Exaggeration. There were ways to win that fight.

No exaggeration. Every spell, no matter how good I made the odds, failed, every illusion was dispelled the following turn (and failed doing anything when summoned) and every enemy attack was successful. That never happened again to that extent, but the point isn't that the battle was indicative of how campaign battles usually go but how losing failed to affect me in any way. Similarly, I didn't have any fun winning and stopped after going through a couple of the campaign maps because of bored I was. Who knows, maybe it gets super fun later on, but I'm not going to check if that's the case.

It's mainly a multiplayer game, the single player is an after thought.

I know, that's how I played the original and I didn't particularly enjoy the singleplayer for that back then either. The inclusion of a campaign gave me hopes that they might have improved on this this time around.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Who knows, maybe it gets super fun later on

Not really, the campaign is p. banal. The first, say, three maps can be sort of fun because they are compact, but then it just gets tedious with multiple enemy castles spawning multiple roaming wizards coming in through multiple paths, and respawn points being placed in very inconvenient places, so eeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[MrBuzzKill]

odds

Try the Law mode.

Spoiler

Also, kind of ironic considering your username

 

[Yeesh]

I can vouch for at least Warcraft 3, Dota2, nuXCom (this was a particularly egregious case) do stuff like this. There are also various game development articles on randomness mechanisms which behave similarly. If I remember correctly, I've read that Uncharted series and Last of Us use such mechanisms in their random systems, which I find a bit odd since I didn't expect those games to have much randomness. As far as I can tell, it is very common practice for game randomness to be done this way. I believe you can also find articles about techniques on how to hide this fact from the player, so you don't get cases like nuXCom.

Lacking any research into this now-verified conspiracy I will concede.

I was wrong to challenge the not-at-all ridiculous assertion that all other games display incorrect odds so as to hide players' true, inflated chance to succeed so they like the game more. This one game is unjustly criticized for an over-reliance on RNG when in fact what's happening is that people just can't handle a game where a 70% chance of success actually means a 70% of success, since (again) no other game has such correctly displayed odds.

I will try the game out next time it goes on sale, and experience this new type of gameplay.

 

[7h30n]

I can vouch for at least Warcraft 3, Dota2, nuXCom (this was a particularly egregious case) do stuff like this. There are also various game development articles on randomness mechanisms which behave similarly. If I remember correctly, I've read that Uncharted series and Last of Us use such mechanisms in their random systems, which I find a bit odd since I didn't expect those games to have much randomness. As far as I can tell, it is very common practice for game randomness to be done this way. I believe you can also find articles about techniques on how to hide this fact from the player, so you don't get cases like nuXCom.

Lacking any research into this now-verified conspiracy I will concede.

I was wrong to challenge the not-at-all ridiculous assertion that all other games display incorrect odds so as to hide players' true, inflated chance to succeed so they like the game more. This one game is unjustly criticized for an over-reliance on RNG when in fact what's happening is that people just can't handle a game where a 70% chance of success actually means a 70% of success, since (again) no other game has such correctly displayed odds.

I will try the game out next time it goes on sale, and experience this new type of gameplay.

Yeah, I should have put some citation.... So, I've updated the post with links on mentioned games which explain how their generators work. Though I wasn't able to find the exact article/video/post-mortem for Uncharted series.

 

[Raghar]

All games have random generators that can create long repeated strings of zeroes. It's just some games are thinking these strings of zeroes are bad state, and have special protection against repeated strings. (When someone opens a chest, then opens chest in second house and finds the same content, it feels quite unrealistic.)

Now that 6 dices remove 2, is actually somehow funny to try at hand.
As you can easily know, the result range is 4-24.
Obviously without removal of two lowest dices the center will be 14. Now rolling additional two dices would obviously shift the distribution upward. (which is reason why they are rolling 4D6 remove lowest dice. You can have proper heroes, and still roll them.)

With only 4 dices, the highest roll is just 1/6^4, which is crazily low outcome, real games wants critical chance between 1/20 and 1/100. But with two more dices, there are two more chances for highest roll.

To roll 4, obviously all dices must roll 1.
To roll 5, one dice must be 2, which happens in 6 cases.

And then we have that roll 24 which is 406, but how did you get that 406 cases? One of it is obviously all 6 on dies. But then you have 405 other cases. I think the rest can be easily calculated by any high school student. So I wouldn't bother to show the rest. Game developers simply write down a program to find stuff. (I kinda miss these garage games high school dropout, that were quite competent. Nowadays you can see people who mechanically learned stuff in the school, but didn't think about it.)

 

[tuluse]

I can vouch for at least Warcraft 3, Dota2, nuXCom (this was a particularly egregious case) do stuff like this. There are also various game development articles on randomness mechanisms which behave similarly. If I remember correctly, I've read that Uncharted series and Last of Us use such mechanisms in their random systems, which I find a bit odd since I didn't expect those games to have much randomness. As far as I can tell, it is very common practice for game randomness to be done this way. I believe you can also find articles about techniques on how to hide this fact from the player, so you don't get cases like nuXCom.

Lacking any research into this now-verified conspiracy I will concede.

I was wrong to challenge the not-at-all ridiculous assertion that all other games display incorrect odds so as to hide players' true, inflated chance to succeed so they like the game more. This one game is unjustly criticized for an over-reliance on RNG when in fact what's happening is that people just can't handle a game where a 70% chance of success actually means a 70% of success, since (again) no other game has such correctly displayed odds.

I will try the game out next time it goes on sale, and experience this new type of gameplay.

I don't think *every* other game lies about probabilities, but it is common enough.

A another reason people feel this game is so random is that it's very high stakes. You can lose because opponent hits a single 30% or 40% chance while you miss say 3 70%s. Most games you'd just lose some hp or units and be able to recover, but your wizard gets hit and it's gameover.

 

[Lucky]

Try the Law mode.

Spoiler

Also, kind of ironic considering your username

Judging by what Darth Roxor said, you could say I was lucky not to finish the campaign. Eh? Eh?

Multiplayer's been fun, though.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

Try the Law mode.

Spoiler

Also, kind of ironic considering your username

Judging by what Darth Roxor said, you could say I was lucky not to finish the campaign. Eh? Eh?

Multiplayer's been fun, though.

I recently finished the campaign and it was extremely meh. There's almost no carry-over between the separate scenarios, some characters do (seem to?) return but you don't care about them. I can't remember a single name. But it doesn't matter because it's just an excuse to trudge through the map.
Played a few duels online and got my ass handed to me, haven't played it since.

 

[Great Deceiver]

So I haven't played this in about a year and decided to give it another try.

I haven't read the entire thread but what the fuck is this "Law" mode? Gollop is a strong designer and Chaos Reborn had a strong design. Why cater to whiny crybabies who post negative Steam reviews?

How does multiplayer work now? "Law" can only be matched up vs. other "Law" players? It's a terrible idea to have any kind of artificial divide in your playerbase.

What a shame.

 

[ColCol]

When this game was in early development it was amazing. Yet, Gollop was worried about maintaining a long term playerbase and it led to a bunch of decisions that weakened the game.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I feel that trying to cater to short attention span, fickle retards who watch streams all day is an obviously losing proposition. I understand Gollop wants his game to be popular, but he should embrace the fact that it's a niche title and cultivate his niche audience, building upon a strong foundation and eventually developing sequels. This idea of a "permanent" game is pretty ridiculous - only very few games can afford that luxury. Iterative design is probably the way to go.

At the end of the day, you might get a few more players to the detriment of your established playerbase, but those new players will probably leave after a couple of matches anyway and go back to Hearthstone, old players will be disgruntled by new changes and everybody loses as a result.