Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

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Autoclave
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Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by Autoclave »

I don't like the current system where we have 4 (!!!) Separate rolls for damage calculation.
1. Hit roll
2. Damage roll
3. Crit roll
4. Dodge roll

What are PI trying to achive here? Make the damage calculation even more unpredictable? Guys, guys, this is basically damage roulette what you have right now. It's counter-intuitive the way how crit and dodge are separate rolls, and how they sometimes cancel each other and sometimes do not.

Just have a look at the terrible mess you have designed, a random example:
85% Hit chance, 10% graze band, 5-7 damage roll, 25% Dodge, 35% Crit.
Can you just grasp the pure randomness of this thing? How much damage can you expect from this shot?

Do I have to calculate the formulas all by myself with every such shot?? Just look at what supposedly I need to calculate to find out the chance to deal normal 5-7 damage:

(Hit-Graze)*(Dodge*Crit+NoDodge*NoCrit)+2*Graze*NoDodge*Crit
(85%-10%)*(25%*35%+75%*65%)+2*10%*75%*35% = 48% Chance that I will do 5-7 damage.

Jesus Christ Pavonis! And I am not even sure that these calculation are correct, your system might be even more convoluted than that!
Stop this complete non-sense and make the game more easily understanble regarding what chances the players have.

Let the Crit and Dodge cancel each other in one single roll. Let us use crit as a tool to deal with dodge.
JulianSkies
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by JulianSkies »

For what's worth the information the screen displays is the finalized value with the exception of the graze band on the accuracy.
Hyzersurface
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by Hyzersurface »

I think turning off the graze band makes things a little clearer. I just experienced a 100% shot miss thanks to that.

All in all, I don't like the graze mechanic of xcom 2, which makes the things even more unpredictable. I enjoy in the zone snipers of lw 1, while don't like them so much in lw 2 because of the dodge.
MacroNova
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by MacroNova »

In your example - 85% to hit, 25% dodge, 35% crit - you actually have a 67% chance to do at least 5-7 damage, which is the number we care about.

You need to consider cases where a regular hit (75%) fails both the crit and dodge rolls, succeeds at both the crit and dodge rolls, or succeeds at crit but fails at dodge (best case scenario).

You also need to consider the case where a graze (20%) is converted to a regular hit by succeeding at crit and failing dodge.

I guess it kinda sucks that an 85% to hit is only a 67% to do at least base damage, but that's better than 48%! If you consider grazes, then any crit/dodge variation of a regular hit (75%) will do some damage, and the 20% graze will do damage if the crit and dodge both fail, both succeed, or crit succeeds but dodge fails. That adds up to about a 92% chance to not miss completely.
Fictitious1267
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by Fictitious1267 »

I agree with you. On paper it sounds like there is such grand variance that adds so much to the game. But when I'm playing the game, what I want to know is the likelihood of my 3-5 damage shot killing a guy with 3 hp. So, functionally, it makes for an incredibly frustrating experience.
rlkr83
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by rlkr83 »

Dodge and crit are opposite ends of a damage roll spectrum, not qualities with the potential to overlap. The separate roll system creates too many extraneous possibilities and therefore skews the probability of the final results in a meaningless way. The separate roll system only makes sense if dodge and crit are stats intrinsic to the units that are derived from some base stats, so that better units have a better chance to crit/dodge against a worse unit. That is not the case, and so taking those rolls out of the damage roll achieves nothing.
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3tamatulg
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by 3tamatulg »

I disagree that it's a mess, but it would be good to see an extra %age or two on the fire pane. %chance for each damage number maybe.

like a little line which goes "50% 0 ; 10% 2 ; 30% 3-5 ; 10% 8"
JulianSkies
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by JulianSkies »

Fictitious1267 wrote:I agree with you. On paper it sounds like there is such grand variance that adds so much to the game. But when I'm playing the game, what I want to know is the likelihood of my 3-5 damage shot killing a guy with 3 hp. So, functionally, it makes for an incredibly frustrating experience.
That likelihood is literally "(Displayed accuracy)-(Graze Band)" though. Unless it's T3 Guardians since they have Evasive so they force-dodge the first hit (that'll always trip you up but it's a unit's special ability)
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Devon_v
Long War EU Crew
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by Devon_v »

I agree. The game makes one roll. All factors have been mapped to the 1-100 outcome in advance. Perfect Information just doesn't break it down properly, but that's PI's fault.

If you have a displayed 73% to hit, then you have a 63% chance of doing at least 3 damage. You also have an 83% chance of doing at least 1, which can be very relevant dealing with foes who just wouldn't die to the previous attack.

The graze band, at it's default +-10, is the only thing to account for.
wobuffet
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by wobuffet »

Devon_v wrote:If you have a displayed 73% to hit, then you have a 63% chance of doing at least 3 damage. You also have an 83% chance of doing at least 1, which can be very relevant dealing with foes who just wouldn't die to the previous attack.
This is just unnecessarily complicated. Either change the UI so it says "63% chance of hit, 20% chance of graze" or just use a simpler system like the one I floated here:
http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 15&t=25170


Anyone sympathetic to the OP's concerns here might be interested in this rework too: it lets increasing Crit decrease the probability of a Graze result, replacing the "Graze is almost always 20% likely to happen" phenomenon we see now.
JulianSkies
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by JulianSkies »

wobuffet wrote:
Devon_v wrote:If you have a displayed 73% to hit, then you have a 63% chance of doing at least 3 damage. You also have an 83% chance of doing at least 1, which can be very relevant dealing with foes who just wouldn't die to the previous attack.
This is just unnecessarily complicated. Either change the UI so it says "63% chance of hit, 20% chance of graze" or just use a simpler system like the one I floated here:
http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 15&t=25170


Anyone sympathetic to the OP's concerns here might be interested in this rework too: it lets increasing Crit decrease the probability of a Graze result, replacing the "Graze is almost always 20% likely to happen" phenomenon we see now.
This is actually a fault of the ui code for displaying hit chance, in a part that is not really accessible to modders. The hit chance is the only part of the display that is NOT pulled from the finalized values
darkerevent
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by darkerevent »

Long War 1 fan here, now playing through LW2 concurrently with my partner. We're both fans of strategy and tactics games, and we both agree that the separate rolls feel pretty terrible, and are detracting from the experience of what is otherwise a pretty fun and deep tactical combat system.

To my mind, the #1 reason why this feels so bad is that the shot preview interface doesn't reflect the probabilities correctly. It definitely doesn't take the graze band into account, and it doesn't inform the player of whether their accuracy is far enough over 100% to negate the odds of a graze due to the band.

On paper, I like the graze band as a concept, but I don't like missing "100%" shots (which has happened due to graze band + dodge joining forces to demote a shot twice). The degree of "bad user experience" when that happens is pretty high, and for me it has negated everything that at first seemed fun about the graze band.

At present, both myself and my partner (with whom I play LW2 a lot) would prefer a more intuitive Fire Emblem-esque "Attacker's Crit minus Defender's Dodge" crit chance system, where a positive outcome to that equation grants a chance to promote damage via critting, while a negative number grants a chance to demote via grazing. If I knew how to mod the game to make that happen right now, I would do so without a second thought, since it would make the gameplay a lot more intuitive. I don't even think that's necessarily the ideal solution, but it would be a readily comprehensible one for someone who's familiar with crit vs crit avoidance mechanics from other games.

If the current system is going to stay around, then I at least want to be able to see the actual odds of a hit, miss, crit, and graze properly reflected in the shot preview UI (with the graze band and all possible damage promotion and demotion outcomes taken into account) so that I can make an informed decision without needing to do probability math every time I want to take a shot against a viper in low cover. The fact I currently have to do that tends to ruin the pacing and the immersion for me.

If it's not possible to do that because of how the game engine is structured, then I would rather remove dodge as a stat, give dodge-based enemies like Vipers a bunch of Defense instead, and use combat rolls akin to XCOM 1's.
fowlJ
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by fowlJ »

darkerevent wrote: On paper, I like the graze band as a concept, but I don't like missing "100%" shots (which has happened due to graze band + dodge joining forces to demote a shot twice).
If you see this again, take note of it and submit it as a bug report, because this should be impossible. Dodge is already accounted for in the to-hit summary (against a Viper with a 100% base shot chance it should have read 'Dodge -3' or so in the list of modifiers), so if that introduced a chance of missing the shot shouldn't have said 100% in the first place.

Really, the UI does most of the math already - the final shot chance display should be increased by 10%, and it doesn't tell you the exact chance of a shot grazing (which, neither did vanilla), but hit chance otherwise accounts for dodge and critical chance accounts for both dodge and hit chance (giving the 'per shot' crit chance like vanilla X2 instead of the 'per hit' crit chance of X1).
darkerevent
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by darkerevent »

fowlJ wrote:If you see this again, take note of it and submit it as a bug report, because this should be impossible. Dodge is already accounted for in the to-hit summary (against a Viper with a 100% base shot chance it should have read 'Dodge -3' or so in the list of modifiers), so if that introduced a chance of missing the shot shouldn't have said 100% in the first place.

Really, the UI does most of the math already - the final shot chance display should be increased by 10%, and it doesn't tell you the exact chance of a shot grazing (which, neither did vanilla), but hit chance otherwise accounts for dodge and critical chance accounts for both dodge and hit chance (giving the 'per shot' crit chance like vanilla X2 instead of the 'per hit' crit chance of X1).
*nods* Both the shot preview and Perfect Information's little popup blurb said "100% hit," but the shot definitely missed. If it happens again I'll try to get some kind of useful footage/save file of it.

I haven't really played vanilla XCOM 2, so I'm not entirely sure what you mean about "per shot" versus "per hit." I had assumed that the displayed crit percentage was predicated on the assumption that you actually hit the target (just like in XCOM 1 and in all other tactical games that I've played that involve critical hits). So, I had been assuming that 80% hit 25% crit meant, "You'll hit this shot 4 out of 5 times that you attempt it. In addition, IF AND ONLY IF you successfully hit the target, you will promote one out of four of those hits to a critical." Is that not the case?

Also, if the dodge roll is already partially baked into the stated to-hit calculation, then what is the significance of the Dodge number that's displayed in the shot preview? (Like with crit above, my assumption had been that the stated Dodge percentage in the preview is the % chance to demote a crit to a hit, a hit to a graze, or a graze-banded graze to a miss. Is that also inaccurate?)

If my assumptions here are wrong, then I definitely want to see all of these systems be made more intuitive to understand, because it's not like how LW1 or most other tactics games that I'm aware of do the math and associated projections, nor is it what I would expect after a quick reading of the explanation of how dodge and crit work on the Ufopaedia wiki for LW2.
fowlJ
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by fowlJ »

darkerevent wrote: I haven't really played vanilla XCOM 2, so I'm not entirely sure what you mean about "per shot" versus "per hit." I had assumed that the displayed crit percentage was predicated on the assumption that you actually hit the target (just like in XCOM 1 and in all other tactical games that I've played that involve critical hits).
I'm not exactly sure why Firaxis changed it, because I think most people probably assume it works the way, but in XCOM 2 it was changed to be independent of hitting the target - if you have a 10% crit chance it means that 10% of the time when you hit the 'shoot' button you will get a critical hit, regardless of your hit chance. In LW2 it works the 'classic' way, but is still displayed the X2 way, so if you have a 'base' crit chance of 10% and a hit chance of 50%, the UI should display that you have 5% critical chance with a 'Hit Chance -5' modifier in the breakdown.
darkerevent wrote: Also, if the dodge roll is already partially baked into the stated to-hit calculation, then what is the significance of the Dodge number that's displayed in the shot preview? (Like with crit above, my assumption had been that the stated Dodge percentage in the preview is the % chance to demote a crit to a hit, a hit to a graze, or a graze-banded graze to a miss. Is that also inaccurate?)
If you're using Perfect Information (which I don't think is 100% accurate with LW2's changes, so that could possibly be why you're seeing some odd numbers) I believe there will be two different 'Dodge' numbers for a given shot - the one that displays to the right of the hit chance should be the chance to downgrade the hit, as you expect (it is added by Perfect Information, though, so if that mod isn't reading everything correctly it could be off), while the one I was referring to is the one in the list of modifiers for the shot, which refers specifically to the chance that dodge will cause you to actually miss a shot (by way of an enemy dodging a graze).
Autoclave
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by Autoclave »

Thanks for all the replies, I see I am not the only one concerned about the difficulties with UI. May be ask Firaxis to do something about it?
darkerevent
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by darkerevent »

fowlJ wrote:I'm not exactly sure why Firaxis changed it, because I think most people probably assume it works the way, but in XCOM 2 it was changed to be independent of hitting the target - if you have a 10% crit chance it means that 10% of the time when you hit the 'shoot' button you will get a critical hit, regardless of your hit chance. In LW2 it works the 'classic' way, but is still displayed the X2 way, so if you have a 'base' crit chance of 10% and a hit chance of 50%, the UI should display that you have 5% critical chance with a 'Hit Chance -5' modifier in the breakdown.
Oh dear. Vanilla X2's system sounds terrible. D:

Knowing all of this will make it easier to read the current UI. If anyone active about editing the Ufopaedia wiki is reading this, can we get some kind of update to the LW2 Mechanics article to reflect this? Currently the article talks about the math but doesn't explain that the UI doesn't reflect said math (unless I missed it).
fowlJ wrote:If you're using Perfect Information (which I don't think is 100% accurate with LW2's changes, so that could possibly be why you're seeing some odd numbers) I believe there will be two different 'Dodge' numbers for a given shot - the one that displays to the right of the hit chance should be the chance to downgrade the hit, as you expect (it is added by Perfect Information, though, so if that mod isn't reading everything correctly it could be off), while the one I was referring to is the one in the list of modifiers for the shot, which refers specifically to the chance that dodge will cause you to actually miss a shot (by way of an enemy dodging a graze).
That's sad to hear, I loved the PI second wave option in LW1. This causes me to consider uninstalling PI until I have a better handle on what's going on with the hit chances.

Seeing a native version of PI implemented into the options menu of LW2 would definitely be good for sometime down the road. When I'm learning a new game/campaign I really like being able to see accurate enemy shot odds so that I can get a more empiraclly grounded understanding of what I'm doing right or wrong.
bountygiver
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by bountygiver »

you can get the LW1 version of perfect information with EU aim rolls mod, remember to follow the instructions in the config before using it with LW2
JulianSkies
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by JulianSkies »

darkerevent wrote:
fowlJ wrote:I'm not exactly sure why Firaxis changed it, because I think most people probably assume it works the way, but in XCOM 2 it was changed to be independent of hitting the target - if you have a 10% crit chance it means that 10% of the time when you hit the 'shoot' button you will get a critical hit, regardless of your hit chance. In LW2 it works the 'classic' way, but is still displayed the X2 way, so if you have a 'base' crit chance of 10% and a hit chance of 50%, the UI should display that you have 5% critical chance with a 'Hit Chance -5' modifier in the breakdown.
Oh dear. Vanilla X2's system sounds terrible. D:

Knowing all of this will make it easier to read the current UI. If anyone active about editing the Ufopaedia wiki is reading this, can we get some kind of update to the LW2 Mechanics article to reflect this? Currently the article talks about the math but doesn't explain that the UI doesn't reflect said math (unless I missed it).
fowlJ wrote:If you're using Perfect Information (which I don't think is 100% accurate with LW2's changes, so that could possibly be why you're seeing some odd numbers) I believe there will be two different 'Dodge' numbers for a given shot - the one that displays to the right of the hit chance should be the chance to downgrade the hit, as you expect (it is added by Perfect Information, though, so if that mod isn't reading everything correctly it could be off), while the one I was referring to is the one in the list of modifiers for the shot, which refers specifically to the chance that dodge will cause you to actually miss a shot (by way of an enemy dodging a graze).
That's sad to hear, I loved the PI second wave option in LW1. This causes me to consider uninstalling PI until I have a better handle on what's going on with the hit chances.

Seeing a native version of PI implemented into the options menu of LW2 would definitely be good for sometime down the road. When I'm learning a new game/campaign I really like being able to see accurate enemy shot odds so that I can get a more empiraclly grounded understanding of what I'm doing right or wrong.
Vanilla system wasn't terrible at all! It was absolutely and perfectly intuitive. If you were playing a tabletop instead of rolling one die to see if you hit and then another to see if you crit you just roll one die and look, is it under the hit chance? It's a hit. Is it under the crit chance? It's a crit.

Also the Perfect Information mod is quite literally as accurate as it can be except for one instance, AoE attacks with a chance to miss, those have the popup a fair bit wonky since it bases the popups on the first shot. There's another mod called "EU Aim Rolls" that has a slightly different implementation of the same feature (check the mod page to see how to make just the PI information active) that doesn't have that particular error but it also doesn't shows popups, it shows on the lower-right side like LW1, and doesn't have the detailed shot breakdown that PI has.

Also, maybe it's just a bit of a peeve of mine but it's not really nice to ask for native implementation of other mods into LW2. It isn't vanilla, it's just another mod, and implementing those features would mean that PI would have to do maitenance on them and honestly waste time on them while there's other modders out there already doing the job in the community. Instead you should go bug them about it instead of PI.
darkerevent
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Re: Feedback: The separate rolls for Dodge and Crit make the game a terrible mess

Post by darkerevent »

JulianSkies wrote:Also, maybe it's just a bit of a peeve of mine but it's not really nice to ask for native implementation of other mods into LW2. It isn't vanilla, it's just another mod, and implementing those features would mean that PI would have to do maitenance on them and honestly waste time on them while there's other modders out there already doing the job in the community. Instead you should go bug them about it instead of PI.
I trust that Pavonis are mature developers and don't mind users feedbacking features that they'd appreciate seeing made native at some point.

Personally, as an end user, I don't like the hassle of having to double check whether an outside mod that I'm subscribed to has updated (or failed to update) in a way that is causing my game to break or perform strangely. I would ideally like to be able to sit down and play the game using features I'm familiar with (e.g. Perfect Information existing as an option like it did in LW1) without running into surprise mod conflicts or other errors that I then have to go bother someone else about. However, I also understand Pavonis doesn't have infinite time and resources, and it's entirely up to them to decide whether implementing a suggestion like this one is worth their time or not.
bountygiver wrote:you can get the LW1 version of perfect information with EU aim rolls mod, remember to follow the instructions in the config before using it with LW2
Thanks, I'll look into this!
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