I actually see the randomness as an important comeback mechanic - when you are leading in a game, you have very little reason to not play it safe, but when you are behind, taking that 70% shot with a bunch of willpower riding on it lets you take a chance to bring yourself back in the game. And I think that those kinds of mechanics (that allow comebacks for trailing players, thus closer and more interesting matches) are generally useful to making better games.
Dealing guaranteed 1str damage would make maimed units highly overpowered. Dealing no damage to higher armor would make the opposite.
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How is 1 guaranteed str damage more overpowered than 80% chance to deal 3 str damage? If anything, it would be weaker, not stronger than the current system. To clafify: I'm also proposing that exertion should increase the strength of attack, as opposed to the current system where it increases the damage dealt. So striking 5 str vs 7 armor with 2 exertion would result in a 100% chance to deal 1 damage instead of 80% chance to deal 3 damage.
As for dealing no damage, said units could still deal armor damage, which is usually prefered to str damage attempts anyway. And besides, maimed units are supposed to be a burden to their team, that's the whole point of maiming.
Yeah, that's what I was expecting it to do. I bet Stoic tried that out at some point...I wonder how/why they ended up with the current system. Maybe they'll chime in.Originally Posted by Skaer
If I had to guess, I'd say applying willpower straight to damage makes the system more interesting for 2 reasons:
1) It prevents a big slowdown in the endgame. Sometimes you can end up with several high-armor, low-strength units whittling each other down without good break. Willpower currently serves as a (risky) way to break that stalemate and cause tension that would otherwise bleed away as units kept on missing each other or doing 1 break a turn, with minimal influence from the horn as well.
2) When the target's armor is only 1-2 points higher than the attacker's strength, the current system allows the player to take the risk of missing in order to get that influential, higher-impact shot in. Otherwise for a given attacker and target, there would always be a single best choice between strength or break.
I welcome enlightenment from the devs as well, of course.
Apply the willpower to your low armor break and you end the stalemate just the same, only without randomness. In fact, the chance to deal direct str damage despite swinging against high armor is what causes the stalemate in the first place, because when it's a low chance to instantly win, you still take the chance. So instead of steadily going towards the end, two units with 1 str/10 armor will be constantly swinging against each other, hoping to get that lucky swing.
There always is a single best choice for each particular situation, reguardless of whether it's chance-based or strict. Only difference is, if there's no RNG involved, you win by making the right moves. With RNG, you sometimes can still lose even if you play the situation perfectly, purely due to bad luck.Otherwise for a given attacker and target, there would always be a single best choice between strength or break.
A comeback based on RNG can be amusing to watch, but it has very low value for the players. I personally don't like getting cheap victories just because RNG decided to bless me today.
It is not cheap if you know you did your best to maximize those odds. Games that are decided by randomness go both ways. "You only won due to rng luck" is not equivalent to "without randomness I would have won" it is equivalent to "if I had more luck I would have won".
Winners make their own luck.
That is all
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It takes an extra move, though - the option is there to try to speed things up by taking that risky shot and score a hit NOW. It's not necessarily the optimal move but players have that choice. Your dislike is not sufficient reason to take that choice away.
In some cases yes, but other situations can reasonably create a few armored-but-maimed unit: a Warmaster alpha-strike, dueling archers, Bloody Flail, etc. It is generally in a player's best interest to avoid this sort of free-for-all in the endgame, but that doesn't mean the rules can't be used to create an interesting situation out of it when it does happen.
That depends partially on how you evaluate the RNG-based part of the situation. Since you destest the RNG I assume you'd value those options very low, but others like the - relatively minor - uncertainty it adds, and Factions is just as much for them as it is for you.
To quote another's post:
Wise words indeed. While I'm sure everyone understands the value of playing well enough that one NEED NOT pull the RNG lever to win, I think some of the disdain for the randomness comes from not also understanding the value of playing so well that the opponent CANNOT pull the RNG lever to win, either.
not as succinct as what tirean said, but perfectly stated.While I'm sure everyone understands the value of playing well enough that one NEED NOT pull the RNG lever to win, I think some of the disdain for the randomness comes from not also understanding the value of playing so well that the opponent CANNOT pull the RNG lever to win, either.
that which does not kill you often leaves you handicapped
If you check this thread you'll find that the dislike is not just mine.
"Interesting" is subjective. To me for one, it's not interesting to have RNG play my game for me.that doesn't mean the rules can't be used to create an interesting situation out of it when it does happen.
That could be true if maiming was not usually the best way to win. If it was so, you could indeed try to remove those 1str units from the board so that they cannot abuse the random mechanics. However, in most cases that is a far less efficient approach, partially because the chance to hit is low, thus statistically you will win more by letting the opponent take those chances and fail. And to play so well that no amount of luck can save the opponent from losing requires a rather big gap in skill between the two players.While I'm sure everyone understands the value of playing well enough that one NEED NOT pull the RNG lever to win, I think some of the disdain for the randomness comes from not also understanding the value of playing so well that the opponent CANNOT pull the RNG lever to win, either.
The fact that there are random mechanics means that players can force their opponent to deal with these mechanics. And the way things work now, you have to sacrifice efficiency to remove randomness, so it's basicly not an option.
Earlier today I lost an 18 armor provoker to units that never had above a 30% hit chance throwing willpower at him. It made me very sad. I still managed to win that game, but having a unit die to just added willpower damage and 4 30% or less swings was... well. It sucked. Lol. He died with 18 armor, poor guy.
While not quite random, it's also out of the control of the opponent and prevents real counterplay: The strike trap. I lost another game earlier today where I had 4 different paths to two different targets that my BB would have killed, one of the four paths had a trap. I just happened to walk onto the path with a trap.
True it's not random in it's placement, but it was essentially random to me as I have no way of knowing where it went, only where it could be. I could have chosen a different path but there was no effective way to evaluate which path was best. The best option was simply guessing which is little different from hoping those willpower boosted attacks with low hit chances will hit in my eyes.
At least for me I'd rather the game have no random elements, but I've only lost two games so far out of about 70 due to the random elements so I can't complain too much.
I have to say today seems like the rng has been hitting more than missing for once in most of the matches I have played. Not sure if they changed something or its a bug? But I had the same a 16 armour dieing to a 1 str foe with 3 wp to hit him for 4 to kill him
@Skaer:
Our respective opinions regarding the RNG are now known; I don't feel it would be productive for either of us to continue in the same vein. I don't wish to come off as dismissive though; if you want to continue along those lines I'd be happy to come to an arrangement.
This is a fair statement, and if true would bear looking at. I certainly wouldn't want luck to be the deciding factor in a large fraction of matches; I haven't had this experience from my time in Factions though. I can't speak for you, but neither of us has the whole picture - only the developers could say for sure how their playtesting caused them to choose the current system over other, similar ones.
That depends entirely on the return for your sacrifice. If you leave a weak unit standing to waste an enemy turn and they win the lottery with it, then you have my condolences. But if you could have killed that unit to ensure a (slower) win for yourself and you chose not to do so in the name of efficiency, then you erred. While I can't say that you "deserved" to lose in those circumstances, you accepted the risk when you made your choice.
----------
You, sir, have my condolences.
It's simple really, a unit with unspent will is like a unit with high natural break and is worth killing over maiming. Getting the low break units to spend all their will, then keeping them alive, while killing break units with their will leftover will usually result in a win.
You won there cause your opponent was too dumb throwing all his willpower on %% strikes rather than breaking armor with it. Provoker did his job perfectly - aggregating all the hits from enemy, allowing your other units to wipe them out.
If you don't know where to put it - put it in the pillage
Steelhammer Tribune issues collected here
Some of my Factions games can be observed here
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I personally like the Thrasher as a desperado type character. A strategy I've seen performed is for the enemy to strip most, though not all, the health of your squad. This is done so that weaker characters still clutter up the initiative, and stronger remaining characters don't gain more attacks per rotation.
The Thrasher is the anti-thesis of this strategy. You cannot really ignore him, even at low health, because he has an ability that's dangerous regardless of how weakened he is. He is the only character who is a chaotic dice roll to keep things interesting.
To be honest, the game makes every effort to inform you of the very few moments when probability is a factor, such as the Thrasher attack and when a foe's armor rating is great enough to risk missing entirely. Since I'm aware of my chances, I don't feel like I was cheated. I could have done something more sure-fire, like strip a foe's armor. But I chose chance.
Four attacks to kill a provoker is not why I won, poor positioning on his part is why I won. I had one unit left by the end since I lost my provoker so much earlier than I should have. It was two already maimed raidmasters that did it. I never had an opportunity to finish them off sooner that wouldn't have resulted in even more damage that wouldn't have had a % miss attached to it.
I'm not arguing about this because I win or lose due to the mechanic. I could not care less. The mechanic inherently just sucks! Why would you leave anything up to chance? Why even invite, let's say a grandmaster finals, to be decided by the accumulation and/or immediate net effect of random events? Skill will be statistically predominant if the game makes any sense at all (which it currently does) , but even then, those luck factors are in there to skew the outcome.
Yes, you can circumvent this x-factor. But why even have it in there if you're supposed to side-step it? Don't worry, I know perfectly well how this crept into the game. The devs were having "friendly matches" that seemed so boring because one of them was better than the other. And what happens then? He's got a snowballs chance in hell of doing a comeback. So why not give him a little crutch? Let's give him a 5% chance of making a comeback with the aid of a RNG. Suddenly, there's a smile on both faces as this exciting new mechanic made the battle more evenly matched. This made me think about having RNG as a selectable option in friendly games but off for competitive/ranked ones!
Sometimes I feel like I am playing a completely different game to some other people
Could this thread get closed? its going nowhere fast!
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