Guild Wars 2

Combat RNG, at its core is a flawed design principle that first was proposed as a game mechanic for real world games, where an unpredictable element was needed to stop games from becoming tedious.

However, those were the days where your characters were small plastic figurines, or sheets of paper with there statistics written on them.

These days, YOU are the character, and you can control them in an analog fashion.

When I talk about RNG, the main culprit is Critical Hit, Something that should have been left behind a LONG time ago.

What is Critical Hit?

At its core essence, critical hit is a % dmg modifier, for every 1% of critical hit, your damage is increased by 1% (assuming that a critical hit is 200% damage).

As you all know though, the damage increase is not flat, but rather spikes unpredictably, and can result in a lower or higher damage increase.

Why Critical Hits are flawed:

Its not guaranteed, this may seem fun, but in a game like Guild Wars 2, where PvP is flaunted as a big part of the gameplay, something that could determine you winning a fight and losing a fight should not be a random aspect of the game. Something that you and the enemy have NO control over.

Proposed Solution

Solution A.

Precision now gives a % armour piercing effect.
(Possibly non-linear scaling to avoid exponential returns)

Why?

This gives a flat damage increase, that is both reliable and achieves a similar goal of increasing your damage by a %.

1 Problem

If the damage increase is non-linear, than against less armoured targets, the damage will be less, and against high armoured targets, the damage will be more.
This may not be a problem however as a nice side effect is that its harder to burst squishier targets.

Solution B.

Precision now gives a flat % damage increase, Critical Damage increase the rate at which precision gives this increase.

Solves the same problem, however due to the now reliable nature of precision, the % increase it gives may need to be lowered.

Other RNG in Guild Wars 2 that compounds the problem:

I’m looking at you 30% chance to do X on a crit, 10% chance to do Y when you attack, and .ect

These SHOULD NOT exist in a game like this, there are other reliable methods of getting the same effect

I.E

Every 4th attack applies a bleed (boring)
Every attack from behind applies a bleed (somewhat interesting)
After taking damage, your next attack applies a bleed (boring)

these are just a FEW examples, the more you have to think about how to utilize the effect, the better it is as this creates INTERESTING, and DIVERSE gameplay, rather than an arbitrary % dmg increase.

You had such a great opportunity with your game to break away from other RPG and MMO standards. Just because those games have CRIT doesn’t mean its a good thing.

TL;DR;

Crit and RNG based mechanics don’t belong in a flagship next gen MMO that touts itself as having a strong PVP based gameplay.

Eh, crits work well enough in League of Legends, one of the biggest most competitive games in e-sports out there.

Crit-fishing has always been a popular way to build characters in RPGs. Well, ever since ways to increase the odds in your favour appeared. Some people like it; others do not. You do not have to build for it if you personally do not like it.

Ghostwheel.2734:

Eh, crits work well enough in League of Legends, one of the biggest most competitive games in e-sports out there.

Just because something “works” currently, doesn’t mean that removing the rng nature of critical hits, and merely change them to an alternate advantage is not a better idea.

Some will complain that they like the random nature, and find the unpredictable nature of crits fun, and exciting. All I ever notice is them having to be balanced out to a degree where they’re merely stacked to death for the obvious advantage, or ignored because they’re random

of course other skills have random elements, mesmers chaotic spells and winds staff attack cause “random” conditions from a set, weakness only applies 50% of the time during on each hit. So there is other things that are “rng” dependant, thieves have steal which is rng too

I guess it’s down to a choice, the unpredictable fun can lead to those hail mary wins, where as without it the game can feel surgical and sterile. But skill is rewarded with better control etc

Thanks Hellkaiser for pointing out the falacy that because other games do it, there’s nothing wrong with it.

A game without crits, still has a lot of random too it due to human interaction.

There is that fear that the game will become surgical, but with so many other factors that a human brain cannot process within the game, this is highly unlikely.

Think of this analogy, if I fire a gun blindly, where that bullet lands is not random, but a result of a ton of chemical and physical reactions that led to that moment. Humans can not process this result and so it seems random to us, however a powerful enough computer (i’m talking infinitely) would have know of the result decades before.

Personally I prefer that damage is fixed rather than random (Dark Souls does this).

As for criticals and procs, I personally prefer something like:
25% Critical = crit on every 4th hit.

You might consider it boring, but to me it becomes interesting because it gives you a reason not to constantly auto-attack.

eg. Coordinate with your teammates so that everyone’s next attack will crit, and thus spike an enemy to death instantly.

eg. Your next normal hit will trigger a proc that cripples the opponent. You rely on attacking using other skills until you need to cripple them.

etc.

By making crits and procs predictable, and giving people ways to manipulate them, you add another layer of skill to the game.

(eg. imagine if Ele crits and procs were seperately tracked for each attunement. So I can go to water mode and attack just enough times so that my next attack will chill the enemy. Then I switch to using the other attunements for damage. If the enemy tries to run away, I switch to water and hit them once to chill them.)

Crit dmg RNG doesn’t bother me that much, it adds a sense of oh snap, what happened there ! Dang ! moments. What does bother me a LOT is the other kinds of RNG I’m looking at you “Mystic Forge” gambling style recipes…..!

This is relevant because we shouldn’t introduce luck-aspects of a game unless we have to. But I fear that most people enjoy the randomness of numbers and the chancebased system of critical hits, etc.

It’s only the utmost serious games out there that has no-luck, I think its basically only Starcraft games and possibly first person shooters (but there might be random sprays of shots instead so…).

So in general, even super serious games like Warcraft 3 had RNG with units attacks. I remember seeing footmen having like 13-15 damage per strike. Why not go the route of SC and have 14 flat damage every hit? I think it’s still because people find it boring.

So far I don’t think it ruins the game of GW2 anyway. It’s a lot worse in DOTA where you have the Chaos Knight for example with 2-4 seconds of stun on an ability, (sure he is called CHAOS knight, so hes supposed to be random) which can either mean you obviously get the kill or the opponent obviously gets away.

League of Legends actually implemented a way to prevent runs of good and bad luck with crits. If you have 50% crit chance then for every X attacks you will always crit half of the time. Its like it ticks a crit every other hit but not quite as exact as that.

In GW2 it just feels flat out random, and detracts from the player’s actions. I feel like I press my buttons and have no really expectation of my damage output

weli.8760:

League of Legends actually implemented a way to prevent runs of good and bad luck with crits. If you have 50% crit chance then for every X attacks you will always crit half of the time. Its like it ticks a crit every other hit but not quite as exact as that.

My understanding is that if you have a string of bad luck, your crit chance “increases” until you reach the expected rate, and vice-versa, so you still have a weak random element but the variation is smaller. Kind of messy but clever.

They could just add a Necklace of Heavy Fortification to PvP

Effect: Grants a +100% enhancement bonus to fortification, which protects against critical hits and sneak attacks.

sorae.7394:

weli.8760:

League of Legends actually implemented a way to prevent runs of good and bad luck with crits. If you have 50% crit chance then for every X attacks you will always crit half of the time. Its like it ticks a crit every other hit but not quite as exact as that.

My understanding is that if you have a string of bad luck, your crit chance “increases” until you reach the expected rate, and vice-versa, so you still have a weak random element but the variation is smaller. Kind of messy but clever.

Thats interesting. Do you mean LoL uses a system like that or GW2 does currently?

On another note, I don’t feel its just crits that adds to the feeling of randomness in combat damage. There is possibly too much damage range on the weapons from which crit damage is calculated from too, and the way damage builds for certain attacks seems to multiply this randomness. I’m sure i’ve even done crits on basic attacks that did less damage than a normal non crit ones.

I don’t have a problem with crits. In most games, crits are RNG anyway. In DotA, building a Daedalus will give you a 25% increased crit chance. Of course it’s RNG, but if you actually crit it’s amazing.

Now in GW2, I don’t find the crit RNG that terrible. I’m sort of used to it when playing a subtlety rogue in WoW. I actually find critical chance in GW2 more rewarding than most games.

Combat RNG, at its core is a flawed design principle that first was proposed as a game mechanic for real world games, where an unpredictable element was needed to stop games from becoming tedious.

I disagree with this premise, especially when it is stated as if it were a fact.

I don’t understand randomness as necessarily bad game design. It simply introduces an amount of uncertainty, which makes a game “less chess” and “more yahtzee”. Whether you will like or dislike randomness in games isn’t what “next gen” game design dictates, it’s simply a matter of taste.

And any of those who think “RNGs” would ruin a game and make it a cheer game of luck should please do the math. E.g., in GW2, the deviation introduced by crits, etc. is relatively low; you do not “one-shot by chance”. A “20% per shot” effect will kind of happen each fifth attempt. And in the long run, the random elements of GW" do not really matter that much compared to circumstances, skill, and build. They just make “certain success” of an action a little less certain, which also helps to increase the tension.

Randomness or no randomness is simply a design decision, and there is a justification for either approach. ANet made their choice, and I cannot see where this decision breaks the game. So go out and make the best out of playing the game according to its rules.

~MRA

Crits add excitement and chance to a game. There are “crits” in sports and many other competitive games, inasmuch as there are random events that sometimes tilt the favor one way or another. And that uncertainty is exciting to me.

I realize you got omgsomad because you missed a spell due to RNG or because someone landed a “lucky crit”, but you should be mature enough to take it on the chin and move on with your life.

I do understand your compulsive need to have everything do exact damage so you can never, ever feel like luck was against you. But even if you get your way, you will simply come to the forums and complain about class balance or comp imbalance or some other issue.

Games are meant to be fun. Sometimes a little luck is needed to pull off a great feat, like taking down two guys because of an excellent dragon’s tooth crit (just kidding eles dont win pvp fights).

Anyway QQ