Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone

In this post I would like to talk about RNG mechanics and how they should not have anything to do in any kind of real Competitive E-sports game and also list some skills that utilize said mechanics in this game.

RNG ( Random number generator) is the current definition of events that are decided entirely under the game engine in which the player is not capable of predicting/controlling the outcome of certain event. Some of these events are widely known in this game, such as:

1. Mystic Forge yields. (Will I get that precursor this time)?
2. Salvaging. ( kitten 10 rares and no ectos )
3. Rewards you get from daily chests, ie Fractals rewards every tier. (Will I get that infused ring today?)

These mechanics exist in PvE and they affect all of us, possibly rewarding some individuals that put no effort but hit the jackpot, or punishing those invest a lot of time every day and still don’t get those elusive rewards due simple Luck.

RnG mechanics usually have a negative impact in the player experience, but some of them are necessary to keep the economy safe to act as money sinks. This is why I think some degree of RnG in a PvE setting is acceptable but we have other important aspect in Guildwars 2, Competitive PvP.

Since day 1, GW2 has been advertised as a game that will provide a competitive/balanced/fun pvp experience for those who like this kind of content and dream of someday participating in big tournaments, ensuring to rewards player skill/tactics/knowledge instead of luck, but then, I have noticed a few mechanics in Spvp that go against this philosophy.

Here are a few examples:

1. Respawn timers in tournaments. ( Kudos to Anet for changing this)
Used to use respawn waves instead of fixed timers, sometimes you kill somebody and he gets gets to respawn instantly, or he would need the full timer to appear, being this an extreme factor deciding the outcome of a game.
Some Games like League of Legends addressed this by giving fixed ever increasing timers to respawn.

2. Guardian Purity & Signet of Resolve passive effects.
These skills will remove a condition every 10 seconds, but they also use a cleanse timer such as what was being used for respawns in pvp. This brings a few issues.

• Case 1: The guardian uses an important skill to remove a condition that might have been removed with a passive effect 1 second later if he hadn’t used the skill. Bad Luck there guardian buddy.

• Case 2: A necromancer casts an important fear on a guardian to get some breathing room. The fear is removed instantly without any guardian input, neither player expected it. Bad Luck there necro buddy.

In these 2 examples I show how luck can change the outcome of an entire fight. Why luck I say? Because neither the guardian or the necromancer know the timer for those passive skills, its like tossing a coin every few seconds without you knowing if you hit heads or tails.

An elegant solution I propose to remove this Luck mechanic from SPvP is to make the passive buff timer visible on your boon sections. Something like the boon line that runs around the icon indicating the exact moment it will remove a condition refreshing itself every 10 seconds. A less elegant one would be to just add the flashing effect on the icon 3 seconds before it activates.

What do I accomplish with this?
Both the Guardian and the Necromancer and utilize this information to their advantage, adding a new layer of skill to the game play. The skills didn’t change at all, but now the guardian can manage that precious condition removal and use it as he sees fit, balancing the wait vs the benefits of cleansing via other means. The necromancer can also be rewarded by putting extra attention in those guardian buffs, knowing exactly when to use those deadly conditions. This solution rewards both players and allows them to control the outcome of the fight.

3. Guardian Glacial Heart
Critical hits with a hammer have a 50% chance to chill your target for 4 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 45 seconds.
The RNG is fairly obvious in this, a trait that will activate on pure luck, first you have to roll the dice and get a crit, then do you toss a coin to see if you will chill that person. The chilled condition is a very powerful one, and being unable to control it puts a great handicap in this trait.

• The guardian has no visual indication to let him know the chill is available. When it pops it will be entirely random.
• The chill is based on both a crit and the base chance of the trait, the guardian can’t control when to use it.
  Id say that a fight being decided on a lucky random chill would be extremely infuriating to the player getting chilled, but also somewhat frustrating for the guardian.

• Case 1. Guardian attacks a necromancer, O look, he got chilled, ok what was I doing? Since i didn’t expect it my options to capitalize on it are reduced considerably.
• Case 2. Mesmer is about to die, 4 seconds cooldown on the heal skill, which will allow him to turn the fight around and defend a point sucessfully. Guardian gets a random chill/crit on him. Wait what? now the mesmer has to wait 6.5 seconds on the heal. Mesmer dies.

How to fix this?
I propose to give a visual indicator, icon for example, to let the guardian know that the chill is available, second, make it proc of an ability 100 percent of the time. Something like “Your next Mighty Blow chills your target for 3 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 45 seconds”.

There you go, now the guardian can use this trait to his advantage to apply chill properly, and his enemies also know that they gotta dodge that powerful mighty blow or eat a chill.

4. Engineer Elixirs
There is no better example of how RNG can win or lose a fight for you.

• Elixir H Gives you either Protection, Regeneration or Swiftness randomly.
• Elixir S Gives your allies either Stability or Stealth randomly.
• Elixir C Gives you random boons.
• Elixir U Gives you quickness and a random skill from other profession.

Seriously why is there so much RNG in this class mechanic? I believe the problems this brings are fairly obvious but ill list some examples anyway.

• Case 1: An enemy is capping a point, you have 8 seconds to get there or lose the match. You pop elixir H, you either get lucky and get swiftness allowing you to contest the point, or you get something else and you lose because the game decided it that way.
• Case 2: You down a dangerous guardian and attempt to stomp him, you toss elixir S, You get Stability? good the guardian and his friend have no way from stopping you and you get the stomp. You get Stealth? not good, the guardian does the aoe knock back and gets successfully healed by his friend.

How to fix this?
One idea would be to use the guardian tome elite skill mechanic, in which you press the skill hotkey and you get another skill bar to pick the effect you desire, The bar would be really responsive to allow you to get the effect really fast.

I understand this would make the elixirs extremely good because its basically giving the engi so many different skills in 1, so I’d say they would have to be nerfed individually to not make them op, (reduce options, benefit durations), but I think being able to win a fight because you took the right choices would be more rewarding than knowing you won because you got lucky and got X boon instead of Y or Z.

Another great idea suggested by Teldo from Team Paradigm a while ago was to make the elixirs give you specific boons according to different factors like combat/hp/spec. I’ll leave the video here.

5. Engineer Go for the eyes, Infused precision, Transmute

More RNG for or engineer friends, these skills act much like Glacial heart, which I already talked about

My only suggestion is to make them 100 percent proc chances somehow instead of luck.

Transmute is the epitome of RNG, total flat out random chance to convert a condition into a boon without a cooldown. A suggestion is to give you a buff every 30 seconds or so that will convert the next condition into a boon, That way both the engi and his enemies know what they are up against.

To finish this post I would like to say that these are just a few of the many examples of RNG that other classes have that I haven’t found yet, If you have other examples and possible solutions please let us know in this thread.

Thanks for reading.

Non-RNG is always great.

/Singed.

As much as I understand the sentiment but thing is, where do you draw a line? RNG has been in MMO combat forever but it’s always the newer concepts that seem to come under fire.

A string of lucky crits that bursts someone down to the same string of moves not critting at all is the same polarizing scenario you’ve described in your examples.

I do like and agree with some of your proposed changes though, just some food for thought is all.

especially the second one is an amazing idea

Lumines.3916:

As much as I understand the sentiment but thing is, where do you draw a line? RNG has been in MMO combat forever but it’s always the newer concepts that seem to come under fire.

A string of lucky crits that bursts someone down to the same string of moves not critting at all is the same polarizing scenario you’ve described in your examples.

I do like and agree with some of your proposed changes though, just some food for thought is all.

Even though Crits are a form of Rng themselves, players can interact with crits via stats and builds, so its not entirely out of their hands, as opposed to say Elixirs.

rangers are the only suckers that support their team via RNG procs (spirits), which are useless when they do occur.

Schwahrheit.4203:

Non-RNG is always great.

/Singed.

That’s so meta.

But in all seriousness, LoL went the right direction with this. I believe mechanics like crits and timed skills are completely fine. But if ANet wants GW2 to be an E-sport (which they seem to have made very clear), then they need to comb out any mechanics that turn fights into coin tosses.

Instead of things like 5% chance, 10% chance, or 25% chance, why not change them all to every 20 attacks, 10 attacks, or 4 attacks? Statistically, the effects will proc with the same frequency over the course of a match. But now, more skilled or attentive players can time their attacks to coincide with their procs.

I’d love to remove RNG but it’d never happen.

Bloodline champions one of my favorite games was great for it’s PvP for a time, part of that was the fact the game was all skillshots and no RNG.

McClearyUnderMistRaildexGun.2086:

I’d love to remove RNG but it’d never happen.

Bloodline champions one of my favorite games was great for it’s PvP for a time, part of that was the fact the game was all skillshots and no RNG.

We might not be able to remove it, but flat out endorsing it with traits like Transmute is something we can definitely avoid.

I would really really like to see less RNG, and more UI elements to better inform the player about what is going on with themselves and others.

The exception is obviously with the engi. Just dump every ability with RNG and let them be the WILDCARD profession. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYtjpIwamos

Personally I like random chances. It takes people out of their comfort zone. Removing them imo would make things feel stale and predetermined.

I say nay (Edit: to clarify, I say nay to saying nay to rng). I say react to the situation and adapt or simply build around it. PvP would get stale if it weren’t for RNG. Necro traited to do massive 1252314 second fears, Guardian has no chance. Fight ends the same every time. Bring in RNG of the condi removal – Guardian has a chance. Take out RNG from the condi removal – Guardian nullifys Necros fear every time and again we are lopsided.

Ok that was a stupid example, definitely not something that we see in game or anything. But right now we don’t even get enough info after death to see who did what damage, what effects were in play and how things turned out. We don’t even notice the RNG things and don’t appreciate them, but when we get decent data you will see.

RNG stops from there being ridiculously total 100% complete counters.

And the Engineer RNG, it’s not like it matters if you get Tornado or Juggernaut, you’re dead either way.

theonewhoknocks.8641:

I say nay (Edit: to clarify, I say nay to saying nay to rng). I say react to the situation and adapt or simply build around it. PvP would get stale if it weren’t for RNG. Necro traited to do massive 1252314 second fears, Guardian has no chance. Fight ends the same every time. Bring in RNG of the condi removal – Guardian has a chance. Take out RNG from the condi removal – Guardian nullifys Necros fear every time and again we are lopsided.

Ok that was a stupid example, definitely not something that we see in game or anything. But right now we don’t even get enough info after death to see who did what damage, what effects were in play and how things turned out. We don’t even notice the RNG things and don’t appreciate them, but when we get decent data you will see.

RNG stops from there being ridiculously total 100% complete counters.

And the Engineer RNG, it’s not like it matters if you get Tornado or Juggernaut, you’re dead either way.

I don’t believe encounters would be 100 percent complete at all depending only on builds. Players play differently everytime, adapting to the situation and creating new strategies on top of what they learn constantly. If the necro is traited to deal that massive fear, then the guardian will adapt and save the condi removal exactly for that moment, then the necro will adapt and save that fear for when the guardian used condi removal on something else.

You can never predict how a player will move/play/use cooldowns and combos, but you can learn and adapt utilizing the information you obtain as you fight others.

Dual.8953:

Personally I like random chances. It takes people out of their comfort zone. Removing them imo would make things feel stale and predetermined.

This is like saying X will always beat Y because it has 1 more stick, and Y will never learn and adapt to beat X using a new strategy or play style.

theonewhoknocks.8641:

RNG stops from there being ridiculously total 100% complete counters.

But this assumes there would be 100% counters without RNG, otherwise you are solving a problem that doesn’t exist. Let’s assume that’s true, how does adding RNG make it better? Instead of being determined by build it’s determined by luck. But shouldn’t the outcome of fights be determined by skill? Isn’t that the real goal for a competitive game? Having RNG just obfuscates the situation. If there are 100% counters that’s a balance issue, but adding RNG will not make the game balanced, it just replaces absolute certainty with blind luck, not with skill.

It’s possible to make games without complete counters. Games where execution takes practice, games where you have to get into your opponent’s head, games where you just don’t have enough time to juggle all the variables, games with incomplete information. You don’t need RNG to have uncertain outcomes, you can use mechanics which players actually have control over.

/signed
no RNG in competitive PvP!

The annoying thing about Engineer RNG is mainly in how different the outcomes can be.

Take the toolbelt skill on Elixir U for example. The 3 outcomes are:
Smoke Screen from Thief that blocks projectiles and blinds foes.
Wall of Reflection from Guardian that reflects projectiles.
Veil from Mesmer that stealths you and your allies.

So let’s say I have the high ground, and I’m grenading people below. They notice me and start firing back. If I use my Elixir U toolbelt and I have a 2/3’s chance of getting a wall that will stop me from getting hit, and a 1/3 chance of making a pretty purple wall that doesn’t help me at all.

If the outcomes are a variation of something that does the same job, then it’s a viable form of RNG. But when the outcome can be something completely different to what the player expected, then the RNG can make the skill utterly useless.

the main problem with rng is that you have no way to plan anything. engi is especially problematic. you are often faced with situations where you “hope” a certain thing will happen to let you win a situation. it takes the skill out of the player’s hands and distances them from the immediacy of combat. i also have a problem with random procs for conditions and conditions or spells that proc when a critical procs. it is too much. each layer or rng you add is another layer that i am more distant from being the architect of my own victory. in gw1 the only real rng were critical hits (only from physical weapons btw) and block chances. every condition and every hex and every spell you put on that enemy was something that you specifically knew was going on and for how long.

As a relatively PvP-focused guy and a great fan of E-Sports in general, I think that the absurd amount of RNG (many traits, the whole Engineer, sigils and runes…) in the game is unhealthy for its competitive scene and possible tournaments/streams viewers. I very much agree with everything you said here, OP, especially since I play Hammer Guardian and that trait is as frustrating as important for my build. That being said, many concerns were voiced in the past, especially in beta, but the devs said the RNG is going to stay because players will find interesting ways to adapt/react to it.

Yeah, like there’s a whole lot of adaptation and counterplay you can do around wanting a specific thing to happen ( say getting Wall of Reflection/smoke on Engi ) and getting something completely different ( Mesmer’s wall ). Or that my team can react to a lucky 3 second quickness proc when you don’t even know that it can happen until it does…. but I digress.

milo.6942:

the main problem with rng is that you have no way to plan anything. engi is especially problematic. you are often faced with situations where you “hope” a certain thing will happen to let you win a situation. it takes the skill out of the player’s hands and distances them from the immediacy of combat. i also have a problem with random procs for conditions and conditions or spells that proc when a critical procs. it is too much. each layer or rng you add is another layer that i am more distant from being the architect of my own victory. in gw1 the only real rng were critical hits (only from physical weapons btw) and block chances. every condition and every hex and every spell you put on that enemy was something that you specifically knew was going on and for how long.

Even crits aren’t as random as in other mmos in GW1.
Hitting a moving target in the back is a guaranteed crit.
Crit also removes one layer of randomness:
Whenever you crit in GW1 your weapon will deal max damage. It doesn’t choose a value between min and max.
And the bonus damage isn’t some sort of high number. Instead it just takes the enemy armor value and reduces it by 20.

Guard passives have nothing to do with rng.

Mammoth.1975:

Guard passives have nothing to do with rng.

Technically, this is true.

Things like purity, the signet of resolve passive, and the virtue of courage passive are not based on RNG because the effect doesn’t happen randomly – it happens exactly every 10 or 40 seconds, respectively.

However, this timer is obfuscated from the player and there’s no reasonable way for the average player to track multiple internal clocks for the entirety of a match to know exactly when these effects are going to go off. The same goes for enemy players who are trying to work around these effects offensively.

So yeah, technically not RNG, but effectively it might as well be.

I agree with suggestion #2 – to have these timers visible on your own and your target’s buff frame.

Noctred.6732:

Mammoth.1975:

Guard passives have nothing to do with rng.

Technically, this is true.

Things like purity, the signet of resolve passive, and the virtue of courage passive are not based on RNG because the effect doesn’t happen randomly – it happens exactly every 10 or 40 seconds, respectively.

However, this timer is obfuscated from the player and there’s no reasonable way for the average player to track multiple internal clocks for the entirety of a match to know exactly when these effects are going to go off. The same goes for enemy players who are trying to work around these effects offensively.

So yeah, technically not RNG, but effectively it might as well be.

I agree with suggestion #2 – to have these timers visible on your own and your target’s buff frame.

As a necro: spam 1 hard till conditions drop off without the guard doing anything, or doing something else, then apply all your stuff.

Mammoth.1975:

As a necro: spam 1 hard till conditions drop off without the guard doing anything, or doing something else, then apply all your stuff.

That’s kinda beside the point.

Not every fight is a clean, prolonged 1v1. Sometimes you need to spam 1 hard on a different target and then swap to a guardian momentarily for a quick fear or whatever. The lack of focus target frames in this game means you can’t monitor the buff/debuff activity of multiple players at the same time.

It also doesn’t address the situation from a defensive perspective – where you are the guardian and you just blew smite condition or w/e to cleanse something critical cause you didn’t know that purity would have auto-removed it a second later and couldn’t afford to wait.

Idk, I’m just not sure why anybody would argue against giving players more visibility into their actions.

Noctred.6732:

Mammoth.1975:

Guard passives have nothing to do with rng.

Technically, this is true.

Things like purity, the signet of resolve passive, and the virtue of courage passive are not based on RNG because the effect doesn’t happen randomly – it happens exactly every 10 or 40 seconds, respectively.

However, this timer is obfuscated from the player and there’s no reasonable way for the average player to track multiple internal clocks for the entirety of a match to know exactly when these effects are going to go off. The same goes for enemy players who are trying to work around these effects offensively.

So yeah, technically not RNG, but effectively it might as well be.

I agree with suggestion #2 – to have these timers visible on your own and your target’s buff frame.

Back in the beta I read a post where someone claimed the elementalists Signet of Water passive actually proc’d immediately when you first get a condition, then went on cooldown. I haven’t actually tested these effects, but even if it’s not the case, if they were changed to work this way they would become more predictable, and the game could simply use the signet buff icon, or similar icon for purity to indicate that the effect is active and the next condition will be cleansed. That makes the whole thing a lot more predictable, and while it might be a buff to the passives in some cases, it can also be played around like how you would use a weak attack to break a guardian’s aegis before using your cooldowns.

Noctred.6732:

Mammoth.1975:

As a necro: spam 1 hard till conditions drop off without the guard doing anything, or doing something else, then apply all your stuff.

That’s kinda beside the point.

Not every fight is a clean, prolonged 1v1. Sometimes you need to spam 1 hard on a different target and then swap to a guardian momentarily for a quick fear or whatever. The lack of focus target frames in this game means you can’t monitor the buff/debuff activity of multiple players at the same time.

It also doesn’t address the situation from a defensive perspective – where you are the guardian and you just blew smite condition or w/e to cleanse something critical cause you didn’t know that purity would have auto-removed it a second later and couldn’t afford to wait.

Idk, I’m just not sure why anybody would argue against giving players more visibility into their actions.

A random necro fear has an 87-90% chance of lasting it’s full duration on a guard anyway unless you’re stacking fear duration stuff. 91% chance of lasting 90% of it’s duration, 92% chance of lasting 80% of it’s duration, etc etc.

It’s much simpler for guards. Use your cleanse when they apply a big stack, because they just saw your passive tick and you won’t have it again for 7-9s. If they applied it without seeing your passive tick, no big deal if you waste your cooldown, because the passive will keep you alive just fine against that kind of play.

I’m against most kinds of UI spoonfeeding. I’m bad but I prefer a game where people can differentiate themselves with skill.

Hypothetically, what’s the UI solution for plague signets passive?

Mammoth.1975:

I’m against most kinds of UI spoonfeeding. I’m bad but I prefer a game where people can differentiate themselves with skill.

I’m assuming this is some kind of potshot at WoW, so I’ll just say that there’s a significant misconception here.

Yeah, there are a lot of addons for World of Warcraft and many of them help out in PvP – custom cast bars for target/focus target/target of target, spell announcers, cooldown trackers, DR trackers, interrupt trackers, whatever. Because of this, players typically tend to spend some amount of their time keeping a close eye on their UI.

However, what I think you fail to realize is that at mid-high levels of arena competition, you can’t just watch your UI. You have to keep a close eye on the field. You have to know where all of your teammates are and where everybody on the enemy team is at any given point in time. You have to know where you are in relation to every single player on both teams in order to be able to make informed decisions at any point in the match and keep yourself from doing something stupid or being in the wrong place at a crucial point. You have to know that, when you see your cast bar light up with a critical spell and hit your focus counterspell macro, that the player you’re counterspelling is actually in line of sight. You have to know that, when you hit your focus shadowstep/kick macro while harassing another target, that the player you’re shadowstepping to is actually in line of sight AND not surrounded by teammates so you don’t get owned as soon as you step to him. You have to make sure that if anybody on your team gets controlled in any way, that you’re in a proper position to quickly cleanse that control without getting controlled yourself. So on and so forth.

Keeping an eye on all of these things while also being aware of what’s going on in your UI in order to be able to get off those split-second interrupts and cleanses takes a magnitude of awareness and precision that tons of WoW PvP bashers tend to ignore for no obvious reason.

IMO, the more information that a player has to work with in order to make informed decisions, the higher the individual skill cap is for a given game – regardless of whether that information comes from the field or the UI.

Mammoth.1975:

Hypothetically, what’s the UI solution for plague signets passive?

The same thing that was suggested in the OP for purity and signet of resolve would probably be a good start (some kind of pulse on the icon).

Not a potshot at all. I quite enjoyed wow arenas and had my UI heavily customized for it.

I just prefer that some information require interpreting rather than staring at the UI. Things like elementalists only being able to see 1/4 of their weapon cooldowns at a time provide a lot of scope for a good elementalist to distinguish themselves from an average one. You put that on the UI, and suddenly there’s less room for good players to stand out.

This is one reason GvG was so much better than WoW arenas. Good players were in fact keeping track of multiple enemy skill cooldowns with no UI assistance at all. To most observers it just seems like they always have the answer ready at the right time, but that’s because they started to conserve those answers when they knew the cooldown was coming up. They were doing this while doing all the things that wow players were doing, only positioning was even more crucial. Prot monks had to know which way the enemy team were facing at all times, not just where they were located, and one person being out of position at the wrong moment would often result in a match loss.

It took me a couple weeks of tpvp to figure out how to beat guard passives, despite how obvious it is when you think about it. I like that kind of learning curve, and I look forward to seeing what great players can do as time goes on. I doubt anyone has hit their full potential in this game yet.

ITS SIMPLE

Its REALLY simple. Is this game supposed to be chess? (no rng) or is it supposed to candy land or sorry? (rng based game). Keep in mind one game is competitive, the other is for house hold fun where anyone can win.

Its a timeless thing as all developers from every game previous to this have pointed out. RNG is a way to dillute the harshness and competiveness of your game. Smash brothers designers didnt like how brawl was becoming such a competitive fighter when the intention was to create a house hold family game where anyone could win. Thus they put in random item drops but to try to stop competitive play implemented the “prat fall” where your character had a chance to fall down.

Take league of legends, master yi a champion used to have a chance to double attack. They said it was an uncomfortable mechanic because sometimes it would instantly destroy people other times nothing so they changed it to every 7 attacks. The moment league of legends went E-Sport ready they released a patch to remove dodge from the game. As it was a random chance to completely avoid damage. They kept crit because your attacks always hit and you could build around it easier (and mostly just because they said it was a fun mechanic and was the one rng they would not part with) EDIT: they DID say however they would never put in an ABILITY with a random effect.

To those who say RNG needs to be present or a game is stale. Look at major league sports. They remove as much outside interference as possible to create an even playing field where the results are based on the performance of the players. Would the game be more fun to watch if randomly a timer would go off and whoever had the ball lost 3 points? No, PEOPLE are unpredictable. A player fakes a pass, catches a long drive no one thought he could reach, a player moved his rook to an unexpected place.3 moves later its checkmate! *

End point. RNG is a design mechanic to make a game less competitive and more a game of chance. Games that rely on RNG are not found in the olympics or major league sports HOWEVER are found all over the place in a casino.

@Mammoth -

I don’t really disagree with most of the things you said, but there’s a difference between tracking major cooldowns and tracking timed passives, especially in this game.

I don’t particularly want to derail this thread, but IMO there are three factors involved -

1. This game has tons of visual noise in the context of team fights.
2. Nearly all offensive and defensive abilities are AoE in some way.
3. Major cd’s are usually (but not always) visually obvious while timed passive effects typically have no distinct cue.

When combined, the three sometimes create situations where you literally cannot know where a boon application or a condi cleanse came from, especially if they came from passives. Not to mention situations where you start taking massive damage but cannot reliably identify the exact source because of the noise. This isn’t a low tier problem either – you can see reactions like this day in and day out on current paid streams.

Neither WoW arenas nor GW1 GvG had this kind of aggregate problem, but IMO it’s a real issue with the visual design of this game and something that a little more UI transparency could help with.

agreed less RNG more skill pls
/sign

Random elements are a tried and true element of competitive contests, players should never feel like the winners have been predetermined. There is no sport where the most skilled player wins EVERY time; and if this requires a certain amount of RNG to be added to the game, then sure as hell it belongs there.

Comparing a video game to the Olympics is not a fair comparison; you are forgetting that games are as much a test of strategy and tactics as much as skill. But even so, there is still randomness in those sports as well; any player could have an ‘off’ day, the weather might not suit their training, their equipment could fail; if we wanted to find the absolute best, we wouldn’t try to determine it by a single result (world records are often better than Olympic records).

Poker, one of the most purely strategic and successful games around, has an inherently huge amount of randomness; it is basically pure luck on any given day. The most successful e-sports are only made more exciting because there is a chance of “build order win”, an essentially random situation that players must accept if they adopt high risk high reward strategies.

A more practical argument: Like hell I want this game to be about skill with its single server location and unresponsive targetting.

edit: I realize people may try to pick this apart on an argument by argument basis and claim that it is therefore completely false. I simply ask that you let players worse than you have their victories to keep them, and you, interested in the game. There is always a chance you might lose no matter how good you are, and that is appropriate.

This post got me thinking… ever since I have been able to predict when my conditions will be removed by my signets pretty consistently.

Besides Ens has a good point. If you can’t roll with the punches you aren’t the best.

Players should never feel they lost because of lol random the chance to lose should be on the player not because you rolled a 1 and he rolled a 20.

Eurantien.4632:

Besides Ens has a good point. If you can’t roll with the punches you aren’t the best.

hard to roll with invisible punches; great way to get knocked out if you ask me.

this game can’t be competitive when you introduce random chance. to me engi elixirs are the most glaringly obvious issue.

1 up’ing skill with chance puts chance above skill. and you want this to be a pro game?

Immo.9217:

Players should never feel they lost because of lol random the chance to lose should be on the player not because you rolled a 1 and he rolled a 20.

Players will always feel like this, and you know what, it is often true.

Take table tennis for example; sometimes the ball lands on the very very edge of the table, making it impossible to return. Should the player be complimented for his skillful shot or should the volley be replayed because of the randomness? In reality neither happens—the point is tallied AND the player apologizes because both players know that it was by luck and not skill. These things are accepted and the game goes on.

Part of becoming a mature competitor is realizing that chance occurences are just that—you play all your cards right, you do everything you can to MINIMIZE the possibility they will happen, but they do still happen. Immature players allow this to affect them emotionally (ie. tilt), and are never able to reach the highest level because they do not see the games for what they are.

Often it becomes a matter of hubris; they take their victories to mean they are better than their opponents and their losses are purely due to chance or error. They think by removing any possibility of randomness that their true skill will become apparent.

Coming from quake, I find this to be an old discussion. Most quake players would say these games (mmorpgs) take no skill at all, because by skill they mean motor coordination. Many players believe motor skill is the only thing that matters, and reject duelling because it forces you to keep track of item spawns, learn arbitrary geometry and movement, and deal with random factors such as respawns and unusual tactics. They would rather be placed in a small empty arena with all their tools and their opponent in front of them; and this is exactly what they do. A quick googling of “quake thunderstruck” will show just how incredibly shallow and boring this becomes. Ultimately the only lasting form of competition in quake has been duelling (and team play to an extent) because it is so interesting, challenging, AND unpredictable (eg. deep).

ens.9854:

Random elements are a tried and true element of competitive contests, players should never feel like the winners have been predetermined. There is no sport where the most skilled player wins EVERY time; and if this requires a certain amount of RNG to be added to the game, then sure as hell it belongs there.

Comparing a video game to the Olympics is not a fair comparison; you are forgetting that games are as much a test of strategy and tactics as much as skill. But even so, there is still randomness in those sports as well; any player could have an ‘off’ day, the weather might not suit their training, their equipment could fail; if we wanted to find the absolute best, we wouldn’t try to determine it by a single result (world records are often better than Olympic records).

Poker, one of the most purely strategic and successful games around, has an inherently huge amount of randomness; it is basically pure luck on any given day. The most successful e-sports are only made more exciting because there is a chance of “build order win”, an essentially random situation that players must accept if they adopt high risk high reward strategies.

A more practical argument: Like hell I want this game to be about skill with its single server location and unresponsive targetting.

edit: I realize people may try to pick this apart on an argument by argument basis and claim that it is therefore completely false. I simply ask that you let players worse than you have their victories to keep them, and you, interested in the game. There is always a chance you might lose no matter how good you are, and that is appropriate.

Any competition will have unknown factors, things beyond our control that can influence the outcome. But the question is whether you need intentionally add RNG. Let’s take two example games that have already been mentioned in this thread, poker, and chess, and augment their RNG properties, then we can try the same exercise with GW2.

First we taker poker, and we remove the randomness. Now you have a whole different game. Bluffing doesn’t make sense if you know what the cards are. At best it’s a game about how well you can memorize the deck. Not the kind of thing that really grabs your interest.

Next we take chess, and we add RNG. Each time you take a piece you roll a die, and on a 1 you lose your piece instead. Does this make chess a better game? I’d say it doesn’t, chess between very skilled players is interesting and unpredictable due to its complexity, the competition is about who can plan more turns ahead and that die roll can destroy so much effort. At the very least the game is again, completely different. Adapting to the die roll doesn’t really add a new skill any more than adapting to your opponent making a totally unexpected move. It does increase the number of possible outcomes, but chess is already complex enough that you can’t plan for every possibility anyways.

And lastly, we consider GW2. Let’s take the easiest conversion to purely non-rng. We just calculate the average damage caused by crits, and use that as a modifier for damage. For proc rates you calculate the average chance of proccing, and convert that into every 1 out of every X hits causes a proc. So 50% crit chance with 200% crit multiplier (so 50 prowess) simply becomes 150% damage multiplier for all hits instead. 60% proc rate with 50% crit chance is a 30% chance to proc, so that becomes 3 out of every 10 hits, which gets spread out as something like the third, sixth and tenth hit causes a proc. Lots of math, and a pretty kludgy fix I admit. But what about gameplay? It’s a lot more predictable, builds might change to take advantage of rounding errors in proc rates, but mostly it’s the same game. When you take the RNG out of guildwars it doesn’t become a totally different game the way poker does.

I do understand that games lacking RNG are more punishing to new players, but the unpredictability of high level play doesn’t necessarily become more predictable. Chess games between two highly skilled players are not predetermined affairs. It’s only when one player is much better that the outcome becomes highly predictable. Guild Wars 2 already has a huge gap between experienced teams and newbs, so the RNG doesn’t even seem achieve much for newbs. But it does hurt the experience for equally matched players where the outcome is already unpredictable without RNG.

ens.9854:

Random elements are a tried and true element of competitive contests, players should never feel like the winners have been predetermined. There is no sport where the most skilled player wins EVERY time; and if this requires a certain amount of RNG to be added to the game, then sure as hell it belongs there.

Comparing a video game to the Olympics is not a fair comparison; you are forgetting that games are as much a test of strategy and tactics as much as skill. But even so, there is still randomness in those sports as well; any player could have an ‘off’ day, the weather might not suit their training, their equipment could fail; if we wanted to find the absolute best, we wouldn’t try to determine it by a single result (world records are often better than Olympic records).

Poker, one of the most purely strategic and successful games around, has an inherently huge amount of randomness; it is basically pure luck on any given day. The most successful e-sports are only made more exciting because there is a chance of “build order win”, an essentially random situation that players must accept if they adopt high risk high reward strategies.

A more practical argument: Like hell I want this game to be about skill with its single server location and unresponsive targeting.

edit: I realize people may try to pick this apart on an argument by argument basis and claim that it is therefore completely false. I simply ask that you let players worse than you have their victories to keep them, and you, interested in the game. There is always a chance you might lose no matter how good you are, and that is appropriate.

Using poker as an example I its quite over the top since we know the nature of that game.
However this is a video game that happens in a controlled setting. And I actually do believe comparing a game to an olympic sport is a good comparison. Take Fencing for example, 2 individuals fight eachother, and the best doesn’t always win, the game is decided by what player can adapt, learn and outplay his opponent over the course of a match. The underdog might lose the first couple rounds, but he can make a great comeback and get the grand price, was it with rng, doubtful.

Do you think removing RNG would favor bunkers too much? If I don’t know what you roll I can’t prepare for it. If I see you use a certain signet or elixir and the affect is not random then I can be prepared to defend against it. How do you kill me now when you can’t get that lucky perfect shot?

ens.9854:

Players will always feel like this, and you know what, it is often true.

Take table tennis for example; sometimes the ball lands on the very very edge of the table, making it impossible to return. Should the player be complimented for his skillful shot or should the volley be replayed because of the randomness? In reality neither happens—the point is tallied AND the player apologizes because both players know that it was by luck and not skill. These things are accepted and the game goes on.

Part of becoming a mature competitor is realizing that chance occurences are just that—you play all your cards right, you do everything you can to MINIMIZE the possibility they will happen, but they do still happen. Immature players allow this to affect them emotionally (ie. tilt), and are never able to reach the highest level because they do not see the games for what they are.

Often it becomes a matter of hubris; they take their victories to mean they are better than their opponents and their losses are purely due to chance or error. They think by removing any possibility of randomness that their true skill will become apparent.

I still dont see how this would help noobs win vs “pros” as the main reason I would want randomness toned down is to make evenly skilled fights more entertaining the better skilled player who makes less mistakes should win.

Now I had a paid match yesterday that was very close the score was in our favor at around 365 to 350 when one of our team died he waited about 7 seconds before he relized he got the infinite load screen bug by the time he relogged and entered we were down my 20 points at the end of the match we lost by 8 points. Now this had to do with a game bug and not something that was intened either way I dont like losing because our team got the bug and theirs didnt, just like I wouldn’t like to see a engineer lose because he got stealth when he wanted stability or vice versa.

From a purely GW2 perspective, it is silly to say things like crit rates, etc are RNG and pure chance.

Take a step back. Suppose you play thief and 1/4 times your entire backstab combo crits and makes you an 80% favorite to win that fight. It becomes a strategic decision; is the upside high enough that you are willing to fight it out the other 3/4 of the time? Do you need to be guaranteed victory when you crit to make the build worth it?

You want GW2 to boil down to single encounter dynamics, but it is much deeper than that. Adding pure defense is one way to mitigate the effects of RNG, and blocks/blinds/evades can often completely stifle them; but ultimately how often these are used effectively is just another statistic to be taken account of.

Chess, I think, is a terrible example, most games end in draws! There is certainly an element of luck; there is no way to choose the best strategy at the start of the game; so maybe you choose a strategy or openning that turns out to be a huge underdog. Can you still win? Yes of course, but it will be much more challenging, or you can choose to be safe and play for a draw. It is the same in GW2, maybe something unpredictable happens and you are a huge underdog for no reason related to skill or strategy; do you fight it out or try to retreat? It’s things like these that make every game different.

And I think enough is enough on the sporting examples; anybody who has ever played a sport at a decent level knows that “lucky shots” do exist. Sometimes they coincidentally make that perfect choice. Over the long haul, statistics will win out.

Immo.9217:

ens.9854:

Players will always feel like this, and you know what, it is often true.

Take table tennis for example; sometimes the ball lands on the very very edge of the table, making it impossible to return. Should the player be complimented for his skillful shot or should the volley be replayed because of the randomness? In reality neither happens—the point is tallied AND the player apologizes because both players know that it was by luck and not skill. These things are accepted and the game goes on.

Part of becoming a mature competitor is realizing that chance occurences are just that—you play all your cards right, you do everything you can to MINIMIZE the possibility they will happen, but they do still happen. Immature players allow this to affect them emotionally (ie. tilt), and are never able to reach the highest level because they do not see the games for what they are.

Often it becomes a matter of hubris; they take their victories to mean they are better than their opponents and their losses are purely due to chance or error. They think by removing any possibility of randomness that their true skill will become apparent.

I still dont see how this would help noobs win vs “pros” as the main reason I would want randomness toned down is to make evenly skilled fights more entertaining the better skilled player who makes less mistakes should win.

Now I had a paid match yesterday that was very close the score was in our favor at around 365 to 350 when one of our team died he waited about 7 seconds before he relized he got the infinite load screen bug by the time he relogged and entered we were down my 20 points at the end of the match we lost by 8 points. Now this had to do with a game bug and not something that was intened either way I dont like losing because our team got the bug and theirs didnt, just like I wouldn’t like to see a engineer lose because he got stealth when he wanted stability or vice versa.

Obviously some skill gaps will be too large to overcome by RNG no matter what; we all encounter players that are just that much worse than us. There is also a point where the “chance” occurences are just too much; I am not suggesting that everything be a pure die roll.

However people are being far too overly-dramatic. Things are not as bad as all that, and some element of unpredictableness is healthy to the game. I don’t think any reasonable person would argue that randomly being taken out of the game is a challenge that we have to fight through to obtain victory; even though it is easily possible when playing worse teams.

Eurantien.4632:

Do you think removing RNG would favor bunkers too much? If I don’t know what you roll I can’t prepare for it. If I see you use a certain signet or elixir and the affect is not random then I can be prepared to defend against it. How do you kill me now when you can’t get that lucky perfect shot?

This is the kind of situation I’ve been referring to, props for pointing it out. Players who want RNG removed would say that you either need to bring an “anti-bunker” build, or bring another player to kill him (assuming equal skill).

What do you do, then, if you are in a losing situation? It becomes impossible to make that clutch, risky play, where your roaming thief solos their bunker, unless you are literally banking on your opponent making a game-breaking mistake.

ens.9854:

Random elements are a tried and true element of competitive contests, players should never feel like the winners have been predetermined. There is no sport where the most skilled player wins EVERY time; and if this requires a certain amount of RNG to be added to the game, then sure as hell it belongs there.

Comparing a video game to the Olympics is not a fair comparison; you are forgetting that games are as much a test of strategy and tactics as much as skill. But even so, there is still randomness in those sports as well; any player could have an ‘off’ day, the weather might not suit their training, their equipment could fail; if we wanted to find the absolute best, we wouldn’t try to determine it by a single result (world records are often better than Olympic records).

Poker, one of the most purely strategic and successful games around, has an inherently huge amount of randomness; it is basically pure luck on any given day. The most successful e-sports are only made more exciting because there is a chance of “build order win”, an essentially random situation that players must accept if they adopt high risk high reward strategies.

A more practical argument: Like hell I want this game to be about skill with its single server location and unresponsive targetting.

edit: I realize people may try to pick this apart on an argument by argument basis and claim that it is therefore completely false. I simply ask that you let players worse than you have their victories to keep them, and you, interested in the game. There is always a chance you might lose no matter how good you are, and that is appropriate.

Edit seems like a pre-responce knowing just how weak your point is. But let me explain why so you can atleast understand and hopefully you can present your opiion or point better.

You see first and for-most poker falls under gambling. It is a game of chance. Much like monopoly and sorry or even candy land you can effect the game slightly through varrying basic decisions (bluffing etc). But in the end its what ever cards you were dealt. It is a game of chance, it is gambling. And not ever going to be an olympic sport due to that.

also to quote" But even so, there is still randomness in those sports as well; any player could have an ‘off’ day, the weather might not suit their training, their equipment could fail; ""

A player having an off day is still leaving the result up to the PLAYERS SKILL not a random unfair interference in the game itself. I think this is the key point that is being narrowly avoided by most people trying to argue RNG’s importance. Also, a bike breaking down in the olympics would be equivelent to my computer crashing during a match. But its my equipment, the game and its rules did not give me a random effect to effect my loss, but the PLAYERS equipment. Usually in competitive sports they do not say “you are issued a bike tha tmay randomly fall apart as part of the rules”. So this does not apply.

ens.9854:

I still dont understand why you are argueing against eliminating randomness in the traits/utlilites in the OP most examples you give involve randomness directly involed with a player and their skill.

Any player can throw a shot from the opposite court its a hail marry thats controlled by a player if instead that player has a guarenteed 50% chance to make it or lose it that would be terrible what if he is bionic and can make it 100% but the baskets has a cover that closes 50% of the time when a player throws a ball.

ens.9854:

Coming from quake, I find this to be an old discussion. Most quake players would say these games (mmorpgs) take no skill at all, because by skill they mean motor coordination. Many players believe motor skill is the only thing that matters, and reject duelling because it forces you to keep track of item spawns, learn arbitrary geometry and movement, and deal with random factors such as respawns and unusual tactics. They would rather be placed in a small empty arena with all their tools and their opponent in front of them; and this is exactly what they do. A quick googling of “quake thunderstruck” will show just how incredibly shallow and boring this becomes. Ultimately the only lasting form of competition in quake has been duelling (and team play to an extent) because it is so interesting, challenging, AND unpredictable (eg. deep).

I personally wouldn’t make this comparison.

Thunderstruck wasn’t the greatest but competitive 1v1’s in QL and especially Q3A had very little actual randomness. In the end, you’d see a lot of deliberate conversion frags in Q3A because players were able to predict off of respawns pretty accurately – this was nerfed completely with the respawn model in QL but that’s another topic altogether.

Item spawns aren’t even a point of contention since duels among the best players had absolutely zero RNG factor involved in terms of who was able to monopolize the spawns.

HLDM is as much of a relevant example as Quake was – watch somebody like Garpy play antigrav on a map like bootcamp or crossfire and you’ll see just how non-existent RNG is in terms of knowing player and item spawn points.

RNG in a MMO is something very, very different.

Edit: also as apraxas example i’d add to “Take Fencing for example, 2 individuals fight eachother, and the best doesn’t always win, the game is decided by what player can adapt, learn and outplay his opponent over the course of a match. The underdog might lose the first couple rounds, but he can make a great comeback and get the grand price, was it with rng, doubtful.”

The game of fencing for example is left to two players skills with what their given. A pointy fencing sword. Who can win using the best of their ability to adapt and react will win the match. people might say “well its random because the over all worste player won”. But thats not true, during that match he made choices that won him THAT match . No dice roll on the side of the arena, but his own use of his sword and decision. So while a player may be more seasoned or skilled, it is always possible to lose if the opposing player confuses or uses some tactic that the (better) player is not able to forsee or counter. This is what i was talking about in my original post.

Randomness in competition exists through the UNPREDICTABILITY of the PLAYERS RNG is an artificial randomness added to a game to take away the outcome from the players and leave it more to chance

It is not needed, thus why olympic events and sports of all kinds do their best to limit it as much as possible so the winner can feel satisfaction from winning through his own choices and skills and not due to "luck’.

I think it is absurd to think that this game could hold up if skill were all that mattered. It is not demanding enough compared to physical sports. The controls are not tight or responsive enough compared to other games. For example, snap interrupts, where you change targets and immediately press stun, are impossible because there is a delay between when you change targets and when you will actually target that person.

I also think it is absurd to say that randomness is out of hand; when crit rates are “balanced” at the 40-60+% chance, this is anything but random, it is statistics. There is no 1 in 100 chance that you just win or lose. Nobody uses a build that has +60% crit damage and only a 10% crit chance, even though there is a chance it will outperform all other builds. By the same token, nobody makes a build that will only survive if somebody misses half their crits. Why? It would be too unreliable. GW2 is not about what happens in individual encounters, although there are specific builds that try to maximize this specific outcome.

Im confused at what your saying ens we are trying to make this game more competetive and you dont want that? I’m not trying to insult you just honeslty confused by some of your posts.