4 ms·

> They don't accept that if someone has a 75% chance of being guilty, they may very well not be. Nothing drove this point home to me more than X-COM: EU. Missi

> They don't accept that if someone has a 75% chance of being guilty, they may very well not be. Nothing drove this point home to me more than X-COM: EU. Missing 3 successive 90% shots at the worst possible time would cause me to fling my keyboard across the room, but eventually, I learned to accept 90% isn't 100% :).

Gravityloss 10y ago
Well, considering the bayesian, I'd consider it likely there to be a bug, either in the probability display or the outcome calculation...
- csydas 10y ago
  Nah, it's just how these games are. The first two fire emblem games on GameCube/wii were merciless in the same way on the normal modes. 80% hit chance sounds good until you miss and the entire battle goes south because of it. Since these games had permadeath, a miss could mean restarting if you didn't just hit reset mod battle. Sometimes those odds are just those odds. A lot of gaming which uses pseudorandom had given a lot of people the gamblers fallacy as their understanding of probability. In some games it perhaps makes sense; in league of legends I believe the Critical hit chance is pseudo random to feel less swingy, which is probably healthier for a competitive game. Diablo 3 weights it's unique drop rates to ensure that players get a steady supply of relevant uniques since there is no trade economy in d3 anymore. This also makes sense in isolation. Other games though that don't have as strong of a reason to fudge the roll give a really bad impression of random to players.
  - foota 10y ago
    You might consider using a term other than pseudo random for that, since pseudo random number generators generally try to be uniformly random, as opposed to the sort of thing you're talking about.
    - madenine 10y ago
      The term comes from the games community - its what they call it. For example, in DotA: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Pseudo_Random_Distribution http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Pseudo_Random_Distribution
      - foota 10y ago
        Interesting, thanks for making that point. I think it might be best to refer to one as a prng and the other as a prd (generator vs distribution) although implementing a prd creates a prng, some prng attempt to target a real random distribution.
        csydas 10y ago
        Late reply but thanks for the heads up - I wasn't aware that prng was a term that I could be using as opposed to prd. The above comment is accurate in how I first came across the term as it's pretty commonly used in a lot of games in a lay person's fashion.
  - slavik81 10y ago
    Most Fire Emblem games have misleading hit percentages. When it says 80%, you really have a 92.2% chance to hit. http://web.archive.org/web/20141004060133/http://old.serenesforest.net/general/truehit.html http://web.archive.org/web/20141004060133/http://old.serenes...
golergka 10y ago
And that's why it's a bad idea for game designers to expose honest probabilities as naked numbers to the players.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  Why? Does something like 90% get rounded up to 100%?
  - golergka 10y ago
    Because games are created for humans, and humans are bad at understanding probabilities. So when 90% shot fails three times in a row, overwhelming majority of players will think that the game is cheating.
Dylan16807 10y ago
While you learned a good lesson, hit percentages in games are very often lies. I'm seeing conflicting data for X-COM: EU specifically. Some say it's fair (except for cheating in your favor when you're losing on easier modes), but this guy collected a quite-significant number of samples and got results that looked like the square of the displayed hit chance: https://steamcommunity.com/app/200510/discussions/0/613937943073634826/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/200510/discussions/0/61393794...

Gravityloss 10y ago

Well, considering the bayesian, I'd consider it likely there to be a bug, either in the probability display or the outcome calculation...

csydas 10y ago
Nah, it's just how these games are. The first two fire emblem games on GameCube/wii were merciless in the same way on the normal modes. 80% hit chance sounds good until you miss and the entire battle goes south because of it. Since these games had permadeath, a miss could mean restarting if you didn't just hit reset mod battle. Sometimes those odds are just those odds. A lot of gaming which uses pseudorandom had given a lot of people the gamblers fallacy as their understanding of probability. In some games it perhaps makes sense; in league of legends I believe the Critical hit chance is pseudo random to feel less swingy, which is probably healthier for a competitive game. Diablo 3 weights it's unique drop rates to ensure that players get a steady supply of relevant uniques since there is no trade economy in d3 anymore. This also makes sense in isolation. Other games though that don't have as strong of a reason to fudge the roll give a really bad impression of random to players.
- foota 10y ago
  You might consider using a term other than pseudo random for that, since pseudo random number generators generally try to be uniformly random, as opposed to the sort of thing you're talking about.
  - madenine 10y ago
    The term comes from the games community - its what they call it. For example, in DotA: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Pseudo_Random_Distribution http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Pseudo_Random_Distribution
    - foota 10y ago
      Interesting, thanks for making that point. I think it might be best to refer to one as a prng and the other as a prd (generator vs distribution) although implementing a prd creates a prng, some prng attempt to target a real random distribution.
      - csydas 10y ago
        Late reply but thanks for the heads up - I wasn't aware that prng was a term that I could be using as opposed to prd. The above comment is accurate in how I first came across the term as it's pretty commonly used in a lot of games in a lay person's fashion.
- slavik81 10y ago
  Most Fire Emblem games have misleading hit percentages. When it says 80%, you really have a 92.2% chance to hit. http://web.archive.org/web/20141004060133/http://old.serenesforest.net/general/truehit.html http://web.archive.org/web/20141004060133/http://old.serenes...

golergka 10y ago

And that's why it's a bad idea for game designers to expose honest probabilities as naked numbers to the players.

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
Why? Does something like 90% get rounded up to 100%?
- golergka 10y ago
  Because games are created for humans, and humans are bad at understanding probabilities. So when 90% shot fails three times in a row, overwhelming majority of players will think that the game is cheating.

Dylan16807 10y ago

While you learned a good lesson, hit percentages in games are very often lies. I'm seeing conflicting data for X-COM: EU specifically. Some say it's fair (except for cheating in your favor when you're losing on easier modes), but this guy collected a quite-significant number of samples and got results that looked like the square of the displayed hit chance: https://steamcommunity.com/app/200510/discussions/0/613937943073634826/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/200510/discussions/0/61393794...