-
I still like it. But what I'm working on is simpler still, and I'm happy for that.
That's cool. The FS3 skill mechanic is pretty simple. You could make it simpler by ditching attributes (like FATE, basically), but I like the way they add another dimension to characters.
The FS3 Combat system is more complex because it's designed for a war game. It's designed to do the sorts of epic battle scenes @Seraphim73 is talking about, and to do them quickly. It's also designed to give players options so it's not just "attack Cylon1" all the time. That requires a lot of automation and a fair amount of complexity.
All that isn't necessary, though, on a lot of games. Technically I did use +combat on Sweetwater (my western) for a few big gunfights, but that was only once in a blue moon. Most stuff was resolved with simple opposed rolls.
-
So I dug down a little bit more into the probabilities of FS3 and found something that I think exemplifies what happens when you design a challenge resolution system using a semi-arbitrary 'this sort of feels good' mechanism.
Before I go on I would like the say that I still feel that the probabilities in FS3 work out pretty well and my comment about how it is designed isn't meant to come off as dismissive. It is just that at the moment I've been grinding through some math and my language centers are a little out of whack so I can't think of a better term to use that would be a clear and concise summary for how the probability system was derived without making it so that some people might perceive me as being dismissive.
The flaw I've spotted is essentially one of 'countering modifiers'. To explain the term in most games if you take an action to get a +1 to attack and then someone takes an action that gives them a +1 to defense then you end up back where you started. They take some form of action that counters your modifier (although usually in doing so they have to take some other form of penalty themselves).
In FS3 this doesn't happen. If you've got 6 dice to attack someone and you attack a person with 6 dice to defend then your chance of hitting is 61.69%. If both people get a 3 die boost (from spending Luck) the odds drop to 59.60%. So even though relative positions remain completely the same (both people are equally skillful, both people catch lucky breaks) the attacker loses 2% on their possibility to hit. While this isn't a whole lot it is still awkward and this is compounded by the fact that it isn't a consistent change. If both people only have 2 dice to begin with the odds shift from 69.60% to 62.76%, nearly a 7% change. Even more inconsistent if someone with 2 dice attacks someone with 6 dice they go from a 23.56% chance to hit to a 29.25% chance to hit, so they in fact gained nearly 6%.
Now again, I'm really not trying to say that FS3 is a horrible system or anything. Honestly, if I didn't think you were looking for data like this and you weren't able to use it constructively (and in this case 'constructive' even includes saying 'you know what? I -like- that this happens') I wouldn't bother. Kind of how we were talking earlier about aspects of realism and different people having different thresholds people will interpret these 'hiccups' differently. I'm just making sure you know they are there.
Now in a tabletop game I would be a lot more accepting of these small aberrations in the probability curves. It's more important to keep things moving along quickly and so you want to avoid complex calculations. That means there's lots of mechanisms that get used to generate probability curves and character progression schemes that are 'good enough'.
We're not playing on a tabletop, however and a lot of the things that would give us a headache the computer can handle very, very easily. As an example I would never try to play a game in which I'm told that the odds of success are 1/(1+2.718281828^((level difference)*-0.183102))*100. I mean what the Hell is that? On the other hand having the computer look at the two characters and say 'Oh! There's a 6 level difference. That means the odds of success is 75%' is something a computer is -really- good at doing. Computers are so good at it that they don't even need to round the result to 75% but can actually have the 'real' probability of 74.99999458% because they don't need to roll 2 10-sided dice to generate a probability.
Even better than that, because you are using mathematics to calculate probabilities you can avoid another pitfall that is left over from tabletop games; the Hell a character goes through to increase a skill they are really good at. You're a Great pilot and you want to increase your skill another point? That's going to take you 3 months during which absolutely nothing changes because you can't roll 2/3 of an 8-sided die. Using math, however, there's not anything wrong with being partway between Great and Expert. The computer has no more difficulty calculating the chance of success between characters of equal level and characters who are 2.1 levels apart.
Now in a lot of settings players might have some difficulty wrapping their heads around some of these aspects and I can completely understand that. One of the nice things about FS3, however, is that a lot of these mechanics are already hidden under the hood and you could change the system with the players barely noticing. Just allow the players to put XP straight into a stat like Pilot. If they put 4 or 5 XP in the skill they get feedback on their sheet that shows that their skill is 'Fair'. As soon as they add the 6th point of XP to Pilot the stat now reads 'Good'. However, a pilot who has put in 5 XP has a small advantage over a pilot who puts in 4 XP. When they shoot the computer looks at their stats, compares them to the stat of the defender, and tells them whether they hit or not. Practically nothing has changed for them (and that's assuming you let them buy partial levels. While I'm all in favor of that it is hardly a requirement. It's an advantage of the system buy hardly mandated).
The biggest problem you would have with such a system is dialing in the initial values. I actually had created a spreadsheet a few years back that did the math for me so I could concentrate on shaping the curve however I wanted.
I've gone ahead and cleaned it up and added some stuff that allow you to sort of 'mock up' tests using attributes that are roughly the same scale as what FS3 is doing. I did make one cheat, however, in the mockup and rather than using the XP chart that FS3 uses I change the calculations for the levels of skills and attributes to a pair of formulas.
-
@The-Sands While I appreciate the effort on the detailed analysis, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. FS3 deliberately uses a familiar dice mechanic because people didn't trust a system they didn't understand, not because of any technical obstacle. In fact, first edition used computer generated probabilities exactly as you described and the feedback was universally negative. I'm perfectly fine if there are small statistical aberrations like what you describe, because they're exactly what you'd find in a tabletop RPG. People can relate to what +3 dice means, even if it doesn't give them as much of a boost against an opponent who also spends luck (which, incidentally, doesn't happen in the sort of PvE combat hat FS3 is designed for.)
-
@The-Sands said in FS3:
So I dug down a little bit more into the probabilities of FS3 and found something that I think exemplifies what happens when you design a challenge resolution system using a semi-arbitrary 'this sort of feels good' mechanism.
This just came to mind, not to discount anything anyone has said about this, but it'd be a shorter list to find a rolled RPG stat system where this isn't true. The rest of the analysis is deeply interesting but, yeah.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain You're not wrong there. Sometimes it just drives me crazy that game designers pay so little attention to their math.
-
@The-Sands I pay attention, I just decided to emphasize fun and familiarity over complex algorithms. You, @Seraphim73 and other system geeks might find the success chart for FS3 First Ed interesting:
0, -1, -2 were varying degrees of failure, and 1-4 were success. The Y axis is the percent chance of getting each degree of success/failure. Notice how the expert (palest blue line) was skewed to have a huge chance of getting a big success, and almost no chance of a spectacular failure, whereas the rookie (maroon line) was the opposite.
Now you could quibble over these how these curves "should" be, but that's not really the point. The point is that the general reaction to this system (not the curves, just the system overall) was: "WTF? What does this even mean? How good am I really?" You can say that it's fine to hide the results behind the curtain and just expect people to trust that the system spit out "Bob rolls Firearms - Great success" but the reality is more like what @Thenomain said earlier - people want to know how the system works, and something weird is not going to get much traction.
ETA: So for 2nd ed I changed it to use the same basic mechanic as my favorite RPG - Shadowrun 4. And wouldn't you know it, people started using it more.
-
@The-Sands said in FS3:
@Thenomain You're not wrong there. Sometimes it just drives me crazy that game designers pay so little attention to their math.
Most RPG game designers are authors, a field not known to attract many people going for the sciences. Conversely, most of the best board game designers do have a strong grasp of statistics, or know how to fake it. Guess which field makes enough money to live on? (Hint, not RPGs.) I would hate to see an RPG designed solely by an expert statistician, but would forgive a badly mathed game made by an expert writer.
This reminds me of that one illustrator/designer that Google hired to help them fine-tune their brand. He quit after a few months because the engineers were arguing technicalities over various shades of blue.
--
edit, because sloppy connection: @Faraday, consider instead mapping it out as an 'at least' graph. Those curves sure are wonky, but visually it'd be easier to understand. And probably still wonky. Probably.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain The thing, though, is that RPGs been developed by a single person in a pretty long time. Heck, even games like Dungeons and Dragons weren't actually developed by one person. Now in the case of things like FS3 where it's a labor of love I can understand the designers not getting the chance to get someone good with probability math to work on things. When you had books being written in the late 90's by teams of people and making significant amounts of money (sadly, these days we are back to where game designers often need to hold other jobs just to make a living) I always wished the larger companies would invest in just one or two people with a good math background.
-
@The-Sands I'm an engineer and a computer programmer. I took stats and a crapton of math in college. I also worked with an actual RPG company as a freelancer. Don't mistake a lack of interest for a lack of ability. Game design is a balancing act. It's not all about the math.
ETA: I'm not offended or anything
I just find it funny to hear a comment like: "Oh, if only someone with more math background worked on it..." -
The amount a modifier is worth changing value applies to any curve.
Both sides of a contest having less of a chance to overcome one another if they stack other advantages doesn't bother me. Since the system doesn't track small differences, I think of it as being similar to rounding Olympic performances to the nearest 2 seconds. A LOT of best performances get clumped together. (This is why I favor systems where you total a bunch of dice, then if you want "successes levels" you can divide by some common value like 5 or 10.)
Partial levels could be enabled by allowing the newest die to have a success on an 8, then 7-8, then 6-8 at full value. Alternately, just allow a percent chance of getting to roll the new die based on (or equal to) the percentage of the level you have paid for.
-
@The-Sands said in FS3:
Heck, even games like Dungeons and Dragons weren't actually developed by one person.
TSR was two people. Then four. Then ten. And by the time they could afford more, they couldn't make it any different. Oh they could, but then people would revolt and go somewhere else. By the time that WotC bought them (a board game company), TSR had tried other systems. And people kept coming back to D&D. The bad statistics was far from making it unpopular. Hell, around 3e/3.5, the games that were supposed to "fix" the bad math of D&D, some upstart company made Pathfinder and ate WotC/Hasbro's dessert. Not quite their lunch, but enough to continue to show that most people don't care about the math; they care how it feels.
So yeah, I know what it's like to be one person in a crowd shaking your nerd fist nerdingly. It's still a very interesting analysis.
-
I'm probably weird in that I don't particularly care about the dice-feel, and I like the idea behind @faraday's chart above, where you look at what you want and make the system conform rather than the opposite way around.
It always seems so weird to do a lot of the stuff we do on MUs, using systems that are designed for easy math at the game table, when we're playing on supercomputers that can calculate out all the ridiculous complexity, extra steps, etc that we could ever want! Stuff like hit locations, armor systems, etc are all just eyes glaze over if you have to do them step by step yourself, but if the magic box can do them for you, you get all the extra detail with none of the effort.
-
I agree. Oh how I agree. But eventually you'll have to explain to someone what a "+1" means, and you'll have to find some kind of way to explain it. You have XP to spend, how do you know what to spend it on. You are building a situation for people to overcome, how do you decide what numbers to put where to make it challenging.
It works in cRPGs. I think it works in cRPGs because the game is balanced to a certain story. In MMOs, it's balanced because if you die trying something you have a lot of solid feedback and oh my god the analysis people do on these things is insane, and the time and effort put into coding these things are insane.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain I also think it works in cRPGs because there's a level of trust there that Blizzard's game engine isn't screwing you over. And even if there isn't trust, it's not like you've got Blizzard's ear to complain about it. A MU* staff is a completely different situation.
Even with labels like "Rookie/Professional/Veteran/Expert" (which I thought were pretty straightforward) and instructions to "just pick what level fits your character", you would not believe the volume of questions I got about: "But what does Expert really mean? Is that like 5 dice in WoD?"
Even when I switched it to a dice-based mechanic, people were still skeptical about it until I showed them the dang die roll. And even now, we've seen some folks requesting that same degree of transparency in the combat rolls. You can't do that if the system is stats-based.
-
Even when I switched it to a dice-based mechanic, people were still skeptical about it until I showed them the dang die roll. And even now, we've seen some folks requesting that same degree of transparency in the combat rolls. You can't do that if the system is stats-based.
Sure you can.
Person A (CV:8.5) attacks Person B (CV:2.5) and hits (Target 75%/Rolled 42%).In fact in some ways it might even be clearer to the people playing. While they might not understand exactly how 75% came about (though that can be pretty easily explained) the fact that they are given a clear percentage chance for success would probably offset some of the situations where people think that because they've got 11 dice and the other person has 9 their odds of success should be around 80% when it is actually only about 70%.
This doesn't mean people would automatically accept such a system. I completely understand people's bias to feeling a clump of dice somehow represents the odds better. I'm just saying that you can definitely provide a lot of transparency to the combat rolls.
-
@The-Sands said in FS3:
In fact in some ways it might even be clearer to the people playing. While they might not understand exactly how 75% came about (though that can be pretty easily explained) the fact that they are given a clear percentage chance for success would probably offset some of the situations where people think that because they've got 11 dice and the other person has 9 their odds of success should be around 80% when it is actually only about 70%.
Have you ever played XCOM? It pissed the shit out of me when I would have a stated 85% to succeed, and then didn't. Because, fuck, really?
Some people like transparency, statistics, and all of that. A lot of people, I'll wager, don't give a shit. That's why nWoD and other RPGs persist because, as @Thenomain points out, good writing overcomes shitty mechanics.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
-
@Ganymede Missing on an 85% isn't that big a surprise. You should still be missing about 1 in 6.
-
@The-Sands said in FS3:
Missing on an 85% isn't that big a surprise. You should still be missing about 1 in 6.
I'm not surprised that the Trump Administration is a shitshow in wheels, but that makes me no less pissed off that it's happening.
-
Have you ever played XCOM? It pissed the shit out of me when I would have a stated 85% to succeed, and then didn't. Because, fuck, really?
Had one of my snipers miss a 96% shot last time I rolled up a game. Haunts my goddamn dreams.
And yet, it's probably my favorite video game of all fucking time. Which says a lot about my psychology as a player, I guess.
-
@Thenomain said in FS3:
I agree. Oh how I agree. But eventually you'll have to explain to someone what a "+1" means, and you'll have to find some kind of way to explain it. You have XP to spend, how do you know what to spend it on. You are building a situation for people to overcome, how do you decide what numbers to put where to make it challenging.
I mean, I understand why the system nerds want to understand the underlying system! It's a reasonable impulse. But they're also the most math-literate so they could probably understand more complex computations? Like maybe you provide documentation of the guts if they really want to dig into it (I know there are some ridiculously complicated pen and paper systems out there, too - and someone, somewhere, actually learns to play those!), but for most people provide a basic chart like she did that gives them the big picture.
The trust thing I just think is ridiculous, to be blunt. Not that I disbelieve it, but... if you don't trust staff, idk, what are you even doing and how is some text of pretend dice making you trust where you didn't before?
