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Baldur's Gate Missing isn't fun or how I failed statistics at high school and blamed D&D for it.

J1M

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Mr. Hiver look at this:

(1,1) (1,2) (1,3) (1,4) (1,5) (1,6)
(2,1) (2,2) (2,3) (2,4) (2,5) (2,6)
(3,1) (3,2) (3,3) (3,4) (3,5) (3,6)
(4,1) (4,2) (4,3) (4,4) (4,5) (4,6)
(5,1) (5,2) (5,3) (5,4) (5,5) (5,6)
(6,1) (6,2) (6,3) (6,4) (6,5) (6,6)

I've put in bold the case that you are interested in. But why is it special? What about the cases defined by (x, 1), (x, 2), etc.?
Any row or column forms a similar set with an ordered pattern. We can find many patterns in a diagram like this. What makes that diagonal row special?
Disclaimer: I understand statistics and the point you are attempting to make. This post is pedantic.

One way the diagonal row is different is that each pair of district numbers has a mirrored result in the table, and the matched one does not. (x, y) -> (y, x) except x=y.

I highlight this because there are very few games where you roll a handful of dice and then look at the results through the lens of "this is die 1, this is die 2, etc." If you going to discuss 'real' statistics and probability I'm not sure why you would stop at the toy problem where order matters instead of looking at the 'real' use-case.
 

HeatEXTEND

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Kaivoks and Hiver lying down in a room

"You up?"
"Sure"
"My turn?"
"Yeah, pretty sure it's you"
"Right, fix some eggs? you start rolling"
"sure"
*cooking sounds, dice rolling*
"It came up again."
"123 outta 619.920..."
"...Go again?"
"...no"
:lol:

This post is pedantic.
Guy probably never played Catan :shittydog:
 
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Mr. Hiver

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I said the same thing three times. Not going to repeat myself again.

Whats actually relevant to the subject here is that player character misses should not be used to determine successes as the most important mechanic - in RPG combat. Its too simplistic for complexity of actual gameplay we get. And the answers we usually get even from devs like Tim Cain, about how hey "thats what probabilities mean" as if its some binary 50/50 toss each time you try to attack - are nonsensical.
You can spread the results with grazes and similar additions, as a band aid, but to me the situation should be changed from the ground up.

as i said previously

"Im of a mind outright misses should be drastically reduced as skills get higher and all such unsuccessful attempts should be changed into defense of the enemy being successful.
So instead of you missing - the enemy defends with visual feedback clarifying that. Same for you in opposite situation.

Distance should be a great modifier to this all the time, increasing chance to hit at low levels when closer, slightly decreasing it when larger even on high levels, but the problem is that most often RPGs use very constrained small space for combat.
Yet even so, most "misses" at high levels should become enemy or yours successful defense.

So, you have 20% in small guns or knives at the beginning, in a fight you run toward enemy to get close - and that makes you and the enemy chance to hit become very high if you get very close.
You can hit more easily, but so can the enemy - and then it becomes a matter of who can defend, dodge or block or whatever better."

I would also add movement modifier, so targets that are stationary would be easier to hit, while moving targets more difficult. Which totally makes sense - and thats the point.


All of this would result in a gameplay where you can still miss, but rarely - while majority of failures would actually be a success of enemy defending.
Same for you, the enemy wouldnt just miss you most of the time - instead you would perform a successful dodge, block, etc. defensive action.
 
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Roguey

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I don't think that's so good, in tabletop gaming failure can be as fun as success and put you in amusing/tense situations you would have never gotten yourself into otherwise.
That needs to translate perfectly into games, the player shouldn't be immediately aware if they succeeded or failed a certain skill check but instead want to see how the situation plays out regardless.

To me, something like that would feel the same as savescumming so your favourite characters don't ever die in Valkyria for example. Half the tension comes from an encounter where you screwed up and you need to rush to save your favourite characters before they're killed off for good... And the more memorable moments of your campaign when you lose them for good.

This doesn't happen in PC games. Tides of Numenera made an attempt, they weren't successful. Anyway, you can still fail if you don't meet the requirements, and there's precedent in the p&p rules themselves
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingSkills.htm
When you have plenty of time (generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be checked in 1 round, one full-round action, or one standard action), you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20. In other words, eventually you will get a 20 on 1d20 if you roll enough times. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, just calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.

Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding. Taking 20 takes twenty times as long as making a single check would take.

Since taking 20 assumes that the character will fail many times before succeeding, if you did attempt to take 20 on a skill that carries penalties for failure, your character would automatically incur those penalties before he or she could complete the task. Common “take 20” skills include Escape Artist, Open Lock, and Search.
 

Kaivokz

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Disclaimer: I understand statistics and the point you are attempting to make. This post is pedantic.

One way the diagonal row is different is that each pair of district numbers has a mirrored result in the table, and the matched one does not. (x, y) -> (y, x) except x=y.
Point conceded, but you could also
Specify cases where x =< 2 & y =< 2...

(1,1) (1,2)
(1,3) (1,4) (1,5) (1,6)
(2,1) (2,2) (2,3) (2,4) (2,5) (2,6)
(3,1) (3,2) (3,3) (3,4) (3,5) (3,6)
(4,1) (4,2) (4,3) (4,4) (4,5) (4,6)
(5,1) (5,2) (5,3) (5,4) (5,5) (5,6)
(6,1) (6,2) (6,3) (6,4) (6,5) (6,6)

which only occupy that corner and everywhere else x & y > 2, but that's no reason to think it's a special grouping. You'd need to provide some further argument to say it's not just a pattern we've picked out and that it is actually relevant to whatever we're doing.

I highlight this because there are very few games where you roll a handful of dice and then look at the results through the lens of "this is die 1, this is die 2, etc." If you going to discuss 'real' statistics and probability I'm not sure why you would stop at the toy problem where order matters instead of looking at the 'real' use-case.
I wasn't really commenting for real-use cases, I just chimed in because someone brought up probability and flipping a single coin multiple times.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

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If I don't get fucked by RNG in a hilariously anti-climatic way, then that RPG sucks.

That's all there is to it, BRUDDA.
 

AdolfSatan

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I sure hope this thread is but a ruse to get the names of all the brainlets who can't into statistics before sending them to the gas chambers.

"Im of a mind outright misses should be drastically reduced as skills get higher and all such unsuccessful attempts should be changed into defense of the enemy being successful.
So instead of you missing - the enemy defends with visual feedback clarifying that. Same for you in opposite situation.
This could work very well if implemented in combo with a pooling of one character against the other's expertise in weapons to further process the possible results (as opposed to just matching THAC0). Thing is, this only works in hth, because how the fuck are you supposed to block or dodge a bullet? At some point you gonna have to accept that even if you have 99% you might still get five misses in a row.
 

Mr. Hiver

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This could work very well if implemented in combo with a pooling of one character against the other's expertise in weapons to further process the possible results (as opposed to just matching THAC0). Thing is, this only works in hth, because how the fuck are you supposed to block or dodge a bullet? At some point you gonna have to accept that even if you have 99% you might still get five misses in a row.

I said it already. Distance and movement modifiers + armor, naturally.

You would still miss in this system, it doesnt remove it entirely. It would be rarer - and make more sense.

Plenty of games where characters dodge and "block" bullets, arrows and spells due to all of the abstraction. I would like to reduce that too to something more sensible. Armor and other feature of the setting would play a great role there.

And there would be other adjustments to various core features to make all this feel really good and proper. For example, the small constrained environments usual for combat encounters would need to be extended.
But the whole game is always a gestalt of all the features, and that is why this rejection of "misses" happens in a lot of players.
 
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AwesomeButton

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Assuming the coin is perfectly balanced every flip in the succession will be 50/50. If you flip 150 heads in a row, the 151st flip still has a 50% chance of landing heads. Further, any specific sequence of coin flips will have the same odds of happening (eg HHHH, HTHT, HHHT). It’s just our psychology that makes HHHH feel “more unlikely” than HHHT. (Often called the gambler’s fallacy.)

Either I am failing to understand you, or what you said there is countered by your other example:

(1,1) (1,2) (1,3) (1,4) (1,5) (1,6)
(2,1) (2,2) (2,3) (2,4) (2,5) (2,6)
(3,1) (3,2) (3,3) (3,4) (3,5) (3,6)
(4,1) (4,2) (4,3) (4,4) (4,5) (4,6)
(5,1) (5,2) (5,3) (5,4) (5,5) (5,6)
(6,1) (6,2) (6,3) (6,4) (6,5) (6,6)

Two coins at the same time, permutations:
(2,1) (2,2)
(1,1) (1,2)

Three coins at the same time:
(1,1,1) (1,1,2) (1,2,1) (1,2,2)
(2,1,1) (2,1,2) (2,2,1) (2,2,2)

The chance of all landing on heads is 1/4th in one case and just one 1/8th in the other. That was what I mean when I said simultaneous coin tosses.

Edit: quickly fixed the number of coin sides :D
 

lobsterfrogman

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AwesomeButton

I believe Kaivokz's point was to show that every result has the same probability of appearing - when you roll d10 3 times for example and record every roll a result of 666 is just as likely as 457 (both are after all a concrete single result out of 1000 possibilities). Some people don't get it because numbers like 666 look special to them and they think the result of rolling it is less probable.
 

Kaivokz

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Either I am failing to understand you, or what you said there is countered by your other example:


Two coins at the same time, permutations:
(2,1) (2,2)
(1,1) (1,2)

Three coins at the same time:
(1,1,1) (1,1,2) (1,2,1) (1,2,2)
(2,1,1) (2,1,2) (2,2,1) (2,2,2)

The chance of all landing on heads is 1/4th in one case and just one 1/8th in the other. That was what I mean when I said simultaneous coin tosses.

Edit: quickly fixed the number of coin sides :D
Yes, the point was that (1,1,1) has the same odds as (2,1,2)—as you can see graphically. So when you say “the odds of getting 3 heads in a row are 1 in 8” a more general way to say that is “the odds of getting [any specific sequence of flips] is 1 in 8”—but people don’t typically have the second in mind when saying the first and assign more meaning to getting three heads in a row (Woah! So crazy!) than getting heads-tails-heads (eh just a normal occurrence).

(Edit- But you’re right that if you’re specifically looking to get all heads, the more coins you throw at once the less likely that you’ll get all heads! I just wanted to get at the underlying meaning)
 

janjetina

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Given unbiased die (or coin) and independence of die tosses, every disjunct atomic event (particular sequence of toss outcomes) has equal probability. Complex event like "two ones and three threes in five tosses, order doesn't matter" is union of some disjunct atomic events (each atomic event can be written as a distinct permutation of 1,1,3,3,3), and its probability is the sum of their probabilities. Kaivokz is talking about atomic events here, so you guys are kind of talking past each other.
 

Sabotin

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Given people's perception and that we're talking about computer programs, why aren't more systems using "weighted" random chances? For example to more evenly distribute rolls, so it's less likely you get five 1s in a row etc. A while back I was reading something about how critical hits work in League of Legends, that when you don't crit then your next attack will have a higher chance. Nowadays it just seems to be in those money sucking gacha games and MMOs...

I think it'd also make a decent difficulty system, where instead of changing stats it just affects the dice rolls. Looking at a d20, easier could be that you never roll a 1 and/or you have a higher chance of rolling 11-20 than 1-10, core would be without special effects and harder would be with enemies being more "lucky" instead.
 

FeelTheRads

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I said the same thing three times. Not going to repeat myself again.

You said the same retarded thing 3 times, which while true in itself is completely irrelevant to discussion and you still don't get that. So, yeah, about time you stop repeating yourself.
 

Mr. Hiver

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I said it yesterday and you just figured out to repeat what i said now, only with moronic spin - and that supposed to... what? Make you feel better about something Rads?
 

J1M

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A lot of games do cheat dice rolls, which leads to further perception problems.

It is fine to give a boost on miss or artificial armor increase, but it should not be hidden.
 

Mr. Hiver

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Nah its totally stupid. Because events in reality do not happen completely separated from other events. And neither they work like that in games.

If i have 70% chance to hit then i should mothrfuking hit 7 out of ten times. Thats not a random fuking chance. it is 7 out of ten motherfiking chance.
 

Mr. Hiver

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Yeah i know, and thats the problem with how those mechanics work.

The simplification into single percentage calculation simplifies what its supposed to represent so much that it distorts it into something else.
 

Riddler

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Nah its totally stupid. Because events in reality do not happen completely separated from other events. And neither they work like that in games.

If i have 70% chance to hit then i should mothrfuking hit 7 out of ten times. Thats not a random fuking chance. it is 7 out of ten motherfiking chance.

Why not 70/100, 700/1000 or 7000/10000?

It sounds to me like you don't want chance to hit at all but rather a system of resistance, so when you would have 70% chance to hit you just do 70% damage.
 

Mr. Hiver

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I hope that nonsensical strawman makes you feel all warm and fuzzy from how correct you are ... because thats the only purpose it can possibly have.

You know, it sounds to me like you dont want ganledonk approaching dungdung but would rather bananas to fly sideways in green.
Answer that motherfuker. And if you dont, it means im right!

Why not 70/100, 700/1000 or 7000/10000?
I dont know, why not? Am i making a hundred, thousand or ten thousand attempts?

Why not seven million in ten million or seven hundred million out of billion?
That should be enough that i never hit anything in any game.

Which is what those percentages are supposed to be doing, right? Creating an infinite number of misses - because in infinity the number of attempts is infinite - glonk.
And even if the chance to hit is 99.99 - in infinity there is always infinitely more attempts being made - so i would then also miss infinite number of times.
Sounds like a perfect and completely reasonable way to handle such mechanics.

instead, being insane as i am, i would rather have a game behaving like i described in previous post or two. Loco, i know. But what can you do, some just cant handle when things are reasonable and mathematically correct!
 

AdolfSatan

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You're being mathematically retarded, 70%THC doesn't guarantee 7 hits out of 10 shots. That's it, there's nothing left to be discussed.
 

Mr. Hiver

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Of course, i just said so. 70 thc guarantess infinite misses. Or, maybe, you being not retarded mathematically could explain what is it supposed to achieve.

Or is that "there's nothing left to be discussed." line just an example of the content of your dumb retarded brain.
 

AwesomeButton

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70% thc means "throw a 10-sided dice, if you score 8, 9 or 10 you miss, otherwise you hit". Go to a random number generator on the internet (type "random number generator", and google has one) and generate a random number between 1 and 10. Let's see if it's under 8 in 7 out of 10 times. Experiment.
 

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