Turn-Based Tactics Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden - now with Seed of Evil expansion

[MadMaxHellfire]

the beginning is horrible enough to make me completely abandon the game. the computer pulled 3 50% in a row, i missed my two 75%. game over and i did everything perfectly. absolutely retarded.

 

[Glop_dweller]

Do you mean percentages? Random percentages? There can be three successful 50% rolls in a row; there can be thirty failed 50% rolls in a row. There can be thirty failed 95% rolls in a row—it's not impossible....it's just very unlikely.

Some time ago, Tim Cain recounted being asked to code a juke box [feature] in some project, and his instructions were that the music played randomly—so that's what he had it do, and the guy who had asked for it freaked out that the tracks repeated; but he asked for the music to play randomly. He meant for it to be a shuffled list, and had no idea what random meant. You seem to assume that 50% means that every three coin flips cannot be all heads, or all tails.

 

[ValeVelKal]

the beginning is horrible enough to make me completely abandon the game. the computer pulled 3 50% in a row, i missed my two 75%. game over and i did everything perfectly. absolutely retarded.

At the beginning it is hard to not let the enemy shoot at you a few times, but there is no reason not to take 100% shoots, so you did not do everything « perfectly ». This should have stopped the bad guys from shooting at you 3 times.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Do you mean percentages? Random percentages? There can be three successful 50% rolls in a row; there can be thirty failed 50% rolls in a row. There can be thirty failed 95% rolls in a row—it's not impossible....it's just very unlikely.

Some time ago, Tim Cain recounted being asked to code a juke box [feature] in some project, and his instructions were that the music played randomly—so that's what he had it do, and the guy who had asked for it freaked out that the tracks repeated; but he asked for the music to play randomly. He meant for it to be a shuffled list, and had no idea what random meant. You seem to assume that 50% means that every three coin flips cannot be all heads, or all tails.

It is a well known issue. In many games, including nuXCOM and Mutant Zero, it you miss an high percentage chance your chance to hit the next one « secretly » increases, while if the enemy hits you his chance to hit you again next shoot decreases.

Making randomness looks more random by removing some randomness is weird but smart in an industry where everyone and his mother can reviewbomb you because « the computer is cheating »

 

[Glop_dweller]

Vaporum is the same way; as the developer stated over on the Grimrock forums. I was not a fan of this little trick.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[ValeVelKal]

So I have now also finished the DLC, forcing myself not to use sneak kills (except absolute stragglers that were miles away from support).

Guess what ? It was super fun. The level design is solid, weapons & enemies play differently, stuff keeps blowing up (due to Pod Destroyers in the DLC, and with the "pod spwaners" you have to keep relocating (except in those instances where you manage to position yourself in a "tower of snipers" and just shoot everything.

If I replayed the game, I would do this from the beginning.

I think the game would have been better if :
- Sneak skill was still allowed, but the bad guys hear death screams and bot explosions from quite a distance (so you can take out 1-2 "strategic" enemies before there is an alert) - it would also have made "enemies vs enemies" combats more organic.
- You could use the 5/6 guys at the same time (so new equipment would be more useful - currently you need armor, weapons and to a lesser extent hats for 3 guys) - with more enemies to compensate if needed.

 

[Horvatii]

There can be thirty failed 95% rolls in a row—it's not impossible....it's just very unlikely.

Well, acshually, if one considers the typical implementation of RNG with "value = rng() modulo 100" and a subsequent check for "value > 94 ?" in case of a miss, than such an RNG would probably fail randomness tests if it delivered 30 numbers with such low bits. Most library RNGs dont fail randomness test to a such high degree. So 30 95% rolls in a row is probably impossible...
One could actually test this too.

 

[baud]

There can be thirty failed 95% rolls in a row—it's not impossible....it's just very unlikely.

Well, acshually, if one considers the typical implementation of RNG with "value = rng() modulo 100" and a subsequent check for "value > 94 ?" in case of a miss, than such an RNG would probably fail randomness tests if it delivered 30 numbers with such low bits. Most library RNGs dont fail randomness test to a such high degree. So 30 95% rolls in a row is probably impossible...
One could actually test this too.

With a RNG, any sequence of 30 number is equally likely, so any true RNG can give the result of 30 consecutive 95+ on a d100. But if I calculated the odds right, you could spend a long time trying before seeing it, since it's 0.05^30.

 

[Horvatii]

There can be thirty failed 95% rolls in a row—it's not impossible....it's just very unlikely.

Well, acshually, if one considers the typical implementation of RNG with "value = rng() modulo 100" and a subsequent check for "value > 94 ?" in case of a miss, than such an RNG would probably fail randomness tests if it delivered 30 numbers with such low bits. Most library RNGs dont fail randomness test to a such high degree. So 30 95% rolls in a row is probably impossible...
One could actually test this too.

With a RNG, any sequence of 30 number is equally likely, so any true RNG can give the result of 30 consecutive 95+ on a d100. But if I calculated the odds right, you could spend a long time trying before seeing it, since it's 0.05^30.

You dont understand. An RNG out of cosmic radiation might produce uniform likeness. But thats not how games work. In games a pseudo rng generates a determistic ring of numbers. It might be 2^31 or 2^61 long but it is determinisitc.
So if you want to roll a percentage, you usually do "number modulo 100" which gives you the remainder, which is 0-99. And for it to give us a 99 (I changed 5% to 1% to amke the argument more convincing...) thirty times a row it would have to look like this:
0x??????64
0x??????64
.... 26 times
0x??????64
0x??????64

Yeah? Such a sequence would trigger rng tests like DIEHARD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests

And the rng generator would have been modified when it was designed.

I am fairly certain that even the old ANSI C LCG rng does not generate 30 ints with such a distribution, ever. Hence impossible.

 

[curry]

Garbage! Don't buy.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Garbage! Don't buy.

Wouldn't say it's garbage, just mediocre — arguably even worse.
Very repetitive, uninteresting areas, uninteresting "abilities", etc., I got about 5-6 hours in and stopped playing.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Its decent

 

[Efe]

had this thanks to tim sweeney, thought i could give it a go throughout the holidays but...

• hold space bar to make enemies go faster.
• hold space bar to immediately move your character to cursor.

one of these has to change. its insane that its not fixed yet.

 

[vortex]

I guess this movie is some guarantee that sequel will be made and Mutant game is not over

 

[cvv]

Good. I enjoyed this little game. Difficulty curve was a bit fucked up, hard diff. was ball-busting early game but then became facestomp. Got a bit repetitive in the DLC. Still, a small TB indie done right.

Selma's voice actress gave me hard-on for some reason. Hoping for a sequel.

 

[oldbonebrown]

I'm going to drop this game now after just acquiring Magnus.

I don't like the writing, from the quests to everything the characters say, the elder especially has way too many uninteresting things to say.
The combination of real time movement with turn based battle didn't feel smooth and makes me wish I was playing XCOM. Having to walk around the map looking for trash to hoover up did not change that.

 

[SoupNazi]

Yea, I just wish all of the travel and walking around hubs could be skipped. The combat is fun enough, but just give me a JA2 style campaign where I move from map to map choosing may way through the encounter, and have anything outside of that be a "laptop screen". I don't understand why that isn't a thing nowadays, with the relative success of games like Shadow Tactics... and I'm still fucking miffed that they canceled the "Divinity: Original Sin 2.5" game that was gonna be all about combat except for CYOA style screens inbetween missions. Just give me that, god damnit!!

 

[Zombra]

Yea, I just wish all of the travel and walking around hubs could be skipped. The combat is fun enough, but just give me a JA2 style campaign where I move from map to map choosing may way through the encounter, and have anything outside of that be a "laptop screen". I don't understand why that isn't a thing nowadays, with the relative success of games like Shadow Tactics... and I'm still fucking miffed that they canceled the "Divinity: Original Sin 2.5" game that was gonna be all about combat except for CYOA style screens inbetween missions. Just give me that, god damnit!!

I blame the rise of open worlds and gamers who don't understand that it's okay for some games to be focused. They figure if you can put a shoe tying minigame into one title, it should be in every new game ever made. Otherwise, how do the characters have shoes on if they don't tie them?? Huh?? Realism!! Worse, some developers feel the same way - any little thing they can put into a game, they should.

/hobbyhorse

 

[SoupNazi]

I don't know who's to be blamed. But I suspect that, making a fun and complex combat system is tough, but there are a few studios who can pull that off, except there's no publisher that will fund such an endeavor, and it's a damn shame.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I find this game really mediocre and boring. Some of the concepts are neat but the execution and the lack of courage to make it a little bit complex is holding it back.

I like:
-loot are unique, generally spread around evenly and reward exploration
-cooldown is using killcount instead of timer

Dislike:
-Almost mandatory stealth/picking of enemies one by one.
-the world looks nice but in the end feel samey with different color pallete each area. Some of them are too big and walking around is too slow
-progression feel flat and the fact even you have only 1 slot for each type of mutation is lame.
-gets really repetitive after a while.
-Rarely any interesting enemies, only the cult leaders have synergy and do interesting things



I don't really find the will to continue after rescuing hammond or whatever

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

That sounds like a total letdown. Always fucking up duck games. Damnit!

 

[cvv]

That sounds like a total letdown. Always fucking up duck games. Damnit!

It's not a letdown, it's good for what it is. It's not bursting with production values or features or replayability or dozens of hours of playtime. Tt's a small tactical indie game with unique setting that will last you 10-15 hours. It's good for that.

 

[Lord_Potato]

I'm near the end of the base game. It's becoming somewhat repetitive, but still very fun. I love the characters, especially interactions between Dux, Bromin and Selma, and the way they understand old technology completely wrong each time. Boombox as a high explosive, iPhone as a fruit freshness tester... fun stuff. Also star-struck lovers (p)Izza and Fala(fel).

The story is underwhelming, but I like the way in which they do worldbuilding with scattered notes, old legends and general lack of reliable information.

Combat above normal level is difficult, sometimes you can get stuck with no medikits and depleted abilities, with no clear way how to proceed. Then it's best to look around for optional regions with lower level foes, there are usually some places like that to improve your level and gear and prepare for the challenges of the main plot.

A game of limited scope, but somehow deeply endearing. Looking forward to Seed of Evil dlc.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Finished the game.

Seed of evil DLC wasn't really all that interesting. Instead of answering questions from the original game, they added some more. Where is Ingmar Edison and what is he up to? Why did he escape after his identity got revealed? How is he going to "buy more time for the Ark"? I'd love to know that. The new story wasn't very exciting, although the pod generators added some additional tension to the battle scenarios. Final confrontation with the big baddie proved to be fittingly tough, also the optional police department map offered a cool and prolongued exchange of fire. Finally, the new mutant was a bro. I added him to my party and never looked back at the other optional folks (neither Dux nor Bormin ever left my team). All in all, I don't feel the game needed this additional mission pack. However it would be nice to see a sequel one day. And perhaps lead our team of misfits into space. After all that was where the plot was going before they cut it short.