Now I remember why I stopped playing games like Fire Emblem and X-COM....

[Rylot]

Yeah, I have to play Fire Emblem without permadeath. I'm not against the idea but every fucking battle in Awakening is me just turtling everyone around my healers and very slowly creeping around the map. Not much fun.

Oh and I absolutely fucking hate flying units. Mine seem to be made of paper and fall apart the second they're near an enemy but there's? Oh man those guys are experts at finding just the perfect spots to weave around my party and one shot my healers every FUCKING TIME.

 

[Cowabungaa]

And that's why I have a love-hate relationship with tabletop RPG's, boardgames and Magic the Gathering.

Lord I love them, but my oh my does RNGesus hate me enough to dick me over constantly. In a way it's making me pretty Zen actually. Breathe in, breathe out, on the next shitty roll, it matters not. *hums quietly*

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I honestly don't mind RNG as long as it has a somewhat realistic feel, which it largely did for me in X-Com. Yes, there were times when I got crited from a long distance on what seemed like a BS shot, but I remember just as many times where I pulled off a lucky shot at just the right time that only had a 30% or so chance of hitting.

Where I do mind RNG is games where you have characters who you have to keep alive or game over, and the game doesn't allow any saving. In X-Com, losing a Soldier isn't the end of the world, so even on Ironman mode you can still keep going.

It's why I had to quit playing "Warmachine: Tactics", even though I really enjoy the mechanics and setting. In literally every mission you have to keep several of your guys alive or it's instant game over, and it's throw-your-keyboard-out-the-window frustrating to play through the entire mission and then lose one of your guys at the last second thanks to an enemy getting a lucky critical shot, and now you have to start the whole thing over again.

 

[freaper]

Yea, I'm gonna have to play XCOM 2 with tissues and crackers, I didn't even get 4 months into my Long War campaign.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Problem with RNG's in games is they aren't actually random.

They are a pseudorandom algorithm. And while that has benefits, (set the correct seed value, and you can replay a 'random' sequence exactly. This is what makes stuff like minecraft and procedural content feasible), it also has major pitfalls.

The first is that, well, if you know what the seed is, you can predict the result.
The second is, these things are inherently NOT random. They are unpredictable, but not random.

Finally, and this is the killer, many of these algorithms exist that simply aren't correct. They aren't random in a statistical sense, they are clearly biased towards certain values.

A naive programmer using such a pseudo-random function may not know the properties of that particular function, and thus not actually know how close to true randomness it is.
They use it without even knowing if it meets the criteria for random output. (obviously it can never actually be random, by nature. But if you don't know the seed value, a good one will give results statistically close enough to a true random source to be considered 'random' for most purposes. A bad one however, will exhibit very obvious and very non-random properties to it. This is easy to spot if you graph the output results, but most people don't bother. The better the algorithm, the longer it takes for an obvious pattern to emerge. A bad one may have an obvious identifiable pattern in just a dozen, or maybe a few thousand results at best. A good one, can get into tens of thousands, to millions or billions of numbers before you start to spot a pattern.)

Problem is, a lot of coders don't really consider this. An especially bad case is people that blindly use the C/C++ library functions.
the 'rand()' function that ships with most C compilers is absolutely atrocious, and yet lots of people use it without thinking.

Still, even with a perfect RNG, there's still going to be some highly improbable situations that arise. If a game involves random elements, you're likely to hit severe frustration sooner or later...

 

[MHR]

I love RNGeesus. I feel I'm on the generally good side of rolls for random games. People in MMOs get jealous about my good fortune. Plus, I'm one of those people that feels that "random" is a source of variety in my gameplay.

The only big difference I think is knowing how to roll with your losses. I don't get upset when a bad roll happens for something, but I get happy when a good one happens, and I'm more likely to remember the happy thing that changed my mood rather than the bad thing that I didn't even end up caring about anyway.

Lady RNG loves me. I know how to whisper sweet ones and zeros into her command line.

Problem with RNG's in games is they aren't actually random.

I don't know how you can say that's the problem with RNG. I don't ever hear anyone ***** about being killed by a variable and saying "bullshit! that wasn't random enough!" The vast majority of the time, nobody's going to notice, and unless someone dedicates time to cracking the pattern, it doesn't matter.

 

[Panthera]

Pretty much 99% of all complaints about RNGs (actually that may be understating it) is people who don't understand probability in the slightest. People are bad at it without practice generally, and most people assume that anything over a certain number (usually around 70%) is "guaranteed" and then complain when it fails, while forgetting every single time they've ever gotten lucky. In Fire Emblem games, people love to use strategies that throw a unit into a scenario where they only have a 10% or lower chance of survival, and then whine about the game cheating when the unit actually dies because they saw that each enemy had only a 30% hit rate and they assumed that made them invincible, ignoring that when you have 20 attacks coming your way and only two need to hit to kill you, 30% on each is practically guaranteed death levels of accuracy.

It's worth noting that in every Fire Emblem game from 6 onwards, the RNG is tipped in your favour: it takes the average of two random numbers, so high hit rates are more accurate than they should be, and low hit rates are less accurate than they should be. Given that the player almost always has hit rates above 50% (unless you're fighting bosses in 6) and frequently faces hit rates below 50% (often much lower), this gives the player a huge advantage. And people still complain about how unfair and biased it is against them. People's instinctive understanding of probability is so bad that you can rig it in their favour and they still think they're being screwed.

 

[Wiggum Esquilax]

I feel this. Started up a game of XCOM to get hyped for XCOM 2. Half of my squad gets wiped out every mission due to being killed in one crit from halfway across the map despite being in half or full cover.

Cover does not effect incoming damage or crits, only hit chance. And if I remember correctly, it's only -20% for half cover and -40% for full. If you're playing with aiming angles on, that can quickly be reduced to almost nothing by shots from your flanks. And even without it on, aliens like Thin Men start with (if I recall correctly) a native 80% chance to hit on an open shot. Meaning even in full cover with smoke on, you've got a 1 in 5 chance of getting hit.

On top of this, hunkering down doubles the cover bonus and makes you immune to crits from shots obstructed by cover. The mistake that everyone makes is to use overwatch as their default turn end action, despite hunker generally being far superior.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

On top of this, hunkering down doubles the cover bonus and makes you immune to crits from shots obstructed by cover. The mistake that everyone makes is to use overwatch as their default turn end action, despite hunker generally being far superior.

True. In the absence of hard/100% cover, hunkering down and/or using smoke is pretty important if you don't want to take a bunch of stupid risks. Overwatch is actually pretty awful without the traits that support it, and even then it's no guarantee of anything good happening.

You could certainly make an argument that forcing the player into a hunker/hard cover play style at higher difficulties is a bit boring, but it's not "unfair" or "too subject to RNG". It's only an RNG nightmare if you manage your squad like a riverboat gambler.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

It's odd, when I'm playing a game like XCOM: Enemy Unknown or Jagged Alliance 2 or Fallout: Tactics I tend to have amazingly awesome luck.

Yet when I play a Roguelikes, like FTL or Binding of Isaac, I tend to just get constantly wrecked by RNG. I bought FTL during the Steam sale, and even though I'm absolutely loving it, I'm pretty much having to constantly reset it due to shit luck. I'm usually an "anything less than the hardest difficulty is a joke" sort of gamer - and I don't even dare to touch FTL's hard mode.

 

[Scarim Coral]

You're not playing Fire Emblem on casual mode? In saying so, yeah RNG can be a ***** at time back in the old DE game (the enemy perform a crit despite it only had 1% to do so)!

 

[MeatMachine]

Team Fortress 2.
Playing Medic.
Full ubercharge ready do deploy.
Get insta-killed by a hatless enemy F2P Soldier who shot a 2% chance random crit rocket at my patient and hit me instead.
Now I am autobalanced to the other team.

At one point, they included the ability to cast a server vote to disable autobalance. Then they got rid of it.

Team Fortress 2 has been my favorite game since 2009, but holy Jesus they are determined to make me hate it.

 

[Aerosteam]

In the case of both Waifu Simulator: Awakening and XCOM, to save scum completely you have to reload the save that is before when you started the mission.

 

[DoPo]

In the case of both Waifu Simulator: Awakening and XCOM, to save scum completely you have to reload the save that is before when you started the mission.

Not strictly true. I did try save scumming in XCOM without the option that unlocks the random sequence (so, vanilla) and it wrked like a charm. As long as you actually use the fact that the sequence is predictable, of course - if you get a bad shot, you can reload and don't take that shot (substitute it with a different action), if you get a crit, you can reload and crit a more important target, if an enemy crits, you can reload and move away from them, so they don't attack, thus cycling through the current entry of the sequence. It was actually quite powerful when you know what the outcome of an action is and can then apply it elsewhere, or alternatively erase that from existence.

I don't know about Awakening, though - I assume it would work the same. I was testing that in XCOM because I had heard you can't savescum but I just did the same thing I've done with other games with locked sequences and it just worked.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

RNG has warped my thought process.

Before, if someone said I had a 75% chance of success, I'd figure odds are in my favor.

After I played Xcom for hundreds of hours, if I see 75% chance... I'm raging because I feel like it's an automatic miss.

And for the most part. It is.

There's something wrong with RNG when you feel like 80% chance of connecting is too low.

 

[Aerosteam]

Snap

Yes, it works almost the same in Awakening, though you can only have up to 3 saves in the world map and 2 saves during a battle. However, these saves count for all playthroughs and the 2 saves during battles is disabled in classic mode.

Basically there's a hidden code in the game that changes after every single attack/heal/dance action (moving your units don't count). Example:

(If unit's hit chance is >40, attack hits) + (If unit's crit chance >30, critical hit) + (If paired units' relationship points >50, dual strike) +
(If enemy's hit chance is >70, attack misses) + (If enemy's crit chance >90, critical hit) + (If paired units' relationship points >40, dual guard)

When you start a mission the numbers in bold are randomly generated, highest is 100 and lowest is 0 and are calcualted in an extremely long array that keeps going for as long as the mission lasts, like this:

23, 14, 76, 90, 5, 12
45, 67, 31, 92, 10, 60
65, 87, 10, 3, 39, 2
etc.

The outcome of the action will always be taking into account pre-determined numbers. Which unit you use to initiate the attack, what weapon they use or which enemy you're attacking determines if they pass the thresholds or not.

Let's say there are 2 identical enemies and I have two units left to make an action, one has a 90% change to hit and the other has 30%. I have to kill both enemies with one hit each.

The predetermined numbers to hit an enemy is [First action = 10% required to hit] [Second action = 50% required to hit]. Based on this, I would tell my less accurate unit to attack first because he passes the first hit threshold, but not the second. The more accurate unit will hit no matter when because he passes both thresholds.

Knowledge is power.

 

[WindKnight]

Because I'm permanently on RNGesus's shit list. I've hard reset and sleep tricked my 3DS on Awakening no less than 28 times and I'm only on Chapter 3. I've seen multiple instances of things occurring so incredible than that should technically never happen ever during someone's lifetime.

My last attempt just ended with multiple characters dying in succession to 1% Crit chance crits all in a row.

At this rate, I honestly don't know if I'll be able to finish the game at this rate. I don't think at this age I have the patience or time to play dice with RNGesus over and over just to complete a game.

1) Remember Murphies law - If it Can Go Wrong, It Will Go Wrong

2) Remember, Murphy was an optimist

Alternatively, there's sods law, Which is Murphies law with a dash of Irony - IE, you get that rare drop you spent a month hunting for only after you no longer want it