deadlights

They shouldn't be arguing but clearly it takes an example that obvious and absurd to stress the point because people keep coming in and talking about how hitting a seem on a baseball, a gust of wind or the way blades of grass are laying on a green is somehow equivalent to a programed 15% or 30% RNG based proc.

Someone flat out said that WoW is completely deterministic the same as sports. How else is that statement supposed to be taken.

Meh but it's going to long so I'll let it go at this point. I'd rather focus on some of the other aspects since I don't believe that the RNG is the main factor in "esport" viability. People have shown with Poker that a certain amount of chance is acceptable and even desirable in the right venue.

 

xarg

I think the main difference in poker is that the game is based around odds. At a professional level, the idea is to make a decision based on the best odds you can come up with. Frequently their choice is going to be something like 55:45, they go with the 55%, they understand perfectly that the 45% chance will happen a lot and while they will lose that particular instance, if they continue to play well they will win out in the long run.

When the choice you make has something more in the order of 95% chance, it's different. And it's really annoying when the opposing 5% comes up. It'd be like hitting a full house on the flop and going all in. You get called by a player with 3 contiguous cards of the same suit, who gets a straight flush from the turn + river. And while this is a rarity, it happens. However the entire nature of the game is on taking chances and risking getting screwed.

It's like attacking a rogue with evasion up. You're fully aware that he's going to dodge a lot of your attacks, and you're happy when some land. You have ways to counter this (as a warrior, piercing howl or intercept stun, overpower). You don't get frustrated that the dodges happen, you expect it. But when it's a 5% chance, when that 5% happens it's an outlier and it can often make a big difference. And that's really frustrating.

And yes, it's human nature to remember the 5% a lot more than the 95%.

 

• Calantus

Honestly I never cared about RNG as far as it affect esport acceptance so while the OP's point was from that perspective I object to RNG purely from a gaming/fun standpoint. I was going to say you were being hypocritical about your stance on RNG in arena before I noticed that you hadn't actually taken a stance on the RNG itself, more that it wasn't a barrier to esport acceptance. The reason is that you and other raiders have complained (justifiably) about RNG in raid encounters. Things like the random factors in the early versions of Mother and parry gibs on tanks have been complained about bitterly by the raiding community because ultimately it sucks that you can do everything right and still lose just because the RNG decided you should. It's also why pugs suck. It's also why crappy guilds suck to play in as a good player. It's just a horrible, horrible feeling to know that you did nothing wrong (rare in PVP, more like "did enough to win this time") but still lose due to factors beyond your control.

Ultimately there's no personal post-mortem you can undertake that will ever eliminate "the other people suck" or "parry gibs happen" or "the counter-spell resisted". I don't mind losing, I don't mind failing. It's not because I like it. Far from it, I want to succeed and I hate not succeeding. But every loss, every mistake is an opportunity to improve and come closer to winning next time. If I can come away with a loss and say to myself (and often my teammates also) "I missed that dispell I'll remember next time" or "I should have LOSd that polly I'll have to watch the mage more closely" then that's a valuable loss. If I come away from a loss and all I can say is "well, we played that right and the RNG fucked us" what have I gained? Nothing. I just wasted time and lost some rating for nothing at all.

I'll give you an example where RNG can and does decide games: Priest/Warrior vs Paladin/Warrior. You cannot outlast Paladin/Warrior, it's just not possible with their massive healing advantage. A warrior will also absolutely kill a priest before your warrior kills their paladin in a straight-up warriors-on-healers fight. Mana burn works, but only if the other team lets you. In this matchup the priest/warrior is the beatdown and the only way to win the matchup besides the other side playing it wrong is to co-ordinate to kill either the warrior or the paladin before inevitability runs the priest out of mana or health. You start off setting it up, getting them into the right positions, blowing their trinkets, etc, but eventually you have to burst down one of them. It's somewhat of a lopsided match as the warrior/priest has to play very tight and pressure very hard to get a kill before paladin/warrior just steamrolls them, but it is possible. The only problem is that at some point you will often have to dispell a BoP or a DS in order to get the kill you need and both of those have a 30% chance to resist. There have been many games, less as we got better but still a few, where we've lost and I've been able to say what we did wrong and try to do better next time. That's fine, it's a hard match and we're not perfect, I accept that. But sometimes we do everything right to secure the victory. Sometimes we will absolutely win if the dispell lands. And then the 30% resistance rears its ugly head and we lose. I've had a number MD+Scream combos hit a resistant bubble, the heal go through, and the match be lost because of that one spell alone. I can't take anything away from those matches at all. We lost because. That's not any fun at all.

And that's why I hate RNG. I don't mind losing, I just mind losing and not being able to take anything from the game. There's no mistake to correct, no way to tighten up the execution to fix the problem. Forget about rating and how it evens out, I just want every game to be worth something, some rating or something to learn from. Give me at least one of them and I'll be satisfied.

 

ceasefire

As a general rule, I think a lot of people complaining about RNG in General Forums/Blogs/other sites are idiots. I notice a lot of the top players in battlegroups/servers/the world rarely complain about RNG, it's mostly the mediocre players and the terribles who cry about it nonstop. Based on my playing semi-professional Poker, I see this mentality in that game as well.

Basically, the way it's laid out, you have games like WoW, Poker, and Backgammon versus games like Chess, Starcraft, and Counterstrike. In the former, there are random elements added to a skill-based game. When you have 5000 people enter a tournament for such games, the most skilled players will generally have the best results, although this varies from event to event. So if you were to run the WWI one hundred times, Council of Mages might have won forty of them, and placed from second-fourth in the other sixty but never really finished last (these are hypothetical numbers pulled from my rear end).

Compare that to a game like Starcraft or Chess, where there are zero to very few random elements. The best players will always win. And consequently, games like Starcraft (I'm Korean, but let's exclude South Korea from SC) and Chess do not have big worldwide audiences. Sure, a country like Russia or Korea might have some fanaticism for Chess and SC, respectively. But neither game is really fun to watch because the outcome is almost predetermined.

In Poker, almost everyone feels they are "running bad," at some point. The list of endless QQ bad beat stories I've heard stretches on for years, and most of the people complaining are bad players who haven't really grasped the small edges that top players push for cash. Most of the MTT (tournaments like the WSOP) pros push every small edge in the beginning to acquire a huge stack, then try to flip for it with another big stack. So while you have the amateur crying about losing "yet another flip with AK vs underpair," the top pro realizes once you take a huge stack you can basically raise with impunity and take blinds + antes with little to no resistance.

In WoW, the scrubs in the 1700-2000 bracket complain constantly about RNG. "We would have beat him if my Kidney Shot hadn't resisted! He is an Orc so I lost!" In actuality, the reason the team lost has far less to do with RNG and far more to do with skill. Though I played on a 2300 Gladiator team, If I was to play fifty skirmishes with the top 2v2 on my battlegroup (Vorrent and Reflex, the former is a very e-famous druid), I think my team would probably win two or three games, possibly less. Themaximum upper limit I would put on our team's wins is probably 10 out of 50. Why? Because they are undoubtedly superior at the small things in game (GCD management, mana management, kiting) that separate the cream of the crop from the very good.

Gurg asked for instances where RNG determined a 3v3 game in an MLG or other such event. Most replies weren't able to directly address the issue because there are very few situations where RNG determines the winner. Why were Serennia/Neilyo able to place well in two tournaments in a row? Why are the same teams consistently at the top of the tournament realm ladders?

Lately, the amount of crying concerning counter-comping and RNG is getting depressing and borderline sickening. People claim Priest Mage Rogue has unwinnable matchups, then we see a Korean team sweep literally every comp and counter-comp out of the building. People are so set in a narrow-minded "this is the right strat, I'm too good to change" mindframe that they have to pretend to hate this beautiful, well-balanced game to justify their own failures.

You can't like WoW and play it without accepting the base fundamental rules governing the game. Do you want to remove the combat table, turn Parry/Dodge/Block into activated abilities? Do you want to remove the resist mechanic completely from Arena, and give players a pool of 3 resists to draw upon for the whole game? Give improved hamstring/mace stuns on a timer to players? If such changes were implemented, I guarantee your ratings won't jump from 1600 to 2200. It's not RNG that's holding you back. Such changes would actually let the experts carve out even bigger edges against you. It's retarded to hope PvE and Arena get completely separated when you're not even on the tournament realm (I'm not, and I love using PvP/PvE gear in different elements and the WoW combat system and the game in general).

Finally, the comparisons to real life sports (by people against RNG) are some of the stupidest/most asinine failures of logic I've ever seen. Because of physics, wind resistance, grass length, grass texture, and human temperaments, Sports have far, far more RNG than any video game. Give a player the chance to kick a ball from the same box one hundred times in a row and each ball will go in slightly different directions.

You want to compare an improved hamstring proc, or Mace Stun, to the variables involved in hitting a home run?

1. The catcher's signal
2. The pitcher's pitch
3. The hitter's nervousness/adrenaline
4. The swing the hitter takes
5. The wind
6. The ballpark
7. The call of the strike zone
8. The footing of the hitter
9. The pitcher
10. Wind resistance on the ball.

I hit a Hamstring. I can either slow, or have a 15% chance to immobilize. Chipper Jones hits a baseball, insert millions of potential outcomes.

 

• Calantus

I was going to put in "The people who disagree with me do so because they suck." as a parody of what you are saying but I see you helpfully put the parody in your post already.

I certainly don't recall, say, Team Pandemic laughing at how random the game is when they were on top. No sir, they loved the RNG. I specifically don't remember Noktyn bitching about how stupid and random mace spec was and wishing it didn't exist. I also don't recall Swarm caught on vent bitching endlessly about multiple random frostbite procs on him. I'm not going to put words into anybody's mouth and say most people at the top dislike the RNG, but I will say that there's enough of them that you can't just paint RNG dislike as a scrub phenomenon.

I know it's easier to discount an opinion by blindly calling the other side idots. But... lets not, yeah?

 

ceasefire

I note with some dismay you missed the generalization part, I'll edit it to reflect I wasn't referring to members of this thread or EJ (Gameriot was referenced). But the quoted parts of your message are astonishing in their hubris. Do you really think you did everything as Warrior/Priest to deserve to win the game. There weren't other elements at play, or other strategic alternations you could have done, such as pulling the Warrior behind the pillar as MS fades, disarming him, and Greater Healing to full while LOSing the Paladin? Or alternating between Holy/Shadow? Who says you have to burst one of them down?

Don't you think it's a bit presumptuous (read: arrogant) to blame RNG for matches you've lost, when your skill level is nowhere near high enough to "play perfectly," or even realize what perfect play versus a certain setup even is.

And also, yes I think it's dumb for "pro players" to play dozens of hours a week, grind all the gear required for a character, fall in love with the game, then sit and pretend like it sucks and skill has no bearing on game events. It's just stupid to say "I hate WoW, I want fair balanced Arena, let's erase Parries/Dodges/Stuns/Resists! Let's play AoC!"

 

• Calantus

If you have extensive experience playing priest/warrior against paladin/warrior and use a solid strat that doesn't either require stupid opposition or often put you up against the need to dispell or lose: I'm all ears. If not, then of all the strategies I've heard of or tried, bursting down one of them (usually the warrior) is the strat with the highest winrate, even with the RNG factor. And if we get to a point where a spell landing will win the game and the RNG makes it resist, then the RNG absolutely did decide the game, no need for arrogant assumptions on my part.

 

ceasefire

I think a relevant analogy is that of a Boxer in the ring with a superior opponent. Whereas a superb ring general such as Ali may formulate a strategy using footwork, hand speed, and cutting off the ring to gradually wear his opponent down and win, a lesser tactician might simply rely on the one punch knockout. Once the knock out misses, it can be attributed to "RNG."

I would daresay that the reason for you losing to a Warrior/Paladin has less to do with one spell resisting for one global cooldown and more to do with a) the comp b) your skill level c) their skill level. I'm sure you prefer blaming RNG for it, like a lot of players, but that's human nature I suppose.

 

• Calantus

So you don't know a better strategy?

 

Adrammelech

Calantus, I think in your example that you're impacted more by the comp than any RNG. You can illustrate a scenario where RNG causes a win or a loss as you have, but I think it's woefully shortsided in respect to the entire match for the purpose of making a point.

Replace your warrior with a rogue, or with a warlock, and you'd probably find yourself less in a position of needing a single cast to determine the outcome of a match.

 

• Calantus

Oh it's absolutely about the matchup and even the comp of my team itself. I was frankly surprised we had any chance at all against war/pal when we were starting out. Both sides have so few options compared to many other matchups and one side has both the squishiest class and much less mana efficiency. I used the example because the matchup is so restrictive in what does and does not work. We should really lose more war/pal games than we win and I'm not at all surprised or disappointed when we do. It's just a really good example of the RNG deciding the match at the last moment because it's one of the few matchups where there's so little going on that it's usually very obvious what happened and why.

 

rayijin

Example match that's decided by RNG:

Mirror match, warrior/druid vs warrior/druid. It's not a class balance issue as both sides are exactly the same.

Each warrior is on the other druid. One warrior clearly outplays the other, using well-timed intercept stuns, saving trinket and deathwish for a key moment and forcing the druid to blow all his cooldowns to stay alive. When his trinket comes up again he has a sure kill on the druid.

The other warrior misses pummels due to fake casting, doesn't intercept the druid once while he is in caster form but resists nature's grasp, a bash, mace stuns a cyclone (after a wasted pummel on fake cast) then resists intercept stun and dodges disarm from behind when the other warrior tries to help his druid, while having an effective 60% crit rate for the match.

This sort of luck may win only one in 10 matches, but the fact is, it will happen, statistically speaking.

Bring a much closer level of skill and gameplay on both sides, and 2 resists in a row plays a much bigger role than not wasting a pummel on 2 fake casts in row. When 10 or 15% more RNG is more important than 10 or 15% more skill, that's where the line between skill and RNG needs to be looked at and possibly moved.

 

Headhuntress

RNG shouldn't decide matches. Some RNG incidents will always happen but there are things easily fixable.

Changing the resist talents was a move to the right direction. Resists are purely random, while you can counter things like dodges by attacking from behind, or stunning the opponent, you can't really do anything about resists. Reducing the duration of the X effect is a win-win deal.

Now we have the low proc talents. These can become devastating sometimes. As Calantus said you can play perfectly and still lose just because of RNG. For the low proc talents Blizzard can follow three routes:

a)Adding a cooldown to effects like they did with Sword Spec and Mace Spec. This doesn't completely fix the RNG factor but at least you don't have multiple procs so often.

b)Doing what they did with Lightning Overload. Increasing the proc rate but reducing the effect can definitely work for some talents.

c)Make the proc talents active skills. Here's an example. Instead of Imp.Hamstring, warriors get a new skill with 30 second cooldown that immobilizes the target on the next hamstring you use. No rage cost, not affected by GCD, just like a "Cold Blood". This is the best solution in my opinion. Allowing players to actually decide when they want that proc and completely countering advantages or disadvantages because of bad luck.

Removing the 1% miss rate from spells is another thing that won't hurt anyone. What's left is the dispel resistance talents, this is the trickiest type of RNG and I can't really think of a solution. Note that RNG will always exist with the form of "Miss" "Dodge" "Parry" etc. Of course, RNG isn't the only reason that decides matches. Lets not get crazy, skill, strategy and team setup will always give advantages to a team. So why not reduce the luck factor to the minimum making the truly best players win?

 

Vykromond

In Nagrand where love is king
When Horde meets Alliance here's what they say

When a mace crits your face
And you're stunned in your place
That's Arena!

When your Cyclone resists
and you get really pissed
That's Arena!

Rating will fall tingalingaling, tingalingaling
And you'll sing "Fuck this game"
Hearts will pound tippytippytay, tippytippytay
Like a drumbeat of shame

When that rogue just won't die
No matter what you try
That's Arena!

When you always die first
Due to RNG burst
That's Arena!

When you lose points in a dream but you know you're not dreaming Serennia
Scuzza me
but you see
back in old Nagrand
THAT'S ARENA!

Lock this thread.

 

Mækk

I think the important thing is to find the right balance between no randomness (fixed damage, no crits, no resists, etc) and the dice-roll.
Some might argue that it would be better if everything was left down to player skill. But that would mean that matches would be alot more predictable.
RNG adds an element of randomness to the game, another level to the play. A resist can turn the tables, make or break your game. And that sucks when it happens, espeically those times when that one random happening cost you the win. On the other hand, a resist or a proc can create an opening for a composition which usually wouldn't be able to win. Now you could say, if they did win, that they won, not because of skill, but due to RNG. However it would require skill to use that window the RNG created.
If blizzard can add RNGs that add unpredictability, and who are not so powerfull that they will often spell the difference between win and fail.

From a viewers point of interrest, I would say that RNGs make things more entertaining to watch. (If you can see them happening) Because it is random, out of the blue, causing an unexpected turn of events. And that is entertaining. Seeing a well coordinated skill-based win is also entertaining, no doubt, but it isn't the same. And if you can add both without ruining either, that's fantastic.

 

Aaberg

There's randomness in Counter Strike too. It's not like a Quake 3's Railgun: Aim = hit. There's some miss ratio incorporated.

Maniq is right!

 

solbergb

I'm terrible at arena WOW. But I recognize this discussion from other games.. Random chance keeps the game from becoming so stratified that nobody plays it. If you aren't as good, you need hope to keep playing (or perhaps something to blame if you're wired that way). Even though the really good players consistently get the highest win ratios, the pool of players is greatly enlarged by the occasional losses due to flukes.

A lot of what I'm about to say comes out of 20 years or so of playing wargames and one CCG, a couple of them to championship level briefly in invitationals (never the best player, but able to play with the best and win a fair % of the time, once enough to win a tournament). I've also done chess and poker at the level where I can beat casual players reliably and always lose to the pros. From the thread so far, I think this experience is fairly relevant to the discussion.

In the discussion below, substitute "the combination of comp, gear and player skill" wherever I say "Skill". In the games I'm familiar with, the "gear" was the same on both sides and "comp" really only applied to CCG deck design or which side you had on a particular boardgame vs victory conditions.

Where skill falls in games with higher degrees of randomness is three things.

1. Knowing the odds and maximizing odds in your favor, playing "correctly"
2. Knowing how to recover from a setback when the odds bounce the wrong way, how to extend the game till you can find a new advantage.
3. Knowing when to gamble on a long shot, because you'll lose anyway if you do not.

Even in games with no RNG, like chess, these dynamics apply to some extent. You can decide the position is lost and make a move that is objectively bad, but if the opponent reads it wrong, due to fatigue, stress or lack of skill, you might suddenly get the advantage. If you failed, well, it just ends the game faster.

When you play someone evenly matched, in a game where RNG is a factor, you are both doing #1, and you know all the normal #2 maneuvers, plus (at high skill levels) probably have a few unique tricks on both sides of the table to pull out when things go sour.

You have to accept though, that when skill is similar, the other guy is going to gamble when he gets behind, and sometimes the gamble will pay off. Even if it is gambling that you'll get that 20% resist, or that your 10% stun will proc often enough to overcome your disadvantage and turn the tables. You're happy when it happens to you, and sad when the other guy gets lucky.

If skill is not similar, the long shot won't win them the game. It will be just a setback, the poor player won't capitalize on it correctly and you'll eventually get the advantage again, and keep doing so until the RNG cooperates. Part of being really good is not getting rattled by the RNG.

To the poster who wanted a "Takeaway" when the RNG beats his team - for me the takeway every time that happens is "huh...I had him beat and XXX happened. Next time I'm at that kind of disadvantage I'll try for/hope for XXX and see if I get lucky. Better than just losing the slow way."

I have a bias for gambling when I'm behind the skill curve though, so if you're not comfortable with that this approach may not work for you.

 

Rhod

I like to think of WoW arena as a game of Euker. You have your hand based on team set up but only know which cards are "trump" when you enter the arena and see the other team combination. Sometimes you end up with a good hand, sometimes you don't.

Having said that, the exciting thing about Euker is the ability to play your cards however you want and thus decide the outcome. I play warlock/disc priest and often come up against teams that completely dominate us - undead rogue/undead priest for example. But, if we play our cards right we can sometimes get into a position to pull off a win. For example, baiting out WoTF, both trinkets, and surviving blind early on (eating their "trump cards") and then fearing, deathcoiling, spell locking, priest fearing all with PS up to pull off a win. It often gets the rogue low and CAN win the game for us unless fear resists, spell lock resists, deathcoil resists, PS is dispelled on the first cast, etc. Strategy IS the point of both arena and Euker (along with coordination with your partners). If you play a game of cards perfectly and are about to win (having been the underdog from the start), no one enjoys watching their ace turn into a 9 after you lay it down. By having such mechanics in the game, it is often penalizing the players using the best strategy and teamwork.

There is definately enough randomness in a typical arena match already, dispell getting off junk buffs first, poisons applying, fear pathing, lag, and (the biggest one of all), which team you're fighting that particular match.

 

Mearis

A game like WoW will always have a small element of randomness, but nobody complains about that. For example, healing wave doesn't heal a fixed amount but has a small amount of resist ability back and forth. Druid heals over time have a 30% resist chance, so you always expect to take several dispells to remove them.

The RNG that people complain about are those things that completely swing a match without requiring any particular skill. For example, on a druid, if you get hit with an intercept in caster form, then the next cyclone gets mace stunned after a fake cast you are tipically in a horrible position. If you are playing priest/rogue versus shaman/warrior and the shaman resists 2 kidney shots in a row, then you are most likely fucked as the warrior will have killed your priest.

Abilities that completely change the outcome of a match and are not controlled are not good for the game. I do agree that people blame them far too much, but that's because losing to them and them alone is incredibly frustrating.

Sorry but I really can't take this kind of shit seriously when it's coming from the guild that thinks drawing swastikas with chain heal and relentlessly abusing someone whose only 'crime' is that he takes himself a bit too seriously is the height of humour.

 

Vagabond

Assuming balance in all things to the point where a team wins an unfavorable matchup purely off the RNG: a team that shouldn't win a match up... SHOULDN'T WIN. Arena has the larger metagame of counter-comps and counter-counter comps to battle this.

As for the viewers point of view on RNG game swings. Unless Bliz imports an Unreal Tournament style announcer, using current tools 99% of the viewers will never know. It's great that all the 2300 rated will be able to watch a playback (or live) and understand it at a glance, but Bliz wants the money; they want Joe Casual.

Now maybe if the booming voice of God spoke up with "Deathcoil Resisted!" "Cyclone Trinketed!" "Crit, Crit, Windfury, Crit INSTAGIB!" then Joe Casual would get it.

Of course, I'm a bit biased. I love me some of that announcer voice :P.

 

solbergb