My brain started to hurt after the 4th page so apologies if I'm beating a dead horse further/bringing up anything that's been settled.
I have one thing to add to the sports analogies. Imagine Team A is losing to Team B. Team A suddenly makes a great play and is about to score, bringing them into the lead and possibly winning them the game (there is very little time left on the clock). Before the score is finalized, there is a 15% chance they will not get any points from the play they just made. They get unlucky and their score doesn't count. How would people react to that situation? It wasn't human error, or environmental "factors", just a percentage chance that their strategy fails for no "natural" reason. People would hate it. What keeps me (and, I believe, most western cultures) watching sports is the idea that the people involved are highly trained athletes in a kind of battle against other athletes. We like heroics. Tiger Woods pulling out a win despite his injuries. That's not RNG, that's the human spirit and pure skill.
Poker is also a bad example... if Poker was simply random draws, no one would ever win a tournament twice. Anyone can learn when to bet and when to fold. What separates excellent poker players from mediocre ones is the ability to read your opponents, to make judgements based on your intuitions about what possible cards other players have, and your ability to convince other players that you have a hand other than the one you have. A poker player can pull a win out of a terrible hand. RNG can work for or against you, but it's your skill that gets you the win or the loss, pure and simple. That's not necessarily the case in WoW.
The more skill-based arena becomes, the better. I think everyone can agree on that. There are certainly ways to increase the skill you need to be competitive in arena that don't involve accounting for some 15% proc to not have a key spell interrupted or not be stunned until your partner dies.
I'm surprised to have not seen any mention of stoicism and blessed hands in this thread, and how their current design works directly against the new philosophy of reducing randomness.
30% dispel resistance on mass dispel for divine shield and 60% dispel resistance on Hand of Protection/freedom/sacrifice (mass dispel prioritized HoP especially) is, quite frankly, a horrible design decision. It can absolutely decide games to have a HoP/divine shield dispel repeatedly resist. Even 1 resist on a mass dispel is a massive amount of mana, not to mention the extra healing that happens during the bop/divine shield.
It would be vastly superior game design to either:
Make these abilities normally dispellable
Make them completely undispellable and just rebalance other aspects of paladins to make it fair
Redesign the mechanic completely (think along the lines of reducing the remaining duration by a percentage of the original duration when the buff is targeted by dispel, or adding "if Hand of Protection is dispelled, all physical damage taken is reduced by 50% for 5 seconds" or "if Hand of Freedom is dispelled, increases movement speed by 60% for 5 seconds").
Whatever it is, I hope they take the "lol 60/40 split dice roll" RNG out of it.
For the uninformed:
"Hand of _____" is the new name for Blessing of Protection, Salvation, Sacrifice, and Freedom in WotLK so that they no longer overwrite the 1 blessing limit: (hand of - Wowhead Search)
Blessed Hands is a new 5th tier Holy talent: Reduces the mana cost and increases the resistance to Dispel effects of all Hand spells by 30%. (Blessed Hands - Spell - World of Warcraft)
Stoicism has been unchanged and moved to 2nd tier Protection so that it is even more accessible to all talent builds: Reduces the duration of all Stun effects by an additional 30% and reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by an additional 30%. (Stoicism - Spell - World of Warcraft)
This statement has me outraged. Does Blizzard even care about WoW as an eSport? Do they not realize how RNG-based matchups at the high end already are? Right now, the entire eSport designation for arena play makes me roll my eyes, simply because of how winning/losing is already based on randomly generated numbers as much as player skill. So why does Blizzard insist that the backbone of the competitive eSport game continue to be randomly generated?
As it stands, arena is an exercise in frustration for a skilled player. The RNG plays a bigger factor in determining wins than player skill. Resists and critical strings (in spite of resilience) are often what decide a match. Between players with a perceivable yet small difference in skill, the primary determining factor in winning and losing is the RNG.
There are many ways to outplay an opponent: luring him into more favorable positioning for your team; better debuff/rage/mana/cooldown management, fake casts to draw counterspells, coordinated CC and burst, abusing line of sight and perfectly timed spell reflects/vanishes/ice blocks, to name a few. This is what makes WoW eSport worthy: game mechanics that rely on player skill and team coordination.
Things that do not take player skill into account whatsoever but sway matches much more than the above list: Resists/misses in general. Missing kicks/pummels on a mage (5% chance through talents), blind missing/resisting, fear resists, nature’s grasp resists, stun resists (5-20% chance with a meta/racial/talents, though blizzard IS making stun resist talents be a duration reduction in the expansion at least), random procs (mace stun, improved wing clip, blackout to name a few), critical streaks (4+ crits in a row with 20% effective crit after resilience), mortal strike being dodged by a healer (3% chance).
So what has Blizzard done to address randomness playing a huge role in arenas?
The change to cheat death removes a lot of the randomness (since currently, cheating death at 30% is extremely different than 10%). The change to the stun resist talents (and racial, hopefully) will remove the random factor from stuns in the next expansion. The addition of resilience was not to lower damage output in PvP as much as it was to reduce the possible burst (and hence randomness). The move of some buffs to non-magic, so they cannot be removed by random dispels. I applaud Blizzard in taking these steps to help make arena PvP more skill based and less RNG based.
What still needs to be addressed?
CC. Having a small chance to resist fear / sheep / blind / cyclone in arena is one of the worst PvP mechanics, especially for a supposed “eSport”. The random direction fear will send a player in is another. All procs need to be looked at and evaluated. In my opinion they should be removed and replaced with other skills/abilities that can be used consistently. Resilience doesn’t do enough for crits, crits need to be lowered further and class damage mechanics based on crits need to be re-evaluated. Dodges/Crits/Parries may need to be removed entirely or changed to have a smaller variation (like a dodge/parry being 75% of baseline damage, a crit being 125%). Another example, evasion/cloak should be 100% dodge / resist chance respectively, as opposed to a 5-20% chance of getting hit while they are up. Individual spells should either be pushed back by every melee swing or none, 50% or 70% pushback resistance needs to go. Dispels should not prioritize randomly. Poisons having a non-0% and non-100% application and dispel resist chances.
The counter argument: "But randomness is what makes arena take skill, because it's all about reactions!"
Bullshit. There's so much you can do even if you remove all randomness from the PvP aspect of the game. Basically, believers in this argument think that reacting to the RNG rather than your opponent's moves make PvP "interesting". Imagine if in basketball the shot clock was randomly set between 5 and 45 seconds. Would this make it a more interesting and skill-based game because you have to "react" more? That's what this argument claims happens with resists in WoW. The variety of things your opponents can do to try to beat you is enough randomness.
Conclusion
WoW arena PvP is strongly RNG based. This is extremely detrimental to its consideration as an eSport and the only way to fix it is to remove as much randomness as possible. This will lead to less frustrating, more competitive play, acceptance across the board as an eSport (barring continuing class balance issues) and more publicity for Blizzard.
To end, a quote from my good friend and WoW MLG Pro Tour commentator Robert “Voice” Simpson, in a discussion I was having with him before the recent 3v3 tournament. It is something that shouldn't even be on the table with an eSport:
Let me get this straight, everyone should be able to NOT resist cc, thus making rogue druid teams or warlock druid teams face-rolling rofl-wins? Everyone should eat stuns? We should all have one anti-cc trinket but eat all other cc's unhindered? It sounds to me like your main is really a lock or stealther. So RNG is bad but overdosing on CC is like a new and safe form of digital heroin? Sounds tasty and totally biased to me!
What about a "charge" type mechanic to replace the current rng system of dispel? Buffs will have a certain number of "charges" depending on their duration; different dispels will remove certain numbers of these charges to reduce the duration of these spells. The rng resist talents could be changed to increase the maximum charge pool of certain buffs/spells.
edit:
Originally Posted by Blackula
Let me get this straight, everyone should be able to NOT resist cc, thus making rogue druid teams or warlock druid teams face-rolling rofl-wins? Everyone should eat stuns? We should all have one anti-cc trinket but eat all other cc's unhindered? It sounds to me like your main is really a lock or stealther. So RNG is bad but overdosing on CC is like a new and safe form of digital heroin? Sounds tasty and totally biased to me!
That's why they're changing some things to duration reduction. However the disappearance of many resist mechanics is also why wotf and escape artist are still imbalanced.
RNG is cool when my cyclone gets resisted 3 times in a row and when the first one was meant to stop an NS, even though I am pvp spell hit capped.
Not too mention bash, outside of being feral and behind your target, is resisted or dodge about >50% of the time.
RNG is quite lame, you can tell I mean that since I stack spell haste instead of crit, why rely on something that is "Random" when I can have something that's garunteed?
While I won't comment the nature of RNG and its effects on high end pvp, I must say that the original poster probably misunderstood what Blizzard intended when they said they wanted to add more randomness to arenas.
My understanding is that what they want to add is a more active environment to increase the need for situational awareness. Imagine for instance that the pillars in the Nagrand arena constantly move up and down, alternating between blocking LOS and not, or areas of lava in a new arena presenting an environmental hazard to players. It's not random as in RNG based, but random as in the arena not just being a room with some static obstacles.
I'm gonna' start my bitching off with the Ring of Valor and stating that priests and locks are going to be able to fear us through the fire causing us a painful dot.
I must say that the original poster probably misunderstood what Blizzard intended when they said they wanted to add more randomness to arenas.
My understanding is that what they want to add is a more active environment to increase the need for situational awareness.
Originally Posted by Chimono
I'm gonna' start my bitching off with the Ring of Valor and stating that priests and locks are going to be able to fear us through the fire causing us a painful dot.
I apologize for not being more aware of Blizzard's design intentions. Clearly making a fire that players can be feared into through fear's directional randomness is a design philosophy that increases the impact of a player's skill in arenas and makes small % chances that can vastly swing the outset of a match more than skill a thing of the past.
/rolls eyes
Update from where I was with my original post: I'm a little disappointed with Blizzard's changes, or lack thereof, but at least some progress has been made. The stun resist to reduction change is very good. Mace stun being removed is good. The Paladin dispel resist talents on the other hand are garbage far above and beyond the expected "bullshit RNG" threshold anyone who PvPs is accustomed to at this point.
I've come around to Praetorian's viewpoint. Some RNG is fine in an MMO so the underdog can win / have a chance. You don't want things to be boring. However, I've had several wins in the last few pvp sessions I've done due to resisting cyclone alone, and lost several matches to my target resisting intercept stun alone.
Winning because of luck as opposed to skill makes me almost as angry as losing because of luck. I notice the pendulum swinging both ways and it makes me sad.
For randomness in real sport, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned blocked kicks/punts and fumble recovery in football. Skill is certainly involved in stripping the ball and applying pressure to the kick, but from there it's largely random. Pretty much all sports have tons of events that are functionally random. If you watch soccer, you know that occasionally there are matches where one team holds the ball 2/3 of the time and gets 3 times as many shots as the opposing team but still loses because none of those shots went in. Basically, what's happening here is that while yes, skill does matter, the task is hard enough that the same player, attempting it many times, will fail some considerable proportion of the time. In this sense, WoW arena is actually much less random than "real sport" because even top teams in real sports generally win less than 75% of their games. In WoW, most matchups don't end up working this way. When you get matched 6 times in a row with the same team, the split tends to be 6-0 or 5-1, and not 3-3.
Randomness in games seems to be much more acceptable when it's not applied to a "bright-line" situation, that is, when the law of large numbers has a chance to take effect. Most of the particularly egregious situations mentioned are things like triple cyclone/poly resist, multiple dispel resist, chain mace stun, etc; to deal with that, what if a countermeasure were implemented whereby RNG events become more or less probable based on recent frequency? I mean, if the string of a particular type of event were less than (for example) 10% likely to occur, then the game would start adjusting the probabilities to force the chain of events back towards the mean.
For randomness in real sport, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned blocked kicks/punts and fumble recovery in football. Skill is certainly involved in stripping the ball and applying pressure to the kick, but from there it's largely random. Pretty much all sports have tons of events that are functionally random. If you watch soccer, you know that occasionally there are matches where one team holds the ball 2/3 of the time and gets 3 times as many shots as the opposing team but still loses because none of those shots went in. Basically, what's happening here is that while yes, skill does matter, the task is hard enough that the same player, attempting it many times, will fail some considerable proportion of the time. In this sense, WoW arena is actually much less random than "real sport" because even top teams in real sports generally win less than 75% of their games. In WoW, most matchups don't end up working this way. When you get matched 6 times in a row with the same team, the split tends to be 6-0 or 5-1, and not 3-3.
Randomness in games seems to be much more acceptable when it's not applied to a "bright-line" situation, that is, when the law of large numbers has a chance to take effect. Most of the particularly egregious situations mentioned are things like triple cyclone/poly resist, multiple dispel resist, chain mace stun, etc; to deal with that, what if a countermeasure were implemented whereby RNG events become more or less probable based on recent frequency? I mean, if the string of a particular type of event were less than (for example) 10% likely to occur, then the game would start adjusting the probabilities to force the chain of events back towards the mean.
First, your comparison to football. I will have to say that it is flawed. The player who misses could have aimed his kick better. It was all his own fault for not scoring with that shot.
The better team, who had thee times as manny shots, were just inefficient. Maybe they didn't deserve to win, as they were too bad at scoring? The opposing goalkeeper might have played excellent. It's not random.
In wow, however, there is a code that generates a random number, which you can't influence in any way. You can't swing your mace a bit harder to "score" (kill the target instead of leaving him at 1% for example).
As for your second sentence. I think Blizzard did use what you described for WC3 and TFT. Here's a thread about it (it's about dota, which as you might know is a map for WC3:TFT): Criticals chance not right (quoted text) - DotA Allstars Discussion . I don't know if they've used it for WoW though. I don't think so, because they started to implement the hidden cooldowns on trinkets in TBC to reduce randomness.
First, your comparison to football. I will have to say that it is flawed. The player who misses could have aimed his kick better. It was all his own fault for not scoring with that shot.
The better team, who had thee times as manny shots, were just inefficient. Maybe they didn't deserve to win, as they were too bad at scoring? The opposing goalkeeper might have played excellent. It's not random.
In wow, however, there is a code that generates a random number, which you can't influence in any way. You can't swing your mace a bit harder to "score" (kill the target instead of leaving him at 1% for example).
As for your second sentence. I think Blizzard did use what you described for WC3 and TFT. Here's a thread about it (it's about dota, which as you might know is a map for WC3:TFT): Criticals chance not right (quoted text) - DotA Allstars Discussion . I don't know if they've used it for WoW though. I don't think so, because they started to implement the hidden cooldowns on trinkets in TBC to reduce randomness.
Uh, no, that's not quite how it works. If the kicker shanks a kick, that's obviously his fault. Blocked kicks are different. They are rare--approximately 1 in 40 kicks are blocked. The reason it is a "random" event is because there exist zero players in the league with sufficiently high skill to block kicks consistently. With soccer, all but the easiest shots are a compromise, made in about half a second, between the risk of missing the goal and putting it where the goalkeeper can easily stop it. I doubt there is a single professional soccer player who has converted on 85% of shots he attempts (much less on 85% of drives he makes) but pretty much every WoW character is capable of better than that.
You complain that you have no control over Blizzard's RNG, but it grants you better odds on nearly every roll you make than you would have using a manual, "controllable" system of targeting, and this is true for me as well--even though I regularly eat miss rolls on fight-critical pummels.
even though I regularly eat miss rolls on fight-critical pummels.
Fallacy. Either you get more hit gear so all your specials hit, or you stop trying to get the interrupt off at the last second. During casting, there is no block/parry/dodge. Don't forget to account for lag.
Before you start to drift, and your soul begins to scream.
I just wanted to tell you, that you're listening to a dream.
Fallacy. Either you get more hit gear so all your specials hit, or you stop trying to get the interrupt off at the last second. During casting, there is no block/parry/dodge. Don't forget to account for lag.
Yes, yes, I know all that. I meant "Miss" specifically, and my miss rate should be roughly 2%--not quite capped, but fairly low. I say that merely to illustrate my point which is that even if it feels like you're getting screwed, statistically that's not what's happening.
Uh, no, that's not quite how it works. If the kicker shanks a kick, that's obviously his fault. Blocked kicks are different. They are rare--approximately 1 in 40 kicks are blocked. The reason it is a "random" event is because there exist zero players in the league with sufficiently high skill to block kicks consistently. With soccer, all but the easiest shots are a compromise, made in about half a second, between the risk of missing the goal and putting it where the goalkeeper can easily stop it. I doubt there is a single professional soccer player who has converted on 85% of shots he attempts (much less on 85% of drives he makes) but pretty much every WoW character is capable of better than that.
You complain that you have no control over Blizzard's RNG, but it grants you better odds on nearly every roll you make than you would have using a manual, "controllable" system of targeting, and this is true for me as well--even though I regularly eat miss rolls on fight-critical pummels.
Your examples are not random. Just like no one can block every kick no one in wow perfectly times every interrupt. That doesn't mean mistiming a kick is "random." When a kick in football is blocked someone made a mistake. The man on the kicking team that should have kept the blocker from getting to the ball failed, or the kicker made a mistake. These things are not random. Missing a shot is again a failure of your skill vs the defending teams skill. That's very different then randomness. Very few of these sports analogies in this thread even come close to actual random chance and those that do take place only at razor thin differences in skill.
Your examples are not random. Just like no one can block every kick no one in wow perfectly times every interrupt. That doesn't mean mistiming a kick is "random." When a kick in football is blocked someone made a mistake. The man on the kicking team that should have kept the blocker from getting to the ball failed, or the kicker made a mistake. These things are not random. Missing a shot is again a failure of your skill vs the defending teams skill. That's very different then randomness. Very few of these sports analogies in this thread even come close to actual random chance and those that do take place only at razor thin differences in skill.
You really think so? People who are in the know about football and spend a great deal of time reviewing statistics will tell you that aside from blocked kicks, there is no evidence whatsoever that defending teams can pressure the kicker. Does blocking kicks require skill? Absolutely, but it also requires luck, because it is such a rare event. The skill necessary to perform the maneuver is not within two standard deviations of the top player's average performance.
If a basketball player desperately hurls the ball from halfcourt at the end of regulation and nails the basket, is that skill or is that luck? If a golfer gets a hole-in-one, is that skill or is that luck? If they're skill, why don't those athletes do it more often? How is it any different from executing a series of attacks once and winning because I got four crits in a row and executing that same series of attacks in the same situation ten other times and losing because I didn't get those crits?
I really love that you say "actual random chance" because surely you know that WoW's RNG isn't "truly" random. Like every other computer RNG, it's pseudorandom. If you had access to the number it used to generate rolls and knew where in that number it was generating the rolls from, you would be able to predict exactly what that roll would come up as. To the same degree it's that golfer's lack of skill that he can't recognize the exact position of the hole relative to the tee, identify all wind and any other atmospheric conditions between him and the hole, and then execute the perfect swing that will guide the ball exactly to the hole in exactly the conditions that will be prevailing at the time, it's your lack of skill that prevents you from timing interrupts and CC spells exactly so that the RNG never coughs up a resist--which is to say, not at all.
What I'm arguing against here is not the reduction of more egregious forms of RNG fight-deciders. I'm arguing against a hatred of "randomness" that stems from the absurd belief that if only there were no dice you would be the complete master of your own fate. That's not true in any real sport, and it's not true here.
Much is made in these threads and similar threads about The Deciding Event. Usually it's a form of CC that if it had resisted/hadn't resisted would have won/lost the game. Of course it's human nature to focus on these events, but you have to think, what about the entire rest of the match? Are you truly trying to tell me you were so evenly matched that only the 3% chance to miss played a factor? That there was absolutely nothing you could have done better during the entire rest of the match that would have negated that spell resisting?
Obviously I'm beating up a strawman here to some degree, but I think it's close enough to the opinions often espoused here to be relevant. I have difficulty believing anyone here has play perfect enough that only the 10% chance kept them from winning.
Sure, RNG happens, and when it happens to you, it sucks, but surely that's balanced out by the RNG happening to the other team.
However, despite the paragraphs up there, if you actually look at the top team make ups, they're extremely rng independent. The 2v2 bracket especially so, but it applies to some degree to other brackets. A classic case is mage/rogue vs druid/warrior. Mage/rogue is a great team, but it doesn't have the staying power to outlast bad rng like druid warrior does. There's a reason healer/dps is so powerful and it has to do with recovering from bad results, RNG based or not.
I advanced an argument similar to yours a couple pages back. The idea being that if you are in a position where a couple random events happening in series loses the game, you're not superior enough to the other team that you can claim "I should have won". If a 2100 team faces a 1500 team, all the mace stuns in the world aren't going to save the weaker team.
While WOLK got rid of a lot of randomness in CC and pushback, they've introduced other elements that will no doubt cause RNG victories.
Just as an example, the hot streak talent in the mage list. Here's a talent where with 50% crit rating you'll get an instant pyroblast about one in six castings. The way 1/6 chances work though, you can get a clump of them where you can essentially get instant pyroblasts every two castings of scorch and fire blast. scorch/fireblast-pyroblast-scorch-scorch-pyroblaste-flame-blast/scorch-pyroblast. (plus they're all crits, the mage is able to move except when scorching and the pyroblasts are critting half the time...this is a LOT of burst, and such a mage is likely to have impact, meaning you're during some of that, allowing planting for scorches and you probably also have living bomb ticking). On the average, the rotation isn't that bad. But you get these spikes....
Of course nobody plays deep enough fire now to get that kind of combination into arena play. That may not be true in wrath though. People might spec into it for similar reasons to why people spec into mace now. It might not be the strongest possible build but it can turn the tables.
I'm sure everybody else has received other talent combinations that will seem like RNG losses when they come together and you are on the wrong end of them. Not all are going to be in specs that were traditionally bad at arena PVP either.
Really, wouldn't the better RNG sports analogy be human referees? In baseball, one umpire to the next, the game is called very differently. Similarly holding/pass interference calls in football. All sports have some elements uncontrollable to the players.
...
I really love that you say "actual random chance" because surely you know that WoW's RNG isn't "truly" random. Like every other computer RNG, it's pseudorandom. If you had access to the number it used to generate rolls and knew where in that number it was generating the rolls from, you would be able to predict exactly what that roll would come up as. To the same degree it's that golfer's lack of skill that he can't recognize the exact position of the hole relative to the tee, identify all wind and any other atmospheric conditions between him and the hole, and then execute the perfect swing that will guide the ball exactly to the hole in exactly the conditions that will be prevailing at the time, it's your lack of skill that prevents you from timing interrupts and CC spells exactly so that the RNG never coughs up a resist--which is to say, not at all.
...
I don't think anything in the whole world is truly random, but that is kind of besides all of this.
Although I think your argument is quite lame (that the player should know if he is going to crit or not), it's still theoretically valid. I'm not entirely sure about how pseudorandomness works, so correct me if I'm wrong. But even if you DO know when you are going to crit and when you aren't, It doesn't change the fact that you could've gotten a seed where all of your swings would crit, instead of none.
Well as for the new arenas i would say a dynamic environment doesn't necessarily imply RNG.
For example if there was an arena with a pillar that went up and down every 30 seconds. I wouldn't call that RNG as it is predictable and you know when it is going to happen.
However, if it was a tornado that appeared in random locations on top of people doing damage i would call that RNG.
So if there are pillars that go up and down i wouldn't call it RNG as long as it is at a fixed rate.
Really, wouldn't the better RNG sports analogy be human referees? In baseball, one umpire to the next, the game is called very differently. Similarly holding/pass interference calls in football. All sports have some elements uncontrollable to the players.
This is a great point, there are many strikes that are called balls and many balls that are called strikes. Some of the bad calls determine games.
I don't think anything in the whole world is truly random, but that is kind of besides all of this.
Although I think your argument is quite lame (that the player should know if he is going to crit or not), it's still theoretically valid. I'm not entirely sure about how pseudorandomness works, so correct me if I'm wrong. But even if you DO know when you are going to crit and when you aren't, It doesn't change the fact that you could've gotten a seed where all of your swings would crit, instead of none.
That's not my argument at all. I'm saying that your argument that actions in sports aren't random is based upon the assumption that they can know accurately the exact motion needed to produce the desired result, which is akin to claiming that the player should know when to use his ability to get the RNG to roll him a crit, which is absurd. The athlete can't know if his motion is exactly right; to improve his chances, he can only practice and hope, and he will never achieve 100% predictability. Likewise, you can't know if your ability will crit, hit, or miss, you can only stack hit and crit rating and hope, and you will never achieve 100% predictability.
Should the results of actions in arena be 100% predictable? Maybe, but if so it sure as hell isn't because actions in sports are 100% predictable. And if you don't like the idea of having seeds exist where all or no abilities will crit, then I provided a solution.
Sports exist as entertainment. For WoW to be an eSport, people have to want to watch it.
I like to watch eSport. I like to watch people doing incredible things which make you think "oh that was a very smart chain of decisions, didn't actually think of that myself". I like to watch people doing perfect games by always doing the right thing. It's all about decision making you know. After a game it's always so easy to say what you should have done, because then you know what the opponent did. But being in the middle of the game and always do the right thing is often more challenging, and demands both skill, experience and coordination with the other team members. So when watching two very good teams playing against each other this can be very exciting! One little tiny 'wrong decision' and the game might have a winner. I hate to see teams win because of a mace-stun or similar. Then I always think "oh.. mace-stun.." and you don't really see the winning team as a true winning team.
And another thing Sydane; to say things like real life is full of randomness, hence wow should reflect that is pretty useless. A lot of rl sports stribe to let the game be more reliable and with less randomness, for instance if a runner run extremely fast it won't get approved as a new world record if the wind is too high. And even if there exist lots of game full of randomness doesn't mean this is the only (and the best) solution. In computer games everything is possible you know! Hey; its virtual!
Originally Posted by mofidik
Unless you're fighting Jezus, there is no difference between the amount of lost or won matches due to RNG. Mathematically, they do not change the overall outcome of your arena performance.
This ain't correct either, because of different classes and setups. Some setups will counter other setups better because of this randomness, because it benefits setups different. So unless you're always fighting a mirror team with the same races, randomness do affect the rating.
I think wow should try to remove such randomness in the game, and rather stribe for more user-directed fights when it comes to pvp. Maybe they need to let players have more stuff to do (more spells etc) to compensate for the randomness so the games won't get too determistic (by only allowing one 'possible' solution for a setup), I don't know and I'm not a game designer luckily
I apologize for not being more aware of Blizzard's design intentions. Clearly making a fire that players can be feared into through fear's directional randomness is a design philosophy that increases the impact of a player's skill in arenas and makes small % chances that can vastly swing the outset of a match more than skill a thing of the past.
Personally I see this as a problem with Fear itself, rather than a problem with the design of the arena in question. If you're on a crusade against randomness, then the "running about like a headless chicken" effect of Fear should be right in your line of fire.
I definitely agree with you on that point, too. From a logical perspective it might make sense that you run and scream when Feared, but from a gameplay perspective I'd rather see Fear working like a Confuse effect, making you wander/cower in a tight area, like Polymorph, Blind or Scatter Shot does.
That's not my argument at all. I'm saying that your argument that actions in sports aren't random is based upon the assumption that they can know accurately the exact motion needed to produce the desired result, which is akin to claiming that the player should know when to use his ability to get the RNG to roll him a crit, which is absurd. The athlete can't know if his motion is exactly right; to improve his chances, he can only practice and hope, and he will never achieve 100% predictability. Likewise, you can't know if your ability will crit, hit, or miss, you can only stack hit and crit rating and hope, and you will never achieve 100% predictability.
Should the results of actions in arena be 100% predictable? Maybe, but if so it sure as hell isn't because actions in sports are 100% predictable. And if you don't like the idea of having seeds exist where all or no abilities will crit, then I provided a solution.
You have a very odd definition of random. First kick blocks were random simply because they don't happen very often. Now it's random if it can't be known with 100% accuracy. Both are not all even evidence for a thing being random let alone proof.
In a football game the defense never knows with 100% accuracy what the offense is going to do that play. That certainly doesn't make the offenses play calling random. Uncertainty is a critical part of any sport. Uncertainty is not the same thing as randomness.
By they same token the true experts (like the ones employed by ESPN) will take a great deal of time explaining exactly where the mistake occurred every time a kick get blocked in the NFL. The reason why it may only happen 1 in 40 times is because the advantage is on the kicking teams side. In order for a kick to be blocked the kicking team must make a mistake and the receiving team must be in a position to take advantage. Turns out they don't pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to play football if you make mistakes often. I am sure if you got the kick blocking percentages for high school football they would be much high because they players are more likely to make a mistake.
As for the "pseudo random number generator" bit, the RNG that WoW uses is functionally indistinguishable from "true random numbers" for the anyone in WoW.
The crit and hit in WoW are random of course and they do have an effect but most of the complaints are about randomness that has far more of an effect like CC breaking and Stun resists.
You have a very odd definition of random. First kick blocks were random simply because they don't happen very often. Now it's random if it can't be known with 100% accuracy. Both are not all even evidence for a thing being random let alone proof.
In a football game the defense never knows with 100% accuracy what the offense is going to do that play. That certainly doesn't make the offenses play calling random. Uncertainty is a critical part of any sport. Uncertainty is not the same thing as randomness.
By they same token the true experts (like the ones employed by ESPN) will take a great deal of time explaining exactly where the mistake occurred every time a kick get blocked in the NFL. The reason why it may only happen 1 in 40 times is because the advantage is on the kicking teams side. In order for a kick to be blocked the kicking team must make a mistake and the receiving team must be in a position to take advantage. Turns out they don't pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to play football if you make mistakes often. I am sure if you got the kick blocking percentages for high school football they would be much high because they players are more likely to make a mistake.
As for the "pseudo random number generator" bit, the RNG that WoW uses is functionally indistinguishable from "true random numbers" for the anyone in WoW.
The crit and hit in WoW are random of course and they do have an effect but most of the complaints are about randomness that has far more of an effect like CC breaking and Stun resists.
My argument never had anything to do with the definition of "random," by which you mean "truly random" here. The point of my argument is that events in sports are pseudorandom like the RNG in WoW is pseudorandom.
You keep calling plays like those blocked kicks mistakes, but how are they mistakes? The word "mistake" implies that it was preventable, and preventability in turn implies predictability--but you too admit that the defense can't know with accuracy what the offense will do, and the offense is simultaneously unable to know what the defense THINKS it will do. And what I said about the repeatability of motions also applies. The kicker doesn't KNOW how to make contact with the atoms on the ball just right to make sure it flies over the outstretched fingertips of the defenders, without compromising the accuracy of the kick. Essentially, because the player is unable to adjust his actions to compensate for events as they unfold, as far as he is concerned those events are randomly selected. You yourself have already accepted the validity of this premise in making your assertion regarding the WoW "pseudo RNG" in your second-to-last paragraph.
09/23/08, 11:28 AM
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