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LYING TO PLAYERS
Posts
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
LockeZ
View playlists
CloseThere's a massive difference between someone thinking that something happens more often than it does when they don't know the numbers, and lying to someone about the numbers in order to perpetuate their bias. People falling prey to a bias doesn't make it acceptable to lie to them. It's fucking repulsive. I don't think any of you should be allowed to make games.
Crystalgate
694
Lying to the players can be a parasitic behavior. It gives the players a good feeling as it coddles their bias. However, it may also perpetuate said bias and lead to them getting more frustrated elsewhere when they encounter a situation where their biases are not coddled. For example, the player could find themselves less prepared to handle say X-com games who don't lie to them. Make the player feel better about your game, but worse about situations outside your game.
The lie can also screw over those who actually do the math. "I have 75% chance of hitting, which will kill the enemy, but if I miss, the enemy has a 25% chance of hitting and killing me, do I want to risk that 1/16 chance of dying?". In the fire emblem games who rolls twice, the chance of that character dying is far less than 1/16.
I do not like the idea at all, but I can not say that it won't benefit your game.
The lie can also screw over those who actually do the math. "I have 75% chance of hitting, which will kill the enemy, but if I miss, the enemy has a 25% chance of hitting and killing me, do I want to risk that 1/16 chance of dying?". In the fire emblem games who rolls twice, the chance of that character dying is far less than 1/16.
I do not like the idea at all, but I can not say that it won't benefit your game.
AubreyTheBard
1801
On a more productive note, does anybody know some ways in which the typical human player's bias and unwarranted feelings of being cheated can be mitigated when you don't lie to them? For example, as has already been discussed, a lot of players will think of 95% chance of success as a 'sure thing', but if you tell them they're rolling a 20-sided die and anything but a 1 will succeed (same as 95% chance), I'd think they're a tad more likely to accept the result, especially if you can show them the die being 'physically' rolled. In fact, they might be even less perturbed by rolling two 1s on 6-sided dice than rolling 1 on a 20-sided die, even though that's less likely (1/36 instead of 1/20), because they feel like a 1/6 failure can happen easily enough -- and so, why couldn't it happen twice in a row? That's the intuitive understanding of probability going awry again, but in a way more favorable to the player's perception of the game.
Has anybody seen any methods successfully used in games to get players to be more accepting of random outcomes?
Has anybody seen any methods successfully used in games to get players to be more accepting of random outcomes?
Irog
4858
Players often assume they will get the average outcome from a random process.
A 5% item drop rate should give a drop every 20 kills, right ? Unfortunately, no !
In Rome Protector, the healing potion drop rate is 5% but if you kill 19 enemies without getting a potion, the 20th will drop one. This ensures a minimum of one potion drop every 20 kills.
Note that this system doesn't lie to the player because it doesn't display deceptive drop rate. Actually, it doesn't display drop rate at all !
A 5% item drop rate should give a drop every 20 kills, right ? Unfortunately, no !
In Rome Protector, the healing potion drop rate is 5% but if you kill 19 enemies without getting a potion, the 20th will drop one. This ensures a minimum of one potion drop every 20 kills.
Note that this system doesn't lie to the player because it doesn't display deceptive drop rate. Actually, it doesn't display drop rate at all !
That might be worth it. Roll for a chance to get, but the chance has a failure floor. It can't fail more than a certain number of times.
Should it work in the opposite way? Should something with a 95% success rate have enforced limited success?
I understand probability, so I have never implemented this. I've thought that beyond a certain point, you just don't talk about or make excuses for math. Nothing is a true random number generator, but it's close enough.
Maybe, give the player the choice to reject the result. Not even a certain number of times, either. It's just a game, after all. Not a sport.
Should it work in the opposite way? Should something with a 95% success rate have enforced limited success?
I understand probability, so I have never implemented this. I've thought that beyond a certain point, you just don't talk about or make excuses for math. Nothing is a true random number generator, but it's close enough.
Maybe, give the player the choice to reject the result. Not even a certain number of times, either. It's just a game, after all. Not a sport.
Irog
4858
Zachary, you made a very good point. We could indeed implement a limited success. For example: after 2 consecutive drops, the 3rd kill never drops a potion.
With both systems we essentially remove the very unlucky 20-kills-without-a-drop and the very lucky 3-consecutive-drops. So the outcome of the random process is closer to its mean value; the value expected by the player.
With both systems we essentially remove the very unlucky 20-kills-without-a-drop and the very lucky 3-consecutive-drops. So the outcome of the random process is closer to its mean value; the value expected by the player.
Azzie
1601
author=Red_Nova
So then the question I have to ask is: if the devs fudge numbers to be more fair, why not just display the fudged numbers to the audience? Instead of feeling cheated by missing your 90% chance hit, it feels more fair to me to see the hit rate be at 84$ or whatever the value would be.
I think displaying the true hit value would inevitably lead to some frustration/annoyance that the numbers don't add up.
Fire Emblem is very forward with their stats so if you've got 150 hit and the foes got 70 evasion you can see both on the stat screen and in battle you'd expect to have 80% hit. But if you entered battle/forecast and the game suddenly you've suddenly got 89% during combat instead of 80% it'd just cause confusion.
None of the hit and evasion values displayed to the player would actually add up to the numbers you'd see in battle and it'd leave the player questioning the game's maths.
Whereas if it displays 80% but in practice it's 89%. The games logic displayed to the player is presented consistently way while also being kinder to the player in terms of outcome than the hit rates would suggest. Which is more satisfying.
