Is 2RN "lying" to the player?

[MuteMousou]

7 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Imagine what Binding Blade would be like with 1rn is a completely unverifiable scenario because Binding Blade does have 2rn. Sure we could imagine it with 1rn and being completely the same. I can also imagine Genealogy where everyone has 1hp. It being a hypothetical that exists isn't a decent argument for or against saying Genealogy's HP values are too high. Imagining Binding Blade with 1rn isn't conductive to any sort of useful point for or against 2rn because 1rn Binding Blade is a complete fantasy. It's like saying "imagine Ike killed the Black Knight on their first encounter". Sure, we can imagine it and talk about it for fun, but it has no bearing on the actual story of Path of Radiance, because that's not what happened. Saying "Imagine Binding Blade with 1rn doesn't prove, enhance, challenge or change an argument. That's why it's a bad argument.

Thinking purposely of a silly hypothetical  that would tell you nothing to compare it to what we're talking about doesn't really change anything about what you're saying. This is like comparing what I'm saying to "what if all the bows in FE had 10 hit lmao" as if that's at all an accurate comparison or relevant to talk about in relation to saying what if the first game that had 2RN had 1RN like the game before it did, which is absolutely something to think about because it was the first game to use 2RN and it also has incredibly similar weapon hit stats compared to the game before. 

[OriginalRaisins]

On 12/7/2021 at 4:43 AM, LoneStar said:

When you're playing these SRPGs and see 80%-90%, in your mind that should basically be a guaranteed hit, but with 1RN you will have the unlikely outcome happen more often than you'd like.

 

On 12/8/2021 at 4:58 AM, pong said:

Humans just have a very poor intuitive grasp of probabilities, so a game with accurately presented odds will often make the player feel like it's rigged against them.

 

On 12/7/2021 at 9:38 AM, Eltosian Kadath said:

People don't like to think about a 90 means missing 1/10 times, and if you try for enough hits like that across a map, you will see those misses

If people somehow think that a 90 is basically a 100 then they're wrong. Plain and simple. If I earn a salary of $2000/mo for my work and then I go to my boss and say "in my mind, 2000 is basically 3000 so you should be paying me $3000/mo" should they then change my salary according to that logic? Of course not, that's ridiculous. Maybe the reason people are so bad at understanding probability is because so often when they encounter it there's some hidden force like 2RN making the results actually more favorable. I can buy the angle that "it advantages the player and makes it more fun" because yes at the end of the day the point of a video game is to be fun but the crux of your argument is that "people have literally unreasonable expectations and are wrong so let's just make this game fit the misconception rather than present them with the actual reality of the situation" then that's a dumb argument in favor of 2rn.

[MuteMousou]

13 minutes ago, OriginalRaisins said:

To be honest I think the whole argument that "it's not presented as a percentage so it's not actually lying" is a really irrelevant semantic argument. Even without the percent sign present, it's still a binary outcome (only a hit or a miss) with a chance communicated from 0 to 100. How else are you supposed to interpret that besides a percentage? Even if you say "probability" instead of "percentage" as the japanese version does it's still mathematically equivalent to a percentage, except you just divide by 100 to get the proper representation.

Eh, my point isn't necessarily that it wouldn't be lying because of that, moreso that I just think it's a bit more complicated than what I feel it's presented as. The comparison is moreso to some other games such as Shin Megami Tensei which never give you an actual hit rate for anything other than "low" "medium," or "high," while most different abilities do actually have more than 3 different hit amounts, you just can't see any of them. So obviously, the design philosophy is completely different from FE there because the game doesn't give you an approximated chance at all, but I'm just saying there are ways outside of the FE way that can be utilized, and the game doesn't really have to tell you how anything works.

So I think if FE literally said that each number presented were a percentage chance to hit, this would change how people perceive and play the game. Likewise, the bars in FE1-2 also have their own purpose, I'm fairly certain if the devs wanted to, they could have just told you the specific 0-256 chance, so the presentation in specifically this manner likely had some purpose in controlling how you see the game, as far as I can guess.

[Jotari]

35 minutes ago, MuteMousou said:

Thinking purposely of a silly hypothetical  that would tell you nothing to compare it to what we're talking about doesn't really change anything about what you're saying. This is like comparing what I'm saying to "what if all the bows in FE had 10 hit lmao" as if that's at all an accurate comparison or relevant to talk about in relation to saying what if the first game that had 2RN had 1RN like the game before it did, which is absolutely something to think about because it was the first game to use 2RN and it also has incredibly similar weapon hit stats compared to the game before. 

But what you said is a silly hypothetical, because Binding Blade was designed with 2rng. If they released a version in Japan with 1rng and then internationally with 2rng then the difference would be something to point to, but saying "imagine what it'd be with 2rng" really is as poor an argument as saying "Imagine bows had 10hit", because both are fantasy scenarios that don't pertain to what the game actually is like. We can imagine anything, but games and the systems they use can only be assessed on what actually exists.

Edited December 11, 2021 by Jotari

[MuteMousou]

14 minutes ago, Jotari said:

But what you said is a silly hypothetical, because Binding Blade was designed with 2rng. If they released a version in Japan with 1rng and then internationally with 2rng then the difference would be something to point to, but saying "imagine what it'd be with 2rng" really is as poor an argument as saying "Imagine bows had 10hit", because both are fantasy scenarios that don't pertain to what the game actually is like. We can imagine anything, but games and the systems they use can only be assessed on what actually exists.

You're becoming the satirical point I made to represent your stance earlier which is "you can't talk about a hypothetical because it's a hypothetical." 

[LoneStar]

2 hours ago, OriginalRaisins said:

If people somehow think that a 90 is basically a 100 then they're wrong. Plain and simple. If I earn a salary of $2000/mo for my work and then I go to my boss and say "in my mind, 2000 is basically 3000 so you should be paying me $3000/mo" should they then change my salary according to that logic? Of course not, that's ridiculous. Maybe the reason people are so bad at understanding probability is because so often when they encounter it there's some hidden force like 2RN making the results actually more favorable. I can buy the angle that "it advantages the player and makes it more fun" because yes at the end of the day the point of a video game is to be fun but the crux of your argument is that "people have literally unreasonable expectations and are wrong so let's just make this game fit the misconception rather than present them with the actual reality of the situation" then that's a dumb argument in favor of 2rn.

The example you tried to use isn't transitive to my point or what I was trying to portray. Probabilities out side of 100% and 0% aren't absolute, so of course saying 90% is basically 100% is ridiculous. A probability in practical terms is simply a tool to provide "reasoning" behind an action. Since it's near impossible for things to have either 0% or 100% probably, generally there has to be a "comfort" area for what you would call reliable. I think at least 80% is where the hit rate is somewhat comfortable, especially when there isn't much you can do to improve it.

Going back to your example, you're mentioning a flat $2000/mo rate that has no probability tied to it. This is an absolute case where the 0% is not getting paid, and the 100% is getting the $2000. If probability was added to it, then the pay wouldn't be a flat $2000/mo, it would have some range applied to it like $1000 - $3000. Here the average expected pay would be $2000, but there is some chance it will be higher, or lower. Here it depends on what your "hit or miss" criteria is. Getting $2000 or more is a hit and getting $1999 or less is a miss, and there is  a 50/50 chance of either happening, and this doesn't change. This is where the "unreasonable" expectation comes in. But in video games where the hit rate changes, where you can have a 90% chance to hit but a 10% to miss, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that the attack will hit. Obviously there is a reason to doubt, the 10% miss chance, but on average you are more likely to have a good outcome. Unlike the 50/50 case where you get screwed half of the time.

The true hit rates not being shown would actually make people less arrogant in believing that something that is chanced based at the end of the day is 100% in their favor, even though it technically is. I don't know the 2RN probabilities off of the top of my head, but if the game shows me 90% then I'll think 90% chance to hit, but 10% chance to miss. If I was showed the real numbers, say it was 92%, obviously this looks better, and I would have a more "unreasonable" expectation of the result. Even if a 70% is more favorable than it looks with 2RN, I'm not going to depend on that if there is a better way of going about the battle.

[OriginalRaisins]

1 hour ago, LoneStar said:

Going back to your example, you're mentioning a flat $2000/mo rate that has no probability tied to it. This is an absolute case where the 0% is not getting paid, and the 100% is getting the $2000. If probability was added to it, then the pay wouldn't be a flat $2000/mo, it would have some range applied to it like $1000 - $3000.

That specific example was as an objection to the "people think that 80 is basically 100" line. Just because you think of a probability as a completely different probability doesn't mean that your expectation is well-founded.

1 hour ago, LoneStar said:

Since it's near impossible for things to have either 0% or 100% probably, generally there has to be a "comfort" area for what you would call reliable. I think at least 80% is where the hit rate is somewhat comfortable, especially when there isn't much you can do to improve it.

I agree there needs to be a comfort area where I would call it reliable. The "comfort" area is 100% success. Anything less than 100% means that I either have a backup plan in case of failure or I'm comfortable with the consequences of failure (a reset, losing a competition, etc.)

 

1 hour ago, LoneStar said:

But in video games where the hit rate changes, where you can have a 90% chance to hit but a 10% to miss, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that the attack will hit. Obviously there is a reason to doubt, the 10% miss chance, but on average you are more likely to have a good outcome. Unlike the 50/50 case where you get screwed half of the time.

It is unreasonable to believe that you will hit because you have a 10% chance to miss. Crossing the street without looking both ways probably has a >90% chance of getting you to the other side safely but I don't see people going out and doing it because they know that they need to take chance of failure seriously.

 

1 hour ago, LoneStar said:

I don't know the 2RN probabilities off of the top of my head, but if the game shows me 90% then I'll think 90% chance to hit, but 10% chance to miss. If I was showed the real numbers, say it was 92%, obviously this looks better, and I would have a more "unreasonable" expectation of the result.

Literally how can seeing the true probability give you a more unreasonable expectation of the result? In the situation you presented, your expectation of the result being "90% chance to hit, 10% chance to miss" is actually the unreasonable expection, because the reality of the situation is that you actually have a 92% (90 displayed hit is actually 98 true hit under 2rn but you conceded you didn't know the probabilities so I don't mind) chance of success and 8% chance of failure. The best way to have a true and reasonable expectation of the true hit is to be shown the true hit.

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, MuteMousou said:

You're becoming the satirical point I made to represent your stance earlier which is "you can't talk about a hypothetical because it's a hypothetical." 

Because that's true. Binding Blade with 1rn is a hypothetical. As much so as bows having 10hit. Like I said, it doesn't actually challenge or enhance the point. It's just "imagine if it were bad" which can be done with anything. 

Edited December 12, 2021 by Jotari

[iridium137]

Yes, it's technically lying. Though IMO, it's kind of a "benevolent lying". A lot of people have a poor intuitive grasp on probability and 2RN kind of skews things to be in line with that bias.

When I think of 1RN, the first SRPG that comes to mind is Battle for Wesnoth. There's endless complaints about how the RNG is "rigged". 1RN might be more "honest", but it can also be very harsh and unforgiving, especially for a casual player.

[MuteMousou]

On 12/15/2021 at 10:54 PM, iridium137 said:

Yes, it's technically lying. Though IMO, it's kind of a "benevolent lying". A lot of people have a poor intuitive grasp on probability and 2RN kind of skews things to be in line with that bias.

When I think of 1RN, the first SRPG that comes to mind is Battle for Wesnoth. There's endless complaints about how the RNG is "rigged". 1RN might be more "honest", but it can also be very harsh and unforgiving, especially for a casual player.

I think that the thought of 1RN being unforgiving is kind of funny on its own (I'm not saying you are saying this) consdering fe6 uses 2RN and for awhile has had a lot of people who unironically believed that the RNG in it is bugged despite it having the exact same rng system as all 7 games after it. The reality, obviously is that fe6 just has lower average hit rates than all those other games. Conversely, you will very rarely see player misses in FE3 despite the game using 1RN... because the game has really high hit rates. Another thing is that I think the 99 hit cap/1 minimum in fe5 is an incredible mind game on the part of the developers because many people make it out to be a much bigger deal than it actually is... all it means is that hits that could never hit now have a 1/100 chance to hit and hits that could always hit in other games now have a 1% chance of missing, meaning that this only matters for 1% of cases for either of these things. For example, how often do you even have 100 hit in gaiden/SoV or fe6? I would argue those games may actually have more misses on average than fe5 despite being games where 100 hit exists and/or use 2RN.

The point here, I guess, is that I think it's really all up to the context of how the game presents it as far as if people see it as unforgiving.

[MuteMousou]

On 12/11/2021 at 11:12 PM, Jotari said:

Because that's true. Binding Blade with 1rn is a hypothetical. As much so as bows having 10hit. Like I said, it doesn't actually challenge or enhance the point. It's just "imagine if it were bad" which can be done with anything. 

Next time I try thinking about how Turkey might be a better place for Kurdish people if using the Kurdish language wasn't illegal for instructors, I'll be sure to stop myself after realizing that it's not worth thinking about because that isn't currently reality and therefore not worth thinking about. 

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, MuteMousou said:

Next time I try thinking about how Turkey might be a better place for Kurdish people if using the Kurdish language wasn't illegal for instructors, I'll be sure to stop myself after realizing that it's not worth thinking about because that isn't currently reality and therefore not worth thinking about. 

That's not the same at all and you know it.

[Eltosian Kadath]

5 hours ago, MuteMousou said:

consdering fe6 uses 2RN and for awhile has had a lot of people who unironically believed that the RNG in it is bugged despite it having the exact same rng system as all 7 games after it.

Technically FE6 RNG is bugged, and does work slightly differently from the FE7 and FE8 RNG, but the bug is so minor that it isn't what makes people complain about the RNG. This classic Mekkkah pitfalls video goes over it at the beginning.

 

[MuteMousou]

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

That's not the same at all and you know it.

I mean, you can just say no however much you want but if you can't give a reason for why then you might as well just be admitting that what I said fits your argument.

Edited December 19, 2021 by MuteMousou

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, MuteMousou said:

I mean, you can just say no however much you want but if you can't give a reason for why then you might as well just be admitting that what I said fits your argument.

Because the active suppression of a culture is completely different from saying "Hey imagine if this were shit, then it would be shit, this proves my point that trying it would be shit." It's a farcical false dichotomy.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Jotari