Intelligence Bulletins

Remember the Sherman Crocodile vs Panzerschreck in last weeks SNF, Sepha vs Symbiosis? That was made possible by RNG

If Randomness played such a huge factor you would see such a different group of people winning the tournaments. IT is obviously not that. Even though luck is in the game the better player almost always wins.

Probabilistic behavior emerges whenever there is uncertainty; by simply having fog of war there is "random" behavior where players are making choices based upon uncertain information. Similarly, if I launch an offmap artillery strike it's not certain how many shells will strike home and how many will miss, or whether or not my opponent will react in time to avoid it, but the ability is still essentially balanced.

The idea that Starcraft is any more balanced because it eliminates these kinds of features is silly; you can have balanced uncertainty, like the fog of war, and given any mechanic with uncertain behavior it can probably be balanced in some way.

The difference in Starcraft is that all uncertainty is caused by lack of knowledge about choices the opponent has made rather than lack of knowledge about what the random number generator will generate, which means that players can outplay an opponent by outguessing them in a way that they can't outplay the random number generator.

You are correct, though, that randomness is just a tool for getting players to make choices based on probabilities rather than on certainties, and there's nothing less skilled about playing a game with a lot of these choices (like poker) than a game with none of these choices (chess). Unless you can literally read your opponents' mind, figuring out what they've done in Starcraft is often up to chance about as much as figuring out where your opponent's next artillery shell will land.

The reason competitive players whine so much about randomness in Company of Heroes is that it sucks to lose a match because of a probability that went against you, and a game design that places a lot of weight on the outcome of a single random outcome or a few random outcomes isn't very great for competition.

If poker turned on the outcome of a few hands rather than on an extensive series of them, it wouldn't be as popular with professional players, and in a lot of ways some Company of Heroes games come down to whether the last shot penetrates the Panzer IV or bounces off, or whether the offmap artillery shell deviates and accidentally kills a sniper.

Too much snub, Sem.

Yes, my post was inappropriately offensive and you don't deserve that: sorry.

The reason competitive players whine so much about randomness in Company of Heroes is that it sucks to lose a match because of a probability that went against you, and a game design that places a lot of weight on the outcome of a single random outcome or a few random outcomes isn't very great for competition.

The reason competitive players whine is because they hate to lose and look for some external cause to blame.
In a probabilistic system the goal is to avoid situations where you can lose because of one or a few bad rolls; it will not happen unless you made decisions to effect that situation.

If the game is balanced such that situations where you win or lose depending on probability crop up a lot of the time then you can't just blame the players.

For instance, if every single vehicle in the game has random critical damage rolls that sometimes take out the engine, sometimes take out the gun, sometimes take out the treads, sometimes destroy the vehicle, and sometimes decrew the vehicle so the enemy can steal it, you can't really blame competitive players for getting into a situation where the "vehicle destroyed" or "vehicle decrewed" critical makes them lose and the other ones make them win, because pretty much everyone is going to build vehicles and you can't just say "you should never let your vehicle get critically damaged."

Playing overly cautions with a vehicle is much less effective than playing normally with a vehicle, risking its death, and having victory come down to chance.

That is not even close to what I'm saying.

I'm saying that if your whole game hinges on that vehicle not getting destroyed or decrewed, then you have made a mistake.
If being aggressive with the vehicle means you have 95% chance of success, obviously you should be aggressive, even though 5% of the time you lose 100% of the time.
This is as true for CoH as it is for SC2.

Here's a riddle:
Between 2 equally skilled CoH players, what decides who will win a particular game?
Between 2 equally skilled SC2 players, what decides who will win a particular game?

I'm saying that if your whole game hinges on that vehicle not getting destroyed or decrewed, then you have made a mistake.
If being aggressive with the vehicle means you have 95% chance of success, obviously you should be aggressive, even though 5% of the time you lose 100% of the time.

These two statements do not go together.

The first says "if you lose a game because your vehicle got destroyed instead of losing its engine, getting one more shot, and blowing up the enemy tank, then that is your fault and you have made a mistake."

The second says "if 95% of the time, your vehicle loses its engine instead of getting destroyed by the first critical hit, then obviously you should use your vehicle aggressively instead of keeping it super safe."

But if you should (obviously) use it aggressively, then sometimes you'll lose the game because you get unlucky and a critical destroys your vehicle at the clutch moment. So then you say you've made a mistake even though you've done what you should obviously do?

A much better example is OMCG. If you make a choice to buy OMCG to get extra AT to take out the KT, and you get two M18s, then you win. If you get an AT gun and a mortar you lose. Is it automatically a mistake to get OMCG for AT when not getting enough AT from it means you lose?

The mistake is putting all your eggs in one basket, not whether or not your expose it to danger, so they do go together.
However, I agree the second statement is poorly phrased: it should read "even though 5% of the time you will be unsuccesful".
In other words: if you have no contigency for the situation where you lose your vehicle, and such a contigency is available, then you have made an error and I posit that this decides many more games at top level than 'randomness'.

Regarding OMCG: I don't know the numbers, but if calling in an OMCG gives you the best chance of success then the correct decision is to call in the OMCG.
Any subsequent outcome like an awesome mortar-mortar-ranger-rifle combo does not affect the value of the decision.

Let's say an OMCG gives you a 100% chance of success (or, like, close to it) if it comes with an M18 and a 0% chance of success if it comes with no M18. You need to blow up the immobilized KT that is protecting the VP you need to cap to win, and an AT gun will never get there in time or penetrate the front armor of the KT fast enough to kill it. Aside from the KT your opponent doesn't have much AT, so your M18 will be safe. You've at Tier 3 and there's no time to build a tank depot or anything and you can't get Rangers close because they have MGs and snipers and stuff.

In that situation, if the random number generator gives you an M18, you win, otherwise you lose. You could try something crazier, like spending the manpower on Rangers and hoping you can fire up past the MGs and snipers to throw some nades and get some bazooka shots, but that's much less likely to work. So the best choice is calling an OMCG. But if the game doesn't give you an M18, you lose right there.

You could say "but you should just play better so that you never get in a position where you have to rely on an OMCG to win the game." But the OMCG is not the only thing in CoH that is based on luck. Vehicle criticals, artillery deviation (especially off-map shells), whether your infantry do the cover dance tango or sit there and shoot at the enemy, hits/misses for shots fired from AT guns and tank guns and other heavy guns, etc. all rely on the random number generator, and if you think the outcome of a match never turns on aggregate lucky breaks for one player or even on one lucky break (when an offmap artillery shell decides to land straight on a squad and wipe it out for instance) then you're ignoring a big part of CoH.

Now obviously the game isn't all luck, but sometimes important aspects of the game do come down to luck, and that can be the difference between one player winning or losing if they are at about equal skill.

"As a competitive gamer the hardest thing to do is to acknowledge your mistakes and learn for them instead of making endless excuses." Daigo Umehara

"As a competitive gamer the hardest thing to do is to acknowledge your mistakes and learn for them instead of making endless excuses." Daigo Umehara

+1

Let's say an OMCG gives you a 100% chance of success (or, like, close to it) if it comes with an M18 and a 0% chance of success if it comes with no M18. You need to blow up the immobilized KT that is protecting the VP you need to cap to win, and an AT gun will never get there in time or penetrate the front armor of the KT fast enough to kill it. Aside from the KT your opponent doesn't have much AT, so your M18 will be safe. You've at Tier 3 and there's no time to build a tank depot or anything and you can't get Rangers close because they have MGs and snipers and stuff.

In that situation, if the random number generator gives you an M18, you win, otherwise you lose. You could try something crazier, like spending the manpower on Rangers and hoping you can fire up past the MGs and snipers to throw some nades and get some bazooka shots, but that's much less likely to work. So the best choice is calling an OMCG. But if the game doesn't give you an M18, you lose right there.

You could say "but you should just play better so that you never get in a position where you have to rely on an OMCG to win the game." But the OMCG is not the only thing in CoH that is based on luck. Vehicle criticals, artillery deviation (especially off-map shells), whether your infantry do the cover dance tango or sit there and shoot at the enemy, hits/misses for shots fired from AT guns and tank guns and other heavy guns, etc. all rely on the random number generator, and if you think the outcome of a match never turns on aggregate lucky breaks for one player or even on one lucky break (when an offmap artillery shell decides to land straight on a squad and wipe it out for instance) then you're ignoring a big part of CoH.

Now obviously the game isn't all luck, but sometimes important aspects of the game do come down to luck, and that can be the difference between one player winning or losing if they are at about equal skill.

If your only chance to win is getting an M18 then odds and rolls are irrelevant, because you have no alternatives.
If you believe a ranger has a chance to do the job, then it comes down to whether that is more probable than drawing an OMCG with an M18.

And yes, in fact i do say "but you should just play better so that you never get in a position where you have to rely on an OMCG to win the game."
There are thousands of events in a single game and letting its outcome depend on any one of them is a mistake to be avoided, and that is exactly what the small handful of people who repeatedly turn up in finals and semifinals are doing.

You cannot look at a single event without taking into account every event, decision and account that lead up to that event.

There are thousands of events in a single game and letting its outcome depend on any one of them is a mistake to be avoided, and that is exactly what the small handful of people who repeatedly turn up in finals and semifinals are doing.

You cannot look at a single event without taking into account every event, decision and account that lead up to that event.

But that small handful of people do win or lose because of "luck" (be it only against each other). If the margins are tiny, "RNG luck" will matter.

Not every game can adopt to LoL's style in LoL you build you "character"(mostly favored) whit runes(like diablo 3 where every upgrade gives you +10 more stats) ! What you will do in COh2 ? Buy new commanders ? its just does not fit here and never will........Pay-to-Win models can only adopt to RPG genre games and RPG genre games where you build your character(actually its very addicting to become stronger and stronger overtime)

Not every game can adopt to LoL's style in LoL you build you "character"(mostly favored) whit runes(like diablo 3 where every upgrade gives you +10 more stats) ! What you will do in COh2 ? Buy new commanders ? its just does not fit here and never will........Pay-to-Win models can only adopt to RPG genre games and RPG genre games where you build your character(actually its very addicting to become stronger and stronger overtime)

I am sure someone will figure out a pay2win model for RTS that will work. Just no one has gotten it right yet.

But that small handful of people do win or lose because of "luck" (be it only against each other). If the margins are tiny, "RNG luck" will matter.

Yes, between two equally matched players only chance decides who wins. That is true for CoH and for SC2 alike.

Yes, between two equally matched players only chance decides who wins. That is true for CoH and for SC2 alike.

SC2 has no RNG luck, all units damage is constant the entire game. No misses, no non penetrating shots, etc. The only "luck" is if you narrrowly missed scouting some important structure or unit.

SC2 has no RNG luck, all units damage is constant the entire game. No misses, no non penetrating shots, etc. The only "luck" is if you narrrowly missed scouting some important structure or unit.

Then answer me this: Assuming SC2 is perfectly balanced, in a tournament match (ie. a winner must be found) between to equally matched players, what will decide who wins?