A comment on RNG and competitive games

[Helstrem]

I see comments over and over to the effect that "WoWS is not really a competitive game because it has RNG in it." or variations thereof.

 

The fact of the matter is that almost all sports, perhaps all of them, have RNG factors.  Football, basketball, rugby, soccer, hockey, baseball, cricket, sprinting, marathons and on and on.  All of them.  Nobody claims that those are not competitive due to RNG factors that are out of the participant's control.  Wind, rain, field conditions and so on.  Over the course of a season the better teams/players will rise to the top, RNG will be averaged out.  Sure, a gust of wind at the wrong moment may screw Brady or Rodgers in a given game, but over the course of the season, if they play at their previous levels, they should do well and their team's win rate reflect that.  Same as in WoWS' RNG case.  Yes, sometimes you fire a salvo that straddles the target in every which way, and go on to lose the game when you know had that salvo hit as aimed the outcome would have been different.  That is frustrating, but....   How often do we remember the cruiser we deleted when we fired at his health bar over an island, not even able to see him or his true heading?

 

The only games that I can think of that have no RNG are either board games like chess and go or computer games.  I suspect that this is where the "If there is RNG in a game it cannot be competitive stems from.  The gamer mentality of ones and zeroes, on and off, yes and no.  There is no "maybe" in a digital world without explicit effort being made to simulate it and perhaps that colors the expectations of players.

[gurudennis]

When people complain about RNG and its incompatibility with competitive play, they are referring to excessive RNG. Like if Brady's throw would randomly disperse 30 feet away from the intended target half of the time, using your analogy. The real point of contention is whether the element of randomness in WoWs is at a level that is incompatible with a practical competitive environment, i.e. high enough that an unacceptably high number of matches would have to be played for the randomness to reliably even out. To discount this debate as pointless isn't fair in my opinion.

[Helstrem]

5 minutes ago, gurudennis said:

When people complain about RNG and its incompatibility with competitive play, they are referring to excessive RNG. Like if Brady's throw would randomly disperse 30 feet away from the intended target half of the time, using your analogy. The real point of contention is whether the element of randomness in WoWs is at a level that is incompatible with a practical competitive environment, i.e. high enough that an unacceptably high number of matches would have to be played for the randomness to reliably even out. To discount this debate as pointless isn't fair in my opinion.

30ft or 3ft.  Makes no difference.  3ft off and Brady's pass is incomplete or intercepted.

[gurudennis]

Just now, Helstrem said:

30ft or 3ft.  Makes no difference.  3ft off and Brady's pass is incomplete or intercepted.

 

Sure, point being it sometimes (rarely) does, but mostly goes exactly where Brady aimed for provided no mistakes on his part. Not so in Warships: random dispersion happens 100% of the time, but sometimes it's favorable and sometimes not, perhaps 50/50. This kind of odds wouldn't go well with the Major League now would it :)

[Helstrem]

7 minutes ago, gurudennis said:

 

Sure, point being it sometimes (rarely) does, but mostly goes exactly where Brady aimed for provided no mistakes on his part. Not so in Warships: random dispersion happens 100% of the time, but sometimes it's favorable and sometimes not, perhaps 50/50. This kind of odds wouldn't go well with the Major League now would it :)

The total number of random factors in a football game is much, much higher than in a WoWS match.  Individually they are likely of less impact, though turf giving out causing a ball carrier to be caught, or escape can be game changing by itself, but cumulatively they are probably a greater factor.

[SireneRacker]

Some RNG aspects of this game make competitve play difficult, the inconsistency of the dispersion being one of them (unless you play Yuubari). Detonations are also something that oppose competitive play. 

 

Imagine that during a soccer play two players face each other, one is in a top condition and just got onto the field, the other one just got out of the hospital and is exhausted from the long game. Assuming both are equally skilled it's no surprise that latter has no chance. In WoWs however it can happen that dispersion will deny our full HP the success while the heavily damaged one lands a surprising triple citadel. That doesn't really sound competitve to me.

[Saetre]

No, real life does not have RNG.  Football, baseball, and soccer included.  Sorry.

[LoneStormchaser]

To have an RNG, there has to be a starting point. There also has to be a set "spread". A high and a low. It's like, pick a number between 1 - 5.

[twitch133]

Here is the problem with your random stuff in real life games vs PRBG In a game.

 

The random stuff happening in real life is pure dumb luck. And it will generally not happen unless a mistake is made.

 

Random stuff happening in game is due to a pretty crappy piece of code, and will still happen even if you make no mistakes. 

 

 

You you want a perfect example. The two biggest shooters on the market. Rainbow six siege vs Battlefield 1. Care to guess why R6 has a huge E-sports arena and BF1 does not? That's right, randommess. The number one reason is BF1 uses a random bullet dispersion to simulate recoil and lower the skill gap. One that is so bad, that you can be still, lying prone, shooting at a stationary target and watch your first round miss. There is no amount of skill that can overcome this. Siege uses a recoil model. The bullet will always hit where the sight is pointed, but there is a fairly robust recoil model that is different for each gun, but always consistent on the same gun, that player skill can overcome.

 

Care to take a guess as to the biggest reason there is no e-sports following for this game? (I'll give you a hint, it is not popularity.)

 

 

Edit.... One thing I feel like I need to add to this. There is a place in this game for RNG. And one place only. That is shell dispersion within the historical limits of the fire control systems of the ship firing the shots. That is it. They need to remove the percentage vs angle based penetration mechanics and bring in real effective armor thickness calculations. Using RNG instead of effective armor to determine whether a shell bounces or pens is just lazy coding. Nothing more.

[Cognitive_Dissonance]

Hmm, as a Age Grouper competitive Triathlete that has been racing for almost 20 years in rain, heat, wind, hail etc. I humbly disagree. The fittest and most prepared athletes still win as they did on a day with ideal conditions, it is just that the entire field slows down (or speeds up if fair winds), but the results always favor those most prepared, regardless of conditions.

The only "RNG" I have seen in competitive racing is a flat that took too long to replace, or you showed up for race day with walking pneumonia and dropped down 10 slots, and those instances are exceedingly rare, speaking from experience.

[twitch133]

2 hours ago, SireneRacker said:

Some RNG aspects of this game make competitve play difficult, the inconsistency of the dispersion being one of them (unless you play Yuubari). Detonations are also something that oppose competitive play. 

 

Imagine that during a soccer play two players face each other, one is in a top condition and just got onto the field, the other one just got out of the hospital and is exhausted from the long game. Assuming both are equally skilled it's no surprise that latter has no chance. In WoWs however it can happen that dispersion will deny our full HP the success while the heavily damaged one lands a surprising triple citadel. That doesn't really sound competitve to me.

 

I can handle the dispersion.... As aggravating as it gets, it is for the most part, predictable. Along with the full health vs low health thing. As long as it was the enemies aim, and not an RNG roll that caused it. I have finally been getting to the point in Rainbow 6 siege, that have I have been able to take on multiple enemies when I had less than 10 health remaining in game, due to better planning, aim and the games headshot model. (A headshot will kill the player outright, except in very limited circumstances.)

 

It is craplike detonations. Where the very first round that hits me, that should have done no more than about 1100 damage, decides that it has a right to do 19,000 damage that gets on my nerves.

 

1 hour ago, _V12 said:

No, real life does not have RNG.  Football, baseball, and soccer included.  Sorry.

 

Yup. OP does not understand what RNG means. He thinks it means "Random". 

 

He forgot about the "Random Number Generator" part of it.

 

There is no RNG outside of anything software based.

[SireneRacker]

15 minutes ago, twitch133 said:

I can handle the dispersion.... As aggravating as it gets, it is for the most part, predictable. Along with the full health vs low health thing. As long as it was the enemies aim, and not an RNG roll that caused it. I have finally been getting to the point in Rainbow 6 siege, that have I have been able to take on multiple enemies when I had less than 10 health remaining in game, due to better planning, aim and the games headshot model. (A headshot will kill the player outright, except in very limited circumstances.)

 

And the long training and the studies on the game's mechanic puts you into a different skill level. With equally skilled players however the dispersion can and will create situations that oppose the idea of competitive gameplay. Don't imagine yourself fighting a Random Player, imagine fighting a clone of yourself in different games. In some games, like soccer or chess, the outcome will be narrow all the time and you may also get draws. Now imagine the same scenario in WoWs, it's not unreasonable to see one side winning the battle while still having half of it's health.

 

As for Rainbow 6, never played so I can't comment on that.

[LoneStormchaser]

24 minutes ago, twitch133 said:

 

I can handle the dispersion.... As aggravating as it gets, it is for the most part, predictable. Along with the full health vs low health thing. As long as it was the enemies aim, and not an RNG roll that caused it. I have finally been getting to the point in Rainbow 6 siege, that have I have been able to take on multiple enemies when I had less than 10 health remaining in game, due to better planning, aim and the games headshot model. (A headshot will kill the player outright, except in very limited circumstances.)

 

It is craplike detonations. Where the very first round that hits me, that should have done no more than about 1100 damage, decides that it has a right to do 19,000 damage that gets on my nerves.

 

There is no RNG outside of anything software based.

Completely agree. But even an RNG format can be programmed to give more of or less of.

Slot machines were once programmed to limit the number of times it give a jack-pot.

[twitch133]

7 minutes ago, SireneRacker said:

 

And the long training and the studies on the game's mechanic puts you into a different skill level. With equally skilled players however the dispersion can and will create situations that oppose the idea of competitive gameplay. Don't imagine yourself fighting a Random Player, imagine fighting a clone of yourself in different games. In some games, like soccer or chess, the outcome will be narrow all the time and you may also get draws. Now imagine the same scenario in WoWs, it's not unreasonable to see one side winning the battle while still having half of it's health.

 

As for Rainbow 6, never played so I can't comment on that.

 

True.... I am sure that we can all tell tales of besting technically better players too. It a full on underdog situation. Weaker ship, lower health, ect.... Most times due to RNG favoring us. Occasionally due to them making a mistake. And occasionally due to us genuinely outplaying them.

 

Rainbow is a shooter with one of the steepest learning curves out there. This game, even a complete and total noob that has no idea what the W key does can still get damage and the occasional kill. I spent my first ~20 hours or so in siege without a single kill. The learning curve is so steep, I have rage quite, uninstalled, taken months long breaks and finally come back to the game.

 

I got through typing all of this, and forgot where I was going with it. It was going to be a useful anecdote about comparing skill in games, but I cannot remember the end game I had when I started typing. Lol. I will just leave this hear in case it comes back to me.

 

[twitch133]

3 minutes ago, LoneStormchaser said:

Completely agree. But even an RNG format can be programmed to give more of or less of.

Slot machines were once programmed to limit the number of times it give a jack-pot.

 

And they are still artificially limited to trick the player into believing they have a real chance of winning, while maintaining profitability of the casino.

[LoneStormchaser]

3 minutes ago, twitch133 said:

 

And they are still artificially limited to trick the player into believing they have a real chance of winning, while maintaining profitability of the casino.

Your not suggesting, something like this is going on here in WoW, are you?

[IronWolfV]

Well if you want to roll full realism in this game and call it esports. You all go right on ahead. Cause even with the high handed RNG everyone screams about, we have hit percentages that any captain of WW2 would drool at. Even with her sophisticated radar of the day Iowa only managed an average hit % of 9%. Most other ships built before that averaged 5% or less. We're talking about firing 10 broadsides out of an Iowa and MAYBE hitting 9 shells. 

 

Doesn't that sound like fun?! 

[twitch133]

Just now, LoneStormchaser said:

Your not suggesting, something like this is going on here in WoW, are you?

 

Just a little bit.... 

 

Hence the reason our bell curve of skill in this game is more of a mesa than a hill.

 

Where a game that is purely based around skill and game knowledge looks like this:

 

ours looks something like the red line on this chart:

 

The skill levels in this game increase and decrease exponentially. Now, these charts are not necessarily apples to apples. As the top chart represents rank and Elo. The bottom chart represents win rate, with 50% being in the middle. I believe that win rate is enough of a measure of skill that they are somewhat comparable. 

[LoneStormchaser]

1 minute ago, twitch133 said:

 

Just a little bit.... 

 

Hence the reason our bell curve of skill in this game is more of a mesa than a hill.

 

Where a game that is purely based around skill and game knowledge looks like this:

 

ours looks something like the red line on this chart:

 

The skill levels in this game increase and decrease exponentially. Now, these charts are not necessarily apples to apples. As the top chart represents rank and Elo. The bottom chart represents win rate, with 50% being in the middle. I believe that win rate is enough of a measure of skill that they are somewhat comparable. 

Maybe, our fate is predetermined, in the confines of a pre-set RNG according to the individual. (Note: I am not saying WG "doctored" the dice, yet anything is possible)

[Skpstr]

2 hours ago, _V12 said:

No, real life does not have RNG.  Football, baseball, and soccer included.  Sorry.

 

This is true, but to model any real life situation as a game, you need RNG. Otherwise, you would spend as much or more time and effort coding a system for effects on the gameplay as the game itself.

 

For example, to avoid using RNG in this game, you would have to model a complete weather system, simulate the manufacturing of gun barrels and ammunition, as well as a physics/chemistry based system to handle fire.

 

 

[twitch133]

1 minute ago, LoneStormchaser said:

Maybe, our fate is predetermined, in the confines of a pre-set RNG according to the individual. (Note: I am not saying WG "doctored" the dice, yet anything is possible)

 

Now... I am not trying to suggest some kind of conspiracy of the dev's to try and keep us all at 50%.

 

I am just suggesting that there are hurdles with the randomness that keep a much larger portion of the population within a few points of that 50% than other games. Resulting in skill spread, if viewed on a chart, with considerably less deviation than a purely skill based game.

[LoneStormchaser]

11 minutes ago, twitch133 said:

 

Now... I am not trying to suggest some kind of conspiracy of the dev's to try and keep us all at 50%.

 

I am just suggesting that there are hurdles with the randomness that keep a much larger portion of the population within a few points of that 50% than other games. Resulting in skill spread, if viewed on a chart, with considerably less deviation than a purely skill based game.

 

Oh, I doubt very highly, the dev's are interested in creating an RNG which could lead us all to 50%. (Note:   I too, am not saying there is a conspiracy)

[twitch133]

1 minute ago, LoneStormchaser said:

 

Oh, I doubt very highly, the dev's are interested in creating an RNG which could lead us all to 50%. (Note:   I too, am not saying there is a conspiracy)

 

Artificially created randomness is frustrating at best. Infuriating at worst. The games that I have been playing lately really don't have much of, if any use for an RNG at all.

 

Every shot I hit an opponent with, I know exactly how much damage it is going to do, and how many of those shots it is going to take to kill them. Of course, there are multipliers that make hitting different parts of the body do different damage. But, nothing changes those multipliers. So, I know if I hit an opponent in the leg, it is going to do 0.66% of my weapon's base damage with every single shot. And if my weapon does 32 damage, I know it will take 5 shots, every time, like that to kill them. Hence, it will always come down the the player that is better at both planning and aiming.

 

There is no chance for him to turn around, and shoot me in the big toe, killing me in a single shot. Now, if my planning was better and I attacked from behind. But my aim was so poor, I could only hit him in the legs. But he turns around and shoots me in the face (which will kill in one bullet every time in the game I am talking about) Good for him, I had better planning, he had better mechanical skill. He bested me based on skill. I cannot be mad about that.

[LoneStormchaser]

I have a question. (And let's forget about the "spread" or accuracy of player's shot history)

What would you think, after 10 games, are the chances of a player being put on a team, whose team has a combined WR which is less than the combined WR of the team the player is playing against? What about after 100 games? What about 1,000. 2,000? Would it be a coincidence? Could it be fixed? How would a RNG come into play under such results? The only way to get a somewhat of an answer is to multiple results from a vast number of different players. Like a poll, only not altered to give results one wants to hear.

Would RNG still exist?

[twitch133]

4 minutes ago, LoneStormchaser said:

I have a question. (And let's forget about the "spread" or accuracy of player's shot history)

What would you think, after 10 games, are the chances of a player being put on a team, whose team has a combined WR which is less than the combined WR of the team the player is playing against? What about after 100 games? What about 1,000. 2,000? Would it be a coincidence? Could it be fixed? How would a RNG come into play under such results? The only way to get a somewhat of an answer is to multiple results from a vast number of different players. Like a poll, only not altered to give results one wants to hear.

Would RNG still exist?

 

I do not think this example can really be looked at as RNG so much as just plain random.

 

This game only looks at Ship type and tier, and will grab the first available player to fill the needed slot. If the game needs a T9 DD, it is going to grab the first one available, with no regard to skill. This is really sub optimal. But at least after a larger sample size, it will even out. It certainly does get infuriating when you are on a cluster that is against you though.

 

Now, I would much rather have a skilled based match maker. But with the way our matches are built, and the fairly low population of this game. How feasible is it?