[WarCry is (too) unpredictable]

7 hours ago, tom_gore said:

Don't know why the math is different. I just calculated the average damage done by 1 attack (for example for 1/4 damage profile used (0 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 4) / 6) and multiplied it by 8. Still, thanks for the curves. It does show those high damage numbers are rare, but of course rare things happen.

I can definitely live with that, because I'm not super competitive. I do know some players will be put off by this since they feel they don't have enough control of the outcome of attack actions.

 

Yeah, I fully appreciate the fear of getting randomly exploded by a super rare roll. But in Warhammer those are the memorable moments. The problem with the 2/3 being the baseline damage for grunts is that you have to have a much higher starting health pool across the board (Avg damage is 9 v 24- assuming all hit with fails both values will be lower but retain their relative positions..) which could make games longer and more complex to play. 

I'd be surprised if GW designed games around the math, but they'll know what "feels" right for the objectives they're after. 

[WarCry is (too) unpredictable]

3 hours ago, Obeisance said:

I saw this thread and I was going to talk about Infinity, got beaten to it.

The dice mechanics are just different. In GW games, you're rolling buckets of dice looking at averages and/or 6s.

In Infinity, you're stacking mods and range bands to push the math in your favour.  The critical hit mechanic is swingy, but it gives you that 1:20 chance to not get ruined by overwhelming dice/mods. Yes, you can be totally blindsided by hidden models.. but playing around them is sort of a given. If you play against Combined Army or Shasvastii, you know there might be a Noctifer with a Missile Launcher hidden on a rooftop. Or any army that has access to TO: Camo might have someone off the table skulking near an objective. Personally, I love the hidden model mindgames.

I've also played a lot of Warmachine/Hordes. That was D6, based, but you could bump the curve in your favour with boosting hit/damage. 

While Infinity may literally be the best game I've played, I'm enjoying taking a break to play AoS and I'm looking forward to getting some Farcry games in.

 

I really really loved Infinity. It was a beautiful, fun, cinematic game. With gorgeous models. But I couldn't get my mates to buy in, and I don't have the time for the massive ruleset  

[WarCry is (too) unpredictable]

2 hours ago, Hannibal said:

If I remember correctly, in M2E you could only count on outactivating with one model. You were allowed to skip a certain number of activations if you were fielding less models.

M1E didn´t have such a rule as well as offered an unlimited number of chain activations which made shooty alpha strikes pretty lethal in the right cicumstances. This was addressed by M2E.

I generally don't recall this being a thing, however it has been a while since I last played.  IIRC, you had to activate a model on your turn. You couldn't skip. I played a number of tournaments and I never saw a turn skipped.


In response to my other post, here's the correct probabilities. I ran them quickly in excel, them realized I didn't handle the permutations properly so had to redo it in R,  (Im in work so skimmed through it hence the lazy math). 

 

Purple line is raw percentages. Yellow line is those same percentages bounded to the list of probabilities. Assuming all 8 hits deal damage (Treating 1's as a success cause the math is easier, although the probability distribution will look similar anyway) . 

Blue bar is 1/4, orange is 2/3.  As you can see, orange has a tighter spread than blue. But, its min damage is significantly higher. Blue has higher range of outputs, but a much lower damage at the bottom end of the damage output.

Once the probability of the expected damage is factored in, the damage curve over N games looks like this: 

Yes it is more predictable, but requires the game to be designed with tools to offset this higher damage at the lower end. Given the low probabilities of crit, this could make some for really grindy games. 

 

Edit, forgot to add average damage is :  9.43 for blue and 24.89 for orange

[WarCry is (too) unpredictable]

Edit: Spreadsheet error. Will clarify. 

[WarCry is (too) unpredictable]

*edit: Spreadsheet error, see my next post for clarification*

13 hours ago, Hannibal said:

Ok, to point out why I don´t think Warcry can be seen as a competetive game:

 

Any serious tabletop with small number of models that uses the "I go – you go" mechanic of any kind has some rules to prevent that the player with more bodies on the table certainly gets the last activation(s) in a round. That is called "to out-activate your opponent" and means that you can savely hold back your strong fighters to activate them last while your opponent is not able to react.

Such a rule is NOT EXISTANT in Warcry and therefore I think Warcry in the current state will never be competetive. Out activation is just too huge.

 

 

Malifaux M2E didn't have anything to prevent out-activations, (I can't speak for M3E), and the out activation strategy was integral to some aspects of the game, smaller model count lists have their own advantages and disadvantages, same as in any game. 
So I don't really see this as a major concern for Warcry tbh.  What matters is how you react to the evolving game. 

13 hours ago, tom_gore said:

I get what you mean, but in-game you will often need to be able to judge if a model will be able to finish off another model or not. That calculation is almost pure guesswork with the crit mechanics swinging the outcome so much. The maximum damage is so far off the average damage the calculation is just meaningless.

Analytics behind for an infinite number of games don't really apply when you're playing a single game and need to judge the outcome of just handful of dice.

For example, let's say you roll 8 attacks total with a damage profile of 1/4 against lower T. This means that you will do between 0 and 32 points of damage, with the average being only 9,33! Change that to a profile of 2/3 and it becomes a maximum of 24, with an average of 12. Do you see what I mean?

I'm not sure of your math here. I'm getting 9.664470895 and 16.55482363 when I run the numbers.  If you look at the graph below, I don't think this is as big an issue as you suggest. Grey line represents probability of 6's on that many die. Bounded to 0 and 8.  The probability of at least one 6 is 0.53. 
The blue and orange lines represent damage. Each of these damage outputs maps on to a probabilistic outcome (assuming the dice is perfect). We can see that the most likely outcomes here show 2/3 as having higher damage. 
 

 
I mean, you are right in saying that the damage curve for 1/4 is much steeper than 2/3.  However, the probability of hitting those higher damage values is quite slim. (The above assumes 8 attacks which all hit). But, once you factor in the probability the 2/3 has a much higher overall damage curve. 

And whilst minimizing the range of output matters for balance in a competitive setting ( I made similar arguments for competitive wow arena back in the day), in a game those... "oh Sh**" moments are what make it fun to play- provided they are not too common:which the probability damage curves above suggest they are not. 

In  addition to discounting the probabilistic outcomes, your perspective discounts unit specific abilities that may hinder/mitigate crits and damage output which could further smooth out damage.  (Although, I concede this does go both ways and it can enhance it)

[The Rumour Thread]

2 minutes ago, flamingwalnut said:

They DID say return for more reveals at 4. So this is part 1. 

Try not to get overhyped anyways, though. 

They've said that after every reveal though... at 4 it's middle earth stuff. 

Actually kinda disappointed with the AoS reveal - was hoping for updates on Forbidden Power, and maybe new Armies.. what's the big June release too? 

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

2 hours ago, Qrow said:

e, it feels almost like they intended for nighthaunt to have more 2/3 model units. 2 harrows in a unit, the spirit torment and 2 chainghasts as a unit, Such a strange release. I just hope we do get a little love with the GH2019, so many models I want to use but can't justifying doing so outside of very casual games.

Yeah, I hadn't really put too much thought into it to be fair. but I just thought it was a very strange release.  Like.. making the Harrows easy to build, but letting people only ever need one box? That seems daft. 
We have Dreadblade Harrows, Reikenor, and a Knight of Shrouds on a steed... but only 1 unit of Cavalry (Hexwraiths)?  I could easily see a terrifying nighthaunt Cavalry army based of those 4 units, but not with the hero tax. 

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

On 5/8/2019 at 10:25 AM, Neck-Romantic said:

Agreed. Chainghasts are also one of the examples of a very strange NH release plan; you can only get them within a named alternate sculpt of one specific hero boxed set.

We have discussed that the entire NH release felt cobbled together in an odd and inexplicable fashion, from soulwars having different point costs and odd-numbered minis compared to their actual squad size, to the chainghasts and dreadblades' extremely odd packaging decisions, the myrmourn's odd repetative sculpts for units of 4 to 12, myrmourns- Reikenor - glavewraiths - Dreadblades being snapfit and having sculpted bases while the rest of the line doesnt....

You know. I kinda felt the same! 

I never understood why Dreadblades were hero's instead of units of heavy cavalry. It never really made sense.  We have a lot of Hero units...