Post:Are removing open rolls on the horizen? - 4/20/2009 - 6:29:29

Re: Are removing open rolls on the horizen? · on 4/20/2009 6:29:29 AM	16178
> I heard there was someone working to get rid of open rolls, but to increase nicks and such. I am getting pretty tired of being open rolled so often, makes no sense. Open rolls are being addressed, but they are not the biggest problem. Two other problems are far more common than open rolls, and just as fatal. The first is that the random roll in combat is a percentage modifier, and without going into exact numbers, it has a huge spread. Suffice it to say that if one side rolls well and the other side poorly, the results can be spectacular. Now take into account these are percentage modifiers and consider the difference between +/- x% of 50 ranks and +/- x% of 1000 ranks, and you will begin to understand Problem #1. The second problem has been discussed many times before. Damage tends to increase as the skill behind them goes up. The damage required to destroy a body part (say, your chest) is static, and never changes (nor can we change it on a GM level -- it's an engine thing). As a result, the higher you go in skill, the more likely it is that each attack is literally kill or be killed. Add in +/- x% randoms, and it becomes ugly. The odds of getting the actual "open roll" (which isn't actually an open roll anyway, but definitely a OMG! random modifier) is very very slim (roughly 1 in 1000 chance), so it is very unlikely that most so-called open rolls really are open rolls, especially since most players at higher levels swear they get more common at higher ranks (the odds are actually static). I have a sneaking suspicion that I have not been able to confirm yet (but the evidence strongly supports it) that the messaging many people believe indicates an open roll really doesn't. It probably just indicates that the random was above (or below) a certain level. Unfortunately, the way the messaging is set up makes it very difficult to confirm this at this point, but it seems very likely since the system definitely does not flag whether the roll was a normal random or an "open roll" -- it just stores the value of the random, which can overlap between the two in terms of percentages and especially in terms of ranks added/removed. I'll do some more digging over the next few days and see if I can confirm/deny whether the "bizzare luck" style messaging is truly only applied to the 1 in 1000 roll or whether it is based on the random itself, regardless of how it was determined. Either way, the actual 1 in 1000 random is probably the least common cause of death in the game (well, at least if you only consider things that CAN kill you). A high end good roll for the attacker combined with a really bad low end roll for the defender is far more likely to happen, and just as likely to be a one-shot death, especially at higher ranks. - GM Dartenian
This message was originally posted in Combat - Weapons and Armor (11) \ General Discussions (3), by DR-DARTENIAN on the play.net forums.