So much randomness in abilities diminishes strategy

Puglio

I find myself thinking a lot of the time, "Oh, if I were to apply debuff X or buff Y right now to Z, that would be perfect... but it probably wouldn't land, so I'm better off doing a standard attack."

For example, it's really great to make my enemy's tank immune to buffs before he taunts, but my Nightsister Initiate only has a 45% chance to apply that effect, and even if she does there is a good chance it will be resisted and the damage will just be healed anyway. That means there is about a 60% chance it would be a waste of a turn. So it's better to just do a standard attack to their healer. Every time. How boring.

There is a great Extra Credits video on how to use and how not to use randomness in games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V5eq4IQ6Go

If I were to underline the main takeaway for GOH, I think it would be that randomness works great for standard attacks, like the stun for Coruscant Underworld Police. It's exciting when it procs, but if it doesn't, you might be disappointed but are at least satisfied that you have done an attack and can soon try again. His grenade, on the other hand, is a very weak AOE with a very small chance to apply offense down. You're probably better off ignoring it completely and hoping for a stun.

The worst offender is Asajj Ventress' Strike Fear ability. It has a better-than-even chance of doing literally nothing at all, and it's on a cooldown to boot.

Rolf

This is an awesome point. It's depressing in a strategy game when you have to "play the best odds" rather than enjoying cool multilevel strategies and planning.

Think back to the classic RPG's in the 80s/90s. Did you ever use the RNG moves? No, because they only worked on the weak characters you could beat without thinking. Same here, if you're in a challenging battle then you'll lose most of the time if you play the super-power game-ending move with a 25% proc rate.

Otar

Thanks for the new channel, its just great and makes sense!

LocoAl

I feel frustrated sometimes too because of bad luck on battles but... I also feel happy when an ability performs better than expected (e.g. AOE debuffs) ...

Some randomness is cool, being too deterministic can lead to pre-built moves for all battles and make them become boring. There is also a lot of strategy in choosing your next move when an expected ability does not take effect, and on building a team not based on a 1-path-only movement. You must handle the result of the events that happen during the battle knowing your team to react to them.

However I feel confused because I do not always know well what are the chances for an ability to success... As a suggestion to the developers, wouldn't be nice to have a tooltip above the abilities that show the probability to work out? (for instance a 60% - or whatever - text on top of the basic attack of a jedi when the selected target is sid).

Venator_83

Dump all your moves on one guy at a time a pray to RNGesus

Trotticus

What you're not accounting for is how randomness lets worse players beat better players. The reason a lot of games use randomness is to toss wins to bad players; not enough to discourage becoming a better player, but enough to keep them having fun (and thereby spending money). The randomness is there so 'stronger' teams don't always beat 'weaker' teams. This gives hope to weaker players and keeps them paying and playing. It also works to beat down critics of pay-only characters being powerful- there's always some goon who'll say "Nah, it's balanced; I beat it once!". It lets developers ignore actual balance because we're heavily influenced by anecdotal evidence (particularly our own). Randomness blurs the actual state of balance between characters.