[Dev Note] Near misses and bad luck…

Big fan of tactical RPGs, huh? If so, how do you feel about Hit Rates? Frustrated by astronomically unlucky misses? We know the feeling...

When you want to dive into the tactical depths of this genre, this kind of Hit Rate system can be a tricky thing. How should we handle the elements and feelings of “uncertainty” and “luck” when creating these systems? Well, finding an answer to this isn’t exactly simple...

Games with a similar format to ours such as XCOM or Battle Brothers, as well as others with turn-based combat rules, use the concept of Hit and Avoidance. In the beginning we too felt it was an integral part of the genre so early builds centered around this concept.



However, after many playtests the question came up: Can we enjoy this kind of game without having to deal with the frustration of completely missing attacks? We’ve all felt the sting of whiffing that 94% chance hit...

Of course, the inverse would also be problematic. Removing any element of uncertainty and making all attacks have a 100% Hit Rate with fixed damage would diminish the Emotion and Tension a player can feel which damages the overall experience.

Unlike a game like Chess or Go where uncertainty is created through the unpredictability of a human opponent, we came to the conclusion that in order to create diverse experiences in our game there must be an element of luck which can affect the outcome of an action.



Aside from the weapon Hit Rate, Remore has other factors which are uncertain to the player.

• When opening a door or turning a corner, how many enemies await?
  
• Which way is an enemy facing? Will we be caught next turn if they turn this way?
  
• What items will we find while looting, and will they be of help to us at this moment?
  
• Weapon’s Min and Max damage range, and Critical Hit probability.
  

Also, to emphasize the theme of ordinary folk trying to survive an infestation, Characters’ Health and Defenses is set quite low. Even the weakest Infested variant, the Knawer, can kill a player character in 2 or 3 hits, so play is more about minimizing damage taken and avoiding detection than it is a “tit for tat” battle.



After considering all these factors, we decided to remove the concept of “Missing” from the combat system entirely, instead leaving just the uncertainty of how much damage the attack would do or whether it would be a critical hit. We concluded that this uncertainty of whether an enemy would be killed in 2 or 3 hits would be enough to pose a threat.

In place of a “Miss” we have included the concept of “Graze” which means that an attack could still deal damage lower than the weapon’s current min damage.

Special effects such as “Bleeding”, “Fainting” and “Pushing” are still applied as normal so there is still a high degree of probability in the tactical play.



As a result of this change, we were able to maintain the “tension of uncertainty” while minimizing the feeling of “even though we made a good tactical decision, it was negated by bad luck.”

In addition to the Hit Rate system there are many others that seem trivial but really had us scratching our heads during the design process. We’d love to go through a few of these in the next few Un-Dev Notes so until then, thanks for reading and we’ll catch you next time!

Thank you