Hello everyone,
so, here’s a little video from the series called Extra Credits. In case you don’t know it, Extra Credits is a series of videos, dealing with various aspects of video games in general and with their design. While I do disagree with some of their conclusions and view them as too optimistic, the core of the series is sound and I like the format very much (I was even thinking of creating something like that about various WoT aspects, but my lack of art skill kinda prevents me from it, so if you are more skilled than I am, go ahead, that would be very popular I think).
I am honestly surprised that Wargaming hasn’t contacted or worked with these guys before, they seem to be… how should I put it… easily available for hire. Not that it’s a bad thing, they seem to be quite competent.
Anyway, back to topic. A lot of people over time have complained about the randomness of World of Tanks in various competitive modes, especially in e-sports. And it’s true, there is always the 25 percent RNG factor and all that, but that’s not all there is. This video explains very nicely, why randomness in games (in our case, World of Tanks) is actually not a problem. Just… watch it and tell me, what do you think.
RNG affects weaker players more than stronger players because stronger players are better able to compensate for RNG than weaker players.
Same with poker. Thats kinda the difference between good and bad players. THe same is aplied to tactics of the enemy team, the changing of a tank, a new map. A strong player always compensates better then a weak one. Thats what diffines them in the first place.
It’s just saying what is said in the video in another way. RNG effects everyone the same, but good players are able to minimise it by relying on less risky moves or fully aiming shots, or capitalising on enemy team mistakes (one tank on edge of group is easy target and rest can’t help him effectively, enemy team splits up and you attack smaller group or being able to predict with some degree on what your enemy is thinking when you fight him 1v1) etc.
Indeed. A lot of people don’t get this though. They seem to think that RNG is bad :-)
Well, he is damn right when he says poker is a competitive sport while being totaly random!
Totally random = you can’t affect the outcome, even in the long run.
So – no, they didn’t say that.
Ofcourse i mean the drawing of the cards. And yes, even when they are removed of the stack and you already see a bunch, the next one is still a random card from the still remaining stack.
I agree. Also I agree with them that the WG tournaments are too much luck-based. I would be for something like Swiss tournament format – but that would probably be tough to code for WG EU guys…
Thought of that too when they talked about “every player” but how would you decide the first round? Based on WN8? WGR? :D
On the otherhand side, you have to look what is comparable to a single “hand” in WOT? I’d say it’s the shot. And there are possibities to turn the randomness down here for skilled team/player e.g. shoot where you are guaranteed to penetrate etc. Also there are other things which are very important but not subject to randomness, as tank positioning. Engine accelerates always the same, ground resistance isn’t subject to rng etc.
So all in all I’d say there is not so much randomness in in the WoT e-sports. Also I never heard a player say in the aftergame interviews “we had bad RNG today, FU MM” :D and I guess they know why they don’t blame there.
Sry, but that is plain stupid and clearly shows you did not understand what the video was about.
A single elimination tournament is too much luck based, if you have a card game. WoT is not a card game. You don’t need luck to draw the right cards. You know the map and you can choose your players and tanks. You even know on which side of the map you will start. Also you don’t have “turns” in Wot. You can move all the time. So there is also no “white side has higher winchance, because it has the first move” in WoT.
The only random elements in clanwars or tournaments are: Accuracy (not so much anymore since the sigma changes), penetration rolls (bad rolls can be negated by premium ammo) and module damage.
Just take a look at the ongoing WGL EU Gold series. Virtus.Pro won all their games (11) this season. So even if they played in a single elimination tournament (instead of a league system) Virtus.Pro would have won. Therefore the outcome is determined by skill only.
So you take a single instance of a streak of good games and conclude that the outcome is determined by skill only? And YOU are arguing statistics?
Holy shit, please be a troll.
I see only one troll here…
He argued that single elimination would be too luck dependant for WoT. I told him it is not. The proof is comepletely fine. Either way, Virtus.Pro would have won this season. And btw you should look-up what “streak” means. To win every match in a whole season is not a streak…
Furthermore you are stupid, because you think without RNG you would win 100%. The reason you don’t win 100% is not RNG. It is you. It is definitely possible to win 100% and a possibility to win 100% means there is not much of an RNG influence. So if you want to talk about statistics get your facts right.
> I told him it is not. The proof is comepletely fine.
Good one.
> Either way, Virtus.Pro would have won this season.
Maybe. Who knows? Let’s play 500 more rounds to find out if the data is statistically viable.
> And btw you should look-up what “streak” means. To win every match in a whole season, is not a streak…
You should learn something about statistics.
> Furthermore you are stupid, because you think without RNG you would win 100%.
I didn’t say that. Stop projecting so hard.
> So if you want to talk about statistics get your facts right.
You mean the ones that you didn’t post?
> Either way, Virtus.Pro would have won this season.
“Maybe. Who knows? Let’s play 500 more rounds to find out if the data is statistically viable.”
Who knows? We all (even you) know, because the season is over and Virtus.Pro won every game against every opponent. So since they won every game against every opponent the system did not matter this season. This has nothing to do with statistics. Hard to understand? I cannot put it more simple, sorry.
And what do you want to proof with those 500 games? That Virtus.Pro is unbeatable? Who said that? Again you don’t understand that even though RNG does not play a big role, you cannot win 100%, because you are a human and you fail often. Very often.
The point with the streak still stands. If you take 100% of the data than it is not a streak, even though it is only 11 games. 11 games out of 1000, that would be a streak. But not 11 games out of 11. We had this in statistics at the uni. Exactly the same discussion. You are wrong.
cronotik, if anyone is a troll here, it’s the one posting hostile one liners (you)
Edit: Damn it. It should say: module damage and damage.
They pretty much nailed it. Still, I don’t think a simple round-robin is sufficient for WoT to remove the RNG. There’s a reason why Poker is played for hours with a lot of games in the same group of players to decide the winner.
This video is also a good argument for why winrate isn’t luck.
However, I don’t think WG can fix the actual problem with their e-sports (even if they make the teams play more games): They are boring as fuck to watch. 7 vs 7 is just so fucking boring since splitting up the 5 non-scouts is a dumb idea so it comes down to 10 minutes of camping and letting the scouts go ahead and then rush and get into a huge “lemming” slugfest anyway. Or just cap each other out. Good game, much skill, such excitement, wow.
Not saying the same couldn’t happen with 15 vs 15, but three groups of five allow for much more tactical movement. Lemming trains can work, but the one (overwhelmed) group could fall back and let their teammates get into the flanks of the train.
None of teams in WGL are eliminated with a defeat, they have chance to play until end of season and have multiple attempts with each opponent (there are also 3 leagues).
For WG tournament it’s different, there is 1000 or so teams and first few games are single eliminations, then it becomes best of 3. Playing one of those average 1000 teams against “favourite” teams is like pitting average X bar chess player against X Gary Kasparovs. It doesn’t make sense to keep those 900 or so bot teams in competition when rewards are given only for like 16. There is a massive skill gap in those tournaments, first few games you play are won so decisively and enemy teams are so clueless (X:0 or X:1) that you don’t really need to keep them fighting for 16th place. Sure occasionally you might meet a decent team that is capable of beating you but that doesn’t happen very often.
It’s boring because elite teams are so good, they don’t make mistakes or risk a lot and there are large sums of money involved (teams who do that, like asian teams in WGL grand finals, while fun to watch, don’t lead to good result), First they try to get an early advantage with positional warfare, only then they might decide for a push (and even then they do it sometime in last 2 minutes or last minute) so they can draw it out if it doesn’t work out for them. But skill and amount of thinking that goes into that is amazing (for example you see two teams on radar, nobody spots anyone or moves for some time, they start moving against each other at almost the same time – that’s either extremely well refined tactic/algorithm, use of logic or ability to predict what enemy team will do). Larger groups of players (15vs15) would fill up the map too much and would diminish the meaning of player skill and give more emphasis on tactic or execution (when competitive groups get smaller it matters more how many shots you penetrate/miss and you get punished a lot more for mistakes).
but that adds to the problem.
For teams with a chance to reach top 16 WG tournaments look like that:
3 battles without opponent, few tanks or easily killed
1 or 2 battles where you have to play well
battle with top team that smashes you easily.
Those tournaments are not for top 16 only, they are supposed to be a way to promote e-sport.
as long as system is automatic then having 1000 or 128 teams still in play is not a problem at all.
So I would see it that way:
1st round – teams are randomly paired and play twice against each other – from both caps. We remember the number of lost battles for both teams (draw counts as lost)
From next teams play against other teams with the same (or as close as possible) number of losses.
After accumulating some number of lost abttles (it may be 6 or 20 – remember you may lose twice in every round) the team is eliminated.
That way after first 2 rounds you play with opponents more and more at your skill level prolonging the fun.
Because there is no tree you dont need to have a winner in particular game, because having both teams losing the game will not make a hole in your tree. So there is no need for “X points rule” and appelations.
Of course every round there is a chance 1 team will have no opponent, but that’s minor problem unless there are 7, 5 or 3 teams left.
The downside is, you don’t know how long the tournament will go on. But plan accordingly – start first tournament “every sunday”. Next tournament “every wednesday”
and so on. Even if tournaments will overlap, it is still not a problem.
The only reason that most teams are playing is for gold/rewards. If you can’t win it you just loose time and loads of credits in this case, do you want to pay 1 milion+ credits and spend hours and days of “booked activity” for a tournament, if you want to play at a serious competitive level, or just for sake of your goodwill or tournament promotion? Even few 100k are a lot considering how much time you spend getting them back. In summer tournament or what was it again, you had qualifiers and then top teams from qualifiers played in groups against each other (every team against each team in group, and top 2 which had highest score in group proceeded to fight winners of other groups). I mean everyone had 6 chances there to qualify to group stage, I think that is more than enough tries.
I would like to see the WG league take more of a presence, make divisions for the different skill levels of clans, have them run for 8-7 months of the year then a few months break, similar to the way football works with the premiership and the lower leagues wuth promotions and relegations
The way the WG League seems to be run atm is quite short.
The lower lleague teams dont have to be given Huge sums of money, ingame gold would work just as well, or reward tanks etc.
Just a thought
League will not work, at least not in lower or medium levels.
You can’t expect a small team to keep good attendance for an extended period of time and many lower level teams will even break apart and league with too many technicals makes no sense,
Also if you start new team, how long will it take you to reach top level, 3 years?
Long term tournaments should be played by clans, not 20-person teams.
If you really want to make league like competition do it with sth similar to swiss system or elo based matchmaking.
Teams are paired by their ranking. After every battle their ranking is adjusted. Next day teams are set up depending on their new ranking. That way you rather quickly get to roughly your level and play at your level.
How the ranking would work is not really important.
It can be league – you go 1 league up after winning, 1 league down after losing, you stay the same if you draw.
Or it can be you get 1 point for every battle won (match consist of 2 battles played 1 after another or simultaneously if we have clans as participants) and after the day some percentage of your ranking is deducted (to prevent rating inflation)
or normal ELO system
Thats one problem i really have with WoT is RNG. Who says it is really a RNG ? How can i compensate for RNG when as happend yesterday to me a complete noob sets me on fire twice and after the second time i dont have a fire extinguisher anymore. Thats something i cant compensate… he went out in front of my FV got hit for 1k dmg which he souldnt have and then he ends up killing me because he has luck ??? Who says RNG is random? It feels like i am constantly low rolling with my dmg, bounching on Bats, getting 1 shot by arty and so on. There is only so much you can compensate for either its 3 vs 27 or 1 vs 29… in the long run your stats will show that you are a good player but battles are often decided by ridiculous MM and noobs that get a away with stuff they shouldnt have. Either by sheer luck or becaue your team consisting of noobs as well.
Very thoughtful and interesting Video.
I have to think thorigh it a few times about it’s point.
That video pretty much explains why everyone who says “WR IS LUCK” is wrong. He never mentions it specifically, but the law of large numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers) plays a huge role in the matter. Nobody disagrees that given a sample of 10 or so pub games, your teams may suck or your teams may be amazing. Over a few hundred (let alone thousand) games, your win rate stabilizes dramatically. That’s because your teams, due to their randomness, average out in the long run.
I often hear it being said that “you are the only constant. Your teammates are variables,” but that’s totally not true. Though it seems counter to logic, your RANDOM teams, given enough battles, become a sort of quasi-constant. You, being the only thing that will vary your win rate, are the variable.
The problem is this – when the question of random elements is applied to weather a game like WOT, it takes very little reasoning to figure out just how truly stacked the game is AGAINST new players. The game is a 15 VS 15, and of the 14 other members of your team odds are you will be stuck with as many if not more donkeys on your team than the enemy team has. Further, when one factors in how often there are platoons or clan mates on one side (or how often one team will get heavily outstacked in regards to platoons and clanmates) then this leaves players that are stuck in either the boat of working through a weak tank and/or new to the game as a whole and/or being constantly screwed over by a broken RNG; it becomes very quickly apparent that the truest test of skill in the game is how well one can do WITHOUT help. Further still, the very structure of WOT built by WG goes out of its way to reward those that spend a LOT of money on the game – people with money to burn will buy gold tanks, rack up free XP, then convert it and leapfrog past the weaker/crappy tanks in the game that, if you are NOT a wallet warrior, you have to struggle through and as such get even more regularly screwed by bad MM and broken RNG; while those with money get themselves into OP tanks and continue to pad their stats while not actually focusing on gameplay nor teamwork. While this might make a good business model; it is far from a fair system for players to have to cope with. To put it even more simply – YOUR chance of GOOD luck will not, with very rare exception, outweigh Your TEAM’s chance for BAD luck coupled with the ENEMY’s chance of GOOD luck. it literally will be in the less than 1% range.
In short, when it comes to WOT, while it may not be so easy to fix the asinine MM, RNG can certainly be tightened up; as can the OP tank syndrome and as can the ‘rewarding players for money over skill’ problem.
> odds are you will be stuck with as many if not more donkeys on your team than the enemy team has.
That’s not how odds work.
> Further, when one factors in how often there are platoons or clan mates on one side (or how often one team will get heavily outstacked in regards to platoons and clanmates)
Both sides always have a similar amount of platoons.
> then this leaves players that are stuck in either the boat of working through a weak tank and/or new to the game
What, you are not as good when you are new to a game than people who have played it for years? WHO’D HAVE THOUGHT?
> and/or being constantly screwed over by a broken RNG;
Surely you have statistics containing every shot fired and every damage taken by all guns over at least a thousand games to back up your claim.
> it becomes very quickly apparent that the truest test of skill in the game is how well one can do WITHOUT help.
Wait, what is your argument? RNG or teammates that you cannot depend on?
Why don’t you just play team- and company battles then?
> Further still, the very structure of WOT built by WG goes out of its way to reward those that spend a LOT of money on the game
Oh, NOW this gets funny :D
> people with money to burn will buy gold tanks
Which are worse than other tanks on the same tier, except for making money.
> rack up free XP then convert it and leapfrog past the weaker/crappy tanks in the game
I still don’t see how playing weaker tanks makes you a worse player. Unless you are arguing that your overall stats decide your skill. Then you are just a moron.
> that, if you are NOT a wallet warrior, you have to struggle through and as such get even more regularly screwed by bad MM and broken RNG; while those with money get themselves into OP tanks and continue to pad their stats while not actually focusing on gameplay nor teamwork.
Because a single OP tank can totally win the game through sheer RNG luck and this has nothing to do with player skill, right? Also more claims that overall stats show skill. Which they still don’t.
> While this might make a good business model; it is far from a fair system for players to have to cope with.
The oney who are slightly intelligend can cope with it because they understand things you don’t.
> To put it even more simply – YOUR chance of GOOD luck will not, with very rare exception, outweigh Your TEAM’s chance for BAD luck coupled with the ENEMY’s chance of GOOD luck. it literally will be in the less than 1% range.
Wow, just wow. This is going into my copypasta archive.
The RNG video only partially applies to WoT because the video is discussing RNG in terms of games where the outcome is intended to be a single winner out of a mass of starters – e.g. a poker tournament or esports champion.
WoT, by contrast, is a mass consumer business. Ergo the intention of WoT is not to create winners, but to encourage mass participation – because mass participation drives revenues and profits.
The is the difference in the argument between those who maintain RNG works as published, and with the intent of providing a more varied game experience – and those who believe that the RNG is not entirely random, but is part of a greater algorithm that manages the player base in order to encourage mass participation (briefly, by preventing experienced players from too much seal-clubbing, and thus causing new players to leave).
The view of the latter community is that WoT’s +/- 25% RNG is primarily used to obfuscate the effects of other layers of game management. Thus, whenever someone thinks they have detected a pattern or trend in the game, the response is usually a flaming “its RNG, stoopid!”…
Video does not talk about RNG, but randomness which is more general (RNG is random number generator used to modify parameters of game like armor penetration, damage, accuracy).
You have many more unique things with random components in world of tanks, such as positioning of team members on map with respect to time (arguably the most random thing in wot), and uniqueness of tank lineups, player skill, when they fire each shot, where turrets and hull are turned at which time, exactly how player will dive over terrain at any given time, what crew skills player and module damage player, state of upgradedness of modules, what each player ate for launch, irrational beliefs of a player brought on by his brain chemistry, general faults of being a human manifesting themselves at an inconvenient time etc. … There is a lot of randomness in [real] life too (team sports), random components are even present in some well tested physical theories (Quantum mechanics) so on basis of that you can argue that a lot of world is random too. Implementation of RNG is computationally cheap way of attempting to simulate that.
If you wanted to know if MM is rigged, game is turned against you, or something, you shouldn’t be relying on your beliefs (brains beliefs and memories can be faulty, unreliable and too subjective), you would need to preform statistical analysis (for MM weight for example) accounting for a lot of variables and see how it deviates from a sample that would be random.
One of game developers acknowledged that you can get harsher MM (but this is not a big obstacle for extremely skilled players) if you win a lot of games in a row or if you platoon. But even with that it’s still possible to have 60%+ solo and 70-80% in platoons or very high win rate session (~95% in almost 50 games in something that is generally not considered a good tank with only 1 platoonmate), that is if you play for win rate only, which is only one of possible styles of playing (playing for higher average xp is harder).
huh, i posted this on the NA forums, didnt expect to see it here. they do make very good points though. you can also apply this to dispel the “winrate is luck” argument from baddies.
What makes people think RNG is “random”? If they can’t control you through MM in pubs, they will get you with RNG in game modes where MM does not apply.
Very interesting, SS, thanks for the link. I’ve seen other videos by this guy before, and they’re pretty much all well done and very informative.
Also, is it just me, or does the narrator sound like he’s a Salarian? Which oddly enough fits the informative nature of the video… XD
The problem is that with the WoT random/RNG there is incorporated a second algorithm, actually more than just 2 total, that affects the overall RNG efficiency of a player. There are times when RNG will be completely on your side (good RNG) and you’ll make shots you know that you shouldn’t make, and then there are other times when RNG makes you miss or bounce shots over and over again (bad RNG) that you know you should make. Here’s some things to watch out for: Overall WR for the day (win/loss streak), if you take risky shots and make them, and several high/low damage rolls at a time. All of these items are affected by the 2nd RNG algorithm of good/bad RNG.
This 2nd algorithm use to not be in place until some entity in the player base cracked the original RNG and made an aim bot for it that would put 3+ shells into the exact same hole on a tank 400 meters away. WG can claim that their RNG system is “balanced” because over the course of many battles the average player is more than likely to end up with 50% win rate and having an average damage close to the one listed for the gun. Individual battles, however, are completely unbalanced when looking at the small picture and analyzing every number individually. With this system in place there are predictable actions that will be rewarded when playing WoT (including snap shots). Granted this is not true with every variable in the game as some players/weapons perform better to the RNG than others.
Keep in mind that bad/good RNG is based on an “over a length of time from one half to 5 matches” collection of data and not just the 1 lucky shot or 1 bad shot.
“This 2nd algorithm use to not be in place until some entity in the player base cracked the original RNG and made an aim bot for it that would put 3+ shells into the exact same hole on a tank 400 meters away”
sauce?
Yeah, I’m not happy with WG staff trying to explain to me that RNG is “fair and balanced” when over and over again I have made them speechless or answer “I don’t know” with examples straight from their game. What WG needs to do is create a different RNG system based on server population so that these damn 15-5 resulting matches stop on the NA server.
70% of the matches on the NA server end in 15-5 and it’s only because of RNG. It doesn’t matter if both sides have perfectly symmetrical tactics/tanks/ammo/movements the match will still end in 15-5 due to RNG.
WG’s response to my queries about 15-5 matches is “15-5 is the new norm” and “it’s all because of tactics used and skill of player, but not our system.”
>implying i’m from WG staff
this make me giggle xD (BTW my nick means “WG victim”)
i’m not trying explain to game mechanics (which sucks IMO) – i want only source of this information:
“This 2nd algorithm use to not be in place until some entity in the player base cracked the original RNG and made an aim bot for it that would put 3+ shells into the exact same hole on a tank 400 meters away”
Belief in existence of “good” and “bad” “RNG” is just your poorly constructed belief, based on incomplete understanding of the game and statistics, and trying to find some emotion based external rationalisation and patterns, that don’t exist and you invent, to compensate for your poor performance. How can game even influence, in a way you are implying, what players and you are doing? Do you imply that game doesn’t allow you to have free will?
The video says a little randomness is not a problem. But World of Tanks has far too much randomness.
RNG starts affecting the game at the moment one pulls the trigger. First it will decide if you hit exactly where aimed or if the shell will simply overshoot and even hit an ally on the other side of the map.
+/-25% affects 2 things at the same time. Affects whether your shell will penetrate or not a target and then how much damage it will deal. After that, we have things like module damage, which can vary from nothing to a ammo rack explosion.
And l won’t even go through the worst aspect of them all, which comes in the form of sky cancer.
The problem with WOT is that we have:
. Shell disperse RNG (main problem) plus
. +-25% damage RNG plus
. +- 25% shell penetration plus
. if modules are damaged or not
For a single person that is too much already, and if you put in a scenario that player A had bad RNG and player B (enemy) had good RNG, the different outcome is HUGE.
A little Randomness is acceptable, but the way WOT is right now is a big game of luck. Like i always say, for you to play WOT well all you need is experience to understand how it works and don’t be stupid, that’s all, you don’t have to be a genius. Skill help but it is capped. Once a player is good, the difference between him and a VERY SKILLED player is not that big.
Well that “good rng” “bad rng” evens out if you play a lot of games. If you do smart positioning (positional warfare) you can do more than if you just rush into enemy and rely on RNG to kill him. It’s not that hard to have near 100% hit rate or at least 75% consistently. Main trick is to have chance to fire enough shots so that you are not that dependent on single shot.
I would like to point out a distinction that the video didn’t make. The reason why, say, card games are the way they are isn’t because someone decided it’d be a good idea to incorporate randomness into the game. The reason for the randomness, is because it is inherent to many, if not all, card games. Whereas the randomness in WoT is artificial. There is nothing that says that the current situation is optimal.
I for one, couldn’t care less about WG’s aspiration towards “realism” in this regard, and would much rather have consistency.
Matchmaking, tank compositions, positioning can vary/matter more than those +-25%, and let’s not forget about 30 essentially unpredictable brains. For consistency you have WT, which is pretty boring and easier as a game compared to wot, yet it still has some RNG, (turnfighting derp galore in AB and autist climb to space in RB,SB), and let’s not forget level of it’s “realism” such as spotting mechanics etc. If you would have less RNG it would become closer to some first person shooters because even now many pro players rarely miss.