Recent changes to crits and rng

[Anfalas]

Random numbers are exactly that. Random.

No they're not. Also what matters is their distribution. Standard deviation. Value boundaries. And other math stuff I forgot.

As far as I know (some) modern games "cheat" with RNG to make it look more fair. Not sure if gen does that.
The reason why they do it is not to have temple orc single shooting myth (also to adapt difficulty and make it more exciting, but that won't work for Gen obviously).

What games need is (some) predictability. "I killed X 100 times in a row ending at feeling well - it is not possible X will single shot kill me next time".
Even if that NPC gets heavy recode - it should be either announced (as it was with Urian) or done gradually so npc gets harder every arma or so.

That rule should *especially* apply to npc's you can't run away from (because they block, stun, whatever).
Or that can harm seriously (I remember mage before beast - killed it once with no problem - no eq damage, second time he almost broke all my stuff the moment fight started - like 3-4 clouds in row).

Are the numbers fixed each time a mob swings at you? ie it does exactly 100 damage? No. Then there's randomness involved. Yes, it depends on the system as to HOW random it is. But it's still random.

Genesis is very predictable. Kill the same mob 100 times, record your results and don't go based off feeling. Having taken some stat courses in university 20 yrs ago(far from being an expert) it's not a huge sample size to make very concrete observations. But you'll typically start seeing a pattern in Genesis. I have recorded results on various things in Genesis to try and better understand the systems in the past. What I did find is you will find relatively consistent patterns (in my mind) but there was always randomness.

I killed Urian after the changes non-stop for several weeks. Yes, there was some randomness in how hard the encounter was. Vast majority of the time I knew what to expect. Every once in a while it was a bigger challenge because of my gear and RNG on my end or the mobs. Sometimes everything would go my way and I'd barely be scratched. Majority of the time? Somewhere in the middle. Again not proof because I'm going off of memory, not factual recordings of all my encounters.

If there was no randomness, any game would get boring fast.

[Toferth]

Yes game needs randomness. But not randomness to the moment where game becomes totally unpredictable.
That's why "dice" are tweaked, or systems are built to be less random.

I'm pretty sure some things in genesis do that right (skillchecks? Say you're not able to pick that lock *ever*), but apparently some are not (combat, i'd guess PVE mostly)

I'm ok with bigger challenge, but not "you'll get randomly killed". Or "you kill hard, blocking npc, got heavy beating, and it immediately respawns on top of you".
or "npc drops 5 it's special attacks damaging armour on you in a row, you end up naked in first 20s of fight" or what happened in Raumdor not that long time ago.

Not to mention those rules don't seem to apply to (every) player inflicted damage/special.

[Anfalas]

Yes game needs randomness. But not randomness to the moment where game becomes totally unpredictable.
That's why "dice" are tweaked, or systems are built to be less random.

I'm pretty sure some things in genesis do that right (skillchecks? Say you're not able to pick that lock *ever*), but apparently some are not (combat, i'd guess PVE mostly)

I'm ok with bigger challenge, but not "you'll get randomly killed". Or "you kill hard, blocking npc, got heavy beating, and it immediately respawns on top of you".
or "npc drops 5 it's special attacks damaging armour on you in a row, you end up naked in first 20s of fight" or what happened in Raumdor not that long time ago.

Not to mention those rules don't seem to apply to (every) player inflicted damage/special.

Is Genesis completely unpredictable? Can that greenhorne mob kill a myth? Can you 1 shot the Balrog?

What you find acceptable and someone else finds acceptable are going to be completely different. I have worked with many different Wizards and several different Admins in Genesis over my 20+ years. One thing that has been pretty consistent is their struggle to find what's an acceptable and balanced approach to game play while still having some randomness and differences between abilities and guilds. Why have they struggled? Because everyone's idea of what's acceptable is different. That is literally everyone. Admin, Wizards and Players. Ultimately it ends up being the admins decision, and they have a tough task to try and find a middle ground that's not too rigid (all damage is equal) and not too open ended (completely random).

[Shanoga]

... or what happened in Raumdor not that long time ago...

I just want to note that, as an apprentice wizard in Raumdor, I helped to figure out what happened here and it was a bug that we were not aware of and has now been fixed (along with many other ongoing changes in Raumdor). We worked with AoP and the player to make sure that not only was the bug addressed, but the player was not punished for this bug.