To my mind the more important factor is, whether the attacker lands a direct hit or not - regarding "speccing excitement" -, and not how exactly the damage is calculated. However, when a direct hit occurs, the calculation should be as fair as possible, i.e. static. It is about the fair play here, the good feeling that after a man-to-man duel the skill decided the outcome and not a die.

Overall, I fail to see how the game would become boring without the RL damage randomness, when we have enough luck influences like packet loss or fluctuating latency already. Proven in Renzo's field test no one seemed to lose the joy of QW. You kept playing - just that it was fairer than usual.

One thing that everyone seems to have missed: 100 + rand(20) is fair!

Huh, you may say. It's true, though. Everyone has the same probability to make maximum damage. Everyone has an even amount of luck (ignoring superstition here). It all evens out over time.

So to underscore it one last time - either mode is fair.

Writing about "as fair as possible" and "fairer" implies that the randomness isn't unfair. There are different qualities of fairness though and the static damage is fairer than the dice rolling.

I have to say when it comes to qw, I disagree on this point. Even if this is on the other subject, but I recently played such a povdmm4 round where I actually spawned EVERY SECOND TIME to the upspawn for the first two minutes. Random shit in QW just doesn't work properly, who knows what gives but it's very common to see "ra spawns" in dm4 for the other player, bad spawnluck streaks on dm2 after dying or some players getting telefragged more by spawning players.

But again, this wasn't about spawns or telefrags, instead something that requires skill (dhs are hard to make) and then considering the possibilities what happens next if we have random or not.

Thats what make qw fun

I voted static for one simple reason, no matter if I lose or win I want to know that I lost or won because I was better then my opponent or my opponent was better then me. Never do I want to lose a game cause my opponent got lucky neither do I want to win a game because I got lucky.
The QW community should like communities do in all other games/sports try to remove luck by as much as possible.

Nobody has really mentioned this, but I'd expect there to be a lot more instances of both players dieing with fixed damage. We wouldn't see as many tight battles ending with one player barely alive. That makes it much less exciting if you ask me.

agreed dustin

Why would you expect that?

btw, you guys realise that RL direct hits isnt exactly common

i checked some logs from my last 4on4 and duel games. in 4on4 20mins vs equally skilled opponents, all players got between 5-15 direct hits each.

In duels vs equally skilled opponents on dm6, i would also get between 5-15 direct hits.

Imo directhits are so rare, that changing this is just for cosmetic reasons and in that case, non-random looks better

I'm curious to know too.

Well... 8 players with 5-15 dh each, that means approx 80 dh per game. Personally I wouldn't call that rare, that's 80 times you're getting this random amount of damage applied.

How many of them are from spawns, where you'd kill anyway rnd or no. Would also be interesting to know how many rockets were shot total.

I actually find this kind of argument pretty hard to accept (bringing the quad-rocket issue into it)
In my opinion, the idea that fixing rl damage at 110 would be bad because then you can never kill a player with >440h+a by quad-rl is no different from the idea that you could never kill a player with >110h+a by a normal rocket. If a player has 116h, there is a "luck chance" that he can be killed by a normal rocket. Fix the damage at 110, and there is zero chance. How is that any different from the quad situation?

Take dm6 for example. There is no quad on that map, but there is mega, and armours. So if you fixed damage at 110, a player with 116h would be unable to die from a single shot. Currently that isn't the case.

So for me this whole "special case" about when a player is fully stacked with RA and 2x mega is a bit of a moot point - it's actually no more special than situations which are far more likely to occur and be of relevance in games.

IMO, if a so called 'pure thinking' game has a luck factor, then actually, it isn't a pure thinking game afterall. It's a thinking+luck game
It could be argued that even chess has a small element of luck to some degree, in terms of whether you are playing as black or white (the degree to which this influences the game depends on the players involved - for example some players tend to fare better with white, maybe due to limited opening knowledge)

A single hand in poker is not really all that exciting. If all games were played with a single hand, it'd be very much a game of luck, but not that interesting. It's when you play hundreds and thousands of hands it becomes more of a game of probabilities and less of luck. Again interesting is when skilled players can calculate these probabilities and keep winning in the long term. You could easily add more luck factor into the game, but could you easily remove it?

^bump^ to return it to the front page of qw.nu. I'm interested to see how the vote goes.

I laugh at all the doomsday speakers, that say if you make this change then further changes will be made and make qw wimpy. Discussion alone can only go so far. Why don't we, immediately, make it a toggle in KTX, in the configs enabled and only toggleable by admin, and see what discussion comes after further testing?

decrease rocket dmg to 90 +-5, remove telespawnfrags & while you are at it, reduce lg dmg to 85% or....
spawn with 125 health lolz

but random is what makes qw a little bit more fun than other games imo

Remember that dealing with random outcomes is also a skill. Both technically being ready with a plan, and also mentally dealing with luck. Some people get discouraged when they get a bad first spawn, and as a result play worse. In the long run this will hurt their results, as opposed to the person who who can keep their game up regardless.

Understand that when you remove randomness from the game, you also remove from a type of skill. It's not as simple as less random -> more skill.

That being said.... This rocket damage seems like an issue where only the hardcore duel players should care about it. Lower skilled players have so much "human randomness" and 4on4 so many random events, that this kind of thing is insignificant. Practical solution is to do what ever the HC-guys want to do.

Most games are more random than qw. At least most weapons in qw shoot where u aim.

No it does not. For x > y it is more like:


"I have x health and armor points, so there's a y% probability that my opponent has to hit me at least twice to kill me"
... is very much different from ...
"I have x health and armor points, so if my opponent only hits me with y% chance, I will survive"

You can't really, in any meaningful way, calculate the probability of your opponent hitting you since there is way too much variance. The events are not random in the same way.


I am sure people didn't believe a person could realisticly time three items at one point too. Sure, we won't see this applied by just any noob in an unimportant 1on1, but I do think it's realistic in top-level 1on1 competition. Those close battles with lots of CS leaves the players ample opportunity to base their decisions on probability.

eeeeh? Splash damage already is static i really hope? The only way it varies is the distance to the target, but it's no _random_ generator. :}

I can't accept your reasoning as I understand it. It only stands up if you know with a reasonable certainty that you're going to get hit directly. Let's say, generously, there's a 10% chance you get wanged in the face with a rocket (but, of course, this chance is based around your skill and ability to dodge when pitted against your opponent's aim and prediction). This is a far more significant risk calculation factor than random damage.

You still have to plan to avoid the direct hit, and, if you do get hit directly, having pure, uncontrollable chance decide whether you win or lose that fight is unacceptable to me in a game based so heavily around skill.

Timing items has been an essential part of the game as far back as I can remember. On the other hand I have never heard of anyone basing their actions in the game on calculations about the random damage of rl direct hits. My opinion remains unchanged, the latter is unrealistic and far fetched. Even if there was some once in a lifetime real life example of this, making every rl fight of every game mode (1on1/2on2/4on4) more fair and skill dependent outweighs it easily.

That's why it's so utterly weird. The coder must've been drunk when he added that random piece of code.

I vote to increase RL damage to 120.

^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H

Why doesn't it work ! *sniffles*
Keep to the topic please =|

It is a viable suggestion though. Why 110 and not 120? Or 100? (although 110 sounds perfectly good to me)