reroll undo is bugged

Started by Harmless, October 20, 2015, 01:08:06 AM


It's not bugged, but it's a little counter intuitive. Here's how I understand it to work.

Your HP, Stamina, Stun, and Mana are numbers derived from your stat levels. It's not "Exceptional Endurance = X HP," it's "Exceptional + Randomly Generated Number within a Range =  X HP."

That "RNG within a Range" is calculated every time you roll, including when you undo the reroll.

It's a risk that I think should be spelled explicitly so people can make an informed decision on whether to reroll or not.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on November 20, 2015, 01:01:12 PM
It's a risk that I think should be spelled explicitly so people can make an informed decision on whether to reroll or not.

It's in Help Reroll

QuoteReroll undo will give you another random roll for derived stats such as Hit Points and Stun.

Might be helpful if it was at the end of this first paragraph instead of at the end of the notes section.

QuoteIf you are dissatisfied with your character's stats, the staff policy is to allow a player one reroll within the first three hours of play. You may reroll your character by typing 'reroll self'. If you are unhappy with the reroll, you can return to your original roll by typing 'reroll undo'.

eg

If you are dissatisfied with your character's stats, the staff policy is to allow a player one reroll within the first three hours of play. You may reroll your character by typing 'reroll self'. If you are unhappy with the reroll, you can return to your original roll by typing 'reroll undo'.  However, reroll undo will give you another random roll for derived stats such as Hit Points and Stun, which may result in a higher or lower number than the initial values.
Quote from: BadSkeelz
Ah well you should just kill those PCs. They're not worth the time of plotting creatively against.

I'd say it's been about 50/50 if I recall. It's been a while though.

This creates a strange stastical situation where for attributes you are given the option of two rolls, while derived stats you are effectively given three rolls but without the choice to revert.

What also makes this strange is the inability to know where your ranges are.  This ends up favoring the veteran who has played lots of characters and has gotten a feel for where those highs and lows are and to the detriment of the newer player that has no frame of reference what is high or what is low.

I get this is working as intended, but I question the intention.  Why make it cloudy where that range is if we're supposed to take into account that rerolling will change within that range?

Though I really do find rolling for stats in the first place to be pretty silly, but I don't think I'm going to win the battle for a point buy system instead.



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I don't think anyone is claiming that rerolling those values as you undo is ideal.

I suspect it's more that preserving your initial hp/mv/stun values for reroll undo is not a particularly simple code change.

If undo is meant to be free, perhaps the more sensible option would be just to roll two sets of stats from the beginning and let the player choose between them outright.  One roll for derived stats, and no rerolls.

I would just like to add that yes, since the introduction of the reroll undo code, I had the total of 16 characters and I've only had one (1) occurrence when reroll undo gave me more hp then I had before, and I had one (1) event when I returned to 'exactly same' stun/hp. All other rerolls turned out to be lower. Sometimes dramatically so.

Quote from: catchall on November 21, 2015, 03:06:34 PM
If undo is meant to be free, perhaps the more sensible option would be just to roll two sets of stats from the beginning and let the player choose between them outright.  One roll for derived stats, and no rerolls.

+1
Quote from: BadSkeelz
Ah well you should just kill those PCs. They're not worth the time of plotting creatively against.

Quote from: Dar on November 21, 2015, 09:32:17 PM
I would just like to add that yes, since the introduction of the reroll undo code, I had the total of 16 characters and I've only had one (1) occurrence when reroll undo gave me more hp then I had before, and I had one (1) event when I returned to 'exactly same' stun/hp. All other rerolls turned out to be lower. Sometimes dramatically so.

A ratio in this neighborhood has been my experience also and I just saw in ATS that this continues to be a pattern players perceive. I know staff ran experiments for us in this thread but I continue to "see what I see" and agree with catchall's suggestion to simply the process and remove the punishing hp/stun recalculation.
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I've had almost the complete opposite. You folks are just unlucky.

Yeah, I tend to see increases to derived stats when I roll undo, although I more clearly remember the couple times it's but me under a threshold I really wanted to be over in a stat.
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It's been about half and half for me. Despite the nice feeling I get when my HP goes up on a reroll undo, I'd still rather it just revert you back to your original roll, including derived stats.

Thinking about it this morning this looks like an interesting variation on the Monty Hall problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

Assume you have 3 "rolls" (hp included), A, B and C, that you are going to choose from.  Without loss of generality, say you blindly commit to roll C.  But then seeing you've picked C, the game reveals to you that B is NOT the best roll (the metaphorical "goat").  Counterintuitively, with this new information, C only has a 1/3 chance of being the best, while A has a 2/3 chance -- even though you've seen neither.

Say A is the initial roll, B is the reroll, and C is the reroll undo.  Our situation is way more complicated with other little bits of information thrown in (like our familiarity with stat ranges and the close relationship between A and C).  But the moment you decide to reroll you're blindly committing to C over A.  If the game reveals to you along the way that B is the goat, you're stuck.
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I haven't noticed any particular trend in this, myself, and I'm a pretty high-volume character kinda guy. I agree, I've definitely had characters where my reroll added insult to injury, but usually when it's REALLY bad it's because I was playing a youngster or a city elf or something, and at that point, well, you could've expected it.

It's cool that Nergal went through the trouble to actually test it when, frankly, he could've just looked at the code and saw that there was indeed no "if this is a reroll undo, give less HP" logic in there. It would surprise me if the derived rolls weren't using the exact same methods / method calls as the original rolls.
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