Curious about one aspect

(Shadowcat) #41

Player one can pick any class and be unique

Player two has a 25% chance of picking player 1’s class and a 75% chance of being unique

If player two didnt pick a new class, then player 3 has the same odds he just did.
If player two did pick a unique class then player 3 has a 50/50 chance of picking a unique class

In order to do these kinds of probabilities, permutations are required, and i dont feel like breaking out pascal’s triangle in the middle of the night. Pascals triangle deals with the branching nature of permutations.

(Linsolv) #42

I think I see your point more or less. Not that you’re arguing it poorly but it’s been a long day. What you’re saying is that my numbers are for any one class, where yours are for all classes. You’re probably right. Certainly close enough to right. And so, having admitted my mistake, I’ll embarrass myself for y’all tomorrow morning. Good night.

(Seyu) #43

[QUOTE=Shadowcat;281156]similar math, but you ignored the fact that the first three people aren’t 25%. The first person would be able to pick any class, the second would have a 75% chance of picking the new class, the 3rd would have either a 25% or 50% chance of picking a new class. So i simplified it to the first 3 people picked different classes, and then everyone else had a 75% chance of picking one of those three. 75%^5 = 23.7%. I rounded up to 1/4 to make up for some of the simplification.

so 1/4 is the worst case (everyone has one class)[/QUOTE]

So you are dividing the three classes into a team of 3-3-2 distribution, right? This doesn’t make sense, why would you discount all other combinations that have only three classes?

The worst scenario where everyone has the same class should have a probability of 3/4 x (1/4)^7, no?

(Weapuh) #44

[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;281166]That’s the point, it’s the best of the players ability, not the best abilities given to them by the game. If you’re so reliant on class abilities, that you’re useless without them, then you have bigger issues it seems. If you’ve made the concious decision not to tweak that specific class, then it’s best bets that you rarely play it anyway, so class specific abilities that you don’t understand for a class you never play, won’t give any great boost to your own ability as a player.

You have your class, you have your equipment, you have a gun… you have everything you need to get the job done, lack of abilities don’t affect that.[/QUOTE]

Lol what are you even reading you drama queen. “useless without them” “won’t give any great boost to your own ability as a player.”

It’s obvious that the abilities given in the game are applied in the best of the players ability since no matter how good you get you still won’t disarm faster without the perk. It is just a seemingly senseless annoying, calm down Nostradamus.

(DarkangelUK) #45

OH NOES WE HAS NO ABILITIES, WE’RE DOOMED! PEOPLE WILL QUIT! NO ONE WILL CHANGE CLASS! AAAAAHHHHHHH! And I’m the drama queen :rolleyes:

It’s obvious that the abilities given in the game are applied in the best of the players ability since no matter how good you get you still won’t disarm faster without the perk. It is just a seemingly senseless annoying, calm down Nostradamus.

I think you failed at reading… I was commenting on those ‘doomsday sayers’ thinking they’ll be useless as that class since they don’t have the abilities. All they do is enhance what you can do anyway, and at the end of the day it comes down to the individuals ability as a player and not the slight buff they get from a perk.

(Shadowcat) #46

[QUOTE=Seyu;281178]So you are dividing the three classes into a team of 3-3-2 distribution, right? This doesn’t make sense, why would you discount all other combinations that have only three classes?

The worst scenario where everyone has the same class should have a probability of 3/4 x (1/4)^7, no?[/QUOTE]

Sadly, its not that simple. Its not even as simple as i thought it was at first.

I did some creative math, and the numbers I’m coming up with are about a 37.5% chance of a team missing one class, and a 2.5% chance of missing two classes.

These numbers are assuming ever player only puts points into one class. So 3 out of 8 games, you would have a team where one class in general is missing. 1 game in 40, you would have 2 classes missing.

In reality, I think many players will be multi-classed, reducing this chance to somewhere around 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 games where someone has to play a weak class, and less than 1 in 100 where two whole classes are missing.

ANYWAY…whole point to this was showing that there will be games with a class missing, but it wont happen in the majority of games. Kinda got off track tho. Human beings really aren’t programmed to think about probability, it ends up being so confusing. :eek:

If you want to completely avoid playing a class you have no skills in, have a pub build with a secondary class, if everyone was able to play two it would be really rare. (or just hope that someone else is willing to pick up the slack.)

A jack of all trades might even be an interesting build, where the strength would come from being able to pick you class based on whatever the team needed at that moment, rather than strength coming from a full skill tree.

(Seyu) #47

How did you come upon the new figures?

Shadowcat, you’re freaking me out. My final test is in two weeks and I’m screwed if I bomb at this elementary stuff.

(Shadowcat) #48

[QUOTE=Seyu;281229]How did you come upon the new figures?

Shadowcat, you’re freaking me out. My final test is in two weeks and I’m screwed if I bomb at this elementary stuff.[/QUOTE]

These probabilities are far more advanced than anything you will have in a basic stats class. Because the selection size is bigger than the number of options, the probabilities are dependent, and you are trying to account for multiple options. Honestly, I’m not even quite sure how to do it properly, so i did it backwards.

Chance of a specific class missing: .75^8 = 10%
Chance of two classes being missing: .50^8 = .4%
Combinations of two classes: 6
Chance of three classes missing: statistically insignificant
So i added up the 4 classes alone, and subtracted the overlap (two classes missing), and ended up with 37.6%, then rounded to 37.5% or 3/8

Then in order to account for a game where many players have a secondary class, i multiplied that percent by itself (basically making everyone’s secondary class just as random, and allowing 1/4 of players to specialize in only one class) ending with 14%

(Seyu) #49

“So i added up the 4 classes alone”

What does that mean?

Edit: Nevermind, got it

(Seyu) #50

I think the figure for the secondary class should be 10% since you can’t have the same secondary class as your primary one thus leaving you with two options to choose from.

(Shadowcat) #51

Its true, but the way i figured it, 1/4 of people would end up with one class twice, and i could just consider them as the people who focus on a single class.

(Bridger) #52

[QUOTE=Linsolv;281079]Okay. It’s very simple. I don’t know why people don’t get it.

Choice of abilities is a tactical decision which you make as you level your character.[/quote]

The problem is that playing Optimally means missing out on swaths of content. You shouldn’t have to play sub-optimally in order to experience all the content in the game. in theory, specializing in medic should be no more powerful/weak an option as specializing in soldier or playing a generalized character. Yet if being flexibility is important, then specializing is automatically weaker than generalizing.

Since I expect most of my play will be in Pubs, this is what I’m concerned about. I don’t like a game design decision that requires me to play sub-optimally in order to experience all the content.

If you plan on running solo all the time, and you find that there are rarely enough skilled players on your team to justify specializing, then don’t.

If this is the case, see above.

Pick up a few abilities for each class and then you’re set. It’s not like that’s not an option, and based on what we’ve seen so far you don’t need every ability for you to have important stuff—with 20 abilities, that’s enough to have 4 in each class and then 4 general abilities as well.

This may be true. it remains to be seen how the abilities will shake out and how many you will actively use at any given time. Would someone with 20 points in soldier (if that’s possible?) be significantly more effective than someone with 4 points in soldier? If the max points you can really take advantage of at any given time is 5, then 4 points per class is OK with me.

(tokamak) #53

Shouldn’t happen either.

(SockDog) #54

Have to agree with BMXer that this could lead to some very annoying behaviours.

Let me be clear here. I’m not saying the abilities make or break players but they’re clearly there for people to invest in and to augment their chosen character. The game then asks people to give that up willy nilly for the benefit of the team. I just find that very contradictory. I mean I hope as the more optimistic people here seem to think, that this is a non issue. Yet I also wonder if this is exactly the sort of thing having a closed beta test doesn’t pick up on due to the fact you haven’t got a high percentage of slavering character builders leveling up and playing just their chosen class.

Like the single player expectations I hope we don’t get the classic “you’re not playing right, it’s your fault” wheeled out if pub games are full of quitting or people refusing to change classes.

(CapnHowdy21) #55

Both the Gatling Turret and Downfire are rank 5 abilities. Rank 5 is level 20, thus you can only have 1 level 5 ability. My point being that you will then be able to max out at about 9 points in universal abilities(if you take every other one). Therefore you have 3 more points to put in another class.

More then likely, you won’t take all those abilities from universal, probably give you 5-6 you can spend in another class. So it isn’t like you will be complete crap in your “secondary” class.

(Linsolv) #56

[QUOTE=Bridger;281310]The problem is that playing Optimally means missing out on swaths of content. You shouldn’t have to play sub-optimally in order to experience all the content in the game. in theory, specializing in medic should be no more powerful/weak an option as specializing in soldier or playing a generalized character. Yet if being flexibility is important, then specializing is automatically weaker than generalizing.

Since I expect most of my play will be in Pubs, this is what I’m concerned about. I don’t like a game design decision that requires me to play sub-optimally in order to experience all the content.

[snip]

This may be true. it remains to be seen how the abilities will shake out and how many you will actively use at any given time. Would someone with 20 points in soldier (if that’s possible?) be significantly more effective than someone with 4 points in soldier? If the max points you can really take advantage of at any given time is 5, then 4 points per class is OK with me.[/QUOTE]

I expect to play mostly in pubs. Let me be clear about that. I’m a pub gamer, and at the very best I might have a few friends from the web joining me. The odds that I’ll even be good enough to get into a clan if I wanted to aren’t pretty. However.

Yes. I’m saying that you can choose to be generalized or specialized. You can be Derek Jeter or you can be Marco Scutaro. Sure, Jeter is probably the better short stop. But that’s okay, because Scutaro can hit, play 3rd, 2nd, short, 1st, and apparently left field, whereas Jeter can only get a job when someone needs a shortstop and doesn’t mind a guy who constantly hits into double plays.

In the same vein, you can get great abilities in all 4 classes, and not be gimped at all. Or even just 3. And you’ll still be a quality, useful character whenever you have any one of those classes. You might not be a superstar, but as a reasonably skilled player, you’ll do better than most “specialized” scrubs anyways.

It’s more of a conscious choice to over-saturate general abilities and one class, if you think about it. What could you possibly want out of an Engineer that uses more than 7 points? 3 for a Gatling Turret, 1 for improved gun buff, and 3 for I don’t even know yet. Same goes for Soldier and Medic. Maybe Operative, IDGI with him.

(obliviondoll) #57

Four minus one does NOT equal two. You have THREE options to choose from.

But sorry Shadowcat, your math is wrong.

You can’t just add up the figures the way you did and end up with an accurate probability in this situation.

Assuming your math was correct, and assuming no dual-class characters, then you’d have a 40% chance of getting a class missing. Which shows that you forgot to sanity-check your math.

You calculated the chance of a single specific class being missing at ~10%

You didn’t account for the fact that this figure applies across the spectrum, not individually for each class.

There’s a 10% chance that your team will be missing one class, regardless of what that class is, assuming that each class is totally independent. So with the possibility of dual-spec characters, that 10% is further reduced.

The calculation that gave your 37.6% figure is a reasonable approximation of what percentage of 10% you need to subtract from itself to account for the dual-spec characters though, assuming a 25% chance of the player going dual-spec. And the slightly-higher-than accurate number will allow it to also account for the occasional 3- and 4-class players.

Giving a final result of…

6.24% chance of missing ONE class.

NOTE: Because of the chance of one or two classes being extremely popular at first, the actual probability of this situation may be significantly elevated early on - possibly close to Shadowcat’s calculation in the 35 - 40% range, because the variance in numbers between the characters will be past the threshold allowed by a mathematical calculation where equal or near-equal popularity is assumed between the different options. Over time, this imbalance will correct itself, though, as people move from the “cool” factor to more practical builds for their playstyle.

(Oh, and for reference, I haven’t studied statistics in the past 11 years, but when I was 17, I passed my final exam for the year with just under 70% - I went into the exam without a calculator)

(Seyu) #58

“…Four minus one does NOT equal two. You have THREE options to choose from…”

Worst case scenario.

I’d respond to the rest but I need some sleep. Later.

(obliviondoll) #59

I’m not sure how “Worst case scenario” makes any sense whatsoever in context. Please explain when you get back? Because I’m pretty lost here.

If there are four possible classes, and a person has already picked one, there are three remaining classes they could choose from if they want to choose two in total. You said they have two options left after the first choice. What am I missing here?

(Bridger) #60

[QUOTE=CapnHowdy21;281434]Both the Gatling Turret and Downfire are rank 5 abilities. Rank 5 is level 20, thus you can only have 1 level 5 ability. My point being that you will then be able to max out at about 9 points in universal abilities(if you take every other one). Therefore you have 3 more points to put in another class.

More then likely, you won’t take all those abilities from universal, probably give you 5-6 you can spend in another class. So it isn’t like you will be complete crap in your “secondary” class.[/QUOTE]

Are you sure about that? I figured at level 20 when you respec you can put your points whereever you want, including all rank 5 abilities (but this is theoretically not desirable because they mentioned the really good stuff you get earlier on).