Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

josna238
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Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by josna238 »

I think hidding AWC perks is very punishing in addition to the enormous amount of time we need to retrain a soldier.

I get the point of having exagerated retraining times in order to make that our decissions be almost definitive. But with random perks we actually don't know what we are doing exactly. For example I am doing a high damage destroyer grenadier and he rolls free flashbang, smoke and tactical sense. That if I had known I had made a support antimech grenadier.

To me hidding this perks means adding more randomness to a system that already has lot of randomness in its own (the AWC tree is basically random).

To me is something like hidding the avengers rooms. Knowing where the coils, the supplies, the alloys and the elerium are and knowing the digging times is what marks our long time strategy (we dig during lot of ingame months). So we know where we will place the worksop, when we will receive 40 suplies or when we will have acces to free power or how much time we will need to be able to build that facility.
Autoclave
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by Autoclave »

People have a weird feeling when they play a game by the rules they made themselves. For this reason many of us try to convince Pavonis to make this or another change so that our experience can be measured by a developer's standards.

My advice to you: drop the chains that keep you from enjoying the game. It's your game now. It's your experience. Change it however you see fit. If johnylump considers that AWC respec should be prohibitive so be it. It's his vision what is fun and what is not.

Do as I did, change the ini files. See if it makes the experience more fun for you. Then decide whether to keep the changes or not. Personally I have tons of fun with visible AWC perks. I had so many soldiers with terrible tier 2 perks and amazing tier 3 perks. It completely changed my approach to how I built them.
DerAva
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by DerAva »

Most of the pros and cons have probably been mentioned in the previous discussions on this topic:

AWC Balance: http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 15&t=25453

Thoughts on revealing the AWC soldier perks?: http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 15&t=24654
josna238
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by josna238 »

Then I think I missed the question. I asked because I feel much more logical have visible perks and maybe most of players too. Maybe the question should be:

Do you like that AWC perks are invisible? and why?

Because I can't find a reason. In the example of AWC huge retraining times I understood it, developers and most players don't like reatraining and want the game in the way: "you made a decission, then you have to live with that", I accept that and also like it, but about the matter of hidding perks I don't understand which is the reason.

Edit: I have just seen the previous post after writting this. I didn't know about that post. Thanks.
Notintheface
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by Notintheface »

I revealed the AWC perks and also set AWC retraining time to 0, because I find it more fun. Nothing is stopping you in a one-player game!
RantingRodent
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by RantingRodent »

I prefer them hidden. If you get the ideal AWC perks, they can be a bit OP, and the only thing balancing against that is the amount of time you need to spend sifting through less than ideal AWC perks and respeccing to take full advantage of the better ones.
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johnnylump
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by johnnylump »

The reason why they're hidden is that I decided that the AWC progression should involve some gambling with the soldier's time, instead of it being a pure optimization exercise. But of course, play how you like!
Frei_Ninjesus
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by Frei_Ninjesus »

Autoclave wrote:People have a weird feeling when they play a game by the rules they made themselves. For this reason many of us try to convince Pavonis to make this or another change so that our experience can be measured by a developer's standards.
This. I find myself often thinking that I'd like some stuff to be different, because that way I wouldn't see the need to mod or edit ini files and feel like I'm "cheating". But then I remind myself that it's just a single player game, and given the limited time I have to play I should go with whatever makes the experience more enjoyable to me. Of course, due to my pride I insist on finishing the campaign with the "factory default" features. After that maybe I'll go ahead and change stuff to meet my idea of how XCOM should be.
LordYanaek
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by LordYanaek »

I think people would feel better if this option was actually available in the menu rather than in the ini. It would look like an "official option" that you are allowed to change, similar to Red Fog or the Graze Band, while editing config files make people feel like they are touching something they shouldn't or that they are cheating. This doesn't prevent some of those same people from save-scumming to get the correct sequence of shots so every soldier hits and the enemy misses their overwatch shot.

Human mind is "intriguing" (to quote Tygan) :lol:
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johnnylump
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by johnnylump »

Sure; it just takes work to do that -- including crowdsourced translations -- and there's only so many hours in the day.
LordYanaek
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by LordYanaek »

johnnylump wrote:Sure; it just takes work to do that -- including crowdsourced translations -- and there's only so many hours in the day.
Sorry, it wasn't a hidden request, just a real observation on how we can view something totally differently based on how it's presented to us :oops:
There is a "Red Fog (Aliens only)" option that's obvious "cheat" (as far as you can cheat in a single player game) and yet i'm sure there are players who feel perfectly fine using it because it's in the menu (and nobody talks about it). On the other hand something that barely (if at all) affects the difficulty of the game but just changes the randomness/planning balance feels like cheating because you change it in the ini and we see topics rising regularly to discuss if it should be changed (while everyone can actually change it on their own).

"Intriguing" ;)

Back on the topic : what i did was show them and (because it gives me a small advantage) i doubled the required rank to train those abilities so my soldiers must be TSgt rank to train the Tier3 AWC perks rather than Cpl. Makes me feel better for not cheating :lol:
Goumindong
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by Goumindong »

josna238 wrote:I think hidding AWC perks is very punishing in addition to the enormous amount of time we need to retrain a soldier.

I get the point of having exagerated retraining times in order to make that our decissions be almost definitive. But with random perks we actually don't know what we are doing exactly. For example I am doing a high damage destroyer grenadier and he rolls free flashbang, smoke and tactical sense. That if I had known I had made a support antimech grenadier.

To me hidding this perks means adding more randomness to a system that already has lot of randomness in its own (the AWC tree is basically random).
So one of the ways that game designers can modify systems is to add RNG. Fundamentally there are two kinds of RNG, input RNG and output RNG. Output RNG is what we're all very familiar with in XCOM. Its the to-hit chance RNG. While this is a necessary component of games like XCOM (as, with no RNG the game would be determinant and would be exploitable in a number of ways) its generally viewed as a negative in terms of quality of life.

That is, players don't like it, and it doesn't usually add anything to the game. In XCOM we can get around this largely because there are sufficient levers to modify or bypass the RNG. (we essentially expend resources to negate the RNG)

However input RNG is an entirely different animal. So long as the system is robust enough to handle it, input RNG means that every playthrough will be different. And that means that a fair system on the output side can be modified in ways to make the game different under what would be the same set of rules.

The obvious ways we can see this is that not all the missions are the same, and the mission order changes. And whether or not you get certain beneficial missions or rewards changes*.

AWC is another form of input RNG and frankly is one of the better ones. Getting different AWC perks can massively modify how you want to play the game and build your soldiers.

However there is a downside to this kind of input RNG and we might call it selection bias. As an example of selection bias there are a bunch of people who think rangers have massive aim advantages over other classes (they don't). The reason that they think that they do is that they tend to make high aim soldiers rangers and in doing so fulfill that prophecy. If you can see all the AWC perks in advance you're going to select soldiers for your team which have the ideal AWC perks that you want. That turns the "input RNG" designed to make your soldiers different in every playthrough into a maximization game where you select the best AWC soldier and make sure they get the mission XP.

In the end, its a relatively minor ini change. But i suspect that if you show the perks you will end up not enjoying the game as much on subsequent playthroughs
Spoiler: show
In AWCPack.ini under

[LW_AWCPack_Integrated.UIArmory_AWCExpandedPromotion_LW]

ALWAYSSHOW= False -> True
*Though this can be problematic its not a topic for this thread.
Bu6613man
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by Bu6613man »

Goumindong wrote: If you can see all the AWC perks in advance you're going to select soldiers for your team which have the ideal AWC perks that you want. That turns the "input RNG" designed to make your soldiers different in every playthrough into a maximization game where you select the best AWC soldier and make sure they get the mission XP.
So, I'm in October now in a Legend campaign with AWC perks visible. And I really haven't made up my mind which I prefer.

I think having the AWC hidden doesn't do as much to promote different soldier builds as you might imagine. Often I found perks from the AWC were wasted on characters not built to take advantage of them. The pistol perks were much more consistent, and often just plainly the right choice. Ultimately, I guess I think that there are too many near-worthless perks to make the hidden AWC as much fun as revealed.

For my next play through, I think I'll hide the AWC again, but edit out most of the grenade perks, and a few others, so that you don't know what's coming, but it's more likely to be good.
JulianSkies
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by JulianSkies »

Goumindong wrote:In the end, its a relatively minor ini change. But i suspect that if you show the perks you will end up not enjoying the game as much on subsequent playthroughs
Incorrect on this point, only because this hinges entirely on the mental archetype of the player. It's up to you to figure out what you have the most fun with and optimize for that (praise to PI for exposing so many configurations for people), otoh it's also a fallacy to think that what applies to you applies to others.
DerAva
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by DerAva »

Goumindong wrote: If you can see all the AWC perks in advance you're going to select soldiers for your team which have the ideal AWC perks that you want. That turns the "input RNG" designed to make your soldiers different in every playthrough into a maximization game where you select the best AWC soldier and make sure they get the mission XP.
I just don't see that happening. By the time the AWC is built you will have a bunch of soldiers leveled up already, and those are also the soldiers you will send in there. You're not going to abandon your SSGT in favor of a Squaddie just because of some AWC skills.
I just think "Do I spend 12 days training up questionable skills in order to gain a great skill?" is a much more interesting decision than "Guess this soldier won't go into the AWC".
Goumindong
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by Goumindong »

DerAva wrote:
Goumindong wrote: If you can see all the AWC perks in advance you're going to select soldiers for your team which have the ideal AWC perks that you want. That turns the "input RNG" designed to make your soldiers different in every playthrough into a maximization game where you select the best AWC soldier and make sure they get the mission XP.
I just don't see that happening. By the time the AWC is built you will have a bunch of soldiers leveled up already, and those are also the soldiers you will send in there. You're not going to abandon your SSGT in favor of a Squaddie just because of some AWC skills.
I just think "Do I spend 12 days training up questionable skills in order to gain a great skill?" is a much more interesting decision than "Guess this soldier won't go into the AWC".
AWC should be your first or second build in the order. If you have SSGT's before then then ok, but usually it comes early enough to make those choices
josna238
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by josna238 »

In my case the output is not that I create more different soldiers. In my case the current way makes soldiers available or not available for AWC, for example if I see volatile mix and covering fire on my sniper I just don't spend 8, 10 or 12 days (depending on wich 2 perks upgrade) to see if the lottery rolls me a good T2 or T3 combination. I just forget him for AWC and focus on the other sniper who has lonewolf and steady hands.

So in my case the current system turn some soldiers as eligibles and another are as if they just don't have AWC perk options. And think that having all the info previously it would be more probable to have more variety, because we could see a soldier AWC T1 and think "what a trash of perks for this class" but seeing T2 and T3 we could find a new combination with these T1 perks we didn't like at first that opens a new "class".

The problem is that it could bring some combos overpowered but I think that it would be very unlikely (8 classes plus dozens of abilities in packs of 3 make very unlikely to get a "supertank" with resilience, will survive and hard target on a gunner or a "supersniper" with bring all, steady hands, agresion, lone wolf.
darkerevent
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by darkerevent »

My partner and I decided to tweak the ini file to make the perks visible, because we found that the lack of visibility pigeonholed us into wasting no AWC time at all on characters who rolled bad initial perk options, and left us generally disfavoring such characters in general. We were instead only giving extensive AWC time to the most RNG-blessed of soldiers: ones who not only had good first perks, but continued having good or great perks as they were revealed in subsequent levels. The second that anyone (for instance) revealed a useless grenade perk as their next choice in the offense tree, that was usually the end of their run in the AWC, and we moved on to training someone else to see if they would roll with better fortune.

In the absence of perfect information about what perks each soldier would be offered, we couldn't find a sound strategic reason to justify doing it any other way, which ended up making the AWC feel boring when (in our opinion) it should've been a feature that allowed for interesting decisions about specialization and hybridization of character roles. (We also figured that, from a roleplaying/flavor perspective, it should be possible to test a soldier's various aptitudes at a reasonable pace without relying on some kind of special eureka moment at each tier of training to figure out what could be learned next.)

Once the perks were revealed, we had a far more interesting time trying to decide whether or not we wanted to invest the time in each character (e.g., whether we wanted to slog them through two useless grenade perks in order to get them to something like Run & Gun at the end, or even if we could somehow perhaps make their grenade perks work together with a free utility grenade that they had rolled in the defensive side of the tree in order to make them into an offspec grenadier). Both of us ended up creating a priority sheet for which characters we ideally wanted to train what, and then we worked around the realities of wound times and A-team deployment necessities in order to make it all work. For us, that was a lot more fun than a blind dice rolling exercise would have been.
LordYanaek
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by LordYanaek »

Goumindong wrote: So one of the ways that game designers can modify systems is to add RNG. Fundamentally there are two kinds of RNG, input RNG and output RNG...
Going strictly by your definition, randomized AWC perks rather than fixed sets per class is input RNG and i think everyone likes the various perks we can get allowing different (and sometimes unusual soldier builds). However hiding those perks turns the AWC into output RNG because you end up training soldiers without knowing what you'll get and given the required time to both train the AWC perks and retrain soldiers once you realize your build and AWC perks don't play well together, it's a lottery you don't necessarily want to play.

I sure didn't want to play that lottery and the result is that i would turn to the tree where i know i'll get good skills that will fit my soldier build : the Pistol tree (you don't know exactly when you'll get face off or fan fire but you know you'll get them and some other more or less useful but never useless perks along the way).
That's when all my games would look exactly the same because i would totally miss the interesting variety brought by the inaccessible, because it's hidden, input RNG (unless you want to be at the mercy of the output RNG).

Ultimately i think it's something where the default setting can't please everyone and that's why it's an option we can change. We must just accept that ini options are also options and nothing prevents us from changing them. If the developers didn't want us to show the AWC perks, the hidden status would be hard-coded.
josna238
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by josna238 »

LordYanaek wrote:...Ultimately i think it's something where the default setting can't please everyone and that's why it's an option we can change. We must just accept that ini options are also options and nothing prevents us from changing them. If the developers didn't want us to show the AWC perks, the hidden status would be hard-coded.
I agree with that, and I thought about it, but also thought that a change in my own (with very low experience playing games and none developing) it could be overpowered. I thought about add training time to AWC perks or even force the ranks required higher (for instance T1, T2 and T3 to match with T2, T4 and T6 of normal perks). But I really can't guess if it would be balanced, very good or very bad.
LordYanaek
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by LordYanaek »

Well, as i said i play with them revealed and doubled required rank.
What this means :
  • If a good T3 perk is available on a soldier with good T1 and T2 perks, i'll get the T3 perk later than someone playing with the default settings.
  • If a good T3 perk is behind some bad T1/T2 i might choose to train the soldier anyway to get to the T3 perk. In this case
    • I'll still get it later than someone who guessed right but i don't know if many players love to play AWC roulette.
    • Compared to someone who didn't guess, since he didn't train the bad perks i took but instead some good T1/T2 perks, i now have more useless perks but some good T3 perks he don't have. This might give me some slightly stronger soldiers but overall i have less useful perks spread around the squad. The squad is what gives XCom it's power, not individual soldiers.
  • Compared to someone who just went for what's always useful and provides additional firepower i probably have less pistol perks as i had to train some bad perks standing in the way of my T3 targets.
Overall the effect of those changes is certainly minor and i can't guess who has the strongest barracks. I might have a slightly stronger A-team at the end of the game to assault Waterworld provided i put all my best AWC soldiers in that A-team (something i didn't as i don't switch soldiers in and out of squads when a "better" one appears, my soldiers are used to work as a team and i respect this :D ).
Well, i tried to get all the good perks i saw on my A-team so maybe i had a slightly stronger team for Waterworld anyway. Big deal, when you cross the portal you've basically won the game already.
ndessell
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by ndessell »

DerAva wrote:
Goumindong wrote: If you can see all the AWC perks in advance you're going to select soldiers for your team which have the ideal AWC perks that you want. That turns the "input RNG" designed to make your soldiers different in every playthrough into a maximization game where you select the best AWC soldier and make sure they get the mission XP.
I just don't see that happening. By the time the AWC is built you will have a bunch of soldiers leveled up already, and those are also the soldiers you will send in there. You're not going to abandon your SSGT in favor of a Squaddie just because of some AWC skills.
I just think "Do I spend 12 days training up questionable skills in order to gain a great skill?" is a much more interesting decision than "Guess this soldier won't go into the AWC".
worse yet will exposed awc perks, you will find piles of soldiers with awesome perks for a different class, unskipable strat destroying perks.

you very rarely get that broken smoker/flashbanger, rapid deployment, volatile mix front liner; tradecraft, covert, phantom specialist or lethal rapid reaction sniper
Goumindong
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by Goumindong »

LordYanaek wrote:
Goumindong wrote: So one of the ways that game designers can modify systems is to add RNG. Fundamentally there are two kinds of RNG, input RNG and output RNG...
Going strictly by your definition, randomized AWC perks rather than fixed sets per class is input RNG and i think everyone likes the various perks we can get allowing different (and sometimes unusual soldier builds). However hiding those perks turns the AWC into output RNG because you end up training soldiers without knowing what you'll get and given the required time to both train the AWC perks and retrain soldiers once you realize your build and AWC perks don't play well together, it's a lottery you don't necessarily want to play.
No. More or less the entire strategic structure is input RNG.
LordYanaek
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by LordYanaek »

Input precedes the action. If i'm given a set of randomized variables and have to work with those it's input RNG. I have to work with randomized AWC perks so it's input RNG.
Output comes after the action. If i take an action without knowing what result i'll get it's output RNG. If i train someone without knowing what perks i'll get it's output RNG.
ndessell
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Re: Am I the only one that thinks AWC perks should be visible?

Post by ndessell »

LordYanaek wrote:Input precedes the action. If i'm given a set of randomized variables and have to work with those it's input RNG. I have to work with randomized AWC perks so it's input RNG.
Output comes after the action. If i take an action without knowing what result i'll get it's output RNG. If i train someone without knowing what perks i'll get it's output RNG.
With the perks hidden, it tends to be more output. The player doesn't know when the perks were rolled; all they see is the results of training. Training to reveal rank[1] is essentially free, because you need every soldier to be squaddy regardless of Awc rolls. Traing to see rank[2] is dependent on the quality of rank[1] and the risk of rank[2] being low quality. Either rank[1] is a compelling alone, or the prospect of possible rank[2] options uplifts rank[1] to worth training through. Rinse and repeat for rank[3+].
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