Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Rock Paper Scissors Does not Work Mathematically

I'm sure someone has pointed this out before, but I can't seem to find a post talking about this issue. Here is a statement about the possible issue and a suggestion on how to fix it.

In short: the Rock Paper Scissors system, appears to be fundamentally flawed. If I understand fully the way the system works currently, it can be expressed like this:

"The first player to reach a score of 10, by adding up all his or her individual round wins, wins the match."

Just doing some basic math, we can easily see how the number of points each player gets per round affects whether the match is won. In fact, what we can specifically see is that only point values evenly divisible by 10 have any meaning:

1: 10 wins*
2: 5 wins*
3: 4 wins
4: 3 wins
5: 2 wins
6: 2 wins
7: 2 wins
8: 2 wins
9: 2 wins
10: 1 win
Nothing higher than 10 matters, because 10/10 is 1.

Players appear to start with a score of 3. So when we throw out those rows, we are left with only 4 breakpoints in the RPS system: 3, 4, 5, and 10.

What this means is that any situation where a player has a starting score of 6, 7, 8 or 9 points, that is exactly the same as having 5. Then when you get to 10, you win instantly if you win one round.

The way this system should work is to make it additive/subtractive and based on always completing 5 rounds of conversation.* Whoever has the highest score after 5 rounds wins. Making it based on whoever gets to 10 first will always mean that only values divisible by 10 have any meaning, unless some other weighting is applied. 9 is only bigger than 5 if you make it so; right now a player with a score of 9 who wins 2 rounds should have a score of 18, almost double the score of 10 they instead get assigned.

*(However, if one player gets a score higher the other player can possibly roll in the match, you could call the match off early. [Example: one player has a score of 14 from winning 2 rounds at 7 points per round. Player 2, stands to win 3 points round. Since there are 3 rounds left, and 3x3 = 9, which is less than 14, the match ends early).

Alternative method: Another way to do it is to subtract the lowest point value -1 from both players at the start of the competition. For example, if player 1 has 5 points and player 2 has 3, the scores are changed to 3 and 1. This way, whoever has the lowest point value always wins 1 point per round, and must always win 10 rounds. The player with the higher score at least gets some varying benefit if she is within 2, 3, 4, or 5 points of the other character.

Very good point. I agree.

In fact I think that the RPS feels very much out-of-place in this game and should be replaced by something else.

Arguments should be solved through 1-on-1 death matches

A proper auto resolving probability calculation would be fine.

I love the rock, paper, scissors mini game!

Any time a random roll is done for you, I might as well watch a movie. Imagine if you were playing Dungeons & Dragons and the dungeon master would roll all your dice behind his screen and never tell you anything.

The fact that you roll your own dice, or choose your own rock, paper, scissors "strategy", gives you a feeling or being more a part of the action.

In addition:

The first time I saw that mini game, I was overjoyed because I thought there would be mini games for more things, like lock-picking and crafting, and I'm rather sad that there wasn't.

too much math for me

Only even levels in Charisma should increase your points per win. So 3 at zero, then 4, then 5. You could get 6 points per win (default) at 6 Charisma, but no one would care by that point, unless...

Odd levels in Charisma should decrease your opponent's points per win. So 3 base, then 2, then 1, then 0. This would mean that, at 5 Charisma, you'd automatically win every argument against NPCs with no particular Charisma bonus.

Note that your opponent having very high Charisma may make Charisma 6 useful (since your 6 may be reduced by 1, and 5 is better than 4).

edit: Actually on reflection that sounds kind of hairbrained. I don't know. But I agree that getting 6 points per win is kind of pointless.

There seems to be a mathematical equation that determines what the NPCs will throw. More than one in fact, depending on the argumentative ability of the NPCs. With a little observation, you should be winning 100% of your matches against the computer.

I've never seen two strangers playing rock-paper-scissors to settle an argument.
Why would my character play this game with a door guard in order to let him open a door for me which he's supposed to guard?
If I was guarding a door and someone asked me to let him in, I sure wouldn't start a game of RPS with him.

The RPS minigame is one of the few things that really bother me in this game.
The game should handle these arguments on its own, without a minigame, with a higher rate of success based on the value of your charm.

I am confident that Rock-Paper-Scissors represents a symbolic battle of will and force of personality between two characters. There is no actual game of Rock-Paper-Scissors happening.

I could just picture it...

Immaculate: "Stop, heathen scum! Only the Faithful may pass!"
Protagonist: "Guys, trust us, we're totally on the level here. No need to fight, just let us go through!"
*ding!*
*several rounds of Rock Paper Scissors later*
Protagonist: "And rock beats scissors. I win!"
Immaculate: "Truly the Goddess guides thy hand. You may pass, faithful one!"

I myself thought that it would be better to see who has the most points after a certain number of rounds. Not only does it fix the issues that the op points out, but it also prevents those seemingly eternal rounds of RPS.

You have a point, but isn't the score you receive by a win also dependant on the other persons Charisma or something? Because I can swear I've had RPS matches with my 4 in Charisma where a win has only awarded me 2 points.

In the end, the whole RPS thing is fun but too easy to cheat since you can just quicksave, press space and quickload until you get your way. It was fun for my first playthrough where I just let things happen and never reloaded, but once you know the different outcomes it's hard not to cheat the system. Making Charisma largely a waste. I wouldn't have minded if npc-related dialogue was simply decided on your Charisma vs theirs, no rolls or mini-games, while dialogue between the two main characters used the RPS system.

Assuming that the autoresolve is acting bugged, it should be fixed of course.
Right now the outcome seems too random (purely subjective), making me wonder what they actually roll in the background (random or vs some skill check).

E.g.: I've a RPS giving me odds of 6 vs 3, I'd expect it to come out in my favour somewhat easily when using autoresolve - so I use it only to lose several times in a row.
(Of course on its own that proves nothing - there's always the possibility that it's just the RNG screwing with me here...)

I'm not a fan of the RPS mini-game.

There is a bug so that you can skip it though... click on your teammates portraits while playing the RPS mini-game.

So not only do we have a bad minigame - we have one that is broken in many ways.

Kill it.

No need to kill it. If you don't like the mini-game, just hit the provided button to skip it and settle for the auto-roll. The game itself fits well enough with the humor in this world, which generally seems to run along the theme of "Are you starting to take this all too seriously? Here's a sheep that does flips, and some smelly charismatic undergarments to go with your talking demonic boxer's heckling..".

There are situational bonuses (or maluses) that can affect your scoring with a particular choice.

The persuasion system wasn't very well planned out ever since it was being developed. They wanted something a bit more involving than rolling some pseudo-random numbers behind the screen and giving you a result, but they didn't manage to find divine inspiration by the time they couldn't change it any more due to constraints.

One thing you forgot to factor in is the choice of Intimidate/Reason/Charm adding between -1 and +1 to the roll, this changes the scorecard slightly:

1/2: Impossible for a starting player
3: 3-5 wins required
4: 2-4 wins required
5: 2-3 wins required
6-8: 2 wins required
9/10: 1 or 2 wins required
11+: 1 win required

Obviously it may be possible somewhere that -2/+2 becomes available though I've not seen it personally. This'd make only 7 irrelevant, which be a far cry from the massive range you quoted out of context.

What I do find funny, however, is how often the opponent will not throw the same symbol twice if the symbol just lost, to prevent you throwing double rock to beat double scissors.

This is exactly what I am feeling whenever a RPS game appears. :P



They didn't have a deadline, did they? It should have been easy enough to kick out the RPS game and replace it with some out of sight dice rolling. Shouldn't take much time.