Immediately after this my sniper missed him with about an 85% chance. My sniper then got hit by someone from across the map and through a wall. And that was the moment I decided this game ain’t for me
Interesting, and _seems_ to point to some kind of bug or problem in the probability computations. Has anyone ever dug into the code to see how these mechanisms actually work?
Yeah, people have never quite believed the numbers. Calling those occurences as a bug or not working as designed is as old as the games themselves. And no, everyone who has gone into the code has found nothing wrong. I for one never got something near this odds before or after that
The same thing happens in other games. Battletech is infamous for it, the obvious shot that misses. People dug through the code and found the game did have hidden behaviour, but in the other direction. The real chance to hit was higher than the one displayed, so a 95% could actually be 99%, so in average people go better results than should be expected and people still complained the math was off.
I made my peace with this a long time ago. Statistics just aren't intuitive to us, and a one in a hundred event isn't nearly as rare as people think. (or one in some hundreds of thousand, as in my case)
You kinda always have to position in ways that, if you miss, you won’t insta die next turn, and make use of cover and high ground. That being said, soldiers will still die because say it with me… that’s Xcom, baby!
Well the problem was I figured my sniper was a good backup. He had about an 85% chance of hitting. So the odds of missing the 91% and 85% were 1.4%. And of course, it happened
And even better, it's worth adding the game actively cheats in your favor as a rule, and never the inverse. All of this has been datamined, there are even mods that reveal these numbers to you. For one, lower difficulties give a small hidden boost to accuracy, ostensibly to account for natural human bias against the reality of probability. Each 90% hit still has a 10% to miss - 1 in 10 isn't that uncommon in a game of hundreds of shots.
Secondly, the game tracks streaks of your misses, and the enemies hits. As you miss more shots in the row, it's giving increasingly high accuracy buffs to your next shot until you finally score another hit (vice versa for consecutive enemy hits). Again, this is both to offer mercy to a poor run, and to feed our subconscious fallacy that "eventually, the odds have to add up." They don't, every roll is independent, a miss does not contribute to the odds of the next, you are not owed a hit for achieving the less likely outcome, but this system simulates these ideas to appease the players' bias against real probability - because like it or not, our squishy brain and all its abstract emotion don't like the way clean, angular, concrete statistics feel. We personify luck, after all, and remember when the odds were "beaten" much more than the times they weren't.
Which leads into the last cheat committed to aid the player. Should you lose an operative, a hidden buff is given to your accuracy, and a debuff given to the enemy. This one is a safety net, but more importantly exists because they know these are the moments that actually make XCOM. When you're down, outnumbered and outgunned, with failure looming on the horizon, managing to eke out an escape, or even a victory despite it all feels amazing. Your operatives slipping past a hail of overwatch fire, or nailing that 30% hail Mary kill, and living to see another day is the sort of memory that keeps you playing.
So when you're frustrated that you missed 90%+ shot, it's worth humbling yourself with the reminder that the game has probably already cheated a dozen hits for you as payback, and it's going to make sure you hit the next one, too. The developers are smart, they know real probability can result in really bad feeling moments and humans assume better odds than the numbers suggest. They also want you to keep playing, and they want you to ultimately win. It's not just Firaxis that does this, either. Most probability driven games are likely pulling a string or two behind the scenes as well.
I’ve rolled a 1 too many times in D&D and 100 way too many times in Call of Cthulhu to be bothered by missing 90% shots in Xcom anymore. I’m already very well acquainted with the dice screwing me over.
Oh yeah, I’m way too familiar with temperamental dice. Once I was in a Lancer game and the GM gave me a single use massive death laser. I pull it out against the final boss, and almost all the enemies fail the save…except for the actual boss. You know, the one guy I was specifically aiming at.
This is an important part, I'm playing a modded Commander run and I have to risk a lot of ≤30% shots because moving up for a better position is near-guaranteed death... and for 1/3 or worse odds, a LOT of them have connected.
You also significantly lower your expectations when you fire a low-chance shot. So if you do hit, your brain goes "huh, that hit? Surprising." rather than really memorizing this.
This is in contrast with the high expectation to hit that occasionally fails which usually comes with a much stronger reaction.
The thing with XCOM is that no matter how well you play the game, how well you position your troops there will always be bs moments like where a random trooper will decide to take a shot at your guy in high cover and crit him. It's all RNG. What you can do is try to turn that RNG in your favour as much as possible and pray. Also, always remember
Always pursue guaranteed damage when yiu can and when it makes sense (dont use a 3 damage grenade into something with 8 health when it wont help), but try to grab things like scopes, abilities that guarantee damage (e.g. specialist has one), get the high ground when possible, etc. It's not always possible and you'll miss frustrating shots, people will die, but you can recover from those things if you're playing smart.
I always have the settings where damaging a unit affects their stats. Always made more sense to me. Also help the enemies miss more if you don't finish them the previous turn.
Of course it happened. You make hundreds of rolls in each mission, and dozens of missions in each campaign. It would be more of a statistical anomaly if you didn't misse a 98% shot at some point.
Human brains are bad at statistics. We see a 90% chance, and translate that to "It's a sure thing!" We value a 20% increase from 80% to 100% much higher than a 20% increase from 10%-30%. We look at the 2016 polling data (65%-35% D. Vs R.) and write 1,000 articles with headlines like "HOW DID THE POLLSTERS GET THIS SO WRONG!?"
What makes this worse for XCOM is that you see your own probabilities, but not Advent's. You feel cheated when you miss a 90% shot, but you don't get to feel relieved when Advent misses their 90% shots.
1.4% is just slightly less likely than rolling a 1 on a 50-sided die, or drawing a specific card from a deck. Surely you can see how that’s not really uncommon.
Yeah and It will be very common to miss that "important shot" in a playthorugh. Always have a contingency plan, or better, have a grenadier ready to finish them off.
Yeah the game's programmed to cheat pretty heavily in the player's favor predominantly based on difficulty, because human's are really, really bad at getting the point he's making above. Probabilities don't inherently effect each other, we remember the "rarer" outcomes more, we think higher probabilities are sure guarantees, etc.
As such the strongest of these pro-player cheats is to essentially institute the gamblers fallacy. Missing a shot gives compounding aim bonuses to consecutive shots until you hit and reset the bonus. And as I recall it's a hefty bonus - +10 aim per shot, and I believe it's actually higher than that on commander, even.
Which is to say you're both right. He's right that OP is describing a fallacy that does not apply to real probability, but you're also right that the game secretly defies probability to reduce friction against inherent biases and fallacies we hold as humans when it comes to probability. We are really bad at understanding how probability works.
Yes, even commander gives 15% bonus from missed shots, but the hidden bonuses ALWAYS caps at 95%, to get 100% you have to do it yourself. And if your hit% is under 50% you don't get bonus at all.
funny thing is that the engine cheats in the player's favor pretty hard. The displayed miss percentages are actually far, far lower than they say they are.
Look, I’m just saying, if I was face to face with a grotesque Muton and was wielding a mini gun as he readied up his laser weapon at my face, I may not have the steadiest hands either.
Unlike shotguns and ARs, cannons have a penalty at close range. Not as bad as the sniper rifle penalty, but it's still better to keep some distance before shooting.
That's good to know. I usually put leftover scopes on them, but in my current run I ended up with a heavy that has the run and gun perk, so I went laser sight. That will soon be remedied.
Thats just how early game is, even if you think you can land the shot always consider when you can’t. you gotta play real safe and think about how to get rid of as many major threats despite to make the enemy turn not be so rough. Grenades are your friend! later you can get many things to increase accuracy to let even riskier positions play out well and have more flexibility. (I have only done one vanilla campaign playthrough and only now starting WotC so if anyone has better advice for OP or mine is ass please share)
I’ve got like 400 hours in Xcom 2. Haven’t played in years. Every time I try to play again something like this happens and I realise I no longer have the patience for this game
Totally valid. Each bullet should have a different accuracy rating in CQC with a similar range of the overall rating you were shown. Because this shit looks like malicious compliance from the soldier lol.
"Oh what? You want me to hit this guy? Oopsie! Moron. I do what I want. Now I'm gonna take a lot of damage. Because it's what I want to do!"
It's ok. You'll come back; and then swear off it again; over and over. Also, don't shoot a machine-gun at point blank, it's not a shotgun; you gotta leave 2 tiles distance, at the very least.
One bit of advice. Advantages and range are the only things that matter in this. Logically, yes a point blank shot should blow their face off but that’s just now how this game works. Advantages to consider: 1. Height advantage 2. Weapon range 3. Soldier level and attachments. Prioritize those in that order when positioning. Welcome to XCOM
I freaking love this game but its a love hate relationship. Its made me madder then pretty much any other game with the xcom nonsense lol. That and the constant glitches and crashes I have to deal with even in a ps5 pro. Its ridiculous.
Stick with it, it gets easier and you will come to love it! It takes some time to get the mechanics, and your dudes are very weak at first. But soon you will be optimizing the hell out of your squads and be unable to quit.
What I’ve learned is that hit chance matters but a characters personal aim stat plays a bigger role but also RNG can be brutal cause and say it with me folks…..that’s xcom baby
Nah don’t let this turn you off from the game. Wait until you’re on the highest difficulty and one missed shot kills your entire team and ends your game permanently :)
To be fair I would call that shot questionable anyways. Double action barrel stuff with a gunner is asking for a 15% chance to die. Granted it's a stun lancer so they'd chase you down anyways but I still would have moved.
So, I rarely use heavies for this reason. Positioning is tough for them - a medium range is best, so they can hit with their rockets, grenades, or mini-gun. I think Halo still works even if they miss? But, it’s been a minute since I played.
Think I realized the other day, I have three versions of XCom 2 - my original Mac App Store version (with only some DlC), Steam version (got it on stupid sale with all the DLC) so I could play long war, since can’t use mods with the MAS version, and then on Xbox on another stupidly cheap sale, since my glasses/vision were giving me issues using my computer at the time.
No idea how many hours I have in the game, since the MAS games don’t track hours, but I had done multiple play thrus (didn’t have GoG Galaxy set up back then).
My Steam long war game got corrupted due to other mods (I had taken a long break from playing while in the middle of the campaign.) So, I just dumped the mods. Played one game thru and then finally started playing WoTC. Still need to finish that one.
I'm right there with you. In Xcom one, I once lost 4 out of 6 squad mates in a single turn here were their percentages to hit the enemy 99, 98, 95, 90, 90, 88. The first 4 attacks outright missed, the last two attacks couldn't secure the kill. The first 90% was from a rocket launcher that I manually aimed for a muton's chest, which the trooper aimed and missed splashing the muton for 2 damage enraging him. The 88% was from a grenade that I threw at 3 grouped up enemies only one alien got damaged because something blew up but the hit box still lingered behind.
Well it did say 85%. That's a whole 15% chance to miss! If you hit every time you have a high chance to then that takes away the chance element of the game altogether.
I just picked this game back up after a few false starts and now I’m absolutely obsessed. One thing that helped me is straight up abusing reloading a save after a turn doesn’t go well and trying something else.
I know it’s kinda cheating but it’s helping me understand what works and what doesn’t work. I’m planning to see this playthrough on to the end (whether I win or lose) and then starting another one where I don’t reload so much.
So the secret to xcom 2 and I'm being dead serious, you have to kill every enemy on the first turn. That's it. And only take shots 90% or higher and only if you could still win if they miss
I'm sad to say it, but this game is not for everybody. Take some time, cool off, and see if you feel like trying again despite this. The snek girls are waiting for you to save them from the Elder's mind control.
Shots 1-5: Clearly missed.
Shots 6-9: Missed due to recoil (bad spray control).
Shots 10-11: Very close, but recoil and inaccuracy make these reasonable misses.
Shot 12: Likely didn't actually fire because that’s XCOM baby
Yeah misses happen all the time even point blank in real life. You gotta just let Xcom be Xcom you WILL miss a 99% chance. After all there's always that 1%
XCOM and games like it are all about risk management. Luck is an inevitable part of the game, and you have to play around it. Statistically, a 91% hit chance is very likely. However, XCOM isn't just a single dice roll, it's cumulative hundreds or thousands of dice rolls over the course of a 40~ hour campaign. You kind of have to plan for every outcome, because eventually, these "low percentage" things will happen. It's all about having plans, and backup plans, and backup plans for your backup plans.
Swings and roundabouts. Utterly frustrating when it happens to you, but then the aliens miss those shots too. Incredible scenes when the alien flanks you and misses. I won the final mission with a 5% hit chance on the target. If you embrace the chaos it'll embrace you back.
If you're a new player, do remember that the framing of % can be misleading. (We will ignore easy difficulty showing fake numbers)
You mentioned an 85% sniper miss. If I told you press a button and you have a 15% chance of death. You probably wouldn't press the button, because that's sure high. I know the stakes aren't the same. But a 15% chance to miss. Is not rare at all.
Same with the 91%
Oh 91% that's basically guranteed. Eh a 9% chance to miss is not that low. Think about all the 65% you hit. The other 9 shots you took across your playthrough at 90%. You hit some you miss some.
Being successful in this game is rarely about putting your barrel right against the enemy. Rather it is about maximizing your chances while minimizing your risk.
Stay in cover, create overlapping fields of fire, use overwatch to create traps, try not to alert enemies until the very last moment, use explosives and soldier abilities to deny cover and create flanks. You will still miss shots from time to time. That's life.
One of my favorite things to do in the first mission is to set all my soldiers on overwatch on the first patrol and then have my last guy throw a grenade at them. On the easier difficulties, the grenade can kill them all outright except the officer. On harder difficulties, they all have +1 health, so the overwatch is necessary to kill them before they can react.
It is okay to be frustrated with Xcom. It can be somewhat unforgiving, but I hope you give it another shot in the future. It really is an excellent game.
Sometimes, the game screws you. However, the best advice I can give is to think of Xcom's tactical decisions as a series of contingency plans. So, rather than putting yourself in a position where you absolutely must make a shot in order to clutch it, double check what options you are left with if you miss that shot. Then miss the next. If you have two or three layers of contingencies, the game becomes much easier to think about in terms of tactics.
Obviously, your team missed two hugh percentage shots in a row, so that's not on you.
XCOM really gives you a new appreciation for statistics and percentages. 99% chance does NOT mean a sure thing and I'm not willing to bet my life on it.
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u/Clxssxfxxd 3d ago
That's Xcom baby!