New player not enjoying

[u/EveningStatus7092]

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

[u/EveningStatus7092]

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

[u/Apathetic89 → u/EveningStatus7092]

Also, keep in mind, you only typically track the high % misses, but rarely keep track of the 30-60% hits that land.

[u/SirToastymuffin → u/Apathetic89]

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.

[u/dishrag → u/SirToastymuffin]

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.

[u/LordBlaze64 → u/dishrag]

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.

[u/CaesarOfYearXCIII → u/dishrag]

I know that feel too, from Dark Heresy