Show player "chance of success" for an action

When faced with a decision about an action to take in a strategy game what do you prefer?

A)
No displayed info about chance of success until after the fact / learn to assess it over time playing from past results

B)
General info about chance of success before submitting the action, like "good chance", "hopeless" etc

C)
Getting a numerical value, like "chance of success = x%"

I'm torn between B) and C), tending towards C) atm but that might be because I have a gambling background. I feel more involved / affected by hitting or missing a "70%" chance than a "good" chance but I'm probably biased.

I like that the player can make adjustments before sending the action and see the % value change - but that could be done with B) as well if I put in lots of steps. I could also omit the actual % numbers in A) and just show a bar that is filled to x%.

B) is better for players who dislike numbers (is that even a demographic given they play a turn based strategy game in the first place?) and could offer more flavor than cold numbers I guess.

Curious to hear your thoughts!

 

Should just depend on what kind of experience you are aiming for.
Realism? Choice A.
RPG game? Choice C.

 

Sounds like you could do all of them, depending on the game's difficulty levels.

On the easiest setting, you see the percentage. On medium, just a general idea of what your odds are. And on the hardest, no feedback, and it's up to you to figure it out.

 

Schneider21,

that's a great idea, will probably do that, thanks!

 

I personally like C.

It worked great in FFt, and it helps the player focus on their strategy as apposed to the system.

As far as the difficulty goes, I would pick one and go with it before making your game more complex.

 

I think C is the best, and not enough games do this.

 

In a turn based strategy game, I like to know the % chance if things can be enumerated that way.

 

Considered combining B + C? "Likely (65%)".

As a side note - randomness is fickle and humans learn poorly through statistical sampling. If this were not true, there'd be no casinos. 33% could mean 1 out of 3, and it can also mean 8 straight losses. I saw Sid Meier discussing this problem during playtests of CivRev. In the end, they built a system where one combat involved several iterations, where health was lost. In this case, a 75% chance ended up being 3 or 4 rolls of the dice, so that you'd actually win the combat maybe 90% of the time, and likely lose a good portion of your health in the process. Combat became a LOT more predictable - and players were happier.

TL;DR - Simply random is risky and often not enough.

Gigi

PS - For other modifiers, most games use style C (+1 damage, +5 gold/turn, ...).

 

I've come around and will do C, but good point about randomness bringing out the worst in people who are not used to it. I'm thinking about lying to the player to make them feel a bit lucky, i.e. real chance of success is 80% but I will show them 75% or 70%.

For my game the number will be for "Complete, utter success", but the actual calculation has space for / will spit out partial successes as well, which for the %age will count as loss/not won, but still reward / not punish the player too hard.