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Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
The "Cannot" beats "Always" concept is fundamentally flawed and dangerous
Ultra8529
Posts: 526 ★★★
This sets a dangerous precedent for the game and I would like by this thread for the game team to clarify their intentions going forward. Ideally, this should not be the reasoning employed to explain the recent change to the interaction between guaranteed critical hits and glancing.
By way of background, corvus used to always be able to crit on opponents even if they had the ability to glance. The result was that corvus would register a critical hit, since he has a guaranteed crit when using his glaive, but that hit would have a chance to glance and have reduced damage. The interaction has been changed in the latest update so that corvus will not crit when the opponent procs glance.
The official explanation for this is that the game team made a decision that an ability like glancing, against which you "cannot" crit, will henceforth take precedence over abilities, like corvus' landing critical hits, which are expressed as "always" going to happen.
But if one thinks further about this, this is fundamentally flawed and is simply a matter of semantics. Any ability or mechanic in the game can be expressed in both - "always" or "cannot". For example:
- Corvus' ability to crit on every hit can be expressed as (1) "always" land a crit when using his glaive; or (2) "cannot" land a non-crit when using his glaive
- Iceman's coldsnap can be expressed as (1) "always" prevent enemy from evading when attacking; or (2) enemy "cannot" evade when iceman is attacking
- Spider Gwen's ability to evade unblockable special attacks can be expressed as (1) "always" evade unblockable special attacks; or (2) enemy unblockable special attacks "cannot" hit her
- Even glancing abilities can be expressed both ways: (1) enemy attacks that glance "always" do not crit and suffer ability accuracy reduction; or (2) enemy attacks that glance "cannot" crit and suffer ability accuracy reduction.
The list goes on and on. The distinction between "cannot" and "always" is not a principled way for the game to decide how mechanics interact. My view is that the glancing/guaranteed crit interaction should just be called what it is - the game team made a decision to change the interaction.
If the game team decides to stick to its position that "always" trumps "cannot", then these terms must be made clear in every single champ description.
Thoughts?
By way of background, corvus used to always be able to crit on opponents even if they had the ability to glance. The result was that corvus would register a critical hit, since he has a guaranteed crit when using his glaive, but that hit would have a chance to glance and have reduced damage. The interaction has been changed in the latest update so that corvus will not crit when the opponent procs glance.
The official explanation for this is that the game team made a decision that an ability like glancing, against which you "cannot" crit, will henceforth take precedence over abilities, like corvus' landing critical hits, which are expressed as "always" going to happen.
But if one thinks further about this, this is fundamentally flawed and is simply a matter of semantics. Any ability or mechanic in the game can be expressed in both - "always" or "cannot". For example:
- Corvus' ability to crit on every hit can be expressed as (1) "always" land a crit when using his glaive; or (2) "cannot" land a non-crit when using his glaive
- Iceman's coldsnap can be expressed as (1) "always" prevent enemy from evading when attacking; or (2) enemy "cannot" evade when iceman is attacking
- Spider Gwen's ability to evade unblockable special attacks can be expressed as (1) "always" evade unblockable special attacks; or (2) enemy unblockable special attacks "cannot" hit her
- Even glancing abilities can be expressed both ways: (1) enemy attacks that glance "always" do not crit and suffer ability accuracy reduction; or (2) enemy attacks that glance "cannot" crit and suffer ability accuracy reduction.
The list goes on and on. The distinction between "cannot" and "always" is not a principled way for the game to decide how mechanics interact. My view is that the glancing/guaranteed crit interaction should just be called what it is - the game team made a decision to change the interaction.
If the game team decides to stick to its position that "always" trumps "cannot", then these terms must be made clear in every single champ description.
Thoughts?
33
Comments
“Cannot not do something”, instead of “always does something”. I don't think you can just turn it around like that, as a “double-negative” and say that is viable alternative language to a “positive” wording. That double-negative really wouldn't count as being a true “Cannot” Ability.
First of all, it isn't actually true that "always crit" means the same thing as "never not crit." Those two statements might mean the same thing semantically, even mathematically (if translated appropriately) but they have a different design imperative. The first statement says there's an action possible in the game called "crit" and when the relevant activity occurs and the game must decide whether crit should occur or not, the game should always decide to trigger crit. The second statement says that when the game considers all the things that can prevent crit from occurring, it should assume all of them fail. Maybe these two things seem identical, but having worked on games before I can tell you they aren't.
Second, and more directly, in general "always" tends to be associated with action, and "cannot" with in-action, or prevention. That's not always true, but it happens often enough to be the default conceptual connection. We don't tend to say that bleed immunity means the champion always doesn't bleed, we tend to say that they never bleed, or cannot bleed. And when you have one effect in the game asserting that something happens and another effect in the game asserting that something doesn't happen, unless they specifically specify directly the default assumption should be that the "doesn't happen" wins.
That's because outside of self-interest situations, this matches most people's default assumptions. If an ability says it causes bleed and another ability says it prevents bleed, we assume the prevention overrides the action. I believe this is to avoid a ridiculous situation. If you say something takes action and another thing prevents that action, if the "take action" wins by default, then "prevents action" actually is meaningless. "Prevents action" does nothing if the action isn't even attempted in the first place, and if "takes action" overrides it then it also does nothing if the action *is* attempted. Thinking that "takes action" overrides "prevents action" would force all "prevents action" to redundantly specify "...even in cases where the action is said to take place." And that doesn't make sense to most people.
If "prevents action" overrides "takes action" by default, then it makes more sense to me that "prevents action always" also overrides "takes action always" by default, because in a sense the two "always" balance out, and "prevents action always" is both conceptually and semantically synonymous with "action cannot happen." "Cannot" in this case overrides "always."
Now, if the descriptions are semantically twisted to try to flip "cannot" and "always" I think that we should trace back to the fundamentals. However the adjectives are used "stops action" should override "takes action" by default, unless there's an obvious explicit behavior described.
I tend to assume (softly, because this isn't done consistently) and if I were writing the description myself I would follow the rule, that when something has a 100% chance to occur, it should state that it has a numerically 100% chance to occur (and this number could theoretically be affected by other things in the game), and when something is said to "always" occur this should mean that the game doesn't even roll the dice.
I will say that if this were true and we could rely on the devs always obeying the "always = 100%" rule, then this is a simple situation. Probability percentages multiply. When something with a 60% chance to occur runs into something that prevents it from happening 50% of the time, this thing ultimately happens 30% of the time. So the direct assumption to make is when something with a 100% chance to occur runs into something that only allows it to occur 0% of the time, 100% x 0% = 0% and it doesn't occur.
The independent effect rule of mechanics design would hold the above to happen. In other words, we think of every effect mentioned in the game as happening, so Corvus' 100% crit chance simply means nothing stops him from triggering the critical effect, but then when that critical effect reaches the glanced target the glancing effect "admits" exactly zero percent of those crits. Games with conflicting descriptions would then always behave in a specific way you could deduce. So of course practically no one obeys this rule when they design mechanics.
Glancing prevents Hits from being Critical.
So in short , Hits "cannot" crit if they glance.
OR
Glance "always" prevent hits from being critical.
Above statements have the same meaning.
In that interest, we need a clear and principled justification for how an action is defined as "always" or "cannot".
Arguably the best justification so far is by @DNA3000 - looking at it as "take action" vs "prevent action". But even then I can still see difficulties. The relevant action as far as the game is concerned can still be flipped around depending how you look at it - it could be either a critical hit or a non-critical hit, it could be a hit or an evade. So it really seems to me to be a matter of perspective.
THEN UNDERSTAND IT LIKE THIS
X -> 100% to take place -> X will take place
If X takes place:
Y ->100% chance to stop X -> X will not take place.
So eventually X never happen.
Now connect it to the game.
X= Critical Hit chance
Y= Glancing chance.
Games work on LOGIC and not on GRAMMAR.
Glancing has always overridden all other abilities. Has been like that since AM was first released years ago. This isn't anything new, and it's surely not "fundamentally flawed and dangerous."
You can never bleed a bleed immune champ, even if you have a 100% change to bleed them, the never trumps the always.
you can never do anything to someone is immune to it. this is not "against the player". This is player neutral unless you ignore half of the equation, the antman side.
“SP1 has 100% chance to cause Bleed, EXCEPT against Bleed Immune champs or against champs on a Bleed Immune Node or Synergy”.
And...
“This champ is Immune to Bleed, EVEN against champs that otherwise would cause guaranteed Bleed and even on nodes that cause Bleed”.
Extrapolate that to a whole bunch of scenarios, and a Description would be a Harry Potter novel.
Does it matter? Glanced hits are immune to crit. I dont see where the problem is