Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden Livestream Interview

Last month, some of the developers behind the recently released post-apocalyptic tabletop RPG-inspired Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden participated in a GDC livestream. During the livestream, they discussed Mutant Year Zero’s tactical and stealth elements, the game’s take on the XCOM formula, the deceptiveness of RNG, and more. Check it out:

And if watching an hour or so of video isn’t your thing, this Gamasutra article offers a transcript for some of it. An excerpt:

Why game designers need to lie about hit percentages

Skarin: First of all of course we’re also cheating behind the scenes, because people don’t understand percentages very well. So a 75 percent shot here is a bit higher, right. We’ll also do a few tricks on the AI side where if they hit you they’ll actually have less chance next time and such so you don’t get into these streaks of the enemy feeling super powerful just because they got a lucky run. you need to do a couple of these things, specifically around 50 percent, right?

You shouldn’t be taking those shots really. You shouldn’t be taking 25 percent shots in an XCOM game really. People expect four 25 percent shots to be a hit. So one way of doing that then of course is to add a bit when you miss. So we have a few of those tricks going on behind the scenes, but I think it doesn’t deter anything from the game. We added more along the lines of we felt it was needed. It’s better that the game feels fair, than that it is fair.

Varley: Especially the hardest thing to do in these games is to make them feel fair.

Skarin: Yeah, and Lee was also very early on with [defining] the percentages. We looked at Mario + Rabbids I think.

Varley: Yeah, they do 100 and 50 which is more extreme than we are.

Skarin: But we went with a system in between.

Varley: Yeah, we went for like an in-between system where we round the numbers up to the nearest 25 percent I think it is. Because it just feels a bit more, for me personally when I’m playing, it feels a bit more easier to predict what’s going to happen. A 75 percent to me feels not guaranteed, it’s still a bit of a gamble. 50 percent, feels like, we know what 50/50 is, its a complete gamble. 25, that just feels like it’s going to miss. Whereas if I’m playing and I get a 87 percent chance to hit that’s a little bit more difficult for me to get a feel of what that number means to me. if i’m taking my shot.