The developers behind the popular game “Dispatch” have recently revealed a controversial decision regarding their in-game mechanics: the displayed probabilities for mission success and other actions are not entirely accurate. They confessed to implementing a system that secretly adjusts these probabilities, drawing inspiration from the infamous techniques used by Firaxis, the creators of the XCOM series.
During a presentation at the GDC conference, the developers elaborated on their reasoning:
“We understood that there are methods to alleviate frustrating scenarios, such as missing a shot with a 99% success chance. As any dedicated XCOM enthusiast knows, one of Firaxis’s clever tactics was to subtly tweak the numbers ‘behind the scenes’ to make everything *feel* fair, even if it wasn’t strictly so. These developers were smart, so we decided to follow suit.”
After extensive internal testing, the Dispatch team settled on a specific rule for their probability adjustments: any action with an ostensible success chance above 76% is guaranteed to succeed. However, this beneficial boost comes with a built-in limitation:
“Once a player had benefited from this bonus three consecutive times, we would deactivate the automatic success and revert to the true, underlying probabilities. As soon as the player then failed an action that *should* have had a chance above 76%, we would reactivate the three automatic ‘Successes.’ This was to ensure they wouldn’t experience a discouraging losing streak and then feel compelled to complain that the game was unfair.”