Anyone else sick of the grossly unfair rules of pazaak? Would it be possible to create a mod that overides the "player always draws first" rule?

I think these would be good draw rules to make the game fun and fair:

-first set determined by both players drawing 1 card, like how you flip a coin to see who kicks off first. the person with the highest card draws first.

-winner of each subsequent set has to draw first the next set.

If the above is too complex to be implemented, then a simple alternating draw would also be fair imho.

I've skimmed through the bif files using the editor but i can't find any files that alter the game rules. I've found some files under .gui extension and a pazaak deck 2da file. I don't know how to edit the gui files and I don't believe any of these files are relevant to the rules. If anyone can point me to a correct file that would be great also.

there's nothing unfair about the rules for Pazaak. unfair would mean rules applying to you that did not apply to the opponent. you and your npc opponent are subjected to the same rules and conditions, and everything else is the luck of the draw.

i guess the people accusing the computer of cheating in pazaak would accuse a vegas blackjack dealer of cheating as well huh? though it's more likely that he is cheating than a coded probability equation is.

but eidos, being always have to draw the first card puts you into disadvantage.

uhhh. not really. having to draw first is a disadvantage depending on the value of the card. say you drew a 1 and then your opponent draws a 10. who was better off for drawing first in that instance? so, drawing first could be good, or it could be bad. really it would make little difference at all. i would hardly consider having to draw first GROSSLY unfair.

Originally posted by thenewguy
I've skimmed through the bif files using the editor but i can't find any files that alter the game rules. I've found some files under .gui extension and a pazaak deck 2da file. I don't know how to edit the gui files and I don't believe any of these files are relevant to the rules. If anyone can point me to a correct file that would be great also.

The 'pazaakdecks.2da' file manages the decks of the 'opponents' (at leats the rows 1, 2 and 3). Puting '+1' for every card will make the pazaak game easy (very easy).

It's not fair, true... but doesn't add dark points to your character :D

the advantage that you mentioned is not due to drawing the first card. what i mean is that, when you compare "drawing a 1 when you are the second to draw" is always "better than drawing a 1 when you are the first to draw".

consider this scenario:
both you and your computer had drawn a total of 15 by the end of your second round. noe the pressure is always on you to decide whether or not you want to draw as you are the first player to draw in the third round. whereas for the computer, he just have to wait, hoping the PC will bust out trying to draw the next card. if the PC indeed bust, he can just do a stand and win the game.

sigh. once again, who is waiting on who to bust does not depend on who draws first, but on who draws what. even if you have to draw first and now have two cards, one is a 1, and one is a 5, and the opponent has received a 10 and a 5, then it does not matter who drew first he is still more likely to bust than you. there have been many occasions where i knew i could draw and most likely the npc would bust. and while this does happen the opposite way as well, that is what makes it a luck of the draw scenario, as with all gambling card games. and i just don't consider that unfair.

edios, you really don't know anything. you would make a terrible gambler and you have no understanding of odds and statistics.

your analysis is flawed: having to draw first means you are more likely to bust first. since one of losing conditions are that if you are over 20 when you end your turn (a bust), you have a greater chance of busting because you always draw first.

consider the scenario where your opponent ALWAYS draws the same card as you:

you draw 9
opponent draws 9

you draw 9
opponent draws 9

you draw 9 (you bust and lose)
opponent doesn't get chance to draw 9 to bust because you already lost.

hence by drawing first you always are at a disadvantage.

this is why the serves are alternated in sports like badminton, volleyball, table tennis, tennis, and why there is the always have to win by 2 sets condition.

the only remedy to the above situation, that still makes the player always draw first is to add a condition that first player to 20 always wins. hence, if you drew 2 10s as your first 2 cards you automatically win. otherwise the npcs always have an unfair advantage.

well, don't you know how to make a grand entrance into a forum you @sshole.

now with that out of the way. i STILL hardly consider that such a HUGE disadvantage. and i am tired of whiny little babies like yourself trying to make excuses for why they aren't doing well at a particular game. suck it up, grow up and move on with your life. if you don't like the rules, don't play it.

and for someone who seems to know SO much about probability and statistics, why don't you give me the likelihood that you and the npc will draw the same card value on every turn as everyone keeps using for their example of why this game is SO unfair. not very likely is it there genius. so therefore, everyone's grand example as to why it's SO unfair that they have to draw first falls VERY short. as much as i've played this game i never saw that there was a greater chance of me busting from having to draw first.

BUT if you want to be such a whinly little prick, and try to cite mathematical equations for your inadequacies, that's fine. whatever helps you sleep at night.

instead of gracefully admitting to stand corrected, or adding anything insightful or relevant to the topic "at hand", you have instead decided to start a flame war. well I will not rise to your bait.

while it is unlikely you and your opponent will draw identical cards each time, it is likely that you may draw similar cards. and if that happens, you are still more likely to bust first. while you do not get the impression while playing pazaak that you lose more often due to this, many others here feel that it is rather unfair.

and yes, i do not like the rules, so i am looking for a way to change them so that i do like them. that is why i am in this forum, looking to mod the game like everyone else in this forum. not trolling the forums looking for excuses to add insults and ask stupid questions about why people want to mod the game.

and by the way: post count means nothing. if you have nothing intelligent to say you should not say it.

Eidos, the example he set was a perfectly good one that anybody should be able to understand! Why should he then use a different example?

Well, I never saw the big deal about the player drawing first neither, but I'd like to see a MOD in which it's random who draws first, just for "realism" (if you can say that about a fictional game INSIDE a game that takes place in a fictional universe:p)!:)

Besides, we generally need more MODs for this game!:D

that is very true.

and while you like to say that i started a flame war, i would like to point out that i had discussed this without calling anyone ignorant, or ever pointing to there lack of knowledge in a certain area. i never said: newguy, you don't know anything, and you'd be a bad gambler."

i never did anything other than express my opinion until i was insulted for no particular reason. if you want a civil discussion, try being civil. but don't dare get up on your soapbox with self-righteous bravado about a flame war, when you threw the first stone.

and as for a flaw in an analysis, it seems to me those so mathematically minded that they lack the ability to think in the abstract and give more than one very unlikely example of when this would be unfair are the one's failing to realize something. the only instance in which this could be GROSSLY unfair is one in which the opponent knew the values they would draw, and that you would draw, as well as the cards in your sidedeck in advance. otherwise, they would take just as much of a risk by standing and hoping that you would bust AND not have the card to get back to 20 in your hand. so, a disadvantage it may be. i never said it wasn't any disadvantage at all. i merely said it was my opinion that is was not MUCH of a disadvantage, and that it was most certainly not GROSSLY unfair.

and this may have been more polite had you had the capability to discuss things civilly.

my observations of your knowledge is based on what you said yourself:

there's nothing unfair about the rules for Pazaak. unfair would mean rules applying to you that did not apply to the opponent. you and your npc opponent are subjected to the same rules and conditions, and everything else is the luck of the draw.

as we have said. it IS unfair to have to draw first, and there IS a rule that apply to you that does not apply to the opponent.

If you think that these rules are fair and would bet good money against an opponent under theses circumstances then you would have no grasp of your poor odds of winning and be a bad gambler.

and while house rules at casino games are usually not in your favor, it is compensated by the fact that your wager is multiplied by the inverse of your poor odds, like roulettes. If you win you take back many times what you bet.

My view of pazaak is this.

Luck.

The CPU may draw first but their side deck is fixed so after a few plays you know what cards he can draw from the side deck as the CPU never knows what side deck card we have.

Not that prevents the odd of drawing a couple of 10 in the opening rounds, pazaak is still a chance game in its core and no side of +/- cards will change that.

Now there is a advantage of drawing second but it will not make us win games by drawing second, it depends on too many factors what sould we do, the only real win strategy is playing after the other had call it and is no longer able to play cards and drawing second will not do that since the CPU will try to reach a 18/19/20 no matter what.

in case you didn't realize this, you have poor chances of winning in gambling PERIOD. that's why it's called gambling.

i was merely pointing out that i never insulted anyone during this discussion, until i was first insulted. and then once again you want to whine about something and say i started a flame war.

if you had known how to state your opinion in an intelligent and adult way to begin with, and hand't started the conversation with "you don't know anything, and you'd be a bad gambler, and you must be stupid if you don't agree with me and my scientific analysis into why pazaak is unfair because i lose alot.", then i would have never felt the need to be rude or insulting in anyway myself.

as i have previously conceded that this IS a SMALL disadvantage, you can stop proving to the world that your god-like skills of statistics make you the superior human being, and go back to figuring out a way to deal with the blow that pazaak must have delivered to your ego to cause you to want to mod such an insignificant part of the game with such a SMALL disadvantage as having to draw first.

so, let's recap here. a disadvantage, yes. a GROSSLY unfair disadvantage, no. a normal and polite conversation until someone became so enraged that someone didn't share his opinion that they had to result to name-calling and insults, yes. a mod that would be interesting only to those who already hated pazaak anyway, and therefore would be unlikely to be used at all, yes.

now, we can keep this up, or you can simply concede that you started the offensive nature of this thread, just as i have already conceded that drawing first is a disadvantage.

fine. I will concede that my remarks were interpreted as offensive to you, but they were only meant to state an observation due to your own remarks. it appears that we got off on the wrong foot and we should put in behind us before this thread gets locked.

I am still interested in modding the rules of pazaak, if they are not hard-coded. any insights into this would be welcome.

well, i will ignore the poor attempt at an apology and just say that to be honest with you, i hate math anyway. ;) i don't think in the concrete very well. as i really don't believe there is much in the world that is concrete. i know a little programming, but only enough to do the design work i need to do. so, we got off on the wrong foot, because we think and approach things in two different ways. i have the same type of arguments all the time with a friend of mine who's a computer science major.

but we realize we have different views of the way things work and the governing principles behind them. i was a fine arts/ philosophy double major, and he majored in computer sceince. so we rarely agree on the principles behind things.

so, i apologize for getting rude. all i was attempting to say was, no matter how great a statistical genius you are, it doesn't change the value of the next card drawn. that was all i was attempting to communicate. you can say it's unfair all you like, but considering the chance involved in a game of this nature, drawing second would not really help you all THAT much. i just don't think it is necessary to question the intelligence of someone because they do not see eye to eye with you. the laws of probability have never done anyone much good anyway. look at weather forecasts if you think the laws of probability are sound enough to rule your life.

now, i will have to install kotor again, and see if there is anything i can find about pazaak. though i am pretty sure it is not hard coded. i remember seeing an entry for it somewhere. BUT if what you meant by hard-coded was in reference to who went first, you could be right about that.

i take things quite literally. you merely asked for my concession that my original remarks were offensive. that i did. if you wanted an apology you could have asked for it and received it. my intentions were never meant to be insulting and if it was taken as such i apologize as well.

i see you insist on our view that going first is not a big disadvantage, but it is. consider another scenario:

you have 17 and decide to stand. your opponent has not decided to stand, and now knows that he has to beat 17 in order to win. this decidedly gives him a much bigger window to guarantee a win (ranges 18-20) while your only guarantee to win is to hit 20, and then hope that your opponent busts or not match your score. whoever has to stand first is always at a disadvantage unless they hit a 20, because they opponent has a much wider win range, and therefore can have much more flexibility in side deck card usage.

this and my previous scenario happens every set. the difficulty in winning is that you have to win 3 sets in order to win the match. that means these poor odds are compounded against you.

and while you do not believe these are grossly outrageous disadvantages, let me remind you that these views are strictly relative.

i have done some more diggin thru 2da files. it does not seem anything pertaining to game rules can be altered through the spreadsheets :(

i understand the "you're better off if your opponent stands early, and this leaves you with an option other than 20 to win" hypothesis. believe me i came to understand that very idea very quickly. but i have not seen that having to draw first makes it more likely that you will be the one standing first. i know statistically it would. but if you learn anything from the actual living of a life, it's that statistical probabilities do not mean very much in reality.

and yes, i know that technically you ARE more likely to bust before your opponent when drawing first. but i am saying from experience, that there are so many more factors that go into this(sidedeck cards, what the actual value of the cards being drawn from the hand are, who's total goes higher more quickly(and yes i realize this is directly affected by who draws first....but drawing first does not gaurantee that you will reach the higher numbers more quickly than your opponent), that having to go first is not that BIG of a disadvanatge.

and i have not been able to locate anything related to the rules either. i wouldn't think a mini-game would be hard-coded though.

A computer-game is not real life!:rolleyes:

:p

But yeah, I'd say that the chances of winning are slightly against you with all factors and randomness considered, maybe 2/5?