Just like XCOM, superhero comedy Dispatch cheats random percentages of success in the player's favor: 'anything that had over a 76% success chance would automatically succeed'

Just like XCOM, superhero comedy Dispatch cheats random percentages of success in the player’s favor: ‘anything that had over a 76% success chance would automatically succeed’ | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Gaming Industry CEO of Kitfox Games reckons hundreds of hours playing Civilization could be the secret to the Dwarf Fortress publisher’s success: ‘Maybe Kitfox wouldn’t be as successful if I didn’t know how to alternate between science trees and army defences’ Adventure More than 800 gamers took an exam to prove they could complete an ’80s adventure game without peeking at a walkthrough—and only 2 passed Card Game ‘It’s kind of like you’re a butcher’: Hundreds of Slay the Spire 2 card ideas were cut during development in an ‘incredibly destructive process’ Roguelike Slay the Spire 2 dev says its Marathon joke turned out ‘a bit meaner than expected’ in hindsight: ‘To be fair I didn’t think we’d actually pass Marathon in concurrent users’ RPG Tim Cain says he got hired at Interplay because he knew THAC0 better than the other guy, and went out of his way to prove it Card Game Please send help: We can’t stop opening packs in Wikigacha, a browser-based card game where you collect Wikipedia articles like ‘List of Red Hot Chili Peppers band members’ or ‘Bariatric Surgery’ Sim In defense of Deus Ex: Invisible War FPS Highguard’s failure is emblematic of something that has tormented videogame investors for years now: past live service hits do not equal future live service hits Action The devs on Deus Ex: Invisible War knew its most-hated part was a ‘terrible idea,’ and they give the director ‘sh*t about it all the time’ Games The best indie games on PC Strategy Heart of the Machine review: A fascinating grand strategy RPG that starts to buckle under its own ambitions Adventure Making Dispatch was motivated by ‘a mix of arrogance and stupidity,’ its creative directors say FPS Highguard didn’t flop RPG Tabletop gaming saved videogame RPGs RPG You can blame some of Deus Ex: Invisible War’s console limitations on the publisher’s ‘weird theories that FPS games don’t sell or RPGs don’t sell’ Trending NEW: PC Gamer Clips! Marathon Arc Raiders Best PC gear Quizzes Games Strategy Dispatch Just like XCOM, superhero comedy Dispatch cheats random percentages of success in the player’s favor: ‘anything that had over a 76% success chance would automatically succeed’ News By Jody Macgregor published 11 March 2026 “If coincidences are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?” When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: AdHoc Studios) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter PC Gamer Get the PC Gamer Newsletter Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. 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Signup + Every Thursday The Setup Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more. Signup + Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo’s new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play. Signup + Every Saturday The Watchlist Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter When Firaxis’s XCOM remake came out a constant complaint in the comments was that its random number generator was clearly cheating against players. Someone would miss a 95% chance, or God forbid a couple of them, and confidently declare that Jake Solomon was personally tweaking the probability to fuck with them.Of course, that wasn’t the case. As we later learned, the XCOM games do massage the math, but they do it in favor of the player—especially on lower difficulties. True randomness feels unfair, so XCOM cheated on our behalf. Which worked for most people, if not the ones in the comments section. I guess there’s always a chance someone will think they’re being hard done by even when you push the odds in their favor. It’s probably got like a 95% chance of working.Adhoc, the developers of Dispatch, followed the example set by Firaxis. Their superhero comedy’s dispatching minigame, in which you assign heroes to jobs that best suit their abilities, gives a percentage chance of success based on how well you’ve selected your squad—matching their abilities to the challenges they’ll face. Adhoc’s directors, Nick Herman and Dennis Lenart, discussed this at a GDC talk.Article continues below You may like In defense of XCOM: Chimera Squad Making Dispatch was motivated by ‘a mix of arrogance and stupidity,’ its creative directors say Instead of difficulty, Obsidian designer Josh Sawyer thinks in terms of 3 RPG player archetypes: ‘What are they trying to get out of this game?’ “We knew that there were some tools to mitigate these frustrating experiences, like missing a 99-percenter,” Herman said. “As any hardcore XCOM fan knows, one of the tricks F