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Card games and nature of RNG

Do you consider card game(think mtg) to be random?


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lukaszek

the determinator
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tl;dr; This is yet another effort to belittle RNG in RPGs


While thinking about what I value in RNG and not, at some point I've looked at card games, specifically mtg.
There is certain randomness involved and yet when I play I dont consider that winning/losing was based on chance. Let me explain:

1st step is building your deck.
You decide how many mana cards you put so that you will get just enough. Get it wrong and you wont be able to play cards when you need to. Commonly people would set it so every 3rd card would be mana related. Basically you set up a chance to have x mana as game progresses.
Rest will be proper cards. As you advance as player you build around cards interacting with each other. It would be insane to build winning strategy on having 3 specific cards out of 100 to win. What you end up doing is like having a set of x cards and any 3 in play would be enough to get you going. Again by deck building you set up a chance to have required combo.

2nd step is shuffling. Final randomness step.

3rd step is actual game which is... deterministic.
Sure there are exceptions, some specific cards include dice throw/flip a coin/deck reshuffling but those are minority.

All this randomness involved in mtg is spent on setup. You dont know what card is on top of your deck. People often refer that they didnt win due to luck. If only black lotus was my next card to draw then you would lose!
But limited knowledge does not equal randomness(even though you know your deck, you can estimate chance that next card is x). If you could save scum in real life - outcome would be the same.
Would you consider it random if libraries were open and everyone played with open hand?
It is fine not having winning strategy after initial setup. In most cases it would be either about your deck being weak against enemy or your deck being weak in general.
There are special cases where you get 20 lands in a row which I chose to ignore as you can just rematch.

Lastly I bring this up as common feedback as of why RPGs need RNG was not to have every encounter same. You want to reload and something being different.
My point is again: resolving to RNG is lazy. Having encounters play differently due to random misses is lazy.
What you could have instead is some sort of randomness involved in encounter setup: number/placement of enemies/ who is asleep/events outside of fog of war that might screw you without scouting and so on.
 

Lazing Dirk

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Does anyone actually disagree that relying purely on RNG instead of interesting and varied encounter design is lazy? I'm sure everyone likes having a bit of variety, but doing away with RNG completely is - in most cases - going too far. D&D, for example, would be a lot less interesting if there were no dice, and the DM simply looked up results on a chart. Or to take your example, if MtG cards were not shuffled, but arranged by a specific algorithm that never varied. Without RNG, we wouldn't have many wonderful tales to tell about our poor character that died 5 minutes into the game after 2 critical fails in a row, or the time the rogue managed to kill a giant by throwing a knife into its eye. To succeed against all odds, there first must be odds.
 

lukaszek

the determinator
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deterministic system > RNG
 
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Jokzore

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There's RNG that keeps combat suspenseful and prevents you from letting your guard down. RNG that ignites a spark of hope even in most dire of circumstances...

.... and then there's Hearthstone. Fuck Hearthstone.
 

Lazing Dirk

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It is not about having 2 encounters in a row being different.
Its about same encounter (through save and loading) playing out differently even if you execute exactly same set of actions. Basically so each encounter doesnt become a set chess puzzle.

So... is that what you want? Everything to be a chess puzzle?
 

lukaszek

the determinator
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deterministic system > RNG
 
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Lazing Dirk

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everything to be slightly different chess puzzle.

Speaking like decks, I want single encounter in rpg to be like playing against same goblin deck. Each time I reload I will face same deck but cards(monsters) will be thrown at me differently.
Once you move on, in another encounter you will be facing different deck.

Okay, so let's say in this encounter there's a bunch of goblins. You decide to fire an arrow at one. Should the game just assume it hits? If not, then you're dealing with chance, but you don't want RNG, so how does it work? Or does everything always hit? What about cover? Is there a range limit? Does that make the size of the monster irrelevant? Can they dodge? If so, do they always dodge or is it back to chance again? If things always hit, then are skill levels useless? If things always hit, then that gives a huge advantage to whoever goes first, if it's going to be turn-based. How is that decided?
 

lukaszek

the determinator
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deterministic system > RNG
 
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Gregz

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RNG is an inherent concession of quick card games.

If you want deep deterministic strategy then play tabletop, but be prepared to dedicate many hours observing all the rules minutiae.
 
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thats not it.

It is not about having 2 encounters in a row being different.
Its about same encounter (through save and loading) playing out differently even if you execute exactly same set of actions. Basically so each encounter doesnt become a set chess puzzle.
Resorting to RNG is practical. If RPG combat was the way you envision it, the gameplay would be further encumbered by additional rules for techniques and maneuvers (some games have that to a lesser extent, and it ends up becoming cumbersome unless everyone has memorized the whole thing). Because roleplaying is more than just a downscaled version of Advanced Squad Leader, some abstraction is needed, hence RNG.

That said, I still prefer systems that are crunchy while minimizing variance.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Gameplay isn't really deterministic though, since your opponent's actions would be unpredictable even if you knew their hand. Think of rock paper scissors- this is obviously a game of chance, even though you get to pick what to throw.
 

Urthor

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
MTG isn't truly that much of an RNG game, but every single Hearthstone ripoff is. All those games are 10x more focused on curving out properly than the best MTG formats and are incredibly RNG based, the digital CCGs are honestly largely awful, with the exception of Gwent before the November update.

Hearthstone games that end on the 8th turn inevitably turn into contests for who had the best curve 4-7, whilst proper MTG games go a lot longer than that and involve holding threats and curving out in the best (blue deck) formats.

But the fact of the matter is that most card games are not that deterministic over a single game though, you can see that with pro tour win rates. In certain games there are fairly large skill tierings, if you can't get a read on their hand for example, but for determining the win rates between two reasonably equal players most card games don't have close to enough variables or complexity to determine a valid winner over a single game.

It's just that hearthstone and the hearthstone clones are the least deterministic CCGs ever assembled.
 
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Damned Registrations

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Gameplay isn't really deterministic though, since your opponent's actions would be unpredictable even if you knew their hand. Think of rock paper scissors- this is obviously a game of chance, even though you get to pick what to throw.

This is only true if the game has simultaneous action selection.
Consider a basic scenario: You've played a creature and your opponent has a card to kill it. You can play an enchantment on that creature, which will be countered if he kills it, or you can save the enchantment for your next creature, which will be countered if he instead does nothing. You have no way of knowing whether he'll clear the board or add to it or be completely irrational and wait around. That decision isn't based on only the cards he has, but what he's thinking- anyone that plays pvp games like this has experienced the moment where you get killed because you overestimated your opponent and he made the suboptimal move that happened to foil your strategy. Like, you're playing an effective land destruction deck in MTG, and your opponent wins... because he built his deck with 60% lands like a moron and will lose vs every other deck. The same sorts of scenarios can happen on a smaller scale during gameplay. Chess is different because in chess there is always a theoretical way to play that means you will never lose. That's not necessarily the case in MTG, so even if you minimize risk you can still lose to an unlikely strategy when you could have won by being riskier.
 

Leechmonger

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he made the suboptimal move that happened to foil your strategy.

In a game with no RNG, including no hidden information, a suboptimal move will never foil your strategy. It would simply be a good move.

Your land destruction is a niche example of a bigger problem: the rock-paper-scissors RNG nature of playing with a deck built ahead of time against unknown decks. Aggro vs tempo vs control matchups are known to decide games before they're even played.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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he made the suboptimal move that happened to foil your strategy.

In a game with no RNG, including no hidden information, a suboptimal move will never foil your strategy. It would simply be a good move.

Your land destruction is a niche example of a bigger problem: the rock-paper-scissors RNG nature of playing with a deck built ahead of time against unknown decks. Aggro vs tempo vs control matchups are known to decide games before they're even played.
I didn't say no hidden information, I said no information hidden from you. I could be cheating and still lose because my opponent played like a moron in an unpredictable way. Suppose I had a card that instantly wins the game if I can play it while my opponent has 2 creatures on the board. He doesn't know I have this card. Despite this, he refuses to ever play a second creature, and eventually wins by decking me because the entirety of my deck is defensive except for my win condition. He's sitting on a hand full of things that could overwhelm my defenses and kill me in 2 or 3 turns, but never plays them. Nothing I can do will possibly allow me to win given these two decks unless he makes this very optimal move of playing a second creature. This is obviously RNG at work, not skill, since no amount of skill on my part will allow me to win, and no amount of skill on his part is allowing him to win either, only this particular interaction.
 

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Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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You're the one that doesn't understand that there are games in which minmaxing doesn't guarantee victory. Playing to lose by 5 points of overkill at the worst 99% of the time instead of playing to lose by 6 points of overkill at the worst 1% of the time is a retarded strategy.
 

spectre

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So, what OP is essentially proposing is a more elaborate approach to encounter tables.
These can be useful if you want some filler content real quick, but for the actual meat of the game, I think you will want something hand crafted, which reflects the player party and their choices anyway.

I can see it work if the encounter somehow mimics the flow of a card game - the situation developing from round to round based on what is "drawn," although I am not sure if coming up with elaborate "deckbuilding" mechanics for encounters isn't a bit
pointless unless the players are somehow involved in the process, if not that's a lot of work for stuff that's mostly kept under the hood and could be handled by a random selection from an event table.
Still, it does have merit if you want an engine to produce lots and lots of replayability once it's up and running.

You may want to look up Lord of the Rings LCG, from what I recall, the game was about players building decks and teaming up to defeat a premade "adventure" deck.

Also, I know it was more of an example, but MtG is not a very good example of well-made random card game, I'd look for more modern card games and LCGs if you want to snag some interesting deck building mechanics to use. I consider Call of Cthulhu a pretty good refinement of the core MtG resource formula with lots of interesting decisions to be made and a much smoother flow when it comes to building resources and going through your deck. There are also card games like Star Realms where the decks are constructed during the game by drafting and buying cards by players.
 

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Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Well, guess we can do away with all that Elo ranking bullshit then, no luck at all in deterministic games. :roll:
 

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