What's the point of randomness?

[vean]

This is disappointing. But it's my fault. I expected too much from the codex.

 

[Telengard]

For those who don't know, Chess Puzzles are like a thing, going back decades.

They can be interesting.

But they would suck as rpg. As with all such puzzles, there's no variance. They are a singular intellectual challenge, not an adaptive one. Here, the Player (or rather, the Participant) never reacts, never has to adapt, because it's a puzzle, not a challenge. Figure out the solution, implement it, win. The other side moves, but that's just fakery, not actual challenge. There is a given optimum solution, and you figure it out.

There are PC games like this too. They're called Puzzle Games.

 

[vean]

They are a singular intellectual challenge, not an adaptive one. Here, the Player (or rather, the Participant) never reacts, never has to adapt, because it's a puzzle, not a challenge. Figure out the solution, implement it, win. The other side moves, but that's just fakery, not actual challenge. There is a given optimum solution, and you figure it out.

This has nothing to do with the presence or absence of randomness.

 

[adrix89]

Sirlin has a great article on Solvabilty that should put the randomness debate to rest.

This is disappointing. But it's my fault. I expected too much from the codex.

Quit talking like you know shit.
CRPGs come from Tabletop gaming and there characters die permanently from random bullshit.
Dice is king to this guys.

 

[vean]

Why you arguing about something that you don't understand except through the lens of "that's how it's been"?

Have you ever read the history of any field whatsoever? It's all full of stupidity. Dice rolls are just another example.

 

[adrix89]

Why you arguing about something that you don't understand except through the lens of "that's how it's been"?

Have you ever read the history of any field whatsoever? It's all full of stupidity. Dice rolls are just another example.

You haven't even read the article I posted.
Don't worry you are wrong on all levels, old history or new design.

 

[vean]

Sorry, but you don't just ask people to read random articles or books in arguments. Either you can summarize it in a paragraph or you don't understand it and it's therefore irrelevant.

I think I've made a pretty good show of addressing the points raised here in a simple and self-contained way and I expect the same from others.

 

[adrix89]

Sorry, but you don't just ask people to read random articles or books in arguments. Either you can summarize it in a paragraph or you don't understand it and it's therefore irrelevant.

I think I've made a pretty good show of addressing the points raised here in a simple and self-contained way and I expect the same from others.

You might not have realized. But that is what we have been doing here the whole time.
I thought an article might give you something more meaty to process and digest.
But it seems no information seems to get to you.

I am sorry but we cannot help you.

 

[vean]

I'll repeat myself because it's very important that you understand this, not just for my sake, but for those you'll interact with in the future.

You can't ask people in an argument to read a longer text. You have to summarize it and say how it relates to what they're saying. If you can't do this then it means that you didn't understand it, and since there is always much more material that doesn't relate to the argument than material that does, it's probably irrelevant.

Now that I've gone out of my way to spell out an absolute basic rule of debate perhaps you can rise above name-calling and ad hominems, which is unfortunately all you've provided so far.

 

[adrix89]

I'll repeat myself because it's very important that you understand this, not just for my sake, but for those you'll interact with in the future.

You can't ask people in an argument to read a longer text. You have to summarize it and say how it relates to what they're saying. If you can't do this then it means that you didn't understand it, and since there is always much more material that doesn't relate to the argument than material that does, it's probably irrelevant.

Now that I've gone out of my way to spell out an absolute basic rule of debate perhaps you can rise above name-calling and ad hominems, which is unfortunately all you've provided so far.

And like I said. It has been summarized many times here already.
Risk management is a skill that comes from random outcomes. It is more complex then having a simple puzzle solution because you have to handle not only when the solution works but also when it doesn't and have contingency plans for it.
Does this sound familiar? Because I already fucking talked about this in this thread.
Of course I could go into much more depth.
But why would I write an article in a post when there is already a article I linked that does a much better job then me?!
I don't need to fucking babysit your fucking ignorance.

 

[vean]

You talk but you don't listen, apparently.

You don't need randomness to have risk management. You can hide some information of the game state from the players, or design a system that's too complex to work out in real-time, which is pretty much anything more complex than tic-tac-toe.

 

[adrix89]

You talk but you don't listen, apparently.

 

[Ninjerk]

You talk but you don't listen, apparently.

You don't need randomness to have risk management. You can hide some information of the game state from the players, or design a system that's too complex to work out in real-time, which is pretty much anything more complex than tic-tac-toe.

Which is exactly what probability is.

 

[vean]

Which is exactly what probability is.

The player or AI acting under uncertainty is very different in gameplay effects from dice rolls in chance-to-hit or damage.

The latter is frustrating for players and makes it difficult for developers to design challenges.

I've deliberately avoided concrete examples because it's more fun for me to argue this way, but I'll point out one: Hammer & Sickle. They tried to design "puzzle" like encounters, but a lot of the maps start you out in close combat with several enemies, and you have to get the dice rolls to disable them or they'll almost certainly destroy you on their turn. The randomness destroys the otherwise pretty cool encounters and makes them stupid and frustrating reload fests.

It's a shame because the game is otherwise very good.

 

[Ninjerk]

Which is exactly what probability is.

The player or AI acting under uncertainty is very different in gameplay effects from dice rolls in chance-to-hit or damage.

The latter is frustrating for players and makes it difficult for developers to design challenges.

I've deliberately avoided concrete examples because it's more fun for me to argue this way, but I'll point out one: Hammer & Sickle. They tried to design "puzzle" like encounters, but a lot of the maps start you out in close combat with several enemies, and you have to get the dice rolls to disable them or they'll almost certainly destroy you on their turn. The randomness destroys the otherwise pretty cool encounters and makes them stupid and frustrating reload fests.

It's a shame because the game is otherwise very good.

You don't even need to employ concrete examples. In your previous reply, you advocate for an actual black box (ie. "hide some information of the game state from the players"), while apparently suffering from the notion that randomness itself is a black box. If you know the probability of an action, basic counting techniques are sufficient to make predictions about gameplay. That some games are made with small chances for utter player failure is no indictment upon probability as a whole, but an indictment upon the failure of the designer to understand and systematically implement probabilities that would promote satisfying gameplay. That the designer and player both remain ignorant of relevant methods of prediction is of little consequence to the reality that probability is not just something that, as a rule, frustrates the player.

Unfortunately, I really don't see the industry moving forward in this regard any time soon because the sort of pipeline you'd have designers being funneled through (and gamers alike) just couldn't be justified relative to what they're being paid (exceptional, motivated individuals notwithstanding).

 

[vean]

I don't know what you're talking about. If you have dice rolls then sometimes the player will fail through no fault of their own and sometimes they'll succeed when they shouldn't have. There's no satisfactory solution to this. You can give the player more resources than they'll need on average to compensate for some bad rolls, but that reduces challenge for the average experience. Do I need to say that that's really bad?

The best thing you can do is optimize saving and loading times.

 

[adrix89]

If you have dice rolls then sometimes the player will fail through no fault of their own

That is usually bad design but sometimes that is intended.
The world doesn't always align with what you want.
The Role Playing part of RPGs implies some sort of narrative, and sometimes that is just how the story goes.
To get the moment of clawing your way out of a desperate situation you must have a system that put you into that situation. The player not being fully in control is the way to do it.

This is a bad situation:

The question is if it is an enjoyable situation? Sometimes you have to roll with it.

 

[Ninjerk]

I don't know what you're talking about. If you have dice rolls then sometimes the player will fail through no fault of their own and sometimes they'll succeed when they shouldn't have. There's no satisfactory solution to this. You can give the player more resources than they'll need on average to compensate for some bad rolls, but that reduces challenge for the average experience. Do I need to say that that's really bad?

The best thing you can do is optimize saving and loading times.

Sigh. The dice do not know who should or shouldn't win. It's the job of the game designer or GM to responsibly dole out challenges. The satisfactory solution here is to actually understand probability and leverage that understanding in designing challenges as well as in tackling challenges as a player. If the probability is poorly implemented, don't play the game!

I think I will have to bow out of this one, as I believe I did not read your previous replies closely enough. You've repeatedly argued from and remained steadfast in your commitment to ignorance. As Richard Feynman once said about resistance to prevailing theories about physics (appropriately, if I'm correct in understanding, regarding probabilities in QM), "This is the way nature works . . . You don't like it? Go somewhere else--to another universe where the rules are simpler, more philosophically pleasing, more psychologically easy. . ."

 

[vean]

No, you're not playing attention. There's no way to do dice rolls like chance-to-hit or damage well. A game is always worse for having them, regardless of how it's designed.

"Hm! I wish this game was more random!"

said no one ever.

I don't know what nature has to do with video games. Nothing as far as I can tell. Feynman also never brushed his teeth. Do you follow that too?

 

[Alchemist]

If you have dice rolls then sometimes the player will fail through no fault of their own

The Role Playing part of RPGs implies some sort of narrative, and sometimes that is just how the story goes.
To get the moment of clawing your way out of a desperate situation you must have a system that put you into that situation. The player not being fully in control is the way to do it.

Exactly! Occasional failure creates an interesting emergent narrative. One that no one (perhaps even the designer) expected to play out. Not many great stories / films / etc. involved things always going smoothly. The best ones have a give-and-take between success and things going horribly wrong.

Randomness ensures that an occasional curve-ball is thrown the player's way, even if he thinks he has everything figured out.

 

[Leshy]

There are two reasons for that. One is the simulation aspect:
All of our actions in the real world have a degree of chaos in them. The more complicated the action the more chaos is involved.
When you hit an opponent with a sword, even if your hit connects there is a chance your hit will bounce off, or something equally difficult to predict will happen.
The randomness, the dice is to simulate that.

Second one is the ludic aspect:
Without randomness and with perfect information each game becomes a game of chess. Not everyone enjoys that.
You can fix that hiding some information, but unless you have a human opponent information doesn't stay hidden for long. Playing long enough will allow the player to unravel everything.
The only way to make the game unpredictable is to use some sort of randomness.

And personally I like if a game is unpredictable in a limited scope. Who doesn't like scoring a critical hit? :D

 

[vean]

I've already addressed these but nobody listens.

1. Video games don't simulate real life.
2. Video games have unimaginably larger state spaces then chess.

 

[Zetor]

Just skimming the thread, it seems that for many people having a deterministic core in a game means complete predictability, lack of variance, no curveballs and no uncertainty at all because game AI is dumb... when that's not the case at all, as long as determinism is actually implemented in a competent manner, and randomness isn't completely eliminated from the game (basically randomness in any area other than action resolution is fine). It is also an effective mechanism to make players own their mistakes instead of blaming it on the RNG while conveniently ignoring all the times the RNG screwed the AI characters.

Invisible Inc and Telepath Tactics are some of the best squad tactics games I've ever played. They have plenty of randomness (the RNG in Invisible Inc map generation essentially drives gameplay, and TT has random character growth combined with coin-flip debuffs and dodge that the player needs to plan and manage risk for), but the execution of actions is fully deterministic. And yet, I never felt like "going through the motions" at any point, whereas combat in nuXCOM (which is heavily RNG-based) can be extremely formulaic and make me feel like I'm just playing Risk Management Spreadsheet Simulator 2016.

edit: Athelas on the previous page also listed Frozen Synapse and Banner Saga, and I don't hear people saying that those games were total shit / could be improved by adding a chance-to-hit on attacks, either.

 

[Calcium]

That is usually bad design but sometimes that is intended.
The world doesn't always align with what you want.
The Role Playing part of RPGs implies some sort of narrative, and sometimes that is just how the story goes.
To get the moment of clawing your way out of a desperate situation you must have a system that put you into that situation. The player not being fully in control is the way to do it.

Really? You honestly believe that losing a combat scenario in an RPG is a way to progress the narrative, when in almost every RPG losing combat is a failure state which requires the player to do the combat again? I suppose that if you're a level 60 LARP master you might find a modicum of enjoyment in pondering the consequences of your party/character losing a battle, but the actual narrative of the game you're playing does not change. You win or you lose, and only one of those results actually progresses the 'narrative'.

 

[J1M]

That is usually bad design but sometimes that is intended.
The world doesn't always align with what you want.
The Role Playing part of RPGs implies some sort of narrative, and sometimes that is just how the story goes.
To get the moment of clawing your way out of a desperate situation you must have a system that put you into that situation. The player not being fully in control is the way to do it.

Really? You honestly believe that losing a combat scenario in an RPG is a way to progress the narrative, when in almost every RPG losing combat is a failure state which requires the player to do the combat again? I suppose that if you're a level 60 LARP master you might find a modicum of enjoyment in pondering the consequences of your party/character losing a battle, but the actual narrative of the game you're playing does not change. You win or you lose, and only one of those results actually progresses the 'narrative'.

Go play FTL and get back to us.