lukaszek
the determinator
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2015
- Messages
- 12,699
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.
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.