Skip to Content
 

Luck in games - a matter of style, not of game quality

15 replies [Last post]
PauloAugusto
PauloAugusto's picture
Offline
Joined: 12/04/2011

I often read and hear people complain about how certain games are not so good, are of lower quality, because they are too reliant on luck. I think this point of view is wrong.

When i was developing my civ game, i tried to keep it as low on chance as possible, keeping the game as skill based as possible. At some point, while soloing it, i felt the game felt too much like chess. Being completely deterministic, you could plan your moves ahead like in chess and somehow didn't felt right for the theme. At that point i started thinking about how luck really influences the game and what is really the best option.

Here are my conclusions. Without any luck, the game is completely about skill.
# First, a loss is always about your lack of skill: never will you be able to complain about your lack of luck to excuse a loss at chess and in Catan you can always excuse yourself with the dice rolls.
# Second, you gain the feeling (and correctly so) that, if you fall behind due to mistakes*, you can never come back up. One can only hope that the other player(s) makes a mistake of similar ammount while you don't make any more mistakes.
# Third, a game without luck will be very demanding mentally and will require alot of commitment from the players. Often, it becomes too tiring and you just want to play something without heating up your brain.

*and your falling behind will always be due to mistakes, because in a zero luck game you always have what can be considered the perfect move and you only fall behind because you don't do that specific move.

# Catan, vs Powergrid #
Many people complaint about Catan for it being too reliant on luck. Many others like it to death (until playing it too much, at least). Many people complaint about Powergrid for it being a math feast (i think the real complaint is: very dependent on calculating moves ahead). Others love it because you have nearly no luck in it and you won't lose because of some unlucky thing.

# Slut-machines vs Chess #
What about slut-machines vs chess? Can i really say that chess is better (especially with so many people playing the other)? I frankly desire to say that slut-machines is a worst game than chess but i think i can't (it is still a stupid money sink that enriches the rich and enpoors you, though).

A game can be more abstract (like chess or Dvonn or ..) or more concrete (like really realistic war games), or something in between. That doesn't qualify as game quality, just as game style.
A game can be long (like Arkham Horror) or short (like Dominion), or something in between. That doesn't qualify as game quality, just as game style.
I think that the same happens with luck. It is just another dimension of game style and never a dimension of game quality. Games with more luck give players excuses to lose, gives players the opportunity to have come-backs and lessens the weight on the players mind's and there is nothing wrong with it. And i added some luck to my civ game, which fits the theme greatly.

Geikamir
Geikamir's picture
Offline
Joined: 10/20/2011
You also forgot an important

You also forgot an important detail about dice rolling and "luck". That being that its not pure luck, but chance/probability. Poker players have known this for a long time. Calculating your risks vs your rewards can be very profitable.

Its a skill in itself, just one that you don't have complete control of.

nine
Offline
Joined: 01/17/2011
Slut-machines

PauloAugusto wrote:

I frankly desire to say that slut-machines is a worst game than chess but i think i can't (it is still a stupid money sink that enriches the rich and enpoors you, though).

I'm totally behind you with it being a stupid money sink... but I still think that a slut-machine sounds fun!

9

Catelf
Offline
Joined: 10/05/2009
Slot Machines is nowhere near Chess in quality.

I DO say that Slot machines barely qualify as a game, and that it is far from an as good game as Chess.
Why? How?
A Slotmachine is like One Roll of D100, where you only win at 100, and lose at all the rest.
If we remove the lousy chances to win, and put it at true 50/50, then the game is still just One Roll.
No decision at all, except play or not.
However, Boardgames and Miniature skirmish Games is virtually all about decisions, that doesn't always seem clear-cut, and that is what i say define a good game:
The amount of possible decisions, that is understandable, and that works.

It is not the "Luck or not" that defines a game.
In the other respects, i agree with PauloAugusto, luck or not is just a style.

desperadonate
Offline
Joined: 12/07/2011
I think luck can definately be a good thing

Building off something you touched on with Catan, I think one of the great things luck is great for is making it easier for people of different skill levels to compete and enjoy the game. While it's frustrating to lose a game where you felt you had a good strategy but didn't get the right dice rolls, having a mechanism that allows people who are less strategically minded to win every once in a while actually increases the replay value. A lot of people play games with family members or the same group of friends, and if you have a completely deterministic game, then the most skilled player always wins unless there is another player who is their virtual equal. In most groups, it's very rare that each person is at virtually the same skill level as everyone else, so those who are even slightly less skilled are going to eventually get discouraged and refuse to play the game anymore. Granted, they could keep playing until they were as equally skilled as everyone else, but people are rarely have that much dedication to a game when there are plenty of other games out there they at least have a chance of winning.

Another aspect of luck is it can actually make the game more realistic, which is probably why just about every war game uses dice. To a certain point, some element of luck can actually reward strategic thinkers because they need to be able to both think ahead and plan, but they also need to be able to recalculate and adapt their strategy as conditions change, which is a whole new intellectual exercise in itself. Like you said, so long as it's well thought out, I how much luck is in a game is definitely more about style than anything else.

Maaartin
Offline
Joined: 05/15/2011
Luck is sort of giving up

While I agree with many things in this thread, I'd say that luck (unless used homeopathically) is a style, but most of time a bad one. On one hand luck is necessary to make some games work at all, on the other hand it makes many games worse. Let me explain why I do think this.

PauloAugusto wrote:
First, a loss is always about your lack of skill: never will you be able to complain about your lack of luck to excuse a loss at chess and in Catan you can always excuse yourself with the dice rolls.

Yes, but do we really need such an excuse? This reminds me of a trend in education to eliminate any pressure on students, which results in students knowing much less the previous generations.

PauloAugusto wrote:
Second, you gain the feeling (and correctly so) that, if you fall behind due to mistakes, you can never come back up. One can only hope that the other player(s) makes a mistake of similar ammount while you don't make any more mistakes.

In a two-player game, when you're sure to lose, you simply give up. There's nothing wrong with giving up, you save time and can another try in a new game. On the opposite, continuing a decided 2p game is plain stupid (unless the situation is exceptionally interesting). While the goal of chess is checkmate, hardly any game ends this way.

In a multiplayer game, a player elimination (either total or just losing any chance to win) is indeed a problem. But IMHO luck is not the solution. A small portion of luck helps only a little and a big portion turns every game into a sort of Ludo. We should look for a better mechanic allowing the fell-behind player to catch up; here diplomacy and rules preventing bashing the loser could help a lot.

PauloAugusto wrote:
Third, a game without luck will be very demanding mentally and will require alot of commitment from the players. Often, it becomes too tiring and you just want to play something without heating up your brain.

I agree that there's a need for lightweight games, but there should be a better way. Both multiplayer interaction and hidden information make dice IMHO redundant.

PauloAugusto wrote:
A game can be more abstract (like chess or Dvonn or ..) or more concrete (like really realistic war games), or something in between. That doesn't qualify as game quality, just as game style.

IMHO, having a strong theme is always a good thing. The problem is that there are games not allowing for this (e.g. there's no theme supporting the chess rules). So some games sacrifice the theme for more flexibility.

PauloAugusto wrote:
I think that the same happens with luck. It is just another dimension of game style and never a dimension of game quality.

I disagree here:

  • It's too easy to put too much luck in a game. While a short heavily luck-dependent game may be fun, playing for hours only to get your game ruined by the dice is waste of time.
  • Games including luck are much easier to design. Imagine two players drawing one card each and betting on who has the higher one (a stupid game, I know... so make it a bit more complicated and you get Poker). Designing anything deterministic is much harder, that's why I rank deterministic games much higher (assuming they work well).

Planning a lot moves ahead is a problem of chess-like games, which doesn't need to be present in deterministic games. In chess there are only about 30 legal moves, which makes searching in depth necessary (when trying to play at any non-trivial level), which indeed is mentally demanding. Playing a game like Stone Age with most of luck removed is not very demanding but a lot of fun for me, YMMV.

PauloAugusto wrote:
Games with more luck give players excuses to lose, gives players the opportunity to have come-backs and lessens the weight on the players mind's and there is nothing wrong with it.

I haven't felt the need for excuses for losing since I was maybe 15. I really hate losing but such is life. I lost sometimes because of being tired, sometimes because of the others being simply better, sometimes because of them ganging up against me, so what?

I indeed think there's something wrong with luck. There are people liking it and maybe they compose the majority, but I personally think it destroys many games. Maybe the rules should be adjustable, so you can make more people satisfied?

desperadonate wrote:
I think one of the great things luck is great for is making it easier for people of different skill levels to compete and enjoy the game.

Yes, but handicaps do the same, except for somebody having to admit they're the weaker player.

desperadonate wrote:
Another aspect of luck is it can actually make the game more realistic, which is probably why just about every war game uses dice.

IMHO the real reason is that designing a good deteministic game is much harder. As for the realism, in Sid Meier's Civilization I've seen Militia killing a Tank three times in a row.

desperadonate wrote:
To a certain point, some element of luck can actually reward strategic thinkers because they need to be able to both think ahead and plan, but they also need to be able to recalculate and adapt their strategy as conditions change, which is a whole new intellectual exercise in itself.

In theory this may work, but in all games I know (including the aforementioned Catan) with bad luck you're simply toasted.

mdkiehl
mdkiehl's picture
Offline
Joined: 12/10/2010
Probability and Complexity

Honestly, I was expecting PauloAugusto to write more on how chance plays into game "style".

In game design circles I often hear discussions about dissatisfaction with luck basses game mechanics.

There are many things that play into game quality. And I guess I'm a little unsure what is meant by quality if you simply reduce a game to mechanics.

For example, Dungeons & Dragons is a highly respected RPG that has influenced the creation of thousands of other games including World of Warcraft, the most money grabbing game to ever exist. You can't reduce D&D to simply "rolling dice" - in fact, I've seen it played without dice (people in prison play it with little tokens that they grab at random from a bag or flip like a coin - to create similar statistical spreads). The game's quality I think comes from the fact that it can be used to tell complex stories that involve the players - hence the necessity of a great game master to "write" the story.

Games like D&D also have incredible complexity, and they engage the creativity of the players in a way that is amazingly open ended. Games like this have the ability to become more than simply a simulation, in the imagination of the players the game can become like another life, another world.

You could make a D&D, or WoW like game that didn't use any dice or "luck" mechanics, but I don't know if the game would have any more or less quality. It would simply be different.

I think this discussion would be better spent discussing how luck mechanics impact game style rather than game quality.

Regards,
Matthew Kiehl

mdkiehl.wordpress.com

PauloAugusto
PauloAugusto's picture
Offline
Joined: 12/04/2011
This is the

This is the BoardGameDesignForum. So, from a designer perspective:

Maaartin wrote:

Yes, but do we really need such an excuse?

We who? We the designers? We certainly don't need it. But what about the standard player, the ones we are designing for? Need? There is certainly no need for that. But i think it's certainly helpfull.

Maaartin wrote:

In a two-player game, when you're sure to lose, you simply give up. There's nothing wrong with giving up, you save time and can another try in a new game. On the opposite, continuing a decided 2p game is plain stupid (unless the situation is exceptionally interesting).

I, give up? I personally, would probably give up a lost battle. I was a chess player in my youth so i had plenty of practice about giving up lost battles. The players our games are intended to? I won't guess, i will just say with absolute certainty that most players won't give up!

Maaartin wrote:

While the goal of chess is checkmate, hardly any game ends this way.

The reason most games of chess don't get to checkmate is because most games are played by experienced players. Every newbie player of chess always plays out until checkmate. The pattern is very strong. Not very experienced players *always* play until the game rules say it is over (or until all the players get bored with the game).

Maaartin wrote:

A small portion of luck helps only a little and a big portion turns every game into a sort of Ludo.

It is true.
As for a small portion of luck, that will have a small randomizing effect on the skill players play the game with, but it will have a much greater effect on the hopes of those behind.

Maaartin wrote:

We should look for a better mechanic allowing the fell-behind player to catch up; here diplomacy and rules preventing bashing the loser could help a lot.

What mechanics do you propose?

As diplomacy *and* rules that prevent baching the leader, i don't see how that is possible. If diplomacy allows for «allied» players to catch up, it means the «allied» band gained some advantage on the leader (hurting him or helping each other), which means they are bashing the leader. Also, the solution of "diplomacy and rules ..." is imposing diplomacy into a game. Some games we want to have diplomacy, others we don't.

Me, personally, i hate diplomacy in games. Diplomacy games always end up as "chip-taking" games. And, in my circles of friends, i always lose because they regard me as the most threatening player and always band together diplomatically to put me down. In many of the games, i really was the most skilled player. Yet i almost never won, because of their pattern of always eliminating me logically.

How can diplomacy ever be seen as better game style than luck? How can diplomacy ever be seen as better game quality than luck? Diplomacy is even worst than small~medium ammounts of luck in making better skilled players lose games.

Maaartin wrote:

Both multiplayer interaction and hidden information make dice IMHO redundant.

What kind of multiplayer interaction? Please don't tell me: "gang up on the leader"... I've suffered from that way too much in my board-gaming life.
About hidden information, that sounds an interessting option, at least for some games (probably not all). Can you give examples of how that can be used to substitute luck in a game?

Maaartin wrote:

- It's too easy to put too much luck in a game.

So? It is too easy to die being hit by a car. So?

Maaartin wrote:

While a short heavily luck-dependent game may be fun, playing for hours only to get your game ruined by the dice is waste of time.

That sucks, for sure. For example, if a game, by it's rules, always ends up with as D6 -> 1~3 i win, 4~6 you win, it's pointless to play it for 30 mins, even. Probably why the game length is usually related to the ammount of luck involved in the game. I, for sure, wouldn't make a long game have it's finish be heavily dependant on luck.

Maaartin wrote:

- Games including luck are much easier to design.

That is usually true but merely by coincidence. That cannot be stated as such.
My first versions of my civilization game were completely deterministic, as i said. I have been working really hard to add small controlled ammounts of luck into the game.
I think that, at most, you could say that their balance issues are easier to be masked.

Maaartin wrote:

Playing a game like [Stone Age with most of luck removed][sa] is not very demanding but a lot of fun for me, YMMV.

I followed that link but couldn't understand (maybe because i don't play Stone Age).
Care to explain how a deterministic game can be made light?

Maaartin wrote:

I haven't felt the need for excuses for losing since I was maybe 15.

Again, you don't feel the need... We are not designing games for ourselves. We are designing games for other people, for some market share. Most market shares will feel more confortable having excuses for losing.

Maaartin wrote:

desperadonate wrote:
I think one of the great things luck is great for is making it easier for people of different skill levels to compete and enjoy the game.

Yes, but [handicaps][] do the same, except for somebody having to admit they're the weaker player.

I think handicaps are a good idea and i have been planning them for my game. However, they are not easy to mentally implement by the players. I wonder how frequently and how far in handicap players are be willing to go. I think it mentaly hurts more the players being benefited than the other one. But this is just wild guessing.

Maaartin wrote:

desperadonate wrote:
Another aspect of luck is it can actually make the game more realistic, which is probably why just about every war game uses dice.

IMHO the real reason is that designing a good deteministic game is much harder. As for the realism, in [Sid Meier's Civilization][civ] I've seen Militia killing a Tank three times in a row.

Ok .. you're just going rampant on negating stuff. I'm done...

PauloAugusto
PauloAugusto's picture
Offline
Joined: 12/04/2011
mdkiehl wrote:Honestly, I was

mdkiehl wrote:
Honestly, I was expecting PauloAugusto to write more on how chance plays into game "style".
[...]
I think this discussion would be better spent discussing how luck mechanics impact game style rather than game quality.

I don't think there is anything wrong or unproductive with discussing luck as game quality.

Still, you brought up a really interesting point, also discussing luck as a game style. Like a wargame with more or less luck or with no luck at all. Or... A good point to be discusses, indeed, although in a new thread. But that is a much deeper discussion, me thinks.

If you have good theory about luck as a game style, feel free to start a new thread about it, i would be very interested in reading good writing about it (i miself am too busy to think and write about it).

pelle
pelle's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/11/2008
Maaartin wrote:While I agree

Maaartin wrote:
While I agree with many things in this thread, I'd say that luck (unless used homeopathically) is a style, but most of time a bad one.
On one hand luck is necessary to make some games work at all, on the other hand it makes many games worse.
Let me explain why I do think this.

Clearly you are a very competitive player that do not find much enjoyment in games beyond the pure struggle to master the game and show off your superior skills. That is very much the opposite of why I play boardgames, and I think dice are very useful in "simulation"/themed games were it doesn't make sense that the "player character" in the "game world" can know beforehand if an action will be successful or not.

Besides you underestimate the skill involved in planning for bad-luck, having backup-plans etc. Often someone blames the dice when really it was bad moves (or opponent's good moves) that was the problem.

Quote:
As for the realism, in [Sid Meier's Civilization][civ] I've seen Militia killing a Tank three times in a row.

Find a "real" historic wargame to take examples from instead. Not that 100 % realism is possible or sought after, but at least extremely silly things like that are usually not possible, and much of the design work and playtesting is about identifying and eliminating such problems.

Of course allowing for rare freak events is often considered a good thing. It's the things that give players something to talk about IRL when they discuss a game. Annoying when it happens to you perhaps, but fun when you are still talking about it 20 years later with your friends who also all remember it. Not that militia destroying tanks in Civilization would work, since it is much too likely (so is militia destroying bombers...).

Besides there are dice-based games were the dice do not even the game out much or make it non-competitive. Advanced Squad Leader would be a good example. No use trying to play a very good player unless you have also practiced many hours per week for several years. BTW there are balance options in ASL scenarios if you need to give the weaker player some chance.

nfcribeiro
Offline
Joined: 12/20/2011
just my 2 cents

Luck vs no-luck is probably the most classic discussion topic when it comes to our community addressing great game design.

Personal taste is just that: personal. It all comes down to what is it that motivates you the most when playing a game: Is it sheer fun? Is it your competitive nature? Is it the tremendous challenge that some games pose to your mind? Or maybe it's just interesting player interaction, or the way the game works as a simulation of something in real life that you really enjoy? Is it how it fits the theme even?

Playing a game that largely depends on luck to win might not be enjoyable, but the same can be said for a zero-luck game where one of the four players is a much more seasoned gamer.

It's hard not to agree that if you want to mimic any kind of ramdomness (and ramdomness is everywhere) you need to let luck interfere.

Both extremes of this spectrum are present in my top ten games, so I guess I'm just easy to please =)

PS: the slut-machine made me lol ^^

HoopCatCharlie
HoopCatCharlie's picture
Offline
Joined: 09/10/2011
Role of Luck

Very interesting conversation. I think that that as a matter of game design, the role that luck should play ultimately comes down to the questions of what are you trying to accomplish with your game? And who is the target audience that will be playing your game?

I thought that Paulo Augusto did an excellent job stating some of the benefits of luck and limited(controlled) random outcomes in game design.

Yes, introducing the luck of a die roll to chess would completely destroy the essence of what makes chess what it is. But not everybody wants to play chess.

In my case, I am trying to build family and children's games. Because skill levels are unequal between siblings of different ages, some randomness is absolutely necessary as an equalizer to give a younger player enough of a chance to keep the interest. The balancing act is to introduce enough randomness to give a less-skilled player the opportunity to sometimes triumph over those with more skill, yet not so much chance that bad decisions go unpunished and good decisions go unrewarded.

Also limited controlled chance can be used to vary the game enough so that no two matches are exactly the same. Some random chance can create circumstances where a player can no longer follow their favorite strategy and must come up with a plan B in order to win. (and I think a well-designed game should have more than one path to victory, but that would be another topic).

pooryorickgames
pooryorickgames's picture
Offline
Joined: 12/19/2011
PauloAugusto, you asked about

PauloAugusto, you asked about diplomacy and "ganging up on the leader". I do realize that a lot of the time, that's what ends up happening in diplomacy. I wanted to present another alternative. Because I've seen that happen a lot of times, I decided that if there was going to be diplomacy in the game I designed, Villains!, that it needed to be regulated. The Alliance rules I created make it so that:

1) Alliances must be declared, and they have clear benefits in the game.
2) Alliances must break down after a given number of turns, and the parties must turn on each other.

The specific rules listed above fit the game thematically, which is why I chose them, but that doesn't mean that other games where diplomacy could play a part can't have their own specific rules governing them.

As for the original post concerning the effects of randomness on a game, I think personally that one can still have a skill-based game, and randomness (or "luck") only adds a particular flavor to the soup. Does it heavily affect the mechanics? Of course, but there is also the type of randomness, whether it is purely numerical (dice) or strategic (which card will I draw out of the 50? Which mechanical ability does this card give me, and how/when will I use it?).

Randomness can even change the game (Fluxx, for example) where rules are drawn randomly. Although Fluxx is an extreme case, this sort of feature could be toned down merely to bring spice and interest, as well as replayability.

Just some thoughts, what do you guys think?

Spoonful
Offline
Joined: 11/22/2011
Luck!

This debate always surprises me. Hasn't everyone had moments in their life that went better or worse than expected? Luck can be exciting and very life-like. It seems like some people are more comfortable straining their logical reasoning skills and other people are more comfortable dealing with the anxiety and emotional strain of luck. Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle. I usually enjoy a healthy mix of luck and meaningful decisions which I don't see as opposites, but rather two game elements that can support each other.

Maaartin wrote:

In a two-player game, when you're sure to lose, you simply give up. There's nothing wrong with giving up, you save time and can another try in a new game. On the opposite, continuing a decided 2p game is plain stupid (unless the situation is exceptionally interesting).

As a player, I never give up. I like games that are interesting to play regardless of whether I'm winning or not. I'm generally more concerned with the challenge than the outcome. Also, I was always taught not to give up on something just because you're losing.

As a designer, I like the challenge of creating a game that doesn't get decided or less interesting prior to the end. Would you turn off a movie halfway through if you figured out the ending? If so, it probably wasn't a very good movie to begin with.

Maaartin wrote:

- Games including luck are much easier to design.

I disagree. Luck-based games present a huge design challenge in the fact that anything can happen. You have to design a game that will work regardless of whether people are rolling 1's or 6's, drawing aces or deuces.

Maaartin wrote:

Playing a game like [Stone Age with most of luck removed][sa] is not very demanding but a lot of fun for me, YMMV.

Just to offer a different perspective here, one of my favorite parts of Stone Age is that agonizing decision of how many workers to place on a resource. Part of me wants to play it safe, but part of me wants to risk using fewer workers so that I have more to place elsewhere. If you remove the luck, you remove that decision and the tension and excitement that go with it.

Further, I would argue that removing the luck from Stone Age makes the game less skillful and less interesting because there are fewer decisions to be made. This is like turning chess into checkers.

PauloAugusto
PauloAugusto's picture
Offline
Joined: 12/04/2011
pooryorickgames wrote: As for

pooryorickgames wrote:

As for the original post concerning the effects of randomness on a game, I think personally that one can still have a skill-based game, and randomness (or "luck") only adds a particular flavor to the soup. [...]

I think there is one important difference to be noted: randomness is not the same as luck. Randomness sometimes is luck but not always.

For example the most famous Catan. The resource collecting through the dice is random and has luck involved. However, the startup consists on randomly distributing the hex terrain tiles but has no luck involved. It will never affect negatively/positively one player over the other. Randomness but with no luck involved.

I haven't mentioned this in the original post but maybe i should. Actually, maybe that could be an entire new discussion.

pooryorickgames wrote:
[...] I decided that if there was going to be diplomacy in the game I designed, Villains!, that it needed to be regulated. The Alliance rules I created make it so that:

1) Alliances must be declared, and they have clear benefits in the game.
2) Alliances must break down after a given number of turns, and the parties must turn on each other.


That sounds good, indeed. I have been thinking about formalizing diplomacy into my game (like peace treaties and stuff) but i am still undecided.

mdkiehl
mdkiehl's picture
Offline
Joined: 12/10/2010
Luck ot Not?

Sometimes I think the biggest luck factor in a game is turn order. With chess (and many other games, like tick-tack-toe) some players think they have more or less advantage by going first. Sports games like volleyball even have these issues sometimes. The coin toss often means too much. Who goes first is often a problem with games that "have no luck mechanic".

I have often seen people playing rock-paper-scissors (Spock) in order to resolve the turn order issue... or thumb wars.

Regards,
Matthew Kiehl

http://mdkiehl.wordpress.com

Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut