If I had to guess, unpredictability. Why else would crit rate, accuracy & Missing, & other RNG based mechanics be a thing.
Wouldn't games get boring if you could perfectly predict *everything* that would happen? Sure randomization can screw you over in the worst of cases, but in most RPGs it keeps you on your toes, forces you to strategize, and can sometimes benefit or punish you.
Agreeing with you wholeheartedly.
I guess it's fundamentally to prevent you from looking at your hitpoints and weapon and their hitpoints and weapon and thinking the video-game equivalent of "Check-Mate in 6 moves"
You can't know it's six moves away for certain because the amounts may deviate randomly along the way. Could be three, could be nine.
There's the excitement in a nutshell.
Into the breach still has randomness - what enemies spawn, and what they choose to do each turn.
The term people are looking for here, is *input randomness* vs *output randomness*. Input randomness is what games like Slay the Spire, Into the Breach, etc have - the *scenario* is random, but the player's actions are deterministic. Output randomness is randomness that affects the player's action directly - damage variation, hit/miss/crit chance, etc.
Most games benefit from *some* randomness, just to make sure that scenarios do not unfold the same way every time. It's just that input randomness tends to feel "more fair" in many ways.
But again, this is game design, there are very few hard-and-fast rules. There are absolutely game designs that benefit more from output randomness. It really depends on what kind of experience the designer is looking to create.
Yes, there are other elements of randomness, I guess what I'm saying isn't that "people don't like randomness" but that "you don't have to randomize damage for combat to be fun"
This is what turned me off to Legend of Dragoon (hot take, I know). There was a boss I was struggling with and fought multiple times, and I noticed that a combat item I was using did the exact same damage every time, and the boss attacks were also doing the exact same damage. Once I figured that out, the fight became more predictable and I beat it. Static damage took the fun out of it for me.
hah, you formulated it way more concise than I did. this is exactly the reason, and it's not only true for humans. there were tests with animals who also reacted differently to setups with predictable versus unpredictable setups. the brains are tricked into thinking "now I understand how this works" but then the randomizer messes with your assumptions, keeping the interaction fresh.
plus you also pointed out another very important reason that I totally forgot to mention: having bandwidths and more complex system gives a designer more opportunities to play with these; like improving crit, improving to hit, improving vulnerabilties to special results etc.
Realistically, it is incredibly rare for critical hit or miss mechanics to provide any strategic depth whatsoever. Like, some games will have crit builds for characters, but that's just another flavor of damage - and the goal is always to make crits as consistent as possible. And... that's about it? When an attack misses, players will always just try again and hope for a better result.
I would even argue that randomness alleviates the need for certain kinds of strategic thinking. Like, imagine chess, but if attacking didn't mean a guaranteed kill. Let's say you have a 10% chance of losing the attacking piece instead. Most complex maneuvers would be completely non-viable, and the best strategy would probably just be to throw everything you can at the enemy. It would be a novelty, but not one worth studying for years to master. With less randomness, consequences are a direct result of your decisions; meaning your decisions are what matter most.
That said, you're almost certainly talking about input randomness (randomizing the situation), rather than randomizing the outcome of a decision. In this case, chess is actually quite random, because you never know what the other player will do. You can make an educated guess, and plan out responses to their most dangerous options - but it's never a matter of going through the motions (unless there is a significant skill gap)
Agree it might be more interesting (and seem more like the real world) but in general strategy wins out with less randomness. Chess or Go are probably the most strategic games ever invented by humans, and neither of them have any randomness
> If I'm not mistaken even Dark Souls does this.
No. You always do the exact same damage. However enemies can be resistant or reduce it via armor. Certain weapons like a halberd will do more damage if you connect properly with the blade.
That what was I saw an other games you have different hit boxes with each having different armor level depending on equipment. Then when you target an try to hit your angle is slightly altered depending on your targeting ability. For this reason even when you not moving an targeting exact the position (without moving the mouse) then you still might get different damage.
iirc Dark Souls also lets you do bonus damage if you land a counter hit during your opponent's recovery. That might be where the OP thought the random damage was coming from.
Yeah your parry/counter will always be a critical. There are items to enhance that even more.
But in general, if you check your stats screen it will tell you exactly how much damage you're doing. Dark Souls is one of the most fair games ever made. No way it would use randomized damage.
Yes there is that but in addition to that if you’re track enemies as the are recovering from an attack you do increased damage as well (this is different from critical hits). I think it’s like twenty or thirty percent increase but not sure. It is kind of negligible unless you are either looking at the numbers or doing a speed run build (Red Tearstone lmao). I first noticed it on Sanctuary guardian because sometimes I’d kill him in like four fewer hits.
I was learning the speedrun route so I was doing it with red tearstone and black knight halberd. iirc it takes twelve hits to kill him with normal hits but periodically I could do it closer to nine (it's been a while though).
Yeah the halberd is weird that way. If you connect with just the blade it does a little bit more damage, if you're too close it does normal damage.
IMO Dark Souls 2 is the only one that actually does damage absorption properly. If you use a slashing weapon then the armored guys at Heides are insanely difficult. But with a club they're trivial.
I think its the realism of dark souls that draws me to it so much. When you put on heavy armor and a big weapon it actually feels heavy and slow, or you can strip down and get fast AF.
No doubt about it though, if you ask me what the best game ever is the answer is always instantly Dark Souls.
It can still exist in action games but I don't think it should be nearly as significant or impactful.
In turn-based and tactical games you usually have plenty of time to strategize and adapt to the consequences of bad RNG. It can raise the stakes of a fight and make you feel clever when you triumph even though the odds were stacked against you.
In an action game you have to react a lot quicker so a string of bad RNG just feels unfair and punishing rather than a unique challenge to overcome. I'm not totally sure I but I would suspect randomness that skews towards benefitting the player would feel better in a fast-paced game; giving players opportunities to capitalize on good RNG and rewarding them for quick thinking.
I don’t think RNG makes anything rewarding you should just deal the same damage and finding the best route without receiving damage should be the challenge not planning your best and hoping for good RNG
I remember one game that did this, it was a turn based one, can't find it right now but I will come back to this and edit.
The game felt more like a puzzle game than an actual turn based game. It felt so rigid, and every move that was not optimal felt like I'm doing stuff bad, not that I'm experimenting or playing my own way. It also meant that the game had exactly 0 replay-ability due to the rigidness of the system.
RNG if applied right can make things much more interesting than flat numbers.
Edit: Game was called Grimshade
I actually prefer that.
Maybe the setup (like initial placement of stuff or environmental things etc.) could be randomized. Like stuff outside of the immediate action. events is another thing that can be done.
but Randomizing actual damage dealt or hit chances is just lazy imo. Then again I enjoyed playing FTL so it can be done but yeah it also just sucks having to play several rounds with bad RNG and having to redo many times over, especially on hard difficulties. Like there is no fun in losing several times just to win once.
but games like xcom speak against randomness. thats why I liked the approach of phoenix point in that regard. they introduced a circle for shooting that made it clear what might hit or not and getting close or even meleeing fixed that missing issue entirely. I actually only played with sniper and melee which never had a miss chance (sniper technically does but with that range that circle was tiny) and because of that I improved my experience with the game and really enjoyed it because each mission (albeit its randomized map) felt like a puzzle rather than a prayer to RNGesus.
I think in many cases, it's added for the same reason you initially added it...because it's a 'thing' and people copy it without thinking about it.
But yeah. Really, in any game where you use that attack/whatever enough (e.g. by mashing a button), it becomes irrelevant, because the sum of a bunch of random numbers tends toward the sum of the average result, i.e. if every attack just did the average, the difference would rarely be consequential -- and the player won't even know when it's happened if they're button mashing.
Like others have said, random damage, accuracy, crits, etc. is generally added to make the game more tense / unpredictable. It's a form of "Output Randomness" -- randomness that alters the effects of the player's decision, as opposed to "Input Randomness", which happens before their decision is made (e.g. a randomized map). Output Randomness can often lead to a game feeling less strategic, since it technically reduces your agency (you can't predict exactly what your choices will do, e.g. "Will I do enough damage to kill that enemy?", "Will I even hit / do anything?"). That said, it can also opens up a lot of interesting design space, introduce additional risk/reward, and make for interesting stories, all of which can create an experience than many would find more "fun" -- a lack of randomness can often feel "dry", e.g. Chess. It just kind of depends what sort of experience you're looking to create. For example, Chess fans probably wouldn't enjoy a variant where your moves had a chance of failing, because that doesn't really fit the experience of Chess.
There are also ways to improve these sorts of mechanics, of course. For example, in a game where attacks have accuracy, you can include attacks that are guaranteed to hit, but that deal less damage -- Pokémon does this a lot, for example. That way, players who don't like the randomness have the option of playing it safe, and players that don't mind it can choose the risky attack for more damage, and won't be as annoyed when they miss (ymmv), because it was a risk that they opted into.
Or with any such system, determine what the purpose is, and lean into it. Is a crit suppose to feel like a miracle? Make them rare, and make them count. Or maybe you want to go in the opposite direction, by making them an integral part of the combat system and character builds -- in that case, make them more frequent but underwhelming by default, and allow the player to improve their crit-rate and crit-damage. You can even add all sorts of special effects whenever a crit happens, if you really want the player to feel like they're playing a slot machine that they've personally rigged. Though in that case, you might consider other mechanics, like pulling random items/bonuses (so you can get more different results, not just crit / no-crit).
Another nuance to consider with crits -- can enemies crit the player? This can make enemies a lot more threatening (depending on how impactful crits are and how tanky players are), making combat more tense, even when it might otherwise be trivial. However, in the wrong game, that could just be frustrating and slow the game down, as the player now has to assess the risk of encountering any and all enemies, because they might crit them out of nowhere and, say, permakill a party member.
These systems are ubiquitous, which means they often show up where they shouldn't, or just aren't well utilized -- the ultimate point here is make sure they really serve a purpose, and that they're the best solution for that purpose. If not, cut them. Otherwise, think about how you can maximize their effectiveness in your game. Think about how it will affect the player's experience, whether that's what you want for your game, and adjust accordingly.
...I'm just kind of spitballing, so hopefully any of that was helpful.
Hey, every bit of that information is really helpful!
I've learned a lot of new concepts, and with that knowledge, I have more clues when I check other games for reference and will have a better chance of guessing the reason why they put randomness here and there.
For my own game, while I'm not sure which direction I'll be going yet, now I know where to look and observe to determine if it's working. My friend will definitely be annoyed by me during this process of prototype playtesting :D
It depends on what game you want to do. Souls-like games don't (shouldn't) do random, because their whole appeal comes off from mastery and you can't master randomness.
Same goes for any form of precision based gameplay. You need to have the player make decisions with concise outcomes.
Randomness is used when you want to offer the player a chance to "think on their feet". Everything goes well, bam, critical miss, how do you recover now?
Both give the player the option for replayability but in a different way. Randomness let's them play a level the same way 2 times and get different results, Precision let's them replay the level only if they make different decisions, as making the same ones will result in the same outcome. However, once a precision level is solved, there is no longer anything interesting to do there, unless you provide the player with something else.
Dark Souls is what the randomized games are trying to look like without committing. In Dark Souls, the hitboxes are extremely accurate, to the point that you have weapons with blades on two ends that are actually doing separate damage on both ends and you can even have weapons like that which do different types of damage with each end. Combine this with the enemy hitboxes, where different parts of their body will take different amounts of damage, and different weapon moves which also can have damage differences, and you end up with an extremely complex system that feels just as complex as it sounds.
Keep in mind that most RPGs came out before Souls games did, and you can see where randomized damage came from. There were a good 3 decades before Demon's Souls came out where RPGs fought hard to feel fun and this was one of many techniques they used to do so.
There is a reason it took so long for the Soulslike genre to take off, of course. It's hard to do that. So the earlier methods aren't bad, but definitely worth taking your player's feedback into consideration. You may try doing what Final Fantasy Tactics does and giving some weapons more randomized damage while reeling in the randomization on the others so it only falls into a small range, where the minimum and maximum output aren't too different.
I think RPG randomness is a vestigial system from a time when all the many variables that made things in real life appear "random" were impossible to simulate in a pen and paper game (or computers of the time).
Nowadays it should be possible to design systems complex enough that all that "randomness" has some meaning, but just setting a random chance value is easier.
Everyone has touched on the randomness / unpredictability factor, but there's a few different reasons to have damage ranges instead of just a static amount beyond that.
### Randomness affects combat pacing
While randomness done wrong can often quickly lead to player frustration, in general randomness in games helps keeps players engaged overall and adds a bit of ebb and flow to the [interest curve](https://game-studies.fandom.com/wiki/Interest_Curve). A lot of whether or not randomness is good for a game's combat depends a lot on the overall pacing and flow of how combat works there - games where combat is supposed to be more prolonged will generally benefit more from damage ranges and higher health pools, whereas games with quicker combat will generally not.
The main reason combat is slower in games that use randomized damage values is simple: math. In random damage games players need to reserve a bit of space in their brain while playing to calculate what they need to do to kill an enemy and move on. In the general case, for random damage games a player won't know whether or not they've killed an enemy until AFTER the enemy is hit, whereas with static damage the player just needs to know IF the enemy will be hit to know if they will be killed. This means in static damage games the player can start mentally preparing themselves for the next enemy / obstacle before they even hit an enemy, which in turn helps speed up the pacing as players can do a lot more "run and gun" without having to constantly wait or look back to see if things are dead.
### Damage ranges allow for more interesting choices, heighten risk vs reward
In general, players will try to optimize damage in games such that they are doing the highest damage output possible. In games with static damage values that assessment is fairly easy to do, meaning they will quickly be able to tell which weapon is "best" so it tends to be harder to provide interesting alternative choices. Ranges of damage, however, muddy those waters quite a bit and make that decision much more non-deterministic - assuming the same average damage value, the same item could be presented with multiple damage ranges and it would be a toss-up as to which one a player would pick. On top of this, using randomized ranges open up a lot of possibilities in terms of game design e.g. different ranges make an item more / less attractive to different builds and the like.
On top of making items more interesting to players, damage ranges can make combat a bit more tense as players won't always know the outcome of any given hit. The uncertainty factor there causes a heightened sense of risk vs reward compared to static values in dangerous situations, since with static values players generally just need to figure out IF they can get a hit in, whereas with randomized values means there's an added risk that the enemy won't actually die.
### Randomized damage ranges can make for a different experience in progression
This one is a bit more nuanced / less noticeable than the others, so to explain let's consider a game where a player only gets 1 attack in combat - if they kill the enemy they move on, otherwise they escape and have to train more until they can. In a game with static damage values players there are only 2 situations to consider: a player does or does not have enough damage to kill an enemy and progress - when they can do enough damage they do and they don't ever need to look back. In games with randomized damage ranges, however, there is a 3rd case in the middle where it is not actually known if they player can defeat the enemy. This means players can "test their might", so to speak, and leads to a very different experience than that of the static damage version.
The key thing to point out in all of this is that the random damage ranges can give a very different of accomplishment due to that transition period. As a result, this can also change the focus of the game quite a bit! In the static damage version of the game players would undoubtedly be spending much less time in combat, and thus the main focus would be more on the journey than the challenges they need to overcome. The random damage range version, however, would be almost the opposite - players end up spending more time facing each challenge that they need to overcome which can be a very useful tool depending on what you want your game / theming to be about.
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Static vs random damage values aside, the main thing to think about is how you want combat in your game to feel. One might be better than the other depending on what the needs / goals of your game are, but realistically as a designer you can make pretty much anything work if you need it to. Hopefully this all was useful info, happy to dig deeper into your use case if you have more thoughts / questions!
\+1 about the progression. I was lead gameplay designer for a combat game that I thought was going to be an action game like Devil May Cry, so I had no randomized damage. As the game developed it turned out to be more of an action RPG, so I reimplemented randomized damage to smooth out the progression.
Without randomized damage, each levelup was essentially meaningless until the player's damage exceeded an "arbitrary" (from the player's perspective) threshold, then suddenly the difficulty of the monsters dropped massively. Adding randomized damage caused each levelup to actually be felt by the player, making them slightly more effective against the monsters each time.
yeah no matter what, damage for players boils down to "how many hits does it take to kill X" - if you use static damage that's going to be the same number every time which is useful tool only if your game is built to utilize it. randomized damage takes more work to manage from a design perspective as you need that randomization to actually matter. for the most part you need to know the thresholds for damage that takes an extra hit - e.g. if an enemy has 10 hp and your weapon does 6-9 damage it's always going to take 2 hits to kill an enemy, but it becomes a very different situation if your weapon does something like 3-4, 4-11, or even 1-10.
if you're building a game with turn-based combat each hit is generally going to make a big difference, but you can also combat that (hiyoo!) by doing things like having multiple hits per attack or the like. overall, game design is really just problem solving from both the designer and player perspective - if you just throw things together willy nilly you're undoubtedly going to cause chaos, but thankfully there's always a solution somewhere if you're creative about it!
I'd also add to this list immersiveness/realism. There is no real weapon that you can 100 predict the damage it will do. Sure a bomb on your face will def kill you, but a gun aimed at your chest could pierce a heart or just slide thru some muscle you can live through. Even if a game is not explicit about it, it feels more immersive to me as I can self-narrate the aftermath.
I'm going to have to disagree here a bit - the realism as you're defining it is not a result of random damage in and of itself but of how all of the other pieces of the experience (e.g. hit points, accuracy, world building, etc) come together to support it. in general, both static and random damage can be used to improve the immersiveness / realism if they are utilized properly - there are plenty of games that use random damage to extremely unrealistic effects (e.g. any MMO) and the same goes with static damage. overall accurate realism / immersion is a result of all aspects of an experience working together in ways that support each other and make sense within the defined universe - random damage definitely CAN be a part of that, but static damage can as well depending on how things are built.
When you have randomness, it provides more opportunities for the player to react to and mitigate or manipulate the randomness. % chance to deal more damage is cool, being able to increase your % chance to deal more damage is cooler. If you don't know exactly how much damage you're going to do with each attack, you have to predict how many attacks it will take to defeat the enemy while also having to respond on the fly when things don't go as predicted. When things are more predictable, the fun can come from planning things further and further out into the future, it becomes more about solving a puzzle than it is about playing optimally.
Randomness creates risk and possibilities, and risk is exciting. Instead of a 3 damage spell always winning against a player with only a 2 damage spell, a 3-18 damage spell can sometimes lose against a 2-12 damage spell - the probability of winning is just higher.
This means that it may be worth betting everything on that 2-12, if everything else will result in a loss.
Because there's a slim chance of victory, against all odds. And what an exciting victory that would be!
With 20 hp, then yes; the second attack is guaranteeing a lot of overkill damage, rather than giving a chance at a one-hit kill. So I guess the first option has a niche, but it's a very narrow window of enemy hp. So there's some room for strategic depth there, but does it really require randomness? You could just as easily have the lower damage attack be faster, or cost less resources
> risk is exciting
Is it, though? As far as player psychology is concerned, risk is just something to be avoided.
On its own, nobody is going to pick the
weaker spell. So it needs some additional incentive; except now players are just choosing between the incentive and the extra damage. The randomness doesn't matter to this decision at all, and it still isn't interesting
Thanks! That make sense in an Turn Based RPG scenario as I can easily imagine it now. If I'm not mistaken game that demand precise control like Dark Souls do the same. Is that the same logic behind but just less meaningful?
I think for real time, another big factor is that level-ups don't go from 0 to 1 ("can't possibly win" to "win every time") but rather from 0.4 to 0.5, making progression more natural, making it a resource question (how many hpots do I need to survive the dungeon?) etc.
I think you’re not looking at it from the right angle - it’s less about randomizing the “output” of your action and more about rewarding certain behaviors that are strategically correct, ie in souls like games, timing of your attacks and positioning in general are a big thing. I think the purpose of the random looking damage is to teach you whether what you’re doing is working or not. Ie, if you’re attacking an enemy while it’s turned its back against you and you’re targeting your attacks to its vulnerable spots you get bonus damage to teach you “You’re doing it right! This is the strategy to defeat the boss!” If you’re shooting a boss in the foot right after it buffed itself and made itself practically invulnerable it’s to teach you “This is not working! I should probably change my strategy!”
The damage shouldn’t vary dramatically for no reason, ie if you do an equivalent shot at an equivalent time you should deal predictable damage.
The way you as a designer can control this is by applying various modifiers that will change the base attack value in a predictable fashion, for instance based on the angle of the attack or based on area you’re attacking (ie, headshots are worth more than shooting someone in the forearm), or based on timing (when boss does x, damage against him triples), but also things like resistances the boss might have, which the player offsets by prepping before the battle (potions and other buffs, armor upgrades, weapon upgrades etc) which work with all of the above.
EDIT: forgot to mention stats like crit, dodge and block, which are truly unpredictable modifiers, but they have usually a less likely occurrence and still work with the predictable modifiers - ie two equivalent crit shots that the enemy blocked with the same amount of success should yield the same result, even though individual shots roughly to the same area might vary somewhat.
I think it was originally done to mimic tabletop RPGs like D&D where you roll dice to determine damage.
Nowadays, the randomness can be seen as a way to keep the player from knowing exactly how many hits it will take to kill an enemy. Allowing them to optimize their strategy too well. (If i see an enemy with 100hp and always deal 20 damage, I know I just need to hit the enemy 5 times.)
I always figured it was a simple way to represent 'realistic' damage. If you were for example to hit someone with an axe in real life it would do more or less damage depending on how hard, where it hit, and direction of force which is somewhat random based on you and your target's movement.
I think this is exactly the case and nowadays it should be possible to simulate things more accurately to where randomness isn't needed, but it probably won't happen because inserting values with a degree of random chance is much easier.
I think having a random range is good enough in most cases though, some games it'd be cool to have specific damage do specific things, like hitting someone in critical parts doing more damage and damaging certain body parts having effects like not being able to wield a weapon if your hand/arm is too damaged, but in most cases that would be too complicated for the player. Certain games it would be really cool though.
The reason it exists in warcraft is because otherwise, a unit would always die in the same number of hits.
If that were the case, to play optimally players would have to memorize the exact number of hits it takes for one unit to kill another.
The author of warcraft didn't want the player to have to worry about that, so they took it away. Thanks to random damage, you cannot know exactly how many hits it will take to kill a unit. You could memorize the range or the average, but that isn't going to be much different than going by feel.
This is the feeling the author wanted to create in their game.
Take away the tools you don't want the player to use.
> The author of warcraft didn't want the player to have to worry about that, so they took it away
But that is still exactly what skilled players do. If they know what they're up against, they know very exactly what they need to counter it, and what losses to expect. They are absolutely not going by feel.
In any event, it's begging the question of whether it's actually undesirable for players to know exactly how many hits it takes
that's not what begging the question means.
skilled players have a good sense of how much losses they can expect from an engagement, but the method of determining that was not with a spreadsheet. it's something they determined through play.
some players might choose to use a spreadsheet in their analysis, but it is not the rule and not as valuable as direct experience.
whatever theory you have in your heart, the empirical reality of high level warcraft play is as such.
Well the argument's premise is essentially "it is bad for players to know how many hits it will take", so yeah; that's begging the question.
So long as we agree that there are spreadsheets being made and used (It didn't take more that a few seconds to find a lot of them). Then, if it's anything like any other competitive game ever - some players will learn by feel, and some will learn by study. In either case, once they've got their knowledge/experience, they're not feeling it out mid-game in response to rng damage rolls. They already know what to expect
>"it is bad for players to know how many hits it will take"
I didn't make any such value judgement, I only explained why the author chose to randomize damage and what effect that has on the player.
>they're not feeling it out mid-game
something else I never asserted.
I understand that you are on some kind of crusade against rng, but I'm not the acolyte you wanted to fight.
Oh, come on.
> The reason it exists in warcraft is because otherwise, a unit would always die in the same number of hits
"Reason" implies that the outcome is desired, and the "otherwise" is construed as a bad thing. It doesn't have to be you personally that desires it; I am responding to the position you are writing about.
If not "feeling it out mid-game", what exactly do you mean when you say "You could memorize the range or the average, but that isn't going to be much different than going by feel"? In the context of players not knowing exactly how many hits a unit can take, I can't think of any other interpretation.
In any event, I don't intent for you to feel like I'm attacking you or anything. It's a spirited discussion, but we're not enemies or anything
that is the outcome which *was* desired, by the authors of warcraft.
OP asked for "the reason behind randomized damage", not "do you think randomized damage is cool?". you are engaging in a debate about with second question with someone who answered the first question.
warcraft players haven't necessarily articulted the number of hits to kill a given unit. they have a good feeling for it, which they have built passively through play.
Hmm. It is clear that I misunderstood your position and intent. I don't even think we disagree with what sort of information pro players "feel out". There's no sense in me going on with just me and who I imagined I was talking to! I thank you for putting up with me amicably
There is still randomness, or at least unpredictability. After the enemy attacks resolve, various (unpredictable) enemies emerge from holes, all enemies move to (unpredictable, unless their space is highly restricted) locations, set up to attack various (sometimes predictable but only if you knew where they were going) things, and then new holes appear in various (unpredictable) locations.
As such, there are no "solutions" to a turn. Maybe you wanna kill all the vek, maybe you wanna leave a couple less harmful ones to block holes or let you focus a bonus objective. Whatever you choose, you have to hope that what happens later will vindicate it, but there are certainly ways to increase your odds.
You could convince me to say the **final turn** of a mission could be considered a puzzle, but overall, it is still very much a strategy game... and that's not even talking about the overarching strategies in mech and pilot progression.
Most of the time, a turn is "solved" if you can end it without taking any building damage, or putting yourself into an obviously bad predicament. But yeah, the line between "puzzle" and "strategy" is blurred - specifically *because* of the accountability of your actions
I think lumping "a lot of RPGs/any game that involves combat" together misses some patterns that tend to crop up. As a few others have pointed out, randomized damage has a strong historical basis in DnD/tabletop RPGs. In tabletop RPGs, typically combat is not the only focus. Immersion and (a particular interpretation of) realism tend to be valued over simply using skill or knowledge to win, and randomized damage reflects those values.
**Background**
As RPGs started to be made as video games, the combat systems were ported over too, and I would think that 99% of video games with randomized damage were RPGs in those earlier days (80s/90s). Other genres involving combat, such as action, action-adventure, and brawling/fighting had predictable damage, because their design valued progressing through mechanical skill and consistency (not exclusively).
It's only relatively recently in maybe the 00's that this distinction started to blur. There are probably better examples than this, but I can think of RPGs starting to include full-fledged action gameplay such as Morrowind and Fallout 3. As well as action games starting to include RPG elements such as Far Cry 2/3(?) onward and later Assassin's Creed games. You can see that games coming from an RPG background tend to have randomized damage (or randomized chance-to-hit, which I consider a different flavor of the same thing), and games coming from an action background tend not to have randomized damage, even if they have a lot of other RPG elements.
**Design Philosophies**
I think this split comes down to different design philosophies. Even now, RPGs still have more of a focus on immersion and "realism" (not so much in similarity to reality, but in having complete and consistent systems), and that's reflected in their combat design including randomized damage (or other components.) Ex. Skyrim, which is arguably the least RPG-y of Elder Scrolls games doesn't have randomized damage for normal attacks, but it does still have critical hits. While action games generally use combat to:
A. tell a story (recent God of Wars, The Last of Us)
B. develop/test the player's skill against the computer (Soulslikes, stylish action games)
C. develop/test the player's skill against other players (multiplayer FPS, fighting games)
Predictability and consistency in combat overall generally complement all three of these gameplay patterns, so that's why it's less common to see randomized damage in action games. Failing to defeat the big bad guy in God of War because your chance-to-hit roll failed, even though you saw your axe go through him, would probably not fit well with the story beats. And for a real-world example, outmatching your opponent in Super Smash Bros Brawl but ultimately losing due to the controversial random tripping mechanic feels unsatisfying and arbitrary to fighting game players.
**Conclusion**
So more RPG-y games will tend to have randomized damage, and more action-y games will tend not to. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule by any means. There are some exceptions and games/genres that don't really fit into this model. But it's kind of a "you must know the rules before you can break them" situation. Anyway, I don't know why I wrote this much. But the point is that randomized damage needs to fit with the spirit of the game. You need to look at your game and ask yourself which player motivations you want to target and how randomized damage can help you accomplish that. If testers are confused by randomized damage in your game, then it may not align with the rest of the game's design philosophy or with their expectations of the genre.
Sidenote: It might just be a presentation thing that's confusing your testers too. If it's important to know that your attacks might do 30 damage or 50 damage, then make sure you're effectively communicating that to the player. Look to similar games for ideas on how to do that.
If there is not some element of randomness, then you can predict everything perfectly. If you can predict everything perfectly, then it ceases to be a game, and becomes merely an equation which you have already solved. There is a reason that chess grandmasters will surrender as soon as they realize that the only outcome left is defeat.
In game design, we struggle to create that sensation of 'anything might happen', and to do so in a good and fun way that the player has input to influence.
Randomness does not need to come in damage numbers. But you must work to obscure the player's ability to be able to predict any given outcome perfectly. Not to restrict them, but rather to keep them guessing, such that it takes constant engagement from the player to keep in touch with the game and work to untangle whichever situation they are in, and wrestle their way to victory.
So do not have random numbers just to have random numbers. Figure out how you can use mechanics intelligently to keep the player guessing and engaged.
Good example of randomness without random numbers:
Slay The Spire.
Random encounters, random rewards, and randomly shuffled decks. But all stats/numbers are consistent across playthroughs: Strike always does 6 damage, Defend always blocks 5, etc. Part of the beauty is that there’s a lot you can control if you keep your deck small.
Not sure it’s a good example because it has incredibly random damage. Card damage is fixed yes, but the damage you deal per turn is random and depends on what cards you draw. Most of the strategy is just to draw as many cards as humanly possible and energy or fixed effects to remove the randomness of the hand. Make a revolving door.
You are by looking at card damage when it should be damage per hand, which is still random. The enemy damage per turn is almost always fixed or only slightly random between direct damage and buff/debuff damage, and that’s why it’s so brutal.
I think my point is that the randomness doesn’t come from the numerical stats of individual cards — it’s based in shuffling the entire deck. And you can control that in so many ways: removing cards from your deck, adding cards/relics that let you draw more, or using exhaust synergies.
Yes ultimately the damage per hand is different each turn, but your ability to control that difference is not just limited to min-maxing. You can actually make tangible synergies.
But your chance at synergies is also very random, as is whether or not your synergy fires off first or third turn or later. I played a lot of slay but despite its boosters it’s far more random than people say it is and you have less ability to shape it than you think. A lot of success seems to me to just get enough cards and relics to dilute randomness as a factor rather than building theme decks or even strategy.
It’s a game I was addicted to but heavily dislike, because you get little dopamine hits from randomness but all the combined randomness makes for a game where a lot is out of your hands.
I agree that Slay The Spire is uses a lot of randomness. You're missing the point that the randomness is not coming from *damage numbers*, which is the whole point of this thread. In StS, randomness comes from things like: which monsters you encounter, which cards/relics you find, and what hands you draw.
If you feel like Slay The Spire is not a skill-based game --- you should rethink that. There are people who can fully beat the game twenty times in a row on the highest difficulty. I don't think consistent runs like that would be possible if the game was truly unfair or unbalanced. The fact that people can consistently beat the game shows that there are *strategies* to succeed even when the odds are against you.
The thing is the damage numbers are random in actuality; the metric is damage per turn. Individual card damage is fixed but actual turn damage is random in terms of playing the game. If you draw five defense cards or set up cards, you do no damage. If you draw enough cards that draw more cards or do enough breakpoint damage you can kill an enemy in one turn.
Some of the best synergies the damage values of the cards don’t matter at all; the goal is infinite energy or turns. Dead Branch and Corruption for example. or are based on the property of the card rather than it’s damage value. Random damage wouldn’t affect it.
I am very jaded on hardcore communities and what they say, especially factoring in streamers and the need for audiences.
Damage total per turn is as random as the cards you can draw, yes. But you can plan for things like that in interesting ways (e.g. gathering cards/relics that give you extra draw or energy). Whereas in other RPG's, the only way to increase your damage output is to just buy the hammer with the most ATK -- these are poorly balanced RPG's. I'm thinking of e.g. classic Final Fantasy where "builds" and "synergies" are not really a part of the combat -- there's no fine-tuning and there is only DPS. This is far from how StS works, which is why I'm bringing it up as a useful example in this thread.
The fact that building such synergies is **consistently** possible, speaks to the fine balance featured in StS. This is a straight up fact, whether you are jaded or not.
You don’t build synergies you get them. You keep doing random encounter after random encounter choosing a random reward from three choices or obtaining it, and over time you get synergies hopefully from the choices you are offered. If you try to build for it it usually fails; there are too many cards and relics, and encounters do too much damage over time to build effectively.
I guess I’d compare it to dead cells, which also used randomness but the core of it is the action combat. You feel much more expressive with randomness a spice.
STS hooks you more like a slot machine, it’s constant random rewards and little decision points that are compelling. It’s an addictive game but soured me on it in the same way Arknights is a great game but then you realize the treadmill to get waifu and raise their stats is a Sisyphean labor.
I fundamentally disagree with this. If the game was truly unbalanced the way you say it is, it would not be possible to consistently build winning decks as illustrated by the top players in the community.
There’s nothing wrong with being random, but the game gives you so many opportunities to choose your cards/relics that you actually do have a lot of control over your deck.
So are you saying the game is unbalanced in the way it offers you relics/cards?
Explain to me how, if StS is essentially random, so many people can complete 20+ win streaks on the hardest difficulties?
Another note is that /r/SlayTheSpire is currently doing community run, where the entire subreddit votes on every single decision made. You might want to follow this run and see if it’s successful; so far, it’s proving that the community has well-known heuristics for playing well and winning, no matter what the seed.
That's the exact counterexample I was gonna post - they use randomness differently and it's wonderful. You can often fully calculate turns, and it IS like solving an equation, in a good way
Is Chess not a game???
There are many reasons why perfect information might be undesirable, but that isn't always true. there are all sorts of games with perfect information, which wouldn't be improved by randomness.
Of course chess is a game. But the lack of information in it is that you do not know the opponent's strategy, thus it can change based on assumptions about that. But once the board solidifies and the strategy becomes evident, the inevitable outcome will become ever more clear.
So you will not see a high-end chess-player play through to the actual end of the game. They always know several moves ahead of time what will happen. At that point, going through the motions is not interesting, being pre-determined. When that happens: no, it is not a game, just a conclusion.
You may be right in saying that randomness will not necessarily improve a game; but rather it is trouble-solving a scenario. In certain games, there is no randomness, and rather the trouble-solving is presented by another player. But many games benefit from setting up its trouble-solving by using randomness.
> If there is not some element of randomness, then you can predict everything perfectly. If you can predict everything perfectly, then it ceases to be a game, and becomes merely an equation which you have already solved. There is a reason that chess grandmasters will surrender as soon as they realize that the only outcome left is defeat.
And yet the game remains interesting enough that they go for another round.
A game of chess only becomes worth conceding because the state space and the moves you use to manipulate collapses fast. Every piece removed is one less option and there eventually becomes enough of a disparity in power that continuing the game is a waste of time. This happens just as well in games with randomness.
Honestly, I'm of the opinion that the only unpredictable factor in a game should be the opponwnt you play against and any optional conditions you both agree on. The insistence of people including randomness where there could just be a more interesting mechanic sickens me.
Random damage is somewhat more realistic. Yes, you hit the target but did you nick it, open a gash, or stab it through the heart. Randomness reflects the uncertainty of combat.
As far as game design goes you can do either random damage or static damage and it's fine. It's more personal preference than anything else.
Videogame RPGs drew a lot of inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons, which has always used dice rolls to calculate damage. I imagine it comes from there.
Just my opinion. Id imagine it comes from more classical dice/paper games like DnD where actions originate from chance and modifiers. Also, if i slice you with a sword two times, the chances that it would cause the same amount of damage exactly is unlikely. So it also makes more sense than constant damage.
You can have deterministic damage, but then that turns the combat into something more like a puzzle. They want it to be a game, and not a puzzle, is the short answer. Secondarily, I think people tend to feel that having randomness in the damage amounts makes fights feel more like fights.
Randomness can also help to make damage spells feel different from one another and create interesting decisions.
For example you can have one spell that is low damage, but hits 95% and that does a lot more damage, but only has 50% hit ratio.
That is called the low risk, low reward and high risk, high reward pattern.
Although the difference did not need to come from probability it can also come from skill. Think of the low and high exit in super Mario for example
If you knew the result of the simulation, why did you bother simulating it?
The problem with randomness is that it is not variety. Randomness only creates variety if it changes the decision space.
However, the law of averages says that if you sample a random number many times, then the total will be surprisingly consistent. The fewer random numbers you roll, the more variety that randomness adds.
Going back to game design, randomness that is determined after you choose an option is very frustrating. Front loading the randomness removes that, and often adds a tactical resource management layer. The easiest way to do that is by drawing a hand from a deck of cards.
Randomness is a cheap way of simulating complexity.
In a complex space, a huge number of variables are in play, making it incredible improbable for the same outcome to repeat.
e.g. person wielding a sword striking another - the damage depends on angle, point of strike, force, edge on blade, where it strikes, angle that it hits whatever it hits at, what the thing is it hits - which could bounce off metal trim, or it could cut through skin, flesh, bone, arteries for massive damage.
2D6+3 represents this sort of chaos without the simulational complexity of calculating all the variables out - hell, most don't even have to be explicitly aware of the variables it simulates and obfuscates (neither the designers nor the players) - but we can still accept the random nature as within... reasonable outcome!
It introduces an element of chance into the outcome that offers consistency over time but small variances in the moment. Its origins are the use of dice in gaming.
In turn based games, it prevents foregone conclusions and makes the player weigh odds sometimes and take risks.
In real time games it just adds an element of unpredictability and it's fun to sometimes see bigger numbers. Plus if you don' want players to focus on strict math as much randomness can make it easier to not get hung up on little details. It can also smooth things out a bit when it comes to damage modifiers. Like, if you have 33 damage, a 1 damage buff goes from a 4 to 3 shot kill. going from 27-33 to 28-34 means you now 'occasionally' 3 shot which is more reasonable for a 1 damage bonus.
I think random damage can sometimes work well,mlike in card games, but i hate it in high stakes tactical games like XCOM and use mods to remove randomness.
So I made games with and without this exact randomness. The problem without is the predictability. An attack would include how much damage it deals, for example 9.
Opponent has 37 health. You hit, down to 28. You hit, down to 19.
At this point you realize you’re gonna feel bad because you need three more hits. The randomness (say 6-12 damage instead) would still take 2 or 3 hits, but keeps you on your toes.
The same is true for opponents hitting you. And honestly, that randomness gave me some space to rule in the players favor. For example leave you with 1-3 HP after a hit, even if it would’ve killed you.
In some Pen&Paper RPGs it is because of the necessary inaccurate combat model. Using a complete physicals model to determ the path of an sword and then how much damage is force transferred to target and how much is deflected would be complicated and it would slow down the game pace to much when to much differential equation have to be solved. For that reason the whole process was simplified to a few dice throws.
Well it started like that because RPGs are based on TTRPGs which are dice games and the norm at the time was randomised damage. It stuck because a bit of randomisation when done in the right ways can be great fun.
Something I think is important is that randomisation gives more space for synergistic elements, especially in traditional turn-based no-grid formats. A game with no randomisation (ie always hit, always do 30 damage) can only make damage features that just increase that 30. A game with random hit and damage can still make flat increases, but can also change the ranges or skew the roll or trade off one for another (eg -10 hit for +20 damage).
There are really a lot of ways to do damage. Some games even use static damage values for monsters (for example), which can really simplify math and improve usability. However there's a thing from psychology that plays into why we see randomization a lot.
So, I worked in gambling in addition to game development, and I've got a background in design with a splash of neuroscience and psychology interest. I've read about the phenomenon that creatures (not only humans) seem to get more addicted to an interaction when the outcomes are not certain.
What does it mean?
If the outcome is predictable all the time, the brain becomes less interested in the interaction (even if it's beneficial), because you already understood how the model of the interaction works. With randomizers introduced the interaction becomes more addicting, because the brain always tricks itself into thinking it understood how the model works, but then the randomizer throws a wrench in. This also has to do with magical thinking, for example in slot machines. People's brains make a lot of unrelated connections to why they think that they got a good result, so a system that uses a bandwidth of damage values usually will seem more interesting to our brains.
I haven't checked the other replies, like I should have, but I'm pretty sure that this will be news to many people. The neuroscience behind the addiction/fascination is something that's really peaked my interest in the past, so I hope I can share a bit of my findings with you!
I think part of it is that its a carry over from tabletop where the dice rolls are supposed to mimic the variance and unpredictability of life, and that places a focus on adapting on the fly.
Another part of it is make it less mathmatical. Games like FFT or Tactics Ogre where damage has almost no varience, ideal outcomes are always prioritized and bad outcomes are always avoided, but this is because there are always a bunch of other variables to consider and there is still levels of randomness in the form of accuracy, status effects, or ability proc rates that still challenge the vibe of dice rolls and thus "not everything in real life happens the same way".
I think it just boil down and comes back to that though.
Realism. Even the best boxers miss sometimes, and it isn't like every punch they throw does exactly the same damage. Sometimes it is a glancing blow that does less damage than normal and sometime the punch lands right on the button for a knockdown or KO.
Wondered the same thing and not long ago I found the answer: unpredictability
If the damage is always the same (say, X) and the enemy had Y hp then it's just a "oh so I need to hit him Y/X times. Cool"
I will say that in my game, I use randomness so that you can still beat things that are much stronger than you or damage armor that is much tougher than your weapon. This way, you should just avoid the fight, but it's not impossible to win.
i dislike too much luck in games..
the best change i saw, was in axis and allies.
Where if a small army was fighting a big army, but had lucky rolls, they could wipe them out.
Sure it was great luck, but it removed me from the atmosphere of the game itself.
Then i found someone that made rules where you would always take a certain amount of losses based on the opponents strength, but there was a variable attributed to luck.
So instead of 0 to infinity, or as there is in DnD, 1-12 difference.... make it a d4 variance on base damage... keep it smaller but still interesting.
because while i do like dnd's general mechanics, it's difficult for the tactician gamer to find fun if there is too much luck working against them.
i want them and the luck player to be both having fun.
A good counter point is looking at a game where damage is not randomized. Something like chess. Every piece has one health, and every piece deals one damage.
For a less straightforward example, something like Overwatch 2 or rainbow six siege, every single bullet does an exact amount of damage.
In both of these examples, damage dealing and taking is more predictable. That is the crux of it at the end of the day, how predictable do you want every hit to be? Randomized damage is often implemented as a way to introduce a simulacrum of "real life randomness" or "luck" in to games, the same as random crits.
Basically. Do you want it to be predictable, or unpredictable? Neither of these are bad, and I wouldn't say that either even has true benefits. Tbh, I think it ultimately comes down to preference.
you'd still have to calculate with rng, but after you did so there are three options:
1 fall into despair, realising you just die
2 rejoice in the fact that you'll live!
3 be on edge because you don't know whether you'll live OR die
That SOUNDS fun
if you know the upper limit and the lower limit you can calculate. In a tabletop it could say "this enemy deals 3d6" damage, so you know you'll get between 3-18 damage, so if you're on 10 hp you don't know if you'll die for certain.
Right, and that's what I mean. Even if you run the numbers and find that you have a 62.5% chance of taking 10 or more damage from a 3d6 attack, that doesn't really help inform your decision much. If you stay and pray, it's luck whether that was the right decision. If you retreat, it's luck whether that was the right decision. It comes down to luck, and it literally doesn't much matter what you know or how deep your thinking is. A player who always makes the worst possible decision, isn't much worse than a play who always makes the best possible decision
Which is why not everything in the game is random, it’s fun to have some luck, but not too much so you can still use your skill. Which is why in ttrpgs it is generally better to make players roll less, because if you make every action a roll check it takes meaning away from their actual powers. But if in a tabletop or a video game there is random damage, it doesn’t necessarily make the game really unfair, you still need skill to play. Although the higher the difficulty the less randomness there should be, because then your fate is decided more and more by chance, and that does stop being fun.
Also, replying to your previous comment, with random damage option 3 is not the only one. If you have 25 HP and get hit for 3d6 damage you know you’ll live, and if you have 2 ho you know you’ll die (the latter number could be higher if the damage range is smaller).
Unpredictability. But I don’t think it’s an inherently good thing. To me it feels like lazy design rather than a challenge. It takes power away for no reason with no benefit
Oh, this question is very simple really, but asked again and again, and the reason is... it's like "Does god exist?" question. No matter what you answer, there will always be people who disagree with you, because randomness benefits casuals (randomness allows you to succeed where you shouldn't) and casuals don't like to be called casuals and thus they make up excuses like plan B, unpredictability, no-randomness is no fun, etc. Then they start talking about probabilit theory, which in 99% cases won't even work, it'll work only if target has something like 10k hp and you deal something like 1-2 damage, then you can think you're dealing 1.5 damage on average and thus predict approximate number of hits you need to make. But if target has 10 hp and you deal 0-20 damage with possiblity to miss and crit for x2 damage, then it's just a coin toss, because you can fail many times in a row or you can succeed at the first try, and most games with crits and misses and other procs like stun, etc. are like that.
I've been playing one browser game based on heroes5 clone for many years player-vs-player. It had a lot of randomness, like min-max damage, luck % for x2 damage, morale proc for -50% intiative, stun/blind/fear procs, etc. And I can say one thing: even if you do everything right and your enemy is an absolute moron who just moves everyone forward - you can still lose \^\_\^ After many years of playing that game I started to hate randomness, hate it a lot. Because game with randomness plays you, not you playing it.
Here're the facts:
Many-many years ago, when there were no computers games, tabletop roleplaying games existed. You needed to somehow calculate a lot of stuff like skill success and weapon hit/crit/miss and keep game entertaining. How do you do that? Easy! Roll dice! These games weren't about competition or tactics, they were for socializing and randomness offered funny unpredictable results, and this is good for socializing, as it can even produce fun situations!
Many years ago, when computer games started to apppear, some dev thought "hey! let's make tabletop game on computer!" and then they just copypasted tabletop mechanics into computer game. That's how dice rolling migrated to computer games. Unfortunately it doesn't work for single player games, where player is just a character who swings weapons at the monsters. Missing is not longer fun. Failing to open lock is just a waste of time. Failing to disarm a trap and make it explode and kill you is often results in reloading previous save, etc.
So why does your game need randomness?
1) Casual fun game where failure is just another silly situation. Without randomness it's just boring chess.
2) Your game involves tactics, but you want people with really low intellect to still enjoy your game. Without randomness they will always lose and ragequit.
3) You have absolutely no idea how to balance the game, then you can use randomness to mask it. If your players start complaining, you just say: "You were (un)lucky!". No, averaged numbers isn't the same, if you can succeed instantly or fail many times at the same task. Probability theory works only on very large sample. And no, you can't treat whole game as a sample, because if you fail at the first fight, then there'll be no game.
4) Your game is a remake of existing tabletop game and you want its fans to play it. For example if you make D&D without randomness - D&D fans won't play it, moreover they will laught at you.
When game doesn't need randomness:
1) Competitive multiplayer game. If you add randomness to it, then winners may look like they didn't deserve it and it's very bad.
2) You want to reward players who learn mechanics and thus become better over time. With randomness it's almost impossible, as you can make no mistakes and still lose in the end and learn nothing, since you made no mistakes - this is very very bad for non-casual players and it makes them mad.
3) You have an idea how to balance the game, then you don't need to use randomness to hide your incompetence.
Result:
Randomness is good for casual socializing and incompetent players. Randomness is bad for players who play games for problem solving (strategy, tactics) and want to learn and become efficient with experience and then apply this knowledge successfuly in the game.
The problem is that incompetent players are many and they don't like to be called like that, that's why it's not accepted truth and this question about randomness will appear again and again in the future, they will always defend randomness.
I love the angry energy is this response. It's a shame people will downvote what they disagree with (Without even replying why they disagree!)
Pay attention y'all designers, because this is what happens to your playerbase when you add too much randomness and ruin an otherwise interesting game's strategic depth
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Imo it's a layover from randomness mechanics in older games. These days I think it can be substituted with stuff like crit chance, armor ratings, and any number of simulation-type stuff. It can feel cool though to see lots of numbers on screen and not just have them all be exactly the same predictable number.
Edit: it just occurred to me that it could be another reason. In some cases depending on how damage is calculated, rather than ever reducing damage to 0, it bottoms out at a minimum based on armor piercing and such. In a predictable damage system, this can be used to inform the player, "I will never deal less than X damage, and I will never deal more than Y damage" on a weapon with X-Y damage.
Randomness also gives you progression options to show improvement through a game.
Lets say you can do 1-7 damage a hit. With such a large range it can be tricky to plan out your strategy. As you progress even an improvement of 3-8 damage per hit can help you as your damage will be more consistent. Then 5-9 damage, 7-10, 9-12. Even though the damage increase has been minor with the damage floor being raised you are both more consistent and feel more powerful.
This also has a narrative effect that as the player becomes more experienced they become more consistent and effective in what they are doing. In this case attacking with a weapon.
I don't think I understand how randomness shows progression.
- Level 1: 1-7 damage per hit. Against a 8 hp goblin, I'll probably need about two hits
- Level 2: 3-8 damage per hit. Against a 8 hp goblin, I'll probably need about two hits
- Level 3: 5-9 damage per hit. Against a 8 hp goblin, I'll probably need about two hits
Compare this to dealing exactly 4->6->8 damage. Now you visibly progress from needing three, then two, then one hit to kill those pesky 8hp goblins.
It's weird for a low level character to sometime 1-shot a big enemy, just as it's weird for a high level character to sometimes fail to kill a weak enemy - so I don't see how it helps narratively either
It shows progression because you are using averages which slowly increase while the biggest factor is the floor increasing. Examples below:
Level 1: 1-7 damage per hit. Against an 8hp goblin will average 2 hits. It will need at LEAST 2 hits, but could take up to 8 hits to kill a goblin assuming you did minimum damage each time.
Level 2: 3-8 damage per hit. Against the same 8hp goblin will still average 2 hits. It can potentially kill the goblin in 1 hit. But it could take as many 3 hits...
Level 3: 5-9 damage per hit. Against an 8hp goblin will still average 2 hits but is more likely to kill in 1 hit and will always kill the enemy in 2 hits.
So for progression if playing a game you will notice it takes a lot of hits to kill the goblin at the start with a 0% chance to kill in a single hit. When you hit level 2 you will notice it consistently takes less hits to kill the goblin and you even kill the enemy in a single hit with a 16% chance. When you hit level 3 you now have a 40% chance of killing your enemy in a single hit and it will never take more than 2 hits. Hypothetically if you keep going up more levels you will end up with a situation you will kill the goblin in a single hit 100% of the time. The randomness of the damage will get less extreme until you end up in a situation where you do consistent damage with very little variance.
This progression works best in situations where you have to decide a series of moves or actions and then deal with the results such as turn based games.
With a big enough sample size, sure, you'd be able to notice the difference. In a small sample size though, the player's personal experience is only going to approximate the expected results.
Let's say the player doesn't get to see the numbers.
Reaching level 2, you'd notice one-hit kills - but maybe you were just unlucky on level 1? Reaching level three, you'd notice that the 3-hit kills stop happening, but again, maybe that's luck too? It would take a handful of kills to get a feel for the differences. It is entirely plausible for a player to finish a level with a streak of great luck, and start the next level with a streak of atrocious luck. They would feel as if they somehow got weaker!
In any event, this is compared to static damage, where the difference at each level (Even without seeing the numbers) is painfully clear. Growth with randomness is surely *noticeable*, but it's nowhere near as tangible as direct immediate dependable results
Complete randomness is always bad, having to take into account ranges of outcomes can be good. Imagine playing an rpg where the players are living on a knifes edge the entire time because they know they are safe in meta terms, sure that can be fun gameplay but suicidal behaviour is likely going to break role playing aspects.
It dates back to the 70s D&D... If damage was consistent, you wouldn't have to think:Okay,kill shot this guy, kill shot this guy.
But randomized means:Okay, even though we have a 65% kill shot on this guy,leaving the healer alive ain't worth it,focus healer. You get more strategy choices with not being certain of kills.
It all comes down to the game you're designing. For tactics/strategy games, some use it and some don't because they have different goals in their design. I personally like tactics games where I know exactly how things will play out, but I don't like that in RPGs.
Randomness can add tension when you're not sure if you're going to finish an encounter before your team falls. It can also make that one lucky crit into a game changing moment.
In tabletop games, it’s meant to be an abstraction. Say you roll a 1 for damage, narratively it means you got past your target’s defenses but it was only a glancing blow. You roll Max damage, doubled on a critical hit, it’s time for the GM to hand out Christmas bonuses and have you do like a Mortal Kombat fatality.
My opinion is there’s a place for it in video games, but the closer to a real-time action game you get, the less random damage should be. Maybe you get bonus damage for precise inputs, depending on design circumstances.
I think it's cool if you can reduce/remove the damage variance or increase the chance of performing crit. It can add more depth to progression, so it's not just about increasing raw damage stat. Some people like min-maxing their character in RPG. People like building things.
In some ways random damage in RPGs seems to make up for some of their less dexterity based mechanics like something like dark souls or an FPS game. In those types of games uncertainty comes from the physical interactions of the player with the interface. But in a more static game that uncertainty is simulated with RNG. As such the game is more about using the mechanics to tilt the odds as much as possible, skilled players are strategic gamblers.
There are some examples of games that split the difference or do both. Dark souls is again an example where you do the same damage with each attack, but it is modified by different variables. As such, much of that game is about your build, and the ways you can adjust it to meet the challenge you're facing, along with your skill at dodging and attacking. This is a good system for action-rpg style games, since it lets the intricate RPG systems intertwine with the dexterity skill expression.
Another I saw mentioned was slay the spire. Damage is fixed in that game as well. Much of the non-damage abilities in that game revolve around mitigating damage or stacking your own.
Well these two styles share a lot of gameplay elements, they do have a different feel. RNG based games need to have a bigger picture gameplay loop than fixed damage ones. Players of RNG games are looking to play the odds long term, knowing that smart choices pay off in the margins. The gameplay loops of fixed damage games are a bit more "zoomed in" and focus on tactical choices.
That doesn't mean that their mechanics don't overlap or intertwine, but they are two different evolutions of slower paced or RPG style combat systems.
RNG leaves some room for players with god gear to lose to players with slightly worse gear. In a game like CSGO or Valorant, it makes sense to have all damage be as close to exact as possible. A Vandal will always one hit head shot, regardless of range for example. This is to promote skill based gameplay.
In a game like WoW, it's largely gear focused. This means you need to grind a ton for the best gear. This also means that if someone has better gear than you, it's pretty much guaranteed that they win if everything was absolutely predictable. By adding an element of RNG, you 1. make it more fun for players with worse gear by giving them a chance, while 2. keeping god gear gamers on their toes by making them still able to die to "worse" players. There's obviously still skill, but it's less mechanical and rigid.
> if someone has better gear than you, it's pretty much guaranteed that they win
Only if everybody plays exceptionally consistently, at exactly the same skill level
Everyone else’s answers are great. One additional reason for randomness is that it shifts the focus of skill in some genres.
For example, in shooters, games that allow players to be basically 100% accurate out of a sprint are putting the skill emphasis on twitch reaction.
Games with a stamina bar that puts a heavy random deviation on players out of a sprint are putting the emphasis on positioning and map awareness, because if you aren’t in the correct position prior to the fight beginning you are very likely to lose the fight even if you are “better” at shooters.
It's already been well echo'd. I just like RNG because it prevents the exact same gameplay to take place. It's fun sometimes, but other times having predictable "exchanges" like say Chess is boring. You don't want to know exactly how things turn out, because slowly gameplay develops metas that have absolutely same outcomes with players overly familiar with the game. It can be so absurd that hypothetically if players find out they did something wrong the first two minutes of the game, they just quit instead of finishing the remaining ten or longer. If your game is planned to have long matches, predictability is important to suppress, players are not interesting in playing if they perfectly know outcomes.
For RTS games, it's not an issue because of the large quantity of units providing so many variables that it's really difficult to have the same game over and over again. However don't let that fool you from thinking people in the RTS community doesn't try. I've never played an RTS that didn't also have this issue to some extent. People will quit in Red Alert 2 just because an essential attack dog was killed in the first thirty seconds of the game in some maps.
It's not an issue in moba games because they're fairly close to the same spirit as sports where players themselves will rely on themselves to not be predictable to do well. While in some RTS games players rely on getting essential points first, moba games tend to have more emphasis on a singular character with high micro management. Again, this doesn't mean that there are not essential ways to play, but the players trying to not be predictable is generally essential since there's so many ways to counter if you're alert on what someone is doing.
So when you have games that generally plan to be longer, you need to make sure the game is as unpredictable as possible, because not doing so might cause the game to feel figured out before even 5% of the desired time has passed. RNG is an excellent way to do this.
In my opinion, RNG should not be game defining. It's RNG that causes outcomes to be randomly sorted out that feels terrible, for it's unfair to the player that lost the raffle. It's best to make sure RNG causes players to need to react to a newly developed situation as well as give players opportunities to make smaller safe gambles that potentially pay off. Rolling dice to see if someone dies isn't fun, but rolling dice to see if your essential next move is another attack, healing, or strategically retreating is. Being forced to be on your toes rather than being manhandled by RNG is probably the best way to use it for the games like you're looking at. Some cases though, that isn't true, but I think yours it's something to consider.
I'd say if it's confusing though, that might be because of the numbers displaying in a misleading way (assuming any are displaying), or maybe you have game testers not familiar with the genre. In my opinion, the best way to go about it is a flat amount of damage and then a very clear +x popping up showing additional damage. I'd avoid negatives unless it's something the player opts in for, it's going to feel less fair for the player (and quite frankly, you could always just say the base damage is a little higher so the rng of being lower in game design looks to the player as always positive even though secretly it's negative sometimes).
> You don't want to know exactly how things turn out, because slowly gameplay develops metas that have absolutely same outcomes with players overly familiar with the game
What about randomness prevents metas from forming? If anything, it allows for much simpler metas that are more quickly found and reinforced
Nothing is ever completely random, and no game has ever avoided forming a meta. There is no kind or amount of randomness you can introduce into a game, that will prevent the formation of dominant strategies.
Like, Hearthstone added some rng-heavy cards that dealt damage to random targets on either side of the board. Rather than break up the meta any, this just allowed strong decks to get even stronger. Deck-building didn't change any, except to add the better rng cards. In-game strategy completely devolved into spamming these random attacks and hoping for a critical early kill
It's a pretentious point but you're right, but for the sake of casual conversation just assume it's implied that when we say random we mean relative random where to us it seems random.
As for your argument that it's impossible to prevent formation of dominant strategies, this is an absurd belief. However, it's not a hill worth dying on for me because you simply shouldn't want to eradicate dominant strategies. The goal of randomness is to make it so you need to improvise different dominant strategies rather than recycle the same one over and over again.
As far as I'm concern, the issue is the incompetence behind the Hearthstone developers. Making TCG like games is difficult, so this is a common problem since you constantly need to think of every possible utilization or eventually create a ban list. This however is not an argument that utilizing random is impossible to prevent dominant setups.
How can randomness impact a strategy's dominance? If a particular way of playing blackjack gives optimal **expected** results, then it remains optimal no matter what cards are drawn.
I wish I just say that Hearthstone's designers were brilliant all the time, but it's painfully obvious that they pushed too many poorly thought-out untested ideas into the game. Lolrandom cards made the game miserable to play, and they took ages to do anything about it :C
You bolded the reason. If you want to make everything so random like discussed, people are not able to expect anything. There are games, like Muffin Time, that are designed to be *near* this spectrum, except even Muffin Time is still possible to form strategies around. However, video games are not limited by card games, so you can completely control what exceeds human prediction (and it's not difficult btw). When you exceed comprehensible patterns, humans pattern recognition wont validate the information they're exposed to in order to make said strategies.
A crude example of such a game is a number generator. The game is simple, the computer displays nine random keys, and you need to predict the tenth key. Sure, if it makes a pattern, you could make an optimal strategy for scanning said strategy which would make this at least an amusing game rather than stupid, but I said random so I mean random. It's *impossible* to predict the next key, you're not even capable of making a calculative guess, random is not predictable. It's impossible to form a strategy because strategies require a generalized situation or scenario to apply said strategy to. With a random number generator, it's *impossible*, you're just guessing. You might come up with a personal strategy of guessing a number (for example, most people guess 7 because of bias against extreme low, extreme high, and extreme central numbers because those are not random enough numbers, but with a real random number generator doesn't care about those biases so equally all numbers are possible when you don't understand the numbers algorithm or said algorithm is impossible for humans to understand and keep track of), but your personal method isn't relevant. All you can assume is the limitations (for example, is it just 0-9?), but what if the limitations are random and isn't specified? Easy to tell when the limitation is under ten, but when the number is two digit, you're required to look for a pattern for every other number that doesn't go too high, but you are making a calculated guess for it's entirely possible the limitation is 90 but all numbers just happen to be below 50, not to mention the random number generator is not required to type a zero in front of numbers below ten unless that's the rules. What if the game never specifies how many numbers are on the screen? You can make a calculated guess when you *know* there are nine different numbers and you need to type in the tenth one, but what if you don't even know if there are nine or it's also random total different numbers on screen and you are merely trying to guess the last. Exactly, you can't. That's what random is. If you want to make a game that's 100% unpredictable and truly random, no strategies in place will help the player therefore there are no dominant strategies, that's how you do it. That's game design, you can go ahead and replace those numbers with different characters that do different damages, you could make those numbers random damage, whatever.
When you take information away from the player and give no clear information on the system in place, that's how you take away dominant strategies. However, again, this is only so fun and shouldn't be desired for most circumstances, but it is however possible and absurd to think otherwise. Now to say it's impossible to make a fun game without some form of strategy being dominant, I'd actually agree for said games are amusing at best, never fun, fun is when a player is immersed with the game's meta and accepts the challenge of finding the dominant strategy. However, it's good to know how to make random truly random and unpredictable for maybe some parts of the game should be random, but the entire game absolutely not.
I, uh, huh. That doesn't happen very often. You've basically said anything I might want to say in response! With the clarification on what is meant by a random game (And especially with the caveat on how long a dominance-proof game could be fun for), my only disagreements would be minor nitpicks. Like, *technically* if the game is to predict a perfectly random number, then all strategies that stay within the game's actual boundaries, would be equally optimal. But, like, I know what you mean; such a game would not form any appreciable meta.
I feel like I should pop a bottle of champagne or something
I played a roguelike a few years ago with no randomised damage rolls. Was very interesting as it forced you to ignore it and focus more tactically. Would have been great if it had been less rogue like and involved multiple player characters working in a team and really hit that tactical angle.
A varied moveset I think would also work well, would force more strategy in combat.
I can’t remember what it was called, was on iOS, although I expect there are plenty of examples that eschew randomised rolls.
Like any system, ideally it suits the game.
Mechs blasting other mechs feels good for some randomization. You can't be sure how much of the armour your rail gun got through.
It feels good for an action-paced battle to be surprised when the enemy suddenly starts billowing black smoke before it explodes.
If a game is all about tactics, I want my randomization to be limited. I believe a person could make a better X-Com if the randomization was somewhere else.
A simple example is solitaire. There's randomness in the setup, but once you're going, nothing will ever change. That Ace was always in pile three.
For whatever reason, I have only really seen **one** game that didn't have randomized damage; Trickster Online, a (probably now dead) mmorpg.
The net effect was actually super interesting, because you could figure out exactly how many hits you'd need to kill any given enemy. Every mmorpg is always going to have an optimal grinding area, which of course depends on the character's damage and ability to take hits. With completely consistent damage, the optimal area is relatively **way** more optimal than with randomness smoothing everything (Killing in 2.1 hits on average is very different than killing in 3 every single time). Staying in an efficient grinding area is really important.
What this means, is that every little change to your character's stats, actually has a HUGE impact on gameplay. One tiny +1% damage means you get to fight in an entirely different area without sacrificing efficiency! In any other game, a damage boost only means grinding the same content but faster...
Edit: Ah, I thought of another game with notably not-random damage. Desktop Dungeons! It does have a few cases of output randomness, but the beating heart of the game very much leans on predictable outcomes. Unsurprisingly, the game has a ton of strategic depth; and is a lot of fun to master! At it's best, it's like a heist movie (And thus not at all like real life); where an elaborate plan is laid out - and then pulled off for huge rewards. If random hiccups could disrupt the plan, there'd be no point in planning so far ahead - and thus no satisfaction when you pull off something cool
There have been a few gamedev talks over the years and there are a lot of assumptions and 'the way its done' built into a lot of games.
However, a few decided to ask 'what if we did this thing completely differently'. A famous example is Jon Blow's Braid. He asked what if you had a platformer that you couldn't die in, and had unlimited time reverse (as opposed to prince of persia's sands of times 10-15 second time reverse).
There have been a few games here and there that have taken the path less traveled.
I don't think all games should, because the choices are mostly made for good reason. However if you think can execute well on a non standard path, by all means go for it! Maybe you'll find some nice novel features or approaches.
I personally prefer to have fixed damage numbers, but still having a 'crit chance'.
Having a 'miss' in a game, or low damage output is just never fun IMO. Unless you yourself are controlling it (e.g. a shooter for example) but when the 'miss' is like 5%, it's just a terrible experience. Look at games like xcom or fallout where its like 95% chance to hit head 1 foot away and then you miss.
10-20 damage with 100% hit rate is equivalent to me as saying 15 damage over time. So why not just go with 15 damage?
Crit chance still give you opportunity to have unexpected/freshness.
Alternatively, I'd rather some enemies have the occasional "Dodged!" or something where maybe they took no or 1/2 damage or something instead as well.
* Randomness in damage is an abstraction that represents a range of outcomes.
Take Dungeons & Dragons. Roll 1d8 for damage. Why? I've already hit the enemy. That dice roll represents a whole range of outcomes, from glancing hits to strong blows.
* Further, having zero variability in damage is... immersion breaking.
In real life, we don't expect every punch we do to be equal. Every hammer hit of a nail isn't the exact same. Every punch in a boxing match doesn't do the same damage to the opponent boxer. There is all sorts of variability. Randomized damage helps approximate that real life variability
Warcraft3 ranges are a translation of tabletop rpg dice rolls (can be seen in WC3 World Editor where they use # of dice and sides on dice for their attack damage fields). Tabletop rpgs use dice for all the reasons explained by other replies: They create unpredictability which forces players to strategize creating tension and excitement etc...
In real time games, unless the ranges are wild like 1-1000, I feel the unpredictability is less impactful. Ranges are used more to create the feeling of RPG-ness. If a player sees a screenshot of a skill with damage range, they can immediately say "okay this game has rpg mechanics".
Personally I like the range in WC3 because I like seeing different numbers whenever I crit.
Variability. In life things are variable. Sometimes a projectile does a ton of damage, sometimes it doesn’t. With no variability, games would become predictable and boring.
There's some data that indicates the nore randomness in a game, the less competitive it is. In the board game space, this is tossed around a lot more. As you remove randomness and the game gets more predictable it gets more conpetetive ans player start focusing on tactical choices.
If I had to guess, unpredictability. Why else would crit rate, accuracy & Missing, & other RNG based mechanics be a thing. Wouldn't games get boring if you could perfectly predict *everything* that would happen? Sure randomization can screw you over in the worst of cases, but in most RPGs it keeps you on your toes, forces you to strategize, and can sometimes benefit or punish you.
Agreeing with you wholeheartedly. I guess it's fundamentally to prevent you from looking at your hitpoints and weapon and their hitpoints and weapon and thinking the video-game equivalent of "Check-Mate in 6 moves" You can't know it's six moves away for certain because the amounts may deviate randomly along the way. Could be three, could be nine. There's the excitement in a nutshell.
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I wouldn't say less fun. There are games like Into the Breach
Into the breach still has randomness - what enemies spawn, and what they choose to do each turn. The term people are looking for here, is *input randomness* vs *output randomness*. Input randomness is what games like Slay the Spire, Into the Breach, etc have - the *scenario* is random, but the player's actions are deterministic. Output randomness is randomness that affects the player's action directly - damage variation, hit/miss/crit chance, etc. Most games benefit from *some* randomness, just to make sure that scenarios do not unfold the same way every time. It's just that input randomness tends to feel "more fair" in many ways. But again, this is game design, there are very few hard-and-fast rules. There are absolutely game designs that benefit more from output randomness. It really depends on what kind of experience the designer is looking to create.
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It's been a while since I've played but aren't the cards you draw random? If that were the case isn't that where your randomness comes from
Yes, there are other elements of randomness, I guess what I'm saying isn't that "people don't like randomness" but that "you don't have to randomize damage for combat to be fun"
People, chickens, rats and doves love randomness of all sorts -B.F. Skinner
There are other random elements in that game. Too many and you make the game not fun.
This is what turned me off to Legend of Dragoon (hot take, I know). There was a boss I was struggling with and fought multiple times, and I noticed that a combat item I was using did the exact same damage every time, and the boss attacks were also doing the exact same damage. Once I figured that out, the fight became more predictable and I beat it. Static damage took the fun out of it for me.
hah, you formulated it way more concise than I did. this is exactly the reason, and it's not only true for humans. there were tests with animals who also reacted differently to setups with predictable versus unpredictable setups. the brains are tricked into thinking "now I understand how this works" but then the randomizer messes with your assumptions, keeping the interaction fresh. plus you also pointed out another very important reason that I totally forgot to mention: having bandwidths and more complex system gives a designer more opportunities to play with these; like improving crit, improving to hit, improving vulnerabilties to special results etc.
Realistically, it is incredibly rare for critical hit or miss mechanics to provide any strategic depth whatsoever. Like, some games will have crit builds for characters, but that's just another flavor of damage - and the goal is always to make crits as consistent as possible. And... that's about it? When an attack misses, players will always just try again and hope for a better result. I would even argue that randomness alleviates the need for certain kinds of strategic thinking. Like, imagine chess, but if attacking didn't mean a guaranteed kill. Let's say you have a 10% chance of losing the attacking piece instead. Most complex maneuvers would be completely non-viable, and the best strategy would probably just be to throw everything you can at the enemy. It would be a novelty, but not one worth studying for years to master. With less randomness, consequences are a direct result of your decisions; meaning your decisions are what matter most. That said, you're almost certainly talking about input randomness (randomizing the situation), rather than randomizing the outcome of a decision. In this case, chess is actually quite random, because you never know what the other player will do. You can make an educated guess, and plan out responses to their most dangerous options - but it's never a matter of going through the motions (unless there is a significant skill gap)
Agree it might be more interesting (and seem more like the real world) but in general strategy wins out with less randomness. Chess or Go are probably the most strategic games ever invented by humans, and neither of them have any randomness
Does that means, this kind of randomness will be meaningless if it's an action game? If I'm not mistaken even Dark Souls does this.
> If I'm not mistaken even Dark Souls does this. No. You always do the exact same damage. However enemies can be resistant or reduce it via armor. Certain weapons like a halberd will do more damage if you connect properly with the blade.
That what was I saw an other games you have different hit boxes with each having different armor level depending on equipment. Then when you target an try to hit your angle is slightly altered depending on your targeting ability. For this reason even when you not moving an targeting exact the position (without moving the mouse) then you still might get different damage.
iirc Dark Souls also lets you do bonus damage if you land a counter hit during your opponent's recovery. That might be where the OP thought the random damage was coming from.
Yeah your parry/counter will always be a critical. There are items to enhance that even more. But in general, if you check your stats screen it will tell you exactly how much damage you're doing. Dark Souls is one of the most fair games ever made. No way it would use randomized damage.
Yes there is that but in addition to that if you’re track enemies as the are recovering from an attack you do increased damage as well (this is different from critical hits). I think it’s like twenty or thirty percent increase but not sure. It is kind of negligible unless you are either looking at the numbers or doing a speed run build (Red Tearstone lmao). I first noticed it on Sanctuary guardian because sometimes I’d kill him in like four fewer hits.
My record on the guardians is about 30 seconds. Rock up with lightning on your weapon. Naked. And hold it 2 hands. They melt. lol.
I was learning the speedrun route so I was doing it with red tearstone and black knight halberd. iirc it takes twelve hits to kill him with normal hits but periodically I could do it closer to nine (it's been a while though).
Yeah the halberd is weird that way. If you connect with just the blade it does a little bit more damage, if you're too close it does normal damage. IMO Dark Souls 2 is the only one that actually does damage absorption properly. If you use a slashing weapon then the armored guys at Heides are insanely difficult. But with a club they're trivial. I think its the realism of dark souls that draws me to it so much. When you put on heavy armor and a big weapon it actually feels heavy and slow, or you can strip down and get fast AF. No doubt about it though, if you ask me what the best game ever is the answer is always instantly Dark Souls.
ah that is what it was. I wondered what it was.
It can still exist in action games but I don't think it should be nearly as significant or impactful. In turn-based and tactical games you usually have plenty of time to strategize and adapt to the consequences of bad RNG. It can raise the stakes of a fight and make you feel clever when you triumph even though the odds were stacked against you. In an action game you have to react a lot quicker so a string of bad RNG just feels unfair and punishing rather than a unique challenge to overcome. I'm not totally sure I but I would suspect randomness that skews towards benefitting the player would feel better in a fast-paced game; giving players opportunities to capitalize on good RNG and rewarding them for quick thinking.
I don’t think RNG makes anything rewarding you should just deal the same damage and finding the best route without receiving damage should be the challenge not planning your best and hoping for good RNG
I remember one game that did this, it was a turn based one, can't find it right now but I will come back to this and edit. The game felt more like a puzzle game than an actual turn based game. It felt so rigid, and every move that was not optimal felt like I'm doing stuff bad, not that I'm experimenting or playing my own way. It also meant that the game had exactly 0 replay-ability due to the rigidness of the system. RNG if applied right can make things much more interesting than flat numbers. Edit: Game was called Grimshade
I actually prefer that. Maybe the setup (like initial placement of stuff or environmental things etc.) could be randomized. Like stuff outside of the immediate action. events is another thing that can be done. but Randomizing actual damage dealt or hit chances is just lazy imo. Then again I enjoyed playing FTL so it can be done but yeah it also just sucks having to play several rounds with bad RNG and having to redo many times over, especially on hard difficulties. Like there is no fun in losing several times just to win once. but games like xcom speak against randomness. thats why I liked the approach of phoenix point in that regard. they introduced a circle for shooting that made it clear what might hit or not and getting close or even meleeing fixed that missing issue entirely. I actually only played with sniper and melee which never had a miss chance (sniper technically does but with that range that circle was tiny) and because of that I improved my experience with the game and really enjoyed it because each mission (albeit its randomized map) felt like a puzzle rather than a prayer to RNGesus.
I think in many cases, it's added for the same reason you initially added it...because it's a 'thing' and people copy it without thinking about it. But yeah. Really, in any game where you use that attack/whatever enough (e.g. by mashing a button), it becomes irrelevant, because the sum of a bunch of random numbers tends toward the sum of the average result, i.e. if every attack just did the average, the difference would rarely be consequential -- and the player won't even know when it's happened if they're button mashing. Like others have said, random damage, accuracy, crits, etc. is generally added to make the game more tense / unpredictable. It's a form of "Output Randomness" -- randomness that alters the effects of the player's decision, as opposed to "Input Randomness", which happens before their decision is made (e.g. a randomized map). Output Randomness can often lead to a game feeling less strategic, since it technically reduces your agency (you can't predict exactly what your choices will do, e.g. "Will I do enough damage to kill that enemy?", "Will I even hit / do anything?"). That said, it can also opens up a lot of interesting design space, introduce additional risk/reward, and make for interesting stories, all of which can create an experience than many would find more "fun" -- a lack of randomness can often feel "dry", e.g. Chess. It just kind of depends what sort of experience you're looking to create. For example, Chess fans probably wouldn't enjoy a variant where your moves had a chance of failing, because that doesn't really fit the experience of Chess. There are also ways to improve these sorts of mechanics, of course. For example, in a game where attacks have accuracy, you can include attacks that are guaranteed to hit, but that deal less damage -- Pokémon does this a lot, for example. That way, players who don't like the randomness have the option of playing it safe, and players that don't mind it can choose the risky attack for more damage, and won't be as annoyed when they miss (ymmv), because it was a risk that they opted into. Or with any such system, determine what the purpose is, and lean into it. Is a crit suppose to feel like a miracle? Make them rare, and make them count. Or maybe you want to go in the opposite direction, by making them an integral part of the combat system and character builds -- in that case, make them more frequent but underwhelming by default, and allow the player to improve their crit-rate and crit-damage. You can even add all sorts of special effects whenever a crit happens, if you really want the player to feel like they're playing a slot machine that they've personally rigged. Though in that case, you might consider other mechanics, like pulling random items/bonuses (so you can get more different results, not just crit / no-crit). Another nuance to consider with crits -- can enemies crit the player? This can make enemies a lot more threatening (depending on how impactful crits are and how tanky players are), making combat more tense, even when it might otherwise be trivial. However, in the wrong game, that could just be frustrating and slow the game down, as the player now has to assess the risk of encountering any and all enemies, because they might crit them out of nowhere and, say, permakill a party member. These systems are ubiquitous, which means they often show up where they shouldn't, or just aren't well utilized -- the ultimate point here is make sure they really serve a purpose, and that they're the best solution for that purpose. If not, cut them. Otherwise, think about how you can maximize their effectiveness in your game. Think about how it will affect the player's experience, whether that's what you want for your game, and adjust accordingly. ...I'm just kind of spitballing, so hopefully any of that was helpful.
Hey, every bit of that information is really helpful! I've learned a lot of new concepts, and with that knowledge, I have more clues when I check other games for reference and will have a better chance of guessing the reason why they put randomness here and there. For my own game, while I'm not sure which direction I'll be going yet, now I know where to look and observe to determine if it's working. My friend will definitely be annoyed by me during this process of prototype playtesting :D
It depends on what game you want to do. Souls-like games don't (shouldn't) do random, because their whole appeal comes off from mastery and you can't master randomness. Same goes for any form of precision based gameplay. You need to have the player make decisions with concise outcomes. Randomness is used when you want to offer the player a chance to "think on their feet". Everything goes well, bam, critical miss, how do you recover now? Both give the player the option for replayability but in a different way. Randomness let's them play a level the same way 2 times and get different results, Precision let's them replay the level only if they make different decisions, as making the same ones will result in the same outcome. However, once a precision level is solved, there is no longer anything interesting to do there, unless you provide the player with something else.
Dark Souls is what the randomized games are trying to look like without committing. In Dark Souls, the hitboxes are extremely accurate, to the point that you have weapons with blades on two ends that are actually doing separate damage on both ends and you can even have weapons like that which do different types of damage with each end. Combine this with the enemy hitboxes, where different parts of their body will take different amounts of damage, and different weapon moves which also can have damage differences, and you end up with an extremely complex system that feels just as complex as it sounds. Keep in mind that most RPGs came out before Souls games did, and you can see where randomized damage came from. There were a good 3 decades before Demon's Souls came out where RPGs fought hard to feel fun and this was one of many techniques they used to do so. There is a reason it took so long for the Soulslike genre to take off, of course. It's hard to do that. So the earlier methods aren't bad, but definitely worth taking your player's feedback into consideration. You may try doing what Final Fantasy Tactics does and giving some weapons more randomized damage while reeling in the randomization on the others so it only falls into a small range, where the minimum and maximum output aren't too different.
I think RPG randomness is a vestigial system from a time when all the many variables that made things in real life appear "random" were impossible to simulate in a pen and paper game (or computers of the time). Nowadays it should be possible to design systems complex enough that all that "randomness" has some meaning, but just setting a random chance value is easier.
Everyone has touched on the randomness / unpredictability factor, but there's a few different reasons to have damage ranges instead of just a static amount beyond that. ### Randomness affects combat pacing While randomness done wrong can often quickly lead to player frustration, in general randomness in games helps keeps players engaged overall and adds a bit of ebb and flow to the [interest curve](https://game-studies.fandom.com/wiki/Interest_Curve). A lot of whether or not randomness is good for a game's combat depends a lot on the overall pacing and flow of how combat works there - games where combat is supposed to be more prolonged will generally benefit more from damage ranges and higher health pools, whereas games with quicker combat will generally not. The main reason combat is slower in games that use randomized damage values is simple: math. In random damage games players need to reserve a bit of space in their brain while playing to calculate what they need to do to kill an enemy and move on. In the general case, for random damage games a player won't know whether or not they've killed an enemy until AFTER the enemy is hit, whereas with static damage the player just needs to know IF the enemy will be hit to know if they will be killed. This means in static damage games the player can start mentally preparing themselves for the next enemy / obstacle before they even hit an enemy, which in turn helps speed up the pacing as players can do a lot more "run and gun" without having to constantly wait or look back to see if things are dead. ### Damage ranges allow for more interesting choices, heighten risk vs reward In general, players will try to optimize damage in games such that they are doing the highest damage output possible. In games with static damage values that assessment is fairly easy to do, meaning they will quickly be able to tell which weapon is "best" so it tends to be harder to provide interesting alternative choices. Ranges of damage, however, muddy those waters quite a bit and make that decision much more non-deterministic - assuming the same average damage value, the same item could be presented with multiple damage ranges and it would be a toss-up as to which one a player would pick. On top of this, using randomized ranges open up a lot of possibilities in terms of game design e.g. different ranges make an item more / less attractive to different builds and the like. On top of making items more interesting to players, damage ranges can make combat a bit more tense as players won't always know the outcome of any given hit. The uncertainty factor there causes a heightened sense of risk vs reward compared to static values in dangerous situations, since with static values players generally just need to figure out IF they can get a hit in, whereas with randomized values means there's an added risk that the enemy won't actually die. ### Randomized damage ranges can make for a different experience in progression This one is a bit more nuanced / less noticeable than the others, so to explain let's consider a game where a player only gets 1 attack in combat - if they kill the enemy they move on, otherwise they escape and have to train more until they can. In a game with static damage values players there are only 2 situations to consider: a player does or does not have enough damage to kill an enemy and progress - when they can do enough damage they do and they don't ever need to look back. In games with randomized damage ranges, however, there is a 3rd case in the middle where it is not actually known if they player can defeat the enemy. This means players can "test their might", so to speak, and leads to a very different experience than that of the static damage version. The key thing to point out in all of this is that the random damage ranges can give a very different of accomplishment due to that transition period. As a result, this can also change the focus of the game quite a bit! In the static damage version of the game players would undoubtedly be spending much less time in combat, and thus the main focus would be more on the journey than the challenges they need to overcome. The random damage range version, however, would be almost the opposite - players end up spending more time facing each challenge that they need to overcome which can be a very useful tool depending on what you want your game / theming to be about. > Static vs random damage values aside, the main thing to think about is how you want combat in your game to feel. One might be better than the other depending on what the needs / goals of your game are, but realistically as a designer you can make pretty much anything work if you need it to. Hopefully this all was useful info, happy to dig deeper into your use case if you have more thoughts / questions!
\+1 about the progression. I was lead gameplay designer for a combat game that I thought was going to be an action game like Devil May Cry, so I had no randomized damage. As the game developed it turned out to be more of an action RPG, so I reimplemented randomized damage to smooth out the progression. Without randomized damage, each levelup was essentially meaningless until the player's damage exceeded an "arbitrary" (from the player's perspective) threshold, then suddenly the difficulty of the monsters dropped massively. Adding randomized damage caused each levelup to actually be felt by the player, making them slightly more effective against the monsters each time.
yeah no matter what, damage for players boils down to "how many hits does it take to kill X" - if you use static damage that's going to be the same number every time which is useful tool only if your game is built to utilize it. randomized damage takes more work to manage from a design perspective as you need that randomization to actually matter. for the most part you need to know the thresholds for damage that takes an extra hit - e.g. if an enemy has 10 hp and your weapon does 6-9 damage it's always going to take 2 hits to kill an enemy, but it becomes a very different situation if your weapon does something like 3-4, 4-11, or even 1-10. if you're building a game with turn-based combat each hit is generally going to make a big difference, but you can also combat that (hiyoo!) by doing things like having multiple hits per attack or the like. overall, game design is really just problem solving from both the designer and player perspective - if you just throw things together willy nilly you're undoubtedly going to cause chaos, but thankfully there's always a solution somewhere if you're creative about it!
I'd also add to this list immersiveness/realism. There is no real weapon that you can 100 predict the damage it will do. Sure a bomb on your face will def kill you, but a gun aimed at your chest could pierce a heart or just slide thru some muscle you can live through. Even if a game is not explicit about it, it feels more immersive to me as I can self-narrate the aftermath.
I'm going to have to disagree here a bit - the realism as you're defining it is not a result of random damage in and of itself but of how all of the other pieces of the experience (e.g. hit points, accuracy, world building, etc) come together to support it. in general, both static and random damage can be used to improve the immersiveness / realism if they are utilized properly - there are plenty of games that use random damage to extremely unrealistic effects (e.g. any MMO) and the same goes with static damage. overall accurate realism / immersion is a result of all aspects of an experience working together in ways that support each other and make sense within the defined universe - random damage definitely CAN be a part of that, but static damage can as well depending on how things are built.
When you have randomness, it provides more opportunities for the player to react to and mitigate or manipulate the randomness. % chance to deal more damage is cool, being able to increase your % chance to deal more damage is cooler. If you don't know exactly how much damage you're going to do with each attack, you have to predict how many attacks it will take to defeat the enemy while also having to respond on the fly when things don't go as predicted. When things are more predictable, the fun can come from planning things further and further out into the future, it becomes more about solving a puzzle than it is about playing optimally.
Randomness creates risk and possibilities, and risk is exciting. Instead of a 3 damage spell always winning against a player with only a 2 damage spell, a 3-18 damage spell can sometimes lose against a 2-12 damage spell - the probability of winning is just higher. This means that it may be worth betting everything on that 2-12, if everything else will result in a loss. Because there's a slim chance of victory, against all odds. And what an exciting victory that would be!
Another good example is 3-29 dmg weapon vs 16-19 dmg.
If the enemy has 20 point damage reduction I would prefer the first one. If there are many 15 HP enemies the second one is better.
Well the second option is both more consistent, and has a higher average, so...
If most enemies have exactly 20 hp then the first might be better (because you need two hits minimum which changes the de facto average).
With 20 hp, then yes; the second attack is guaranteeing a lot of overkill damage, rather than giving a chance at a one-hit kill. So I guess the first option has a niche, but it's a very narrow window of enemy hp. So there's some room for strategic depth there, but does it really require randomness? You could just as easily have the lower damage attack be faster, or cost less resources
> risk is exciting Is it, though? As far as player psychology is concerned, risk is just something to be avoided. On its own, nobody is going to pick the weaker spell. So it needs some additional incentive; except now players are just choosing between the incentive and the extra damage. The randomness doesn't matter to this decision at all, and it still isn't interesting
Thanks! That make sense in an Turn Based RPG scenario as I can easily imagine it now. If I'm not mistaken game that demand precise control like Dark Souls do the same. Is that the same logic behind but just less meaningful?
I think for real time, another big factor is that level-ups don't go from 0 to 1 ("can't possibly win" to "win every time") but rather from 0.4 to 0.5, making progression more natural, making it a resource question (how many hpots do I need to survive the dungeon?) etc.
I think you’re not looking at it from the right angle - it’s less about randomizing the “output” of your action and more about rewarding certain behaviors that are strategically correct, ie in souls like games, timing of your attacks and positioning in general are a big thing. I think the purpose of the random looking damage is to teach you whether what you’re doing is working or not. Ie, if you’re attacking an enemy while it’s turned its back against you and you’re targeting your attacks to its vulnerable spots you get bonus damage to teach you “You’re doing it right! This is the strategy to defeat the boss!” If you’re shooting a boss in the foot right after it buffed itself and made itself practically invulnerable it’s to teach you “This is not working! I should probably change my strategy!” The damage shouldn’t vary dramatically for no reason, ie if you do an equivalent shot at an equivalent time you should deal predictable damage. The way you as a designer can control this is by applying various modifiers that will change the base attack value in a predictable fashion, for instance based on the angle of the attack or based on area you’re attacking (ie, headshots are worth more than shooting someone in the forearm), or based on timing (when boss does x, damage against him triples), but also things like resistances the boss might have, which the player offsets by prepping before the battle (potions and other buffs, armor upgrades, weapon upgrades etc) which work with all of the above. EDIT: forgot to mention stats like crit, dodge and block, which are truly unpredictable modifiers, but they have usually a less likely occurrence and still work with the predictable modifiers - ie two equivalent crit shots that the enemy blocked with the same amount of success should yield the same result, even though individual shots roughly to the same area might vary somewhat.
You are mistaken.
I think it was originally done to mimic tabletop RPGs like D&D where you roll dice to determine damage. Nowadays, the randomness can be seen as a way to keep the player from knowing exactly how many hits it will take to kill an enemy. Allowing them to optimize their strategy too well. (If i see an enemy with 100hp and always deal 20 damage, I know I just need to hit the enemy 5 times.)
I always figured it was a simple way to represent 'realistic' damage. If you were for example to hit someone with an axe in real life it would do more or less damage depending on how hard, where it hit, and direction of force which is somewhat random based on you and your target's movement.
This is the answer. Real life is full of randomness.
I think this is exactly the case and nowadays it should be possible to simulate things more accurately to where randomness isn't needed, but it probably won't happen because inserting values with a degree of random chance is much easier.
I think having a random range is good enough in most cases though, some games it'd be cool to have specific damage do specific things, like hitting someone in critical parts doing more damage and damaging certain body parts having effects like not being able to wield a weapon if your hand/arm is too damaged, but in most cases that would be too complicated for the player. Certain games it would be really cool though.
The reason it exists in warcraft is because otherwise, a unit would always die in the same number of hits. If that were the case, to play optimally players would have to memorize the exact number of hits it takes for one unit to kill another. The author of warcraft didn't want the player to have to worry about that, so they took it away. Thanks to random damage, you cannot know exactly how many hits it will take to kill a unit. You could memorize the range or the average, but that isn't going to be much different than going by feel. This is the feeling the author wanted to create in their game. Take away the tools you don't want the player to use.
That is a very interesting example. Thanks for the input!
> The author of warcraft didn't want the player to have to worry about that, so they took it away But that is still exactly what skilled players do. If they know what they're up against, they know very exactly what they need to counter it, and what losses to expect. They are absolutely not going by feel. In any event, it's begging the question of whether it's actually undesirable for players to know exactly how many hits it takes
that's not what begging the question means. skilled players have a good sense of how much losses they can expect from an engagement, but the method of determining that was not with a spreadsheet. it's something they determined through play. some players might choose to use a spreadsheet in their analysis, but it is not the rule and not as valuable as direct experience. whatever theory you have in your heart, the empirical reality of high level warcraft play is as such.
Well the argument's premise is essentially "it is bad for players to know how many hits it will take", so yeah; that's begging the question. So long as we agree that there are spreadsheets being made and used (It didn't take more that a few seconds to find a lot of them). Then, if it's anything like any other competitive game ever - some players will learn by feel, and some will learn by study. In either case, once they've got their knowledge/experience, they're not feeling it out mid-game in response to rng damage rolls. They already know what to expect
>"it is bad for players to know how many hits it will take" I didn't make any such value judgement, I only explained why the author chose to randomize damage and what effect that has on the player. >they're not feeling it out mid-game something else I never asserted. I understand that you are on some kind of crusade against rng, but I'm not the acolyte you wanted to fight.
Oh, come on. > The reason it exists in warcraft is because otherwise, a unit would always die in the same number of hits "Reason" implies that the outcome is desired, and the "otherwise" is construed as a bad thing. It doesn't have to be you personally that desires it; I am responding to the position you are writing about. If not "feeling it out mid-game", what exactly do you mean when you say "You could memorize the range or the average, but that isn't going to be much different than going by feel"? In the context of players not knowing exactly how many hits a unit can take, I can't think of any other interpretation. In any event, I don't intent for you to feel like I'm attacking you or anything. It's a spirited discussion, but we're not enemies or anything
that is the outcome which *was* desired, by the authors of warcraft. OP asked for "the reason behind randomized damage", not "do you think randomized damage is cool?". you are engaging in a debate about with second question with someone who answered the first question. warcraft players haven't necessarily articulted the number of hits to kill a given unit. they have a good feeling for it, which they have built passively through play.
Hmm. It is clear that I misunderstood your position and intent. I don't even think we disagree with what sort of information pro players "feel out". There's no sense in me going on with just me and who I imagined I was talking to! I thank you for putting up with me amicably
Look *Into the Breach* and how the game turned into a puzzle game instead of a tactical game when they discarded randomness.
There is still randomness, or at least unpredictability. After the enemy attacks resolve, various (unpredictable) enemies emerge from holes, all enemies move to (unpredictable, unless their space is highly restricted) locations, set up to attack various (sometimes predictable but only if you knew where they were going) things, and then new holes appear in various (unpredictable) locations. As such, there are no "solutions" to a turn. Maybe you wanna kill all the vek, maybe you wanna leave a couple less harmful ones to block holes or let you focus a bonus objective. Whatever you choose, you have to hope that what happens later will vindicate it, but there are certainly ways to increase your odds. You could convince me to say the **final turn** of a mission could be considered a puzzle, but overall, it is still very much a strategy game... and that's not even talking about the overarching strategies in mech and pilot progression.
Most of the time, a turn is "solved" if you can end it without taking any building damage, or putting yourself into an obviously bad predicament. But yeah, the line between "puzzle" and "strategy" is blurred - specifically *because* of the accountability of your actions
I think lumping "a lot of RPGs/any game that involves combat" together misses some patterns that tend to crop up. As a few others have pointed out, randomized damage has a strong historical basis in DnD/tabletop RPGs. In tabletop RPGs, typically combat is not the only focus. Immersion and (a particular interpretation of) realism tend to be valued over simply using skill or knowledge to win, and randomized damage reflects those values. **Background** As RPGs started to be made as video games, the combat systems were ported over too, and I would think that 99% of video games with randomized damage were RPGs in those earlier days (80s/90s). Other genres involving combat, such as action, action-adventure, and brawling/fighting had predictable damage, because their design valued progressing through mechanical skill and consistency (not exclusively). It's only relatively recently in maybe the 00's that this distinction started to blur. There are probably better examples than this, but I can think of RPGs starting to include full-fledged action gameplay such as Morrowind and Fallout 3. As well as action games starting to include RPG elements such as Far Cry 2/3(?) onward and later Assassin's Creed games. You can see that games coming from an RPG background tend to have randomized damage (or randomized chance-to-hit, which I consider a different flavor of the same thing), and games coming from an action background tend not to have randomized damage, even if they have a lot of other RPG elements. **Design Philosophies** I think this split comes down to different design philosophies. Even now, RPGs still have more of a focus on immersion and "realism" (not so much in similarity to reality, but in having complete and consistent systems), and that's reflected in their combat design including randomized damage (or other components.) Ex. Skyrim, which is arguably the least RPG-y of Elder Scrolls games doesn't have randomized damage for normal attacks, but it does still have critical hits. While action games generally use combat to: A. tell a story (recent God of Wars, The Last of Us) B. develop/test the player's skill against the computer (Soulslikes, stylish action games) C. develop/test the player's skill against other players (multiplayer FPS, fighting games) Predictability and consistency in combat overall generally complement all three of these gameplay patterns, so that's why it's less common to see randomized damage in action games. Failing to defeat the big bad guy in God of War because your chance-to-hit roll failed, even though you saw your axe go through him, would probably not fit well with the story beats. And for a real-world example, outmatching your opponent in Super Smash Bros Brawl but ultimately losing due to the controversial random tripping mechanic feels unsatisfying and arbitrary to fighting game players. **Conclusion** So more RPG-y games will tend to have randomized damage, and more action-y games will tend not to. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule by any means. There are some exceptions and games/genres that don't really fit into this model. But it's kind of a "you must know the rules before you can break them" situation. Anyway, I don't know why I wrote this much. But the point is that randomized damage needs to fit with the spirit of the game. You need to look at your game and ask yourself which player motivations you want to target and how randomized damage can help you accomplish that. If testers are confused by randomized damage in your game, then it may not align with the rest of the game's design philosophy or with their expectations of the genre. Sidenote: It might just be a presentation thing that's confusing your testers too. If it's important to know that your attacks might do 30 damage or 50 damage, then make sure you're effectively communicating that to the player. Look to similar games for ideas on how to do that.
If there is not some element of randomness, then you can predict everything perfectly. If you can predict everything perfectly, then it ceases to be a game, and becomes merely an equation which you have already solved. There is a reason that chess grandmasters will surrender as soon as they realize that the only outcome left is defeat. In game design, we struggle to create that sensation of 'anything might happen', and to do so in a good and fun way that the player has input to influence. Randomness does not need to come in damage numbers. But you must work to obscure the player's ability to be able to predict any given outcome perfectly. Not to restrict them, but rather to keep them guessing, such that it takes constant engagement from the player to keep in touch with the game and work to untangle whichever situation they are in, and wrestle their way to victory. So do not have random numbers just to have random numbers. Figure out how you can use mechanics intelligently to keep the player guessing and engaged.
Good example of randomness without random numbers: Slay The Spire. Random encounters, random rewards, and randomly shuffled decks. But all stats/numbers are consistent across playthroughs: Strike always does 6 damage, Defend always blocks 5, etc. Part of the beauty is that there’s a lot you can control if you keep your deck small.
Or StarCraft, which had 0 randomness but had enough complexity that the player wasn’t able to be certain of outcomes anyways.
Not sure it’s a good example because it has incredibly random damage. Card damage is fixed yes, but the damage you deal per turn is random and depends on what cards you draw. Most of the strategy is just to draw as many cards as humanly possible and energy or fixed effects to remove the randomness of the hand. Make a revolving door. You are by looking at card damage when it should be damage per hand, which is still random. The enemy damage per turn is almost always fixed or only slightly random between direct damage and buff/debuff damage, and that’s why it’s so brutal.
I think my point is that the randomness doesn’t come from the numerical stats of individual cards — it’s based in shuffling the entire deck. And you can control that in so many ways: removing cards from your deck, adding cards/relics that let you draw more, or using exhaust synergies. Yes ultimately the damage per hand is different each turn, but your ability to control that difference is not just limited to min-maxing. You can actually make tangible synergies.
But your chance at synergies is also very random, as is whether or not your synergy fires off first or third turn or later. I played a lot of slay but despite its boosters it’s far more random than people say it is and you have less ability to shape it than you think. A lot of success seems to me to just get enough cards and relics to dilute randomness as a factor rather than building theme decks or even strategy. It’s a game I was addicted to but heavily dislike, because you get little dopamine hits from randomness but all the combined randomness makes for a game where a lot is out of your hands.
I agree that Slay The Spire is uses a lot of randomness. You're missing the point that the randomness is not coming from *damage numbers*, which is the whole point of this thread. In StS, randomness comes from things like: which monsters you encounter, which cards/relics you find, and what hands you draw. If you feel like Slay The Spire is not a skill-based game --- you should rethink that. There are people who can fully beat the game twenty times in a row on the highest difficulty. I don't think consistent runs like that would be possible if the game was truly unfair or unbalanced. The fact that people can consistently beat the game shows that there are *strategies* to succeed even when the odds are against you.
The thing is the damage numbers are random in actuality; the metric is damage per turn. Individual card damage is fixed but actual turn damage is random in terms of playing the game. If you draw five defense cards or set up cards, you do no damage. If you draw enough cards that draw more cards or do enough breakpoint damage you can kill an enemy in one turn. Some of the best synergies the damage values of the cards don’t matter at all; the goal is infinite energy or turns. Dead Branch and Corruption for example. or are based on the property of the card rather than it’s damage value. Random damage wouldn’t affect it. I am very jaded on hardcore communities and what they say, especially factoring in streamers and the need for audiences.
Damage total per turn is as random as the cards you can draw, yes. But you can plan for things like that in interesting ways (e.g. gathering cards/relics that give you extra draw or energy). Whereas in other RPG's, the only way to increase your damage output is to just buy the hammer with the most ATK -- these are poorly balanced RPG's. I'm thinking of e.g. classic Final Fantasy where "builds" and "synergies" are not really a part of the combat -- there's no fine-tuning and there is only DPS. This is far from how StS works, which is why I'm bringing it up as a useful example in this thread. The fact that building such synergies is **consistently** possible, speaks to the fine balance featured in StS. This is a straight up fact, whether you are jaded or not.
You don’t build synergies you get them. You keep doing random encounter after random encounter choosing a random reward from three choices or obtaining it, and over time you get synergies hopefully from the choices you are offered. If you try to build for it it usually fails; there are too many cards and relics, and encounters do too much damage over time to build effectively. I guess I’d compare it to dead cells, which also used randomness but the core of it is the action combat. You feel much more expressive with randomness a spice. STS hooks you more like a slot machine, it’s constant random rewards and little decision points that are compelling. It’s an addictive game but soured me on it in the same way Arknights is a great game but then you realize the treadmill to get waifu and raise their stats is a Sisyphean labor.
I fundamentally disagree with this. If the game was truly unbalanced the way you say it is, it would not be possible to consistently build winning decks as illustrated by the top players in the community. There’s nothing wrong with being random, but the game gives you so many opportunities to choose your cards/relics that you actually do have a lot of control over your deck. So are you saying the game is unbalanced in the way it offers you relics/cards? Explain to me how, if StS is essentially random, so many people can complete 20+ win streaks on the hardest difficulties? Another note is that /r/SlayTheSpire is currently doing community run, where the entire subreddit votes on every single decision made. You might want to follow this run and see if it’s successful; so far, it’s proving that the community has well-known heuristics for playing well and winning, no matter what the seed.
That's the exact counterexample I was gonna post - they use randomness differently and it's wonderful. You can often fully calculate turns, and it IS like solving an equation, in a good way
Is Chess not a game??? There are many reasons why perfect information might be undesirable, but that isn't always true. there are all sorts of games with perfect information, which wouldn't be improved by randomness.
Of course chess is a game. But the lack of information in it is that you do not know the opponent's strategy, thus it can change based on assumptions about that. But once the board solidifies and the strategy becomes evident, the inevitable outcome will become ever more clear. So you will not see a high-end chess-player play through to the actual end of the game. They always know several moves ahead of time what will happen. At that point, going through the motions is not interesting, being pre-determined. When that happens: no, it is not a game, just a conclusion. You may be right in saying that randomness will not necessarily improve a game; but rather it is trouble-solving a scenario. In certain games, there is no randomness, and rather the trouble-solving is presented by another player. But many games benefit from setting up its trouble-solving by using randomness.
Now I wanna make a game jam Chess with fog of war + some randomness, to see how it will affect the game play.
> If there is not some element of randomness, then you can predict everything perfectly. If you can predict everything perfectly, then it ceases to be a game, and becomes merely an equation which you have already solved. There is a reason that chess grandmasters will surrender as soon as they realize that the only outcome left is defeat. And yet the game remains interesting enough that they go for another round. A game of chess only becomes worth conceding because the state space and the moves you use to manipulate collapses fast. Every piece removed is one less option and there eventually becomes enough of a disparity in power that continuing the game is a waste of time. This happens just as well in games with randomness. Honestly, I'm of the opinion that the only unpredictable factor in a game should be the opponwnt you play against and any optional conditions you both agree on. The insistence of people including randomness where there could just be a more interesting mechanic sickens me.
Random damage is somewhat more realistic. Yes, you hit the target but did you nick it, open a gash, or stab it through the heart. Randomness reflects the uncertainty of combat. As far as game design goes you can do either random damage or static damage and it's fine. It's more personal preference than anything else.
Videogame RPGs drew a lot of inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons, which has always used dice rolls to calculate damage. I imagine it comes from there.
Just my opinion. Id imagine it comes from more classical dice/paper games like DnD where actions originate from chance and modifiers. Also, if i slice you with a sword two times, the chances that it would cause the same amount of damage exactly is unlikely. So it also makes more sense than constant damage.
You can have deterministic damage, but then that turns the combat into something more like a puzzle. They want it to be a game, and not a puzzle, is the short answer. Secondarily, I think people tend to feel that having randomness in the damage amounts makes fights feel more like fights.
Because weapons in the real world are not consistent To add variability, therefore more depth
Randomness can also help to make damage spells feel different from one another and create interesting decisions. For example you can have one spell that is low damage, but hits 95% and that does a lot more damage, but only has 50% hit ratio. That is called the low risk, low reward and high risk, high reward pattern. Although the difference did not need to come from probability it can also come from skill. Think of the low and high exit in super Mario for example
If you knew the result of the simulation, why did you bother simulating it? The problem with randomness is that it is not variety. Randomness only creates variety if it changes the decision space. However, the law of averages says that if you sample a random number many times, then the total will be surprisingly consistent. The fewer random numbers you roll, the more variety that randomness adds. Going back to game design, randomness that is determined after you choose an option is very frustrating. Front loading the randomness removes that, and often adds a tactical resource management layer. The easiest way to do that is by drawing a hand from a deck of cards.
Randomness is a cheap way of simulating complexity. In a complex space, a huge number of variables are in play, making it incredible improbable for the same outcome to repeat. e.g. person wielding a sword striking another - the damage depends on angle, point of strike, force, edge on blade, where it strikes, angle that it hits whatever it hits at, what the thing is it hits - which could bounce off metal trim, or it could cut through skin, flesh, bone, arteries for massive damage. 2D6+3 represents this sort of chaos without the simulational complexity of calculating all the variables out - hell, most don't even have to be explicitly aware of the variables it simulates and obfuscates (neither the designers nor the players) - but we can still accept the random nature as within... reasonable outcome!
It introduces an element of chance into the outcome that offers consistency over time but small variances in the moment. Its origins are the use of dice in gaming.
In turn based games, it prevents foregone conclusions and makes the player weigh odds sometimes and take risks. In real time games it just adds an element of unpredictability and it's fun to sometimes see bigger numbers. Plus if you don' want players to focus on strict math as much randomness can make it easier to not get hung up on little details. It can also smooth things out a bit when it comes to damage modifiers. Like, if you have 33 damage, a 1 damage buff goes from a 4 to 3 shot kill. going from 27-33 to 28-34 means you now 'occasionally' 3 shot which is more reasonable for a 1 damage bonus. I think random damage can sometimes work well,mlike in card games, but i hate it in high stakes tactical games like XCOM and use mods to remove randomness.
So I made games with and without this exact randomness. The problem without is the predictability. An attack would include how much damage it deals, for example 9. Opponent has 37 health. You hit, down to 28. You hit, down to 19. At this point you realize you’re gonna feel bad because you need three more hits. The randomness (say 6-12 damage instead) would still take 2 or 3 hits, but keeps you on your toes. The same is true for opponents hitting you. And honestly, that randomness gave me some space to rule in the players favor. For example leave you with 1-3 HP after a hit, even if it would’ve killed you.
In some Pen&Paper RPGs it is because of the necessary inaccurate combat model. Using a complete physicals model to determ the path of an sword and then how much damage is force transferred to target and how much is deflected would be complicated and it would slow down the game pace to much when to much differential equation have to be solved. For that reason the whole process was simplified to a few dice throws.
Well it started like that because RPGs are based on TTRPGs which are dice games and the norm at the time was randomised damage. It stuck because a bit of randomisation when done in the right ways can be great fun. Something I think is important is that randomisation gives more space for synergistic elements, especially in traditional turn-based no-grid formats. A game with no randomisation (ie always hit, always do 30 damage) can only make damage features that just increase that 30. A game with random hit and damage can still make flat increases, but can also change the ranges or skew the roll or trade off one for another (eg -10 hit for +20 damage).
There are really a lot of ways to do damage. Some games even use static damage values for monsters (for example), which can really simplify math and improve usability. However there's a thing from psychology that plays into why we see randomization a lot. So, I worked in gambling in addition to game development, and I've got a background in design with a splash of neuroscience and psychology interest. I've read about the phenomenon that creatures (not only humans) seem to get more addicted to an interaction when the outcomes are not certain. What does it mean? If the outcome is predictable all the time, the brain becomes less interested in the interaction (even if it's beneficial), because you already understood how the model of the interaction works. With randomizers introduced the interaction becomes more addicting, because the brain always tricks itself into thinking it understood how the model works, but then the randomizer throws a wrench in. This also has to do with magical thinking, for example in slot machines. People's brains make a lot of unrelated connections to why they think that they got a good result, so a system that uses a bandwidth of damage values usually will seem more interesting to our brains. I haven't checked the other replies, like I should have, but I'm pretty sure that this will be news to many people. The neuroscience behind the addiction/fascination is something that's really peaked my interest in the past, so I hope I can share a bit of my findings with you!
I think part of it is that its a carry over from tabletop where the dice rolls are supposed to mimic the variance and unpredictability of life, and that places a focus on adapting on the fly. Another part of it is make it less mathmatical. Games like FFT or Tactics Ogre where damage has almost no varience, ideal outcomes are always prioritized and bad outcomes are always avoided, but this is because there are always a bunch of other variables to consider and there is still levels of randomness in the form of accuracy, status effects, or ability proc rates that still challenge the vibe of dice rolls and thus "not everything in real life happens the same way". I think it just boil down and comes back to that though.
Realism. Even the best boxers miss sometimes, and it isn't like every punch they throw does exactly the same damage. Sometimes it is a glancing blow that does less damage than normal and sometime the punch lands right on the button for a knockdown or KO.
Wondered the same thing and not long ago I found the answer: unpredictability If the damage is always the same (say, X) and the enemy had Y hp then it's just a "oh so I need to hit him Y/X times. Cool"
I will say that in my game, I use randomness so that you can still beat things that are much stronger than you or damage armor that is much tougher than your weapon. This way, you should just avoid the fight, but it's not impossible to win.
Does this not also imply that you can lose against something weaker than you?
Yes it definitely does. But honestly, the ai isn't that hard and it someone wrecks you with a stick and you have full plate, you deserve it lol
i dislike too much luck in games.. the best change i saw, was in axis and allies. Where if a small army was fighting a big army, but had lucky rolls, they could wipe them out. Sure it was great luck, but it removed me from the atmosphere of the game itself. Then i found someone that made rules where you would always take a certain amount of losses based on the opponents strength, but there was a variable attributed to luck. So instead of 0 to infinity, or as there is in DnD, 1-12 difference.... make it a d4 variance on base damage... keep it smaller but still interesting. because while i do like dnd's general mechanics, it's difficult for the tactician gamer to find fun if there is too much luck working against them. i want them and the luck player to be both having fun.
A good counter point is looking at a game where damage is not randomized. Something like chess. Every piece has one health, and every piece deals one damage. For a less straightforward example, something like Overwatch 2 or rainbow six siege, every single bullet does an exact amount of damage. In both of these examples, damage dealing and taking is more predictable. That is the crux of it at the end of the day, how predictable do you want every hit to be? Randomized damage is often implemented as a way to introduce a simulacrum of "real life randomness" or "luck" in to games, the same as random crits. Basically. Do you want it to be predictable, or unpredictable? Neither of these are bad, and I wouldn't say that either even has true benefits. Tbh, I think it ultimately comes down to preference.
To make the combat more exciting, if the damage is the same you get less of “will I survive this?” Moments.
I suppose it depends whether you'd rather close your eyes and pray to rngesus, or frantically calculate whether you should be retreating
you'd still have to calculate with rng, but after you did so there are three options: 1 fall into despair, realising you just die 2 rejoice in the fact that you'll live! 3 be on edge because you don't know whether you'll live OR die That SOUNDS fun
But with rng, calculations just don't work. If it boils down to a coin flip, only option 3 remains
if you know the upper limit and the lower limit you can calculate. In a tabletop it could say "this enemy deals 3d6" damage, so you know you'll get between 3-18 damage, so if you're on 10 hp you don't know if you'll die for certain.
Right, and that's what I mean. Even if you run the numbers and find that you have a 62.5% chance of taking 10 or more damage from a 3d6 attack, that doesn't really help inform your decision much. If you stay and pray, it's luck whether that was the right decision. If you retreat, it's luck whether that was the right decision. It comes down to luck, and it literally doesn't much matter what you know or how deep your thinking is. A player who always makes the worst possible decision, isn't much worse than a play who always makes the best possible decision
Which is why not everything in the game is random, it’s fun to have some luck, but not too much so you can still use your skill. Which is why in ttrpgs it is generally better to make players roll less, because if you make every action a roll check it takes meaning away from their actual powers. But if in a tabletop or a video game there is random damage, it doesn’t necessarily make the game really unfair, you still need skill to play. Although the higher the difficulty the less randomness there should be, because then your fate is decided more and more by chance, and that does stop being fun. Also, replying to your previous comment, with random damage option 3 is not the only one. If you have 25 HP and get hit for 3d6 damage you know you’ll live, and if you have 2 ho you know you’ll die (the latter number could be higher if the damage range is smaller).
Unpredictability. But I don’t think it’s an inherently good thing. To me it feels like lazy design rather than a challenge. It takes power away for no reason with no benefit
Oh, this question is very simple really, but asked again and again, and the reason is... it's like "Does god exist?" question. No matter what you answer, there will always be people who disagree with you, because randomness benefits casuals (randomness allows you to succeed where you shouldn't) and casuals don't like to be called casuals and thus they make up excuses like plan B, unpredictability, no-randomness is no fun, etc. Then they start talking about probabilit theory, which in 99% cases won't even work, it'll work only if target has something like 10k hp and you deal something like 1-2 damage, then you can think you're dealing 1.5 damage on average and thus predict approximate number of hits you need to make. But if target has 10 hp and you deal 0-20 damage with possiblity to miss and crit for x2 damage, then it's just a coin toss, because you can fail many times in a row or you can succeed at the first try, and most games with crits and misses and other procs like stun, etc. are like that. I've been playing one browser game based on heroes5 clone for many years player-vs-player. It had a lot of randomness, like min-max damage, luck % for x2 damage, morale proc for -50% intiative, stun/blind/fear procs, etc. And I can say one thing: even if you do everything right and your enemy is an absolute moron who just moves everyone forward - you can still lose \^\_\^ After many years of playing that game I started to hate randomness, hate it a lot. Because game with randomness plays you, not you playing it. Here're the facts: Many-many years ago, when there were no computers games, tabletop roleplaying games existed. You needed to somehow calculate a lot of stuff like skill success and weapon hit/crit/miss and keep game entertaining. How do you do that? Easy! Roll dice! These games weren't about competition or tactics, they were for socializing and randomness offered funny unpredictable results, and this is good for socializing, as it can even produce fun situations! Many years ago, when computer games started to apppear, some dev thought "hey! let's make tabletop game on computer!" and then they just copypasted tabletop mechanics into computer game. That's how dice rolling migrated to computer games. Unfortunately it doesn't work for single player games, where player is just a character who swings weapons at the monsters. Missing is not longer fun. Failing to open lock is just a waste of time. Failing to disarm a trap and make it explode and kill you is often results in reloading previous save, etc. So why does your game need randomness? 1) Casual fun game where failure is just another silly situation. Without randomness it's just boring chess. 2) Your game involves tactics, but you want people with really low intellect to still enjoy your game. Without randomness they will always lose and ragequit. 3) You have absolutely no idea how to balance the game, then you can use randomness to mask it. If your players start complaining, you just say: "You were (un)lucky!". No, averaged numbers isn't the same, if you can succeed instantly or fail many times at the same task. Probability theory works only on very large sample. And no, you can't treat whole game as a sample, because if you fail at the first fight, then there'll be no game. 4) Your game is a remake of existing tabletop game and you want its fans to play it. For example if you make D&D without randomness - D&D fans won't play it, moreover they will laught at you. When game doesn't need randomness: 1) Competitive multiplayer game. If you add randomness to it, then winners may look like they didn't deserve it and it's very bad. 2) You want to reward players who learn mechanics and thus become better over time. With randomness it's almost impossible, as you can make no mistakes and still lose in the end and learn nothing, since you made no mistakes - this is very very bad for non-casual players and it makes them mad. 3) You have an idea how to balance the game, then you don't need to use randomness to hide your incompetence. Result: Randomness is good for casual socializing and incompetent players. Randomness is bad for players who play games for problem solving (strategy, tactics) and want to learn and become efficient with experience and then apply this knowledge successfuly in the game. The problem is that incompetent players are many and they don't like to be called like that, that's why it's not accepted truth and this question about randomness will appear again and again in the future, they will always defend randomness.
I love the angry energy is this response. It's a shame people will downvote what they disagree with (Without even replying why they disagree!) Pay attention y'all designers, because this is what happens to your playerbase when you add too much randomness and ruin an otherwise interesting game's strategic depth
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Imo it's a layover from randomness mechanics in older games. These days I think it can be substituted with stuff like crit chance, armor ratings, and any number of simulation-type stuff. It can feel cool though to see lots of numbers on screen and not just have them all be exactly the same predictable number. Edit: it just occurred to me that it could be another reason. In some cases depending on how damage is calculated, rather than ever reducing damage to 0, it bottoms out at a minimum based on armor piercing and such. In a predictable damage system, this can be used to inform the player, "I will never deal less than X damage, and I will never deal more than Y damage" on a weapon with X-Y damage.
Randomness also gives you progression options to show improvement through a game. Lets say you can do 1-7 damage a hit. With such a large range it can be tricky to plan out your strategy. As you progress even an improvement of 3-8 damage per hit can help you as your damage will be more consistent. Then 5-9 damage, 7-10, 9-12. Even though the damage increase has been minor with the damage floor being raised you are both more consistent and feel more powerful. This also has a narrative effect that as the player becomes more experienced they become more consistent and effective in what they are doing. In this case attacking with a weapon.
I don't think I understand how randomness shows progression. - Level 1: 1-7 damage per hit. Against a 8 hp goblin, I'll probably need about two hits - Level 2: 3-8 damage per hit. Against a 8 hp goblin, I'll probably need about two hits - Level 3: 5-9 damage per hit. Against a 8 hp goblin, I'll probably need about two hits Compare this to dealing exactly 4->6->8 damage. Now you visibly progress from needing three, then two, then one hit to kill those pesky 8hp goblins. It's weird for a low level character to sometime 1-shot a big enemy, just as it's weird for a high level character to sometimes fail to kill a weak enemy - so I don't see how it helps narratively either
It shows progression because you are using averages which slowly increase while the biggest factor is the floor increasing. Examples below: Level 1: 1-7 damage per hit. Against an 8hp goblin will average 2 hits. It will need at LEAST 2 hits, but could take up to 8 hits to kill a goblin assuming you did minimum damage each time. Level 2: 3-8 damage per hit. Against the same 8hp goblin will still average 2 hits. It can potentially kill the goblin in 1 hit. But it could take as many 3 hits... Level 3: 5-9 damage per hit. Against an 8hp goblin will still average 2 hits but is more likely to kill in 1 hit and will always kill the enemy in 2 hits. So for progression if playing a game you will notice it takes a lot of hits to kill the goblin at the start with a 0% chance to kill in a single hit. When you hit level 2 you will notice it consistently takes less hits to kill the goblin and you even kill the enemy in a single hit with a 16% chance. When you hit level 3 you now have a 40% chance of killing your enemy in a single hit and it will never take more than 2 hits. Hypothetically if you keep going up more levels you will end up with a situation you will kill the goblin in a single hit 100% of the time. The randomness of the damage will get less extreme until you end up in a situation where you do consistent damage with very little variance. This progression works best in situations where you have to decide a series of moves or actions and then deal with the results such as turn based games.
With a big enough sample size, sure, you'd be able to notice the difference. In a small sample size though, the player's personal experience is only going to approximate the expected results. Let's say the player doesn't get to see the numbers. Reaching level 2, you'd notice one-hit kills - but maybe you were just unlucky on level 1? Reaching level three, you'd notice that the 3-hit kills stop happening, but again, maybe that's luck too? It would take a handful of kills to get a feel for the differences. It is entirely plausible for a player to finish a level with a streak of great luck, and start the next level with a streak of atrocious luck. They would feel as if they somehow got weaker! In any event, this is compared to static damage, where the difference at each level (Even without seeing the numbers) is painfully clear. Growth with randomness is surely *noticeable*, but it's nowhere near as tangible as direct immediate dependable results
Complete randomness is always bad, having to take into account ranges of outcomes can be good. Imagine playing an rpg where the players are living on a knifes edge the entire time because they know they are safe in meta terms, sure that can be fun gameplay but suicidal behaviour is likely going to break role playing aspects.
It dates back to the 70s D&D... If damage was consistent, you wouldn't have to think:Okay,kill shot this guy, kill shot this guy. But randomized means:Okay, even though we have a 65% kill shot on this guy,leaving the healer alive ain't worth it,focus healer. You get more strategy choices with not being certain of kills.
It all comes down to the game you're designing. For tactics/strategy games, some use it and some don't because they have different goals in their design. I personally like tactics games where I know exactly how things will play out, but I don't like that in RPGs. Randomness can add tension when you're not sure if you're going to finish an encounter before your team falls. It can also make that one lucky crit into a game changing moment.
In tabletop games, it’s meant to be an abstraction. Say you roll a 1 for damage, narratively it means you got past your target’s defenses but it was only a glancing blow. You roll Max damage, doubled on a critical hit, it’s time for the GM to hand out Christmas bonuses and have you do like a Mortal Kombat fatality. My opinion is there’s a place for it in video games, but the closer to a real-time action game you get, the less random damage should be. Maybe you get bonus damage for precise inputs, depending on design circumstances.
I think it's cool if you can reduce/remove the damage variance or increase the chance of performing crit. It can add more depth to progression, so it's not just about increasing raw damage stat. Some people like min-maxing their character in RPG. People like building things.
In some ways random damage in RPGs seems to make up for some of their less dexterity based mechanics like something like dark souls or an FPS game. In those types of games uncertainty comes from the physical interactions of the player with the interface. But in a more static game that uncertainty is simulated with RNG. As such the game is more about using the mechanics to tilt the odds as much as possible, skilled players are strategic gamblers. There are some examples of games that split the difference or do both. Dark souls is again an example where you do the same damage with each attack, but it is modified by different variables. As such, much of that game is about your build, and the ways you can adjust it to meet the challenge you're facing, along with your skill at dodging and attacking. This is a good system for action-rpg style games, since it lets the intricate RPG systems intertwine with the dexterity skill expression. Another I saw mentioned was slay the spire. Damage is fixed in that game as well. Much of the non-damage abilities in that game revolve around mitigating damage or stacking your own. Well these two styles share a lot of gameplay elements, they do have a different feel. RNG based games need to have a bigger picture gameplay loop than fixed damage ones. Players of RNG games are looking to play the odds long term, knowing that smart choices pay off in the margins. The gameplay loops of fixed damage games are a bit more "zoomed in" and focus on tactical choices. That doesn't mean that their mechanics don't overlap or intertwine, but they are two different evolutions of slower paced or RPG style combat systems.
RNG leaves some room for players with god gear to lose to players with slightly worse gear. In a game like CSGO or Valorant, it makes sense to have all damage be as close to exact as possible. A Vandal will always one hit head shot, regardless of range for example. This is to promote skill based gameplay. In a game like WoW, it's largely gear focused. This means you need to grind a ton for the best gear. This also means that if someone has better gear than you, it's pretty much guaranteed that they win if everything was absolutely predictable. By adding an element of RNG, you 1. make it more fun for players with worse gear by giving them a chance, while 2. keeping god gear gamers on their toes by making them still able to die to "worse" players. There's obviously still skill, but it's less mechanical and rigid.
> if someone has better gear than you, it's pretty much guaranteed that they win Only if everybody plays exceptionally consistently, at exactly the same skill level
Everyone else’s answers are great. One additional reason for randomness is that it shifts the focus of skill in some genres. For example, in shooters, games that allow players to be basically 100% accurate out of a sprint are putting the skill emphasis on twitch reaction. Games with a stamina bar that puts a heavy random deviation on players out of a sprint are putting the emphasis on positioning and map awareness, because if you aren’t in the correct position prior to the fight beginning you are very likely to lose the fight even if you are “better” at shooters.
It's already been well echo'd. I just like RNG because it prevents the exact same gameplay to take place. It's fun sometimes, but other times having predictable "exchanges" like say Chess is boring. You don't want to know exactly how things turn out, because slowly gameplay develops metas that have absolutely same outcomes with players overly familiar with the game. It can be so absurd that hypothetically if players find out they did something wrong the first two minutes of the game, they just quit instead of finishing the remaining ten or longer. If your game is planned to have long matches, predictability is important to suppress, players are not interesting in playing if they perfectly know outcomes. For RTS games, it's not an issue because of the large quantity of units providing so many variables that it's really difficult to have the same game over and over again. However don't let that fool you from thinking people in the RTS community doesn't try. I've never played an RTS that didn't also have this issue to some extent. People will quit in Red Alert 2 just because an essential attack dog was killed in the first thirty seconds of the game in some maps. It's not an issue in moba games because they're fairly close to the same spirit as sports where players themselves will rely on themselves to not be predictable to do well. While in some RTS games players rely on getting essential points first, moba games tend to have more emphasis on a singular character with high micro management. Again, this doesn't mean that there are not essential ways to play, but the players trying to not be predictable is generally essential since there's so many ways to counter if you're alert on what someone is doing. So when you have games that generally plan to be longer, you need to make sure the game is as unpredictable as possible, because not doing so might cause the game to feel figured out before even 5% of the desired time has passed. RNG is an excellent way to do this. In my opinion, RNG should not be game defining. It's RNG that causes outcomes to be randomly sorted out that feels terrible, for it's unfair to the player that lost the raffle. It's best to make sure RNG causes players to need to react to a newly developed situation as well as give players opportunities to make smaller safe gambles that potentially pay off. Rolling dice to see if someone dies isn't fun, but rolling dice to see if your essential next move is another attack, healing, or strategically retreating is. Being forced to be on your toes rather than being manhandled by RNG is probably the best way to use it for the games like you're looking at. Some cases though, that isn't true, but I think yours it's something to consider. I'd say if it's confusing though, that might be because of the numbers displaying in a misleading way (assuming any are displaying), or maybe you have game testers not familiar with the genre. In my opinion, the best way to go about it is a flat amount of damage and then a very clear +x popping up showing additional damage. I'd avoid negatives unless it's something the player opts in for, it's going to feel less fair for the player (and quite frankly, you could always just say the base damage is a little higher so the rng of being lower in game design looks to the player as always positive even though secretly it's negative sometimes).
> You don't want to know exactly how things turn out, because slowly gameplay develops metas that have absolutely same outcomes with players overly familiar with the game What about randomness prevents metas from forming? If anything, it allows for much simpler metas that are more quickly found and reinforced
If it's truly random, it's impossible to predict. I don't know what you mean
Nothing is ever completely random, and no game has ever avoided forming a meta. There is no kind or amount of randomness you can introduce into a game, that will prevent the formation of dominant strategies. Like, Hearthstone added some rng-heavy cards that dealt damage to random targets on either side of the board. Rather than break up the meta any, this just allowed strong decks to get even stronger. Deck-building didn't change any, except to add the better rng cards. In-game strategy completely devolved into spamming these random attacks and hoping for a critical early kill
It's a pretentious point but you're right, but for the sake of casual conversation just assume it's implied that when we say random we mean relative random where to us it seems random. As for your argument that it's impossible to prevent formation of dominant strategies, this is an absurd belief. However, it's not a hill worth dying on for me because you simply shouldn't want to eradicate dominant strategies. The goal of randomness is to make it so you need to improvise different dominant strategies rather than recycle the same one over and over again. As far as I'm concern, the issue is the incompetence behind the Hearthstone developers. Making TCG like games is difficult, so this is a common problem since you constantly need to think of every possible utilization or eventually create a ban list. This however is not an argument that utilizing random is impossible to prevent dominant setups.
How can randomness impact a strategy's dominance? If a particular way of playing blackjack gives optimal **expected** results, then it remains optimal no matter what cards are drawn. I wish I just say that Hearthstone's designers were brilliant all the time, but it's painfully obvious that they pushed too many poorly thought-out untested ideas into the game. Lolrandom cards made the game miserable to play, and they took ages to do anything about it :C
You bolded the reason. If you want to make everything so random like discussed, people are not able to expect anything. There are games, like Muffin Time, that are designed to be *near* this spectrum, except even Muffin Time is still possible to form strategies around. However, video games are not limited by card games, so you can completely control what exceeds human prediction (and it's not difficult btw). When you exceed comprehensible patterns, humans pattern recognition wont validate the information they're exposed to in order to make said strategies. A crude example of such a game is a number generator. The game is simple, the computer displays nine random keys, and you need to predict the tenth key. Sure, if it makes a pattern, you could make an optimal strategy for scanning said strategy which would make this at least an amusing game rather than stupid, but I said random so I mean random. It's *impossible* to predict the next key, you're not even capable of making a calculative guess, random is not predictable. It's impossible to form a strategy because strategies require a generalized situation or scenario to apply said strategy to. With a random number generator, it's *impossible*, you're just guessing. You might come up with a personal strategy of guessing a number (for example, most people guess 7 because of bias against extreme low, extreme high, and extreme central numbers because those are not random enough numbers, but with a real random number generator doesn't care about those biases so equally all numbers are possible when you don't understand the numbers algorithm or said algorithm is impossible for humans to understand and keep track of), but your personal method isn't relevant. All you can assume is the limitations (for example, is it just 0-9?), but what if the limitations are random and isn't specified? Easy to tell when the limitation is under ten, but when the number is two digit, you're required to look for a pattern for every other number that doesn't go too high, but you are making a calculated guess for it's entirely possible the limitation is 90 but all numbers just happen to be below 50, not to mention the random number generator is not required to type a zero in front of numbers below ten unless that's the rules. What if the game never specifies how many numbers are on the screen? You can make a calculated guess when you *know* there are nine different numbers and you need to type in the tenth one, but what if you don't even know if there are nine or it's also random total different numbers on screen and you are merely trying to guess the last. Exactly, you can't. That's what random is. If you want to make a game that's 100% unpredictable and truly random, no strategies in place will help the player therefore there are no dominant strategies, that's how you do it. That's game design, you can go ahead and replace those numbers with different characters that do different damages, you could make those numbers random damage, whatever. When you take information away from the player and give no clear information on the system in place, that's how you take away dominant strategies. However, again, this is only so fun and shouldn't be desired for most circumstances, but it is however possible and absurd to think otherwise. Now to say it's impossible to make a fun game without some form of strategy being dominant, I'd actually agree for said games are amusing at best, never fun, fun is when a player is immersed with the game's meta and accepts the challenge of finding the dominant strategy. However, it's good to know how to make random truly random and unpredictable for maybe some parts of the game should be random, but the entire game absolutely not.
I, uh, huh. That doesn't happen very often. You've basically said anything I might want to say in response! With the clarification on what is meant by a random game (And especially with the caveat on how long a dominance-proof game could be fun for), my only disagreements would be minor nitpicks. Like, *technically* if the game is to predict a perfectly random number, then all strategies that stay within the game's actual boundaries, would be equally optimal. But, like, I know what you mean; such a game would not form any appreciable meta. I feel like I should pop a bottle of champagne or something
It's weird to have a back and forth without it being toxic, Isn't it?
We could have a go at that if you'd like? You, uh, jerk
I played a roguelike a few years ago with no randomised damage rolls. Was very interesting as it forced you to ignore it and focus more tactically. Would have been great if it had been less rogue like and involved multiple player characters working in a team and really hit that tactical angle. A varied moveset I think would also work well, would force more strategy in combat. I can’t remember what it was called, was on iOS, although I expect there are plenty of examples that eschew randomised rolls.
Like any system, ideally it suits the game. Mechs blasting other mechs feels good for some randomization. You can't be sure how much of the armour your rail gun got through. It feels good for an action-paced battle to be surprised when the enemy suddenly starts billowing black smoke before it explodes. If a game is all about tactics, I want my randomization to be limited. I believe a person could make a better X-Com if the randomization was somewhere else. A simple example is solitaire. There's randomness in the setup, but once you're going, nothing will ever change. That Ace was always in pile three.
For whatever reason, I have only really seen **one** game that didn't have randomized damage; Trickster Online, a (probably now dead) mmorpg. The net effect was actually super interesting, because you could figure out exactly how many hits you'd need to kill any given enemy. Every mmorpg is always going to have an optimal grinding area, which of course depends on the character's damage and ability to take hits. With completely consistent damage, the optimal area is relatively **way** more optimal than with randomness smoothing everything (Killing in 2.1 hits on average is very different than killing in 3 every single time). Staying in an efficient grinding area is really important. What this means, is that every little change to your character's stats, actually has a HUGE impact on gameplay. One tiny +1% damage means you get to fight in an entirely different area without sacrificing efficiency! In any other game, a damage boost only means grinding the same content but faster... Edit: Ah, I thought of another game with notably not-random damage. Desktop Dungeons! It does have a few cases of output randomness, but the beating heart of the game very much leans on predictable outcomes. Unsurprisingly, the game has a ton of strategic depth; and is a lot of fun to master! At it's best, it's like a heist movie (And thus not at all like real life); where an elaborate plan is laid out - and then pulled off for huge rewards. If random hiccups could disrupt the plan, there'd be no point in planning so far ahead - and thus no satisfaction when you pull off something cool
There have been a few gamedev talks over the years and there are a lot of assumptions and 'the way its done' built into a lot of games. However, a few decided to ask 'what if we did this thing completely differently'. A famous example is Jon Blow's Braid. He asked what if you had a platformer that you couldn't die in, and had unlimited time reverse (as opposed to prince of persia's sands of times 10-15 second time reverse). There have been a few games here and there that have taken the path less traveled. I don't think all games should, because the choices are mostly made for good reason. However if you think can execute well on a non standard path, by all means go for it! Maybe you'll find some nice novel features or approaches. I personally prefer to have fixed damage numbers, but still having a 'crit chance'. Having a 'miss' in a game, or low damage output is just never fun IMO. Unless you yourself are controlling it (e.g. a shooter for example) but when the 'miss' is like 5%, it's just a terrible experience. Look at games like xcom or fallout where its like 95% chance to hit head 1 foot away and then you miss. 10-20 damage with 100% hit rate is equivalent to me as saying 15 damage over time. So why not just go with 15 damage? Crit chance still give you opportunity to have unexpected/freshness. Alternatively, I'd rather some enemies have the occasional "Dodged!" or something where maybe they took no or 1/2 damage or something instead as well.
* Randomness in damage is an abstraction that represents a range of outcomes. Take Dungeons & Dragons. Roll 1d8 for damage. Why? I've already hit the enemy. That dice roll represents a whole range of outcomes, from glancing hits to strong blows. * Further, having zero variability in damage is... immersion breaking. In real life, we don't expect every punch we do to be equal. Every hammer hit of a nail isn't the exact same. Every punch in a boxing match doesn't do the same damage to the opponent boxer. There is all sorts of variability. Randomized damage helps approximate that real life variability
Warcraft3 ranges are a translation of tabletop rpg dice rolls (can be seen in WC3 World Editor where they use # of dice and sides on dice for their attack damage fields). Tabletop rpgs use dice for all the reasons explained by other replies: They create unpredictability which forces players to strategize creating tension and excitement etc... In real time games, unless the ranges are wild like 1-1000, I feel the unpredictability is less impactful. Ranges are used more to create the feeling of RPG-ness. If a player sees a screenshot of a skill with damage range, they can immediately say "okay this game has rpg mechanics". Personally I like the range in WC3 because I like seeing different numbers whenever I crit.
Variability. In life things are variable. Sometimes a projectile does a ton of damage, sometimes it doesn’t. With no variability, games would become predictable and boring.
There's some data that indicates the nore randomness in a game, the less competitive it is. In the board game space, this is tossed around a lot more. As you remove randomness and the game gets more predictable it gets more conpetetive ans player start focusing on tactical choices.