Castle Paradox

[Moogle1]

[Machu]

Ya wanna perfect example of a game that's much better because of luck? Tetris! The strategy of Tetris is entirely how to deal with its randomness. You have to build with each piece in mind, having a few different shaped holes for different pieces, all "just-in-case". One of the biggest goofs in Tetris is when you cover gaps, and that is somewhat the equivilant of missing your killing blow in a strategy RPG. It's unavoidable, but it's not game-losing, you just need to change your strategy to make up for it. So, when adding randomization to a game, try remembering the Tetris ideology; make the player adapt to the changes.
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[msw188]

I really like the tetris comment. I think that that encapsulates how I feel about luck in RPGs: it should force a player to rethink what they have to do to succeed.

When I began this thread, I was at the time thinking especially about magic working or not. Without a bit of aiming randomness, there would potentially be no risk at all in using a spell: you would know that it would always work (or always wouldn't) in a given situation. That is why I would like to have a 50-50 aiming choice in custom for attacks. I like the idea of death spells or status effect spells of this nature. I agree that enemy choices would be better if rational rather than random, but I still think that an element of randomness such as I am describing can add to a game.

I also want to add that damage variation is not always simply cosmetic. This is one of the strengths about having games with lower numbers (HP below 100, say). It can make that randomness really matter, making certain things risky. Supposing you have only a few HP left, but it is your turn, and you know that the enemy has 10 HP left. You've worked out that your attack averages around 11 damage. You only have a couple healing items left, and aren't sure how much further the next town is. Do you attack or heal? If you attack and your damage is 10 or more, you win and can use the item out of the battle. If your damage is less, your almost certainly dead. If you heal, the enemy will attack before you, and waste some of that extra HP, and you need as much as you can get right now.

Of course, whether or not these kind of situations are a good thing or a bad thing in a game is another part of the discussion. I think they are good, but some players might find them frustrating.

[Moogle1]

You just completely contradicted most of the opinions in this thread. That doesn't make you wrong, but I sure disagree with you.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[msw188]

Ha ha, yes, "I'm a living proof of all life's contradictions" (I think that that is the quote, it is from a song. Any guesses, or does anyone know who?). Yeah, I've sort of come to accept that I have a different view on what makes games fun than a lot of the users here. But that's okay. We can all agree to disagree.

[Iblis]

Using randomness to generate a situation that the player can still react to in a strategic way (as in Tetris) is a good use of randomness. What you don't want is the piece to sometimes randomly move in ways you don't tell it to or only sometimes clear the blocks when you fill a line. Randomness that the player can react to is good, randomness that comes in and screws up a good plan for no reason is bad.

[msw188]

Hey hey now, Moogle1 said something like 'this is almost universally cosmetic, having no effect on gameplay'. You yourself (Iblis) put it in quotes. Although I may have taken his comment a little more bluntly than he intended, and if so I apologize.

Regardless I must raise a half-disagreement. I agree that if the order of turns was randomized, that would be really bad because as you say the player may die regardless of his or her choice. But at least in my scenario, the player is making a choice between different risks, and feels that they had some effect on the outcome. I mean, they KNEW that is was risky to try the attack, but then again it may have been just as fatal in the long run to use the item, if the attack from the enemy took half of its effects away.

I'm seeing here two different risks. One is from not knowing the outcome of a random number, one is from not knowing how much farther there is to go. Most of the people here seem to think that the second case is more acceptable for a 'fun' or 'good' game. But both really boil down to a lack of knowledge, it seems to me. I can understand the seemingly predominant point of view, but for myself I don't mind the randomness part, and I wouldn't curse the game if I died in my situation. This is just me of course. I have seen some friends get really angry when they receive the random 'terrible blow' from what would have been a normal attack, and die because they can't recover.

[Moogle1]

[Iblis]

[msw188]

[Newbie_Power]

I am new to making OHR games, to game design, and this community, but I saw this thread and wanted to say something.

Luck is a factor that adds to the game. How it adds to the game is up to the developer. The original Fire Emblem just happened to be one of those mentioned NES games that were really quirky and flawed, but its luck formula was built upon each game to be made better, rather than dropping it completely, because Luck made up 80% of that game.

I am playing Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 and Luck affects my strategy in pretty interesting ways. My character could have 86% chance of hit versus a 23% chance of hit for an enemy that is weak, and I need to kill that enemy to get into a narrow passageway. I want kill that enemy so I can move my other characters. A freak accident might occur where I miss and he hits, and suddenly I have to adjust my strategy in that same turn by using an archer to try and take out the enemy unit from a distance and hope I can squeeze my healer in to give my character his HP back.

EDIT: Actually, I just found a bad example of luck in Thracia 776 that doesn't exist in other Fire Emblem games. Healing can sometimes miss, which can just cause more turns to be wasted. Luckily that was changed.

There are ways to help your luck in Fire Emblem games, luckily. You can increase your Skill stat to help accuracy so that situations that cause you to miss happen less, and you can increase your Speed and Luck so that your evasion is higher, or the best way is to have high defense (if possible), where you can soak the damage if it hits. Plus there is a weapon triangle where certain weapons are more accurate when pit against others.

It's all about manipulation if you base your game around it. If your game is deterministic by nature, then Luck is not the best factor. FFT is not as much about Luck as it is doing as much damage as possible (because that's pretty much the best strategy anyway) and getting the best skills that do said damage. Mario depends on the jump button, which is why Mario RPG games (not just Super Mario RPG, but Paper Mario series and the Mario & Luigi series too) remove the random number generators completely and allow the player to see if he can avoid attacks by jumping (and those random stat bonus on level ups in M&L 2 rely on a roulette wheel and not pure RNG as well).

I'm mostly stating facts and opinion here. I refuse to talk about philisophical things such as "what is the definition of fun" or "how should I go about giving the player the most immersive gameplay experience?" I go by "tweak it until it's fun to play".

[Iblis]

[Newbie_Power]

So we're talking about PURE randomness? I must not have caught that. In that case pure randomness is pure gamble, with the main strategy being that you need to know when to quit.

[msw188]

Okay, I think we (Iblis and I) may be in more agreement here than we think. I believe that having a rational thinking opponent is better than a purely random one, as he certainly does. I also think that percentage based randomness is a good thing, and probably the only sort of randomness that ought to be used 'at large' in a game; that is to say, this percentage based (and therefore understandable and to some extent player-controllable, or at least able to be taken advantage of by a player) randomness is the sort that ought to be used for things like aiming in often-used attacks, etc.

The disagreement seems to be that I feel that there is a (fairly small, but >0) place for 'pure' randomness that can add to the game, like the critical hit, or the odd spell. However, a fair bit of my argument against pure determinism does indeed rest on the assumption that the game in question is a 'traditional' RPG, that is to say, one with a fair amount of battling, levelling up, etc. Thus I foresee enemies becoming quite predictable in such a game, where you would have to fight similar enemies many times, unless they had multiple strategies. But how to choose one strategy out of such a set without some sort of randomness? It is in some ways akin to the second player's first move in chess that I discussed. There is certainly a plan involved, but a certain randomness (or at least, what I would call randomness) involved as well, at least to the first player.

All that said, the idea of an RPG that does NOT have many similar battles is a good idea in its own right, although not one that particularly interests me, per se.

I'm afraid I've never played any Fire Emblem game, so I cannot say much about Newbie Power's comments.

[Mr B]

It would be interesting if Luck were a consumable stat. It could be expended to produce good events (of player choice), or restored by selecting bad events (also of player choice). The player could manipulate the battle by determining whether enemy attacks miss or characters make a critical strike, but all that good luck would have to be payed back!

Battles could be resolved by outright killing every opponent, or (more subtly) reducing the other team's luck below zero. Or perhaps leaving battle with negative luck could have some game-world consequence.

Heh...I could imagine players "luck farming" weak creatures in order to have massive good luck to expend on bosses. Hmm.