I was playing Yahtzee with my girlfriend, and we ended up having a stupid argument over games which rely on luck to succeed. (a rehash of an older argument involving Monopoly) A brief description of Yahtzee for those unfamiliar with it: Every turn you roll 5 dice, and you have to fill in a scoresheet depending on what you roll. In order to get a good score, you need to be able to fill in as many of the different score categories as possible, and ideally get a good score in each category. Categories include: Yahtzee (5 of a kind, score = 50) ones, twos, threes etc (score equals number times number of times it is rolled) or Straights (long straight is a run of 5 consecutive numbers, short straight is a run of 4) etc.. Each go you can reroll any number of dice up to two times. I assume everyone is familiar with Monopoly. The question is, which is the better game ? My answer would be Yahtzee - because this game requires a surprising amount of careful thought in order to maximize your score... For example, if I roll 5 sixes, do I put this under the Sixes category, or do I call it a Yahtzee? On the face of it, putting it under sixes gets me 30 points, whereas putting it under yahtzee gets me 50, but then if I put it under sixes I am more likely to get a 35 point bonus from the top part of the scoresheet. Monopoly on the other hand, seems to be based very much on luck. There are very few interesting decisions to be made in this game - buying property is generally a no-brainer since there is no realistic alternative 99% of the time, and you have no control over what you land on. Some skill may lie in negotiating contracts, and deciding what to build on etc, but it seems to me that the dice are the deciding factor. Overall I find Monopoly a rather uninteresting game to play. So what is the point of this post? I don''t know really, I was thinking of starting a discussion on how random chances can add to a game, rather than detract from it. Yahtzee forces you to consider your chances, and make decisions based on risk, Monopoly does so to an extent, but it seems to me that good choices are generally outweighed by pure luck. (Monopoly fanatics feel free to disagree)

From a strategic point of view Yahtzee is surperior. In Monopoly the winner is mostly determined by luck. Although a lot of Yahtzee is luck, a player who understands its underlying strategy will win more often.

From a fun point of view its tough to argue which game is surperior because fun is subjective. Yahtzee has something a lot of fun games have, which is temptation. You can throw away combos in order to get higher scoring combos on the second roll. This makes the game have high drama throughout the entire game because the lead can change hands very quickly. Monopoly is very slow in the beginning and doesn''t have the drama until mid to late in the game.


Personally I love statistics and yahtzee has a lot to analyze. If more developers took the time to add temptation with rewards and penalties into games I think they would keep the player''s interest longer.

- Kevin "BaShildy" King
Game Programmer: DigiPen
www.mpogd.com

That''s exactly why I never liked Monopoly.

I preferred Risk. And even Yahtzee, although that was a game I only played with people who didn''t know how to play Risk or when I only had a limited amount of time.

How do random chances add to a game?

They add, if they are random chances that you can CHOOSE to take. Monopoly really doesn''t have any random chances except for the dice roll. What you roll is what you get. The only time I got to use some strategic choice in that game is when I was in jail. Do I get out and risk landing on my opponent''s high rent squares? Do I need the money that I get when I pass GO?

Now take a game like Talisman, which has some similarities to Monopoly. You roll dice and you move across the board. What''s one of the biggest differences? You get to choose which direction you move. In Monopoly terms, if you roll 7, you can choose to go 7 forward or 7 backward. Each time you roll, you get to make a decision. This way, it combined random chance with a tactical decision.

Monopoly is like that card game where two players sit on opposite sides, each gets half of a randomly shuffled deck and then both players draw a card... highest card wins and player gets to keep both cards. You just keep drawing until you have all cards.

If I can''t put any input into the outcome of the game, there won''t be any thrill because there''s nothing at stake.

A game should ALWAYS allow for player skill to influence the game. Games that don''t are usually suited best for children and for adults that don''t have a competitive spirit.

I think some randomness is necessary in just about any style of game you play. I"m not too keen on the idea of absolutes, i.e knowing with 100% certaintiy that result A will happen because of cause B. There are so many tiny random variables, that it should preclude us from knowing with absolute certainty that the desired or predicted result will come true. In some cases, the chances are so small, that they are incredibly rare, but you never know...

Let''s take for example a tank shooting at an armored car. Normally it would blow it to smithereens. But what if the gun jammed? We are also assuming that it HITS. If it does hit, it could just be a glancing blow.

When the player starts making calculations based on what he believes are absolutes, then games become just that...calculations. When you throw in the random unknowns, then the player has to think about other elements, make contingency plans, or be able to think very quickly on his feet.

That''s not to say that randomness should be the central part of a game design, but there should be enough there to keep one on one''s toes. When the game is too much based on luck, then the player feels that he personally had no effect on the outcome of the game. I feel that should be avoided though even if it is more realistic in certain cases, as the player should feel that mostly through his skill and cunning he was able to achieve his desired outcome.

Well, I personally think every game design requires it''s own set of rules.

Some games don''t need any ''chance''. Take a game like Chess. The only chance that comes into play is when you get to pick if you want to play white or black. That''s it. After that, every single event is a calculated one.

Risk/Yahtzee are games that combine chance and calculation.

Toin coss is pure chance.

With Chess, your opponent is the random factor. You decide on what you *guess* the other player is going to do. A really good player doesn''t always choose the best move. Why not? To make sure he doesn''t become predictable ^_^

I take it then, that the general consensus is that random chance can be a valuable element in a game, but only so long as it does not preclude player skill.

For example, Yahtzee works because the player has a high degree of control over how much risk he takes, and the fact that he gets two rerolls means that one bad roll is not the end of the game. This game is fun because you have to decide whether or not to ''gamble'' one combo for another, and run the risk of getting nothing at all.

Now I am going to take a very predictable change in direction here, and look at a specific type of game, which typically has a large element of chance - Strategy Wargames.
Table top wargames generally work, because typically you have a large number of dice rolls over the course of the game, and any especially lucky rolls will typically be cancelled out by unlucky ones. Furthermore, the player has some degree of control over the probabilities, for example, by placing his troops in cover.

Does this apply to RTS games? I don''t think there is any randomness in SC at all - all units seem to have a 100% hit rate, although I could be wrong here - there may be randomness in the damage vs armour calculations. AoK seems to have some probability in it, although there are upgrades to give 100% hit rates. In any case, the player has no obvious means of changing these probabilities, barring tech upgrades. (which are resource dependent) In any case, if there are any such modifiers, they are too small relative to the overall probabilities to be noticeable.

Also, how can you scale random elements? Random factors seem to be less important the more you include - if you have a suitably large number you could replace the random function with something which simply calculates the expected result: eg if Tank A has a 25% chance of hitting and killing Tank B, and you have 4000 Tank A''s attacking 1500 Tank B''s, you would expect to kill 1000 of them - far quicker than rolling 4000 percentile dice. Is the degeneration of the random factor a cause for concern if we want to add that element of risk?

No offence, but you''re an idiot...

Your description of monopoly:
"but it seems to me that the dice are the deciding factor."

That sentence right there flawed your entire argument. You claim that negotiating contracts, building in specific spaces, etc. in Monopoly is skill but then you claim the entire game is based on dice. Yet you''re comparing it to a game which relies SOLELY on dice to play. If you roll crappy, you don''t win in Yahtzee, its that simple. 1-2-3-4-5 every roll, no matter how strategically placed on the score card, isn''t going to get you anywhere in the game. 2-5 every roll in Monopoly is going to get you further then it would in Yahtzee.

There is no argument, Yahtzee requires less strategic skill and more dice-luck then Monopoly.

quote: Original post by Sandman
I take it then, that the general consensus is that random chance can be a valuable element in a game, but only so long as it does not preclude player skill.

Generally, a random occurence reduces the options available to a player. So long as there are enough meaningful options remaining, this is ok. Sometimes you have no options whatsoever - see Snakes and Ladders for an example. These games are fun among people of unequal skill, as it levels the playing field, but unrewarding for those who like to use some level of strategy. A ''better'' example could be Magic: The Gathering. You choose your cards to play with, but the order they appear in is random. This provides uncertainty, and forces the player to make decisions to handle that uncertainty. The player''s options are reduced, but in return you''ve added more depth to the gameplay as they need to be able to work with many potential card orderings.

Note that a random occurence at the wrong granularity does you no good either. One example is in many roleplaying games, where a weapon deals you between 1 and 6 damage each time. If you have 2000 health points, then the randomness of the weapon is irrelevant. It''s going to take almost exactly 572 hits to kill you every single time. Whereas Civilisation went to the other extreme : your Militia could defeat a Battleship entirely and sink it. So for a random element to be meaningful, it has to have a significant effect each time it occurs, otherwise it levels out over time and becomes irrelevant. To apply this to an RTS, it is probably not very interesting to alter the hit percentage much except in cases where one hit will kill.

GroZZleR, could you be a bit more polite in your posts? The fact with Yahtzee is that in the course of a long game, the results will even out and the difference in skill will show. However, in Monopoly, the course of the game is almost entirely dictated by who is lucky enough to land on certain squares first. This initial advantage is amplified through the process of charging rent, such that the initial leader is almost always the winner, and all because of random chance. There is next to no skill in choosing where to place houses since every square has an (almost exactly) equal chance of being landed on.



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quote: Original post by GroZZleR
No offence, but you''re an idiot...

Your description of monopoly:
"but it seems to me that the dice are the deciding factor."

That sentence right there flawed your entire argument. You claim that negotiating contracts, building in specific spaces, etc. in Monopoly is skill but then you claim the entire game is based on dice. Yet you''re comparing it to a game which relies SOLELY on dice to play. If you roll crappy, you don''t win in Yahtzee, its that simple. 1-2-3-4-5 every roll, no matter how strategically placed on the score card, isn''t going to get you anywhere in the game. 2-5 every roll in Monopoly is going to get you further then it would in Yahtzee.

There is no argument, Yahtzee requires less strategic skill and more dice-luck then Monopoly.

First of all, I would appreciate it if you would be a little more civil when disagreeing with my opinion.

Second of all, I would appreciate you having a clue what you are talking about. You are welcome to disagree with me, but at least have some kind of logic to your arguments, and some experience of the matter in hand.

My point about Monopoly, is that while negotiating contracts and so forth might require some thought, most of the time it is pretty much a no brainer. Ultimately, the outcome of the game is decided entirely by the dice.

Yahtzee on the other hand, while it might appear to be a game based on pure luck, also requires a certain amount of skill. If you don''t believe me, play it against someone who isn''t a total moron. They will probably kick your ass.