The Weekend Debate: Chance is a Fine Thing?

I think games should reward players based on their skills, rather than leaving it to luck.

Luck is a huge advantege on game, take BATTLEFIELD 3 for example im playing the campain on hard diffacaulty and the enemys kill me in 3 shots. So luck and chance is evrything, And not just in shooters. We need luck in all types of games because if we dont then we wont get no where, take a fighting game for example: if you aint got luck then your might loose, we all need luck and chance in a game because if not then we could verry well loose the game.
What it comes down to is skill but luck can take you along way and chance can give you a win.

I think good games strike a balance between the two. FIFA games reward the skilful, but every so often there will be a match with a player who isn’t as skilful but will nick the 1-0 (generally that will be me online).

Street Fighter 4 is another example, with greater skill at the game the rewards are there, but it can be a very steep learning curve for beginners. You don’t get many lucky wins there.

Lastly, some of the trophies on games can be down to pure luck, which can be infuriating when trying to get a Platinum. AC Brotherhood’s trophy of getting every single bonus in multiplayer is notorious for its difficulty in trying to get 15 bonuses in a ten minute period. Luck is required to get the right maps, kills and timings for it to unlock. Skill will get you so far!

I don’t want to break my leg.

Most games don’t involve luck, most involve skill (unless your talking about COD thats all about luck.) Fighting games such as UFC involve skill as you need to be able to dodge & know when and when to not go for your opponent, slightest slip up & BAM! your KO’ed.

2 words that i think you need loads of luck and chance for and it is MYSTERY BOX!!! from zombies…..i always seem to get a crap gun from it

Like it was said in the post, some games depend on skill and some on chance. But luck does play its role in games that depend on the users skill. How many times do we get pass a level by the skin of our teeth, against all the odds, with barely any life left or ammo in our gun. When we do we always say “Phew, that was lucky!”.

But there’s also a flip side, bad luck! When your character doesn’t make a jump in a platformer even though you seemed to execute it perfectly, or when you crash your car right near the end of a race, whether it be a bad turn in a game like Gran Turismo or a lamp pole in GTA.
The perfect example of luck, or bad luck, in a game that is solely depended on skill is BF3. Whether you hear a snipers bullet whiz by your head or a helicopter drops out of the sky onto your head. That game is full of pure chance moments.

So basically, I think there is a degree of luck in all games, some more so than other.

I Think the Fallout games are the best to look at when we are talking about luck in games. Fallout allows you to decide how much luck you should be given in the game and allows you many different methods to change they way your luck works in game.

Fallout uses luck in a way that it triggers random events, increases your chances at gambling, winning in fights and even certain characters appearing. And with luck being included in fallout 3, it means that when developing your character and playing the game, you don’t always have to depend on your skill of your character, as having high luck and change the turn of the game and how it affects you.

Being a programmer, my first observation is that luck, or chance, is often a design tool to keep the game from being predictable: no one wants to play exactly the same thing every time (imagine a game of Tetris in which the pieces you get are always the same every time you play: Boring)!

On the other extreme, a game purely built on luck can be frustrating: if you’re the best player and yet you constantly lose because your opponents (CPU or other human players) are luckier in the random factor of the game, you stop playing because you feel that no matter how well you play you will never win!

Another useful effect of luck in games is to smooth out the odds for newby vs pro matches. If a game is entirely based on skill, the new players will have a hard time fitting in. This for instance, can be seen in games like Tekken, in my humble opinion.

(cont. from #8)

Personally, I tend to favour skill based games because I like being rewarded for my effort and dedication with a game and because at an emotional level it’s more rewarding to feel the accomplishment of winning a difficult battle because _I_ fought for it. The inverse is also true, and I think I speak for almost everyone when I say that I don’t like losing because of bad luck!

Of course there are exceptions though: I think casual games benefit a lot from the luck factor. I don’t want to spend hours perfecting my performance in casual games but I want to have a nice score and just enjoy a good time Also, one cannot play too many purely skill based games, because it takes time to master each game’s techniques!

before i make a post on the subject matter i just wanted to say YAY the weekend debate is back!!!!

Change is always great in games or in say what a console is offering.
I was exited when a few changes where anounced last year y Sony in Germany that whe finaly would get a movie an music rental service in 2011! Unfortunately that never came thrue and my PS3 still can´t do everything.
I also think changes in the time you get a game on the EU market is very welcome like Trine2.
Yes changes is wondefull.

i like skill games like assasins creed because you have plan how to assassinate guards and targets then yur route to escape then yu know how to escape on the next assassination but fifa is just about pure luck when yu think yur going to miss but then yu score then yu think yur sick at fifa

It all depends on the balance of skill and luck. You want a nice balance whereby skilled players will always do well, but luck (based on randomization of items or events) will add that little extra bit of chaos into the proceedings allowing players to come back from behind and steal wins, or just add a bit of unpredictable fun into the game.

“How do varying degrees of luck (or ‘chance’) influence the games that we play and their effects on us?”

I think Luck as an element in games is like the marmite test. Some despise it and some buy games solely due to it.

The biggest example of this is 2010′s Dark Souls, a game loved by sizable bunch and ignored by a huge amount of others. The games entire system is predicated on luck and chance, will my sword get stuck on this wall? will I have enough stamina to swing this sword? will I die if I try and run through this room?

99% of the time Death is assured but that one time when the players throws caution to the wind, rolls the dice (so to speak) and takes the chance that results in them beating a boss, making it through a difficult area or earning a trophy is what drives them forward.

Have a great weekend guys

At first I couldn’t think of any games that I play that involved luck and chance more than actual skill. Then I remembered playing Resistance 3 on superhuman last September. There were a number of sections were I kept getting overwhelmed by the Chimera. There was one section were I let luck play a bigger part than skill. I knew that the next checkpoint wasn’t far away. Having played it on normal already, I knew that the cave entrance would trigger the checkpoint once I entered it. I carefully moved between the huts until I could see the cave. I then made a mad dash for it. The first time I died, the second time I just made it. I guess when it comes to luck in video games I ‘m more likely to take a gamble. After all, sadly there are no restarts or checkpoints in reality!

you cannot have a bit of luck without having a bit of skill, specially when it comes to getting the upper hand in fps. for example there have been times when i have had a rocket miss my skull by inches when running around the corner but with a bit of skill i know how to counter the attack. Also when i think of chance i think of mod nation racers, there have been many times iv blasted my way and kept first position only to be hit by a rocket just in front of the finish line and then to watch everyone zoom past leaving me at bottom position RAGE

Sometimes, the best thing in a game to do with chance is not how lucky you are but how UN-lucky you are! for example the dragons in skyrim, how they are unscripted and will just pop out of air (literally ;P) and make the game 10 times epic-er and present an unexpected challenge, and whats even cooler is when your unlucky enough to get two on you at a time!!!

there is no such thing as luck I’ve always believed it just means Labouring Under Correct Knowledge

skill and luck sometimes go hand in hand.

your peggle example is wrong in my opinion as yes you can pass levels with a bit of luck but your not going to get the high scores that comes with skill and timing.
take the zen/marvel pinball series for example i always thought getting good scores was luck based but with some practice my game is getting much better and thats because im slowing my game down and understanding angles much better, however you need a bit of luck and skill in that game if your going to pull off death saves and such.

a game like disgaea where you have to seek out pirates in the item world is far more luck based as they are random incounters some people trawl the item world for days just trying to find one set however some lucky people find them straight away.

another example of luck in gaming is me not getting my head blown off within a few seconds of an fps because i suck so bad

Luck helps when ai makes a huge mistake like not spotting you etc. Or finding a weapon in multiplayer that like an rpg or sniper rifle.

@19 *that you need

i meant @20 grrrr

I think that the ‘luck’ or ‘chance’ in games often is there to test skill. For instance, if say every match you played online on Call of Duty was exactly the same, there would be no skill involved whatsoever in winning. The random matches and outcomes that occur in games, for instance finding a whole team of ‘n00b tubers’ or snipers will test a players skill based on the diversity of the tactics he is willing to use use to adapt to different situations. Playing the same tactic over and over again in every situation wont get you anywhere. Good luck is basically finding a match that you are able to adapt to well. For example, a long ranged sniper may find it good luck if the whole enemy team has chosen to use short range weapons of a n00b tuber may find it bad luck to find a team full of people with explosive resistance.

hey hey

welcome back everyone \o/

Luck isn’t a huge influence on my gaming but it creates the most interesting, lively and fun times in my household.

Those lucky shots you can crack off in hustle kings can be exhilarating. That moment the health bar is blinking red and you just manage to grab a health orb can bring immense relief. Hitting that demon/boss with your last arrow right in his weak spot to snatch victory is just thrilling.

Luck can provide some of our greatest gaming moments.

Peggle however; is pure skill. (flower power ftw!!)

If the difference between winning and losing was solely based on luck, it would make games too frustrating to play.

On the other hand, if you became good at a game where winning and losing was based solely on skill, it would become far too easy.

A combination of the two is always best.

If you are finding a certain section of a game too hard (because your skills are not high enough) – luck allows you to continue playing knowing you have a chance, and if you play again the scales may tip in your favour.

Also, if you are very skillful at a game, luck can change it up a bit to provide more of a challenge.

Woo TFD is back!

Where to start? I love luck, I particularly think it’s quite a massive thing in online gaming since there is a lot of it going about but oh boy I can’t express the greatest feeling of getting a goal in the 90th minute on FIFA, especially when it’s from a freekick which I rarely ever score from during the match.

Online trophies and challenges also require quite a bit of luck rather then skill, for example Battlefield 2 had a trophy where you had to destroy 20 buildings killing an enemy player inside, you would have to blow the whole bottom floor off, pray there was an enemy inside and hope s/he don’t jump out before it KO’s them. All in all, I love getting lucky (in video games haha), just a shame it doesn’t love me

Luck? who needs luck? Luck is for losers!!

i like luck in games like Fallout 3 where it takes an incredible amount of luck to find a rare weapon the firelance which is found by the random crashing of an alien craft also theres games like portal which combine a sense of skill and luck with placing the portal in the right place.

Good to see TFD back.
Happy New Year James.

I think that adding luck as a factor to any game can be a real frustration. It was something that I kind of experienced with the “corridor of death” in Black Ops.
You would get to the checkpoint, die, and if you were lucky, the AI would be in a slightly different position on your next reload so you could push a little further.
Skill as a gaming tool is tested with harder difficulties and online gaming where there is always ALWAYS someone better than you to test your reflexes.
I like the Battlefield 3 example. But can you call it luck that you, for example, heard the snipers round and he missed you? Or is it simply a lack of skill on the guy with the rifle?

I think skill and luck regularly go hand in hand and are almost impossible to differentiate while in game.

guess it depends on the game, been playing a lot of NFS:HP lately and some of the races have been won or lost because of luck – example a rival racer coming round a last bend, been in front the whole game and he gets wiped out by an oncoming car – lucky me wins the race

I don’t think games like COD or BF can rely on luck as they’re mainly down to skill, although if I do have a good game I’ll always consider myself lucky rather than skilled (mainly because I’m not very good)

In terms of luck itself, you do need a little bit of skill. Take Shadow of the Colossus for example, trying to get hard time attack completed was an absolute nightmare with the 3rd colossi!!! there have been entire forums on how to defeat it within 5 minutes!!! When I done it, It took near on 170+ attempts much to my frustration and I’m not joking when I say that the controller almost went out the window on more than one occasion!! At times I was saying to myself forget about the trophy this is a bit of a joke to do, but then I would feel as if I would let myself down just giving up!!! anyway when I did get it done, some of it was skill some was luck, and sometimes you need both to succeed to get what you need and when you do succeed…..there’s nothing better than a triumph (or trophy lol):-)

If there was a game that simply relied on chance, then it wouldn’t appeal to me. What’s the challenge? I wouldn’t feel like I accomplished something by completing that game of random chance.

Certain games can make you feel lucky, but could be disguised by skill. Veteran mode on World at War (which I platinumed) is probably the toughest form of luck I ever played. It was luck that three grenades got chucked at me, instead of the usual five, whenever I entered cover.

I don’t like luck in my games. If I know what to do and do it right, I should succeed. If random circumstance causes me to fail once, where every other time I succeed, it’s just annoying. It doesn’t “keep me on my toes”, it keeps the game on the shelf.

I feel the same about good luck as well. Winning through luck isn’t satisfying. I want to be ultimately responsible for every win and loss, and I want to know that whatever I did wrong or right will be applicable if the same situation rolls around again. Otherwise you’re not learning anything.

I’d rather be lucky than good…
particularly where randomised game elements come into it. Playing Quake 2 DM on LAN: one game, my random spawn point was always on top of a crate, stepping off it was onto the rocket launcher. I beat the others by a 4 or 5 to 1 kill ratio – even when ganged up on, when they did kill me, I was back on my crate, stepping off onto the rocket launcher. Any other time we played it was a more even kill ratio, but I usually wouldn’t win.
Things like that, where just one time you end up with an advantage are great. Lots of the time things are a combination of skill and luck. Surviving a fight or something where you get unintentional addons (bad luck), but pull it off barely(combo of luck and skill) are great moments, and should always be an element in gaming.
No one likes being on a bad luck run, and it can mean you don’t continue playing and in this games systems that adapt to the losing can be clever (such as rolling on loot in public quests in WAR).
Games need all these things because if the mechanics and results are finite, skill will win against them. Randomisation, and introduction of luck is definitely vital to keep it challenging, to keep it fresh and engaging.

Luck and random events have been and are very important in game design: sometimes they are basic for the gameplay (in Tetris, for example, randomness is essentially the “enemy” which the player must fight, as he is continuously forced to choose the best move in order to minimize the negative effects of the “wrong” blocks), sometimes they are just a way of making the experience richer and more realistic (random elements in open-world games).
In my opinion, it is especially in the first case, where it is part of the gameplay, that the luck element can play a determining role, even if it’s not easy to successfully implement it into the gameplay: in my opinion, the key point is to give the player reasonable tools to “win” against randomness, so that the player doesn’t feel frustrated. After all, that’s what we’d like to have in real life as well!

everyone likes the risk of losing it all or winning big.
when included in a game like .. poker..or racing ect… chance keeps us guessing and by default it makes us enjoy things more theres no risk without reward after all. there is no luck anyway its all just averages.but we just like to call it luck..sounds better you make your own luck.. its called skill. luck doesn’t influence what we play i would say the luck is there when the games you play dont crash and or bug out on you i.e that big rpg that is huge atm…hugely broken you know,… your lucky if you can play that without a gamebreaker finding its way to you.

Sometimes luck matters in some games such as ac revlations as sometimes moving in the wrong direction in the multiplayer can give you away to your target and u tend to be pretty lucky when sometimes your target comes running towards u giving an easy kill

I much prefer games that require more skill than luck.
Games which rely strictly on luck tend to be more casual than something like Gran turismo or Uncharted for example. Every game has some degree of luck involved though, ranging from the mystery box in CoD zombies, to the dice rolls going on behind the scenes in RPG’s that affect damage and loot drops. This kind of luck isn’t usually obvious and the games can usually still be beaten even if your luck is bad.

There are different forms of luck in games but I would say nearly all of it comes from the player, except in one circumstance.

The most common form of luck are the “lucky breaks”, something that wasn’t intended by the player that ended up with a positive effect such as a goal or enemy killed. These are fine in small amounts, but quickly become frustrating if player skill in a game becomes irrelevant. This shouldn’t be confused with the “trick shot”, which while it has some luck involved it mainly is skill with a strong understanding of the way the game functions.

The next is the “calculated” piece of luck. It’s one where you take advantage of the game’s algorithms to gain an advantage in the game. You see it most in games like Mario Kart where knowledge of the game’s power-ups, especially the likelihood of a Spiked (Blue) Shell, leads to players not playing with the skill they have to gain an advantage by ill means later. It’s this type of “luck” that I hate because it is more like an exploit and is unfair on those who play the game as it was intended by the designers. Obviously this doesn’t work all the time, otherwise it wouldn’t still be classed as luck.

The last is the one which is out of the player’s hands and that’s where the result is purely “randomly” generated. Of course that’s not fully true. The random numbers chosen are actually a set sequence that can be repeated by using the same seeding number in the generator, but that’s not the point. To a player though it seems random because they have no control over the outcome. You see that more in virtual casino games, like Roulette.

Luck is fine in video games as long as it doesn’t become the basis of the game itself, unless of course you’re playing a game like Roulette. If something in a game is based too much on luck then it becomes boring and frustrating to a player. Most importantly in a competitive game as long as a player with skill can triumph the vast majority of the time then a few lucky occurrences now and then are fine and actually can make the game more fun for all.

There is a huge difference between pure, random chance and unpredictability. Pure, random chance, I’ll refer to it as luck from now on, is something that will trigger an event regardless of player input. Random quest rewards, for instance, will ignore the effort a player has put into a mission. It does not reward taking risks or skill, and by extension, discourages player initiative and even player input. Luck can surprise you, even in a good way, but it should not be a game mechanic to rely on, unless you want to make your game truly “unfairly” hard.

But unpredictability is something else entirely. When you venture into unknown areas of a game world, “chances” are you’ll find something new and exciting. This kind of chance will better regulate the rewards a player gets for trying something. For example, when following a non-linear story, you can take different paths. While you might be able to foresee some of the things you’ll encounter, it will still not be entirely predictable. The result of your actions will be logical, not random.

So chance is definitely a big part of gaming, even very much helping to define the non-linear nature of it. But pure luck counteracts that improvement, because it negates player input.

In most games luck is slowly replaced by skill. But never completely replaced otherwise it would become boring.

But even when your skilled in a game you’ll often look for luck.
just to get a better time, just to finish the boss faster.
In your mind you sometimes know it is better to take it slowly, heal yourself just one more time or something, but sometimes you take the risk and hope you are lucky and win.
So even a game like demon souls which is a lot based on skill has an element of luck in it, but you decide how much. And that makes games fun

Luck and skill play a huge part in games with some requiring a combination of both. Battlefield 3 is a great example, as the campaign on hard required a great amount of skill, where as online really depends on the luck of where you end up during matchmaking and who you are against. Same goes for Ultimate Team on Fifa 12. The tournaments online require a great amount of skill but getting players you want in packs is truely luck based, as anyone needing the ‘How great is that’ trophy will agree.

Luck or chance is that special ingredient put on top of skill and experience. If a game leaves us stranded with luck alone then the feeling of accomplishment and reward is in no way comparable to the delicately balanced experience when chance is the cherry on top of hard earned skills. That unpredictability is then the pure reward and reason for continuing practicing. Please remember that dear game developers.

it’s been noticed, news will spread, you can’t brush it under the carpet much longer.
http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2012/01/13/sonys-festive-mini-mes s/

You have to pursue your own luck to get it. With practice and skill you can do anything in gaming!
Maybe there’s room for a ‘chance’, but since every game has to have a basic data, as random as it is, there’s always a close result at the end. So maybe you are luck to get a new rare weapon inside a randomly select object for the first time, but if you try again and again, you will get that same weapon eventually.
The only true luck I think its involved is if I accidentally press some button I didn’t mean to, and I end up killing some bad guy… I can see that happening, but this alone will never win a game.
As always, this is my opinion.
Cheers everyone! Have a great weekend!
“Good luck is a lazy man’s estimate of a worker’s success.”

I only really play skill based games and I really hate it when luck is a factor in succeeding, or at least doing well. A skill-based game should be 100% fair, in the case of Vanquish (a very fair, very well designed game) there’s no randomness to enemy spawns, there aren’t any attacks that can juggle you into not being able to do anything and if you die it’s 100% your fault (and not a fault of poor game design), it’s up to the player to learn from those mistakes and improve, luck doesn’t really come into it. On the other hand there’s Ninja Gaiden, they’re very skill based games yet they’re cheap and luck is certainly a factor when sometimes some attacks are unavoidable no matter how good your reflexes are, and as much as I love the gameplay I find stuff like that really frustrating. Luck should stay in games like pachinko and out of videogames imo.

@ryannumber3gamer haha, I definitely agree with that, I’ve put so many hours into Zombies on WaW and so many games have gone badly through poor luck with the box and the ammo drops, the randomness keeps it fun in some ways but when your luck starts bad in a game and just continues throughout until you run out of ammo and die it feels like such a waste of a game!

Luck is what you make of it.
I just recently started playing Borderlands(A Great Game) again but this time with my stepson. I found it easy when I played it solo but when I played it with my stepson it became more difficult because of the endless “Luck” when it came to obtaining weapons, he obviously had the better weapons by way of “Luck” lol.
Some could say luck is the same as random, i’ll leave that open to debate lol
My conclusion is Luck makes games better because if everything was the same they wouldn’t be worth playing. I could give countless examples of games that use luck and many others that don’t, Borderlands weapons just simplifies the whole Luck thing.

no such think as bad or good luck life is full of chances you put in what you take outB-)