Which aspect do you like best in you games? Skill, or chance? Most games have both, so perhaps a better question is, when do you like to rely on your skill and when do you like to leave it to the fates? In general, I think I prefer games of skill. With these kinds of games, you know for a fact that you won because you performed better. I love games that include personal statistics since you can see improvement as well. However, games of chance offer the excitement of the unknown. There’s nothing like pulling an ace card or a critical roll when the odds were against you. Like I said before, though, different games incorporate skill and chance into different mechanics of their systems. That being said, I think it’s worth looking how some games use skill and chance with popular mechanics.
Shooting
I think it goes without saying that Counter Strike is a highly skill based game. What this game, and many other FPSs, boil down to is: kill the other player before he or she kills you. Of course, that is just one aspect to it. Knowledge of different maps and weapons can give you a competitive edge over other players. There are some small aspects of chance, such as bullet spread, however players learn how to deal with it over time.
XCOM takes the stress of shooting completely out of your hands. Before taking a shot, the player is shown the chance to hit in the form of a percent. As many XCOM players know, a 90% chance shot can be really deceiving. The player must instead use their skill to creating good builds and placing his or her units in optimal positions.
Upgrading
Games like League of Legends rely heavily on item builds, mastery builds, ability sequences, etc. For the best results, a player must know what items work best for his or her character given the situation. On top of that, not all mastery builds (think of a skill tree of perks) work that well with each character.
Borderlands 2 has a set skill tree for each class. However, a lot of skills increase the chance of an event happening, such as the chance to absorb bullets. While players can decide what to increase their favor of an event happening, they have little choice of what kind of weapons drop, and how good they are. On top of that, there are items called Badass Tokens that gives players five random stat options. Of them, the player must choose one to upgrade.
I could go further about rouge games like FTL: Faster Than Light or card games like Hearthstone, but I think that would be too much for a single blog post. Let me know how you guys like skill and chance in your games.
On this topic I wanna say every GREAT game has a lot of both, chance and skill. For example, for MOBAs, which I love greatly has a great deal of chance pertaining to your teammates or opponents. In my experience I have gotten great teammates and some who ping a great deal and do little. I have also versed teams that are extremely good and some very bad. This mix of randomness(chance) and still having to be skilled to play is to me what makes MOBAs GREAT.
Then for games such as The Binding of Isaac where luck is the key factor, if you aren’t skilled even with good power ups you’ll die. Sometimes with bad power ups and a great deal of skill you can still pull through but still there are times where all odds are against you. That fight to be the underdog or just being completely overpowered but knowing what to do with what you got is what makes it a GREAT game.
In the class, we defined that game is a problem-solving activity. Therefore, I think a great gamer always rely on skills more than chances. In my opinion, most of “chances” is just a beautiful skin of game’s “money generator.” In many RPG games, when you’re trying to upgrade your weapon, there’s always a chance to fail you. If you want to be very strong, probably you need to pay for those upgrade materials or even other rare items. For some games, you have to get great weapon or items first to solve your problems. However, some games like MOBA games, they focus on skills as you mentioned. They rarely have randomness in their game. So I think as a developer, put more chance elements in the game is an excellent way to earn money. But if I’m a gamer, I love to use my skills to solve all the problems in front of me.
I prefer more skill based games than luck based games. This is because if I lose in a skill based game than I feel as if I lost because I wasn’t good enough. However, if I lose in a luck based game than I feel as if its the game that made me lose and not my abilities as a player of the game. I can also practice and get better in a skill based game while in a luck based game I cannot practice because I cannot control what the game is going to do next.
I typically play games that require more skill and have less chance, but I do enjoy games that are purely based on the latter. One that comes to mind is Hearthstone. While I do not play Hearthstone often, my favorite times playing were the Tavern Brawls where they added even more randomness to the game. For example, one I recall playing a lot of was when you played a Minion, a random spell would activate. This takes most skill out of the game, since you can be destroying the other player and then lose the next turn to some unlucky spells.
I believe games of chance are more laid back and relaxing as opposed to games of skill. I know at least when I play games of skill, I play to win typically. Games of chance you can play to win but know that it isn’t your fault for losing.
This is a very interesting topic that I hadn’t really put too much thought into before. Now that I actually take a second to think about it, I think there is definitely a place in my heart for skill games and luck games as well as games that combine both. I like skill because like you said if you win in a game of skill it is because you performed better than whoever or whatever you were against. Your fate is in your own hands in these games and there is clear progression of your skill and it is usually more fun the better you get. On the other hand, games of luck can be fun too. Who doesn’t love buying a lottery ticket now and then or taking a risky bet? There are tons of apps and games built just around these little risks that can be fun to pick up and play.
My favorite games are usually games that combine the fun of skill progression with the excitement of luck. Games like Clash Royale or Overwatch, where they rely mostly on skill but then have certain features that are (Clash chests) or are not(Overwatch character outfits, voicelines, etc.) important to gameplay tend to be my favorites. Even when luck isn’t too important to the main elements of the game, it can still add another layer of fun that games just based on skill don’t have.
In general I am of course predisposed to think that skill is a more desirable thing to determine whether you win or lose, because of course skill is rewarding the behavior and is goal oriented. Whereas chance is of course out of your hands and the argument of whether or not you are really the one playing the game, or is is the random numbers being generated by the game, that is really playing it. I think this on the surface, however when i try to think more critically on the subject there are definitely pieces of games which you want to be random for a number of reasons, the most salient in my mind is leveling the playing field in a game you play over and over again.
In Mario Kart the random blocks play a huge role in the game-play. They not only alleviate some of the boredom that may come from playing the same tracks over and over again, they also in many ways throw wrenches into the mix which make the entire experience more spontaneous on the whole. Without these blocks I argue Mario Kart would begin to look a lot more like NASCAR, with everyone following closely behind each other trying to get the most optimal turn. With the blocks you now have the option to go out of your way for a reward which could turn the tide of the entire race, or be nothing. This element of chance makes the game more fun.
I definitely prefer skill in any game that I play. I play a lot of MLB the show which has a little bit of luck involved much like baseball, but a lot of it is skill and once you are able to recognize pitching patterns from other players, you can hone in and start stringing together hits. In MLB, usually the more skilled player will win the game and you will usually get punished for making a bad pitch. MLB the show also has those statistics that you were talking about which is a good indicator for me on how certain players on my team are performing and I can make changes to the lineup accordingly.
I have mixed feelings about chance in my games. As you mentioned, in games like COD or Halo, I don’t want a game with a lot of luck. I feel like that ruins the soul purpose of competitive games. I’m already on edge when i’m playing these games due to lag or someone having the host connection. However, when I play games like Mario Party I feel like the more chance the better.
I really think game designers have to understand their target audience and they game they are trying to make when determining chance. I’ve read an article a little bit ago about there being a rule in either China or Japan that forces game companies to publish the statistics. Well this may be a little too far, people will spend thousands of dollars on an item that they will only get by chance and not by being good at the game.
This is a fascinating area to me, especially insofar as the FPS genre. In recent years I believe we have seen the FPS trend evolve from more skill-based mechanics to those of chance. Back in the day (with games like Counter Strike, Goldeneye, etc) FPS games were really simple–you had a gun, and maybe some grenades and your task was to kill the other players. The pacing was also far slower–there were usually less players in a given game, and the maps were more condusive to drawn out engagements and longer matches versus the velocity of modern FPS games. Games like Battlefield (and especially) Call of Duty have gone beyond the basic gun/grenade mechanic and introduced a series of other abilities (the care packages in Call of Duty–which are completely randomized) and “gimmicks” which introduce more elements of chance (another example being vehicles in battlefield–the player who happens to get the tank is more likely to do more damage). Additionally the velocity itself in recent Call of Duty entries has replaced much of the skill based play with ‘Luck & Circumstane’. I think both can be fun, but it can be difficult to strike such a balance that is rewarding to both skillful players, and the more casual crowd.
I prefer skill and chance differently depending on the game. If I am playing a competitive game like Starcraft 2 or a fighting game like Street Fighter, I want zero random chance. Randomness kills competitive games because it allows for worse players to beat better players. This results in the top players dropping the game because the time and effort that they put in is ultimately for nothing. When it comes to single player games, I think that randomness can be fine. Genres like rogue-likes depend on random generation. However I agree with other posts in that no game can be 100% random. 100% randomness basically leads to constantly broken things. This could mean that a level is unbeatable or a weapon does way too much damage. For single player games and casual online games, I think some randomness is acceptable. However, for ultra competitive games, I think randomness has no place.
I personally like games that require varying levels of skill so that I can test myself to see how I can do in each situation. I definitely think that chance is needed in games as well because it is nice to have that uncertainty in a game. Having chance keeps the game interesting and different each time. However, I would prefer a game with just skill rather than just chance because it allows whoever is playing a chance to actually progress and become better at the game rather than relying on RNG.
I think a mixture of both is the ideal game mechanic, but I would rather it rely more on skill and just have a bit of luck intertwined. With skill based games, you’re able to prove that you’re better than other people by repeatedly beating them where as skill is just playing a game where everyone essentially has the same chance of winning, and putting time in doesn’t really affect how good you are at the game.
A game I think that does really well with this mixture is World of Warcraft. From loot drops to your attack rotation, each aspect is mainly focused on skill with a little RNG to go with it. With loot drops, the drop chance is dependent on luck, but you also need skill to kill high level bosses to get a chance for the loot where you could have killed lower tier bosses for loot that is not as strong. With the attack rotation, many aspects of different classes have procs where you are able to boost your damage if you get a proc, but if you don’t your damage will still have a baseline.
I think a mixture of both is what makes games fun, if games were entirely skill based, sometimes you hit a wall in terms of skill, and the game just becomes incredibly boring.
I’d be willing to argue that you cannot have a COMPELLING game that solely utilizes chance. I was so close to just making that a blanket statement, denouncing anything reliant on chance, but then thought of slot machines, which I suppose are entirely random and maybe somehow tucked in as a game.
Skill is what defines a compelling experience, at least for me. While you could most certainly have a game based on raw skill and skill alone, I find often the games that interest me utilize skill to in some way overcome random chance. I’ve recently been addicted to RimWorld, and the game fabricates story through events that are essentially picked out by the AI story teller at random. The interesting gameplay arises as a direct result of how deftly you do (or don’t) address these situations as they arise.
So if I have to prefer, I think you really need both. All skill and things can start to feel like less of a game, less based on fun. No skill, and what’s the point.
Personally, I prefer games that require skills as the main mechanic, and I am not always the most skillful at games. The main reason people play games is to feel achievement, and I feel that you get more of that when you have to do some work, not when it is not in your control at all.
Now, you were correct when clarifying that games tend to have both, and I think the harmony between the two is important in games as well. I love Minecraft, and most of it has to do with skill, but a random chance feature is the enchantment of tools and books. It is a small part of the game, an area you don’t have to touch, but makes the game so much more fun.