Random numbers in video games

I was at EGX over the weekend (it was great!). Went to a talk featuring Julian Gollop (designer of the original 90s X-COM) and Jake Solomon (designer of the 2012 reboot). If you're not familiar, these are strategy games where the chance to hit your target is shown as a percentage, calculated from stats, line of sight, cover etc. Although the newer games have a 1v1 multiplayer mode, these are primarily single player games.



A couple of interesting quotes (I put the times where the quotes occur in the video as the quote title):

I edited the auto-transcript slightly to make coherent sentences, don't think I changed any meanings.

 

Yupp.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...s/rng-are-working-properly.97513/#post-859868

 

Interesting OP.

At the end of the day, it really only matters that your players enjoy the experience of the game. If that's not true, you're failing as a developer. Using random number generation is not something that some players enjoy, in fact they absolutely hate it.

The problem that players have though is that they often think "just not using random numbers" is the obvious alternative. Or making players "win" even when they actually lost. To me that's a really dumbed down game that I personally don't want to play. Kind of reminds me of something like a slot machine where everyone's a winner just long enough to get them hooked.

For me, RNG isn't a problem. I get that 93% success doesn't mean I can't fail four times in a row. I understand that 99% success doesn't mean that if I failed once, the next nine times should be successful.

But that doesn't change the problem, that most players don't understand that, and some do understand it but they don't like it anyway.